Member in the wild

Last week was a busy one for NSFWG member Mark West.

Ellen Datlow, leading horror anthologist, published her annual list of 'honorable mentions' (stories that don't appear in her "Best Of" but which she feels are worthy of pointing out to readers) and included West on it, with his story "The Bureau Of Lost Children".  This originally appeared in the anthology "ill at ease 2" and was workshopped at the group.

He was also part of a quartet of Writers at a reading event held at Leicester Central Library on Thursday evening.  He read from his novelette "The Mill" (which was used as his audition piece to get into the group) and took part in a lively Q&A session.

from left - James Bennett, Hardeep Sangha, West, K. T. Davies

The icing on the cake was a glowing review of his novella "Drive" (also partially workshopped in the group) from Peter Tennant in Black Static magazine.  Tennant writes; "[Drive] is a crowd pleaser, a horror story set in the urban landscape and tapping into our fears of what could so easily go wrong in this setting, a finely tuned tale that delivers all the thrills it says on the tin. I loved it, and I also think it would make a splendid little film."

More details can be found at his blog.

The NSFWG blog celebrates 100 posts!

Well here we are, post 100 for the Northampton SF Writers Group blog.  It's been entertaining, getting from February 16th 2011 to here and we plan on sticking around for at least 100 more posts and hope that you'll keep visiting.

In case you're new to the blog, here are some pointers to the wide and varied content we've published.

Successes of various group members

Articles from group members

Interviews with members

Posts on writing (including top tips from the likes of Group chairman Ian Watson)

Reviews of films and books

and essays about "The Book That Made Me"


Stick around, there's plenty more to come...

Drive, a novella by Mark West

To be launched at Edge-Lit 3 in Derby, this Saturday (19th July), Pendragon Press are publishing "Drive", a novella of urban terror from NSFWG member Mark West.

David Moore has one night left in Gaffney and is at a party he doesn’t want to attend. Natalie Turner, at the same party, is lost for a lift home.

Meanwhile, three young men have stolen a car, and as the night darkens and the roads become deserted, David and Nat enter into a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse. . .

“Drive takes you for a journey down the darkest alleyways of human savagery.  A fast paced, high tension thriller that delivers on all fronts....”

- Jim Mcleod, The Ginger Nuts Of Horror

"Drive is a gripping, tense urban noir with prose as tight as a snare drum..."
- Paul D. Brazill, Guns Of Brixton.

“Mark West writes the kind of fiction that gets under the skin where it lies dormant until you turn out the lights ...”

- Dave Jeffery, author of the Necropolis Rising series

Published as a limited (to 100 copies) edition paperback and unlimited ebook, across platforms, with cover art and design by West himself.  The limited edition paperback includes an exclusive afterword.

More information can be found can be found at the Pendragon Press site or at Mark's site

There's also a book trailer...

Awards and nominees (both Ian's, in this case)!

Congratulations to Chairman Ian Watson on making the shortlist for the Sidewise Award... with a story workshopped through the group, no less.

Come on, Ian!

The Sidewise Awards are presented to recognize excellence in alternate history and named for Murray Leinster’s 1934 short story “Sidewise in Time,” the winners will be announced at Loncon 3, this year’s Worldcon, in London.

Short Form:
“The Weight of the Sunrise,” by Vylar Kaftan
“A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel,” by Ken Liu
“Tollund,” by Adam Roberts
“Uncertainty,” by Kristine Kathryn Smith
“Cayos in the Stream,” by Harry Turtledove
“Blair’s War,” by Ian Watson

Long Form:
1920: America’s Great War, by Robert Conroy
The Secret of Abdu el Yezdi, by Mark Hodder
The Windsor Faction , by D. J. Taylor
Surrounded by Enemies : What If Kennedy Survived Dallas?, by Bryce Zabel

In further awards news...

As previously mentioned (on this post), NSFWG members Donna Bond and Mark West have been asked to serve on the jury for the British Fantasy Awards, which will be presented this September at FantasyCon in York.  Donna is on the jury for Best Magazine/Periodical and Mark is reading for the Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award) and the shortlists for all awards have now been announced.

For the NSFWG, congratulations to co-Chairman Ian Whates, whose NewCon Press is on the ballet for Best Small Press.

The other nominees:

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Between Two Thorns, Emma Newman (Angry Robot)
Blood and Feathers: Rebellion, Lou Morgan (Solaris)
The Glass Republic, Tom Pollock (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Headline)
A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
House of Small Shadows, Adam Nevill (Pan)
Mayhem, Sarah Pinborough (Jo Fletcher Books)
NOS4R2, Joe Hill (Gollancz)
Path of Needles, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)
The Year of the Ladybird, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Novella
Beauty, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
Dogs With Their Eyes Shut, Paul Meloy (PS Publishing)
Spin, Nina Allan (TTA Press)
Vivian Guppy and the Brighton Belle, Nina Allan (Rustblind and Silverbright)
Whitstable, Stephen Volk (Spectral Press)

Best Short Story
Chalk, Pat Cadigan (This Is Horror)
Death Walks En Pointe, Thana Niveau (The Burning Circus)
Family Business, Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic)
The Fox, Conrad Williams (This Is Horror)
Golden Apple, Sophia McDougall (The Lowest Heaven)
Moonstruck, Karin Tidbeck (Shadows & Tall Trees #5)
Signs of the Times, Carole Johnstone (Black Static #33)

Best Collection
For Those Who Dream Monsters, Anna Taborska (Mortbury Press)
Holes for Faces, Ramsey Campbell (Dark Regions Press)
Monsters in the Heart, Stephen Volk (Gray Friar Press)
North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud (Small Beer Press)

Best Anthology
End of the Road, Jonathan Oliver (ed.) (Solaris)
Fearie Tales, Stephen Jones (ed.) (Jo Fletcher Books)
Rustblind and Silverbright, David Rix (ed.) (Eibonvale Press)
Tales of Eve, Mhairi Simpson (ed.) (Fox Spirit Books)
The Tenth Black Book of Horror, Charles Black (ed.) (Mortbury Press)

Best Small Press
The Alchemy Press (Peter Coleborn)
Fox Spirit Books (Adele Wearing)
NewCon Press (Ian Whates)
Spectral Press (Simon Marshall-Jones)

Best Non-Fiction
Gestalt Real-Time Reviews, D.F. Lewis
Doors to Elsewhere, Mike Barrett (The Alchemy Press)
Fantasy Faction, Marc Aplin (ed.)
Speculative Fiction 2012, Justin Landon and Jared Shurin (eds) (Jurassic London)
“We Have Always Fought”: Challenging the “Women, Cattle and Slaves” Narrative, Kameron Hurley (A Dribble of Ink)

Best Magazine/Periodical
Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace (ed.) (Wyrm Publishing)
Interzone, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Shadows & Tall Trees, Michael Kelly (ed.) (Undertow Books)

Best Comic/Graphic Novel
Demeter, Becky Cloonan (Becky Cloonan)
Jennifer Wilde, Maura McHugh, Karen Mahoney and Stephen Downey (Atomic Diner Comics)
Porcelain, Benjamin Read and Chris Wildgoose (Improper Books)
Rachel Rising, Terry Moore (Abstract Studio)
Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Best Artist
Adam Oehlers
Ben Baldwin
Daniele Serra
Joey Hi-Fi
Tula Lotay
Vincent Chong

Best Film/Television Episode
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, Steven Moffat (BBC)
Game of Thrones: The Rains of Castamere, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO)
Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (Warner Bros)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (Warner Bros)
Iron Man 3, Drew Pearce and Shane Black (Marvel Studios)

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Ann Leckie, for Ancillary Justice (Orbit)
Emma Newman, for Between Two Thorns (Angry Robot)
Francis Knight, for Fade to Black (Orbit)
Laura Lam, for Pantomime (Strange Chemistry)
Libby McGugan, for The Eidolon (Solaris)
Samantha Shannon, for The Bone Season (Bloomsbury)

* * * * *

In further Awards news, it should also be noted (because we didn't do so at the time), that SOLARIS RISING 2: THE NEW SOLARIS BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Ian Whates (from Solaris Books) was a "Finalist for the 2013 Philip K Dick Award".

More details can be found here

NSFWG members on BFS jury

Since 1971, the British Fantasy Society has been the focal point for fans, writers, publishers, film-makers, artists and anyone who is a lover of fantasy and horror in all its forms.  The British Fantasy Awards (originally called The August Derleth Fantasy Awards) has been with the society almost from the start and are now established as an annual event, presented at FantasyCon.

Members of the society vote for the longlist and the Awards administrator collates a shortlist from this, with the relevant titles being handed to juries who will decide the winner.

This year, we are thrilled to announce that two NSFWG members - Donna Bond and Mark West - have been chosen to be jurors.  Donna has served in this capacity before for other societies, though it's Marks debut to the process.

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
Cate Gardner
Jim McLeod
Mark West
Pauline Morgan
Thana Niveau

Best Magazine/Periodical
Aleksandra Kesek
Donna Bond
Jim McLeod


From the release:
The juries for the British Fantasy Awards are appointed by the Awards Administrator (Stephen Theaker) under the supervision of the British Fantasy Society committee. The BFS committee itself is the jury for the Special Award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award).

The juries have begun the process of deciding whether to add any egregious omissions to the nominees decided by the voters of the British Fantasy Society and FantasyCon. We hope to announce the resulting shortlists at the British Fantasy Society Open Night on 6 June 2014.

For a full list of jury members, click this link

Memory Man & Other Poems, a collection by Ian Watson

Following on from his PS collection "The Uncollected Ian Watson" (see the blog post at this link), the NSFWG has also had a collection of poetry published by Leaky Boot Press.

As a taster, Ian has provided the blog with a poem that originally appeared Mythic Delirium magazine in 2006

Cobwebs in Heaven

by Ian Watson

 God’s Wife wasn’t like Eve –

although He created Eve in Her image.

She didn’t just potter about in a garden

prior to a curse of childbirth and housework

and being ruled over by a man.

While He took a siesta on the Seventh Day

She was busy with Her own creations,

Which She rather hoped He’d admire,

the life of a million other worlds

-- for She was quite a fast worker.

But He was furious and scorned those as toys

And threw her out of his house called Heaven.

Could it possibly be that He was jealous?

He’d only decorated one world; She’d equipped

Most of the rest of the universe.

Yet She wasn’t too heart-broken, God’s wife,

Satana, not when She thought about it,

falling through space towards her million Edens.

In His rage God forgot one little thing:

Who would keep His Heaven clean? 

That’s why He created angels as audience

to applaud Him while serving as feather dusters

to sweep away cobwebs with their wings.

The collected poems of award winning science fiction writer Ian watson.

Born in St Albans in 1943 and raised on Tyneside, Ian Watson escaped to Oxford as a student in 1960 for 5 years, including a dissertation on 19th Century French literature. Next he taught literature in Tanzania, then Tokyo, and finally (along with Futures Studies) at Birmingham School of History of Art, becoming a full-time author, mainly of SF, in 1976. By now he has published about 30 novels and 11 story collections, and lives in the north of Spain where he recently married the lovely Cristina. His daughter Jessica is a textile designer. Many months eyeball to eyeball with Stanley Kubrick in 1990 resulted in screen credit for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), directed by Steven Spielberg after Kubrick's death. With Cristina he has also published a cookbook in Spanish about meals named after famous people, and with Italian surrealist Roberto Quaglia he authored a book of transgressive stories, The Beloved of My Beloved, possibly the only full-length genre book by two authors with different mother tongues. His photo-strewn website is www.ianwatson.info, and as regards his most recent major novel (with Andy West), a medieval and modern medical Islamic technothriller, see www.watersofdestiny.com. His favourite beers and wines are many (excluding Shiraz and Syrah), and he fries ray wings in butter.

This book can be purchased from major on-line retailers and good bookshops worldwide. Free delivery is available to most countries from Book Depository in the United Kingdom or the USA. If you have difficulty purchasing any Leaky Boot Press title please contact us at this link.

ORDER MEMORY MAN & OTHER POEMS FROM BOOK DEPOSITORY

ISBN   978-1-909849-11-2

160 PAGES

US$ 15.99

£ 8.99

AUS $12.99

New from Newcon Press

Newcon Press, the imprint run by NSFWG co-chairman Ian Whates, has two new anthologies out, filled with excellent writers.

Both books will be launched on Friday evening at this year's Eastercon in Glasgow, 6.00 pm on April 18th, unveiled at a launch party which will also see the release of a new collection from Eric Brown and The Moon King, Neil Williamson's debut novel.

A mysterious disappearance in the closed confines of the lunar colony, a man who claims to see a biblical reference made reality, a vital message carved into a piece of decaying skin, a powerful woman’s sage advice to her granddaughter, an artist determined to create the ultimate work of art whatever the cost, the dangerous search for a very special book, a future metropolis terrorised by an enigmatic serial killer, a man caught in a dark spiral of revenge…

Open the covers at your peril.

1. Introduction -- Ian Whates
2. E.J. Swift – The Crepuscular Hunter
3. Adam Roberts – Gross Thousand
4. Donna Scott – The Grimoire
5. Emma Coleman – The Treehouse
6. Paula Wakefield – Red in Tooth and Claw
7. Simon Kurt Unsworth – Private Ambulance
8. Jay Caselberg – Bite Marks
9. Marie O’Regan – Inspiration Point
10. Paul Graham Raven – The Boardinghouse Heart
11. Simon Morden – Entr’acte
12. James Worrad – Silent in Her Vastness
13. Paul Kane – Grief Stricken
14. Alex Dally McFarlane – The (De)Composition of Evidence

Paperback - £9.99 / Hardback - £15.99

order from Space Witch here

Quantum mysteries, explosions with no apparent source, wartime code-breaking, artificial intelligence cloaked in the sweetest of forms, enchantments undertaken on a whim, a fetish convention at a small town hotel, a faithful pet’s ghost that won’t let go, a surgeon forced to operate at gunpoint, a future London where fate rests on the choice of dishes selected at a meal… All this and more.

1. Introduction -- Ian Whates

2. Stephen Palmer – Palestinian Sweets

3. Frances Hardinge – Slink-Thinking                   

4. Storm Constantine – A Winter Bewitchment

5. Andrew Hook – Softwood

6. Adele Kirby – Soleil

7. Stewart Hotston – Haecceity

8. John Llewellyn Probert – The Girl with No Face

9. Jonathan Oliver – High Church

10. Maura McHugh – Valerie

11. Holly Ice – Trysting Antlers

12. Ruth E.J. Booth – The Honey Trap

13. Benjanun Sriduangkaew – Elision

Paperback - £9.99 / Hardback - £15.99

order from Space Witch here

Also, available from Space Witch, is "The Newcon Press Little Black Box" which contains

Hardback copies of both volumes of the duo anthology

La Femme

And Noir

An envelope filled with a quartet of sheets signed by all the contributing authors

A black tea-light candle shot through with silver, couched within a purple organza bag woven from the wings of dark fairies. The two books will be bound together with ribbon to protect the unwary reader, the inside of the box lined with black as an added precaution:

The NewCon Press Little Black Box is strictly limited, with only 100 available, each box individually numbered. When they’re gone, they’re gone…

Price: £39.99

The Uncollected Ian Watson, a new collection from PS Publishing

To be launched at EasterCon in April, PS Publishing are launching "The Uncollected Ian Watson", which will be edited by Nick Gevers and published as a 408 page jacketed hardcover.

Here are powerful stories which have never been collected before, such as ‘Jingling Geordie's Hole’, voted both the best and the worst story of the year by readers of Interzone magazine (sometimes by the same readers!), the kernel of Watson's novel The Fire Worm. Likewise, the short story which birthed his novel Deathhunter. And there's a stand-alone story related to the masterful Mockymen, never published before now. The mischievous 'Divine Diseases', which appeared in the science journal Nature, brought protests to that august publication; a similar satirical brio informs ‘The Real Winston’, a clever alternative take on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Besides stories, gathered here are many entertaining and often profound pieces of non-fiction, yielding deep insights into the author's creative works. In 'The Author as Torturer' he asks a question even more urgent today than when first voiced 20 years ago. Here are Watson's inspired impersonations of H.G. Wells (even if the period clothing doesn't show in print). Aptly, the Times Literary Supplement commented àpropos Watson's fiction: 'A phenomenon, a national resource to be conserved, Ian Watson resembles H.G. Wells in both invention and impatience.' Well, The Uncollected Ian Watson is devoted to conserving these and other pieces previously scattered across anthologies and magazines—as well as Watson's views on films ranging from The Wicker Man to The Matrix, plus his perspectives on artificial intelligence as published in Intelligent Systems journal. His relationship with comics is explored, and much much more. Here’s the full line-up.

CONTENTS

Three Kinds of Close Encounters with Comics

How I was Shot by Adolf Hitler

Jingling Geordie’s Hole

Beware the Pedicating Tribads!

King Weasel

Shell Shock

How the Elephant Escaped Extinction

The Drained World

Vile Dry Claws of the Toucan

The Tragedy of Solveig

Science Fiction, Surrealism, and Shamanism

The Shortest Night

The Author as Torturer

A Cage for Death

Secrets

Scars

The Jew of Linz

The Big Buy

Eyes as Big as Saucers

The Aims of Artificial Intelligence

The Matrix as Simulation

The Real Winston

H.G. Wells in Timişoara

Of Warfare and The War of the Worlds

The Wicker Man

Dark City

Stephen King’s Thinner: An Attack Upon America

A Daffodil Jacket, or The Misadventures of Sebastian in Kyiv

Divine Diseases

Intelligent Design 2.0

Story Notes

More information can be found at the PS Publishing site or at Ian's site.

That was the Year that Was (a round-up by co-Chairman Ian Whates)

So we bid a fond farewell to 2013, a successful year for the NSFWG and its members in many regards.

Now resident in Spain, chairman-in-exile Ian Watson made a welcome return to the pages of Asimov’s in July when his story “Blair’s War” appeared there, to be followed by his poem “Catalogue Note by the Artist” in the December issue.  Ian also saw stories published in French and Romanian and had an original piece feature in Daily Science Fiction, while his classic “The Very Slow Time Machine” was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Stories. His greatest achievement of 2013, however, was undoubtedly to marry the lovely Cristina (clearly a brave woman).

Nor is Ian the only member of the group to have tied the knot.  In May, members Donna Bond and Neil K Bond were married in a wonderfully relaxed steam-punk themed event at a Northampton hotel.  A month later, Donna, who continues to edit books on a freelance basis for several publishing houses, took over as chair of the British Science Fiction Association from yours truly (clearly another brave soul)  She also had a story featured in Daughters of Icarus, an anthology of new feminist SF and fantasy from Pink Narcissus Press.

Mark West has enjoyed one of his most successful years to date as a writer.  In addition to editing an anthology, The Anatomy of Death, for Hersham Horror Books and co-editing "ill at ease 2" for Pen Man Press, Mark saw his short novel Conjure reissued by Greyhart Press and had no fewer than seven short stories appear in various anthologies, including “Jack In Irons” in The Bestiarum Vocabulum: 2 (Western Legends Publishing), “The Bureau Of Lost Children” in Ill at Ease 2 (PenMan Press), and “It Was A Dark And Stormy Night (tale for Emma)” in The Book Of Horrors (Spectral Press). In addition, Mark’s story “Fog on the Old Coast Road”, which appeared in 2012’s Hauntings (NewCon Press), gained honourable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Years Best Horror.

Another member to gain honourable mention from Ellen Datlow was Emma Coleman, with “Home”, her debut appearance in print, which featured in NewCon Press’ 2012 anthology Dark Currents.  The story was also longlisted for a Bram Stoker Award.  Emma has recently sold a story to PS Publishing for a future edition of Post Scripts, expected in 2014.

Demi-Monde: Fall, the fourth and final volume of Rod Rees’ ambitious and original series, appeared from Jo Fletcher books in August. Various instalments of the Demi-Monde series were also published in Germany, Turkey, Croatia and France. Not content with that, Rod followed the Demi-Monde up with the feisty dystopian short novel Invent-10n (Alchemy Press) in December.

Nigel Edwards’ debut novel, Badger’s Waddle, an anarchic and surreal take on life in a warped English village, appeared from Greyhart Press in May, while his parable-esque tale “The Last Star” closed the NewCon Press anthology Looking Landwards in October.

Andy West’s debut collection Engines of Life, published in July by Greyhart Press, includes a story that won the University of Central Lancaster’s SF prize.  For much of the year, Andy has focussed on the climate change debate, producing several controversial blog posts on the subject.

Paul Melhuish’s story “Time Television” featured in Twelve (Horrified Press), an anthology of Gothic time travel stories, and he is currently working on his next novel.

Tim Taylor’s Greyhart Press continues to go from strength to strength, with ten new titles appearing in 2013, including three via new YA imprint The Repository of Imagination.  The year’s highlight for Greyhart was hitting the #1 bestseller spot on the Amazon.com alternate history and time travel romance charts in June, while the second edition of Tim’s own guide to laying out books for Createspace became his first ever paperback to pass a thousand sales. When Tim added up all the editions of all books he had laid out for paperback or eBook during 2013, the total came to 227. No wonder he felt busy! Notable ventures included working with Peewee Hunt to bring out his tales of life aboard the Ark Royal in the 1950s, and completing the reissue of Jeff Noon’s back catalogue as eBooks.

I’m sure there’s another member of the group who is involved in publishing… Oh yes, that would be me, Ian Whates. In 2013 NewCon Press enjoyed our most prolific year to date, publishing a total of nine new titles, including debut collections from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Stan Nicholls, and Mercurio D. Rivera, and a first SF collection from Steve Rasnic Tem. Highlights included Chris Beckett’s The Peacock Cloak occupying #1 bestseller spot in Amazon UK’s science fiction short stories for both kindle and books, producing the Looking Landwards anthology to commemorate 75 years of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers, and compiling Legends: Stories in Honour of David Gemmell.  The signed hardback of the latter (150 copies) sold out almost immediately, and the title continues to feature high in the kindle sales charts.  Personal highlights included the publication of my second short story collection Growing Pains (PS Publishing) in March, having my novella “The Smallest of Things” appear across four consecutive issues of Aethernet (April to July), and seeing seven new short stories feature in various venues, including “Eros for Anabelle” in a January edition of the science journal Nature, “Default Reactions” in The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic in October, and “Without a Hitch” in the anthology End of the Road (Solaris) in December.

Nor have the other members of NSFWG been idle.  After five years immersed in academic study, Heather Bradshaw has emerged with a doctorate and has begun to write her own brand of cutting edge SF once more, Steve Longworth continues to craft his unique style of short stories while wrestling with the demands of working as a GP in modern day Britain (a task often more surreal than anything he might write as ‘fiction’), and Susan Sinclair continues to develop the themes and narratives of various ongoing novel projects.

So, that was 2013.  Watch out 2014: the Northampton Science Fiction Writers Group has you firmly in its sights!

Ian Whates
Co-Chairman NSFWG
January 1st 2014

Invent-10n - a new novella by Rod Rees

INVENT-10n

You know they’re watching, don’t you?

Invent-10n is my latest book (I call it a semi-graphic novella, that’s a novel of 60,000 words augmented with illustrations) which is to be published by Alchemy Press in December. It’s a dystopian story, following the travails of my heroine – twenty-year old jive-talking, nuBop singer and angry young lady, Jenni-Fur – as she struggles against the suffocating strictures of the surveillance society that is Britain 2030.

Invent-10n began life a long time ago – in 2009 to be exact – when I was playing around with the idea of writing a story about a world where the full implications of living in a pan-surveillance society were being played out.

My research told me that, by some margin, the British are the most watched people on the planet with one CCTV camera for every fourteen of us (a conservative estimate by the way). The reality is that no matter where we are, we’re being watched. What this also signals is how obsessed the British authorities (be they the police, security services or local councils) are with CCTV surveillance: they have become the most avaricious voyeurs in history. Worse, the brouhaha following Edward Snowden’s disclosures regarding GCHQ’s Tempora system – the hacking into the transatlantic fibre-optic cables by the British security services – indicates that the British authorities don’t just like to watch, they like to listen too!

The chilling thing is that Tempora is one and only one of the programs our spooks are developing to better access, store and analyse our e-communications: they can tap into the calls you make on your cell-phone, read what you say in the e-mails you send and monitor the opinions you post on social media sites.

The Britain of 2030 described in Invent-10n is one where this information-gathering addiction has reached its zenith (or its nadir, depending on your point-of-view) and my fictional National Protection Agency – the MI5 of 2030 Britain – is using its PanOptika surveillance system to hoover up all personal data relating to everybody in Britain.

Fiction did I say?

Infinitely large data storage capabilities coupled with the use of unfeasibly powerful algorithms means that soon (as in now!) our security services will have a real time 360⁰ portrait of each and every one of us. They will know what you did, when you did it, who you did it with and what you said while you were doing it … everything … 24/7. All of these data will be poured over looking for patterns that might suggest you’re thinking of doing something of which the government doesn’t approve.

Which brings me back to the heroine of Invent-10n, Jenni-Fur. She is a girl mindful of Scott McNealy’s famous maxim, ‘Privacy is dead, get over it’. Jenni-Fur comes to understand that curbing the inclination of the National Protection Agency to dig and delve into her life is futile: knowledge is power and politicians (the putative masters of the security services) are in the business of acquiring and wielding power. As Jenni-Fur sees it the surveillance genie will NEVER be put back in its lamp.

What Jenni-Fur also realises is that the availability of so much surveillance-gathered information puts democracy at risk. This is what she calls the ‘J. Edgar Hoover Syndrome’, where the power derived from having access to so much (often very sensitive) information has a corrupting effect on those controlling it. In a world supervised by PanOptika it is oh-so-easy to follow the declension:

Yesterday the Government was serving you …                                                 

          Today the Government is surveilling you …                

                Tomorrow the Government will be controlling you.

Jenni-Fur’s insight – her Ker-Ching Moment – comes when she understands that it isn’t the computers and cameras that threaten our freedoms but the use made of this surveillance-harvested information by the Government. Therefore she must scheme to take the human element out of the surveillance matrix, to use the computer to protect us from ourselves. To do this she teams up with mysterious übergeek, Ivan Nitko, inventor of the eponymous Invent-10n.

Jenni-Fur’s world is one where paranoia is an everyday state of mind and to communicate this I wanted to create a feeling in the mind of the reader that they were actually in that world so I came up with the idea of combining faux-factual material supposedly published in the e-media of 2030 and interlacing this with extracts from the diaries of the two chief protagonists, Jenni-Fur and National Protection Agency apparatchik, Sebastian Davenport.

Given that there would be significant design element in the book I collaborated with a friend of mine, Nigel Robinson, who did the artwork for my Demi-Monde series.

That was when I got distracted writing the four Demi-Monde books and Invent-10n lay on a dongle gathering dust. Then in March this year a friend of mine – Peter Coleborn – who I knew from the Renegade Writers’ group in Stoke sent me an e-mail asking if I had anything, novella-sized, I might consider publishing through his imprint, Alchemy Press. I remembered Invent-10n and sent a mock-up to Peter. Peter liked it (what a sensible lad!).

Now I was faced with finishing the bloody thing … and up-dating it. In this day and age four years is a technological eternity and reality had already caught up with some of the ideas I’d dreamed up back in 2009. The most alarming was that in the original Invent-10n my characters used a thing called a Polly (a Poly-Functional Digital Device) to e-interact with each other and Nigel had designed a Polly (in 2009) to look like this:

Seem familiar? One year later Apple came up with their iPad! Bollocks!

For this and other reasons I had to rework/remodel Invent-10n which took longer than I supposed – two months in fact – and then I had to hand it over to Nigel to work his design magic. The interesting thing was while Nigel beavered away the world became increasingly aware/interested in surveillance and its implications for society. The Edward Snowden revelations and the realisation (pause for gasps of surprise) the GCHQ was actually e-monitoring everybody and his brother via its Tempora system made me more determined to finish Invent-10n while the subject was hot. When I had written it in 2009 I had been writing a fantasy, now it was more a piece of social commentary.

So, what with the design requirements of the book and Peter’s various editing suggestions Invent-10n wasn’t finally finished until early September. Then I had to write the blurb which would go on the back of the book and wanting something suitably Jenni-Fur-esque I came up with this (presented à la Jenni-fur on a typewriter, which she uses to avoid the e-wigging of the National Protection Agency):

Greetings Gate, let’s Agitate.

Look over your shoulder. Do you see the camera? Then dig that even as you read these words of sedition and denial you are being watched by the ever e-quisitive National Protection Agency. The National Protection Agency – omnipresent, omniscient and most ominous – which runs PanOptika, the spider at the centre of the Web.

PanOptika. What’s the slogan: watching out for the good guys

by watching out for the bad guys. But what did that Roman word-slinger, Juvenal say? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes: who watches

the watchers?

So dig this to the extremity, cats and kittens: if we do nothing soon we must kneel, digitally-dutiful, before National Protection, and then there will be no chance to zig when the ChumBots say zag, or to beep when they say bop. Realise thou that PanOptika triumphant means we will not be able to think, to act, to speak or to move without the spirit-sapping realisation that the badniks know everything … everything.

We are circling the drain.

This is my warning.

I hope you enjoy the book!

Rod Rees

www.invent-10n.com

Honourable Mentions for NewCon Press

From co-chairman Ian Whates:

Eleven stories from two NewCon Press anthologies, 'Dark Currents' and 'Hauntings' have gained 'honourable mentions' in Ellen Datlow's 'Best Horror of the Year'.

Huge congrats to all the authors: Nina Allan, Emma Coleman, Andrew Hook, Una McCormack, Sophia McDougall, Adam Nevill, Robert Shearman, Tanith Lee, Mark Morris, Mark West, and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Editorial debut of Mark West

In case you missed it, Anatomy of Death (in five sleazy pieces), the editorial debut of NSFWG member Mark West, has been published by Hersham Horror Books.

Says West:

I was lucky enough to feature in their first PentAnth, Fogbound From Five and had great fun with that so when Pete May asked if I wanted to edit my own, I jumped at the chance.

Free to pick my own theme, I decided to go for one of the ‘phases’ that I have a particular fondness for (as a kid of the 70s and 80s), namely that explosion of ‘sleazy’ horror that ran from the early 1970s.  Think of the films of Hammer, Amicus and Pete Walker or the slim, gory and gruesome paperbacks from NEL, Corgi, Star, Hamlyn, Futura et al and you won’t go far wrong.  It was a time of  sex and violence, of pulpy horror and gratuitous nudity, of demons and monsters and no limit to what the writers would expect you to believe.

To fill out my collection, I decided to aim high first and contacted Stephen Volk.  Perhaps best known for Ghostwatch, Afterlife, The Awakening and Ken Russell’s Gothic, he’s a writer I’m in awe of and his story, an envelope-pusher if ever there was one, was ideal - grim, gruesome but also blackly comic.  A Pete Walker film made in type.

Johnny Mains, a true supporter of 70s horror, presented me with a blackly comic, rude and undeniably gruesome story that would have fitted the heyday of those garish paperbacks to a tee.

Stephen Bacon contributed a quieter tale that tells of the sins of the past coming back to haunt the present, the deliberate pace and atmosphere recalling something Hammer might have produced in the period.

John Llewellyn Probert came onboard with a wonderful Victorian drama, featuring a young lady in distress, something terrible from the Thames and a threat to London.  It cannot be read without picturing Peter Cushing as the lead character.

For my story, I decided to embrace the period.  I read a stash of 70s/80s horror paperbacks and had great fun with London during the 1976 heatwave and a glamour photographer who gets tangled up with a monstrous ‘beast’.  I’m proud to share space with these fine writers and their stories.

I produced the cover art for the first two PentAnths (co-designing the first with Neil Williams) and we went through many iterations on this project (my teaser, blogged about here, got a lot of good feedback though unfortunately we couldn’t track the rights through Robert Hale).  In the end, we decided on a simple graphic and I think it works well.

I've had great fun doing this.  It was a real pleasure dealing with writers I admired, I loved writing my story and I've had a great relationship with Peter Mark May during the process.  I’m not sure I’d like to edit again but it’s been an experience and I hope the finished product does what it’s supposed to do - thrill, sicken, terrify and entertain!

The book can be purchased, in print, from Amazon at this link and as ebook from this link

A Facebook page can be found (and liked) here

Ian Watson co-writes a cookery book

In case you missed it, NSFWG founder and chairman Ian Watson published a cook book earlier this year.

Says Ian:

In the run-up to Xmas 2012 my first cookbook appeared in Spanish in collaboration with my beloved Cristina Macía.  Called 50 Recetas con nombre, it revolves around 50 meals named after famous people (mostly) such as Oysters Rockefeller and Beef Stroganoff and was produced to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the big Spanish book club Círculo de Lectores.

I wrote the histories of the meals, discovering many amazing  interconnecting facts about history such as that Russian Salad wouldn´t exist if the Duc de Richelieu hadn´t kicked the English out of the Spanish island of Menorca, thus liberating mayonnaise.  Cristina wrote the menus, and ace food photographers in Barcelona created the seductive pictures as well as Círculo adding many other gorgeous illustrations.  At the moment the book is only Spanish but, since it was originally written in English, UK and US publishers should pay heed for next Xmas — move over, Jamie Oliver!

Naturally this gastronomic partnership led to Cristina and myself  getting married soon after on January 17th 2013 so that we could consume a Game of Thrones wedding cake together, showing the result of my decapitation, here delightfully remastered thanks to the skills of the great Enrique Corominas.

Once again, the group extends its very best wishes to Ian and Cristina.

Conjure, a novel by Mark West

NSFWG member Mark West's 2009 short novel "Conjure" is being re-published by Greyhart Press, in both print and digital editions.  It was originally published, as a limited edition, by Rainfall Books and later as an ebook - the latter a venture West now disowns and regained the rights from as soon as possible.

West has also designed a new cover for the book.

Newly pregnant, stuck in a job she doesn’t like and mourning the death of her cousin, Beth Hammond’s life isn’t working out the way she thought it would.  So when her boyfriend wins a weekend away, at the east coast seaside resort of Heyton, Beth thinks this could be just what they need - some time to themselves, to get away and relax and make their plans for the future.

But as they begin their weekend, a JCB driver accidentally damages a centuries old memorial at the beach.  He hopes no-one will notice but something has - a presence that was buried beneath the memorial, sealed in a stone tomb, that now wants its revenge on the residents of Heyton.

“Mark West is a talent to watch”
Peter Tennant, Black Static

“Mark West’s writing has a heart and soul that many writers would kill for”
Jim Mcleod, Ginger Nuts Of Horror

“Mark West’s stories have a well-crafted, slowly increasing tension and dread, sometimes with a hint of creepy paranoia”
Gene O’Neill, Bram Stoker Award winning author of “The Burden Of Indigo”

Ian Watson appears in Asimov's

NSFWG chairman (and genuinely nice man) appears in the July 2013 issuee of Asimov's Science Fiction with his short story "Blair's War" which was workshopped at the group.

The story speculates about an alternate timeline where a well-known rebellion does not receive the same attention that it did in our corner of the multiverse.

The Demi-Monde: Summer is now available in paperback

The Demi-Monde: Summer, third in the Demi-Monde series, by NSFWG member Rod Rees is now available in paperback from Quercus.

Eight thousand years ago the Deluge destroyed the empire of the Lilithi, setting the race of super-warriors known as the Grigori loose in the outside world. They have lain hidden until now when – thanks to the creation of the dystopian virtual reality that is the Demi-Monde – they at last stand ready to achieve mastery of the Real World – and to cull HumanKind in the Final Solution.

Three girls stand between them and victory: Norma Williams, trapped in the nightmare that is the Coven, the viciously misandric Sector of the Demi-Monde; Ella Thomas, enslaved by the spirit of Lilith-come-again; and Trixie Dashwood, consumed by her hatred for Heydrich and his evil ForthRight.


Available from all good bookshops (for bricks and mortar fans) or online at Amazon (UK) and Amazon (USA)

"Hands", by Donna Scott

NSFWG member Donna Bond has a new story "Hands" published in "DAUGHTERS OF ICARUS
New Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy", from Pink Narcissus Press

What can women tell us about the world? In this new collection of science fiction, a stunning assembly of authors explore the work laid before the daughters of Icarus, left behind after the prideful fall. Whether the worlds they imagine are hopeful of desolate, each sheds new light on the possibilities of feminism. Daughters of Icarus is a bold exploration of the present, past and future.

Featuring 28 stories by Therese Arkenberg, A.A. Balaskovits, Thoraiya Dyer, Joanna Fay, AJ Fitzwater, Caren Gussoff, Zachary Jernigan, Jennifer Linnaea, Douglas Ogurek, E. Catherine Tobler, Donna Scott (Bond) and many more.

Cover design by Rose Mambert. Cover photo by Jordan Tao Mambert.

ISBN: 978-1-939056-00-9

Price: $17.00

Available now at all major online booksellers, US residents may order directly from our website.

Amazon.com link

Amazon.co.uk link

New collection from NSFWG chairman Ian Whates

I’m delighted to say that a new collection of my short stories has been published by PS Publishing.  Titled Growing Pains, the book contains all previously uncollected stories including two that are wholly original to this volume.  In addition to the title story, the book includes “The Assistant”, which was shortlisted for the BSFA Award and given honourable mention in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best SF.

The book enjoyed launches at Eastercon in Bradford (Friday March 29th) and also at Forbidden Planet in London, on Saturday 6th April.

ToC is:

1. Growing Pains
2. The Assistant                    
3. Walking the Dog              
4. Morphs                            
5. Peeling an Onion              
6. A Question of Timing      
7. Coffee Break                    
8. The Outsider                    
9. Hobbies                            
10. Shop Talk                        
11. Piano Song                      

To give the contents a little more context, here’s a brief summary of each story:

Growing Pains: A single father fruit farmer and his son must suffer the company of his sister and her family for the weekend.  Father and son share an ominous secret, one which causes mounting tension as the weekend progresses.  A first contact story with a difference.

The Assistant: Long after the office workers have gone home, cleaners and maintenance crew arrive at a corporate headquarters for the night shift, but they are far more than they seem, protecting the company from cyber-attack and hi-tech incursions.

Walking the Dog: A man walks his beloved dog through the idyllic English village where he lives.  Along the way he encounters neighbours and other pooches, in a world that, on the surface, seems much like our own, but which has in fact been deeply scarred by pandemic.

Morphs: Set in Glasgow; a youth battles against Morphs: homicidal body-stealing demons – creatures he seems to have become a magnet for.  An American heiress recognises the pattern and tracks him down, but has she come to save him, or to kill him?

Peeling an Onion: An ambitious man joins a cutting-edge genetic research team, one that seems on the brink of discovering a deeply hidden secret of human evolution. But was he recruited by chance or by design?

A Question of Timing: A teenager struggles to cope with the death of his brother, aided by an invisible friend who may be far more real than he seems. (Previously unpublished)

Coffee Break: Bud Walker is an off-duty police officer whose only ambition is to enjoy a simple cup of coffee.  Unfortunately, aliens choose that moment to attack his home town.  Nothing is going to keep Bud from his coffee, and he takes them on.  Think Die Hard with added aliens… and coffee.

The Outsider: An alien entity comes to Earth to usurp the identity of a recently deceased man. To do so, it travels back to the man’s birth and follows his timeline, reliving all the significant emotional events, a process that has unforeseen consequences.

Hobbies: A man loves to pursue his hobby, which involves using a sniper rifle to kill unsuspecting passers-by. The police are baffled, and it seems his killing spree will continue unabated.  Until, that is, he meets a youth with a hobby of his own.  (Previously unpublished)

Shop Talk: In a far-flung future where shops jump from high street to high street (stores going to shoppers instead of the other way round), a spoilt teenage girl discovers a new arrival that captivates her: a boutique stocking clothes unlike any she’s ever seen before.  But the shop is far more than it seems, harbouring a secret that will change her life forever.

The Piano Song: Following the death of her mother, Kim inherits the family home, returning there for the first time in many years.  This opens the door to a welter of memories; among them, a long-forgotten melody which provided the soundtrack to her youth; a tune that Kim has never been able to identify or, despite many attempts, play.  Until now.

The book has benefited from some fabulous blurb from Tanith Lee, Paul di Filippo and Adrian Tchaikovsky (thank you, guys!), and features stunning cover art by Tomislav Tikulin

Growing Pains can be ordered from the PS Publishing website:

Badgers Waddle,a novel by Nigel Edwards

Published by Greyhart Press

Available in paperback from amazon.com  |amazon.co.uk 

and in Kindle edition amazon.com |amazon.co.uk  

ePUB edition to follow in late summer 2013.

Life in the quaint English hampton of Badger’s Waddle is never quite the same as elsewhere in the country… or any other country for that matter.

The first sign of impending chaos was when giant rabbits breached the defenses all along the indeterminate length of the vegetable garden of Little Twee cottage.

To patch up the defenses took the combined efforts of the resident gastrognome and a Crippin & Hare Indifference Engine operated by Tavarius Truckle, the man with the highest ever score in an apathitude test. But when tourists start exploding at the village fete, bank deposits build up a critical pressure, and the church’s resident saint finds a loophole in his contract of supra-ecclesiastical employment, the whole hampton must unite to restore some semblance of normality (except for Tavarius Truckle, who’s far too apathetic to care). Only Goode Nurture, the nice old lady in the tall, pointy black hat, has been preparing for this moment, shaving her gibbons in readiness for the looming crisis.

This book will be lapped up by followers of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and fans of Tom Holt and Douglas Adams. But be warned… underneath the polite gentility of English good manners, this book is very, very, rude!

“A helter-skelter ride through life in rural England as seen through the lens of Alice in Wonderland.  Suffused with surreal charm and populated by perceptively-drawn larger than life characters.”  — Ian Whates, author of ‘City of Dreams & Nightmare’.

A short novel — 55,000 words

Artwork by Dean Harkness (click on the picture below to see his hand-painted artwork in super-sharp detail. All the characters and scenes come from the story.)

NSFWG Member Andy West has a new collection out

Engines of Life: Tales of Evolution
by Andy West

Out now!

Paperback pp224 amazon.co.uk RRP£7.50 | amazon.com RRP $11.50

Kindle amazon.com  | amazon.co.uk  at special launch price of 99c/ 77p

Coming soon in other eBook formats

A collection of novelettes and a novella by Andy West with the connecting theme that underlies almost all of his fiction: evolution.

Includes Empirical Purple, The Curator, Meme, Rescue Stories and several prize-winnners.

Engines of Life:

Tales of Evolution

Six piercing novellas and novelettes of philosophical science fiction, lovingly crafted by a prize-winning author to provoke and arouse.

A sentient anti-meme sends emails to fight its rival in Meme.

A stranded starship crew engineers the development of a primitive alien race in Rescue Stories.

Draw aside the social memeplex veils of man-made climate change in the controversialTruth.

Using hypnosis Professor Merrill probes the ‘proto-Sapiens’ language buried in us all. Yet mining the primitive words unlooses savagery, which kidnaps Merrill into grisly Ritual inMano Mart.

Awaking with amnesia in a sealed, spooky museum, Guy Green seeks identity and escape. He finds a curious alien, a disgusting Curator, and an appalling future.

 Ofermynd meant only to examine the primitive creatures competing fiercely upon 7thcentury Earth, not reveal himself. Hearing God’s word, Emperor Heraclius declares Holy War in Empirical Purple.

“From the lazy notions of trans-humanists, the confirmation bias and strangling of free debate that corrupts climate change science, to the one, deep, language that unites us all, West takes unerring aim at his targets and channels his passion to deliver winning science fiction every time.”

Outstretched figure: image (c) Lonely – Shutterstock.com; abstract swirl (c) Emelyanov – Shutterstock.com