Showing posts with label Interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interview. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Greg Egan Interview
I've been meaning to post this for a while. Here is a link to an interview I conducted with Greg Egan several years ago, now on the Albedo One website, "Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures". It came out just before the release of his novel Zendegi.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Midnight Echo 6 interviews: Mark Farrugia
Midnight Echo 6, the Science Fiction Horror special is well and truly out, in electronic and print versions. For the last interview it seems appropriate we speak with the last author in the collection, Mark Farrugia and his end of the world story “Seeds”.
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson is my favourite SF-horror novel. I’ve always been fascinated by the concepts of fractured realities and merging planes of existence. Combine those with a computer simulation designed to preserve intergalactic consciousness, which has been infected by a virus, and I am hooked.
As for SF-horror short stories there are lots of classics that spring to mind. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick and To Serve Man by Damon Knight were SF-horror I enjoyed years ago. More recently I have enjoyed Jason Fischer’s Jesusman series, Stroboscopic by Alastair Reynolds, A Hundredth Name by Christopher Green and The Laughing Girl of Bora Fanong by John Dixon and Adam Browne.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
“Seeds” is set in a dystopian version of Melbourne, which has reverted to a regressive theocracy. It’s a brutal world and I am sure it won’t appeal to everyone.
Influences? The idea for “Seeds” was inspired by the work of New Zealand born, Melbourne writer Paul Haines. For a long time I couldn’t get Paul’s story “Wives” out of my mind, especially the voice of the main character Jimbo. As an aside, I was also working in State politics at the time I wrote “Seeds”, perhaps that influenced my perspective too.
On a subconscious level at least, “Seeds” was also influenced by other dystopian fiction I’ve read over the years. V for Vendetta and Watchmen (Alan Moore), On The Far Side Of The Cadillac Desert With The Dead Folks (Joe R Lansdale), 1984 (George Orwell), Undead Camels Ate My Flesh (Jason Fischer), Y – The Last Man (Brain Vaughan), Frank Miller (Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns) and Philip K Dick (too many stories to list) have all influenced me somewhat with the unique worlds they’ve created.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I’ve written a sequel to “Seeds”. It’s called “The March of the Amputee”.
Seeds
Mark Farrugia
I think his name is Martin but the *doof-doof* beat from the bar outside is too loud for me to be certain exactly what he said. Shirt open and leaning against the basin, his body is doused in sweat. Like rotting wood in an overgrown paddock, a crucifix lies partially hidden amongst the grey hairs on his chest. It trembles with each beat of his heart, but I know this man doesn’t believe in God. Not really; if he did he wouldn’t be here with me. Inside the churches and cathedrals we are forced to pay homage on our knees, but out here in the real world there are other ways to pay tribute, other sacrifices to make.
It’s over. I rub my throat. I should get up but my legs are still numb from kneeling against the cold tiled floor.
Skin like ash, the sombre lines that scar Martin’s face are visible through short stubble. He lights a cigarette and exhales rings of smoke. I used to be able to do that. Now it just makes my eyes water, distorting my vision. For a moment, in the full-length mirror behind Martin, the image of me merges with him and he looks down at me like a perverted reflection.
Shit. My head knocks against the washbasin. Yellow-brown stains and a swab of squashed gum cling to the porcelain. On top of the basin a fold of $100 bills, weighed down by a lump of dirty soap, waits for me. The money is mine. I’ve fucking earned it.
As Martin zips up, I stand. The taste of latex is strong but I know it’s better than the mouthful trapped inside the flaccid rubber. Using the sheath and receiving five hundred instead of four were the only concessions I could gain. My minor victories, I suspect, are the little sacrifices Martin makes to keep his conscious clear. Perhaps the crucifix weighs heavier than I thought. Religion; it’s all about sacrifice, isn’t it?
Did a man called Jesus really die for me? Is that even possible? I suspect he just died and the rest is bullshit. Martin drapes his shirt over the crucifix, concealing it as he does up the buttons. The God symbol is gone. He puffs more smoke and the end of the cigarette edges towards his fingers.
The Righteous say humanity is going to Hell. It’s been almost 75 years since the last female was born. The few alive are all too old to give birth—cunts as dry as the Simpson Desert—but they were harvested for their eggs when they were younger. The Harvest was a blessing, but the supply of eggs will soon be exhausted. The Righteous say the X-Zone Virus is God’s way of forcing man to repent. Repent for what? Guys like Martin and I, we said fuck it and took a different path.
Biography – Mark Farrugia
Mark Farrugia’s writing credits include the blood n’guts dragon fantasy A Bag Full of Arrows, which received an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow for 2010, and the vampire comic series Allure of the Ancients (illustrated by Greg Chapman). His fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM) 48, Midnight Echo 3, 5 and now 6, Borderlands 11, Eclecticism 12 and AntiopdeanSF. BestScienceFictionStories.com declared Mark’s flash fiction amongst its favorites of 2009 and 2010. Mark edited ASIM46 and co-edited ASIM Best of Horror Volume 2. Mark is the AHWA’s Critique Group Manager.
READER WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE AND SEXUAL CONTENT FOLLOW.
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson is my favourite SF-horror novel. I’ve always been fascinated by the concepts of fractured realities and merging planes of existence. Combine those with a computer simulation designed to preserve intergalactic consciousness, which has been infected by a virus, and I am hooked.
As for SF-horror short stories there are lots of classics that spring to mind. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick and To Serve Man by Damon Knight were SF-horror I enjoyed years ago. More recently I have enjoyed Jason Fischer’s Jesusman series, Stroboscopic by Alastair Reynolds, A Hundredth Name by Christopher Green and The Laughing Girl of Bora Fanong by John Dixon and Adam Browne.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
“Seeds” is set in a dystopian version of Melbourne, which has reverted to a regressive theocracy. It’s a brutal world and I am sure it won’t appeal to everyone.
Influences? The idea for “Seeds” was inspired by the work of New Zealand born, Melbourne writer Paul Haines. For a long time I couldn’t get Paul’s story “Wives” out of my mind, especially the voice of the main character Jimbo. As an aside, I was also working in State politics at the time I wrote “Seeds”, perhaps that influenced my perspective too.
On a subconscious level at least, “Seeds” was also influenced by other dystopian fiction I’ve read over the years. V for Vendetta and Watchmen (Alan Moore), On The Far Side Of The Cadillac Desert With The Dead Folks (Joe R Lansdale), 1984 (George Orwell), Undead Camels Ate My Flesh (Jason Fischer), Y – The Last Man (Brain Vaughan), Frank Miller (Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns) and Philip K Dick (too many stories to list) have all influenced me somewhat with the unique worlds they’ve created.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I’ve written a sequel to “Seeds”. It’s called “The March of the Amputee”.
Seeds
Mark Farrugia
I think his name is Martin but the *doof-doof* beat from the bar outside is too loud for me to be certain exactly what he said. Shirt open and leaning against the basin, his body is doused in sweat. Like rotting wood in an overgrown paddock, a crucifix lies partially hidden amongst the grey hairs on his chest. It trembles with each beat of his heart, but I know this man doesn’t believe in God. Not really; if he did he wouldn’t be here with me. Inside the churches and cathedrals we are forced to pay homage on our knees, but out here in the real world there are other ways to pay tribute, other sacrifices to make.
It’s over. I rub my throat. I should get up but my legs are still numb from kneeling against the cold tiled floor.
Skin like ash, the sombre lines that scar Martin’s face are visible through short stubble. He lights a cigarette and exhales rings of smoke. I used to be able to do that. Now it just makes my eyes water, distorting my vision. For a moment, in the full-length mirror behind Martin, the image of me merges with him and he looks down at me like a perverted reflection.
Shit. My head knocks against the washbasin. Yellow-brown stains and a swab of squashed gum cling to the porcelain. On top of the basin a fold of $100 bills, weighed down by a lump of dirty soap, waits for me. The money is mine. I’ve fucking earned it.
As Martin zips up, I stand. The taste of latex is strong but I know it’s better than the mouthful trapped inside the flaccid rubber. Using the sheath and receiving five hundred instead of four were the only concessions I could gain. My minor victories, I suspect, are the little sacrifices Martin makes to keep his conscious clear. Perhaps the crucifix weighs heavier than I thought. Religion; it’s all about sacrifice, isn’t it?
Did a man called Jesus really die for me? Is that even possible? I suspect he just died and the rest is bullshit. Martin drapes his shirt over the crucifix, concealing it as he does up the buttons. The God symbol is gone. He puffs more smoke and the end of the cigarette edges towards his fingers.
The Righteous say humanity is going to Hell. It’s been almost 75 years since the last female was born. The few alive are all too old to give birth—cunts as dry as the Simpson Desert—but they were harvested for their eggs when they were younger. The Harvest was a blessing, but the supply of eggs will soon be exhausted. The Righteous say the X-Zone Virus is God’s way of forcing man to repent. Repent for what? Guys like Martin and I, we said fuck it and took a different path.
Biography – Mark Farrugia
Mark Farrugia’s writing credits include the blood n’guts dragon fantasy A Bag Full of Arrows, which received an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow for 2010, and the vampire comic series Allure of the Ancients (illustrated by Greg Chapman). His fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM) 48, Midnight Echo 3, 5 and now 6, Borderlands 11, Eclecticism 12 and AntiopdeanSF. BestScienceFictionStories.com declared Mark’s flash fiction amongst its favorites of 2009 and 2010. Mark edited ASIM46 and co-edited ASIM Best of Horror Volume 2. Mark is the AHWA’s Critique Group Manager.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Albedo One Issue 41 Released with Iain M Banks Interview
Issue 41 of Albedo One has just been released, and this issue features an interview I conducted with Iain M. Banks.
Issue 41
Having set ourselves the considerable challenge of following our last issue of Albedo One (number 40) with its bumper 100 pages featuring no less than 12 fine stories, we now proudly present our latest issue. Issue 41 features an interview by David Conyers with Iain M. Banks and boasts the same redesigned look from issue 40 with interior artwork accompanying the fiction.
The issue features stories by Bruce McAllister ("Demon") and Eric Brown ("Differences"). We also proudly present the three winning stories of the International Aeon Award 2010 Short Fiction Contest, "Aethra" by Michalis Manolios, "Pinocchio" by Jacob Garbe and "A Room of Empty Frames" by Robin Maginn. Further excellent fiction is provided by Peter C. Loftus ("Reflected Glory"), Judy Klass ("Lost Highway Travellers") and Francisco Mejia ("Nathan Swindle and the Citadel"). The issue continues our programme of translations with an English translation of Jan J.B. Kuiper's surreal fantasy "Blavatsky's Knee", translated from Dutch by Roelof Goudriaan.
We are also proud to feature the three winning stories from the 2010 John West Brainfood.ie Fantasy Writing Competition. Students aged 11 to 20 from all over Ireland were asked to ‘feed their imaginations’ and compose a short story based in the fantasy/science fiction genre. Almost 5,000 entries were received from students nationwide. The competition judges were Frank P. Ryan and A. J. Healy. The winners were 13 year old Lauren Mulvihill (the overall winner) from Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, with "Ways of Making Maths More Interesting", 12 year old Kathy Cronin from Tralee, Co. Kerry, who won the ‘Senior Primary Category’ and 17 year old Aaron Elbel from Killarney, Co. Kerry, who won the ‘Senior Secondary Category’. Albedo One is delighted to see the writing of speculative fiction receive such an impetus in Irish schools.
Issue 41 of Albedo One features cover art by Richard Wagner and the interior artwork comes courtesy of Anastasia Alexandrin. It is available for purchase now in low-cost pdf format and will be available for purchase in print in the coming days.
Extract from the Interview:
David: You’ve been using the Culture in numerous novels since 1987 with the release of Consider Phlebas, and at lot has changed since then in our understanding of science and in technological advan cements. Do you find it difficult keeping the Culture setting relevant with respect to these developments?
Iain: Not too difficult; partly this is luck and partly cunning plan. I set the Culture in what for us would be a medium range future, but where a lot of the gizmology has either shrunk to the point you can’t see it or been put to the task of making things look like a much earlier, even lo-tech version of paradise, largely for aesthetic reasons. The ships are effectively the Culture’s mega-cities, while the places where the vast majority of people live – the Orbitals – are generally quite rural or even apparently wild, with all the infrastructure and fast transport stuff hidden on the underside, in vacuum. Any engineering and storage space is inside the mountains, which are mostly hollow. I just decided really early on – partly from looking at how and where people with vast amounts of money/power have chosen to live their lives throughout history – that what people really like is lots of space both outside and in, with a view over unspoiled countryside, though with the connectivity of a city. So that’s what Orbitals have. (The ones featured in the stories so far, anyway; probably about time to mix that up a little.)
The same idea of using hi-tech to go back to something earlier also applies to Culture humans themselves; I did think of Borg-like amendments and uploading into all sorts of techy and bio weirdness – and all that does happen and is mentioned in the stories – but I decided that in the end the machines (builtfrom-scratch machines) would always do that stuff better, so humans – after going through a civilisational phase of trying everything – would mostly revert to being recognisably human, though with significant changes. All the Culture bodily bio-upgradings are just the things I thought it would be cool to have, like drug glands, slower ageing, a wider visible radiation spectrum, the ability to change sex, pain control etc. There’s also the assumption that all the humans are just born smart; my working premise has always been that if I was a Culture citizen, I’d be of slightly below average intelligence (and, trust me, I have a – probably unjustifiably – high opinion of my own cleverness).
Making the ships fully sentient and masters/mistresses of their own destiny seemed obvious too, back in the Seventies when I was putting all this stuff together. It appeared clear that strong and constantly improving AI would be here by the time we had true interstellar travel and that having a human captain issuing orders to a ship AI would be as comical as a human being bossed about by a flea.
The idea is that machines can do everything better than humans except be human (and, arguably, have fun), so let the humans not even bother trying to compete in other areas, and concentrate on being human. Putting all this far enough in the future, and after that phase of trying out the sort of stuff that Transhumanists here on Earth are talking about now seemed like a good way of future-proofing the stories right from the start. Oh, and terminals; I kind of got that right; terminals are the smart phones of the future, though it’s almost all done by voice. Again, for a while they’d have been implanted, but that would just have been a fashion.
Happily, the cosmology behind the scenes in the Culture stories (the whole nested universes thing) is so insane that even the discovery of dark matter, dark energy and so on made nary a dent in its essential ludicrousness; it’s as absurd now as it was then.
Issue 41
Having set ourselves the considerable challenge of following our last issue of Albedo One (number 40) with its bumper 100 pages featuring no less than 12 fine stories, we now proudly present our latest issue. Issue 41 features an interview by David Conyers with Iain M. Banks and boasts the same redesigned look from issue 40 with interior artwork accompanying the fiction.
The issue features stories by Bruce McAllister ("Demon") and Eric Brown ("Differences"). We also proudly present the three winning stories of the International Aeon Award 2010 Short Fiction Contest, "Aethra" by Michalis Manolios, "Pinocchio" by Jacob Garbe and "A Room of Empty Frames" by Robin Maginn. Further excellent fiction is provided by Peter C. Loftus ("Reflected Glory"), Judy Klass ("Lost Highway Travellers") and Francisco Mejia ("Nathan Swindle and the Citadel"). The issue continues our programme of translations with an English translation of Jan J.B. Kuiper's surreal fantasy "Blavatsky's Knee", translated from Dutch by Roelof Goudriaan.
We are also proud to feature the three winning stories from the 2010 John West Brainfood.ie Fantasy Writing Competition. Students aged 11 to 20 from all over Ireland were asked to ‘feed their imaginations’ and compose a short story based in the fantasy/science fiction genre. Almost 5,000 entries were received from students nationwide. The competition judges were Frank P. Ryan and A. J. Healy. The winners were 13 year old Lauren Mulvihill (the overall winner) from Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, with "Ways of Making Maths More Interesting", 12 year old Kathy Cronin from Tralee, Co. Kerry, who won the ‘Senior Primary Category’ and 17 year old Aaron Elbel from Killarney, Co. Kerry, who won the ‘Senior Secondary Category’. Albedo One is delighted to see the writing of speculative fiction receive such an impetus in Irish schools.
Issue 41 of Albedo One features cover art by Richard Wagner and the interior artwork comes courtesy of Anastasia Alexandrin. It is available for purchase now in low-cost pdf format and will be available for purchase in print in the coming days.
Extract from the Interview:
David: You’ve been using the Culture in numerous novels since 1987 with the release of Consider Phlebas, and at lot has changed since then in our understanding of science and in technological advan cements. Do you find it difficult keeping the Culture setting relevant with respect to these developments?
Iain: Not too difficult; partly this is luck and partly cunning plan. I set the Culture in what for us would be a medium range future, but where a lot of the gizmology has either shrunk to the point you can’t see it or been put to the task of making things look like a much earlier, even lo-tech version of paradise, largely for aesthetic reasons. The ships are effectively the Culture’s mega-cities, while the places where the vast majority of people live – the Orbitals – are generally quite rural or even apparently wild, with all the infrastructure and fast transport stuff hidden on the underside, in vacuum. Any engineering and storage space is inside the mountains, which are mostly hollow. I just decided really early on – partly from looking at how and where people with vast amounts of money/power have chosen to live their lives throughout history – that what people really like is lots of space both outside and in, with a view over unspoiled countryside, though with the connectivity of a city. So that’s what Orbitals have. (The ones featured in the stories so far, anyway; probably about time to mix that up a little.)
The same idea of using hi-tech to go back to something earlier also applies to Culture humans themselves; I did think of Borg-like amendments and uploading into all sorts of techy and bio weirdness – and all that does happen and is mentioned in the stories – but I decided that in the end the machines (builtfrom-scratch machines) would always do that stuff better, so humans – after going through a civilisational phase of trying everything – would mostly revert to being recognisably human, though with significant changes. All the Culture bodily bio-upgradings are just the things I thought it would be cool to have, like drug glands, slower ageing, a wider visible radiation spectrum, the ability to change sex, pain control etc. There’s also the assumption that all the humans are just born smart; my working premise has always been that if I was a Culture citizen, I’d be of slightly below average intelligence (and, trust me, I have a – probably unjustifiably – high opinion of my own cleverness).
Making the ships fully sentient and masters/mistresses of their own destiny seemed obvious too, back in the Seventies when I was putting all this stuff together. It appeared clear that strong and constantly improving AI would be here by the time we had true interstellar travel and that having a human captain issuing orders to a ship AI would be as comical as a human being bossed about by a flea.
The idea is that machines can do everything better than humans except be human (and, arguably, have fun), so let the humans not even bother trying to compete in other areas, and concentrate on being human. Putting all this far enough in the future, and after that phase of trying out the sort of stuff that Transhumanists here on Earth are talking about now seemed like a good way of future-proofing the stories right from the start. Oh, and terminals; I kind of got that right; terminals are the smart phones of the future, though it’s almost all done by voice. Again, for a while they’d have been implanted, but that would just have been a fashion.
Happily, the cosmology behind the scenes in the Culture stories (the whole nested universes thing) is so insane that even the discovery of dark matter, dark energy and so on made nary a dent in its essential ludicrousness; it’s as absurd now as it was then.
Midnight Echo 6 interviews: Stephen Dedman
Midnight Echo 6, the Science Fiction Horror Issue is well and truly out, but the interviews are still going. Today we focus on one of Australia’s most successful short speculative fiction authors, Stephen Dedman, who contributed a science fiction tale focused on the dangers of new technology and child pornography.
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
Probably “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, because it's so convincing, and because it tricks you into expecting a happy ending until you remember that it's a Lovecraft story. Runners-up would be The Andromeda Strain, which scared the bejesus out of me when I was twelve, and for the TV work of Nigel Kneale, particularly Quatermass and the Pit and The Stone Tape.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
A few years ago, I wrote a story called “Desiree”, about a teenager who falls in love with what might be a girl, or might only be software capable of passing a Turing test; he never finds out which, because he can't afford the license fee after the free trial runs out. “More Matter, Less Art” is a sort of sequel to that, where the sex robot had a body. I made the robot a child partly because it would be easier to program, but mostly in response to news stories about things that might or might not legally count as child pornography – Bill Henson's photographs; fan cartoons of Lisa Simpson having sex (and the logo for the 2012 Olympics); children's faces photoshopped over the faces of porn performers; and, of course, real child-sized sex dolls. The Britart content came about because Damien Hirst had also been in the news, and remembering some of the work and statements by Young British Artists such as the Chapmans made me wonder what could and could not be defended by calling it modern art and where the dividing line might be between that and child porn.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I once wrote a non-fiction book for children, Bone Hunters, that made more money for me than any of my novels (mainly thanks to Educational Lending Right, rather than the publisher).
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.—John Ciardi
Bianca sat on the bed, watching. “Hello,” she said, smiling. Her voice was as childlike as her body and face, and she rarely said anything else without being spoken to first. Her facial recognition software was good enough that she remembered Boyce’s face, and would smile when she saw him or change her own expression to mirror his. Her eyes could also track him if he moved, and if he turned away, she would say goodbye.
He didn’t turn away, but stood there staring at her as the room grew darker. Neither of them spoke, and a casual observer might have wondered which of them was actually alive.
Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model, a sculpture by Turner nominees Jake and Dinos Chapman, was made up of fiberglass mannequins of children, their torsos fused into one great blob, their heads sticking out at different angles. They were naked but for sneakers, and while the central mass was as sexless as an amoeba, some of the children’s noses were replaced with erect penises and their mouths with round orifices that might have been gaping vaginas or anuses crafted by someone who’d never seen either, except maybe in a porn movie.
The sexually ambiguous childlike figures who populated the brothers’ Tragic Anatomies were also fused together, though in separate couplings or threesomes, and also wearing sneakers as they ambled through a garden of artificial plants. Boyce’s expression didn’t change as he moved from this installation to Death. This appeared to be two sex dolls 69-ing: Boyce knew that the bodies were actually cast from bronze, but the Chapmans had done a remarkable job of making this look like plastic.
A placard nearby lamented the destruction of their piece titled *Hell* in a Momart warehouse fire, and showed a ‘Momart’ Zippo lighter the brothers had designed in response. It also quoted Jake Chapman describing the murder of a Liverpool toddler as ‘a good social service’. Boyce shook his head slightly as he walked out of the gallery.
Biography – Stephen Dedman
Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting and Shadows Bite and more than 120 published short stories (for a full bibliography, go to www.stephendedman.com). He has won the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, the Spectrum Award, and a sainthood. He lives in Western Australia, and enjoys reading, travel, movies, complicated relationships, talking to cats, and startling people.
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
Probably “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, because it's so convincing, and because it tricks you into expecting a happy ending until you remember that it's a Lovecraft story. Runners-up would be The Andromeda Strain, which scared the bejesus out of me when I was twelve, and for the TV work of Nigel Kneale, particularly Quatermass and the Pit and The Stone Tape.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
A few years ago, I wrote a story called “Desiree”, about a teenager who falls in love with what might be a girl, or might only be software capable of passing a Turing test; he never finds out which, because he can't afford the license fee after the free trial runs out. “More Matter, Less Art” is a sort of sequel to that, where the sex robot had a body. I made the robot a child partly because it would be easier to program, but mostly in response to news stories about things that might or might not legally count as child pornography – Bill Henson's photographs; fan cartoons of Lisa Simpson having sex (and the logo for the 2012 Olympics); children's faces photoshopped over the faces of porn performers; and, of course, real child-sized sex dolls. The Britart content came about because Damien Hirst had also been in the news, and remembering some of the work and statements by Young British Artists such as the Chapmans made me wonder what could and could not be defended by calling it modern art and where the dividing line might be between that and child porn.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I once wrote a non-fiction book for children, Bone Hunters, that made more money for me than any of my novels (mainly thanks to Educational Lending Right, rather than the publisher).
More Matter, Less Art
Stephen Dedman
Stephen Dedman
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.—John Ciardi
Bianca sat on the bed, watching. “Hello,” she said, smiling. Her voice was as childlike as her body and face, and she rarely said anything else without being spoken to first. Her facial recognition software was good enough that she remembered Boyce’s face, and would smile when she saw him or change her own expression to mirror his. Her eyes could also track him if he moved, and if he turned away, she would say goodbye.
He didn’t turn away, but stood there staring at her as the room grew darker. Neither of them spoke, and a casual observer might have wondered which of them was actually alive.
Zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model, a sculpture by Turner nominees Jake and Dinos Chapman, was made up of fiberglass mannequins of children, their torsos fused into one great blob, their heads sticking out at different angles. They were naked but for sneakers, and while the central mass was as sexless as an amoeba, some of the children’s noses were replaced with erect penises and their mouths with round orifices that might have been gaping vaginas or anuses crafted by someone who’d never seen either, except maybe in a porn movie.
The sexually ambiguous childlike figures who populated the brothers’ Tragic Anatomies were also fused together, though in separate couplings or threesomes, and also wearing sneakers as they ambled through a garden of artificial plants. Boyce’s expression didn’t change as he moved from this installation to Death. This appeared to be two sex dolls 69-ing: Boyce knew that the bodies were actually cast from bronze, but the Chapmans had done a remarkable job of making this look like plastic.
A placard nearby lamented the destruction of their piece titled *Hell* in a Momart warehouse fire, and showed a ‘Momart’ Zippo lighter the brothers had designed in response. It also quoted Jake Chapman describing the murder of a Liverpool toddler as ‘a good social service’. Boyce shook his head slightly as he walked out of the gallery.
Biography – Stephen Dedman
Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting and Shadows Bite and more than 120 published short stories (for a full bibliography, go to www.stephendedman.com). He has won the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Sidewise Award, the Seiun Award, the Spectrum Award, and a sainthood. He lives in Western Australia, and enjoys reading, travel, movies, complicated relationships, talking to cats, and startling people.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Paul Drummond
With Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Issue now in circulation, we’ve decided to interview Paul Drummond, who provided the very exciting cover for the issue. Paul is a rising talent in the speculative fiction field of future illustrations, and we’re sure we’ll be seeing more of his work on book covers in the future.
David Conyers: You work as a web designer, e-book design, commercial illustrator and graphic designer, but you are probably best known as a science fiction illustrator. Where does your interest in this genre stem from, and what appeals to you about the SF in the illustrated form?
Paul Drummond: Most of my illustration work involves product visuals and non sci-fi, but I can understand why people prefer the spaceships and robots. I've always been a big reader and developed the sci-fi habit as a teenager. I remember Larry Niven's 'Known Space' series making a strong impression on me because of the interstellar-scale settings, memorable characters and big dumb objects. It's satisfying to read stories set in a consistent, tightly plotted universe, and while you can get that from all genres, sci-fi seems to scratch the itch for me. I'm also fond of 70s sci-fi book covers because they're so evocative of that time, even though they often have nothing to do with the story inside!
It was only when I got to know other artists that I considered sci-fi illustration commercially, but I'm glad I made the jump. I enjoy translating authors' ideas into images and creating worlds that contain odd or surprising elements. If I can produce something that clearly doesn't exist in the real world but looks as if it could I've done my job properly. A good tagline would be 'making the unreal believable', although that sounds like something from a marketing agency. At the same time I have to fight my tendency to make things low key. I'm happy to read about fantastic events but not so good at portraying them. Perhaps I should just throw in a few exploding planets and half-naked women to liven things up.
David: Your illustration for the cover of Midnight Echo 6, "Strange Behaviour" has proved to be immensely popular. It depicts a robot holding a severed human eye. Can you tell us about this image and where you got your idea for this piece?
Paul: This image was created several years ago as an entry for a competition run by the CG Society. At that time I was unsure how to get started as a commercial illustrator, so a high profile competition seemed like a good idea. I didn't win because the other entries were so much better, but it was good practice for working to a deadline. The theme of the competition was 'strange behaviour', hence the title, and my aim was to create an image where the odd or horrifying element isn't immediately apparent. I also liked the idea of a disturbingly blank face, in this case with the features reduced to a single eye.
David: Which artists influenced you and what do you like about their works?
Paul: Is this where I list obscure Baroque painters to make myself look clever? Starting with commercial illustration I admire concept & FX artists such as Scott Spencer, Neville Page, Ryan Church and Dylan Cole. They combine artistic talent and technical mastery to produce incredibly detailed, large scale illustrations of fantastic subjects. Digital design is difficult because the tools are so complex they can interrupt the flow of ideas. It's very hard to create expressive art while trying to get your head around the intricacies of ZBrush or Cinema4D. I'm still fumbling through this process so look up to artists who've managed it.
Considering art in general I tend to go for landscapes and portraits. Artists who come to mind include Caspar David Friedrich, who was not a cheery chap but created wonderfully dramatic paintings such as "The Sea of Ice / The Wreck of Hope". I wasn't joking about the Barogue painters because I'm influenced by chiaroscuro, or the technique of using strong contrast between light and dark to suggest volume and shape. Look at paintings by Velázquez and Caravaggio for examples of this. I also admire American landscape artists of the 19th century such as Thomas Cole, but should probably stop now before I end up in Pseuds Corner!
David: What are some of your favourite pieces of your own work?
Paul: I'm very critical of my own work, but 'Flicker', the 'Bot' series, the 'Dreadnaught' concepts and architectural images such as 'Helix' seemed to work out.
David: Where can we next expect to see Paul Drummond's illustrations in print?
Paul: Other than advertisement and concept work, very little is in print. Most of my illustration work is now for ebook covers.
Biography - Paul Drummond
Paul Drummond is a stray from north of the border who was taken in by the good folk of Lancashire, England. He now lives there and divides his time between commercial illustration, design and working through a long list of things to do. His clients include TTA Press, publishers of Interzone for which he has provided many images, including covers. You can see more of his work at www.pauldrummond.co.uk.
David Conyers: You work as a web designer, e-book design, commercial illustrator and graphic designer, but you are probably best known as a science fiction illustrator. Where does your interest in this genre stem from, and what appeals to you about the SF in the illustrated form?
Paul Drummond: Most of my illustration work involves product visuals and non sci-fi, but I can understand why people prefer the spaceships and robots. I've always been a big reader and developed the sci-fi habit as a teenager. I remember Larry Niven's 'Known Space' series making a strong impression on me because of the interstellar-scale settings, memorable characters and big dumb objects. It's satisfying to read stories set in a consistent, tightly plotted universe, and while you can get that from all genres, sci-fi seems to scratch the itch for me. I'm also fond of 70s sci-fi book covers because they're so evocative of that time, even though they often have nothing to do with the story inside!
It was only when I got to know other artists that I considered sci-fi illustration commercially, but I'm glad I made the jump. I enjoy translating authors' ideas into images and creating worlds that contain odd or surprising elements. If I can produce something that clearly doesn't exist in the real world but looks as if it could I've done my job properly. A good tagline would be 'making the unreal believable', although that sounds like something from a marketing agency. At the same time I have to fight my tendency to make things low key. I'm happy to read about fantastic events but not so good at portraying them. Perhaps I should just throw in a few exploding planets and half-naked women to liven things up.
David: Your illustration for the cover of Midnight Echo 6, "Strange Behaviour" has proved to be immensely popular. It depicts a robot holding a severed human eye. Can you tell us about this image and where you got your idea for this piece?
Paul: This image was created several years ago as an entry for a competition run by the CG Society. At that time I was unsure how to get started as a commercial illustrator, so a high profile competition seemed like a good idea. I didn't win because the other entries were so much better, but it was good practice for working to a deadline. The theme of the competition was 'strange behaviour', hence the title, and my aim was to create an image where the odd or horrifying element isn't immediately apparent. I also liked the idea of a disturbingly blank face, in this case with the features reduced to a single eye.
Paul: Is this where I list obscure Baroque painters to make myself look clever? Starting with commercial illustration I admire concept & FX artists such as Scott Spencer, Neville Page, Ryan Church and Dylan Cole. They combine artistic talent and technical mastery to produce incredibly detailed, large scale illustrations of fantastic subjects. Digital design is difficult because the tools are so complex they can interrupt the flow of ideas. It's very hard to create expressive art while trying to get your head around the intricacies of ZBrush or Cinema4D. I'm still fumbling through this process so look up to artists who've managed it.
Considering art in general I tend to go for landscapes and portraits. Artists who come to mind include Caspar David Friedrich, who was not a cheery chap but created wonderfully dramatic paintings such as "The Sea of Ice / The Wreck of Hope". I wasn't joking about the Barogue painters because I'm influenced by chiaroscuro, or the technique of using strong contrast between light and dark to suggest volume and shape. Look at paintings by Velázquez and Caravaggio for examples of this. I also admire American landscape artists of the 19th century such as Thomas Cole, but should probably stop now before I end up in Pseuds Corner!
David: What are some of your favourite pieces of your own work?
Paul: I'm very critical of my own work, but 'Flicker', the 'Bot' series, the 'Dreadnaught' concepts and architectural images such as 'Helix' seemed to work out.
David: Where can we next expect to see Paul Drummond's illustrations in print?
Paul: Other than advertisement and concept work, very little is in print. Most of my illustration work is now for ebook covers.
Biography - Paul Drummond
Paul Drummond is a stray from north of the border who was taken in by the good folk of Lancashire, England. He now lives there and divides his time between commercial illustration, design and working through a long list of things to do. His clients include TTA Press, publishers of Interzone for which he has provided many images, including covers. You can see more of his work at www.pauldrummond.co.uk.Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Shane Jiraiya Cummings
With the release today of Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Issue in e-format, here is the second interview with the authors from the issue. Shane Jiraiya Cummings is well-known for promoting Australian horror fiction internationally and as co-founder with Angela Challis of Brimstone Press, Australia’s leading small press publisher in the genre. He also knows how to craft compelling and horrific tales, and “Graveyard Orbit” is a good example of Cummings skills.
1. What is your favorite Sci-fi horror novel or short story?
To throw a curve ball, my main sci-fi horror influences have been films. I don’t read enough novels, let alone sci-fi novels, to easily cite an influence. Having said that, I don’t know if there are that many truly awe-inspiring sci-fi horror novelists out there (excluding the thriving Cthulhu Mythos mob – guys like Cody Goodfellow and our own David Conyers have produced some exceptionally imaginative Mythos work that blends SF with horror).
I love a dark, gritty story set in outer space, a trillion trillion kilometres from home, which is why films such as Event Horizon and Alien really appeal to me. Perhaps it was my stage in life and the circumstances that particular evening, but Event Horizon scared the bejeezus out of me when I first saw it at the cinema. That combination of the extreme isolation of space, the claustrophobia of a derelict ship, and the threat of the supernatural really resonates with me. I feel that people find comfort in technology, and these kind of films touch on this as the protagonists often rely on advanced equipment and weaponry, and as a result, they enter situations with way too much confidence (the Colonial Marines on LV-426 in Aliens, anyone?). I love that moment when the characters’ belief in advanced technology fails and they need to rely on neglected, almost antiquated skills to survive (such as good old fashioned human ingenuity). I particularly enjoy clashes of technology and the supernatural. An intriguing, if a little cheesy, take on this occurred in Jason X (the tenth Friday the 13th film, set aboard a starship).
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
Directly, you can blame the band Filter for “Graveyard Orbit”. I sometimes like writing to music, and when a particular song matches the words well, melds into the background, and no longer intrudes on the creative process, I put it on endless loop until the story is finished. It’s a bit Asperger’s, I know, but I have those tendencies. In the case of “Graveyard Orbit”, it was a song titled “The 4th" by Filter. There are no words (discernible ones anyway, as a phrase is repeated in reverse and then buried under a creepy, atmospheric tune) but the song really helped me bring the story to life.
Indirectly, you can blame David Conyers. I’d always wanted to write a Cthulhu Mythos story, and when David invited me to contribute to the Call of Cthulhu fiction anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults (Chaosium, 2010), he sparked my imagination. The resulting contribution, “Requiem for the Burning God”, became a novella (and was later published as a standalone ebook) and the first in what I call the ‘Ravenous Gods’ cycle of stories. “Graveyard Orbit” is the second story in the ‘Ravenous Gods’ cycle, although chronologically, it will probably be the fourth or fifth (once I write the intervening stories). Without revealing spoilers, even though the two stories are set roughly 500 years apart, they have a character in common.
I believe that a big idea should be at the heart of every story, which is why my stories are getting longer and longer. In “Graveyard Orbit”, I hint at an explanation for why there are holes in the universe’s dark matter structure. There is an underlying Mythos-inspired supernatural explanation for the structure of the universe, and while this story doesn’t explicitly offer explanations, it lays clues for what could be revealed in future ‘Ravenous Gods’ stories. And it wouldn’t be a Mythos-inspired story without a brush with the alien, the bizarre, the unknowable, and that is exactly what you will find in orbit around the planet Osiris II.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I have years of experience as a journo, and I find writing news or non-fiction easier than writing fiction (although the mechanics of journalism – interviewing people and transcribing quotes – is a lot more exhausting), but ultimately, I feel more intense satisfaction from completing a work of fiction.
Now for something completely new – as a person (not just a writer), I possess a bizarre ‘superpower’: I am invisible to birds. Whether I’m in my car or walking, my fine feathered friends simply can’t see me. It’s a completely useless and only mildly inconvenient power. The worst of it is when I’m driving and trying to avoid birds on the road or when I need to walk through a large flock of birds (pigeons are a delight – I’m almost guaranteed to have a stray wing smack me in the side of the head, and given that I’m now used to the unexpected brush of feathers, the bird is usually more surprised than I am!). I first discovered this dubious ability when as a teenager I was sitting in a park in Sydney and a particularly imposing ibis spotted the chips I was eating and methodically stalked its way towards them, stepping over my legs and completely ignoring my warding arm. It nabbed one of the chips, but it must have been disturbed when (to its eyes) the rest of the chips levitated away as I left the park in annoyance. My experiences with birds will make great fodder for a story in the future!
System: HD 209458 (designation: Osiris).
Distance from Earth: 150.4 light years (Pegasus Constellation).
“What in hell is that?” Walker pointed to the brown-yellow smudge on the central viewscreen.
Lost to his interface with the ship, Peng took a few moments to answer, “What?”
“You mean, ‘what, Captain’,” Walker said with distraction. He’d spent the entire three month journey reminding his subordinates of his position, and correcting them had become an automatic response.
“Uh, yeah, what, Captain?” Peng said, although he remained interfaced with the ship and didn’t bother to turn to address him.
Peng’s crewmate—and the Wellington’s first officer—Huang was also interfaced, but he appeared to quiver slightly. Although his back was to Walker, he was sure Huang was suppressing laughter.
“Enough, you two,” Walker chided. “I want a full spectrum analysis on that planet. Thermal, radiation, gravity density mapping, atmospheric composition, the works.”
“Sure, Captain.” Huang swivelled in his chair to face Walker. “Although if you just interface... oh, very sorry, I forgot, you’re not enhanced.” The wireless pods embedded in Huang’s temples pulsed with lights. The magnetically insulated strips that ran up the sides of his neck and disappeared into his hairline strobed in a lightning-fast sequence of flashes.
Walker grimaced. The instant information Huang was accessing from the *Wellington’s* telemetry arrays was more of a slap in the face than his words—and Huang knew it. It wasn’t the first time his subordinates had mocked him for his humanity. Mundanes such as Walker were fast becoming obsolete. If he hadn’t owned the *Wellington*, he’d be unable to pick up work in interstellar exploration.
“Just show me what you have, Huang.” Walker sighed. “Main screen.”
The image was still grainy. Walker rubbed his eyes. The advanced telemetry of the *Wellington’s* equipment should have been able to display the visual with crystal clarity. Even with Huang’s tweaking, the image refused to resolve itself.
“Serious ionisation,” Peng muttered.
“Speak up, Peng,” Walker said.
Peng muttered something inaudible, lost as he was to the interface with the ship. Huang, too, was silent as he absorbed the data.
Walker thumped the arm of his chair. “Come on, guys! Don’t drift on me. I need answers!”
Peng straightened in his chair but took a few seconds to disengage from the data stream. “Osiris II has an atmosphere of approximately six hundred klicks. Apart from the ionisation, I’m getting no readings at all.”
“Something wrong with the equipment?” Walker asked.
“No,” Huang answered after a pause. “I ran a diagnostic and the arrays are in working order.”
Walker glanced at the planet on the main screen again. “Strange. It looks like pollution haze. Reminds me of home.”
Although his vision was unenhanced, Walker pressed his face to the nearest viewport. Until today, Osiris II had been an unclassifiable planet, identified only as a gravity distortion by telescopes in far orbit in the Sol System. Walker’s best guess was that it was akin to Venus, a rocky planet covered in a thick layer of gasses, but he needed a closer look.
“Move us into low orbit.” Walker commanded as he returned to his chair. “I want to pierce the veil.”
Within moments, the ship lurched to the right, and Walker’s stomach with it. The planet loomed in the viewport larger by the second.
As their approach vector changed, Walker spotted something.
“Stop the ship!” he called to the crew. Within seconds, the ship slowed and stopped. Walker’s stomach lurched a second time from the deceleration. He was forced to grip his chair tight to avoid being dumped on the floor.
“See that debris? What is that?” Walker asked.
Biography – Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Shane Jiraiya Cummings has been acknowledged as “one of Australia’s leading voices in dark fantasy”. He is the author of Shards, Phoenix and the Darkness of Wolves, The Smoke Dragon, Requiem for the Burning God, the four volumes of the Apocrypha Sequence, and the forthcoming collection The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After. More on Shane can be found at www.jiraiya.com.au. “Graveyard Orbit” is part of Shane’s ‘Ravenous Gods’ cycle of Cthulhu Mythos-inspired stories.
1. What is your favorite Sci-fi horror novel or short story?
To throw a curve ball, my main sci-fi horror influences have been films. I don’t read enough novels, let alone sci-fi novels, to easily cite an influence. Having said that, I don’t know if there are that many truly awe-inspiring sci-fi horror novelists out there (excluding the thriving Cthulhu Mythos mob – guys like Cody Goodfellow and our own David Conyers have produced some exceptionally imaginative Mythos work that blends SF with horror).
I love a dark, gritty story set in outer space, a trillion trillion kilometres from home, which is why films such as Event Horizon and Alien really appeal to me. Perhaps it was my stage in life and the circumstances that particular evening, but Event Horizon scared the bejeezus out of me when I first saw it at the cinema. That combination of the extreme isolation of space, the claustrophobia of a derelict ship, and the threat of the supernatural really resonates with me. I feel that people find comfort in technology, and these kind of films touch on this as the protagonists often rely on advanced equipment and weaponry, and as a result, they enter situations with way too much confidence (the Colonial Marines on LV-426 in Aliens, anyone?). I love that moment when the characters’ belief in advanced technology fails and they need to rely on neglected, almost antiquated skills to survive (such as good old fashioned human ingenuity). I particularly enjoy clashes of technology and the supernatural. An intriguing, if a little cheesy, take on this occurred in Jason X (the tenth Friday the 13th film, set aboard a starship).
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
Directly, you can blame the band Filter for “Graveyard Orbit”. I sometimes like writing to music, and when a particular song matches the words well, melds into the background, and no longer intrudes on the creative process, I put it on endless loop until the story is finished. It’s a bit Asperger’s, I know, but I have those tendencies. In the case of “Graveyard Orbit”, it was a song titled “The 4th" by Filter. There are no words (discernible ones anyway, as a phrase is repeated in reverse and then buried under a creepy, atmospheric tune) but the song really helped me bring the story to life.
Indirectly, you can blame David Conyers. I’d always wanted to write a Cthulhu Mythos story, and when David invited me to contribute to the Call of Cthulhu fiction anthology Cthulhu’s Dark Cults (Chaosium, 2010), he sparked my imagination. The resulting contribution, “Requiem for the Burning God”, became a novella (and was later published as a standalone ebook) and the first in what I call the ‘Ravenous Gods’ cycle of stories. “Graveyard Orbit” is the second story in the ‘Ravenous Gods’ cycle, although chronologically, it will probably be the fourth or fifth (once I write the intervening stories). Without revealing spoilers, even though the two stories are set roughly 500 years apart, they have a character in common.
I believe that a big idea should be at the heart of every story, which is why my stories are getting longer and longer. In “Graveyard Orbit”, I hint at an explanation for why there are holes in the universe’s dark matter structure. There is an underlying Mythos-inspired supernatural explanation for the structure of the universe, and while this story doesn’t explicitly offer explanations, it lays clues for what could be revealed in future ‘Ravenous Gods’ stories. And it wouldn’t be a Mythos-inspired story without a brush with the alien, the bizarre, the unknowable, and that is exactly what you will find in orbit around the planet Osiris II.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I have years of experience as a journo, and I find writing news or non-fiction easier than writing fiction (although the mechanics of journalism – interviewing people and transcribing quotes – is a lot more exhausting), but ultimately, I feel more intense satisfaction from completing a work of fiction.
Now for something completely new – as a person (not just a writer), I possess a bizarre ‘superpower’: I am invisible to birds. Whether I’m in my car or walking, my fine feathered friends simply can’t see me. It’s a completely useless and only mildly inconvenient power. The worst of it is when I’m driving and trying to avoid birds on the road or when I need to walk through a large flock of birds (pigeons are a delight – I’m almost guaranteed to have a stray wing smack me in the side of the head, and given that I’m now used to the unexpected brush of feathers, the bird is usually more surprised than I am!). I first discovered this dubious ability when as a teenager I was sitting in a park in Sydney and a particularly imposing ibis spotted the chips I was eating and methodically stalked its way towards them, stepping over my legs and completely ignoring my warding arm. It nabbed one of the chips, but it must have been disturbed when (to its eyes) the rest of the chips levitated away as I left the park in annoyance. My experiences with birds will make great fodder for a story in the future!
Graveyard Orbit
Shane Jiraiya Cummings
System: HD 209458 (designation: Osiris).
Distance from Earth: 150.4 light years (Pegasus Constellation).
“What in hell is that?” Walker pointed to the brown-yellow smudge on the central viewscreen.
Lost to his interface with the ship, Peng took a few moments to answer, “What?”
“You mean, ‘what, Captain’,” Walker said with distraction. He’d spent the entire three month journey reminding his subordinates of his position, and correcting them had become an automatic response.
“Uh, yeah, what, Captain?” Peng said, although he remained interfaced with the ship and didn’t bother to turn to address him.
Peng’s crewmate—and the Wellington’s first officer—Huang was also interfaced, but he appeared to quiver slightly. Although his back was to Walker, he was sure Huang was suppressing laughter.
“Enough, you two,” Walker chided. “I want a full spectrum analysis on that planet. Thermal, radiation, gravity density mapping, atmospheric composition, the works.”
“Sure, Captain.” Huang swivelled in his chair to face Walker. “Although if you just interface... oh, very sorry, I forgot, you’re not enhanced.” The wireless pods embedded in Huang’s temples pulsed with lights. The magnetically insulated strips that ran up the sides of his neck and disappeared into his hairline strobed in a lightning-fast sequence of flashes.
Walker grimaced. The instant information Huang was accessing from the *Wellington’s* telemetry arrays was more of a slap in the face than his words—and Huang knew it. It wasn’t the first time his subordinates had mocked him for his humanity. Mundanes such as Walker were fast becoming obsolete. If he hadn’t owned the *Wellington*, he’d be unable to pick up work in interstellar exploration.
“Just show me what you have, Huang.” Walker sighed. “Main screen.”
The image was still grainy. Walker rubbed his eyes. The advanced telemetry of the *Wellington’s* equipment should have been able to display the visual with crystal clarity. Even with Huang’s tweaking, the image refused to resolve itself.
“Serious ionisation,” Peng muttered.
“Speak up, Peng,” Walker said.
Peng muttered something inaudible, lost as he was to the interface with the ship. Huang, too, was silent as he absorbed the data.
Walker thumped the arm of his chair. “Come on, guys! Don’t drift on me. I need answers!”
Peng straightened in his chair but took a few seconds to disengage from the data stream. “Osiris II has an atmosphere of approximately six hundred klicks. Apart from the ionisation, I’m getting no readings at all.”
“Something wrong with the equipment?” Walker asked.
“No,” Huang answered after a pause. “I ran a diagnostic and the arrays are in working order.”
Walker glanced at the planet on the main screen again. “Strange. It looks like pollution haze. Reminds me of home.”
Although his vision was unenhanced, Walker pressed his face to the nearest viewport. Until today, Osiris II had been an unclassifiable planet, identified only as a gravity distortion by telescopes in far orbit in the Sol System. Walker’s best guess was that it was akin to Venus, a rocky planet covered in a thick layer of gasses, but he needed a closer look.
“Move us into low orbit.” Walker commanded as he returned to his chair. “I want to pierce the veil.”
Within moments, the ship lurched to the right, and Walker’s stomach with it. The planet loomed in the viewport larger by the second.
As their approach vector changed, Walker spotted something.
“Stop the ship!” he called to the crew. Within seconds, the ship slowed and stopped. Walker’s stomach lurched a second time from the deceleration. He was forced to grip his chair tight to avoid being dumped on the floor.
“See that debris? What is that?” Walker asked.
Biography – Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Shane Jiraiya Cummings has been acknowledged as “one of Australia’s leading voices in dark fantasy”. He is the author of Shards, Phoenix and the Darkness of Wolves, The Smoke Dragon, Requiem for the Burning God, the four volumes of the Apocrypha Sequence, and the forthcoming collection The Abandonment of Grace and Everything After. More on Shane can be found at www.jiraiya.com.au. “Graveyard Orbit” is part of Shane’s ‘Ravenous Gods’ cycle of Cthulhu Mythos-inspired stories.Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Cody Goodfellow
With the release today of Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Issue in e-format, we’ve decided to interview two authors from the issue. The first is Cody Goodfellow, a rising star on the global horror and weird fiction scene. Cody’s style is always captivating and his story “Earthworms” demonstrates his skill. It was so good, it opens the issue.
1. What is your favorite Sci-fi horror novel or short story?
Blood Music by Greg Bear. I read it shortly after discovering Lovecraft in junior high school, and it perfectly dovetailed with the unacceptable revelations of At The Mountains Of Madness. It was an utterly new vision of the apocalypse in its truest sense, as revelation rather than mere disaster. Also, it cleverly disposed of cliche cleft-jawed heroes and sexy scientists fighting to avert the coming change.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
For "Earth Worms", I delved into cherished memories of pulp sci-fi from Fredric Brown and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as cheesy Golden Age sci-fi comics, where the undoing of all human aspirations come as the punch line of a twisted cosmic joke. To push those hoary old tropes in the service of a deadly earnest issues like environmental and spiritual apocalypse scenarios just seemed like a natural fit, with the unspeakable alien zookeeper obligingly explaining how, from our earliest origins as multicellular life on Earth, we'd been conned.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
Not much of international interest... I used to write for a local music and culture magazine in San Diego, and was one of the first (if not the first) to unmask guerrilla artist Shepard Fairey as the man behind the Andre The Giant sticker and banner campaign back in the 90s. I used to compose electronic scores for porno videos in college, and am currently working on the soundtrack for a short monster movie I wrote called Stay At Home Dad.
Gary Caldwell awoke from a dream he couldn’t remember, except for the sound of his own voice telling him to be fruitful and multiply.
Cold golden light poured like sand into his eyes, but he could not close them. Could not move at all. He could see nothing but the light, feel only a vague, universal aching which brought him to the edge of panic. He was still in his body, or he seemed to be. The sensations he felt were nothing like the deep meditation or the OOBE training that was supposed to prepare him for the end.
Something his wife said came to him, just then: the End isn’t when we die… it’s when we all get what we deserve…
Was this what he deserved, then? Was this the Limbo reserved for infidels and unbelievers? It would be far better, if he could panic; if he could feel exultation, fear… anything.
Because the end had come, and what he believed had come true.
This thought cast his discomfort and confusion into a whole new light. He had seen them come down out of the sky with his own eyes. When the whole human race had succumbed to despair, he and the others who shared the vision had held out long enough to see them come.
He was with Joyce in the communications bunker, watching the torrential acid rain. The telescopes and pirate satellite feeds had found nothing, but their Big Ear had been pinging with anomalous radio signals for weeks. Someone had to be listening out there, and might finally be trying to speak.
Caldwell was the only one well enough to stand watch. A Grey Grids infection had wiped out half the group in the last week. Joyce was well into the terminal phase, the livid, circuitry-shaped rash branding every pallid inch of skin, but she came topside to bring him soup and spend her last breaths on accusations.
“Just admit it, darling,” she whispered, like begging for medicine. “Admit you were wrong.” It was unworthy of her, but it was easier than facing the real betrayal. She had followed him out here, and she was dying, and he was not.
“What did I do, now?” He busied himself with rebooting the sweeping radio receivers, but no outsiders broke into their argument. The constant atmospheric disturbances caused by the roving tri-state cyclone-cluster they called the Funnel, now a permanent feature of the Great Plains, had snuffed out all terrestrial communications.
No one on Earth had anything to say that was worth hearing, anyway. Night and day, the group tended their telescopes, their radio transmitters and their lasers, and sent out Dr. Scriabin’s message to the universe.
“All of this was a mistake. All the calculations, the predictions, the pilgrimage out here… just laser-guided prayer. Just another cargo cult pipe dream.”
That stung. The world had called them a cult, but what did they believe, that was not written in the poisoned earth, the tainted skies and the rising, dying seas? Their leader was not a wild-eyed crankcase, or a glad-handing evangelist, but a soft-spoken retired college professor.
Dr. Scriabin predicted the end based on Malthusian charts and greenhouse gas curves, while the rest of the world clung to their fantasies of a universal Daddy who gave them the earth to eat like a pie in an eating contest. Was their retreat into the Montana badlands to try to contact an extra-terrestrial intelligence any more insane than the infantile belief of a solid majority of Americans that they would be raptured away from the end by angels?
It was hard to look at her, but he forced himself. “You’d rather we stayed in LA, when it fell into the sea, then? You’d prefer to have died in the food riots?”
“We didn’t just come out here to survive,” she spat. “You staked our lives on the premise that someone out there was watching. And that they would save us.”
The distress signal had been going out, in some form or other, for almost twenty years. The endless string of binary laser-light pulses and more esoteric codes were a barrage that anyone who could make sense of mathematics would surely decipher to learn the location of Earth, the dire state of its environment and, if they were as merciful as they were advanced, they would come running to save the few humans left from imminent destruction.
“We could have gone out with our families,” she sobbed, “with people who mattered to us… we could’ve gone somewhere and just tried to live…”
Biography – Cody Goodfellow
Cody Goodfellow has written three solo novels––Radiant Dawn, Ravenous Dusk and Perfect Union––and three more––Jake's Wake, The Day Before and Spore––with John Skipp. His short fiction has been collected in Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All Monster Action. As editor and co-founder of Perilous Press, he has published illustrated works of modern cosmic horror by Michael Shea, Brian Stableford and David Conyers. He lives in Los Angeles.
1. What is your favorite Sci-fi horror novel or short story?
Blood Music by Greg Bear. I read it shortly after discovering Lovecraft in junior high school, and it perfectly dovetailed with the unacceptable revelations of At The Mountains Of Madness. It was an utterly new vision of the apocalypse in its truest sense, as revelation rather than mere disaster. Also, it cleverly disposed of cliche cleft-jawed heroes and sexy scientists fighting to avert the coming change.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
For "Earth Worms", I delved into cherished memories of pulp sci-fi from Fredric Brown and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as cheesy Golden Age sci-fi comics, where the undoing of all human aspirations come as the punch line of a twisted cosmic joke. To push those hoary old tropes in the service of a deadly earnest issues like environmental and spiritual apocalypse scenarios just seemed like a natural fit, with the unspeakable alien zookeeper obligingly explaining how, from our earliest origins as multicellular life on Earth, we'd been conned.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
Not much of international interest... I used to write for a local music and culture magazine in San Diego, and was one of the first (if not the first) to unmask guerrilla artist Shepard Fairey as the man behind the Andre The Giant sticker and banner campaign back in the 90s. I used to compose electronic scores for porno videos in college, and am currently working on the soundtrack for a short monster movie I wrote called Stay At Home Dad.
Earthworms
Cody Goodfellow
Cody Goodfellow
Gary Caldwell awoke from a dream he couldn’t remember, except for the sound of his own voice telling him to be fruitful and multiply.
Cold golden light poured like sand into his eyes, but he could not close them. Could not move at all. He could see nothing but the light, feel only a vague, universal aching which brought him to the edge of panic. He was still in his body, or he seemed to be. The sensations he felt were nothing like the deep meditation or the OOBE training that was supposed to prepare him for the end.
Something his wife said came to him, just then: the End isn’t when we die… it’s when we all get what we deserve…
Was this what he deserved, then? Was this the Limbo reserved for infidels and unbelievers? It would be far better, if he could panic; if he could feel exultation, fear… anything.
Because the end had come, and what he believed had come true.
This thought cast his discomfort and confusion into a whole new light. He had seen them come down out of the sky with his own eyes. When the whole human race had succumbed to despair, he and the others who shared the vision had held out long enough to see them come.
He was with Joyce in the communications bunker, watching the torrential acid rain. The telescopes and pirate satellite feeds had found nothing, but their Big Ear had been pinging with anomalous radio signals for weeks. Someone had to be listening out there, and might finally be trying to speak.
Caldwell was the only one well enough to stand watch. A Grey Grids infection had wiped out half the group in the last week. Joyce was well into the terminal phase, the livid, circuitry-shaped rash branding every pallid inch of skin, but she came topside to bring him soup and spend her last breaths on accusations.
“Just admit it, darling,” she whispered, like begging for medicine. “Admit you were wrong.” It was unworthy of her, but it was easier than facing the real betrayal. She had followed him out here, and she was dying, and he was not.
“What did I do, now?” He busied himself with rebooting the sweeping radio receivers, but no outsiders broke into their argument. The constant atmospheric disturbances caused by the roving tri-state cyclone-cluster they called the Funnel, now a permanent feature of the Great Plains, had snuffed out all terrestrial communications.
No one on Earth had anything to say that was worth hearing, anyway. Night and day, the group tended their telescopes, their radio transmitters and their lasers, and sent out Dr. Scriabin’s message to the universe.
“All of this was a mistake. All the calculations, the predictions, the pilgrimage out here… just laser-guided prayer. Just another cargo cult pipe dream.”
That stung. The world had called them a cult, but what did they believe, that was not written in the poisoned earth, the tainted skies and the rising, dying seas? Their leader was not a wild-eyed crankcase, or a glad-handing evangelist, but a soft-spoken retired college professor.
Dr. Scriabin predicted the end based on Malthusian charts and greenhouse gas curves, while the rest of the world clung to their fantasies of a universal Daddy who gave them the earth to eat like a pie in an eating contest. Was their retreat into the Montana badlands to try to contact an extra-terrestrial intelligence any more insane than the infantile belief of a solid majority of Americans that they would be raptured away from the end by angels?
It was hard to look at her, but he forced himself. “You’d rather we stayed in LA, when it fell into the sea, then? You’d prefer to have died in the food riots?”
“We didn’t just come out here to survive,” she spat. “You staked our lives on the premise that someone out there was watching. And that they would save us.”
The distress signal had been going out, in some form or other, for almost twenty years. The endless string of binary laser-light pulses and more esoteric codes were a barrage that anyone who could make sense of mathematics would surely decipher to learn the location of Earth, the dire state of its environment and, if they were as merciful as they were advanced, they would come running to save the few humans left from imminent destruction.
“We could have gone out with our families,” she sobbed, “with people who mattered to us… we could’ve gone somewhere and just tried to live…”
Biography – Cody Goodfellow
Cody Goodfellow has written three solo novels––Radiant Dawn, Ravenous Dusk and Perfect Union––and three more––Jake's Wake, The Day Before and Spore––with John Skipp. His short fiction has been collected in Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All Monster Action. As editor and co-founder of Perilous Press, he has published illustrated works of modern cosmic horror by Michael Shea, Brian Stableford and David Conyers. He lives in Los Angeles.Sunday, 27 November 2011
Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Joanne Anderton
As the release date for Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Issue approaches, we though we would introduce you to Joanne Anderton, who wrote one of the most original and bizarre stories in the line-up, “Out Hunting for Teeth”. Joanne’s skills as a writer are demonstrated by her recent novel publication, Debris out from Angry Robot.
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
I'm really no good at playing favourites. I do, however, have a soft spot for Ghost Beyond Earth by G. M. Hague. I read this book many years ago (when I was but a young thing...) and it left such an impression on me. Twisted, creepy supernatural horror mixed with space-station claustrophobia and good old fashioned madness, all with an Australian setting and tone. There's just something about space and horror that goes together so well, and I think the same things applies to horror set in Australia. So much of the horror in sci-fi comes from the isolation, and the fact that you just can't escape because there's nowhere for you to go. How much is that like the Australian outback? No one can hear you scream on an isolated cattle station either...
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
The main character in my story, "Out Hunting for Teeth", is Wype -- a W-type Scavenger-Class android. He's part dead boy, part machine, and he hunts humans through the insides of a crippled starship, so he can extract their useful material, such as skeletons and neural networks. He was built by the Witch, a giant and grotesque creature born from the ship's core. He mostly ignores the whispers from his dead boy's brain and listens to his programming instead, until he finds the body of a man hanged by his own people. What he discovers on the dead man's networks will change everything.
"Out Hunting for Teeth" was inspired by Goya's etching of the same name, which depicts a witch stealing teeth from the body of a hanged man. As soon as I saw it, I just knew I wanted to write about it, but I also knew I wanted to do something... different. This story is the result. My husband described it as a cross between Wall-E and Genocyber and I still think that's the best description!
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
There's common knowledge about me? Now I'm worried. Well, hmmm, how about: I love writing horror, but I'm a complete chicken when it comes to reading it or watching it. A truly scary movie will give me many sleepless nights before I convince myself that no, the *insert horrific supernatural creature here* isn't real. Got to be supernatural though. Serial killers just bore me.
Out Hunting for Teeth
Joanne Anderton
The colony in the sunside hydroponics chamber had strung the man up in the access corridor like an offering. He swung from the ceiling’s naked beams on a noose of optical fibre and copper wire, and his hands were tied in front of him. His face was expressionless and grey, his mouth hung open, and the nodes drilled into his teeth were misfiring desperate, panicking signals.
W-type Scavenger-Class—nicknamed Wype by his mistress in her cruel glee—had never seen anything like it.
His sensors told him the man was already dead, no need to chase and kill this one himself, which reduced the chance he would damage the man’s spinal enhancements and neural networks. That was good. The Witch was vicious when she was displeased. So it made sense to cut the man down, slice him into manageable parts and drag the useful ones back to her as quickly as possible.
But Wype was more than sensors and circuitry. He was a Witch’s spell, a complex blend of dead human parts and recycled machine parts, given life and a task by his mistress. He shared a brain, and most of his body, with a dead boy. And his boy told him something wasn’t right. Humans were too few and they considered themselves too precious to kill each other indiscriminately. There had to be a reason for this man’s death. Perhaps he was contaminated. If Wype brought a virus—biological or digital—into the Witch’s lair, she would eject him into airless space.
So Wype and his boy decided this required more investigation.
Wype swung himself down from the ducting. His boy leg jarred at the impact. He pumped a fresh round of painkillers into the degenerating muscle, and shuffled awkwardly forward. He was designed for climbing through the hollow bones and rotting guts of the derelict ship, not walking in a straight line. His metallic leg was longer than his human leg, segmented, and hooked at the tip. His one human hand was encased in reinforced ceramic tiles stolen from the ship’s breached hull. He had two mechanical arms. One ended in a hook like his leg, the second was a multi-tool of cables, a light, a soldering iron and a photon-beam blade.
The sensors protruding from Wype’s neck scanned for heat signals, electronic pulses, and neural firings. He detected nothing but the panic emanating from the man’s teeth. He cut the man’s leg, wiped a thin drop of blood directly on the powerful lenses of his mechanical eye, and ran as many scans as he was programmed with. As far as Wype could tell there was nothing wrong with his flesh, other than the rigors of death. That only left his networks.
Wype hauled himself up the wall, extended his blade and cut the man down. Then he dropped back to the floor, and pried open the dead man’s mouth. It took a little drilling with the sharpened tip of his blade to expose enough ports to link himself with the neural network.
Human networks were basically designed for maintenance: they monitored blood pressure, muscle function, and oxygen uptake. But the dead man’s was doing none of those things. Instead, it was flooded with data, a nonsense of figures and formulas, instructions and feedback that didn’t feel human at all. It felt, if anything, like a machine. A jumbled, failing machine.
“Who are you?”
Biography – Joanne Anderton
Joanne Anderton lives in Sydney with her husband and too many pets. By day she is a mild-mannered marketing coordinator for an Australian book distributor. By night, weekends and lunchtimes she writes dark fantasy and horror. Her short fiction has recently appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and orlds Next Door. She was shortlisted for the 2009 Aurealis Award for best young adult short story. Her debut novel, Debris (Book One the Veiled Worlds Series) will be published by Angry Robot Books in 2011, followed by Suited in 2012. Visit her online at: http://joanneanderton.com and on Twitter@joanneanderton
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
I'm really no good at playing favourites. I do, however, have a soft spot for Ghost Beyond Earth by G. M. Hague. I read this book many years ago (when I was but a young thing...) and it left such an impression on me. Twisted, creepy supernatural horror mixed with space-station claustrophobia and good old fashioned madness, all with an Australian setting and tone. There's just something about space and horror that goes together so well, and I think the same things applies to horror set in Australia. So much of the horror in sci-fi comes from the isolation, and the fact that you just can't escape because there's nowhere for you to go. How much is that like the Australian outback? No one can hear you scream on an isolated cattle station either...
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
The main character in my story, "Out Hunting for Teeth", is Wype -- a W-type Scavenger-Class android. He's part dead boy, part machine, and he hunts humans through the insides of a crippled starship, so he can extract their useful material, such as skeletons and neural networks. He was built by the Witch, a giant and grotesque creature born from the ship's core. He mostly ignores the whispers from his dead boy's brain and listens to his programming instead, until he finds the body of a man hanged by his own people. What he discovers on the dead man's networks will change everything.
"Out Hunting for Teeth" was inspired by Goya's etching of the same name, which depicts a witch stealing teeth from the body of a hanged man. As soon as I saw it, I just knew I wanted to write about it, but I also knew I wanted to do something... different. This story is the result. My husband described it as a cross between Wall-E and Genocyber and I still think that's the best description!
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
There's common knowledge about me? Now I'm worried. Well, hmmm, how about: I love writing horror, but I'm a complete chicken when it comes to reading it or watching it. A truly scary movie will give me many sleepless nights before I convince myself that no, the *insert horrific supernatural creature here* isn't real. Got to be supernatural though. Serial killers just bore me.
Out Hunting for Teeth
Joanne Anderton
The colony in the sunside hydroponics chamber had strung the man up in the access corridor like an offering. He swung from the ceiling’s naked beams on a noose of optical fibre and copper wire, and his hands were tied in front of him. His face was expressionless and grey, his mouth hung open, and the nodes drilled into his teeth were misfiring desperate, panicking signals.
W-type Scavenger-Class—nicknamed Wype by his mistress in her cruel glee—had never seen anything like it.
His sensors told him the man was already dead, no need to chase and kill this one himself, which reduced the chance he would damage the man’s spinal enhancements and neural networks. That was good. The Witch was vicious when she was displeased. So it made sense to cut the man down, slice him into manageable parts and drag the useful ones back to her as quickly as possible.
But Wype was more than sensors and circuitry. He was a Witch’s spell, a complex blend of dead human parts and recycled machine parts, given life and a task by his mistress. He shared a brain, and most of his body, with a dead boy. And his boy told him something wasn’t right. Humans were too few and they considered themselves too precious to kill each other indiscriminately. There had to be a reason for this man’s death. Perhaps he was contaminated. If Wype brought a virus—biological or digital—into the Witch’s lair, she would eject him into airless space.
So Wype and his boy decided this required more investigation.
Wype swung himself down from the ducting. His boy leg jarred at the impact. He pumped a fresh round of painkillers into the degenerating muscle, and shuffled awkwardly forward. He was designed for climbing through the hollow bones and rotting guts of the derelict ship, not walking in a straight line. His metallic leg was longer than his human leg, segmented, and hooked at the tip. His one human hand was encased in reinforced ceramic tiles stolen from the ship’s breached hull. He had two mechanical arms. One ended in a hook like his leg, the second was a multi-tool of cables, a light, a soldering iron and a photon-beam blade.
The sensors protruding from Wype’s neck scanned for heat signals, electronic pulses, and neural firings. He detected nothing but the panic emanating from the man’s teeth. He cut the man’s leg, wiped a thin drop of blood directly on the powerful lenses of his mechanical eye, and ran as many scans as he was programmed with. As far as Wype could tell there was nothing wrong with his flesh, other than the rigors of death. That only left his networks.
Wype hauled himself up the wall, extended his blade and cut the man down. Then he dropped back to the floor, and pried open the dead man’s mouth. It took a little drilling with the sharpened tip of his blade to expose enough ports to link himself with the neural network.
Human networks were basically designed for maintenance: they monitored blood pressure, muscle function, and oxygen uptake. But the dead man’s was doing none of those things. Instead, it was flooded with data, a nonsense of figures and formulas, instructions and feedback that didn’t feel human at all. It felt, if anything, like a machine. A jumbled, failing machine.
“Who are you?”
Biography – Joanne Anderton
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Cat Sparks
Our third interview with the contributing authors of Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Issue is with Australian speculative fiction short story writer and editor, Cat Sparks, who penned a space opera horror fantasy with pirates, “Dead Low”.
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
I'm not sure I have an absolute favourite, but I was really taken by Jeff Long's The Descent when I read it a few years ago. The novel concerns a vast, labyrinthine world of tunnels and caverns below the subsurface of the world and the troglodyte hominid cultures that inhabit them; tribes humans have interpreted as demons throughout history. This is a violent novel rich with character and detail. Many scenes remain indelibly imprinted on my mind.
Other favourites include Stephen King's The Stand and Patricia Highsmith's collection of short stories Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
“Dead Low” is inspired by elephants' graveyards and abandoned children raised by wolves, only instead of elephants there are space ships and in place of wolves run malfunctioning surplus military hardware. Did I mention there are pirates? What's not to like?
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
Most of my writing, one way or another, tends to be about the search for identity: either mine, my protagonists', or perhaps that of the entire human species. I didn't realise this fact until an astute editor pointed it out after reading a bunch of my stories. “Dead Low”, however, is about SPACE PIRATES!
They were seven all up if you counted the pilot—and Clancy always did. Qamar had the smarts to demand a fee in lieu of a share of the plunder. Smarts enough to get paid regardless. He never went in but he’d always got them out. More than once by the skin of their back teeth. He cut things close but close was good enough for Clancy. She wouldn’t have swapped him for all the jewels on Europa.
The Sargasso Drift was not for the faint hearted. Not for greenhorns either. She knew she should have left the kid at base. Konte was excited for all the wrong reasons. Busting out and itching for a fight. Trouble was the last thing Clancy needed. The Sargasso Drift was trouble enough on its own.
“Looks like an elephants’ graveyard,” said Kyah, picking at her fingernails as Clancy enhanced the view. Before them, a sea of debris meshed with frozen rocks. Shattered hulls slept nestled amongst them, their once shiny surfaces pockmarked by centuries of micro impacts. Booster cylinders, photon drives, modular components battered into new and unrecognisable shapes. All jammed together to form a large amorphous mass, like a cancer or a blood clot. And something else; a substance registering as a brown-grey shadow that looked as though it should have been rock, but wasn’t.
“This here’s what you call a dead low,” Clancy explained. “Everything adrift in this part of the system ends up here sooner or later.”
Corvettes, cutters, blockade runners, battle cruisers, satellites, zips and flails, and all the other junk detritus illegally dumped from freighters.
“Elephant?” asked Konte, the kid in battle fatigues so new, the fabric was still stiff and shiny.
“An ancient kind of ship,” said Pace. “Freighter. Pre-Empire. Reckon this is where the Horgis generals sent their ships to die.”
“No way!” said the kid, his eyes as wide as saucers. He turned to Clancy. “Can’t we get in closer?”
“Not until we have to.” The grim tone to Clancy’s voice gave them all an early warning. All except the kid, of course, this being his first time out. Nobody wanted him along for the ride. Virgin heroes were generally the first to fall, usually dragging some other poor bastard down with them.
“First in, first serve for salvage rights,” said Kyah. Her hands were trembling, which meant she was on the juice again. Not good.
“Hon, we’re far from being the first. A good many of those shattered hulls belonged to salvage crews.”
“Not good ones, though. If they were good, they would never have bought it so easy.”
Clancy decided to let it go. Regret was already gnawing at her edges. The lies it had taken to get them all this far. After all, the ship belonged to Pace. His ship, Barbuda’s map, but the heartache was hers and hers alone. If she was wrong then none of it was going to matter.
“So what does the scan say?”
DeVere was already on it. “Highly mineralised,” he offered.
Biography – Cat Sparks
Cat Sparks is fiction editor of Cosmos Magazine. She managed Agog! Press, an Australian independent press that produced ten anthologies of new speculative fiction from 2002-2008. A graduate of the inaugural Clarion South Writers’ Workshop and a Writers of the Future prize winner, she has edited five anthologies of speculative fiction and more than fifty of her short stories have been published since 2000. She’s won thirteen Aurealis and Ditmar awards for writing, editing and art. She is currently working on a dystopian/biopunk trilogy and a suite of post-apocalypse tales set on the New South Wales south coast. www.catsparks.net (Photo credit: Selena Quintrell)
1. What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
I'm not sure I have an absolute favourite, but I was really taken by Jeff Long's The Descent when I read it a few years ago. The novel concerns a vast, labyrinthine world of tunnels and caverns below the subsurface of the world and the troglodyte hominid cultures that inhabit them; tribes humans have interpreted as demons throughout history. This is a violent novel rich with character and detail. Many scenes remain indelibly imprinted on my mind.
Other favourites include Stephen King's The Stand and Patricia Highsmith's collection of short stories Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
“Dead Low” is inspired by elephants' graveyards and abandoned children raised by wolves, only instead of elephants there are space ships and in place of wolves run malfunctioning surplus military hardware. Did I mention there are pirates? What's not to like?
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
Most of my writing, one way or another, tends to be about the search for identity: either mine, my protagonists', or perhaps that of the entire human species. I didn't realise this fact until an astute editor pointed it out after reading a bunch of my stories. “Dead Low”, however, is about SPACE PIRATES!
Dead Low
Cat Sparks
Cat Sparks
They were seven all up if you counted the pilot—and Clancy always did. Qamar had the smarts to demand a fee in lieu of a share of the plunder. Smarts enough to get paid regardless. He never went in but he’d always got them out. More than once by the skin of their back teeth. He cut things close but close was good enough for Clancy. She wouldn’t have swapped him for all the jewels on Europa.
The Sargasso Drift was not for the faint hearted. Not for greenhorns either. She knew she should have left the kid at base. Konte was excited for all the wrong reasons. Busting out and itching for a fight. Trouble was the last thing Clancy needed. The Sargasso Drift was trouble enough on its own.
“Looks like an elephants’ graveyard,” said Kyah, picking at her fingernails as Clancy enhanced the view. Before them, a sea of debris meshed with frozen rocks. Shattered hulls slept nestled amongst them, their once shiny surfaces pockmarked by centuries of micro impacts. Booster cylinders, photon drives, modular components battered into new and unrecognisable shapes. All jammed together to form a large amorphous mass, like a cancer or a blood clot. And something else; a substance registering as a brown-grey shadow that looked as though it should have been rock, but wasn’t.
“This here’s what you call a dead low,” Clancy explained. “Everything adrift in this part of the system ends up here sooner or later.”
Corvettes, cutters, blockade runners, battle cruisers, satellites, zips and flails, and all the other junk detritus illegally dumped from freighters.
“Elephant?” asked Konte, the kid in battle fatigues so new, the fabric was still stiff and shiny.
“An ancient kind of ship,” said Pace. “Freighter. Pre-Empire. Reckon this is where the Horgis generals sent their ships to die.”
“No way!” said the kid, his eyes as wide as saucers. He turned to Clancy. “Can’t we get in closer?”
“Not until we have to.” The grim tone to Clancy’s voice gave them all an early warning. All except the kid, of course, this being his first time out. Nobody wanted him along for the ride. Virgin heroes were generally the first to fall, usually dragging some other poor bastard down with them.
“First in, first serve for salvage rights,” said Kyah. Her hands were trembling, which meant she was on the juice again. Not good.
“Hon, we’re far from being the first. A good many of those shattered hulls belonged to salvage crews.”
“Not good ones, though. If they were good, they would never have bought it so easy.”
Clancy decided to let it go. Regret was already gnawing at her edges. The lies it had taken to get them all this far. After all, the ship belonged to Pace. His ship, Barbuda’s map, but the heartache was hers and hers alone. If she was wrong then none of it was going to matter.
“So what does the scan say?”
DeVere was already on it. “Highly mineralised,” he offered.
Biography – Cat Sparks
Cat Sparks is fiction editor of Cosmos Magazine. She managed Agog! Press, an Australian independent press that produced ten anthologies of new speculative fiction from 2002-2008. A graduate of the inaugural Clarion South Writers’ Workshop and a Writers of the Future prize winner, she has edited five anthologies of speculative fiction and more than fifty of her short stories have been published since 2000. She’s won thirteen Aurealis and Ditmar awards for writing, editing and art. She is currently working on a dystopian/biopunk trilogy and a suite of post-apocalypse tales set on the New South Wales south coast. www.catsparks.net (Photo credit: Selena Quintrell)Saturday, 5 November 2011
Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Alan Baxter
In our second interview as part of the lead up to Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror Issue, we have an interview with Alan Baxter. His contribution tackles the fears faced by space travellers far form home and very deep into the void.
1. What is your favorite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
This is a really tough one to answer. Some of the best sci-fi horror is in the movies as it's sadly under-represented in written fiction, but there is a lot of good stuff out there. However, while it's not necessarily classified as horror, I would have to say Peter Watts's novel, Blindsight. It's a hard SF first-contact novel, and not really a horror novel in the commonly accepted sense. But Watts does such an amazing job of creating a truly alien entity for first contact and develops such horrifying reality around what such an encounter would really be like, that I find it hard to go past. It's an outstanding book, and perhaps the most horrifying element for me is the way the aliens move. Seriously, read it and you'll see what I mean.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
My story involves a few influences. Firstly, my science fiction tends to be heavy on the fiction and light on the science. I'm not scientifically educated enough to make the scientific elements of a story really convincing, but I love the scope for exploring ideas that SF gives a writer. There's certainly way more out there than we can comprehend, let alone prepare for, as the example of Blindsight above so ably demonstrates. On top of that, the experiences of humans in deep space would be very different to any experience available on Earth and I like to play with those ideas too. So my story explores the nature of very deep space exploration, the inexplicable things that might be out there, and the psychology of the people in those situations. I like my sci-fi to have a bit of a wild frontiers element, with the technological and human challenges that would bring. For example, the main character, Peevy, has a condition called deepfear, like a galactic agoraphobia, which was a lot of fun to play with.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I'm such an online whore that I doubt there's much people don't already know. But here's a couple of things. I wrote a sequel story to "Trawling The Void", called "Salvage In The Void", which picks up exactly where the first story ends, and that sequel just placed as a semi-finalist in the Writers Of The Future competition. So now I need to find somewhere to publish it. Also, I used to be a fishmonger. How's that?
Trawling the Void
Alan Baxter
The incoherent voices in Peevy’s mind were more insistent. The ghostly dragging at his clothes and skin stronger, though he knew nothing was there. He ground his teeth, staring at the diagnostics panel.
I’m not going mad. I’m not going mad. The thought was becoming his mantra.
He reached one hand down and scratched the soft, furry head of LaVey. The SimHound looked up, gave him a doggy smile. Peevy frowned at engine efficiency readouts. “Look at this, Jack.”
The Duty Engineer, an old ship hand, rough around the edges, shrugged. “Looks all right to me.” His grizzled old face showed no signs of worry.
Peevy glanced up, surprised. “Really? Look at the energy fluctuation across the coils.”
“It’s not much.”
“Maybe not, but as we don’t know what’s causing it we have to find out.”
“You’re the boss.”
Peevy smiled at the Duty Engineer. He was getting lazy in his old age.
#
“This array seems fine.” Peevy twisted in the cramped space to look the other way. “What about there?” The presence surged and he stiffened, wincing as he tried to ignore it.
The tech opposite gave a thumbs up. “Yep, this one’s fine too.”
Peevy made a sound of annoyance. LaVey watched with heavy-lidded disinterest as Peevy and the tech emerged from the service bay. Jack’s eyebrows raised. “Nothing.”
The old eyebrows sank as he smiled. “There you go then.”
“No. The engines are still out of whack. You should care about this. I think we should do a full restart.”
“The Cap will not be happy about that.”
“The Cap will have to suck it up.”
Biography – Alan Baxter
Alan Baxter is a British-Australian author living on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. He writes dark fantasy, science fiction and horror, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He also teaches Kung Fu. His contemporary dark fantasy novels, RealmShift and MageSign, are out through Gryphonwood Press, and his short fiction has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK, including the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror. Alan is also a freelance writer, penning reviews, feature articles and opinion. Read extracts from his novels, a novella and short stories at his website: www.alanbaxteronline.com
1. What is your favorite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?This is a really tough one to answer. Some of the best sci-fi horror is in the movies as it's sadly under-represented in written fiction, but there is a lot of good stuff out there. However, while it's not necessarily classified as horror, I would have to say Peter Watts's novel, Blindsight. It's a hard SF first-contact novel, and not really a horror novel in the commonly accepted sense. But Watts does such an amazing job of creating a truly alien entity for first contact and develops such horrifying reality around what such an encounter would really be like, that I find it hard to go past. It's an outstanding book, and perhaps the most horrifying element for me is the way the aliens move. Seriously, read it and you'll see what I mean.
2. Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
My story involves a few influences. Firstly, my science fiction tends to be heavy on the fiction and light on the science. I'm not scientifically educated enough to make the scientific elements of a story really convincing, but I love the scope for exploring ideas that SF gives a writer. There's certainly way more out there than we can comprehend, let alone prepare for, as the example of Blindsight above so ably demonstrates. On top of that, the experiences of humans in deep space would be very different to any experience available on Earth and I like to play with those ideas too. So my story explores the nature of very deep space exploration, the inexplicable things that might be out there, and the psychology of the people in those situations. I like my sci-fi to have a bit of a wild frontiers element, with the technological and human challenges that would bring. For example, the main character, Peevy, has a condition called deepfear, like a galactic agoraphobia, which was a lot of fun to play with.
3. Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
I'm such an online whore that I doubt there's much people don't already know. But here's a couple of things. I wrote a sequel story to "Trawling The Void", called "Salvage In The Void", which picks up exactly where the first story ends, and that sequel just placed as a semi-finalist in the Writers Of The Future competition. So now I need to find somewhere to publish it. Also, I used to be a fishmonger. How's that?
Trawling the Void
Alan Baxter
The incoherent voices in Peevy’s mind were more insistent. The ghostly dragging at his clothes and skin stronger, though he knew nothing was there. He ground his teeth, staring at the diagnostics panel.
I’m not going mad. I’m not going mad. The thought was becoming his mantra.
He reached one hand down and scratched the soft, furry head of LaVey. The SimHound looked up, gave him a doggy smile. Peevy frowned at engine efficiency readouts. “Look at this, Jack.”
The Duty Engineer, an old ship hand, rough around the edges, shrugged. “Looks all right to me.” His grizzled old face showed no signs of worry.
Peevy glanced up, surprised. “Really? Look at the energy fluctuation across the coils.”
“It’s not much.”
“Maybe not, but as we don’t know what’s causing it we have to find out.”
“You’re the boss.”
Peevy smiled at the Duty Engineer. He was getting lazy in his old age.
#
“This array seems fine.” Peevy twisted in the cramped space to look the other way. “What about there?” The presence surged and he stiffened, wincing as he tried to ignore it.
The tech opposite gave a thumbs up. “Yep, this one’s fine too.”
Peevy made a sound of annoyance. LaVey watched with heavy-lidded disinterest as Peevy and the tech emerged from the service bay. Jack’s eyebrows raised. “Nothing.”
The old eyebrows sank as he smiled. “There you go then.”
“No. The engines are still out of whack. You should care about this. I think we should do a full restart.”
“The Cap will not be happy about that.”
“The Cap will have to suck it up.”
Biography – Alan Baxter
Alan Baxter is a British-Australian author living on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. He writes dark fantasy, science fiction and horror, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He also teaches Kung Fu. His contemporary dark fantasy novels, RealmShift and MageSign, are out through Gryphonwood Press, and his short fiction has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK, including the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror. Alan is also a freelance writer, penning reviews, feature articles and opinion. Read extracts from his novels, a novella and short stories at his website: www.alanbaxteronline.comSaturday, 29 October 2011
Midnight Echo 6 Interviews: Andrew J McKiernan
Here is the first in a series of interviews and story exrtracts with the contributors to Midnight Echo 6: The Science Fiction Horror issue, due for release in November 2011. The first interview off the post is Andrew J. McKiernan, who gave us a creepy Lovecraftian tale set on a comet.
Midnight Echo: What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?
Andrew: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds is probably my favourite. It might not be horror in the traditional sense, but it uses a lot of the tropes to create suspense and a more than sufficient amount of dark imagery. Essentially an almost-hard-sf space opera, Revelation Space also delights in inflicting a bleak and menacing future upon its readers. There is the Nostalgia For Infinity; a centuries old starship more like a rotting Gothic castle than the flashy futuristic sterility of other SF ships. It once carried hundreds and thousands of passengers, but now only a handful of crew members haunt its dark corridors. Not only that, but both the ship and its captain have been infected by the Melding Plague, a virus that attacks humans and machines in equal measure, transforming them into grotesque symbiotes that make it impossible to tell where the machine ends and the human begins. Add into all that the overall series arc (continued in further novels) of a billion year old alien race that has already once wiped out almost all life in the galaxy and is intent on doing it again, and you have some strong Lovecraftian overtones. How can anyone go wrong with a mix like that?
Midnight Echo: Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
Andrew: That's right, always leave the hardest question until last! To be honest, if it isn't common knowledge I probably have a reason for keeping it that way. Some things, especially about a horror writer, should always remain hidden and mysterious.
At a distance of just under 3,500 kilometres, the comet should have been visible as an object roughly the size of a full moon seen from earth. Instead, the passengers and crew saw only darkness and a spattering of light-year distant stars. 
Andrew J McKiernan is an author and illustrator living and working on the Central Coast of NSW. Since 2007 his short stories and novelettes have appeared in Aurealis and Midnight Echo magazines and well as the anthologies Shadow Plays, CSFG's Masques, In Bad Dreams 2, Scenes From the Second Storey and Macabre: A Journey Through Australia's Darkest Fears. His stories have been shortlisted twice for both the Aurealis and Australian Shadows awards, as well as Ditmar Awards shorlistings for both his writing and illustration. His short story "The Memory of Water" was recently reprinted in Ticonderoga Publications' Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 and his story "The Desert Song" received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year Vol.3 anthology. New stories are forthcoming in Aurealis #46 and Midnight Echo #6, both due for publication in November 2011.
Midnight Echo: What is your favourite Sci-fi horror novel or short story and why?Andrew: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds is probably my favourite. It might not be horror in the traditional sense, but it uses a lot of the tropes to create suspense and a more than sufficient amount of dark imagery. Essentially an almost-hard-sf space opera, Revelation Space also delights in inflicting a bleak and menacing future upon its readers. There is the Nostalgia For Infinity; a centuries old starship more like a rotting Gothic castle than the flashy futuristic sterility of other SF ships. It once carried hundreds and thousands of passengers, but now only a handful of crew members haunt its dark corridors. Not only that, but both the ship and its captain have been infected by the Melding Plague, a virus that attacks humans and machines in equal measure, transforming them into grotesque symbiotes that make it impossible to tell where the machine ends and the human begins. Add into all that the overall series arc (continued in further novels) of a billion year old alien race that has already once wiped out almost all life in the galaxy and is intent on doing it again, and you have some strong Lovecraftian overtones. How can anyone go wrong with a mix like that?
Midnight Echo: Tell us about your story and what your influences are?
Andrew: My story, "The Wanderer In The Darkness" is a quite obvious attempt at moving something of the Lovecraft Mythos into space. I've always seen Lovecraft's main mythos tales as being more SF than Horror; these are aliens we are dealing with, not supernatural demons, and the leap from Lovecraft's more common setting of early 20th century America to 21st century deep space seemed an easy leap to make as far as story-telling goes. It is a simple story, essentially; a crew on a routine mission finds out that things aren't at all what they expected them to be. It is a trope that has been used to connect Horror and SF in films so many times in the past - Alien, The Thing, Event Horizon, Pandorum - but not so much that I've encountered in literature.
I'd also been reading about our physical exploration of comets via space probes, which first occurred with the Deep Space 1 probe in 2001 and continued on with Deep Impact 1 in 2005 and more recently Stardust in 2011. The orbits of comets through our solar system can take anything from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years, and some originate from the inside Oort cloud - a place so far away that it may extend almost a full light year out from the sun - and yet even at that distance it is still classed as part of our solar system. Those sort of distances and time-spans are somewhat mind-boggling and fit in so well with the types of things Lovecraft was hinting at. These cold, dark bodies, drifting for aeon's through unimaginable kilometres of space, returning occasionally to shed light and sometimes destruction upon the planets of our solar system. Harbingers of all sorts of prophesies throughout the history of man. It all seemed so perfect for a tale.
And so, what happens when we are finally able to set foot on one of these objects? What will we find? That's the essential thrust of my tale and how the influences came together.
Andrew: My story, "The Wanderer In The Darkness" is a quite obvious attempt at moving something of the Lovecraft Mythos into space. I've always seen Lovecraft's main mythos tales as being more SF than Horror; these are aliens we are dealing with, not supernatural demons, and the leap from Lovecraft's more common setting of early 20th century America to 21st century deep space seemed an easy leap to make as far as story-telling goes. It is a simple story, essentially; a crew on a routine mission finds out that things aren't at all what they expected them to be. It is a trope that has been used to connect Horror and SF in films so many times in the past - Alien, The Thing, Event Horizon, Pandorum - but not so much that I've encountered in literature.
I'd also been reading about our physical exploration of comets via space probes, which first occurred with the Deep Space 1 probe in 2001 and continued on with Deep Impact 1 in 2005 and more recently Stardust in 2011. The orbits of comets through our solar system can take anything from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years, and some originate from the inside Oort cloud - a place so far away that it may extend almost a full light year out from the sun - and yet even at that distance it is still classed as part of our solar system. Those sort of distances and time-spans are somewhat mind-boggling and fit in so well with the types of things Lovecraft was hinting at. These cold, dark bodies, drifting for aeon's through unimaginable kilometres of space, returning occasionally to shed light and sometimes destruction upon the planets of our solar system. Harbingers of all sorts of prophesies throughout the history of man. It all seemed so perfect for a tale.
And so, what happens when we are finally able to set foot on one of these objects? What will we find? That's the essential thrust of my tale and how the influences came together.
Midnight Echo: Tell us something about yourself as a writer that isn't common knowledge?
Andrew: That's right, always leave the hardest question until last! To be honest, if it isn't common knowledge I probably have a reason for keeping it that way. Some things, especially about a horror writer, should always remain hidden and mysterious.
The Wanderer in the Darkness
Andrew J McKiernan
At a distance of just under 3,500 kilometres, the comet should have been visible as an object roughly the size of a full moon seen from earth. Instead, the passengers and crew saw only darkness and a spattering of light-year distant stars.
“It’s still out there, isn’t it?”
The question was from Graham Tully, a young Glacial Geologist on his first trip out of Earth’s gravity well. Three months out of slow-ship stasis and he could still taste the rotten-egg of hydrogen sulphide, still woke up choking on dreams of the hibernation tank’s cramped confines and perfluorocarbon breathing fluid filling his lungs. The transfer from Neptune orbit aboard the *Spiritus Mundi* had been easier; awake all the way under a constant, barely noticeable, 0.01G.
“Yeah, it’s still there,” Captain Haldane answered. “Why’re you here, Tully? You know anything at all about comets?”
“I know about ice. Supposed to be studying the Yasu Sulci ice ridges on Triton but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. So, where is it?”
Dr Susan Maradin, the mission’s astrogeologist, kicked off from a bulkhead towards a bank of display panels. Her fingers flicked across a keyboard and the display panels lit up with a variety of multi-hued blobs centred in blackness. Tully recognised them as spectrographic imagery—infra-red, ultra-violet, chemical emissions, x-ray—and he could see the shape of the comet in their rainbow swirls.
“See, still there,” Dr. Maradin said. “Comets are the least reflective objects in the solar system. They might be mostly ice, but the surface is a tarry crust of organic compounds. It absorbs most of the light that hits it. Probably won’t see anything unaided until we’re right on top of it. Maybe Peregrine Base will have left a light or two on for us?”
The mention of Peregrine Base caused the Captain to shift uncomfortably in his couch. He turned to his Co-pilot and found her already looking his way.
“Still no ping from Peregrine, Lieutenant Garneau?”
“Nothing, Captain. Peregrine’s nav-beacon and communication relays are transmitting identification codes, but no replies to our outgoings. Could be they’re out at a drill site?”
“For over twelve hours? Someone would have stayed back at the base, or they would have taken a radio with them.”
Lieutenant Garneau didn’t answer. She knew this was true. In space you never went anywhere without a radio capable of transmitting a signal, even if it was only an emergency beacon.
Biography - Andrew J McKiernan
Andrew J McKiernan is an author and illustrator living and working on the Central Coast of NSW. Since 2007 his short stories and novelettes have appeared in Aurealis and Midnight Echo magazines and well as the anthologies Shadow Plays, CSFG's Masques, In Bad Dreams 2, Scenes From the Second Storey and Macabre: A Journey Through Australia's Darkest Fears. His stories have been shortlisted twice for both the Aurealis and Australian Shadows awards, as well as Ditmar Awards shorlistings for both his writing and illustration. His short story "The Memory of Water" was recently reprinted in Ticonderoga Publications' Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010 and his story "The Desert Song" received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year Vol.3 anthology. New stories are forthcoming in Aurealis #46 and Midnight Echo #6, both due for publication in November 2011.Sunday, 20 June 2010
Interview with Greg Egan Posted Online
My interview with Greg Egan is now available online on Greg's webpage. This interview originally appeared in Albedo One Issue 37. Here is an extract:
Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures (2009)
First published in Albedo One, Number 37, 2009. Copyright © Greg Egan and David Conyers, 2009. All rights reserved.
Greg Egan is one of Australia’s leading science fiction authors with over sixty short stories, seven novels and three collections to his name. His novel Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and his novella “Oceanic” won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award and the Asimov's Readers Award. He regularly appears in leading science fiction magazines such as Asimov’s and Interzone, and in Gardner Dozois’ The Years Best Science Fiction series. His most recent books are the novel Incandescence (Gollancz, 2008), and the short story collection Oceanic (Gollancz, July 2009).
What was it that compelled you to pursue a career writing science fiction?
I was interested in both science and science fiction from a very young age, and by the time I was seven or eight it was obvious to me that the best thing in the world would be to spend my life doing three things: writing books, making movies, and working as some kind of scientist. And I did make some attempts at all three, but I didn't really have the temperament to persist with the last two.
How did you get started?
I wrote a lot of crap for twenty years, starting from the age of six. I had a novel published by a small press when I was twenty-one, but it wasn't very good and it was more or less irrelevant in terms of my development as a writer. Then in the late 1980s I started writing short stories about biotech and artificial intelligence that just clicked. David Pringle, the editor of Interzone, bought several of them and encouraged me to work to my strengths.
Read the rest of the interview here.
Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures (2009)
First published in Albedo One, Number 37, 2009. Copyright © Greg Egan and David Conyers, 2009. All rights reserved.
Greg Egan is one of Australia’s leading science fiction authors with over sixty short stories, seven novels and three collections to his name. His novel Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and his novella “Oceanic” won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award and the Asimov's Readers Award. He regularly appears in leading science fiction magazines such as Asimov’s and Interzone, and in Gardner Dozois’ The Years Best Science Fiction series. His most recent books are the novel Incandescence (Gollancz, 2008), and the short story collection Oceanic (Gollancz, July 2009).
What was it that compelled you to pursue a career writing science fiction?
I was interested in both science and science fiction from a very young age, and by the time I was seven or eight it was obvious to me that the best thing in the world would be to spend my life doing three things: writing books, making movies, and working as some kind of scientist. And I did make some attempts at all three, but I didn't really have the temperament to persist with the last two.
How did you get started?
I wrote a lot of crap for twenty years, starting from the age of six. I had a novel published by a small press when I was twenty-one, but it wasn't very good and it was more or less irrelevant in terms of my development as a writer. Then in the late 1980s I started writing short stories about biotech and artificial intelligence that just clicked. David Pringle, the editor of Interzone, bought several of them and encouraged me to work to my strengths.
Read the rest of the interview here.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Ian Redman, Editor of Jupiter, Interviewed on SF Crowsnest.com
For anyone who reads Jupiter Magazine, there is an interesting interview with the editor, Ian Redman, on SF Crowsnest.com by Rod MacDonald. It struck me reading the interview that Interzone started out much the same way, so I wonder where Jupiter could be in years from now?
A review of Jupiter 28 can also be found here, which I unfortunately didn't appear in.
A review of Jupiter 28 can also be found here, which I unfortunately didn't appear in.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Interviewed in Shroud Magazine, Issue 8
Jeff W Edwards informed me today that the interview he conducted with me last year has just been published in Shroud Magazine, Issue 8. We even made the cover.In the interview I talk about how I got started as a writer, the experience of writing Secrets of Kenya and The Spiraling Worm, collaborations, how my marketing background has helped my writing and promoting my work, on the good and the bad of running writing workshops, and some background information on Cthulhu's Dark Cults, so the interview is well timed. Jeff did a wonderful job at making it all happen.
If you wish to purchase a copy, buy it here.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
First Publication for 2010: The Swelling
Innsmouth Free Press is a great e-magazine that has been very profilic with their publishing schedule since they set up last year. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paula R. Stiles and the rest of the team have been doing a great job promoting Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, and its like, and they were kind enough to interview me last year.Well this year they have not only interviewed me again, they've published one of my Cthulhu Mythos tales, "The Swelling" based on Robert Chamber's King in Yellow sub-cycle of tales within the Lovecraftian cannon. "The Swelling" remains one of my personal favourites of my own Cthulhu Mythos pieces, but as you can tell from my micro-interview, I was more influenced by Banks and Murakami on this one.
I made top billing on the front cover, which is very nice and a first for me. You can down the PDF of Issue 3 here.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Interview over at Innmouth Free Press
An interview I did with Innsmouth Free Press went up today. I talk with Silvia Moreno-Garcia on The Spiraling Worm and the Harrison Peel series, my influences and favorite books, the Australian speculative fiction scene, H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Read the interview here.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
My Greg Egan Interview in Albedo One #37
I've been waiting to announce this one for a while; I've recently interviewed Australian science fiction author Greg Egan which has now appeared the latest issue of Albedo One. My first in-depth interview with a high profile speculative fiction author.Greg talks about his influences, his writing proces, his favourites of his own work, upcoming books, his experiences with the Australian speculative fiction scene, sources for his idea, and his involvement with securing the release of illegally detained refugees in Australia.
The same issue features several of my reviews, and because I don't have my contributor copy with me yet, I'll have to announce what those reviews are in a latter post.
To read more about this issue visit the Albedo One website. Fiction by Robert Reed, the second place winner of the Aeon Award 2008, "Aegis", by D. T. Neal, Sara Joan Berniker, Gustavo Bondoni, Richard Alan Scott, Gareth Stack and T D Edge.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Charles Stross Interviewed on Yog-Sothoth.com
Interesting podcast with Charles Stross on Yog-Sothoth.com. He talks about his writing, role-playing games and the hint that an Atrocity Archives role-playing game is coming out soon based on the Call of Cthulhu (Basic Roleplaying Game) system.
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