Category: Goodies

A Parcel From China

David just kindly sent over another quick blog. Thanks, David! On a related note, has anyone who frequents here read Trillion Year Spree, the expansive history of science fiction by sci-fi heavyweight Brian Aldiss and our own David Wingrove? I’ve always meant to, and maybe this is the time to do it since we’re mid-cycle for Chung Kuo novels.

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A Parcel From China

Wednesday brought a parcel from the East. The Post Office, rather than buzz our buzzer
and hand the damn thing over for a signature, chose to leave me one of their red cards
instead, meaning I’d have to go to their offices to collect. Which I did, yesterday morning.
They handed me a heavy parcel, covered in Chinese characters and one side completely
covered in beautiful Chinese stamps (which I’ve kept). I knew what it was straight away. Two
months or so back – before the London book fair – I chased up my colleague Brian Aldiss’s
agents, Curtis Brown, regarding the Chinese edition of TRILLION YEAR SPREE, and whether
it had been published, and if so, whether we could have copies. They said they would, and
so they have… and, unwrapping the thing with an excited tremor, I found they’d sent three
copies of what is a most delightful-looking book. A real chunky volume of 659 pages, part of
a five book series they’re publishing for the Chinese market, and priced at 68 yuan. It really
is a good edition and makes me feel proud of it. But it also makes me think that maybe 2011
Anhui Literature And Art Publishing House might be a possible home for the Chung Kuo
series. They certainly put a great deal of care and effort into making TRILLION look quite
brilliant, and the thought of Chinese – in Nanking, or Beijing, or Xyan – reading it, quite
thrills me.

What else has been happening? Well, second daughter, Amy gave in her notice last Friday,
of a very well paid job that she does seemingly effortlessly, so that she could become a
writer, just like Mum and Dad. She’s organised and talented and there’s no earthly reason
why she shouldn’t make a go of it, but as things stand, they’ve offered her a compromise
deal of doing a three day week, which she might take, as it’ll take the pressure off her in
the first few years. Ten years ago, when she was just 15, she wrote a couple of Fan Fiction
novels, based on Final Fantasy and they were tremendously popular (she got over 7,500 hits
when the second one was posted on-line, and had a big following). So wish her luck, you
guys, and as soon as there is something to report, I’ll report it.

As if that wasn’t enough, number one daughter, Jessica, has also been making news by
winning one of the most prestigious awards in world advertising – in fact two of them! The
Silver Lions (awarded at Cannes, and advertising’s version of the Oscars) were won for work
she’d done on a Tourism Ireland campaign she ran with her partner Matt. It could have been
better – they could have got a Golden Lion, but hey… it ain’t every day you win something
like this, and I’m delighted for my girl, who’s a classic works-hard-parties-even-harder girl!

I’ll be blogging again tomorrow – about An Wei, the Chinese on Mars, Ray Bradbury, and
what’s happening on the publication front. Oh, and just to mention that I’ve copy-edited
roughly half a million words of CHUNG KUO since I last wrote. When my mother asked me
what I’d been up to, I murmured, “nothing much”.

Okay. More tomorrow.

David Thursday 21st June 2012

After the Apocalypse

Last night was the Dark Societies event at Waterstones, of which David was a featured speaker. He was kind enough to write up his thoughts about the night and send it our way. Sounds like it was a good event. Hopefully one of these days we’ll see him on this side of the Atlantic.

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After The Apocalypse

Last night was most enjoyable. Three authors, a room full of fans, and time enough to read excerpts,
have a panel discussion and a lively question and answer session.

The venue was the sixth floor of Waterstones, in Piccadilly, reputedly the biggest bookshop in
Europe, and the three authors were Juliana Baggott, Martine McDonagh… and myself.

The event was set to start at seven, but we authors met up before that – in the bar/restaurant on
the fifth floor, shortly after six fifteen. A nerve- calming drink or two… and then up a flight into a
large room, packed with a host of fee-paying people, there to hear what we had to say and to put
their opinion on matters post-Apocalyptic.

The title of the talk was ‘Dark Societies’ and was to do with the creation of dystopias. Martine
McDonagh– forties, slender, blonde-haired and from Brighton – had written a debut novel, I Have
Waited And You Have Come, set thirties years from now in rural Cheshire (that’s just south of
Liverpool, for those of you who don’t know). Juliana Baggott – forties, slender, dark-haired and
from the USA – had written a lot before Pure, the first book of a futuristic trilogy, but never quite so
explicitly in the SF genre. In the session that followed, we enjoyed throwing the questions between
us. But to start with we each gave a small reading from our works.

Influenced by the theme of the evening, I chose to read the first two pages of Chapter 24 of Daylight
On Iron Mountain, with Jake Reed’s waking thoughts about the past. It’s little more than 500 words,
but I think it says a great deal about the ‘Big Lie’ that lies behind the society of Chung Kuo. And,
from three lines in, I knew I had my audience. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. Last night I
definitely did. When I finished, with that deliberately understated ending to the scene – “Just wait
there. I’ll bring you a cuppa in bed.” – you could feel the indrawn breath of everybody in the room.
An hour and a half later, as we signed books in one corner of the room, people drifted across, some
to get their books signed, but most mainly to congratulate me on my reading. Which is incredibly
gratifying. To know you got through to a whole new bunch of people who’d never read a word of
mine, maybe never even heard about me until they’d come along. And, before I’d been given a
chance to get used to this non-hermetic version of myself, Sue whipped me off home on the bus.

Apocalypses. It’s not the sheer scale of them that brings home their awfulness, it’s the little things
that affect individuals. When the world ends, billions of ‘insignificant’ stories die with it. In that brief
passage I wanted to capture something of the poignancy – the true depth of loss – in one man’s life.
And for once, you know, I think I got it right.

David Wingrove

Friday 8th June 2012

An English Boy At The London Book Fair

David just sent along a blog post – a retelling of an… interesting… experience at the London Book Fair. It’s a good read. Thanks David!

Full text continues after the break…

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An English Boy at the London Book Fair

A blog – Saturday 21st April 2012

Wednesday (the 18th) was the third and final day of the London Book Fair, held, as usual, at Earls Court. It’s a massive venue and, with all the stands and all the people milling around, does much to convince an author that they’re the smallest and least important cog in this great machine we call publishing.

Now, I’m not a regular attendee of these gatherings. Someone has commented that taking an author to the Book Fair is rather like taking a cow along to view the abattoir, but that aside, I was there this year – paying my £45 fee – because the guest of honour for this year’s Fair was China. Continue reading An English Boy At The London Book Fair

Criticisms

I’ve got a lot to write about and a lot to share that I just haven’t had the chance to, including a wonderful, unexpected treat that arrived in the mail recently, a good six weeks early. 😉

In the meantime, however, here’s a brief guest blog by Mr. Wingrove about some criticisms directed toward him, suggesting that he’s ripping off his readers by selling shorter books. Personally, I prefer the new lengths as I find them more portable, more manageable, and I anticipate the shorter texts of the “old” material to feel more focused (if that makes sense?). But whatever – can’t please everybody.

Mr. Wingrove’s full text is below. Thanks as always, David!

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Criticisms

I’ve noticed that I’m now being criticized – by the brave “Anonymous” on the Wertzone site – for short-changing my readers by giving them much smaller books this time round. I’m kind of amused (a) because Anonymous himself doesn’t offer his readership any form of buy-it-or-leave-it deal, as he apparently doesn’t actually write books, and (b) because each and every volume that’s about to come out in the re-worked sequence will be between 300 and 400 pages long. Still good value, I’d have thought. And with lovely covers and lots of new material at the end of the sequence where it’s needed. Oh yes… and a book every two months to keep the appetite whetted. And two/three dozen short stories…

How does this compare size-wise, say with the classics of science fiction? Well, we’ve got George R Stewart’s 1949 classic, EARTH ABIDES, which weighs in at 312 pages, and there’s Joe Haldeman’s THE FOREVER WAR, which is 254 pages. Or there’s Dick’s DO ANDROID’S DREAM, a snip at 210 pages and LeGuin’s meaty THE DISPOSSESSED at 319 pages. Fred Pohl’s GATEWAY is 315 pages and Heinlein’s THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON is 238 pages.

Those were just a few taken down at random from the shelves. There are one or two bigger books up there too – Heinlein’s I WILL FEAR NO EVIL at 414 pages, John Brunner’s STAND ON ZANZIBAR at a walloping 650 pages, and DUNE, the original, at 507 pages, but it’s only recently – and more in the fantasy genre than in SF – that books have become a bit bigger than they were in the past.

That said, what I guess I object to is the sneering “he’s ripping you off” tone to Anonymous’s little snipe. As if working on a project like CHUNG KUO isn’t risky enough for both author and publisher. It also neglects the fact that the originals were written to divide up (each English-language volume divided into two self-contained smaller novels) for publication in Germany, Japan, Poland, Korea and elsewhere. If you don’t believe me look at the Heyne edition for the German market, or Bunjei Sunju in Japan. And as for omnibus editions, yes, I’d love to do that at the end of it all – maybe have one big Domesday-like volume – a massive coffee table edition with colour illustrations, like some futuristic Book Of Kells. But I’m day-dreaming now. Publishing is – has to be – a business as well as an artistic endeavour, and the fact that Corvus are coming along on this wonderful re-working of CHUNG KUO should be applauded, not sneered at.

What Anonymous thinks of my work is neither here nor there. People will make their own judgments in that regard.  Adam certainly did in his review, as he did (rightly) last time. But to infer that we’re cheating here somehow is a bit mean. When was the last time our good friend, Mr. A, the “critic”, put twenty seven years of his life into one project? Round about never, I’d say.

David        Wednesday 21st September 2011

Why China? (the official site version)

This version of Why China? appeared on the official Chung Kuo site in Janurary 2011 and is a different piece than the Why China? that was written as the original The Middle Kingdom first appeared in publication. Though the answers to that titular question are the same, the perspectives are written more than a decade apart. Full text after the break…

Continue reading Why China? (the official site version)