And there’s been two reviews of the anthology so far, both of them, er, stellar. The first was from Starburst, which mentioned me by name (which was nice), and the second from Tor.com (which unfortunately blows the cryptic meaning of my title out of the water – so, spoilers).

Niall Alexander on the Tor blog puts it very well – and is certainly the mood which I was going for.

There can be no questioning the value of this artful anthology: it’s as inspiring as it is inspired. But The Lowest Heaven is also a timely and ultimately touching reminder of what we stand to lose by turning inwards as opposed to venturing again into the unknown. Granted, the universe is vast—and vastly dangerous, I dare say—but consider the wonders we stand to discover; the places, the races!

I will definitely be there – the train tickets are booked, and I’ll be dashing about the South like a dervish for three days – I’ll have my signing pen with me.

You all know from his work on Thy Kingdom Come what a fantastically awesome artist Joey HiFi is. The cover for The Lowest Heaven is utterly wonderful. If you look very closely at Mars, you’ll even see a tiny representation of the Pacific in orbit around it, from my story WWBD. Joey talks more about the process on the National Maritime Museum’s blog, and how the anthology ties into the Visions of the Universe exhibition by the Royal Observatory.

The table of contents is, er, impressive. I think that’s the right word. Behold:

• Introduction by Dr. Marek Kukula (Royal Observatory Greenwich)
• “Golden Apple” by Sophia McDougall (The Sun)
• “A Map of Mercury” by Alastair Reynolds (Mercury)
• “Ashen Light” by Archie Black (Venus)
• “The Krakatoan” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Earth)
• “An account of a voyage from World to World again, by way of the Moon, 1726″ by Adam Roberts (The Moon)
• “WWBD” by Simon Morden (Mars)
• “Saga’s Children” by E.J. Swift (Ceres)
• “The Jupiter Files” by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Jupiter)
• “Magnus Lucretius” by Mark Charan Newton (Europa)
• “Air, Water and the Grove” by Kaaron Warren (Saturn)
• “Only Human” by Lavie Tidhar (Titan)
• “Uranus” by Esther Saxey (Uranus)
• “From This Day Forward” by David Bryher (Neptune)
• “We’ll Always Be Here” by S.L. Grey (Pluto & Charon)
• “Enyo-Enyo” by Kameron Hurley (Eris)
• “The Comet’s Tale” by Matt Jones (Halley’s Comet)
• “The Grand Tour” by James Smythe (Voyager I)

Arts by Joey, edited by Jared Shurin and Anne C Perry. That’s not the end of the Joey HiFi love, either. The limited edition hardback version has a fold-out map of the solar system. It is a thing of wonder and beauty, and I can’t wait to see it for real.

There is a launch, on the 13th June, at Greenwich, at which I will (with luck and a following wind) be signing, along with as many of the others who can make it. The limited edition hardcover is only available from the Royal Maritime Museum. Accept no substitutes! After the 13th, the paperback and ebook will be released through the usual outlets. But you want that hardback, don’t you?

It’s all fairly self-explanatory: a Freezone logo is something I’ve been toying with for a while, and finally came up with a design I was both happy with and thought reflected the ethos of the Freezone. It’s on a Creative Commons licence, so you’re free to put it pretty much anywhere you like – it has a permanent page here, and a link to the 640×640 image.

http://upcoming4.me/news/book-news/review-simon-morden-the-curve-of-the-earth

“Morden peppers the swiftly moving story with high energy action scenes, some of which are impressively original. To the extent that The Curve of the Earth feels like an extended set-up for the next novel in the series, it at least whets my appetite for whatever might be coming next.”

http://www.tzerisland.com/bookblog/2013/3/23/the-curve-of-the-earth-by-simon-morden.html

“Great dialogue, great characters, great settings – this takes post-apocalyptic worlds to a new height, with sensational results. Absolutely riveting!”

http://www.booksmonthly.co.uk/adfan.html

“I just slammed through it, and it’s a blast.”

http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=14414

There are very good reasons why I didn’t do a day-by-day blog of Eastercon. The first reason is because the convention hotel and the one I was staying at were separated by a bus journey, and nipping back to my room to file a report would have taken a significant chunk of time out of every day. The second reason is allied to the first, in that I didn’t want to lug my steam-powered laptop around with me (and in the event, the con hotel wifi was taking a beating without me adding to the bandwidth). The third reason is probably the most important, however: I was having too good a time to stop.

So – sunny Bradford. For me, denizen of the wild north, that meant a journey of less than two hours, door to door. Which was nice. And the recent heavy snows hadn’t affected the travel arrangements of anyone, as far as I could tell. The Jury’s Inn hotel was a stone’s throw from the station, was clean, comfortable, quiet, had an ethernet connection for fast, free internettery, and the breakfasts were excellent. The bus service (laid on by the con) was frequent, even though misjudging the traffic density on Saturday morning did mean I was late for my slot in the ‘genre get-together’. Fortunately, it wasn’t a panel, and I wasn’t left too embarrassed. The con hotel food was, er, limited. Probably not much anyone could have done about that, and the drinks were reasonably priced, and the wonderfully skiffy-named Clarks’ beer – traditional and blond – were more than acceptable brews.

I could give you a blow-by-blow account: I’d rather you came and experienced an Eastercon yourself (next year in Glasgow). Suffice to say, there were many highlights, and no lowlights. People kept on coming up to me to say how much they liked my books – which doesn’t get old, and is actually quite sweet. With the news about Iain Banks ringing loudly in our ears, realise that all of us are mortal, and my writing heroes and heroines won’t be around for ever. Say nice things to them while they’re still here – which is why sitting next to Chris Beckett on a panel and talking to him about how much I enjoyed Dark Eden and The Holy Machine is important.

I inevitably launched two books – and inevitably not my own – for Clarion Publishing. Due to Ben Jeapes‘ indisposition (he was the centurion in the Abingdon Passion Play), he’d asked me to stand in for him. Not the weirdest request I’ve ever had, but very close. I did a reading, and signed the books – there are now copies of His Majesty’s Starship and Jeapes Japes from such unlikely luminaries as Mary Shelly and Jerry Cornelius, Engels and Ursula Le Guin. Seriously.

I was on panels, which were good and educational and entertaining, and I got to hold forth about my favourite subject, the state of science education in British schools…

I got to talk to an awful lot of lovely people. I got to witness a light-sabre duel between Francis Knight and Anne Lyle. I had a very nice curry thanks to the lovely crowd at Gollancz, and then drank whisky into the small hours with Simon Ings. I didn’t get up to collect a BSFA award for Joey HiFi’s cover of Thy Kingdom Come, but did see Ian Sales‘ Adrift on the Sea of Rains – which I very much liked – win the Short Story catagory. I signed books (which I had written myself), and bought books, too.

Special mention has to go to the organising committee. The fact that most people didn’t even notice that there was a committee was a testament to how good the con was. It was brilliant. See you all again in Glasgow.

UK Petrovitch trilogy

UK Curve of the Earth

My spies tell me – I have spies now, fear me – that the US links are live, just that I can’t see them from this side of the pond.

US Petrovitch trilogy

US Curve of the Earth

in case you need them…

My itinerary for eightsquaredcon, the Eastercon 2013, is as follows:

Friday, 9pm in Rowan – “Underground London” with Paul Cornell, Roz Kaveney, and Anne Lyle: Take one London. Add magical society hidden from most people. Mix in famous places from the city, and optionally garnish with police procedural. Why is this such a great recipe?

Saturday, 11am in the Conservatory: “Genre get-together: science fiction” with all the other skiffy writers.

Sunday, 1pm in the Boardroom: “Advice for Writers: Setting” with Darren Nash (moderator), Chris Beckett, Aliette de Bodard, and Gaie Sebold: Practical experience and observations on writing believable and detailed environments.

Monday 11am in Rowan: “Selling Space” with John Coxon, Tracy Berg, John Dallman, Anne Lyle: How do you fund space exploration, particle accelerators and other costly scientific endeavours? Why do countries do this, and why are corporations taking an interest? How does academia make its fund-raising media-savvy?

I’ll also be in for the BSFA awards on the Sunday evening, hoping to pick up a gong on behalf of Joey HiFi and the Jurassic London crew.

However, the Ben Jeapes thing: let me explain. Actually no, let me sum up. Ben is having a book launch at Eastercon with Clarion Press. Ben cannot be there. I am standing in for Ben.

All clear? Excellent: I’ll see you in the Conservatory at 8pm on Friday, then. I’m still uncertain as to whether I’m supposed to be signing them, but I could be persuaded…

It’s a funny old business really. Here I am, in the middle of the final edits for Arcanum, and a book I wrote a year ago is coming out now. There’s a slight feeling of “is this happening to me?” about it, an air of bemused detachment, because while I lived and breathed this story during its creation, and then all over again for the edits, it’s now in my past, while for many of you, it’s in your present or even your future. This launch is certainly less nerve-wracking than the bang-bang-bang release of the first three books. I’m older, and a lot more sanguine, for one thing. More confident even (thanks again, Philip K Dick award!). What I’m looking forward to most is hearing what you think of it: Petrovitch is all grown up. He’s been at more-or-less peace for ten years. Then … this happens. And dear Lord, he’s angry. Not incandescent angry,  but coldly calculating angry. Which makes him far more dangerous to both his enemies and his friends.

Do you need to have read Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom to enjoy The Curve of the Earth? Actually, no. The story will probably be richer if you have, but I’ve written it in such a way (avoiding the as-you-know-Bob infodumps) that it’s not necessary. Orbit have kindly released an ebook omnibus if you need to catch up, but you can reasonably do that afterwards if you want, just in the same way it’s not necessary to have read Thy Kingdom Come before starting on Equations. Someone told me they’d read the original trilogy in reverse order. Okay, not recommended, but hey.

However you choose to read about Petrovitch, his world is now four books and a short-story collection long. Enjoy responsibly. You can, of course, hear from the man himself in this exclusive interview posted at the Orbit website. It’s a bit sweary (as you’d expect) but it’s quite enlightening. It was recorded just before the events of The Curve of the Earth, so it should give you some idea to his state of mind at page 1…

Also, where was Google Translate when I was struggling with both French and German at school? Kids today, eh?

The book is signed by Joey Hi-Fi and Simon Morden himself, and tells you all you ever wanted to know about the apocalypse that led to the breakdown of social order and the establishment of the Metrozone.

The winner and three runners up will also receive a set of three limited edition Samuil Petrovitch stickers. These beautious specimens detail various Russian swearwords, common Petrovitch usage, and a very English translation.

This competition is now closed. Good luck to all those who entered!

Please note this competition is open to UK residents only. For full terms and conditions, please click here.

But – don’t buy them until I’ve signed them, which I should have done by Friday lunchtime. Alternatively, buy them and leap out unexpectedly at me while I’m holding a drink, and I’ll do the honours. Because all the smart money is on Joey HiFi’s cover winning a BSFA, right?

Just to remind you of the awesome…

But that was where the Sci-Fi Weekender was, so going anywhere else wasn’t really an option. Me, my merry crew (a special shout-out to my co-pilot Abi, without whom I’d have probably ended up wrapped around a tree somewhere, gently snoring), and about 5000 other people descended on a holiday park (Hafan y Mor, if you need to look it up) to talk, watch and be science fiction for a couple of days before dispersing back across the country again.

I’d been warned that the accommodation on previous Weekenders had been of a somewhat basic – and cold – nature. As it was, it seemed this year was substantially better, with most caravans having working heaters, and I was inexplicably installed in a four-bed apartment with sea-views, radiators, power-shower, kitchenette and wide-screen TV. Just for me. Perhaps the organisers had heard I snored like a revving chainsaw, but other author-guests reported similar levels of luxury. Which was nice.

There are problems with running a big con on a holiday park. Everyone is spread out across a substantial site. If the weather hadn’t been kind – bearing in mind this was the very beginning of March – there would have been problems simply getting from where you slept to where things were happening. Also, there would have been no one venue which would have fitted everyone in. Also, it made finding people you knew really difficult if, like me, you were running a steam-phone without a twitter feed.
However, once I managed to find other authors and publishers I knew from other cons, and exchanged mobile numbers, it was fine. Lesson one: go prepared. It’s easy to feel lost in such a big crowd.

The organisation was a bit on the ad-hoc side. I knew where I needed to be and when, but there were programme changes and rescheduling and no-shows. Lesson two: cons don’t just happen in physical space anymore, they happen online at the same time. It’s been something I’ve been able to ignore until now (yes, I know SF fans are supposed to be early adopters of new technology, which makes me a perverse Luddite twice over), but it’s a truism that those with 3G phones were much more plugged-in than I was. From my vantage point – I’d gone to work, to talk to other writers and generally be available – everything seemed to happen well enough that they were prepared to do it all again next year.

The panels were held in amongst the signing queues, the bar area, and the traders’ stalls, so it was, to quote one of my colleagues, like talking at a motorway service station. Not ideal perhaps, especially with the incipient sound desk problems that would plague that venue all weekend, but the audience for the panels tended to sit forward, and it was in some respects, better than an enclosed room – a certain buzz, if you will. I certainly enjoyed my panel on the Future of SF – a series of smart questions from the floor added to the flavour, and my signing afterwards was enormous fun (thanks to Forbidden Planet for stocking the books, including the first ‘in the wild’ sighting of The Curve of the Earth).

The fact that so few authors and ‘big six’ publishers made the trek was most likely a mistake on their part. Those who did turn up could comfortably fit around a long table at the Mash and Barrel, and the smaller presses – Telos, Black Library, Angry Robot – did brisk business. Lesson three, for anyone who’ll listen: turn up mob-handed with some big names, and it’ll be worth your while, both in terms of raising your profile and shifting some books. These aren’t necessarily people who’d go to the more ‘literary’ cons. Where else are you going to meet them?

Some of the costumes that people brought to wear were awesome. I’ve never been to a con with a big cosplay element, and it was fascinating to see the effort and technical expertise that had gone into the outfits. Being accosted by Rorschach – and working out who it was behind the mask – was actually really cool in a ‘one of us’ geeky way.

All-in-all, without glossing over the problems, I had a thoroughly good time, met some new people, stayed in a lovely apartment and shared the driving there and back. If they want me back, I’ll go.

Many moons ago, I wrote my Eastercon blog and wondered what a ‘different’ SFF convention would look like – and suggested the SFX weekender (of which the SciFi weekend is, unsurprisingly, a direct descendent). The programme certainly looks interesting and varied – I’m on a panel in Spaceport at 5pm on Saturday, discussing modern trends in SF and how would it all look to the old folk. Checking the other panellists, I may actually be the oldest one, so no irony there… if they’re not referring to me as ‘granddad’ by the end, I’ll look on it as some sort of triumph.

I’m also signing 6-7pm at the Forbidden Planet stall/kiosk/lander – there may well be copies of The Curve of the Earth to be blagged, but I’m not sure at this stage.

But putting the work to one side, I’m simply interested as to how all this works: it’s a commercial concern, as opposed to a fan-ran, fan funded con – which is why the likes of me have a free ticket etc, and BRIAN BLESSED will be there. I’m even travelling down/across with friends who (whisper it quietly) aren’t writers, but simply fans who are going for the sheer enjoyment of it all. Neither is this a hotel-based convention. It’s in a holiday park in what can be described as far into Wales as you can reasonably get (which is why I’m delighted that one of my travelling companions is a driving instructor who can share the load with me).

I will – undoubtedly – be in the bar, but also roving around. Don’t be a stranger.

Excellent news: because Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom have been packaged under one sparkling new cover, giving new readers just enough time to experience the Thrill-Ride(tm) that is the Philip K Dick award-winning Petrovitch trilogy, before diving headlong into the New Cold War shenanigans of  The Curve of the Earth.

It’s available for pre-order now, and will descend like an avenging angel onto your device at the stroke of midnight on the 1st March.

Now here’s an extraordinary thing. Orbit have, with usual good taste (thanks, Lauren!), put together a rather fine cover for The Curve of the Earth, for which I have the proofs. Being a rather inquisitive sort of bloke, I wondered who’d done the actual artwork you can see behind the words, and that led me to German Digital Artist Christian “Taeger” Hecker.

The Curve of the Earth cover is a detail of Phoenix Rising. What’s more, he’s animated it.

Phoenix Rising

How cool is that?

The awards are presented at Eastercon (this year in sunny Bradford). If Joey wins, it might well be me bounding onto the stage and acting like a loon.

A thousand years after Alaric the Goth crossed the Alps with his rough alliance of northern tribes and wild, spell-wielding shamans to crush the Roman empire, Europe has become an almost civilised place.

Despite the wars that wash across the continent, the little mountain kingdom of Carinthia remains untroubled and untouchable. Rich through trade and centuries of peace, it owes its success to being the home of the Order of the White Robe, whose legendary hexmasters can destroy whole armies by turning the field of battle into a glittering lake of lava.

Magic is Carinthia’s wealth, its protection and its way of life. So what does a magic kingdom do when it runs out of magic?

What indeed. Arcanum is now mostly finished. It’s the most ambitious story I’ve ever attempted. It’s certainly the longest – the first draft was over 300,000 words, and I’ve got that down to 280,000 in the second. The most gratifying part of reading the manuscript through was that when I was encountering words that I hadn’t seen for over a year, it still read well and felt like the beginning belonged to the end, despite it being so far removed from it.

The other joy was finding that, despite all the statecraft of contending kingdoms and principalities, it remains intensely (and often uncomfortably) personal for the characters involved. If I’ve learnt anything from writing the Petrovitch books, it’s this: make sure there’s always something to lose. And there is, on every page: status, wealth, power, knowledge, love, life, legacy – the whole kingdom, even.

Arcanum is due out in November. There’s still a bit of work to do. But there will be maps. I’ve never written a book that needed maps before.

So. News.

Firstly, it’s not long now until the fourth book in the Petrovitch trilogy is released – March 2013. The Curve of the Earth has a simply stunning cover, and the first chapter is up here to read now. To celebrate, Orbit are repackaging the original trilogy (can this sound any more like Star Wars?) into one mahoosive ebook. Depending on how things go, there may also be a dead tree version of the compendium at a later date. There’s a new cover to go with that too. In case you were wondering whether Petrovitch still has it, Lauren Panepinto (the original cover artist) has given Curve 5 stars on Goodreads. You can trust her judgement.

Secondly, to go with that, I’ll be at the (what used to be called and as everyone still calls it) SFX weekender, courtesy of Orbit, 1st-3rd March 2013. There’ll probably be a signing down at Forbidden Planet in London, and if I can pull my finger out, one up in Newcastle.

Thirdly, Ignite is go. Orbit don’t hate it, or the fact that it’s 300,000 words long. Publication date is nominally November (just in time for next Christmas!), but I’ve got some work to do on it first, which because I’ve been ill, is slightly behind schedule. Rereading something I haven’t even looked at for eighteen months – the first quarter of the book – I was gratified to realise that it didn’t suck, and was actually quite good. Ignite will have its own page in the new year, which I’ll add to as things progress.

Fourthly, other publishing news. I’ve written a short story. And I’m going to write another one. The first story was, almost inevitably, for a Pandemonium anthology: The Lowest Heaven is a collaboration with the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, and just look at that list of contributors. I’m in really very good company. I managed to snag Mars as my astronomical body of choice, which I was delighted about. My story ‘WWBD’ will hopefully be up to scratch. Later on in the year, I’m in another collaborative anthology (with an equally impressive list of contributors) edited by Gary Dalkin about plants. But not as you know them. Really looking forward to this one. And finally for this bit, the Thy Kingdom Come story (and Jared’s favourite) ‘Never, never, three times never’ is being reprinted in a Prime Books anthology (available June) called ‘After the End: recent apocalypses‘. With a contributor list that includes Bruce Sterling (I’m in an anthology with Bruce Sterling! Does the happy dance).

It remains for me to say, whether you believe in it or not, have a very merry Christmas. There will be some festive Petrovitch under people’s trees, so I’m led to believe, so I’ll leave you all with this.

There will be copies for sale, as Jared pulled the pre-order when two-thirds of the print run had gone – but I’ll sign pretty much anything (not other author’s books – I’m given to believe that’s bad form…), and there will be readings and questions and general milling: it’s at Blackwells, Charing Cross, it’s on Wednesday 28th November, and the fun starts at 6pm. Tickets are free, but the store have asked if you could reserve a place by emailing them at: events.london@blackwell.co.uk

http://www.pornokitsch.com/2012/10/competition-win-a-copy-of-thy-kingdom-come.html

Good luck!

I am officially well over my contracted maximum word count. I talked Orbit up from 200,000 to 250,000 when I signed on the dotted line. Ignite was a frightening 300,470 words long when I put in that last full stop. That’s an awful lot of words, vaguely organised into sentences, paragraphs, chapters and parts. At this end of it, I have absolutely no idea if it makes a coherent whole – which is one of the problems of never plotting anything out, but one of the freedoms too.

It’s taken about 18 months from first to last word. That’s a considerable length of time in anyone’s book (hah! See what I did there…), and I’ve lived with these people (‘characters’ makes them sound a bit, well, thin) for all that time. So I had a bit of a sniffle when I finished. It’s not like I won’t be going back over their lives, but what I won’t be doing is learning anything new of their stories – which carry on after the last page. For some of them, at least.

I ended up writing Ignite in four parts, giving each part a specific beginning, middle and end, so it’s almost a quartet of books. I have no idea at this stage what Orbit intend to do with it; they could reasonably split it into two 150,000 word volumes, or keep it as one. Fantasy is supposed to come in door-step sized slices, right?

Which is another thing. It’s not actually a fantasy. Or it is, but that’s not all it is. Or at least, that’s what it starts as, an almost traditional fantasy with kings and queens and wizards and monsters, and then it begins to change into something subtly other. Playing with the tropes is something I love, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed writing this because it’s given me a whole different set of playthings from the Metrozone books.

What happens next? I’ve a whole month (woo! Go me…) before I have to hand in the manuscripts, although as the result of a plaintive email from Orbit Towers a few weeks ago, I did send them parts 1,2, and 3 to read in all their first drafty goodness. I’ll be spending November trying to work out what the hell I’ve done – there’s an awful lot of editing to do on the macro scale, without considering the individual words and punctuation.

All the same, getting the first draft down feels good. Words. We have them.

You are cordially invited to Blackwell’s, Charing Cross Road, on the evening of Wednesday 28th November, 2012 to celebrate of 10 years of Thy Kingdom Come, and the launch of Pandemonium’s hardback version of the stories*.

Time to be confirmed 6.30- 8.00pm 6.00pm-7.30pm, dress is optional**.

Author and publisher will be in attendance, and there will be readings! signings! awkward questions from the floor! cake***!

*actual book may be in short supply. Over a third of the available copies went in the first two days.

**it’s London in November. Thick jumpers and sensible shoes might be better.

***the cake is a lie.

(edited twice to add correct time!)

Actually, no. It’s never been a book with pages, until now.

Have we managed to keep this quiet? Well, mostly. Stuff has been leaking out for a little while (I blame Jared) but here’s the formal announcement: Thy Kingdom Come is going to be a proper dead tree book, with fantastic new artwork by Joey HiFi, a new introduction by me, a new introduction by Robert Jackson Bennett, the full text of all the Thy Kingdom Come stories, and gorgeously wrapped up between hard covers by Pandemonium – the publishing arm of Pornokitsch. There will only be 75 copies of this. I’m sorry, that’s important enough to repeat.

THERE WILL ONLY BE 75 COPIES.

As has been the practice for a while (if folk ask for an original TKC CD, I get them to donate to their national Red Cross/Crescent), all proceeds will be going to the British Red Cross. Because it’s not like being a refugee is going out of fashion any time soon. Hopefully, there’ll be a proper event down in that London at the end of November – but obviously with there only being 75 COPIES I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to buy one on the day. Pre-ordering, however, is clearly encouraged. The books are UK£24.99 – they’d make a smashing Christmas present for a die-hard Petrovitch fan – signed and numbered, and your hard-earned cash goes to a very good cause.

This is the cover:

The internal art work is stunning also.

So if you’re interested, get over to Pandemonium Fiction pronto and bag one of these bad boys.

Soon, I’ll be able to get back to something resembling a slightly less frantic pace, answer some of your queries (both email and comments on here). Soon, but not now. I’ll be back.

Anyway, the full text of this year’s Greenbelt talk – “Money flows to the author: making books pay in the 21st Century” is now up. If you would like to hear me instead, the talk was recorded for the first time ever, and is available for a small charge from http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/media/talks/17932-simon-morden/

They’re all on Monday (27th August). The 2nd and 3rd items are the Greenbelt Book Club at 5.45pm in the Hub, looking at Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden (with Dr Andrew Tate and Ben Whitehouse) followed all-too rapidly by my talk on publishing, “How to make money out of books in the 21st century”, at 6.30pm in Bethany. I’m still at a loss as to how this could have happened – I’m there all weekend, and moving my solo talk to either the Saturday or the Sunday would have been, on the face of it, an obvious solution.

I am not in charge, however, so I’ll have to nip off after half an hour or less to get to the other venue which may well be on the other side of the site.

If – and nothing is certain in this world – any of my books make it into the book store this year (which they didn’t last year, due to, oh I don’t know, aliens or something), I’ll try and arrange a signing. Hopefully Monday lunchtime, as Monday is my day of Doom anyway.

Day of Doom? Oh yes, gentle reader. A while back I was asked if I wanted to do a fun panel on “Visions of the future”, where panel members posit their particular utopia and the audience vote on their favourite. Fun, they said. What it’s morphed into is me, Robin Ince the stand-up comedian who regularly appears on Radio 4, and a professional futurologist are going to be engaged in a Star Trek style battle to the death, complete with polystyrene boulders, for the hearts and minds of the assembled masses – and we’re in a 2000 seat venue. Not because of me, of course, but that Ince bloke appears to be quite popular. So that’s me, humiliating myself in front of a couple of thousand people, in Centaur on Monday at 11.00am.

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, and (as the sun won’t be over the yard-arm) doing it sober, this fills me with Utter Dread. I have not declined from this herculean task, however. The People’s Republic of Freedonia will have its day…

I’m not one for annual celebrations. I’ll be more specific: I’m not one for annual celebrations that involve me. Birthdays, having had so many of them, are something I can honestly take or leave. Cake is nice, but the fuss involved for the rest of the family is out of proportion. Christmas is important for other reasons, but not necessarily the gift-giving and mountain of food cooked. My wedding anniversary, I admit, becomes more significant with every year that passes because it actually represents an achievement that is greater than simply staying alive. But one orbital revolution is pretty much the same as the next. What matters is what’s done during it.

It’s been a year since Degrees of Freedom was published, and by extension fourteen months since Equations of Life started to savage the eyeballs of the world. How did that work out for me? Pretty well, it turns out.

I had some concerns. Chiefly, the covers and the publishing schedule. No one was ever going to argue that the cover art (designed by the hugely talented Lauren Panepinto) was neutral. Some people loved them. Some people hated them. It’s impossible to tell whether or not they boosted sales or suppressed them. They were, however, talked about in the best Wildean sense. For a Z-list author, that wasn’t a bad gamble to take.

Publishing three books in three months is like taking a writing life and smashing it repeatedly against a wall. It’s a big thing, releasing a book into the wild: there’s an awful lot of emotional energy stored up in just one novel, along with the concepts of ‘professional’ and ‘career’. To do that bang-bang-bang? I’d underestimated how draining it would be. Reception was magnificently mixed from the ‘what fresh hell is this?’ to the ‘crowning moment of awesome’. Realising that not everybody like your book and watching them say so in a public forum are different things. My skin is considerably thicker than it was a year ago, and probably a good job too.

As time went on, several good things happened. Sales, while not stellar, were good enough – Equations of Life earned a reprint in both UK and US editions, and what’s more surprising is that it’s still selling. I’m given to understand that most books sell most copies in the first six weeks after publication; not young master Petrovitch. I don’t know what that means yet, but if new people are still discovering the Metrozone while there are newer, shinier books out, then I’m happy.

The audio books of the Metrozone were a revelation, and certainly the closest you’ll get to a cinematic experience for the foreseeable future. Toby Leonard Moore has done a simply stellar job of reading them, far, far better than I could ever do.

I’ve also got fan mail, and not in the creepy odd way, either. Smart people have written to me about stuff. I’m a bit behind in my replies, but I’ll try and get around to everyone shortly. It’s fascinating to hear about where you are and what you do, and how we stumbled into each other’s orbit. And fans have also got me into tvtropes.org, one of my all-time favourite websites. The Metrozone is built on tropey goodness, played straight, lampshaded and averted, often all at the same time, and I’m delighted to find my books in there.

I obviously need to mention the Philip K Dick award. If the three-in-three months schedule has a legacy, this was it. The first time a trilogy of books was nominated, they won. ‘What does it mean to you?’ people ask. It means that every book I write from now on will have ‘Winner of the Philip K Dick award’ on the cover. It means that I probably have more artistic freedom to do other things. It means I get to write some short stories again for a couple of anthologies I’ve been invited (invited!) to be part of. It means I’m very busy at Greenbelt this year, and probably at Eastercon next.

It does mean there’s an extra weight of expectation – one I’m putting on myself – to be better still. Book 4 of the trilogy ‘The Curve of the Earth’ is already at the publishers and it’ll be out next March. It is, I think, a different book again to books 1, 2, and 3. Expect an older, more thoughtful Samuil who’s capable of even greater acts of destruction simply because he’s better resourced. There is Science! of course, and big explosions, but the real drama is in his cybernetic heart.

The work in progress is Ignite. Followers on Facebook will know this has now passed the 200,000 word mark, and I’m probably heading towards 300,000. It is a startlingly different beast, and I have no idea how it’s going to be received by my publishers when they get hold of it – the Metrozone it most surely isn’t. My agent, however, is reading it in chunks – when he got to the end of the last of the chapters I’d sent him, he wished wistfully there were more. This is a hopeful sign. I have until the start of December to finish it – leaving myself some time to revise the manuscript too. It will be done – I haven’t missed a deadline yet, but it is very, very big. I do wonder if I’ve simply bitten off more than I can chew, but if I’m going to fail, I’m going to do it spectacularly. Wish me luck.

It is, as we say in these parts, Ronseal, after the wood preservative that “does what it says on the tin”. But in a slyly knowing meta-way, a prosaic Philip K Dick award which symbolically represents something greater than itself while still maintaining its understated certificate-in-a-frame reality is actually mocking the more flamboyant but less confident awards that are determined to be self-consciously physical representations of triumph.

Pretty cool after all, eh?

Free books!

Now that I have your attention… but seriously: free books. If you’re wondering about the Metrozone (as it’s known in the UK)/Samuil Petrovitch (furrin parts), there’s sample chapters of Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom off the links on this page. There’s also Thy Kingdom Come, which is a short story collection I wrote back in 2002, which eventually formed the back-story to the world of the London Metrozone. The whole text is available free as a .pdf file, on this page.

I’ve written a couple of other books you may be interested in: The Lost Art, my YA-but-secretly-for-grown-ups looks-like-a-fantasy-but-it’s-really-hard-SF from David Fickling Books, and my spectacularly tentacular Lovecraftian-styled World Fantasy Award nominated novella Another War. Both are available as dead-tree copies and ebooks from various suppliers.

Second of the free offerings is Heart, my first ever published novel. After being pretty much unavailable for 10 years, I decided to wheel it back out. The unaltered text as an ebook (various formats) is free, and hard copies are available from Lulu.com.

I have also done various talks and workshops at the Greenbelt Arts festival. If you want to know what I really think about Christian fiction, or How Not to Write a Novel, those things can be found in the Essay section. I’m back at Greenbelt this August, talking about the future of publishing.

Apart from that, feel free to wander around. I’m not a prolific blogger, but sometimes have something interesting to say: there’s an RSS feed and a Metrozone facebook page to help keep folk up-to-date. Thanks for dropping by.

Yesterday, then. Again, the will to go to all those interesting panels was subverted by long, involved conversations about the state of publishing, the rise of ebooks, creating income streams and such like. The publishing world is in a state of flux, and no one is quite sure how the chips will fall. Publishers getting it wrong is actually a good thing, as it not only means they’re trying, but it’s one less failure mode for others to test.
I met my UK editor Anna for drinks (tea, as going on a panel worse for wear is a, unprofessional, and b, a really, really bad idea. More on this later) and some mutual back-slapping. Editors do matter – they make books better, as well as all the other services that publishers provide, including at least a minimum bar of quality, which is becoming increasingly important. So winning the PKD isn’t just good news for me, it’s good news for Orbit too (not just that they get bragging rights over Gollancz for a whole year either…).

More conversations in the afternoon, but I also wanted to hear Cory Doctorow on the ebook panel, which I did. Lots of ideas there, regarding publishing models and DRM, which I’m going to have to think hard about. It would be easy to just steal Cory’s ideas, but there’s no guarantee he’s got all the right answers.

Then onto the BSFA awards.

Much has been said about John Meaney’s introduction. To say it was ill-judged would be charitable, but I’m a fairly charitable bloke, so I’ll say it was ill-judged and leave it at that. People did walk out. A lot more simply sat in their seats, cringing. That some of those who walked out, walked straight into my one and only panel on “The Personal is Political” will give those not present some idea of the trouble I was about to get into.

The panel. Difficult. Really very difficult. I don’t honestly think anything I say now will be helpful one way or another, so I’ll just make two observations. Firstly, I had prepared notes on the tension between creative freedom and social mores, on the ability of books to give vicarious insights and experiences for the good, as well as for the ill, and also on the problems of describing conflicting political and social institutions – you know, things I actually have experience on as a writer and why I presumed I was on the panel. Secondly, that wasn’t what the panel was about at all, as I discovered in the Green Room. It was a difficult, and ultimately frustrating hour. Sorry if I’m being cryptic but it wasn’t my finest moment.

So there was beer afterwards. Much, much beer and some very good company. Paul Cornell, Tom Hunter, another Simon, Emma Newman (whose book “20 years later” I bought) and and and, and even G R R Martin, briefly. Which was nice. A proper con-rounding off evening, in fact. The icing was someone (Rob, I think. I was a touch on the tipsy side by then) saying it was reading my blogs from last year that swung it for them to attend this year. Eastercon: well worth going to – next year it’s in Bradford, and it’s going to be brilliant.

But seriously, it’s been brilliant. I’ve had the opportunity to thank Jon Courtney Grimwood for supplying such an excellent cover quote, and Pat Cadigan for writing some kick-ass cyberpunk which inevitably inspired the Metrozone. I’ve spoken to Anna, my UK editor, on the phone, and met up with Anne, one of the other Orbit editors (no Bananagram this year. Curses!). And the spontaneous round of applause in the bar which left me redder-cheeked than the Greater Red-Cheeked Authorbird caught in mid-blush. And Jared and Anne from Pornokitsch, and and and. I haven’t managed to buy a single drink all day, either, even if it’s a nice cup of tea. Which has been especially helpful as I’m running solely on caffeine and adrenalin.

But I have also been to panels: first up was magic and technology with such luminaries as Juliet McKenna, Chris Wooding and Adrian Tchikovsky, discussing the meeting point of science and the arcane arts in their books, and how it all needs to fit together. Then there was also the Gollancz digital Gateway talk, in which I asked awkward questions regarding the accuracy of OCR technology. Sorry, Darren.

I should reasonably have gone to another panel later (the Not the Clarke Awards), and I was tempted by the Doctor Who evening double-bill (Human Nature/Family of Blood), but I didn’t make it out of the bar – more beers and food with Anne, new Orbit author Francis Knight, and Gail Carriger, followed by an early night. I’m such a lightweight. On the plus side, I haven’t been in the Dealers’ Room yet, so my wallet may yet thank me.

My lovely wife (and this just shows how lovely she is) watched the live streaming content and then phoned me up to tell me I’d won. Having staggered to conciousness, because let’s face it, 4am in the morning is not my best time, she played me the relevant bit over the phone, and yes – there it was: Ellen Wright reading out my acceptance speech, some of it in Russian.

“Yobany stos! I appear to have won. What I have failed to do, however, is appear in person to collect the award and thank the judges, for which I sincerely apologise.

I’m reasonably certain that any author sitting down to write an award-winning novel would be in the grip of massive hubris – and therefore almost certain to be destroyed by the gods – and winning anything, let alone the Philip K Dick award, couldn’t have been further from my mind when I wrote Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom.

What I did do was set out to have a huge amount of fun. I hope that showed through, even as Petrovitch lost yet another body part to be replaced with shiny, shiny metal. I appreciate that the series isn’t exactly ‘high art’, and the books have been on the receiving end of brickbats as well as bouquets. Apart from writing them – and there’s a tip right here: don’t write something you’re not enjoying, because life is genuinely too short – what I’ve enjoyed most is hearing from people who Get It. Not that I’m suggesting for a moment that “What would Petrovitch do?” is any way to approach decision-making, but the sparks of recognition some of you have been kind enough to tell me about, or just post on the internet, have meant a great deal to me. Every author seeks an audience, and I’m very lucky as I have the smartest and best audience in the world, people who read science fiction.

It’s probably a good thing I’m not actually on stage at the moment because I would be blubbing like Gwyneth Paltrow, and no one wants to see that. Thank you for this tremendous honour. I’m going to let Ellen sit down now: vyp’em za to, chtoby u nas vsegda byl povod dlya prazdnika! (May we always have a reason for a party!)”

Which pretty much sums it up. Thanks to everyone involved over in Seattle, judges, organisers and audience. Onwards and upwards.

Which rather knocks the idea of streaming the PKD award. Ho hum.

So – Eastercon. I left Newcastle at just before 9am, and finally swung into the Radisson at just before 2pm. After loading up with name badge and goodie bag, and a refreshing cup of tea in the Atrium, I leaf through the programme, and my eyes immediately alight on “Talk on Cassini and Saturn” by Leah-Nani Alconel. Saturn? Moons? Magnetic fields? I roused myself from my bench and across the way to a soon-to-be well attended talk by Imperial College space scientist Dr Alconel.

Two things about her: firstly, she loves her job. It showed in every single sentence. Secondly, she really loves her job. Seriously. We’re talking hardcore science bug. Yes, I knew some of the stuff already, but the Cassini mission magnetometer data was new to me, and it was presented in a way that wasn’t just engaging, but exciting. Kudos to the doctor.

Straight afterwards I bumped into Philip Palmer, fellow Orbiteer and journeyman – which is one of the good things about Eastercon. An oft-repeated phenomena, in fact, because after I’d wandered down the road to my hotel (I’m in the overflow) and come back, I met Darren Nash, formerly of Orbit and now at Hachette Digital. “Drink?” I suggested.
Four and bit hours later, we’d (him, me, and a frequently-changing rota of SF folk) pretty much put the world to rights, having discussed the Clarkes, ebooks, Hollywood’s passion for remakes, sex, religion and politics. A good evenings work, even if I say so myself.

After a few more conversations, here I am, back at the hotel, wondering what’s happened to my internets…
Tomorrow, it looks like first panel is on “Sufficiently advanced magic”. I may even take notes.

The questions are here, and also from the Equations of Life page, below the Buy the book section.

I will, at most other times be found wandering the corridors of the Con hotel (note: no walk-ins: the Con is officially full), listening to panels and propping up the bar. I am, as ever, always up for a chat about stuff in general, the Metrozone in particular, and will sign pretty much anything as long as I’m not going to get arrested/divorced for it afterwards.

With luck and a following wind, I’ll be blogging Eastercon again. There’s also a small matter of the Philip K Dick awards being announced Friday night, Pacific Daylight Time. That’s an 8 hour difference, I think, so if the ceremony starts at 6.55pm PDT, it all kicks off at 3am on Saturday as far as I’m concerned. It’s also being streamed live on USTREAM, so I could, if I was conscious, watch someone else win the award! Feel free to commiserate with the humbled loser on Saturday morning.

The Heart project FAQ

As previously stated, Heart is being re-issued in both print and as an ebook. The print versions are being handled by Lulu, which should mean for a lot of you, you should be able to order copies in something approximating a local currency, on the same continent as you. You can get either a paperback (UK£8.00), and a dust-covered hardback (UK£15.00).

The ebook versions are free. I’ve got .pdf, .epub, and .mobi – if you want other formats, let me know. I’d rather you downloaded them from here, so I can get some handle on how many copies are going out the door, but am fully aware that they will also appear on torrent sites. There is also a ‘tips jar’ on that page and on the main page to show your appreciation, as they say.

The Heart page is the main access point. Scroll down for the options to buy a paper copy, or download an ebook.

Any initial problems, please leave a comment on this post.

Oh, and enjoy!

I did debate just leaving it like this – no title, no name. In the end I went for a minimal HEART at the top, and a Simon Morden at the bottom.

What the symbol actually is, and what it represents, becomes clear in the novel.

Ease of use isn’t one of them, but for the record, both were relatively straight forward to deal with from a prospective publisher’s end. You would assume that the companies involved would want to make it easy to upload files and design a cover – and you’d be right. To access the high-end Blurb functions, you need to be able to produce a specific pdf format known as x-3, which I couldn’t. Lulu were more forgiving about their upload formats and styles. I’m also wondering if I found Lulu easier because I’d already done the book on Blurb, but all in all, a bit fiddly on occasions though eminently usable if you have a good base knowledge of producing pdf files.

Quality now – exterior first. I went for trade paperback size for both, and that’s exactly the size I got. Visually, the copies are identical. The covers are printed on good quality white card stock, though the Blurb card stock is slightly thicker. The printing is nice and clear, the artwork (such as it is…) is faithfully reproduced. The Blurb copy is slightly better finished, overall, and just edges the Lulu copy – but both are good, which is a step-up from earlier pod offerings I’ve got, which were a bit on the ropy side.

What does it look like inside? Blurb print on a good quality almost-white paper. Lulu’s interior pages are, for the standard cost, a cream ‘paperback’ quality. What’s important is the legibility: does the print from one side obscure the words you’re trying to read? In both cases, no. Again, Blurb have produced the better book, but Lulu have produced a more-than-acceptable book.

However – and this is where ambition meets cost – I have to consider what are known as ‘price points’. Essentially, pod companies price their services so that they can advertise “Your book for only £x.xx!” And they’re right, of course. If you want to produce a slim chapbook or a collection of poetry in paperback with none of the bells and whistles, it will cost only £x.xx. But if you want to put together a decent length novel (Heart is 125,000 words), you break through several price points simply on the way to getting the page count. One of Blurb’s price hikes was at the 280 page mark. Coupled with the problem of not being able to produce pdf/x-3 files (which meant I couldn’t change the interior format from the default – there are header and footer regions I can’t put text in: footers contain the page number, headers are blank because you know who wrote the book and what it’s called, and you don’t need reminding at the top of Every Single Page, do you now?), I had to cut the font size down to 10 point in order to squeeze it in under 280 pages. Lulu are much more forgiving both on the page count and the interior design. I scrapped the header space, upped the font to 11 point and still got it all in for 282 pages. The difference between 10 and 11 point text is subtle, but there’s no doubting that to my ageing eyes at least, 11 point is easier to read, and the pages in the Lulu-produced copy are better-laid out because I had more control.

So – now comes the kicker. The price to you. Lulu are undeniably cheaper, by a good margin. But hang on – that’s just the production. I need to factor in delivery too. This is where I get cross about Blurb. To print one copy of Heart and send it to you, Blurb essentially double the price. If you want it priority shipping, it’s not quite three times the cost. No. Just no. That seems to be a wrong, if not simply unethical, business model. Having said they’d produce one (1) copy of the book for one price, to then load extra cost on actually getting the thing in your hand? It came as a very unwelcome surprise. Now, I do appreciate that Blurb and Lulu are catering for slightly different markets – Blurb probably do expect me to buy multiple books at once and sell them on myself, but that’s not what I intend to do. Lulu’s standard postage is relatively cheap – it came through the regular mail in a cardboard sleeve a la Amazon. Also, if I understand it correctly, a book on Lulu is available everywhere there’s a Lulu press. Uploading it to the UK site means that you can have it printed in the UK, European mainland and the US, pay for it with local currency and have it shipped within your jurisdiction (sorry Canada, but the border is long and porous, and I’m sure you’re used to buying stuff from the US).

I’ve investigated the hardback option too – I haven’t received that yet. There’s also the possibility of buying an ISBN and selling through Amazon – I’m not sure I want to do that, because it’d bump the price up further. As it is, I’m looking at £8 for the paperback, which is almost exactly what we’d pay normally. The hardback is going to be somewhere between £12 and £15.

I also have to consider what folk want to do about signed copies.

Many moons ago – 10 whole years, in fact, which is a lot of moons – my first ever novel came out. I was exceptionally pleased to have it accepted by Razorblade Press, awed by the Chris Nurse artwork, and hoped that this was indeed it: my foot on the ladder, a springboard to greater things, a mixed-metaphor on my way to becoming an established author.

It didn’t turn out quite that way. The book was badly typeset – legible, but annoying all the same, and then there were publisher problems far above and beyond the usual. Without descending into libel, let’s just say I took my rights back. Which meant that not very many people got to read Heart, despite it getting some really good reviews in several of the right places. It simply wasn’t there to find.

*/wavy lines*

It so happens that after 2011′s splurge of Morden-related bookage, 2012 will see precisely nothing from me in print. The Curve of the Earth is due out 2013, and Ignite most likely in 2014. Which seems a shame – for me, I lose some of the momentum the Metrozone has managed to create, and for you because, mad fools that you are, you seem to like what I write.

So this is what I propose to do.

At some point in the near-future (the next couple of months at the latest), I’ll be releasing the full, unaltered text of Heart as .pdf, .epub and .mobi files. These will be for everyone, free and gratis. The reasons for simply giving these away are twofold. Firstly, this book owes me nothing. It was professionally proof-read at the time, I made the artwork that goes with it myself, and having read it through again, and I know I write better now than I did then. Secondly, as a bit of an experiment: I want to see what happens. Because the book doesn’t owe me anything, I can afford to see whether or not it boosts my profile, my sales of other books, or both. I may put up a ‘tips jar’ button on the site.

At the same time, I’m going to make a print edition available through a pod publisher (I’m currently looking at two, to check on quality. I’ve received one so far, and I’m pleasantly surprised – actually impressed – at what I’ve got). I’ll try and price these sensibly, and may even do a paperback and a hardback option, so that if people really like the book, they can own a physical copy (the price point will probably be around UK£10 for the paperback: 280-odd pages, trade paperback size). I don’t want to hold onto stock myself, because I simply don’t have the storage space, or the will to stare at a big pile of books that may well end up going nowhere. Besides, I’m supposed to be WRITING THE DAMN NOVEL, because that’s what I get paid to do.

How does that sound? Is there anything else you’d like to see while I’m still at the planning stage? Do you think I’m mad for doing this? Is it a good mad, or a ‘brave’ mad? I look forward to hearing your responses.

As for the idea that Simon Morden is the next Richard Morgan – hm, I’m not convinced. Morden might get bleaker as the series progresses, but throughout Equations of Life there is just too much rollicking joie de vivre bouncing through the chaos and destruction for any true Morganesque comparisons. Kovacs is capable of flashes of savage humour – but the breathless pace of Morden’s storytelling, with the constant plot twists corkscrewing off in all sorts of unpredictable directions without a pause for any sort of info-dump, or tastelessly graphic sex scene, gives Morden’s work an original charm all of its own. In fact, I think Petrovitch’s adventures have more in common with the early Harry Dresden stories…

I’m not exactly certain who’s been suggesting that I’m the next Richard Morgan. Or the next anyone, for that matter, when I pour heart and soul (see the artist suffer!) into being the first me. I am, as I readily admit, the sum total of all the stories I’ve ever read, plus whatever I bring to the table as specifically me. I’m reasonably certain most other authors, unless they’re being explicitly paid to be otherwise, are in the same boat. Or not the same boat – their own individual boats, in fact. The ‘author of the week’ pastiches as played out on Radio 4′s The Write Stuff are incredibly clever and astute, but acknowledged as pastiches. Anthony Horowitz’s latest Sherlock Holmes is both in the style of Conan Doyle, and undeniably Horowitz. So to say author X is the next author Y, is I think a disservice. Yes, of course I’m aware that marketing comes into it: every YA author has (I understand it’s compulsory) to be compared to either JK Rowling or Stephanie Meyer, and every fantasy tome has “The next JRR Tolkien” on the cover. But I wish they’d stop doing that.

What they mean, of course, is “Do you enjoy famous author Y? Buy this book from complete unknown X! There is a vague similarity in subject and/or style.” Which is fair enough, but it does somewhat indicate that the advance review copies didn’t yield quite enough quotable material to fill out the back cover. It’s obviously tough at the start of a career – if there is such a thing in writing these days – to get noticed. Been there, done that. And am probably still there and still doing that: I’m nowhere near out of the woods yet. Where I’m happier with comparisons is between books – there are a couple of reviews where Equations is likened to Altered Carbon, in that they have a hard-boiled crime-cum-dystopian feel to them, and they both fairly zip along. But even then, according to the Brainfluff review above, I singularly fail at being Richard Morgan.

It would be incredibly sad if, to make it in SF, you had to write as someone else. Richard is very much alive and well and still writing. I don’t plan on going anywhere for the moment. Plenty of room for both Morden and Morgan on those shelves. Just remember to put my books face out, okay?

Well, that was interesting. Having fumed righteously against piracy in all its forms, I was contacted by a real live pirate (arrrr!) who put his side of the story. And I’m such a bleeding heart liberal, I not only took the time and trouble to read what he had to say, but also think seriously about the points he made.

And surprisingly (to me, at least) I am partly convinced: it’s certainly more nuanced than I allowed for. So I’ll try and go through some of the issues raised again, but this time with my special They Live glasses on. And yes, I do have plenty of gum.

Do I own the copyright to my work?   Yes. Yes I do. And yes, my ability to charge for my art depends on me being able to assert that right. As the original creator of a piece of fiction, I can choose to do one of several things with it: I can give it away for free (under a Creative Commons licence) like I have done with Thy Kingdom Come, for example. This way, the work can be distributed freely without alteration, but also without allowing anyone else to attach their name to that work. I’m happy to do that with older pieces of work – and one of the things I have to think about next is whether I do the same thing with Heart. I can also release excerpts of my work as ‘tasters’ (or advertising, if you like). If you like what you’ve read so far, you can then continue to read when you purchase a copy.

Do I need paying for my work?   Again, need is relative. Which is something I’ll touch on later. But for the moment, I live in a scarcity-driven capitalist economy. The future is not going to come and save me, supplying me and my family with fabbers and a Mr Fusion for all my energy needs. Likewise, I cannot eat a good reputation. One day I will. I have worked in a Gift Economy before, when I was a research scientist at a university. I provided not just my employers (the Natural Environment Research Council) with original research, but the whole world. In return, I was given enough money to live on: for the length of my contract, it didn’t matter if I produced one paper in a peer-reviewed journal, or half a dozen, but whether my contract was renewed at the end of it did depend on the quality of what I’d done already, that is to say, my reputation. I believe this is also a workable model for artists. But we’re not there yet.

Do publishers actually do anything? Or, why is your royalty rate so low?   Publishers do lots. Editors improve a manuscript, sometimes immeasurably so. Copy editors, likewise. I’ve had my arse saved by good copy editors too many times to either dismiss the work they do or to think they’re not worth paying. They, like me, have to eat. Then there is the layout, the cover art (hi, Lauren!), the publicity, the mailing room even. All of that happens so that you know the book exists, and that it’s of a minimum standard of quality. Someone other than the author has read it. It makes some sort of sense. It’s written in a language as it’s meant to be written. The publisher has put their reputation behind it. And that’s part of the immutable cost of books. I’ve said nothing at all about printing, which is almost, but not quite, pennies in the pound. The way a publisher recoups these up-front costs (they haven’t made a single dime until the book sells), which includes the author’s advance, is by charging for the product. I know there’s a lot of kvetching about the cost of ebooks, but the cost of a professionally edited and designed ebook isn’t much different from the same book in dead tree form.

Isn’t this publishing model broken?   Probably. Guy Haley also entered the fray a couple of days ago, and has had a lively time of it. In his follow-up post, he makes the entirely cogent point:

When they first started, Penguin paperbacks were cheaply priced, mass produced, but not, and this was the point, not pulp. They were good books, keenly priced, and I think that industry-published ebooks need to go the same way, and soon. I have no control over the pricing of either print or electronic versions, but it seems entirely possible that there would be more profit, not less, on an ebook as a whole if it was substantially cheaper. But not free. Not free. See above regards to quality.

Piracy does not equal lost sales.   This is where things start to get fuzzy. I would agree that not every pirated copy of my book is a lost sale. Some most certainly are, but not 100%. We’re arguing about proportions here – what ratio of pirated copies would have turned into sales, all things being equal? It’s a fruitless question, because there’s no definitive answer. We’ll stick with the ‘some’ value. But anecdotally, it can be significant. Lucia Etxebarria found that value too great, and has vowed her next book may well be never.

“Literature is not a profit-making job, but a passion,” said Kelly Sánchez, one of the least vitriolic critics. “If you had a real vocation then you wouldn’t stop writing.”

You could argue, that having won a couple of really very well paid literary prizes, Ms Etxebarria doesn’t need any more cash. But what Sanchez is saying is “work for free”. Not many employees would work a second month if at the end of the first month, their boss told them that their job should be a passion, and they didn’t need paying. And Etxebarria’s book in question wasn’t published as an ebook – it was scanned and pdf’d. See above, regarding the publishing model. But again, if every book was 100% pirated, only a very few writers would pay for their words to be professionally edited. Only a very few independently-wealthy writers would write full-time. The quantity of quality books would not only decrease (and dramatically so), but the demographic of writers would change (and dramatically so). Neither is healthy. An individual download is a drop, but mass piracy is a flood. Writers can probably afford an umbrella, but that’s not going to be much use when the twenty-foot wave tears up the whole town.

I cannot afford your book.   Here the rubber hits the road. I spent most of my teens with my head buried in a book. I often read late into the night because I couldn’t put the book in question down. And to a very great extent, I hadn’t bought those books at the bookstore. They were either library copies, or second-hand (those, I still have most of them), gleaned for tens of pennies from jumble sales and second-hand book shops. Quite literally, I could not afford to buy all the books I read. I couldn’t afford to buy so much as a tenth of them. My pirate contact – I shall call him The Captain – says this (and English is not his first language, but I’ll quote verbatim):

To me reading is like breathing. I suffocate without books, information etc. … And since the book trip is really some 4-6 hours depending on number of pages .. well I have to breathe books the other 29 days

The Captain can’t afford to buy all the books he needs. Not wants. Needs. He lives in a place which, without giving too much away, was recently a war zone, and civil society struggles to provide health care, let alone an abundance of second-hand books. Now, I grew up in rural Berkshire in the seventies and eighties, but I recognise myself in him. Far too much. “I have to breathe,” he says. Ouch. The stricter reader of this may well say, “Of course he should pay. I had to. It’s still stealing.” So it is, but, but… I’ll have to think about what to do about this. It would be brilliant if I could give away electronic versions of my books to those people who genuinely couldn’t afford them, or at least heavily discount them, while asking those who could to pay more, or even full price. But I can’t. There’s no mechanism to do so. If anyone’s got any bright ideas, please do comment, or email me on the Contact page.

Is there a solution?   Probably. I’ll let you know when I work it out.

I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, people who download music, films, books and audio that they would have ordinarily had to buy in order to listen to/see/read are stealing copyrighted material from their copyright holders. Downloaders make it increasingly difficult for artists to firstly, earn anything from their work, and secondly, make a living from their work so they can give up the day job and concentrate solely on their art.

In the case of the Metrozone books, they were pirated within a couple of days of being released as ebooks. Orbit (and their parent companies LittleBrown and Hachette) try and get those copies removed from file-sharing sites as soon as they can: they do so because the person uploading those files has no right to make them publicly available without the copyright holder’s consent.

And that copyright holder is not Orbit, or some faceless megacorp. It’s me. I’m the creator of the work, and it’s my copyright. By torrenting my work, you’re denying me income which I could put to good use – like repairing my roof and walls, which badly need doing, or saving for my children’s education.

Furthermore, because I’m losing digital sales, the next time I sell a book to Orbit, my advance goes down. Lost sales for the publisher results directly in lower advances for authors. Which means that fewer authors will be able to support themselves, and perhaps their families, with their work – and the vast majority of writers make peanuts as it is. With long, long hours and little pay, they’ll have to do something else instead of dedicating the time and effort into producing good prose.

And unlike musicians, authors don’t have an alternative income stream. Why have the cost of live concerts gone up in the last few years? Blame the downloaders. The live experience is the one thing you can’t stream. It always used to be that a band would tour to promote the album. Now the albums promote the tour, because there are decreasing returns from the physical and digital recordings. Sure, you can go and hear an author speak, but aside from Neil Gaiman (who I understand charges an outrageous fee simply to dissuade folk from booking him: he’d rather be writing), I can’t think of many writers who the general public would pay to go and look at. I’m no oil painting, and Toby Leonard Moore (who reads the audio versions of the Metrozone) is simply better at speaking my lines than I am.

I don’t get much from each sale. But I do get something. Other people get somethings too. The cover artist. The editor. The copy editor (and they’re worth their weight in gold). The publicists. The lawyers who draw up the contracts. The distributors and the booksellers. My agent (who is also worth his weight in gold). I don’t have a problem with that, and neither should you.

There is, of course, very little I can do about any of this, except two things. And you can do them too. Firstly, don’t pirate copyrighted art. If you like an artist’s work, you’ll want to support the artist so they can produce more of it. So do your best to pay for it. I’ve no problem with you buying second-hand books, and I’ve no problem with you going to the library (all my books are registered with the UK’s PLR scheme). The more you support artists, the more art there’ll be.

Secondly, don’t approve of piracy. It might seem just a bit, well, dad-like (guilty as charged) to withhold your approval. But if your friends torrent and download like bandwidth was going out of fashion, that doesn’t mean you have to. It’s not a victimless crime, and it does hurt people – the very people who produce the fantastic music, brilliant film or riveting book you’ve just enjoyed. Hurting people, ripping them off, that’s just not cool, especially when they’re in no position to stop you. It would be lovely if pirating art became socially unacceptable, and those that did it, frowned on and ostracised.

On the other side of the coin, do I want kids to go to prison for five years because they’ve downloaded a copy of Equations of Life? No, I don’t. As someone pointed out, someone torrenting a Michael Jackson song could end up with a longer gaol sentence than the doctor who killed him. Neither do I want websites that promote legitimate content taken down for a single rogue link.

SOPA is sledgehammer to crack a nut. It’s virtually unworkable, and the effort to make it workable is so great and the disruption it would cause so widespread that it’s completely counterproductive. The internet would become unusable within days.

There does need to be something though, that protects artists in the digital age. Real, physical art is difficult and time-consuming to reproduce. Digital art can be copied millions of times, perfectly, and distributed at the click of a mouse: the old copyright laws can’t cope with this new reality. So the solution may mean that sites like megaupload.com get taken down and their owners sued: claiming ignorance when the majority of traffic consists of copyrighted work seems more than a little silly. Whatever the final answer is (and there probably won’t be one), copyright holders need a quick and easy way to not only remove illegal content when it goes up, but prevent it from going up in the first place.

The bottom line is that copyright is how artists make money. Without any way of asserting it, we’re in trouble. You can, however, be part of the solution. Which is a positive note to end on.

Creativity is part of us, and part of us all whether we are specifically Christian, generally spiritual, or completely materialistic. Story-telling (the bit I’m most concerned with), like music or representative art, transcends both time and geography – people tell each other stories, make music together and daub pigments on things throughout history and across wildly different cultures.

The question arises, does spirituality feed creativity? The answer is sublimely simple – yes, of course it does, but then so does pretty much everything else. Certainly, a great deal of creativity can be expressed within a formal religious context (providing that isn’t taboo), and a society’s religion provides a context for creativity.

A further question, though, is whether spirituality can inspire sublime works of art in an individual who otherwise would be mediocre? This is a much trickier claim to pin down: if you pick some of history’s greatest artists, it’s often individual genius and a large sack of cash that’s the potent combination, rather than anything else more numinous. Despite the popular image, there’s nothing more likely to depress creativity than starving in a garret or being so dog-tired from the day job that all feelings of creativity are sapped. Patrons are critically important to the production of great art – and it’s often the patron who decides on the subject matter. You could even argue that it’s the spirituality of the patron that’s important here.

I’m lucky in this respect. My wife earned enough that when we were divvying up child-care duties, it made much more sense for her to keep going to work and for me to stay at home. When the kids got older and were at school during the day, it meant I had time to write – in the warm, with a full belly. And even luckier, no one tells me what I have to write except the publishers, and even they realise they don’t have me over the same barrel that a lot of authors find themselves bent over: I don’t rely on them for a roof over my head.

So I’m sorry to be so prosaic, but those are often the realities.

Which was pretty much an off-the-cuff response, but does include Morden’s 3rd Law of Writing “Marry someone rich”, so clearly I’ve been thinking along those lines before. I’m just wondering if part of the new publishing model that’s always just around the corner might include, how shall we term them, stipends for writers, rather than an advance?

The Metrozone series – all three books, no less – have been nominated for this year’s Philip K Dick award. I am properly stunned. Dick is one of the authors I not only enjoy, but admire: big concept stuff, played out at the personal level.

Congratulations to all the nominees – I’ll be dining out on this for a while!

Frank's rabbit

2011 has been an extraordinary year – I’ve sold some books, I’ve got some more lined up, people have (mostly) liked what I’ve done so far. 2012 looks as if it’s going be be really hard work – Ignite is rich seam to mine but oy, that seam runs deep – but I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s probably going to be hard work for you, too. There’s an awful lot of things in the world that could really do with fixing, so if you don’t already, can I suggest you volunteer some of your time, doing something you feel passionate about, in your local community? The world starts just outside our front doors.

Here’s to you, and the difference you make. Happy New Year.

Just a quick note to those lucky, lucky people who found one or more Metrozone books all carefully wrapped up in shiny paper and bows this Christmas. Once you’ve got over the eye-searing covers and read the expertly-written blurb on the back covers, you’ll be ready to start heading down the mean streets of post-Apocalypse London.

Two things to say at this stage:

Firstly, enjoy. Whilst the Metrozone is serious business (or srs bsns, as the kids say), the books are meant to be fun. If you find yourself snorting inappropriately as something terrible happens, don’t worry. You’re in good company.

Secondly, the Russian. None of it is translated. Just go with it – get the sense of it by reading it (it’s mostly phonetic), and if you’re desperate to find out what Petrovitch says, feel free to look it up on the internet. It is mostly absolute filth, though, as the guttersnipe was dragged up on the streets and paint-peeling insults are simply stock-in-trade for the man.

Other than that, welcome. Have a look around here for extra content, and if you’ve got any questions, don’t be afraid to ask!

Also mentioned in the December Orbit newsletter was the little matter of me writing a fantasy. While this is entirely true, it is not completely true. Ignite (for that is what the book is called) is not just a fantasy, it is more than a fantasy: have some blurb from the synopsis…

Rome was the centre of the largest, most powerful empire the world had ever seen, but that didn’t stop it falling to Alaric the Goth, his horde of skilled barbarian tribesmen and their wild spell-casting shamans. Having split the walls with their sorcery and slaughtered the inhabitants with their axes, the victors carved up the empire into a series of bickering states which were never more than an insult away from war.

 A thousand years later, and Europe has become an almost civilised place. The rulers of the old Roman palatinates confine their warfare to the short summer months, trade flourishes along the rivers and roads, aided by merchants using magic-powered barges and self-propelling wagons, and farming has – at least for the lucky few – become less back-breaking with millstones that turn themselves and ploughs that pull their own way through the soil.

 Even the barbarians’ pantheon of gods has been tamed: where once human sacrifices poured their blood onto the ground, there are parties and picnics, drinking and singing, fit for decent people and their children.

 But it looks like the gods are going to have the last laugh before they slip quietly into ill-remembered obscurity…

 Of all the old palatinates, alpine Carinthia is the most at ease: the richest, poised between north and south, east and west; the most peaceful, having not fought a single battle for over a century; the most magical, being the home of the highest, purest expression of European sorcery – the Order of the White Robe and the feared hexmasters, whose legendary powers brought down Rome and stopped the Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde in their tracks by turning the field of battle into a glittering lake of lava.

 The Prince of Carinthia shelters the Order, and gives them half the palatinate’s revenue. In return, the hexmasters guarantee that any aggressor, no matter how large their army or how many magicians they bring, end up as no more than a memory for the next generation to ponder. It’s been a very long time since someone tried.

 Magic is Carinthia’s wealth, its protection and its way of life. So what does a magic kingdom do when it runs out of magic?

What indeed. And in case you think I’ve gone all hey-nonny-nonny and foresooth on you, I managed to revolt myself with something I wrote towards the end of the the first section. It’s also destined to be a bit of a beast: I’m over 90,000 words in, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve no doubt that some of those words will fall out in the editing, but currently I’m looking at somewhere close to 200,000 words, if not more. Gadzooks, as they say (actually, they don’t. These people are descended from Goths, and they tend to call it as they see it).

I’m hoping to get parts I and II out of the way by sometime in January, and see how the land lies after that. This and subsequent posts will be tagged with Ignite to keep you up to date with everything.

Which is Metrozone 4: The Curve of the Earth, will be published by Orbit, most likely in 2013.

It’ll feature your favourite sweary Russian genius, Dr Samuil Petrovitch, doing some monumentally stupid/heroic feats, kicking some seriously weapons-grade butt, and ratcheting up the global tension-meter to breaking point. You’re going to need guns. Lots of guns.

This is a probably ill-advised attempt to sum up my thoughts regarding the most recent British Fantasy Society awards. If you’ve never heard of the society, or the awards, that’s fine – it is very much a minority sport. If you don’t want to read anything about the internal politicking of a small organisation focussing on the fantasy and horror genre in print and other media… then that’s fine too.

Firstly though, I have to declare some interests – the chief of which is that my novella Another War was published by Telos, and that I know Dave Howe well enough to consider him a friend. I’ve been going to FantasyCon (that’s the society’s annual convention) for the better part of a decade, without ever being a member of the society. I’m acquainted with most of the principle parties involved.

So, time for some background. The BFS awards are nominated by members, voted on by members to to form a short-list, and voted on again to decide a winner from that short-list (I think that’s right). This is the way it’s been done since I’ve been going, and the awards have always thrown up some unexpected winners. The voting pool is small (usually a couple of hundred people who vote), so statistically, that’s going to happen, and in some categories, the same person/publishing house wins every year for a substantial block of time. Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing magnanimously chose to sponsor the Best Small Press award, rather than dominate the field in perpetuity.

The awards (as both a punter, and as someone who was in a winning anthology) have, hand on heart, never been taken that seriously. Yes, it’s nice to see your friends win (cue ribald cheers and drinks in the bar), and sometimes the results leave you scratching your head, but it’s never been something to get too excised over.

Until now.

As far as I can piece together the timeline, it goes something like this. The BFS awards are administered by the Awards Administrator. In January of this year, the sitting administrator has to leave their post for personal reasons. Their replacement also leaves, also for personal reasons, in March. Dave Howe, chair of the BFS, as one of his requirements, picks up the duties of administrator.

The nominations, short-listing and final voting go ahead more or less to plan. There are some entirely valid complaints about notification of the voting deadline arriving, with the society’s publication, after the date has been passed, and moving to electronic voting only. Others have also said that they received email notification of the voting procedures in good time, so it’s difficult to say how this affected matters.

Dave Howe checks the electronically-counted votes, gets the results rechecked by another committee member, and then proceeds to order the awards and get them engraved with the winners’ names. He also organises appropriate people to present the awards at FantasyCon.

Now, in hindsight, this is where the flags should have been raised, because it’s at that moment that Dave discovers that his partner (Sam Stone) has won two awards, and Telos (of which he’s a director) has won Best Small Press, and published two of the other winners. Dave should have handed the whole process over to someone else. Not because he’s done anything wrong – no question of that – but because of how it’s going to look. He (and co-host Sarah Pinborough) would be giving awards not only to himself, but also to his partner and to people he’s published.

Hindsight is, of course, wonderful. It allows all concerned to have a clarity of vision they simply never had while they were in media res. And, in common with many voluntary societies (including the ones I’m involved with), there is a magnificently British tradition of muddling on and letting goodwill and sympathy carry them over the rough patches.

To sum up so far: the rules have been followed, no one’s done anything wrong, the votes cast were all legal, not tampered with or adjusted in anyone’s favour. The awards ceremony is scheduled for the Sunday afternoon of FantasyCon, all the physical awards have arrived with the correct names on and the presenters are… present.

Remember what I said about hindsight, and about how it would look to be presenting awards to yourself? If there was one mistake in all this, that would be it right there. And just so I’m not misunderstood, I think that was the only mistake Dave made. And again for clarity, it’s the sort of mistake that ought to leave you with toe-curling embarrassment and a red face, and something for your mates to poke fun at in good-humoured jest for at least the next few years. And certainly, all concerned would resolve to make bloody sure it doesn’t happen again. He was, in popular parlance, a muppet.

It’s not the resigning, hand-the-award back, shitstorm that subsequently ensued. Dave has offered his resignation to the BFS committee, who have accepted it whilst issuing a statement exonerating him completely. Sam has returned her Best Novel award. A lot of things have been said that cannot be unsaid and some people have burnt their bridges and divided into camps. The Guardian (and now the Express) have covered the situation.

What precipitated this? Stephen Jones blogged this (http://www.stephenjoneseditor.com/article-sj-fantasycon201101.htm). If you haven’t already read it, take the time to do so now. (See update at bottom of post if this comes up 404.)

As I’ve said elsewhere, Steve Jones can be a very polarising character. There’s absolutely no doubt of his passion and commitment to publishing fantasy/horror, but being the gatekeeper to some of the biggest commercial horror anthologies for a very long time brings its own problems. So before this incident, even someone as socially unaware of subtexts as I am was cognisant of two broad poles in the BFS which I will call for shorthand-sake, pro-Jones and anti-Jones.

While there have probably been previous skirmishes of which I am blissfully ignorant, this has certainly crystallised matters. Jones essentially levels two charges at the BFS in general and Dave Howe in particular.

Firstly, that the BFS and FantasyCon members who voted, voted for the wrong people to win the awards: “Perhaps the majority do not read outside the small press anymore? Maybe they no longer have good taste or any critical acumen?”

Secondly, that the voting system was compromised by Dave’s involvement: “there is certainly a strong case for the BFS Chairman to have removed himself from the entire process once it became apparent how many of his own titles and those of his partner were on the initial nomination list. This shows a serious lack of judgement by someone in such an important position.”

However, to that second point, there is more. He accuses Dave of using society funds to further his own, and his partner’s, and his friends, careers. He accuses Dave of a ‘fix’, and a ‘con’. The get-out clause of “Without any proof, I’m not accusing anybody of doing anything underhand” doesn’t negate or lessen the charges.

To the first charge, I shall simply quote the old football chant, “you only sing when you’re winning.” The voting system this year hadn’t substantially changed (caveats above) from one year to the next, including 2010 when The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20, ed. Stephen Jones (Constable & Robinson) won Best Anthology. It’s a common charge to make that a popular vote didn’t choose who you wanted, therefore the electorate had taken leave of its marbles, but if the same system has made you a repeated winner… it’s not a very good argument.

The second charge is where the rubber hits the road. I pretty much agree with the statement quoted. Yes, there was a lack of judgement. In the circumstances, he should have insisted that someone else take over responsibility for the awards, or let them lapse for the year. When you’re juggling a day-job, a busy small press, duties as Chair of a society, and an additional workload due to not all of the committee places being taken? It was, I think, a mistake – see above for notes on goodwill and sympathy.

The additional barbs speak for themselves, and most eloquently. They are, I believe, (amongst other things) just as, if not more unwise than Dave not recusing himself . The BFS has, at least from this outsider’s view point, always been a fan-run, slightly anarchic society which nevertheless manages to throw a decent party. I go because I get to meet my friends and drink and eat and talk with them. I’m not particularly concerned by how ‘professional’ it is, or how many industry people turn up, though I appreciate that some are. I’m just there for the beer and craic, and I like it like that. If the BFS want to change that, then fine – that’s the way the members will take it, but it’s ultimately the members’ decision, and there’ll always be a corner of the bar where the writers congregate and bitch about publishers and reviewers, so I’m reasonably insulated from any decisions. I get to be a filthy pro elsewhere (even if I did hang out an awful lot in the fan bar at Eastercon).

I didn’t get to go to FantasyCon this year – despite the remark “do those people never go on holiday?” to which the answer is yes, but because I work in a school on Mondays and Tuesdays, I have to be awake, sober and ready to teach a class of ten and eleven year olds, and I absolutely cannot be late, which is something I could guarantee I wouldn’t be when the event was in Nottingham – so I missed out on what was by all accounts a classic convention. Steve Jones was part of the organisation, so kudos where it’s due.

But we can’t have everything the way we’d like it. Sometimes is nice, always isn’t good for the soul. Steve Jones can probably take care of himself, but I do feel for Dave, and especially for Sam who deserves absolutely none of the criticisms levelled at her. Being guilty of winning a popular vote isn’t exactly a hanging offence. Neither is being gratuitously nasty on the internet, of course, but Jones’ post is the very opposite of professional. It would go a long way if a fulsome apology were forthcoming.

I have no idea how this will resolve itself. Reconciliation is understandably a million miles away. If there’s one good thing about this is that lots more people are joining the BFS so they can have their democratic say on the future direction of the society. I might well be one of them.

UPDATE 13/10/2011: The Steve Jones link is coming up as a big fat 404. I don’t know when or why it was taken down – for completeness’ sake, I’ve saved the googlecached copy, which if I put a copy up here I’m reasonably certain will breach copyright. But I do have a copy and it should stay on googlecache for a while at least, here.