Ken MacLeod's comments. The title comes from two quotes: “Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.” —Alasdair Gray. “If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.” —Graydon Saunders
I had a great time at Deepcon 26 , with four nights in Fiuggi at the Ambasciatori Place Hotel and a night in Rome at the Hotel Villa San Pio courtesy of the organisers. Special thanks to: Flora Staglianò and Gabriella Gregori; to Gino who met me at the airport and drove me to the hotel; and to Emilio, who drove me and other guests around in Rome and drove me from the hotel in Rome to the airport.…
Back in 2016, I was a guest of honour at Deepcon 17 in Fiuggi . Carol acompanied me and we both had a great time. The town is beautiful and the hotel is splendid. The other Guest of Honour was Walter Koenig , accompanied by his wife Judy. It was a privilege to meet both of them: Judy had a wicked sense of humour, and Walter Koenig is a lovely guy. Most of the proceedings were in Italian, so our…
Happy New Year! For me 2025 has been mostly a year of spending time with family and with getting on with stuff, and with letting some stuff pile up while working on my next novel, provisionally titled Empire Time . Progress has been slower than I’d hoped, but my agent and my editor have been very understanding. It’s now close to the end of the first draft, but I have a major plot thread to…
It seems I’ve become a local celebrity , because I was asked to officially open the new Sue Ryder charity shop in Port Glasgow on Friday. The staff, management and volunteers were most welcoming, and cutting a ribbon is much easier than it looks. (George Munro's pic, in the Greenock Telegraph article linked above, caught the exact moment.) The charity’s photographer Andy Catlin was there to record…
I’m working on my next novel, provisionally titled Empire Time . It’s a space opera. That’s all I’m saying about it for now. Apart from that… Usually, I don’t read science fiction while I’m writing it, and especially not in the sub-genre I’m writing in. But sometimes you have to make an exception. I read or re-read a stack of science fiction recently, to compile lists for the Scottish Book Trust…
It’s been six months. Raw grief fades, and often flares. I miss Carol more than ever. Absence doesn’t go away. We used to take photos of our shadows: shadow selfies. ‘Smile!’ the one taking the photo would say, and we’d laugh. This post is here to fill space. Skip it if you like. After it the blog will get back to its usual intermittent rambling about trivia, politics, science fiction, science,…
More people came to Carol’s funeral than there were seats in the crematorium chapel: our families, her friends and mine, some of whom had travelled a long way. The funeral directors, P B Wright and Sons , took care of the arrangements kindly and professionally. Catriona Miller , the humanist celebrant, conducted the service and delivered a warm and accurate tribute to Carol. I spoke about Carol’s…
Carol Ann MacLeod, 11 February 1952 to 16 August 2024 Carol, my beloved wife whom I met in 1979 and married in 1981, died on Friday 16 August. She was the centre of my world, and she's gone. There will be a funeral service at Greenock Crematorium, on Monday 2 September, at 2 pm, to which all family and friends are invited. Family flowers only please. There will be a retiral collection in aid of…
My Glasgow Worldcon Schedule As some of you may know, I'm a Guest of Honour at the Glasgow Worldcon . I haven't said enough about that here, I know. I'm well chuffed about it, needless to say. Here are time/places where you can be sure to find me. Autographing : Ken MacLeod, Thursday 8 August 2024, 13:00 GMT+1, Hall 4 (Autographs) Opening Ceremony , Thursday 8 August 2024, 16:00 GMT+1, Clyde…
This historic Worldcon has already been very well covered by others, e.g. Nicholas Whyte and Jeremy Szal . For lots of coverage of events, guests and so on, see the con’s Facebook page . But I’ve been back over a week, and here’s my overdue account. Last month I spent far too few days in China, at the Chengdu Worldcon , to which I was invited as an international guest. My travel, and accommodation…
On Saturday I’ll be at the Cosmia Festival in Huddersfield. I have a talk about my recent and current books (4:45pm to 5:45pm), and from 7pm to 8:15pm I'll be talking about Iain M. Banks along with his (and my) friend and musical collaborator, Gary Lloyd. £10 for the day, with a great range of authors, plus workshops and exhibitions: details and bookings here .
Moniack Mhor is Scotland’s creative writing centre, located in a spectacular landscape in Inverness-shire. I’ve taught there before , with Mike Cobley, and it was great . But a residential week or long weekend isn’t for everyone, which is why Moniack Mhor offers ‘Moniack in a Month’: courses held over Zoom, with one evening workshop a week for four weeks, plus one-to-one tutorial sessions and…
Last week saw the UK publication of my new novel, Book Two of the Lightspeed trilogy, BEYOND THE REACH OF EARTH, available here from Amazon UK. A day later came the US publication of the first book, BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY, by Pyr Books and available via Simon and Schuster, with links to Amazon and other online bookshops . This book has had kind words from North American authors: Ken Macleod does…
I haven’t been blogging much, and I hope to do more this year. There are one or two exciting publication announcements in the pipeline. In the meantime, here’s a recent interview with the incredibly productive Moid of Media Death Cult , in which I talk about books I’ve read and books I’ve written, from my office which (New Year resolution!) needs some tidying.
The Edinburgh Science Festival closes with a church service in the historic St Giles' Cathedral. It includes a ten-minute non-religious, non-political address. This year I was honoured to be asked to give it. As you can see, the service is as splendid as the setting. My talk starts at 33:28. The text follows below. The theme of this year’s Science Festival is Revolution. This is an apt topic here…
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What with one thing and another I’ve neglected to mention here that my new novel, Beyond the Hallowed Sky , has been published. It has been well received so far, with good reviews in The Scotsman / Scotland on Sunday and SFX . The book launch at the Cymera mini-festival, in the form of an onstage conversation with Professor Ruth Aylett, went well. You can read the first chapter of the book here .…
I'm delighted to say I'm on an online panel at the Digital Ethics Summit 2021, with Tabitha Goldstaub, Professor Sarah Dillon, and Ted Chiang. 4.30pm – 5.05pm GMT, 8 December 2021. Register for free here .
Details here .
I’m very happy to say that I have a short story, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Nine’, in the first issue (Autumn 2021) of the new online science fiction, fantasy and horror magazine ParSec, edited by Ian Whates, now available here from PS Publishing . The story has been long in the making. Sometime in the early 1990s I had an idea for a story called ‘Nineteen Eighty-Nine’, in which events like those of 1989 in…
'Somebody died fae vaping. Yir better aff back on the fags.' --- Lady at bus stop, a few months ago. You might think it bad taste to talk about vaping in the middle of a pandemic, and you'd be right. But this hasn't stopped a slew of public health bodies, politicians, and activists from doing just that , so I see no reason to unilaterally disarm. If you want some proper science and good sense on…
Best of British Science Fiction 2019 , edited by Donna Scott, is now available to pre-order from Newcon Press . [Update 8 June: It's now available to pre-order on Kindle .] Check out this cover and the impressive Table of Contents: Contents • 2019: An Introduction – Donna Scott • The Anxiety Gene – Rhiannon Grist • The Land of Grunts and Squeaks – Chris Beckett • For Your Own Good – Ian Whates •…
The idea of a society of entirely voluntary arrangements has its charms, but we don't live in one and are not likely to for quite some time. Until that happy day, public services should be funded out of taxation, rather than having to scrounge off the generosity of the public. In emergencies, however, we should pitch in. That's how I square my conscience with making donations, anyway. And if the…
I'm in Gourock, writing a space opera trilogy set in Gourock. That wasn't my pitch to the publisher , it's my pitch to myself, the marching song of these books. In the end there'll be very little of Gourock in it. But Gourock is science-fictional already. The world was changed from here, more than once. Every so often you see a nuclear submarine. They'll be in the trilogy. Submarines also feature…
Tom Nairn: 'Painting Nationalism Red'? Neal Ascherson Democratic Left Scotland, n.d. (2018) This is an odd pamphlet which is well worth getting. Some day it'll be a collector's item. It's well-produced on glossy paper, with a striking cover and, inside, a fine reproduction of the portrait whose gift and sitter the pamphlet celebrates. In these pages three big names meet: the author Neal Ascherson…