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‘Space,’ according to the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ‘is Big.  Really Big.’

These were probably some of the earliest words I remember from my childhood.  My father used to be a publisher, and growing up the sound of Douglas Adams’s work would drift round the house along with the smell of bacon and the sound of frying in the morning.  Sometimes the man himself would come round for dinner, since he shared not only the same sense of humour as my father, but also the same shirt and shoe size which led for a brotherhood known only to large men – and I’d hide and cower at the end of the room, too intimidated to say anything to this man who’s mind was clearly big enough to almost begin to grasp the bigness of the universe, blow it up and then boil it right back down to a slice of angel cake.

The truth of the matter is, physics has always been a little scary.  I love it, and studied it at school in my own slightly-incompetent way.  (I was a history student taking physics A-Level with a cry of ‘hell, it’ll shake things up at a bit!’)  The first rather depressing thing about physics is that the more you study it, the more you realise everything you know is lies.  Gravity on the earth’s surface, when you’re fifteen years old, is a good old ten newtons of attractive force.  By the time you’re seventeen, it’s 9.81 metres per second squared of acceleration on a kilo of mass, and about three days after your eighteenth birthday, as if you’re suddenly being let into a big secret, your teacher turns round and whispers that actually, damned if anyone really knows what the hell gravity even is.  Good, old-fashioned protons and neutrons suddenly begin to acquire not merely magnetic charge and a bit of a mass, but also elusive qualities such as flavour and strangeness as you break them down into smaller and smaller parts and before you know it, electrons are photons and photons are both waves and particles and the gold leaf went down instead of up and all things considered, it’s probably time for a bit of a lie-down. Read the rest of this entry »

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by Kate Griffin •Post a Comment • Categories: Guest Post, Uncategorized • Tags:

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So, two of my all-time favourite fictional characters aren’t actually in books, but on screen. And they were both created by Joss Whedon. I’m talking Spike, aka William the Bloody (Awful Poet), and Wesley Wyndham-Price.

On the surface you might not think they have anything in common. Spike burst into Sunnydale as an unrepentant villain, while Wesley minced his way in as the replacement Watcher for Giles, emphatically a white hat. But as the series, and their characters, evolved, as they transitioned from the world of Buffy to the world of Angel, both characters became more and more nuanced, less and less one-note. More complicated. More ambiguous. And as the lines blurred, so did their allure increase. Spike started doing good, but not always for the right reasons.  Or for pure, unselfish reasons. And Wesley shed his goody two-shoes persona to reveal a man far darker and more damaged than any of us had ever suspected.

But what they also had in common was, at the heart, enough self-knowledge to know they wanted better, they could do better, they needed better. And that struggle became integral to their journey through Whedon’s fictional worlds.

A few months ago, for various reasons, I started watching The Vampire Diaries. And it wasn’t too long before I found myself actively engaged in Damon’s story. Yes, Damon, the bad boy older brother who’d promised to wreak revenge on his younger brother for forcing him into vampirehood, and who delighted in causing misery and mayhem. The other brother? Stefan? The handsome central love interest, hero to the heroine, steadfast and loyal and honourable and good?

Yeah. Meh.

Damon is twisted, he’s complicated, he’s damaged and he’s dangerous. Which means, for me, he is infinitely more intriguing. He fascinates because of his flaws and scars, not despite them. It’s his moral ambiguity that immediately sparks my interest. Every day, he struggles. And in the struggle lies the story.

When it comes to fiction, the morally ambiguous anti-hero  – at least for me – is vastly superior to the straight arrow good guy or gal.

The question is, of course, why? Surely we should be most attracted to the stalwart and shiny, morally unambiguous, never tarnished  hero?  And maybe we are, in real life. Or tell ourselves we are, anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

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by Karen Miller •3 Comments • Categories: Guest Post, Uncategorized • Tags:

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There are authors who chest thump about military experience (the same way guys buff their muscle-cars) and then claim this experience is why their military science fiction is better than the other guy’s (or girl’s). Me? I drive an old Toyota pickup, which hasn’t been washed in donkey’s years, that’s missing one hubcap, and which shimmies at sixty because one rim is bad. It’s a great car, though. Much more useful than a Camaro, that truck carried me across the country twice, hauled just about everything in the world, and is so beaten up that people just laugh when they open the door and look inside – if they don’t throw up.

Germline is my debut novel and it’s military science fiction. But it’s also my response to what I see as a subgenre that’s losing its way, a middle finger to books in which the importance of military jargon overshadows that of sympathetic characters, believable tactics, at least some glimpse of strategy, and a decent ending. Don’t get me wrong: the books I’m flipping-off have a place. They entertain, and a large segment of science fiction readership buys and enjoys them. It’s just that the last time I picked up a military science fiction book and then dropped my jaw at its awesomeness was when I finished The Forever War (in 1983) so when 2008 rolled around it became put-up-or-shut-up time – time to write the book I’d want to read. Read the rest of this entry »

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by T. C. McCarthy •4 Comments • Categories: Guest Post, Orbit Australia, Orbit UK, Orbit US, Uncategorized • Tags: T. C. McCarthy

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Don’t you just love reviews that start with those words? I do…at least when they are talking about one of my books.

When I have a new book out, I am in a state of total panic, worried that this time I’ve made a muck of it, that no one will like it, that the story will be totally rubbished by incredulous reviewers who can’t get past page 5. I’m torn between ignoring the internet, pretending it doesn’t matter if no one ever reviews the book, and googling furiously in the hope that someone has.

Every book is the same. Every publication date results in nail-chewing, chocolate-raiding terror on my part. Yep, eating chocolate helps a little, but the relief doesn’t last…that only comes when I have a good review. Then I know at least one person likes it!

And the odd thing is that every time my initial reaction to that first favourable review is total disbelief. Really? You liked it that much? Are you sure you read my book?

And the week the last book of a trilogy comes out is the worst of all. Because until I have produced an end that satisfies (most) readers, I really haven’t reached my goal. The Stormlord trilogy is over half a million words in length. That’s a long journey to keep a reader interested, and I am both touched and a little astonished that people stay with me — or rather with my characters — over the space of several years and that many words to find out what happens. Read the rest of this entry »

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by Glenda Larke •Post a Comment • Categories: Guest Post, Uncategorized • Tags: