Pyr PS

Hero editor Lou Anders has just let me know that you can pre-order the US edition of The Quiet War from a well-known online bookseller. Hey. It's good to be back.

Holding Pattern

I'm currently hip-deep in copy-editing Gardens of the Sun and posts will be a bit sparse in the next couple of weeks, so in the great blog tradition here are a few links to some good stuff:

The Guardian has published J.G. Ballard's last short story - as David Pringle notes elsewhere, only 13 years after it was first published in Interzone.

I know I bang on rather a lot about the sheer awe of the pictures of Saturn and its rings and retinue of moons transmitted by the Cassini probe, but here are three especially fabulous collections, selected by Alan Taylor at the Boston Globe.

Futurist visions of the future (via the ever-reliable Bruce Sterling).

Deja vu all over again: 1976 Swine Flu Propaganda:

Free Ticket

I'm taking part in a panel, 'Building a Sci-Fi/Fantasy World', in the Literature Lab sessions associated with the Sci-Fi London film festival. It's on at 2.20 pm on Monday May 4 at the Apollo Cinema, Picadilly Circus London. And I have a free ticket to give away. If you want to come along, email me at PJC[insert my last name]@gmail.com and give me your name, and I'll make sure the comp ticket is waiting for you at the door.

UPDATE: ...and it's gone!

USSA

'This is the voice of Communist government speaking. Today, Communist forces have completed the occupation of your country. The United States no longer exists. It is now the Union of Soviet States of America. Long live the USSA!'

Man, I wish I'd known about this when I was writing Cowboy Angels . . . A 1960s comic book about America under the Reds - sponsored by the Catholic Church and approved by J. Edgar Hoover! Via Infinite Thought.

Reality V. The Future

Regents Canal, King's Cross