I should have posted this a while ago, but the new issue of Focus is on the way (with luck members will have it landing on their doorsteps next week).

The contents of the next issue looks something like this:

Masterclass 3: Bringing Home The Bacon
Chris Priest continues his masterclass series with an article about encouraging stray Irish conrunners to follow you home (not really, it’s about the balance between writing and earning a living).

Escape Velocity
Geoff Nelder talks about launching a magazine and what editors expect from writers.

Planning a Novel
Michael Amos describes how he makes novel writing fun!

Caught in a Web
Jetse de Vries looks at the relationship between writers and fans online.

Beyond the Blog
Paul Raven concludes his two-part look at using the web to promote your work.

Write what you know? No Thanks!
Dev Agarwal suggests sf writers should take the standard advice for writers with a pinch of salt.

PLUS there’s poetry from Edward Comma, a spaceman on the cover courtesy of Stephen Sweet, and other news and stuff.

ALSO in the forthcoming BSFA mailing there’s an issue of Vector that’s bursting at the seams with stuff - including tributes to AC Clarke (with a very nice cover image that I think will have fans smiling) and the second of the BSFA’s Special Editions booklets, Fantasy and SF: The Roots of Genre, featuring essays from Farah Mendelsohn and Paul Kincaid excerpted from their respective new books (and edited by Niall Harrison).

AND: The next update of Matrix Online is also coming soon - a Steampunk special (which happens to feature an article by myself on steampunk cinema).

Now this is a great story

A complete version of the first epic science fiction film, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis has turned up 80 years after it was last seen - in a museum in Argentina!

(Who knows, maybe Hitler is still hanging out down there too… Is it safe?)

Apparently it contains explanations for the bits in the film that don’t make sense in current cuts.

Now we just have to wait for the release of the DVD.

Because, seriously, if anyone reading this is going and has the chance to buy a special edition, Comic Con attendee only…

(That’s right, Universal are doing a limited run BSG Toaster!!!)

…then please, for the love of god, get one for me too. I will pay whatever it costs, postage, the whole nine yards.

This might be the best piece of merchandising I’ve ever seen. And I love me my puns. Now help me frakking own one!

Of Cemetery Dance issue 58 - the magazine wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

I’m currently just scribbling some film reviews for Matrix - my article on steampunk movies is due up there soon.

Then I’ve got some Orbiter reviews to do.

Then some writing.

Then I promise I’ll blog something significant.

Now I don’t normally inflict my footballing prejudices on this blog - I’ve always been of the opinion that I’ve made my own bed and therefore I should lie in it and suffer more or less alone (M&N being obvious and unfortunate exceptions to that rule). And, generally, you won’t find me spreading the memes of our corporate masters around the net.

But I’m going to make an exception for this because:

1. I think I’ve actually fallen in love with Fernando Torres,

2. The “Fernando Torres” chant to “Johnny Comes Marching Home” has been the best addition to the Liverpool songbook since Fields of Athenry (though the new Maschereno to the tune of “Seven Nation Army” comes close too),

and 3. This is a fantastically funny and brilliantly observed little advert (with Hungarian subtitles) that won’t get shown in this country and doesn’t do the hard sell.

The two old blokes coming out of the chippie with an “Adios laa” and the lad saying “Gracias mate” crack me up every time.

And for those who don’t know, the translation of the chant being sung in Spanish is:

“His armband proved he was a red, Torres! Torres!
You’ll never walk alone, it said, Torres! Torres!
We brought the lad from sunny Spain,
He gets the ball and he scores again,
Fernando Torres, Liverpool’s number nine”

Nanananana… and bounce maniacally ad nauseum

Haven’t been here for a while - insanely busy with union annual conference and ludcrously tight magazine deadline…

Anyway, I’m working on a couple of longer pieces which I hope will get up soon.

In the meantime, The Stage is posting this news about Stephen Moffat being appointed “lead writer and executive producer” of Dr Who - taking over from RT Davies. I’ve never been one of those people who were highly critical of Davies, but if he was going, this is surely the best possible replacement?

Blue Tyson at Free SF Reader has reviewed Hub 50 and my story Home Protection - which you can still read here.

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of the review. At first 3 out of 5 seems disappointingly low but the site has pretty high standards (the big pro US magazines average around 3.5 an issue) so three doesn’t seem too bad a score. And you can’t really argue with the summary (well, I could but it would ruin the ending).

So I had some bad news, then I got sick, and in truth I’ve spent most of the last week in bed feeling sorry for myself - it’s not a pretty sight - and I’m gutted that this coincided with Sci-Fi London (one of the weekends I look forward to most all year - I’d bought tickets for eight movies and got to see none of them) and the ACC Awards Ceremony.

Somewhere in the middle of that my contributions to Illuminations also took a bit of a kicking (well most of my favourites did anyway) - I’m not complaining about the review, just noting that this week I’ve had the tendency to focus on the negative.

So, I’m still croaking from this chest infection, but back to work today and some nice news… Douglas Hoffman has reviewed “Home Protection” on The Fix and liked it

I know one is supposed to take these things with equanimity - but it’s always nicer to get a positive word. I wrote “Home Protection” a long time ago (maybe three years?) and looking at it now all I see are the things I’d like to change but I’ve always liked the idea at the heart of the story and it’s nice that some new eyes saw it and appreciated it.

More soon.

Illuminations got reviewed at The Fix - under the circumstances the reviewer did a pretty good technical job of completing the review of an assignment I’d have hated.

He’s pretty tough on our little project (but fair, and his criticisms are solidly supported) though he finds quite a lot to like. I’m not going to get into the game of arguing with a reviewer - I’ve had the boot on the other foot too often (obviously when he talked about the bits he liked about my contributions he was very perceptive, wise even, and when he talked about the bits he didn’t like he was an ignoramus who deserved to be boiled in oil) but I would point out in editor Paul Raven’s defence that one of the decisions we made early on was to publish the stories without too much extra polishing (hence quite a few grammar nits surviving into the printed version) as partly it is supposed to reflect the quick, almost disposable nature of the FFF experiment. Perhaps we should have made that clearer in the introductions.

You can buy copies of Illuminations from our website (www.oddtwoout.co.uk) or order it from any bookshop in the UK using the handy-dandy ISBN978-0955866203 - you can even see the cover (and hopefully soon some content) at Amazon (though despite several pokes they’re still showing it as available only for pre-order).

Still, proving that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, the review has brought in a little flurry of sales in the last 24 hours - for which I’m grateful to Alvaro (the reviewer), Eugie (The Fix’s inestimable editor) and, of course, to the folks who put their money down.

So the past week or so have been a bit of a write off - insanely busy at work last week before discovering that a friend had died suddenly. I hadn’t seen him for a while, but I still felt like we had a lot of stuff still to do together and I’d just been trying to organise a get-together when the news arrived.

I still don’t quite believe it. The weekend was a horrible daze.

And, while it’s a minor matter in comparison, I’m dosed with something truly horrible which is making me feel like shit all day and stopping me sleeping at night in case I drown in my own mucus.

Yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself.