The Silver Skull

The first Swords of Albion review is in, from US magazine RT Book Reviews. Classed as four-and-a-half stars (dammit, how did I lose that last star?), it says:

”The new Swords of Albion series, set in an alternate Elizabethan England, gets off to a smashing start. The historical detail sets a believable backdrop, and the main character, a spy, could pass for a fantastical James Bond. Chadbourn sets a fast pace, pitting his characters against supernatural threats with a bit of horror thrown in. FANTASTIC – keeper.”

Which gaves a flavour of what’s in there. I should soon be able to showcase the UK cover art, but if you want to put in an advance order, you can do so here:

UK
Amazon.co.uk
Waterstones

US
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

I’ll do more links when other bookstores put them on online, and I’ll include any indie bookstores if you get in touch.

Courtesy of Warren Ellis:

This is the creepiest thing I’ve read recently. David Carradine claiming he’s being haunted by a ghost in a closet. Shortly before he died…in a closet. A J-horror flick in the making…

For a significant part of my working life, I laboured in the print and broadcast news media, and I still provide media consultancy to various organisations. More than anyone, I know how the voice of the people is deeply unrepresentative of the wider population. But nowhere is that clearer than among those who comment on literature for a living.

Antipathy to genre fiction is deep-seated, and goes beyond mere dislike to a belief that it should be despised and derided at all costs as a way to keep up standards. In The Publisher Files, Tim Holman identifies two recent examples of snooty dismissal of genre fiction and very decently attempts to give these people the benefit of the doubt.

There is a line of thought that the majority of literary criticism is a class thing – an unconscious way for a self-perceived elite to control and contain the masses. And to listen to Mark Lawson’s destruction of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol on Radio 4 I can quite believe this – a programme so sickeningly smug, it made you consider a multi-millionaire author, perhaps the biggest-selling author in the world, as the poor underdog.

Many people in genre publishing like to rise above the constant sniping, stating these people just don’t get imaginative fiction. What can you do when they claim there is no good SF or fantasy, just “well-constructed yarns” or “entertaining nonsense”?

But there is a serious issue here. As Tim points out in his blog, it strikes at the heart of any attempt to grow the audience beyond the core readership. The disproportionately loud voice of these people creates a meme that seeps out through the population – that all genre fiction is low-brow, rubbish, not worth your valuable time. It’s corrosive, and it creates an unconscious collective standard. It’s human nature to be influenced by majority view. Buyers make choices based upon perceived value and if they are constantly told something has no value they will choose something else.

That will hamper any attempt publishers make to break fantasy and SF into the mainstream readership. For that reason alone, it can’t be ignored. It needs to resisted, harshly, at all times, and it needs to have the people at the top of the publishing ladder leading the way.

From Princeton University:

“Beyond its revolutionary technological applications and scientific impact, the evidence of an active role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality holds profound implications for our view of ourselves, our relationships to others, and to the cosmos in which we exist. These, in turn, must inevitably impact our values, our priorities, our sense of responsibility, and our style of life. Our ability to acquire, or to generate tangible, measureable information independent of distance or time challenges the foundation of any reductionistic brain-based model of consciousness that may be invoked. The lack of notable correlations in the data with standard learning curves or other recognizable cognitive patterns, combined with the repeatable and distinct gender-related differences, suggest that these abilities may stem from a more fundamental source than heretofore suspected. Certainly, there is little doubt that integration of these changes in our understanding of ourselves can lead to a substantially superior human ethic, wherein the long-estranged siblings of science and spirit, of analysis and aesthetics, of intellect and intuition, and of many other subjective and objective aspects of human experience can be productively reunited.”

You know I’ve spent the last nine years writing about this stuff in Age of Misrule, The Dark Age and Kingdom of the Serpent, right?

And then Dan Brown goes and writes about it in The Lost Symbol and gets all the attention. Bastard.

It’s interesting and inspiring research and like Brown says in his book, has the potential to instigate a paradigm shift in scientific thinking.

One very speculative and futuristic possibility is that of using gene therapy to equip humans to see ranges of light invisible to them at present, such as ultraviolet or infrared light. Some birds and reptiles can sense UV light, for example, and some fish can sense wavelengths approaching those in the infrared.

I want some.

A quick reminder that I will be attending the UK’s British Fantasy Society convention, FantasyCon, in Nottingham on Saturday (September 19).

I’ll be signing copies of a new BFS anthology at around 5pm. It features a new short story of mine – Deadhouse Steps - but it’s only available to BFS members – free, by the way – so you’ll be expected to sign up before getting a copy

If you’re thinking of attending, full details can be found here. I’ll be around all day so come over and say hello.

ANCIENT Egyptian temples were aligned so precisely with astronomical events that people could set their political, economic and religious calendars by them. So finds a study of 650 temples, some dating back to 3000 BC.

I find Egypt and its history endlessly fascinating. Don’t know how many books I’ve read on the topic, including a load about secrets encoded in the symbols and the landscape. But the fact that it’s still giving up those secrets is a source of great joy.

Every now and then I get sent music by bands and individuals who’ve enjoyed the books (let me point out now that this is a *good* thing. I like free things, and I like music).

I recently received a CD from Occasionally David, a band that has been circling the UK music scene since the 70s, heavily rooted in English psychedelia. The core of the band is Clive Whitelock and Ray Bate, who first met in ’69. Influential British DJ John Peel championed them in 1980 when they released a single, I Can’t Get Used to Losing You (so I’m Coming back).

They sent me Forever Changes, their psychedelic/garage version of Love’s classic sixties album, which was previously only available on limited edition cassette in 1987. And excellent it is too, a lopsided, particularly English take on Love’s material, quirky, trippy and powerful.

As an aside, psychedelia and garage is an area I’m particularly interested in – though I pretty much listen to every genre – and anyone who’s read Jack of Ravens and Wonderland knows of my debt to Love.

You can hear more of Occasionally David’s stuff at their MySpace page.

And any artists reading this, send me something and if I like it I’ll give it a mention. I listen to *a lot* of music, particularly when I’m working, and I’m always on the look-out for something new.