What started as a joke on Twitter and Facebook – in which I complained that my four nominations for Best Novel on the British Fantasy Awards longlist made me look like an inhuman writing machine – has taken on a life of its own.

Artist and reader @Madnad ran with the idea – and you can now buy her creatively-designed ‘Inhuman Writing Machine’ t-shirts here. Good for authors, journalists and anyone who makes – or aspires to make – a living from words.

And, no, there’s no cash coming my way for this. Go on, you know you want to…

I’m very gratified to see Destroyer of Worlds, Kingdom of the Serpent Book 3, sitting at number three in SF Site’s 13th annual Editors’ Choice Best Books of the Year.

It’s a prestigious list that gets a fair bit of attention. And frankly, the company is great: Daryl Gregory’s The Devil’s Alphabet at five, Julian Comstock: a Story of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson at four, The City and the City by China Mieville at two, and the hugely deserved Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson in the top slot.

Here’s the SF Site review of the book and here’s a new review at the excellent NextRead site.

And as if by magic, the mass-market paperback of that book has just been published in the UK.

The UK will formally launch its new space agency on Tuesday. The nation has been alone among the major industrialised nations in not having an executive body to direct its activities beyond the Earth’s surface. The new organisation is expected to take control of the money spent on space by government departments and science funding agencies.

Came across a quote today (from Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, used in relation to the US finally passing its health care legislation) which perfectly summed up the theme of Age of Misrule, The Dark Age and Kingdom of the Serpent:

“Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Hope is the knowledge that we can choose; that we can learn from our mistakes and act differently next time. That history is not a trash bag of random coincidences blown open by the wind, but a long slow journey to redemption.”

Nobody likes to think they can be measured by a stranger. But I’m very interested in psychology and I recently took a VisualDNA personality test. It involved clicking a stream of images in response to various questions. The result:

“You’re a bit of a rebel at heart. You enjoy being challenged intellectually. You’re energetic and curious, with a love of life and an infectious enthusiasm for new adventures. Conscious of your place in the world, you like to stay informed about social and political issues and feel a duty to be environmentally responsible. You are inspired to make your mark and leave a positive legacy. You are energized by your vibrant network of friends and colleagues. Tech savvy and hungry for knowledge, you live life to the full, always seeking new adventures that broaden your horizons and take you out of your comfort zone.”

Which is horribly, horribly close to the truth.

A report in New Scientist suggests the evidence for life on the Red Planet could be as plain as those lumps of rocks that scatter the landscape in all the photos we’ve seen a thousand times.

There’s never been any sign of complex carbon-based molecules on Mars, but sulphur is all over the place, more than on earth. Some microbes in our own backyard convert sulphates to sulphides as a by-product of their activity. Intriguing evidence of this microbial work has been found at crater sites – and similar tests could be carried on Mars relatively easily.

All we need is a Mars Lander fitted with the right tools. Oh, one’s already planned? When’s it hitting the red dust?

NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover will land on the Martian surface in 2012. It will carry a mass spectrometer that should be sensitive enough to see variations as small as 2 per cent in sulphur isotope abundances, says John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the lead scientist for the mission.

Here’s the finished article and a first look at the cover copy for the UK edition.

Very different from the US version (which the artist Christian McGrath styled on the work of Caravaggio, fact fans), but I like the sense of adventure and intrigue here too.

The front cover photo is by Jonathan Ring and the design by Stephen Mulcahey. The Sword of Albion is out in the UK from Bantam in May and you can pre-order it here.