Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 16

 I like to think that I have a pretty exhaustive knowledge of punk, post-punk and new wave, but inevitably my perceptions are filtered through the fact of living in the UK during the late 70s and early 80s. Every now and then it's nice to be blindsided by a completely amazing piece of music - even a group - that somehow managed never to come to my attention.

Such is the case with The Motels. I don't think I'd ever heard of them, let alone heard anything by then. Then Bruce Springsteen (who I thin...

 This is about as good as it gets.

Late in life I have discovered a surprising if relatively useless superpower: the ability to guess the identity of the celebrities on ITV's The Masked Singer.

So far in the current season, I correctly identified (by vocal stylings or clues):

Sophie Ellis Bextor

Martine McCutcheon

John Thomson

Lenny Henry

On that basis, I am unwisely going to stick my neck out and make a prediction. I think John Barrowman is one of the remaining celebs.

 A minor update. Although things have been difficult the last few months, writing's continued in dribs and drabs. After delivering Inhibitor Phase, I switched over to a story that had I'd been working on during the summer, and that was duly completed. It's a long-ish novelette set in the Revelation Space universe, but otherwise unrelated to the just-finished novel. The story's got a title - "Plague Music" - and a home, but about the latter I'll say no more for the time being.

With that done, I re...

 I lost my mother a couple of days ago. There is probably never a good time to have a loved one pass away from lung cancer (I lost my dad to cancer as well, eleven years ago) but having it happen during a pandemic added an extra layer of distress to the whole thing. Due to Covid restrictions, my sister and I couldn't be with our mum during the last weeks of her life, and when Mum tested positive for the virus, even her partner was only permitted a single final visit. Our experience, harrowing as...

 I lost my mother a couple of days ago. There is probably never a good time to have a loved one pass away from lung cancer (I lost my dad to cancer as well, eleven years ago) but having it happen during a pandemic added an extra layer of distress to the whole thing. Due to Covid restrictions, my sister and I couldn't be with our mum during the last weeks of her life, and when mum tested positive for the virus, even her partner was only permitted a single final visit. Our experience, harrowing as...

You're capable of this:

You're also capable of this:

I don't understand.

Images via CNN and The Guardian/Niyi Fote/via Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

 For nearly fifty years I've had the faint memory of a book encountered during the very start of my schooldays, but about which I could say almost nothing at all. The book had some creatures on the cover which were somewhat reminiscent of Moomins, but it was not a Moomin book. (When I first heard of the Moomin stories, I felt that my quest was ended, only to realise that it was not the case). All I could recall with any clarity was that there was something in the book about small creatures who w...