Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 44

Asteroid miner, monochrome gouache and Letratint - mid 90s.

Pen sketch of alien structure and explorer, 1997.


Spacer 1998


Spaceships 1997

A little while ago I did this sketch for a correspondent who was interested in building a scale model (well, I hope it was a scale model) of the Nostalgia for Infinity. To my surprise (and delight) there are already quite a few sketches and models of lighthuggers out there on the web - some of them very close to my mental image.


You can view the image at full size by clicking on the version at my website. I couldn't find a way to link to a bigger one from here.

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Explorers with some kind of levitating alien city in the background.

It's done. Over the last week I've been proofreading the 500-plus pages of Blue Remembered Earth, and a couple of hours ago I was able to email my notes back to my publisher. That, barring the small business of promotion, is where my obligations to the book end. It should be a time for celebration, but as always it feels faintly anti-climactic. This is my last chance to make any changes to the text, but since the typesetting has already been done, such changes cannot be substantial. My approa...

I'm hoping these two gentleman will guide my hand during the writing of the Doctor Who novel.


"My dear fellow, you appear to have a large black cable growing out of your shoulder."

Uploaded a few "new" paintings to the SF Artwork section on my website. Actually this one is new; I started it last monday and finished it four nights later.

I'm on the Coode Street Podcast, with Jonathan Strahan and Gary K Wolfe. We recorded it in Reno back in August. It had been a long day - I'd flown in from LA, via Oakland, and then had a rush to check in to my hotel and then get over to the convention centre in time for a meet-up with the Locus crew. After a few beers with Ian Mcdonald and various parties, I then headed for a wonderful but eyewateringly expensive steak, and then Jonathan, Gary and I repaired to a hotel room to record the podc...

For those not following my twitter feed, I'm going to be taking part in Dr Karl's live science phone-in, tonight, on BBC Radio 5's Up all Night with Rhod Sharp. Our segment is supposed to go out between 2.30 and 3.30 AM although it might shift a bit depending on the running schedule. The program will be available on iplayer for those in the UK.

Dr Karl and I did a couple of radio shows back last year and had a great time. We were in the same studio in Sydney then; now we're a tiny bit further...

It's a terrible and beautiful thing I've done.

I suppose I already had it in mind, when the last uplink came in. Not that I'd come close to voicing the possibility to myself. If I'd been honest about the course I was on, I might well have requested immediate committal to stasis.

The right thing to do, in hindsight. And maybe we'd be on our way home now, back to the gratitude of a thousand worlds. Our house would have crumbled into the sea by the time we got back. But we could always have built ...