Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 6

Over on my justgiving page, thanks to many kind and generous people, we've just smashed the target of raising 1000 pounds for Alzheimer's UK. I'm really stoked by this and want to thank each and everyone who has chipped in, right from the start. In fact, in celebration of hitting the goal, I put in another practise half-marathon this afternoon. It was no easier than the last one in August, disappointingly, and I really struggled after 18km, but today was certainly warmer, which didn't help.

Anywa...

 This might seem like something of an obvious choice, and indeed it is, but where do you go from Talking Heads? I could have gone with Brian Eno as a link into other artists, but I've misplaced my one Brian Eno vinyl album (indeed, I might have loaned it to someone). So it falls on Adrian Belew to link us into King Crimson, and I've plumped for my copy of their 1982 album Beat:

After disbanding in the mid-70s, KC reformed for a trilogy of three similar-sounding and similarly-packaged albums begin...

 In order to drive some additional traffic to my Alzheimer's UK Justgiving page, in the build-up to the Cardiff Half-Marathon, I thought I'd try posting here a lot more frequently. The trouble is, in the day to day life of the jobbing SF writer, there isn't much to report. However, I can prattle on about music until the cows come home, so why not make that a feature, not a bug?

Hence Galactic Vinyl Memories #1, the first in a loose series where I dig through my vinyl connection, offer up a few re...

 We were devastated to hear that our wonderful friend Carol, lovely wife of Ken MacLeod, passed away shortly after attending the Glasgow Worldcon.

Carol was a delight and we considered ourselves very lucky to have Ken and Carol as friends, even as distance and circumstances meant that we hadn't seen as much of them in recent years. We had hit it off as friends since meeting properly for the first time at a convention in Sweden.

Carol's sparkle comes through beautifully in this photo of the four of...

 Just over a week ago I set off for Glasgow and the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention. This was only my second time in Glasgow - the other was for the 2005 Worldcon. It's a great, friendly city and my only regret was that I overcommitted myself with program events to the point where I didn't get to see any part of Glasgow besides the event venue and our hotel. My wife didn't have a con membership but we managed to catch up once or twice in the day in the "public" areas of the SEC, and then m...

 It's not been a good week or so, has it?

Together with a few friends, I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing the master of the kora on the Africa Express tour a decade or so back.

ps - thanks for the latest donations to my fundraising effort, much appreciated.

 Saddened to hear about the passing of Martin Phillips of The Chills, one of the really great guitar bands to come out of NZ, or indeed anywhere. I saw them only once, in the mid-90s (I'd hazard a guess at 1995) in either The Melkweg or The Paradiso in Amsterdam. Brilliant, as you'd expect. Wish I still had the t-shirt.

RIP, Martin.

Oh, and while I'm here, I'm still looking for donations for my half-marathon in support of Alzheimer's UK!

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-17139714499...

 I've posted another modest update over on my Just Giving page for the Cardiff Half Marathon:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/alastair-reynolds-1713971449990

All donations contributed so far have been very gratefully received, but I still hope to keep pushing.

An article in The Guardian this week talked about the positive consequences of "civic engagement", which can be as simple as joining a club.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/23/join-or-die-documentary-review

This got me thinkin...

I'm part of a community theatre group based in South Wales. We're putting on Much Ado About Nothing on the evenings of July 11, 12 and 13 up at the lovely Dare Valley country park. Come along and see our friendly production! Although not in the picture above (I was away when we did the photo-shoot) I'll be playing the incompetent Dogberry, alongside Liam (sitting on the ground on the right) as Dogberry's put-upon sidekick Verges. We've all put a lot of work into our parts (even going up to Londo...

 Newcon Press's anthology in honour of Eric Brown, "To The Stars And Back", is out in the world and contains a very nice selection of stories. Here's an early review of the book:

https://ww.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2024/6/1/to-the-stars-and-back-stories-in-honour-of-eric-brown-edited-by-ian-whates

All of the authors offered to waive their contributor fees, which I think indicates the high esteem Eric was held in by his friends and colleagues, and the desire to lend a little support to his wife ...