A Book That Made Me, and an odd bull
On a Sunday afternoon in 1956, aged 13, I was riveted for about 3 hours by a dramatisation of David Lindsay‘s 1920 novel A Voyage to Arcturus on the BBC Third Programme (the intellectual station, finally canned in 1970) accompanied by very suitable eerie musique concrète. By the end of the performance I could recite
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Uncollected Me to launch at Glasgow Eastercon
Here is the lovely cover of THE UNCOLLECTED IAN WATSON which PS Publishing will launch at the Glasgow Eastercon at the same time as PS launches THE BEST OF IAN WATSON (cover not available yet). (De luxe boxed signed editions, with some bonus extra material, will launch at the London Worldcon.) Maybe I shouldn’t say
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You have Pigeons, We have Peacocks
Most towns have pigeons, but Gijón has flocks of peacocks in its public places such as the Park of Isabella the Catholic—she who funded Columbus, among other significant things: The principal homage in the park is to Alexander Fleming, of penicillin, along with a lad whose life he must have saved. Here is the ninja
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Best of Me & Uncollected Me & Collected Poems for Easter
For the upcoming Eastercon 2014 in Glasgow, probably on the Friday evening during an hour shared with NewCon Press, PS Publishing will launch highly desirable trade editions of The Best of Ian Watson and The Uncollected Ian Watson, and simultaneously—channeled by me—James Goddard’s Leaky Boot Press will present my collected poems, Memory Man and Other
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College Days
The ‘Old Coffee House‘ of Balliol College, seen below in a wonky download of a postcard which I do have somewhere, but cannot find to scan: was where I lived during my second year at Oxford, from 1961 to 1962. Later, the building was demolished to make way for more up-to-date student accomodation made of
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The First Time I Saw Roma
In 1958, aged 14 years and 11 months, I escaped from England for the first time, on a school trip to Rome. Chuff-chuff train from Newcastle-upon-Tyne station wreathed in smelly steam, to London, ditto to Dover, ferry, couchette train via Switzerland to Milan. I woke up on my couchette bunk in the morning to see
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A mere 30 Years Late!
From a bookseller in Holland I just received a virgin clingwrapped copy of Tuin der Lusten, the 1983 Dutch translation of my Gardens of Delight, set in the triptych painting by Hieronymus Bosch. I only discovered that this translation exists when someone (maybe Thomas Olde Heuvelt) told me that there’s a copy in a display
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The Chemistry of Stories
OuLiPo is a mainly French experimental literary movement (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle = Workshop of Potential Literature) which relies upon “constrained writing“—for instance refraining from using the letter “a” anywhere in a story or complete novel, or where the first word of each sentence on a page itself forms a sentence, or where the length
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Farewell, Colin Wilson
I’m looking at the first paperback of Colin Wilson‘s Ritual in the Dark (London: Pan Books, 1962), inscribed “For Ian, Sorry about its condition, but a friend found it a jumble sale. This is my first novel, started before The Outsider & is probably my best. Warm Regards, Colin, 7 July 97.” I only met
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Tactical Nuclear Penguin: Tasting Notes
Recently opened in Gijón is a new pub with a menu of at least 500 best beers of the world chalked on both sides of a cinemascope-size blackboard, of which this is a mere portion: The 3 prices being for take-away, drink at the bar, or drink at a table; the bottles
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