September 18th to 20th 2009 I was Master of Ceremonies at the British Fantasy Society’s annual Fantasycon in Robin Hood’s Nottingham (though actually it was the wicked Sheriff’s city, while Robin lived in the forest, but Wicked Sheriff City wouldn’t be such good PR).  This involved knighting Sir Peter Crowther of PS and Sir Les Edwards for services to fantastic literature and artwork, and also compèring the British Fantasy Awards ceremony.  People seemed to think I’d dressed as James Bond for the occasion, and truly it took the tenacity of Bond to stay upright for the 2 hours and more that the event lasted, as the temperature soared; if I had a time machine I’d pop back and put a chair on the stage, and definitely more vino – I’d only taken one glass of wine up there with me and bizarrely an excited award winner seized and drained my glass to lubricate his throat for his acceptance speech, something I hadn’t bargained for.  Various Bond titles comes to mind: You Only Drink Once; The Chardonnay Is Not Enough…Of course lots of lovely beer was available just 5 minutes walk away in Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem pub built (in 1189 A.D.) into the cliff that would be supporting the castle if a castle remained, where Crusaders gathered to get blotto before setting off to ravage the holy land, or sack Constantinople if they got impatient en route. And speaking of going the distance, 5 minutes in the other direction is one of the best Indian restaurants in the world, the precisely named 4550 Miles From Delhi.  No marble elephants or Maharajas, just great food.
            During the weekend Storm Constantine launched from Immanion Press a beautiful new edition of my Balkan chess fantasy Queenmagic, Kingmagic, now with an afterword, and also Roberto Quaglia’s hilarious double-novel Paradoxine: The Adventures of James Vagabond in a translation from the Italian revised quite a bit by me.

On 26th August 2009 I was a guest of the BSFA at their monthly meeting in the Antelope Tavern in London’s Belgravia, full of antique nooks and crannies and ups and downs, where Ian Whates ably interviewed me, and where I had a visionary moment:

Chad Dixon took this image, which reminds me just how good and appropriate black and white can be.  Chad Dixon prefers b & w for people shots, and more of his work is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mesmerising/

Amongst other places I visited during 2009 were Barcelona, where by complete chance I saw the Tour de France passing by the hotel where I was staying, preceded by what seemed to be the entire motorcycle police force of the city having great fun with their flashers and sirens (a good morning to rob a jeweller’s elsewhere in town, perhaps); and Brussels, and Athens which gave rise to a story about how the Parthenon should be repainted the way it was in antiquity, in blue and red and gold – the Parthenon has become woefully rusty due to oxidisation of the iron content in the Pentelic marble once the original paint wore off.  

I have a as of November 2009 - one of my novels which has my name in the title.

The Beloved of My Beloved  by me and Roberto, beautifully published by Big Ian’s Newcon Press, was launched in Fiuggi, just south of Rome, on March 28th 2009 during the Eurocon; with a UK lunch, I mean launch, on April 11th at the Eastercon in Bradford.
Videos of the launches, as well as other amazing images, are on www.belovedbook.com
Although, before heading for the vicinity of Rome, I landed in Genoa to experience the astonishing cemetery of Staglieno, filled with huge galleries of photorealistic statues of the dead and their grieving relatives, as for instance:

)

The dust of a century and a half has fused with the marble very persuasively.  Now I knew where to set the story I’d promised to write for Darrell Schweitzer’s Cthulhu’s Reign anthology… to which it has now sold.  My first Cthulhu story!
            After the Eurocon, my film-make chum Paolo Cingolani amiably guided me and Jim Walker around wonders of Rome such as a wine-shop/café which served 550 beers of the world, all lovingly detailed in a long menu.  That’s quite near the foreigners’ cemetery where Keats is buried, but, not to be chauvinistic, I left Keats until last and thus missed him since Pachelbel’s Canon was already playing from speakers amongst the trees, signalling closing time.  Thus I need to return to Rome; besides I left so many inviting beers unsampled.  Noteworthy too was the street where priests and bishops and cardinals buy their vestments (and probably the Pope too).

Jim and I also took in the Futurismo exhibition in the Quirinale Palace, where the Italian futurists were wonderfully bright and eye-grabbing, which was their aim.  The futurists violently attacked most cultural clichés, including pasta, so they might have been distressed by the four-course lunches and dinners at the Hotel Ambasciatori in Fiuggi, which always featured two hearty pasta dishes, without ever repeating themselves. 
            At the Eastercon in Bradford, Big Ian launched several NewCon Press titles (new website: www.newconpress.co.uk) including our Beloved; and I achieved a new altitude in the world:

in keeping with that lovely film Kinky Boots set in Northampton, where NewCons are held, although not alas a NewCon5 in 2009 because we can’t yet totally guarantee that our fine venue, the Fishmarket, will stay open (but it may well do so).

Newcon4, co-chaired by me and by Ian Whates (Little Ian & Big Ian) happened on 11-12 October 2008 in Northampton’s Fishmarket, now a lovely spacious arts venue with a charming patio garden made of scaffolding poles, planks, fairy lights, and plants.  Ah, Northampton, where co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick went to school, as an evocative sculpture in the main street celebrates…

Northampton, also the home of legendary Alan Moore, with whom I was privileged to share hair…

…and who introduced two of our Guests of Honour, Iain Banks and Ken Macleod in talk with John Clute.  Meanwhile our third GoH, Storm Constantine, acquired Bread, Butter and Paradoxine from Roberto Quaglia for her Immanion Press, and, before the bands struck up and vocalists gave voice, she celebrated her birthday, as did the British Science Fiction Association, both with cakes decorated by Tesco with imagery designed by Big Ian

who here presides as Lord of the Books over the publications of his Newcon Press, scheduled to publish in Spring 2009 the outrageous book of stories by me and Roberto Quaglia, The Beloved of My Beloved…

 
            Special Guest Paul Cornell romped away as winner of “Just an SF-ing Minute” (as in fact he romped throughout).  The buzzers of the radio show, which listeners normally cannot distinguish between, were replaced on this occasion with varied flutes and rattles and tambourines from Early Learning, so that sightless people in the audience could be absolutely sure who was interrupting the eloquence.  Topic: Canals.  Ken: “Canals are bodies of water made by people…”  Speedy interruption:  “The canals on Mars weren’t made by people.”  Ken (with great restraint): “The canals on Mars are fucking imaginary.”  Big Ian (Moderator): “And therefore they were made by people, since we made them up!”
            Newcon4 exclusively premièred excerpts from Paul’s adaptation for BBC Radio 4 of Iain Banks’ The State of the Art, not due on air for another 5 months, and duly discussed by adaptor and author.
Just short of 200 people attended, including from Sweden the dynamic Bellis, Who Is A Greek, and a guiding light of the Imagicon 2, Swedish Nation SF Convention 2009, www.imagicon.se (its GoH Liz Williams, a guest of Newcon3).

            The sun shone strongly all weekend (except by night) due to chaos magic dividing the waters, rather like Moses, thrusting rain back to the previous week, and unfortunately also into the hotel room above Storm due to her being a chaos magician – which ‘earthed’ the rain, causing her ceiling to collapse along with many gallons just before she was about to go to bed.  Being magical, she was unhurt, although husband Jim’s clothes were soaked.
            The blazing heat of the sun was welcome since most of the heaters obligingly provided by the Fishmarket failed due to cables not being fully unwound; but next year correctly unwound they will be, if needed, in time for: ta-Da, Newcon5 (October 3-4 2009) in the same venue, presided over as MC by the very Jester who hanged himself on a gallows at Newcon4.  Here the Jester muses about his impending fate near two attendees all the way from Germany, Elke Fiedler and Larissa Budde…

Newcon5 is happening because of a flood (non-wet) of very kind things said by rather a lot of people about Newcon4, demanding another such event.  There was talk of life-changing experiences and of revitalisation after such panels as “Where would SF Be Had No Britons Ever Written SF?” and “Sex Sells, But Should We Buy?”  Since the 7 barrels of real ales ran out by the end of Saturday night, to the astonishment of the Fishmarket, next year we’ll lay on at least 10 barrels.  And there’ll be at least 2 birthday cakes again, for Big Ian and for Pádraig O Mealoid, who’ll be 100 years old, um, collectively.  Oh and also – probably a first for a convention in a Fishmarket – a Flamenco workshop.  Amongst much else at www.Newcon5.com

For the past year Ian has been collaborating on a civilization-shattering novel, ranging from 12th Century Iran and Ethiopia to near-future America, with Andy West of the Northampton SF Writers Group.  Globe-trotting product manager of a company specialising in hardware and software for extreme conditions, physicist Andy is fascinated by the mechanisms of history and the workings of evolution.  His novella “Meme” recently stretched across 4 issues of Bewildering Stories, and Ian Whates’ anthology from NewCon Press, disLOCATIONS, features Andy’s story “Impasse”; not to mention that his epic SF novel, The Clonir Flower, currently seeks a publisher.

Here, in February 2008, in his folk music minstrel aspect, Andy, a dab hand on the large Irish Whistle, anticipates a Chinese banquet, while Ian, in Bergmanesque Scandinavian mode, prepares to play chess with Death.

One of the startling tales in The Beloved of My Beloved by Ian and Roberto, “The Penis of My Beloved,” has just been reprinted (January 2008) in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 7, edited by Maxim Jakubowski. 

This is not the Kama Sutra for extinct elephants, but “the hottest annual collection from the realm of the senses.”

Meanwhile, during a recent visit to England by Roberto, he and Ian gained access through a blue portal:

to an alternative reality where enthusiastic warriors hailed news of the existence of The Beloved of My Beloved:

and enthroned the authors upon a sacred ancient seat:

The September 2007 FantasyCon in Nottingham saw the reissue by Immanion Press of my Gardens of Delight, given a stylistic polish and a brand-new Afterword, and with a lovely cover by the wonderful Vinny Chong (www.vincentchong-art.co.uk) who won the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Artist at the same convention.

As the Immanion blurb puts it:

In The Gardens of Delight Ian Watson boldly lands a starship within the hallucinatory terrain of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, a medieval masterpiece which enchants and horrifies all who see it, for the picture shows what looks to be a paradise of pleasure yet it also displays a terrible hell of torments.

And so the ship’s psychologist, Sean Athlone, and two women companions explore the luxurious landscape of giant fruits and birds and strange towers and naked celebrating people, in quest of the godlike alien intelligence that has transformed a planet according to Bosch’s vision, populating it with the colonists from a previous starship.

Why, and how, has this magical, alchemical transformation been carried out? To discover, Sean and his companions must themselves die and make their way harrowingly through Bosch’s Hell.

Wildly colourful, with an amazing final explanation, The Gardens of Delight is Ian Watson at his most imaginative. On first publication, Analog declared that “Gardens is a strange book, as strange as Bosch’s original painting… Watson has handled the imagery well, emerging with a story that could stand discussion in terms of Bunyan and Dante.” In a specially written and entertaining Afterword, Watson traces other strands and reveals that the basis of his Boschworld has become recently an urgent problem for cosmologists, two and a half decades after the book first appeared. Here transformational magic and cutting-edge science blend thrillingly.

Since I myself wrote the blurb, I endorse every word! Although, at Fantasycon itself, I wondered if I would be able to utter a word after a day’s absurd fever of sweating and shivering, culminating in a 6 hour attack by hiccups every 10 seconds the sleepless night before. No, I tell a lie. I must have slept a little because in my fever I perceived profound secrets regarding language and reality and then discovered that the important notes I’d made were completely absent from the bed. Fortunately Peter Michaleczky (webmaster of Miguel Ajeno) had come from Hungary to accompany me to Fantasycon and this ensured that I got to Nottingham in two pieces, him and me.

Here’s a teaser from the Afterword, revealing secrets about my distant past:

In 1959, I’d already left school at 16 because there were boys of all ages in classes, so I happened to have finished all possible exams; the place was quite like the Academy of Gormenghast as seen in the TV dramatisation. In fact Gormenghast kept me sane after I left school, because I made the error of thinking I should do a job during the year before I went up to Oxford, so I became an accounts clerk at a shipping company in Newcastle, Runciman’s, at £4 per week, plus some luncheon vouchers. My first task was to add up in a huge elegant ledger a portage account, which details all the money a ship spends in port, thousands of Pounds. I duly added, then inked in the total. Just to be on the safe side, I re-added the column. Strangely, the total was quite different. So I crossed out my first answer and inked in the second. Hmm, I thought… so I added once more, and produced a third divergent answer. At this point my supervisor peered over my shoulder and uttered slowly, in awe, the one word, “Sh-i-t.” At least I think it was in awe…

So what has this to do with Hieronymus Bosch? And why did Gollancz first publish Gardens in their short-lived Fantasy Collection when the book is a science fiction novel? Gardens is available from Immanion Press at this link.

www.immanion-press.com

From 10th to 12th August in company with jolly author Jo Walton, American games guru Chris Pramas, and meisterfilksinger Franklin Gunkelmann from Germany, I was GoH at Recombination in New Hall, Cambridge, a university-based Unicon 21 teamed up with Harmuni 3 (harmony, right?) and the British Roleplaying Convention. The programme was so well organised that, whereas often I find that I only go to panels I’m actually part of, staying nattering in the bar instead, this time I hastened to sit in on Several Others. The real ale bar was so well organised, with 5 excellent choices from local Milton Bewery, that whereas it’s decades since I woke up with a hangover on the second day of a con, this time I couldn’t help it. New Hall has some quite unusual plants in its gardens, such as one that looked like stretched rhubarb with smaller leaves and bearing long bottle-brush blooms studded with what appeared to be half-blackberries. Playing the Stephen Donaldson game, I managed to find clenching within 3 seconds. (This is where contestants are given the Thomas Covenant trilogy and hunt for any example of Donaldson’s favourite verb.) I was interviewed expertly about Miguel Ajeno, my collaboration with Roberto Quaglia, bum-branding in my Space Marine, and other important topics. Here’s Professor Yaffle explaining the true use of objects presented to him and his team, fuelled by Milton Brewery stout:

The write-up about me in the Recombination Programme Book is well worth quoting. Only couple of weeks ago, I received the second e-mail this year inviting me to address the British Homeopathy Association. The next time they mistakenly ask me, I think I shall accept.

Who in the World (Wide Web) is Ion Watson?
Owen Dunn (and Google)

Following a teenage passion for herbal medicine and flower essences, lan Watson became a homeopath in 1988. He is now a facilitator of self-healing and personal transformation, offering seminars, residential retreats, and private consultations on a wide range of healing topics. He graduated from the University of Bedfordshire with a BA in Media Production and is currently preparing for the release of his first 35mm feature film about war-torn Iraq.
lan has also brought theatre to the people, as an arts administrator and general manager
crucially involved with the "theatre in the round" movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Bringing democracy to the audience, truthful reality to acting, and everyday subject matter to playwriting, he worked closely (albeit turbulently) with Alan Ayckbourn and Peter Cheeseman.
In 2003, lan was appointed as the Artistic Director of Arcadia Players in recognition of his long musical career. As an organist, harpsichordist, and pianist, he has played with most of the leading British orchestras, and his many recordings and tours have taken him around the world. In 2000 he was assistant conductor for the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, performing the complete Bach Cantatas on the correct liturgical day and in places where Bach lived and worked.
Being a truly interdisciplinary fellow, his work spans arts and sciences. His research
interests at the University of Manchester's Advanced Processor Technologies group
encompass parallel computer systems and machine architecture, and he teaches a
Computer Science module there. He does however also find time to be an Associate
Professor in the University of Auckland in New Zealand, working on artificial intelligence as well as a member of staff at the Institute of Photonics at Strathclyde University.

Or alternatively, he wrote The Embedding, The Jonah Kit and many other works of SF, fantasy, and horror. You decide.

In the first week of August 2007 I was in the south of Spain for the summer fiesta in Canjáyar, where Paco is now Mayor. A splendid flamenco show kicked off, on a stage erected on the terrace surrounding the hermitage dedicated to San Blas, patron saint of throat diseases, overlooking the village from on high – how brave to dance dramatically at such an elevation next to a precipice! Next day a Gymkana proved not to consist of fat little girls on fat little ponies, as any Briton would expect, but of a treasure hunt on foot. My own part in the fiesta was to be one of four judges of an Intercultural Culinary Competition highlighting traditional local cuisine, plus a section of food prepared by the local foreign residents. I was quite pleased that my choice of best traditional dish, out of about 40 entries, was the very same fennel dish chosen as best by a chef from Eustacio’s restaurant. Terribly disconcerting, given my neuroses about eggs in any form, were the Huevos Sorpesa (Eggs Surprise) pictured here: huge fried eggs, gone cold, although warming up again in the blazing sunshine. None of us judges dared break them apart to sample. Only the next day did we discover that in fact the yolks were glazed peaches and the whites were meringue slightly grilled. We’d been fooled. The surprise ought to have won a prize!

The final item of the fiesta listed in the programme was Quema de la Zorra. “Um,” I said to Luisa, “doesn’t this mean Burning the Female Fox?” “Oh yes,” she replied casually, “it’s traditional. We set fire to the fox’s tail then the children chase it around the square till it dies. It’s very amusing.” “Maybe not for the fox!” said I sternly. Whereupon she couldn’t keep a straight face any longer. In fact it’s a ceremony of launching fireworks with a mind of their own, which will chase people around the square before exploding. Dr Miguel told me he was at a previous Quema de la Zorra with a friend dressed in a brand-new white suit. They took refuge in a doorway and closed the outer doors, only to realize that a firework had got inside with them. Boomph. When they opened the doors, Miguel’s friend emerged with his suit blackened and burned. How boring all the health & safety regulations are at English village fêtes. Unfortunately a thunder and lightning storm postponed the Quema to a later date.

Launched at Novacon on 10 November 2006 is Immanion Press's beautiful new edition of Alien Embassy, Ian's fourth novel originally published in 1977 - probably the first ever SF novel with a black female narrator. "It hums with notions as a hive of bees," said The Times at the time. This new edition, with cover art by Vinny Chong (who also did the cover for The Butterflies of Memory) has been polished stylistically and includes a specially written five page Afterword. Available through Amazon or from Immanion Press (www.immanion-press.com; info@immanionpress.com) for £13.99/$23.99.

Newly released as of July 2006 by PS Publishing (www.pspublishing.co.uk) - in 500 numbered trade hardcovers signed by Ian (a bargain at £25/$45) and 200 numbered slipcased hardcover copies signed by both Ian and Paul McCauley who wrote the introduction (for collectors of fine books at £60/$90) - is Ian's 10th story collection, The Butterflies of Memory, with a beautifully evocative cover by Vincent Chong.

As well as 17 stories, The Butterflies of Memory contains 16 pages of story notes specially written by Ian for this edition. Among the stories are "An Appeal to Adolf," about gay Nazi sailors in an alternative 2nd World War, which his German translator originally said was impossible to write; "Hijack Holiday," which anticipated by a year the events of 9/11; "One of Her Paths," selected as a Best of the Year by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber; "A Speaker for the Wooden Sea," which has just appeared in French from Dreampress as a chapbook (La Voix de Wormwood) with an introduction by Robert Sheckley; "The Grave of My Beloved," the first of the My Beloved stories co-authored with Roberto Qualia; and "Giant Dwarfs," a true account of Jules Verne's own journey to the centre of the Earth…

A book's worth of story collaborations between Ian and Italian sf-surrealist Roberto Qualia (www.robertoqualia.com), undoubtedly to be called The Beloved of My Beloved, will soon be complete. Stories from the book which so far are due to pre-appear in magazines and anthologies are "The Grave of My Beloved" (due in Weird Tales), "The Penis of My Beloved" (in Lust for Life edited by Claude Lalumière and Elise Moser), and "The Colonoscopy of My Beloved" (in Strange Pleasures edited by John Grant).
The Beloved of My Beloved will be a perverse encyclopedia of Western civilisation approaching collapse. The Beloved is symbolic of the desires we vest in consumer capitalism. The stories are illustrations of this, upon an eroticised tumour the size and shape of a woman's body, the tale of which forms the framing narrative, rather as in The Illustrated Man, but not really.
"The Beloved" may be a definitive metaphor for the aims of Western civilisation taken to perverse extremes already inherent in them. The stories are romantic and anti-romantic, acidic and alkaline, erotic and anti-erotic, surreal, exotic, and unexpected.
And very funny.
They're set in Somewhere, and in Spain and Romania and Japan and Prague and San Marino, and Somewhere Else. Other titles already recently completed include "The Moby Clitoris of His Beloved," "The Mass Extinction of My Beloved" (described by poet and editor Mike Allen as "some kind of demented masterpiece"), "Beloved Vampire of the Blood Comet," and "The Beloved of the Gigolem." A Gigolem, of course, being a cross between a gigolo and a golem.

On October 1st and 2nd, in Northampton's gorgeous NeoGothic Guildhall, Ian and other members of the Northampton SF Writers Group presented NewCon3, a convention on the theme of progress through time. Consequently H.G. Wells was present, and the compère throughout was the jolly and effervescent Official Town Jester of Northampton (sometimes on stilts of bendy metal) who brought along his ladder of swords and his bed of nails, which made a considerable impression on Ian and others, about 200 impressions each in fact.
Strolling players strolled and played, with Andy like a Pied Piper on his flute and giant Irish whistles. A Ceilidh occurred, where Gwyneth Jones tried to strangle Ian for whistling Vivaldi, the background music to her lengthy telephone dispute concerning her computer. Gwyneth was one of the finalists for the Booktrust Teenage Prize, with Siberia by her alter ego Ann Halam; and also present was another finalist, Sarah Singleton, for her Gothic Century; but they declined to engage in armed combat despite a vigorous sword-fighting demonstration. (A while later, Sarah won the award.)
Cambridge historian Kari Maund gave a talk on Viking towns and also won the NewCon3 short story competition with "Saltus Lunae," the prize being publication in Matrix (Jan-Feb 2006). Phil Nanson from Cambridge discoursed on damascening. Virgin Spaceways sent a promotional video to anchor a panel on holidays in space, perhaps the world première of this video. Lots of other stimulating panels too, starring amongst others globe-trotting Paul Billinger and ace cook & gourmet Ian Whates, mainstay of the NSFWG. (NWSFG Treasurer Ian Pursey is another mainstay. Many members are called Ian, though this isn't a requirement of membership. Sword-wielding Susan Sinclair is the Social Secretary). Luminary Peter Weston participated with stars in his eyes. Steve Cockayne demonstrated his giant puppets, one of which bears a startling resemblance to himself, which inspired characters in his Legends of the Land novels. Feasting occurred in Chinese and Indian restaurants. The real ale didn't run out. H.G. Wells became custodian of the NewCon award for best time travel book, a surreal inside-out clock created by NSFWG member Neil Bond (who is pictured lower down beside Iñigo Montoya).
The photos are of the Jester as fakir, the strolling players, and Matrix editors Tom and Claire along with HGW and Jon Courtenay Grimwood wielding the sword - JCG and Liz Williams and Fangorn were the delightful Guests of Honour, although H.G. Wells felt obliged to tick Fangorn off for his collaboration on Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

Ian was in Barcelona on 19 January for the launch of Hard Questions in Catalan. Its translator Eduard Castanyo and his wife Monica, who writes children's books, took him to the Dalí Museum in Figueres which is wonderfully surrealistic, and fed him delicious deep-fried liver of Angler Fish - that's the one with wide-gaping jaws and a phosphorescent lure to show smaller fishes the way in. Eduard is tall, due to playing basketball. Ian, with the shorter haircut, isn't, due to never playing basketball.

Ian and his Spanish translator and his Hungarian publisher have discovered a hitherto unknown poet of world calibre, the Colombian Miguel Ajeno. So they have set up a website to celebrate him. For the masterpieces and misfortunes of Miguel Ajeno, see www.ajeno.intelmedia.co.uk

Paragon 2, the British National Science Fiction Convention for 2005, held at Easter in Hinkley, had decided to assign secret identities at random to all attendees. Being random, many secret identities were a bit inappropriate, such as a female El Cid; but by magic (since I've been learning Spanish for 2 years) I was Iñigo Montoya, the finest swordsman in the world from The Princess Bride. "You killed my father. Prepare to die!" Thus I won the award for Best Hall Costume, no less than the chocolate Bunny of Death with a fried egg halo.

I was Guest of Honour at Novacon 34, 5 - 7 November 2004 in Walsall, and H.G. Wells came along too. Because I'd shaved off my moustache months earlier to evict some Staphylococcus aureus from a campsite underneath -- but Bertie Wells always had a tash -- the Committee ordered me to find a joke shop to rewhisker myself, which I succeeded in doing after a long walk. Storm Constantine's Immanion Press held a wine party to launch their UK edition of my Mockymen -- here's Storm with Bertie Watson proudly holding a copy of the newly-minted book
(available from www.immanionpress.wox.org for £12.99 or $21.99).
Visit Storm at www.stormconstantine.com

Traditionally the Novacon GoH chooses the menu for the buffet after the beers-of-the-world-tasting on the Sunday evening. In 2003 Jon Courtenay Grimwood chose scrumptious North African cuisine, and this year I chose Finnish food.
Why Finnish?
Because as a little boy I was told to eat up everything on my plate, since other little children in the world were going hungry. Which never made much sense -- how did it help the hungry if I became huge?
Oops, that's "finish" with one "n." Start again. In my Books of Mana (Lucky's Harvest and The Fallen Moon) the characters regularly eat far more food than in any other of my books - whole banquets of nosh - because in an epic of over 1000 pages obviously they need more nourishment to get through to the end. Those are very enthusiastic novels where passions and appetites of all sorts run riot, so eating couldn't be neglected. Besides, the novels partly came about because of a Finnish cook book. I'd never before read Finland's epic, the Kalevala; but then I went to Finland as guest at a convention - and I was given a book of poems by Eino Leino, whose statue has its back to the public loo in Helsinki's main street leading to the harbour. Those poems were lyrical capsules of episodes from the Kalevala, and immediately science-fantastical interpretations dawned on me. I was also given a well-illustrated Finnish cook book, so I knew that the characters forming in my mind would be suitably fed. And I proceeded to read the Kalevala.
For the Novacon buffet the hotel chef borrowed my cook book.
So on with the blood soup and blood sausage and minceballs and carrot casserole, fish pasties, red cabbage salad, dumplings and savoury pancakes, mushrooms in sour cream, lambs' legs baked on hollow logs, geese and slabs of fish and radioactive reindeer and whipped cream buns -- or whatever would adapt most suitably after eliminating "the outrageous, impossible, and simply extravagant," as the PR booklet put it. The carrot casserole particularly found favour.

In 2003 I chaired NewCon2 in Northampton, a one-day con run by members of the Northampton Science Fiction Writers Group, which proved popular. So on the first weekend of October 2005 we'll be running NewCon3 in the palatial Northampton Guildhall, bigger and better and lasting 2 days, with many extra attractions not usually found at SF cons such as displays by self-impalers, as well as Guests of Honour Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Liz Williams, and Fangorn (who will not impale anyone despite his name). Please visit www.newcon3.co.uk, launched during Novacon and growing, if only to admire our logo by Kev Rooney. The Guildhall is very close to Northampton Museum with its huge display of boots and shoes ancient and modern, sexual fetish footwear a speciality. You can also admire a boot worn by an elephant while crossing the Alps.

The Immanion Press (www.immanionpress.wox.org) edition of my rewritten Whores of Babylon, about the reconstruction of ancient Babylon in the Arizona desert as an experiment in futurology, is now available with a sumptuous new cover.
In 1988, the year of first publication, Saddam Hussein did actually start rebuilding Babylon, after a fashion. Presumably Saddam wasn't influenced by Whores of Babylon, although we do now know that he collected sexy fantasy art for his den. Then about a decade later in Rome, artificial life specialist Domenico Parisi and archeologist Mario Liverani began modelling the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire to see whether it might serve as a model for our present-day cultures and their destinies - digital Babylon as a forecast for the future! -- while at the Santa Fe think-tank in New Mexico researchers were doing likewise regarding the native American Anasazi culture.
In 1999 a professor at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland (which I happened to visit for a literature festival a few years previously), a chap named Jukka Ammondt, recorded some songs by Elvis Presley in ancient Sumerian. "Blue Suede Shoes" became "Esir Kus Za-gin" ("sandals of leather of the colour of a blue gem") due to the Sumerians having lacked suede, or shoes as such.
Maybe my novel was genuinely anticipatory!

The Black Library of Games Workshop (www.blacklibrary.com) has just (June 2004) published a 762 page omnibus edition of my Warhammer 40K fiction - although excluding Space Marine, deemed too heretical. Not long ago, happening to drive through the red light district of Budapest, the Hungarian publisher of my 40K omnibus which does include Space Marine, spotted a prostitute on the street reading the book in an earlier Hungarian edition. This is true readership! The present Black Library omnibus contains a 3 page introduction by me specially written for this edition.

The Book of the River, The Book of the Stars, and The Book of Being have just been reissued (April 2004) in a beautiful large format paperback omnibus edition retitled Yaleen, after the heroine, by BenBella of Dallas, Texas (www.benbellabooks.com), with an introduction specially written by Stephen Baxter. The book reprints the format of the omnibus edition produced for the Science Fiction Book Club in 1986 as The Books of the Black Current. The cover art by Jael, originally used on the DAW paperback edition of The Book of Being, is much lovelier on the new BenBella edition because it's isolated as a painting instead of being wrap-around and overprinted with title and blurbs and bar-code, as previously, and the reproduction is now much more vivid.

The first story I ever sold to an American magazine was "My Soul Swims in a Goldfish Bowl" (in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1978). This has just been filmed in Paris, in April 2004, screenplay by Justine Gasquet. Here's a photo of the filming, complete with goldfish bowl:

Ian's Arthur Clarke Award finalist, Whores of Babylon, first published in
1988, will reappear early in 2004, in a much revised edition with a
specially written afterword, from Immanion Press recently founded by Storm
Constantine. - http://www.immanionpress.wox.org/immanion/author.htm

British Paperback Edition of MOCKYMEN...
In Autumn 2004 Immanion Press will also release a British paperback
edition of Ian's latest novel Mockymen (published in America in hardback
by Golden Gryphon Press in Autumn 2003), probably to coincide with Ian
being Guest of Honour at Novacon in Walsall, UK.

Ian will be a guest at ÁtjáróCon on 6th March 2004 in Budapest, then at ItalCon in Fiuggi near Rome, 11th to 14th March 2004.
Ian will be Guest of Honour of Novacon 34 in Walsall, England, 5th to 7th November 2004 - www.novacon.org.uk