My short story An Open Letter To Any Impressionable Young School Leavers Who Are Considering Joining The Space Corps appears in this week’s issue of Nature.

Unlettered. Top notch work as always from Jim Boswell, who has made me promise not to write any more crowd scenes.

You can read my story In The Beginning There Was The Machine in the latest issue of Flurb, edited and published by the mighty Rudy Rucker.

Plenty of other good stuff in there too.  And all for free!

I heard from Nic Wilkinson at Insomnia that Robert M. Heske was putting together an anthology book featuring both comics and short stories based around the 2012 myths.  He specifically wanted a short story about what would happen the day after the cataclysmic events of the 21st of December, 2012 . So I knocked up a story and he’s bought it for the book.

The Seeds Of Time will appear, along with an accompanying illustration, in 2012: Final Prayer.

Due out sometime towards the end of the year. Should be a good book.

Just heard that Nature have bought another one of my short stories for their Futures section.

When I sent it in I thought that this one was a real long shot, but I thought that when I sent the first story they published too.

Out within a few months I should think.

Here’s another teasing peek at what Jim Boswell has been up to while working on our graphic novel . . .

Jim Boswell has started work on Project Luna: 1947.

Here’s a tiny peek at what he’s been up to . . .

I especially like the fact that the fellow on the right somehow ended up looking like HP Lovecraft.  This makes me strangely happy.

More images over on Jim’s blog.

Just noticed that scfi.com have the full text of Thomas M. Disch’s classic short story, Descending, in their archive.

It is magnificent; a story which starts off as innocent and playful as a kitten with a ball of yarn but soon turns into a syphilitic eight-cocked demon with an utter absence of empathy in its eyes that wants nothing more than to make you pay for all the awful things that you’ve done.  At least, that’s the mood I took away from it.  Your experiences may be entirely different.

You can read it here.

Disch shot himself in his New York appartment on July 4th, 2008.

Project Luna: 1947 will be an 88 page original graphic novel written by me with art by Jim Boswell, who I worked with a little while ago on a four page sci-fi strip for Futurequake.

Contracts with Markosia are signed and we’re good to go.  Above is Jim’s first mock-up cover, a try out as he gets to grips with the characters, sorts out their hair colours and builds, designs the ships and what not, and it looks rather splendid.

Jim’s a great artist and I’m really looking forward to seeing his pages as they come in.

So, some good news to end the year on.  Who knows . . . next year might not be complete shit after all.

My short story, Spamface, appears in this week’s issue of Nature, on sale August 28th.

Here’s a panel from the first page of “Intergalactic Bank Robbing Teenage Space Aliens on the Run,” a four-page strip for FutureQuake.

Art and letters by Jim Boswell, who, as always, is doing an insanely good job.

I wish I could show the whole page, Jim’s art really is spiffing stuff.

My story Something out of Nothing appears in Barren Worlds, a new anthology from Hadley Rille Books.

$12.92 here.

Got some great news yesterday.  Nature editor Henry Gee emailed me to say that he’s accepting my short story “Spamface” for publication in the Futures section of an upcoming issue.

Click below for info on the current issue.

Click here, then Murky Stuff, Issues, PDF # 2 to download a free 22-page taster issue of Murky Depths.

Along with my short story, Shit New World, it also includes prose stories from Lavie Tidhar and Sarah Wagner. The original Episode #1 of Death and The Maiden from Richard Calder. Poem from Glynn Barrass with accompanying artwork by Luke Hinchley. Cover by Luke Cooper.

Murky Depths is a quarterly anthology of short fiction, poetry, articles and comic strips and you really should be reading it.

So says Sam Tomaino in his review of my short story Shit New World (Murky Depths Issue Three) over on SFRevu.

Much better than Michelle Lee’s review on The Fix in which she says, “. . . the tale itself is little more than a long complaint.”

Well, it is called Shit New World after all, that was kind of the point of the story, and it’s barely 500 words so it can’t be that long.

So then, one good review, one bad. I’m torn between having a celebratory drink or doing a Stephen Fry on it - hopping on a ferry and pissing off to Belgium in a huff.