Friday, March 30, 2007

Now Hear This

Alan Kaster of AudioText tells me that ‘Second Skin’ has just been released as a Great Science Fiction Stories audio selection. Check out their list.

‘Second Skin’ was the first of the Quiet War stories, and I’m steadily reaching the end of a novel that draws on them, although there’s been some rearrangement of the furniture for the current narrative dance. It’s been, good grief, ten years since ‘Second Skin’ was first published, and the series didn’t so much evolve as grow in various odd and whimsical directions. Rather than try to patch up their common background, I’ve dismantled it and rebuilt it. Only way to get it humming like a turbojet . . .

2 Comments:

Blogger Keith Ferrell said...

Ten years since "Second Skin"? Surely not!

That, anyway, was my first thought.

Then I remembered reading "Skin" for the first time in Asimov's, a bit less than a year after the paper OMNI closed its pages for the last time, and realized that in just a few more weeks it'll be 11 years since OMNI closed its doors. Surely not!

I've had -- or, more accurately, made -- occasion over the last three or four weeks to re-read "Skin" and "Gardens of Saturn" and "Making History," each of them sovored beneath a favorite tree next to the garden I'm preparing for this year's round of deer, rabbits and anything else seeking nourishment from my work.

All three of the stories, like all of the best of your work, read as fresh and sharp and compellingly as on first encounter.

No surprise there, but what a pleasure to have some months of eager anticipation awaiting the chance to see how you've "rearranged the furniture."

I believe, in fact, that in honor of the impending completion and, I remain confident, succesful and profitable publication of the furniture-rearranged Quiet War novel, I'll spend part of this weekend starting a new asparagus bed in its honor. The deer and rabbits will be grateful for the shoots while I wait for the novel.

March 30, 2007 10:46 pm  
Blogger Paul McAuley said...

Hi Keith,

May your memorial asparagus multiply and be fruitful. From what I recall of asparagus growing I think the novel should be ready about the same time as your new bed starts to yield.

April 08, 2007 4:56 pm  

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