Richard [K] Morgan's News and Views

So, then - that's The Steel Remains off the slipway and drifting gently into the swirl and tug of fantasy's dark waters. Ain't she lit up pretty? And early signs are that she's going to fare pretty well on her way downriver too; the signing gig at Forbidden Planet in London went down a storm, I must have put my scrawl on something like a cubic metre of books by the time we were done. And, catching the flight home the next day, I got a jubilant call from my editor Simon Spanton to let me know we just made the Independent's Hardback Fiction bestseller list top ten. Was pretty jubilant about that myself, albeit through a faint veil of vagueness from a night of hard (well, medium-taut) drinking with the aforementioned Simon, the Mighty Abercrombie (aka Joe), Adam 'the Professor' Roberts, Marcus and Donna from Blackwells, and Jon Weir, publicist extraordinaire. Great evening. Much opinionated dissection of The Dark Knight and all things Batman. Repeated attempts to persuade those who don't read Pynchon that they should. Noodles at the Tokyo Diner. Best joke of the evening: I see British people. Best T-shirt: Hanging Like A Wizard's Sleeve.

And now, since Clint Eastwood just got his retrospective at the British Film Institute, here's a little something for all you Dirty Harry fans who've also recently bought The Steel Remains:

Do ya think I should have included a map at the beginning of the book? Well, do ya?

Okay, then - draw one yourself. We can talk about it over lunch.

No, really. Details here

And in other news.....

I finally get the excuse to ramble on about the coolest side project I've been involved in all year. To wit, writing lies about the Dandy Warhols.

No, really. Last July, mid-US tour, I was knocked out flattened and flattered when Dandys guitarist Peter Holmstrom showed up to my reading at Powell's in Portland and told me he was a big fan of my stuff. (Mutual - after Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Dandy Warhols are my all time favourite US rock band. But if you've read my links page, you already knew that.). So Peter and I exchanged e-mails and mobiles and were in touch on and off over the next few months, then out of nowhere he asks me if I'd like to invent biographies for the band members. The new album is titled Earth to the Dandy Warhols and is themed around space exploration, so Pete figured a set of SFnal biogs might set the thing off nicely, and maybe confuse a few journalists. Would I be interested?

Would I? Hah! Is the Pope a Nazi?

So I got hold of the album artwork, spent a while staring at photos of the band in their spacesuit helmets and worked up a thumbnail backstory from each face, loosely set in the world of Black Man/Thirteen. I also got a sneak preview of the album a few months ahead of release. How cool is that, I cackled repeatedly to myself for most of the summer. Earth to... is cracking stuff, with a lot of the same much loved Dandys standby sounds as on Odditorium, but angrier and sharper throughout. Stand out track for me was Wasp in the Lotus; it sounds like a fucking building coming down on top of you!

So anyway, if you'd like to see the results of all this, they are lying around here Attendees of SFeraKon in Zagreb this year may feel a faint shiver of recognition - yes, these are the sketches I used in the seminar on world building, with so much secretive muttering about a band I couldn't name. So there you go - now you know!