Richard [K] Morgan's News and Views

So, it's been a week of major surprises.

First and foremost, the major surprise that Black Man took this year's Arthur C Clarke award. Anyone who was there will be able to attest to how blown away I was by that, and suffice it to say I'm still walking on air nearly a week later.

Next major surprise - Croatia and Zagreb. At the start of last month, I got an invitation to attend SFeraKon '08 in Zagreb as Guest of Honour, and accepted without giving it a lot of thought. It was a part of the world I didn't know, which for me usually serves as next best thing to a reason to go, and the timing meant I could fly back via London just in time for the Clarkes. As for Zagreb itself, well, it sounds kind of ugly in English, right? And I had this vague image in my mind of nasty grey Soviet-era architecture and a depressed East European economy......

Not. Quite.

Zagreb in fact turns out to be this small, mostly sunny and incredibly beautiful little city on the slopes of green hills, littered with gorgeous Austro-Hungarian Empire architecture, thronging with cheery blue, clanging trams and full of laid-back, friendly people. High speed trips back and forth across the country in the company of my Croatian publisher, Neven Anticevic, did nothing to dispell these general impressions. In the east, Osijek is a tranquil provincial capital beside a broad, unpolluted and swimmable river, buildings still somewhat diliapidated by the war (and in some places, repaired with specific intentions to recall the fighting - shrapnel damaged chunks of wall replaced by bricks of a different colour, scarring specifically preserved elsewhere...) and surrounded by green fields and woodland. In the west, Pula is an ancient (Roman and before) town still flaunting the traces of its long history; there's a colosseum in white stone, intact and towering enough to easily compare with the one in Rome itself, ancient city gates, also intact..... The coastline recalls southern Italian beach towns in both landscape and architecture, and I'm told that as you head south towards Split and Dubrovnik (something we didn't have time for) it just keeps getting more and more beautiful.

Culturally, Croatia was for me (and even more intensely for my wife Virginia, who is Spanish) a weird combination of very familiar and very alien. There is an attitude here to family and to food which is pure Mediterranean. Kids are the centre of attention everywhere, eating is an important aspect of life (rather than just the fuelling up it tends to be in the UK) with thriving open markets for fruit and veg, broad arrays of (genuinely - check out the eyes) fresh fish and seafood, and everywhere buyers and sellers who want (and have the time) to talk about the produce as if it actually mattered what you put in your stomach. To this extent, it all felt very much like being back in Spain. But at the same time there's a dash of something far more north European in the slightly sober-looking coffee houses, the well behaved traffic, the more sedate, quieter pace of things when compared to the frenetic speed and volume that Spain likes to operate at. And of course there's the language - Croatian, helpfully lettered in Roman rather than Cyrillic characters, but still a million miles from a Romance tongue, full of harsh slavic sounds and peppered with a selection of loan words that I sometimes recognised from my very rusty Turkish. It's fascinating to read (well, look at) and listen to, but it's not a tongue I had any confidence about getting easily to grips with. My publisher concurs - it is, apparently, incredibly grammatically complicated (as it seems are most slavic languages), with endings for everything, and the antique declensional complexity of Greek or Latin. We spent the whole six days we were there eternally grateful for the high levels of English speaking competence among the Croatians we met.

We're going back, for a more leisurely holiday, as soon as humanly possible. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Okay - third major surprise. A little while ago, Pete Crowther asked me for a guest editorial piece for this year's Worldcon edition of Postscripts. I wrote him a rant about the endemic factionalism in SFF, and how fed up I was with it. Pete declined to use the piece and it's now posted over in "Articles" on this site. Go have a look if you haven't already. I stuck it up there without really giving it much thought, and then promptly forgot all about it.

Wow. When, after a couple of days haring around in Croatia, I finally sat down and opened my e-mail, it was packed with responses; readers, writers, publishers and editors, all basically saying "dat shit needed to get said". Which was all very gratifying, despite the surprise. In a couple of cases I'm still in e-mail correspondence with authors, wrangling the details of where we agree or disagree on the subject.

Slightly less gratifying (though kind of funny) was the way the article was taken in the blogosphere. Eg: To my contention that SFF needs to stop squabbling about who's more valid and just get along, the way the crime genre largely appears to, one blogger immediately leapt in and defended said squabbling along the lines that of course SFF does that stuff more than crime fiction, because, hell, SFF has all these so much more important existential themes to deal with than crime. Sigh. And then a significant US writer of horror fiction stormed to the breach, decrying my refusal to blame readership patterns on some evil corporate marketing plot as an attempt to make us all wear the slave collars of the evil corporate publishing industry. Bigger sigh. Worse than that, I then get snarled up with this guy in exactly the kind of pointless back-biting blog catfight I'm so fed up with seeing. Tempers go from zero to rage in nothing flat, and round we fucking go again. It would seem that shit is contagious.

So - I quit. Cold. Going to put my money where my mouth is and just not do that nerd rage shit no more. Those who get off on it, or on the equally irritating superior-new-form-of-the-genre thing are welcome to the field. I'm out.

Going to get on and write a book, instead. Details to follow.....

So it's done - The Steel Remains is signed sealed and delivered, now awaiting proof and continuity check. UK publication August '08, US dates t.b.a. My first stab (or should that be hack?) at fantasy.

Or should that be Sword and Sorcery? Or New Odd High Fantasy? Weird Old Epic Noir, anybody? Low Epic Fantasy? That last has got a nice ring to it - especially as, hey wait, look; people who practice it in three book form could call themselves Low Epic Fantasy Trilogy writers - or LEFTists! Hahaha!!!

Ahem. 'scuse me. Bit demob happy right now.

It is a fair question, though. Beyond the general issue of genre sub-division and infighting (see my guest editorial in the Worldcon edition of Postscripts magazine later in the year for a rant on this), there is a vague worry hanging over me as to how I'm going to describe The Steel Remains if asked. This isn't because I care much myself, but I'd hate to think of people buying the book and diving in under the assumption that this stuff is like Tolkein (or like China Miéville, or like Jeff VanderMeer for that matter) and getting a nasty shock when they hit the water. Had enough of that with all those dyed-in-the-wool Kovacs fans who hated Black Man because their expectations weren't met. So...

Uhm.

Look - it's like this: if you really, really love Tolkein with a firmly burning uncritical passion, then there's a good chance The Steel Remains is going to upset you. If you really, really love all those stories about simple, good-hearted farm-boys becoming princes or wizards, then there's a good chance The Steel Remains is going to upset you as well. And if you like your heroes masculine, muscular and morally upright, well, then you could be in serious trouble here.

Oh, yeah, and if you really think that "things were better" at some unspecified pre-modern point in human history then you'd really be wasting your time with this one.

If, on the other hand, you're up for a bit of moral ambiguity and a fistful of darkly dysfunctional characters, natural and supernatural, then this book is for you. If you think that an era in which people resolved their differences with bits of sharp steel was probably not a very nice time to be alive, then welcome to the retro-dystopic vision of The Steel Remains. Noir fantasy? Low fantasy? Dunno - all I can tell you is that it deserves a soundtrack by the Rolling Stones; Street Fighting Man, Gimme Shelter, Respectable, Jumping Jack Flash and Sympathy for the Devil - at the very least.

Oh yeah, and stop press - Nightshade's message boards are back up at their revamped site. Been over already for a chat with Jeremy and others. See you there.

....book yourself a holiday in Kenya?

Oops. Don't.

There is always something profoundly depressing about watching a country tear itself apart this way, but it's especially awful when you've actually been there and seen for yourself the human potential that subsequently gets pissed away when this kind of chaos kicks off. Hard to believe that the tolerance, pluralism and grace under economic pressure that I was witness to among Kenyans almost everywhere I went has dissolved into standard-issue machete-wielding tribal violence at the drop of a corrupted ballot box. You never want to believe that humans can be this stupid - but they always end up proving you wrong.

Happy New Year. I guess.

Forgive the neat little literary allusion there, but it fits the content rather nicely. Added to which winter solstice is coming up fast, less than a month to go now, we'll maybe get snow if we're lucky, and if a book deadline counts as a promise then I certainly have a couple of those to keep. Eeek. Appropriate time for Frost, if ever there was one.

Ahem - the point: I did quite a few miles back in September/October and completely forgot to mention it last time I posted - Virginia and I spent two weeks in Kenya, mainly in a little coastal town called Malindi (Hemingway stayed there, it seems), but also up the coast a bit and on safari in the Masai Mara, all of which added up to one of the best holidays I've ever had. I also made a promise there, to two guys in Malindi who helped make that holiday what it was - the promise being to mention their names here. So Lenny Henry and Omar Sharif, Lenny and Omar, if you're reading, this is for you - thanks for everything. And for anybody else who's thinking of Malindi, Kenya as a worthwhile holiday destination (and it is, can't emphasise that enough, it is) - these guys, Lenny and Omar, will sort you out with whatever you need in terms of safari arrangements, snorkelling expeditions, further travel, whatever. Check them out - everything they promised to us, they delivered (plus a couple of things they hadn't promised, when things went awry for us - the most luxurious tuk-tuk in Kenya, right Lenny?). You'll generally find them outside the Scorpio Villas hotel complex (where we stayed, also highly recommended, a beautifully laid out, laid back place to base yourselves). You'll also find them mentioned repeatedly on Trip Advisor.com - proving that we aren't the only ones they delivered for.

So what's on offer, exactly? Well, Malindi itself has beautiful white sand shorelines, some of the more colourful reef diving I've ever seen, and a bustling, pluralistic culture in which the component groups (Christians, Muslims, Animists, coastal dwellers and inland visitors, native Kenyans and immigrants alike) all just seem to get on. It provides a salutory reminder that melting pots are everywhere, not just in big, first world metropli like New York, London or Sydney. (It also provided a salutory contrast with another place we went, some distance up the coast, where the population were 90% Muslim and the remaining 10% minority were decidedly not (IMHO) feeling the love.)

Meanwhile, in the Masai Mara, you have to keep pinching yourself to recall that you are not participating variously in a David Attenborough documentary or a Hollywood movie about Karen Blixen. The animals show up out of the bush or from over the veldt horizon as if booked in for the event; elephants, lions, giraffes, cheetahs, you name it, every African animal you've ever seen Attenborough stand dangerously close to. Your driver can mostly get you to within single figure metrage of all of them, and they're all utterly unfazed by your presence. You spend the whole day in the same this-is-not-fucking-real trance. And then, heatsore and full of aches from the bone-rattling hours of cross country driving, you head for home, and that's a whole other unreal experience. We stayed in a place called the Mara Safari Club, in what is rather deceptively called tented accomodation. Ye-esss. Let's put it this way - these tents had purpose built wooden porches overlooking the river (and a pod of noisy hippos therein), tiled floors and electric light fittings, ensuite marble topped bathrooms and a four poster bed with turn down service including a hot water bottle for your feet (which can be a bit of shock when you get blurrily into bed after a day watching exotic animals and aren't expecting to find anything warm in there with you). This kind of camping I could get used to.

And (to wrap this up quick before I become the family look-at-my-holiday-snaps bore) the Kenyans themselves have to be the most incredibly friendly people I've ever felt the urge to generalise about - I mean, come on; where else in the world does your immigration officer inquire at length what kind of holiday you've had, ask you to write down a few useful phrases for her in Spanish (Virginia's native tongue), tell you to come back soon, and wish you a safe journey home with such warmth and enthusiasm that she completely forgets to hand you back your exit-visa stamped passports? Homeland security, it ain't!

So, if you're wondering about a holiday in sub-Saharan Africa - don't wonder. Just go to Kenya, go to Malindi, and go to the Masai Mara - it's life-enhancing, life affirming, in a way I would not have believed a two-week last-minute break ever could be.

oh yeah - completely forgot. This is the new site. Have a wander around, see what you think. If you need me, I'll be in the usual place. Enjoy.

Wow - how much did some people hate Black Man/Thirteen? They hated it a LOT!

Some of them hated it so much they completely forgot to explain why, and poured fury instead on my author photo and the scandalous way I wore my shirt hanging out (?) (I think Amazon have pulled that review, which is a shame because it made fascinating reading). Some hated the politics, some hated the religion. Some hated it because a character in the book died slowly and painfully (as opposed, presumably, to being shot and dropping cleanly and instantly dead. Sorry, pal, read the statistics - slow and painful is how most of us are going to go - if you don't like that reflected occasionally in your fiction, you need to get back to Bob the Builder stories.) And some people didn't like the fact that the book made them reach a conclusion about genetic influence in the nature/nurture debate which they apparently didn't want to reach (which I think is a bit like complaining about a road map you bought because you've followed it to a destination you don't like. I mean, Blackpool is at the end of the M55, it just IS - sorry about that, but it doesn't mean you have to go there).

But above all, many, many people didn't like Black Man/Thirteen because it wasn't Altered Carbon. Well, fair point - there you have me - it isn't. But you know, I kiiiinnnnd of feel that readers were given fair warning of that by the fact that the book did have a whole other title (two whole other titles in fact!). I mean, that is a bit of a giveaway, right?

So if you haven't yet bought, borrowed or stolen Black Man/Thirteen, please be aware - it's not Altered Carbon, it's not a Takeshi Kovacs novel, it's not set in the same universe, it's not about the same things. Black Man/Thirteen deals with a whole different set of issues and technological factors, it takes a whole different, and deeper, approach to character and relationships, it moves at a whole different pace, and it's a bit longer than anything else I've written. And just so we're clear for those so bitterly disappointed by all this - I won't be writing Altered Carbon again, not ever. Can't - I've already written it. It is time to move on.

In fact, I really should stop bitching, because a lot of other people liked the book - it's sold very well on both sides of the Atlantic, and garnered a lot of very enthusiastic feedback, of which I am, as ever, very appreciative. There's talk of a film deal. I've had a flood of e-mails asking questions about the off-camera implications of the Marsalis universe, and a couple of reviewers coming up with leaps of imagination I wish I'd had back when I was writing the damn thing. All of this suggests that the diorama did in the end stand up, and when that happens your mind drifts inevitably in the direction of sequels...... so yes, there'll be one. At least one more book set in this context, in fact, possibly a couple. It feels like a roomy, eminently explorable universe.

Right - moving on. Land Fit for Heroes now has a new title (in the UK at least) - it will henceforth be known as The Steel Remains, a phrase which has more resonance with the way the tale is choosing to unwind, and it's slated to come out in August of next year. There's a brief set of character vignettes loose on the net, which I was asked to put together for my London editor a while back. Just do a search on Richard Morgan Fantasy, that should dig it up in the various places it's been published. These vignettes don't give you much information on the story itself, but that's intentional - like everything else I've ever written, this book will be character driven - if you like (or at least fall in with) the characters, it'll carry you. If you don't, it won't. There will be more bits and pieces emerging over the next few months as I pull the material together, so watch this and other, slightly more regularly updated space(s). I and my newly acquired webmaster will keep you posted.

So, fantasy now... Feels very strange all the way out here, deprived of my usual stock of technological metaphor. No more feelings "like the juddering of bad brakes", no more "amped-up appeal", no more talk about the body's "motor systems". These characters, even the cool ones, just know so little about the universe the live in! And the distances!!! Shit! In Black Man/Thirteen you could get from any major city on the planet to any other in forty five minutes. Now suddenly I'm needing days at a time to get anywhere at all, and crossing the known world could take months! I'm still reeling from the plot implications of it all.

In more general terms, I'm also still reeling from being selected as one of 25 "authors for the future" by Waterstone's – I mean, I'm delighted to be on this list in the first place, but even more I'm blown away that any SF/F writer figures in it at all. Genre respectability – who'd have thought it? In fact, the Waterstone's list is a remarkably egalitarian and broad-church inspired piece of work, including as it does literary fiction, crime, SF, humour, childrens' fiction and cookery – Granta's Best of Young British Writers it ain't. Oh yeah, and it didn't hurt that the launch party at Waterstone's' flagship Piccadilly branch came the night before Black Man was released in the UK. Serendipity in her finest glimmering attire.

Speaking of attire, following Black Man/Thirteen, I'm due something of an overhaul – while I get on and tinker with Land Fit for Heroes, my UK back catalogue of paperback editions are all getting re-jacketed for an October release alongside Black Man, and the website is coming down temporarily to be redesigned in line. It all feels a bit like going for a much-needed haircut – a little anxiety at the thought of letting go of my accustomed appearance, blended with an equal degree of anticipation at the change. The site address itself won't change, though, will still feature the same direct contact button, and I'll still – eventually – get back directly to anyone who mails me.

Finally, here's a small kernel of useful information in amidst my ramblings: dates for the US tour for Black Man/Thirteen, which this time for logistical reasons will be limited to the West Coast. This list is not yet definitive, there may be a couple of add on events, but here's what we have set up for now:

Monday, July 23 - SEATTLE, WA
Time: 7:00pm
University Bookstore
4326 University Way NE

Tuesday, July 24 - PORTLAND, OR
Time: 7:30pm
Powell's Books
1005 W. Burnside

Thursday, July 25 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Time: 7:00pm
Booksmith
1644 Haight Street
San Francisco, CA 94117

Friday, Saturday & Sunday July 27th, 28th & 29th - SAN DIEGO, CA
Comic Con International
San Diego Convention Center

See you there!

So it's done. Black Man is complete - delivered, line edited and polished to a high gloss. Waiting now on the copy edit and galley proofs. Editorial comment runs to "your best book so far by some margin." Which I confess I'm quite relieved to hear. It'd be pretty mortifying to spend two years on something, pile delay on delay, and come out at the end of it all with some weak-assed shit that's a step down from previous work. I think it's safe to say I gouged more out of myself to write this novel than anything else I've worked on so far. And since everybody's been waiting so long, here's a quick sample: please welcome to the stage Carl Marsalis - the Black Man.

He finally found Gray in a MarsPrep camp just over the Bolivian border and into Peru, hiding behind some cheap facial surgery and the name Rodriguez. It wasn't a bad cover in itself, and probably would have stood standard scrutiny. Security checks in the prep camps were notoriously lax, the truth was that they didn't much care who you'd been before you signed up. But there were still a few obvious signs you could look for if you knew how, and Carl, with a methodical intensity that was starting to resemble desperation, had been looking for weeks. He knew that Gray was up on the altiplano somewhere, because the trail led there from Bogota, and because where else, ultimately, was a variant thirteen going to run. He knew this, and he knew it was just a matter of time before the traces showed up and someone called it in. But he also knew, with induction programmes everywhere skimping and speeding up to meet increasing demand, that time was on the other man's side. Something had to give, and soon, or Gray was going to be gone and Carl wasn't going to get his bounty.

So when the break came, the tiny morsel of data finally fed back from the web of contacts he'd been plying all those weeks, it was hard not to jump. Hard not to dump his painstakingly constructed cover, fire up his Agency credit and badge and hire the fastest set of all-terrain wheels available in Copocabana. Hard not to tear across the border at Agency speed, raising road dust and rumours all the way to the camp, where Gray, of course, if he had any kind of local support, would be long gone.

Carl didn't jump.

Instead, he called in a couple of local favours and managed to blag a ride across the border with a military liaison unit - some superannuated patrol carrier with a colony corporation's logo sunbleached to fading on the armoured sides. The troops were Peruvian regulars, drafted in from dirt poor families in the coastal provinces and then seconded to corporate security duties. They'd be pulling down little more than standard conscript pay for that, but the interior of the carrier was relatively plush by military standards and it seemed to have air-con. And anyway, they were tough and young, a sort of young you didn't see so much in the western world anymore, innocently pleased with their hard-drilled physical competence and cheap khaki prestige. They all had wide grins for him, and bad teeth, and none was older than twenty. Carl figured the good cheer for ignorance. It was a safe bet these kids didn't know the charge-out rate their high command was extracting from its corporate clients for their services.

Sealed inside the jolting, sweat-smelling belly of the vehicle, brooding on his chances against Gray, Carl would really have preferred to stay silent altogether. He didn't like to talk, never had. Felt in fact that it was a much overrated pastime. But there was a limit to how taciturn you could be when you were getting a free ride. So he mustered some light-weight chat about next week's Argentina-Brazil play-off and threw as little of it into the conversational mix as he thought he could get away with. Some comments about Patricia Mocatta, and the advisability of female captains for teams that were still predominantly male. Player name checks. Tactical comparisons. It all seemed to go down fine.

"¿Eres Marciano?" One of them asked him, finally, inevitably.

He shook his head. In fact, he had been a Martian once, but it was a long, complicated story he didn't feel like telling.

"Soy contable," he told them, because that was sometimes what he felt like. "Contable de biotecnologia."

They all grinned. He wasn't sure if it was because they didn't think he looked like a biotech accountant, or because they just didn't believe him. Either way they didn't push the point. They were used to men with stories that didn't match their faces.

Merry Xmas and all that. See you in the new year at the readings.

Right.

2006 tips over, the sky outside my office window darkens increasingly early, and the thought of swimming in Scottish rivers begins to lose its weekend appeal. Summer, always an uneasy guest in Glasgow, is packing her bags and calling down to reception for the bill. She'll be out of here in a matter of days.

Meanwhile, Black Man (aka Thirteen in the US) is almost done. The imagining is complete, the world of Carl Marsalis and Sevgi Ertekin has solidified, there's less and less place for uncertainty as the plot dictates itself towards a conclusion and the last few twists and chapters lock into place. Matter of weeks now, no more delays. It bears little resemblance to the book I started to write nearly two years ago, but that's okay - it's stronger and more human for the time and the changes.

And beyond the end of Black Man, looms the work in progress that is Land Fit For Heroes. I already have half a dozen chapters for the first of these three fantasy novels, and the end result is looking darker and more noirish by the minute. This, I hope, will be a sword and sorcery tale whose most appropriate soundtrack would be the Rolling Stones singing 'Street Fighting Man'. Hope that sounds as appealing to y'all as it does to me.

In the world of comics, Black Widow volume 2 is now out in graphic novel format, with the pleasingly rhythmic title The Things They Say About Her, but it doesn't look like there'll be a volume 3. My take on Natasha really seems to have been an artefact of limited appeal, but I've had a lot of fun with it, so count myself well satisfied. I've also met a lot of enthusiastic people in the comic-book industry who've expressed interest in a variety of on-going collaborations. Other undeveloped graphic novel projects are sitting around on my desktop at the moment like pre-midnight gremlins, notably a blood-soaked monster epic tentatively titled Gloaming, and a more subtle meditation on crime and magic with the working title Geezer. We'll see if I get round to feeding these gizmos or not...

So - back in the saddle, and back to work. And heartfelt thanks to all those many people out there who've been so supportive over the last few months. You know who you are. I hope the extended wait proves worthwhile.

Cheers