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approaching pavonis mons by balloon approaching pavonis mons by balloon occasionally science fiction but mostly frogs and bats wednesday 19 august 2026 another fundraising half marathon it s coming around to the latter part of summer which means i m building up to the cardiff half marathon in early october this year i ll be aiming to raise funds for stroke association if you d like to support my effort then please follow this link https cardiffhalf26 enthuse com pf alastair reynolds you can read a bit about my reasons for doing the run over there and i ll also be logging progress here and there as i try to get myself ready for the big day i ve had a few minor niggles over this summer which have impacted my running meaning it feels like a bit of a bigger hill to overcome than it did this time last year but i m confident i can grind my way around come what may and i have a 10k in cardiff next month as a warm up for the longer run which should help my readers were incredibly generous in 2024 and 2025 when i ran for alzheimers uk and cancer research wales respectively and also for my 100 runs in 100 days thing that i did last year in connection with red january and believe me it makes a massive difference to my motivation to see those donations so if you are able to sponsor me again it s greatly appreciated and every little drop helps thanks again al r posted by al r at 09 22 no comments thursday 13 august 2026 broadcast heard this on lauren laverne s six music show yesterday wow it s amazing they re my new favorite band wait it came out in 2000 how is that even possible i have never heard this before and the singer trish keenan passed away in 2011 after contracting h1n1 swine flu sometimes the world just doesn t seem fair posted by al r at 03 49 4 comments tuesday 11 august 2026 that was july that was sharing a laugh with peter while on stage photo by thorsten wulff i had a busy productive july i got the month off to a promising start by joining peter f hamilton in berlin where we attended metropol con 26 the european sf convention our visit was in conjunction with our friends from the otherland bookstore where peter and i had both done successful and enjoyable events in the past although not together peter and i flew in on separate flights and met up at the moxy hotel just one s bahn stop down the line from the excellent event venue at the silent green kulturquartier a converted former crematorium it sounds unpromising but you couldn t ask for a better event space and everyone there looked to be having a very good time signing with peter thanks to everyone who came along it was great to meet you all we certainly enjoyed ourselves with some excellent beers and meals in the evening and peter and i also found time to visit the berlin technical museum i think the c 47 dc 3 dakota might be one of my favorite aircraft types but you d know that if you ve read one of my earlier novels there s just something so totally right about them and credit to peter for spotting this before i did it s a piece of circa 1800 plateway from of all places merthyr tydfil just up the road from where i live in wales fantastic i ve always been impressed with berlin as a beautiful liveable city spacious and airy with wonderful public transport and great amenities and this third visit did nothing to change my opinion many thanks to wulf and friends from otherland and to the organisers of metropol con i think it was a great success and thanks also to my good friend peter for his usual great company i d also like to thank photographer thorsten wulff for the beautiful prints he gave me of bowie and patti smith truly wonderful beers with wulf that stuff a dark lager was bloody lethal especially as i hadn t touched a drop of alcohol since the start of may your new favorite band photo according to wulf photo by thorsten wulff upon returning from berlin i had a short week back in wales in the middle of this blistering continuing heatwave during which i just about managed to continue work on the new book the second round of edits for merlin s way had in fact come in just before i left but rather than work on them in a fragmented fashion i opted to hold fire until i d got back from my second big trip of the month this time to spain you need to be in a certain mindset to focus on edits in my experience and it s best done in an uninterrupted workflow the spanish trip was built around attending celsius the festival of horror fantasy and sf in aviles northern spain the brilliant writer ian watson had very kindly invited me to come along in 2020 but because of covid and my mother s ill health i had to decline ian had re invited me for 2026 and i was more than happy to accept ian passed away earlier this year but his partner cristina was determined that celsius should proceed i cannot thank cristina enough for her warmth enthusiasm and helpfulness during what must have been an incredibly trying period but i can only hope that the evident success of the festival offered some small reward for the effort invested my wife travelled with me and we were very well looked after and made extremely welcome by all present aviles is a wonderful location for the festival it was actually cooler and rainier than wales while we were there which was no bad thing and i know many writers make a point of returning it s a very chilled affair for the attendees and although the events tend to run well into the night there s no stress and always the promise of some good wine and tapas to reward one s sterling efforts i was delighted incidentally to find out that another ian ian mcdonald was also attending he s one of those who ve made repeat visits and it was lovely to catch up with him over wine and grub i have to pinch myself sometimes getting to hang out with the likes of ian after first discovering his stories thirty five years ago when we were both a lot lot younger and very much closer to the beginnings of our careers than the ends i d sold a couple of stories to interzone but they d not yet published them when in early 1990 i came across ian s first short story collection empire dreams in the books section of grace brothers department store no not the fictional grace brothers from are you being served but the actual one that used to exist in sydney and maybe elsewhere anyway i read ian s stories with amazement and envy blown away by his use of language and seemingly effortless ease with all the gnarly tropes of sf and it s a source of great delight to get to hang out with him all these years later i also enjoyed meeting among others and in no particular order paolo bacigalupi jo walton ursula vernon becky chambers we d said hello in berlin and wole talabi who gave an excellent interview full of interesting insights on ai anyway celsius was great my wife and i flew in and out of bilbao where we ve got family but even the five hour bus ride to aviles and back went smoothly once i was back and settled in wales i cracked on with the delayed edits for merlin those went pretty smoothly and the ms is now back with my editor who reports that the changes i sent back all look good barring any further queries therefore the book s next port of call will be typesetting after which it will go out for proofing that s about the last stage at which any alterations can be made and they ought to be small ones by then after which the book will move to the printers ready for publication early next year and i meanwhile am now back working on the next one which has the working title the dream farms we ll see if that sticks posted by al r at 08 56 9 comments saturday 27 june 2026 thanks thank you to all who braved the heat to meet me at cowbridge library it was lovely to see you all and i could have chatted for hours thanks also to phil and charlotte at the library for a most enjoyable event and just because i heard it on the radio in the car on the drive down this rather gorgeous piece of new music from pj harvey which i believe was commissioned by brian cox splendid posted by al r at 05 41 5 comments wednesday 24 june 2026 cowbridge library event on friday 26th june i m a little late posting this but if you re in the cowbridge area this friday afternoon i ll be doing a talk and q a at the library there ll be another south wales library event a bit later in the year but in the meantime i look forward to seeing people in cowbridge posted by al r at 12 11 7 comments tuesday 23 june 2026 i knew brexit would be a disaster and i was right what i posted in june 2016 on the eve of the brexit referendum why i m for the uk remaining in the eu in a very short while the uk will be holding a referendum on the country s continued membership of the eu at the moment judged on the polls which are of course often inaccurate as with the last general election things seem to be heading the way of a vote to leave i think it would be a great shame were this to happen as a young scientist i benefitted tremendously from the freedom of movement allowed within the eu i m not talking about my time within the european space agency which is a non eu organisation although that experience certainly helped frame my views on european cooperation and integration but having left esa in 1994 i was immediately able to take up a two year postdoctoral position at a dutch university and i did so with the minimum of hassle and paperwork once again i was immersed in a pan european working environment which i found stimulating and encouraging after my postdoctoral position expired in 1996 i found myself unemployed there were a handful of possible job opportunities back in the uk but i had grown fond of the netherlands and my partner at the time who later became my wife had a full time job she too had benefitted from freedom of movement within the eu disinclined to leave holland therefore i signed on for unemployment benefit from the dutch state while continuing to look for work opportunities within the area where we lived i applied for one job in delft working on satellite monitoring of the earth s atmosphere but was not made an offer luck eventually intervened in that i saw an advert in nature for a newly founded business in haarlem which would revolve around developing scientific software for astronomical applications it seemed right up my street almost literally so in that haarlem was only a short train ride from where we lived near leiden i applied for the job and was suitably astonished to learn that the driving force behind the business was an old colleague of mine and a welshman like me who had settled in the netherlands we met for an interview which went well while there was a strong prospect of working for the company in the future though there was still going to be a few more months of unemployment i therefore continued to sign on while going through the motions of looking for work it was an odd unsettling time but in hindsight a blessing because it enabled me to dust off the abandoned manuscript of revelation space and finally give it the polish it needed prior to submission that was early 1997 and the book sold two years later those months of unemployment were therefore literally life changing and i owe them to the dutch state and eu regulations on worker s rights many of the arguments for and against membership of the eu seem to revolve around economics which seems to me to be an extremely narrow metric even if we are better off out of the eu which we probably won t be so what this is already a wealthy country and leaving the eu won t mend the widening inequality between the very rich and almost everyone else more than that though look at what would be lost friendship commonality freedom of movement a sense that national boundaries are and should be evaporating when many countries including the netherlands moved to the euro it was a joy not to have to pack guilders belgian francs deutschmarks for a simple drive to visit to family in germany a few hours away the eradication of visible borders did not lead to a smearing out of regional cultures but instead it made it much more easy to sample those cultures and gain a deeper sense of european history i never stopped feeling that living in the eu was a thing to be proud of and more than ever i am content to think of myself as european before british i therefore hope that the remain vote will win the day https approachingpavonis blogspot com 2016 06 why im for uk remaining in eu html comment form posted by al r at 05 53 1 comment thursday 4 june 2026 i m unreasonably excited about this posted by al r at 14 55 3 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom followers about me al r alastair reynolds science fiction writer i used to work for the european space agency now i live in wales and write full time i left twitter in 2016 view my complete profile blog archive 2026 11 august 3 another fundraising half marathon broadcast that was july that was june 4 may 2 january 2 2025 42 october 3 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