Today Boing Boing posted a piece about a lightbulb that's burned continuously for 107 years.



Does this guy look like the Janitor from Scrubs or what?



He sure has a hungry look in his eyes.

I was listening to Visage's "Fade to Grey" today and it occurred to me (long after it should have) to look up a translation of the spoken word sections, thinking they might be something from an obscure French existentialist, quoted long after his sad and empty death in perhaps one of the coolest, most futuristic songs ever written.

Alas, it's just the English lyrics translated into French. What a waste! Still, I like the oddly dimensioned bag with its "fixed and cold eyes." I'd be hiding too, I reckon.

Here's the version spewed forth by Dictionary.com's free translator service:

"A man in an isolated station
A bag its dimensioned
Fixed and cold eyes
Show fear when it
Turns itself to hide

The rain feels as an English summer
Hear the notes of a remote song
Leaving behind a poster
Hoping that the life was not also long

To become gray"



This flurry of posts (three in four days--whew!) isn't an indication of business as usual. Alas, I'm on a tight deadline to finish The Scarecrow and can't write more than a sentence at a time on anything else.

I did, however, find time to talk to the wonderful satimaflavell for the latest issue of the specusphere. You'll find the interview here. Satima asked great questions. Take a look.

PS. I'm also launching Malcolm Walker's debut novel, The Stone Crown at the SA Writers' Centre tonight. If you have a fondness for Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Robert Holdstock's Arthurian/contemporary fantasies, you'll like this book as much as I did.

PPS. I'm late in pointing out that Earth Ascendant had its world premiere as a spoken word release through the great guys at Audible. You can buy it at their website (or through iTunes) and get a walk-through of the next million or so years of history, easy.

PPPS. Oh, and The Force Unleashed ( has a new cover. )

Onward and upward!

Courtesy of the excellently-named Marshal Zeringue:

What is Sean Williams Reading?
Writers Read: Sean Williams (the full version, comes with free Rob Shearman plug*)

So many books, so little etc.

* And by that I don't mean a plug shaped like Rob Shearman, although I suppose there could be a market for such a thing.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a face in this picture of the centre of our galaxy?

Gary Numan in 2006. Zappa and War of the Worlds in 2007. Iron Maiden in 2008, and now Devo. My daggy youth is haunting me, and I love it!

All I need is the 1980 line-up of Tangerine Dream and ELO to reform, and Robert Palmer to come back to life, and I'll be in heaven.

DEVO AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2008

Thursday 31 July 2008 - Festival Hall, Melbourne
Friday 1 August 2008 - Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
Saturday 2 August 2008 - Splendor in the Grass Festival, Byron Bay
Tuesday 5 August 2008 - Thebarton Pavilion, Adelaide
Wednesday 6 August 2008 - Metro City, Perth

Dan Rubinstein of OUT magazine recently interviewed me for their transgender issue. Why? Because Saturn Returns features a male character "reborn" into a woman body, and the third book plays with his gender even more overtly. The piece didn't make the print version, alas, but has appeared on-line.

Here's the link to Dan's final version, and below the cut is the full interview, which runs over two thousand words.

( 7) Is there anything that a real transgendered person could learn from your character's struggle, as far as learning about identity goes? )

Icon courtesy of Nick Stathopoulos.

Thanks, everyone, for the best wishes (the haiku remedies particularly helped). I'm back on-deck now and pondering which news to blog first: Swancon, the launches of Magic Dirt and The Changeling, finishing The Grand Conjunction, the Ditmar Awards, my Dickless status, the wonderful rain in Adelaide...?

I guess I'll start with the first one and work my way through. Swancon was a blast. Thanks to everyone involved for putting on another wonderful show. There have been reports posted on-line and I don't see the need in repeating what's been said many times over, but the guests were wonderful, the masquerade was a hoot, and the weekend in general went by in a happy, drunken blur. "Tick...tick...tick...tick...BOOM!"

A very big thank you to everyone who attended the launches, and even engaged in audience participation when pressed to. Magic Dirt is out and proud, and available from Ticonderoga in two splendid editions. Buy it now, if only for the cover! The Changeling is just as beautiful, imho, and a very different read. The feedback has been wonderful. I hope every kid in Australia reads and is freaked out by it.

Saturn Returns might have missed out on the Philip K Dick Award (despite Jay Lake's most excellent spruiking of it on the night), but it was still a splendid spread to be part of. Receiving the Ditmar Award at Swancon was icing on the cake, really, and I'm enormously grateful to everyone who voted for it. Kudos to everyone else nominated, and congratulations to the other winners on the night. This is such a talented and good-natured community. There will never be enough awards to go around.

My damaged status had everything to do with sleepless nights and exposure to the real world, and bore no relation at all to the cold and wet Adelaide to which I returned home. Perfect weather, really, to dive into the final edits of The Grand Conjunction, the last book in the Astropolis series. It's been a long and winding road, writing this book; I'm both relieved and sad it's done. So often I don't know what books are about until I've finished them, and in this case it appears I've spawned another romance: one in which the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda plays a role, but a romance all the same. I'm a sucker for it, I guess.

My next projects are The Scarecrow (the last of this round of kids' books) and completely reorganising my study (you know, because there's never a good time so it might as well be now). Lined up after that are a thriller, another YA novel, PhD stuff, and appearances here and there. I'll report on the latter as they grow nearer.

For now, I'm off to have some soup.

Thanks for being such a wonderful bunch of people. I am sending you all happy vibes.

"Life is just one big banana. Science fiction allows us all to peel open the reality and discover the yellow truth inside."

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)