Steampunk Time Machine...

... discovered in the United States.

2008 Sidewise Awards

SfSignal have recently announced the nominees for the 2008 Sidewise Awards.

The Sidewise Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize excellence in alternate history fiction. The 2008 Sidewise Awards will be presented at Anticipation, the 67th Worldcon, to be held in Montreal, Canada from August 6-10, 2009. The winners are selected from a panel of judges that currently includes Stephen Baxter, Evelyn Leeper, Jim Rittenhouse, Stuart Shiffman, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven H Silver.

Unfortunately, none of my Pax Britannia books appear on the list of nominees, although another title along very similar lines, George Mann's The Affinity Bridge has been. So good luck to him.

Spring-Heeled Jack is coming...

Something to whet your steampunk appetites...

Human Nature reviewed on Amazon

The 'official' reviews have spoken very favourably of Human Nature (Ulysses Quicksilver's third outing) and now the punters themselves are having their say.

This very positive review by M. R. N. Shackelford appeared on the Amazon site recently:

A delightful tale of derring-do, damsels in distress, Frankenstein monsters, Victorian heroes and dim policemen - this is a sort of dubious offspring of Conan-Doyle and Steam-Punk. We are in the year 1997, but Victoria is still on the throne and the magnificence of the British Empire is undimmed. But although they have "personal communicators" - made of brass, teak and enamel (!) - they also suffer the worse side of the Industrial Revolution - with smog and pollution everywhere, and the poor still live in rookeries and hovels, dressed in tatters. This book follows on from the (equally amusing) "Unnatural History" and "Leviathan Rising", and observes the adventures of our hero - Ulysses Quicksilver - dandy and secret agent... in a "Hound of the Baskervilles" in Whitby adventure - with the occasional Fagin character, and some great names - "Molesworth" the butler scores 10/10, and another character (who only appears for a moment) is called Mycroft, in a nod to Mr. Holmes. This is NOT great literature and the prose does sometimes hiccup in its enthusiasm - but read fast enough you don't notice it. Definitely recommended for that long flight / train journey / weekend with Great Aunt Gloria.

If you've not read Human Nature for yourself yet, why not pick up a copy and see if you agree with Mark's assessment?

Immortalised in print

Long time readers of this blog will already know that Michelle Powell won a competition last year to appear as a character within the pages of Ulysses Quicksilver's most recent adventure, Human Nature.

You can catch her cameo appearance in Chapter One, when Miss Michelle Powell - velocipede driver and budding amateur engineer - visits consulting detective Gabriel Wraith.

Michelle kindly sent me some photos of herself* holding her signed personalised copy of the book, as you can see here.













If you missed out yourself last time, you may be interested to know that I am currently considering running a similar competition this time tied to Ulysses Quicksilver's fifth exciting outing, entitled Blood Royal. So watch this space for more details!

* Apologies to Michelle for the lateness of me posting this. My excuse is that I've been caught up with writing the follow-up to Human Nature, Evolution Expects.

Abaddon website revamp

Abaddon Books have revamped their website, and very cool it's looking too. (I like the post-it notes in particular.) And that means they've also updated the list of books they'll be publishing before the end of the year.


The sharp-eyed among you will notice that at the end of the list of forthcoming titles is a title called Pax Britannia: Blood Royal, which is the first sneaky peek of my fifth - yes, fifth! - Ulysses Quicksilver adventure.

Now, I must see about getting my author biog updated...

Breaking news!

For some exciting news about an upcoming Jonathan Green publication, click here!