A Couple Of Bits and Pieces of News...

From the email,

FORBIDDEN PLANET is delighted to be hosting one of our trademark multi-author signings. At 3:00pm on Saturday 30th July, Forbidden Planet 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London will be playing host to: -



Tim Lebbon has won the Bram Stoker Award for his short fiction, and the British Fantasy Society Award four times. His novelisation of the movie 30 DAYS OF NIGHT also won him a Scribe Award in 2008. Surrounded by a vast, toxic desert, the inhabitants of labyrinthine Echo City believe there is no other life in their world. Some like it that way, so when a stranger arrives he is anathema to powerful interest groups.

Dr Simon Morden is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics, and is one of the few people who can truthfully claim to have held a chunk of Mars in his hands. Degrees Of Freedom is the third in the Metrozone series of books, set in the decaying urban jungle of a future London.

Philip Palmer writes intelligent, darkly humorous SF fizzing with energy, explosions and originality – as shown in the incredible acclaim for his previous novels Debateable Space and Red Claw. Philip is also a film and television writer and producer and writes for radio and theatre. The Hell Ship hurtles through space. Inside the ship are thousands of slaves, each the last of their race. The Hell Ship and its infernal crew destroyed their homes, slaughtered their families and imprisoned them forever.

Nicole Peeler vexes literature in her role as an assistant professor of English Literature at Louisiana State University. The heroine of Tempest Rising, Jane True always knew she didn't quite fit in with so-called normal society. During her nightly, clandestine swim in the freezing winter ocean, a grisly find leads Jane to startling revelations about her heritage: she is only half-human.

Go and meet some cool authors! Not only that though, look out for the bearded guy holding a cute baby... that'll be me! :o) I'll be anxiously working up the courage to talk to Tim Lebbon and may/may not also be clutching books to be signed by Morden and Palmer. See you there :o)

From the other email,

Solaris has released a free online copy of one of the British Fantasy Society Award-nominated stories from its celebrated anthology of horror stories set in and around the Underground.


'The Lure', by Nicholas Royle, is now available as a free download. Both it and The End of the Line anthology were nominated last month for the prestigious awards

'The Lure' – an erotically-charged tale of voyeurism and dread sparked when someone sees an unusual stranger on the Paris Metro – is a stand-out tale in an anthology that The Times described as “...an excellent sampling of the best writers in this field...”.

'The Lure' is available to download as a PDF from Solaris’ website.

Funnily enough, 'The Lure' is probably one of the stories that I enjoyed the least in what was generally an excellent anthology of horror. Still, it's a free read and you can't go too far wrong with that... ;o)