This is the website of Simon Morden, author of the Metrozone series, published by Orbit Books in the UK and USA.
Here you can read Simon’s latest News and Blog Posts, find information on his books, read published essays and get in touch with the author.
If you’re here for the Heart project, this is the main page.
As someone on Facebook just commented, shouldn’t an award as cool as this be, you know, cooler…?
It is, as we say in these parts, Ronseal, after the wood preservative that “does what it says on the tin”. But in a slyly knowing meta-way, a prosaic Philip K Dick award which symbolically represents something greater than itself while still maintaining its understated certificate-in-a-frame reality is actually mocking the more flamboyant but less confident awards that are determined to be self-consciously physical representations of triumph.
Pretty cool after all, eh?
Posted in: From the Author, Metrozone by Simon Morden on April 23rd, 2012
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As you can probably imagine, there’s been a bit of a surge in traffic recently, so I thought I’d write something in order to point out some of the tourist attractions on offer here.
Free books!
Now that I have your attention… but seriously: free books. If you’re wondering about the Metrozone (as it’s known in the UK)/Samuil Petrovitch (furrin parts), there’s sample chapters of Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom off the links on this page. There’s also Thy Kingdom Come, which is a short story collection I wrote back in 2002, which eventually formed the back-story to the world of the London Metrozone. The whole text is available free as a .pdf file, on this page.
I’ve written a couple of other books you may be interested in: The Lost Art, my YA-but-secretly-for-grown-ups looks-like-a-fantasy-but-it’s-really-hard-SF from David Fickling Books, and my spectacularly tentacular Lovecraftian-styled World Fantasy Award nominated novella Another War. Both are available as dead-tree copies and ebooks from various suppliers.
Second of the free offerings is Heart, my first ever published novel. After being pretty much unavailable for 10 years, I decided to wheel it back out. The unaltered text as an ebook (various formats) is free, and hard copies are available from Lulu.com.
I have also done various talks and workshops at the Greenbelt Arts festival. If you want to know what I really think about Christian fiction, or How Not to Write a Novel, those things can be found in the Essay section. I’m back at Greenbelt this August, talking about the future of publishing.
Apart from that, feel free to wander around. I’m not a prolific blogger, but sometimes have something interesting to say: there’s an RSS feed and a Metrozone facebook page to help keep folk up-to-date. Thanks for dropping by.
Posted in: From the Author, Heart, Metrozone, News and Updates by Simon Morden on April 10th, 2012
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Sorry for lack of bloggage last night. But I have some time to spare at King’s Cross, having been delivered far more promptly than I anticipated by some excellent public transport (free bus from hotel to airport bus station, then tube to King’s X). Inevitably, a bloke on the bus (hello, Simon) said “you’ve been to Olympus, haven’t you?” So I talked about writing, and he talked about being a outside broadcast engineer, which is by far a more interesting job day-to-day. We also talked about Novacon (in Nottingham in October), and I’m seriously considering going anyway. It might be a sign.
Yesterday, then. Again, the will to go to all those interesting panels was subverted by long, involved conversations about the state of publishing, the rise of ebooks, creating income streams and such like. The publishing world is in a state of flux, and no one is quite sure how the chips will fall. Publishers getting it wrong is actually a good thing, as it not only means they’re trying, but it’s one less failure mode for others to test.
I met my UK editor Anna for drinks (tea, as going on a panel worse for wear is a, unprofessional, and b, a really, really bad idea. More on this later) and some mutual back-slapping. Editors do matter – they make books better, as well as all the other services that publishers provide, including at least a minimum bar of quality, which is becoming increasingly important. So winning the PKD isn’t just good news for me, it’s good news for Orbit too (not just that they get bragging rights over Gollancz for a whole year either…).
More conversations in the afternoon, but I also wanted to hear Cory Doctorow on the ebook panel, which I did. Lots of ideas there, regarding publishing models and DRM, which I’m going to have to think hard about. It would be easy to just steal Cory’s ideas, but there’s no guarantee he’s got all the right answers.
Then onto the BSFA awards.
Much has been said about John Meaney’s introduction. To say it was ill-judged would be charitable, but I’m a fairly charitable bloke, so I’ll say it was ill-judged and leave it at that. People did walk out. A lot more simply sat in their seats, cringing. That some of those who walked out, walked straight into my one and only panel on “The Personal is Political” will give those not present some idea of the trouble I was about to get into.
The panel. Difficult. Really very difficult. I don’t honestly think anything I say now will be helpful one way or another, so I’ll just make two observations. Firstly, I had prepared notes on the tension between creative freedom and social mores, on the ability of books to give vicarious insights and experiences for the good, as well as for the ill, and also on the problems of describing conflicting political and social institutions – you know, things I actually have experience on as a writer and why I presumed I was on the panel. Secondly, that wasn’t what the panel was about at all, as I discovered in the Green Room. It was a difficult, and ultimately frustrating hour. Sorry if I’m being cryptic but it wasn’t my finest moment.
So there was beer afterwards. Much, much beer and some very good company. Paul Cornell, Tom Hunter, another Simon, Emma Newman (whose book “20 years later” I bought) and and and, and even G R R Martin, briefly. Which was nice. A proper con-rounding off evening, in fact. The icing was someone (Rob, I think. I was a touch on the tipsy side by then) saying it was reading my blogs from last year that swung it for them to attend this year. Eastercon: well worth going to – next year it’s in Bradford, and it’s going to be brilliant.
Posted in: From the Author, News and Updates by Simon Morden on April 9th, 2012
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Well, that was fun. I think I’ve shaken more hands today than on any given day in the rest of my life. The thing is, is that everybody seems genuinely delighted for me, and as I remarked to Tom Hunter, administrator of the Clarkes, there’s no rancour that might be associated with other, lesser awards… pfft.
But seriously, it’s been brilliant. I’ve had the opportunity to thank Jon Courtney Grimwood for supplying such an excellent cover quote, and Pat Cadigan for writing some kick-ass cyberpunk which inevitably inspired the Metrozone. I’ve spoken to Anna, my UK editor, on the phone, and met up with Anne, one of the other Orbit editors (no Bananagram this year. Curses!). And the spontaneous round of applause in the bar which left me redder-cheeked than the Greater Red-Cheeked Authorbird caught in mid-blush. And Jared and Anne from Pornokitsch, and and and. I haven’t managed to buy a single drink all day, either, even if it’s a nice cup of tea. Which has been especially helpful as I’m running solely on caffeine and adrenalin.
But I have also been to panels: first up was magic and technology with such luminaries as Juliet McKenna, Chris Wooding and Adrian Tchikovsky, discussing the meeting point of science and the arcane arts in their books, and how it all needs to fit together. Then there was also the Gollancz digital Gateway talk, in which I asked awkward questions regarding the accuracy of OCR technology. Sorry, Darren.
I should reasonably have gone to another panel later (the Not the Clarke Awards), and I was tempted by the Doctor Who evening double-bill (Human Nature/Family of Blood), but I didn’t make it out of the bar – more beers and food with Anne, new Orbit author Francis Knight, and Gail Carriger, followed by an early night. I’m such a lightweight. On the plus side, I haven’t been in the Dealers’ Room yet, so my wallet may yet thank me.
Posted in: From the Author, News and Updates by Simon Morden on April 7th, 2012
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Result.
My lovely wife (and this just shows how lovely she is) watched the live streaming content and then phoned me up to tell me I’d won. Having staggered to conciousness, because let’s face it, 4am in the morning is not my best time, she played me the relevant bit over the phone, and yes – there it was: Ellen Wright reading out my acceptance speech, some of it in Russian.
“Yobany stos! I appear to have won. What I have failed to do, however, is appear in person to collect the award and thank the judges, for which I sincerely apologise.
I’m reasonably certain that any author sitting down to write an award-winning novel would be in the grip of massive hubris – and therefore almost certain to be destroyed by the gods – and winning anything, let alone the Philip K Dick award, couldn’t have been further from my mind when I wrote Equations of Life, Theories of Flight and Degrees of Freedom.
What I did do was set out to have a huge amount of fun. I hope that showed through, even as Petrovitch lost yet another body part to be replaced with shiny, shiny metal. I appreciate that the series isn’t exactly ‘high art’, and the books have been on the receiving end of brickbats as well as bouquets. Apart from writing them – and there’s a tip right here: don’t write something you’re not enjoying, because life is genuinely too short – what I’ve enjoyed most is hearing from people who Get It. Not that I’m suggesting for a moment that “What would Petrovitch do?” is any way to approach decision-making, but the sparks of recognition some of you have been kind enough to tell me about, or just post on the internet, have meant a great deal to me. Every author seeks an audience, and I’m very lucky as I have the smartest and best audience in the world, people who read science fiction.
It’s probably a good thing I’m not actually on stage at the moment because I would be blubbing like Gwyneth Paltrow, and no one wants to see that. Thank you for this tremendous honour. I’m going to let Ellen sit down now: vyp’em za to, chtoby u nas vsegda byl povod dlya prazdnika! (May we always have a reason for a party!)”
Which pretty much sums it up. Thanks to everyone involved over in Seattle, judges, organisers and audience. Onwards and upwards.
Posted in: From the Author, Metrozone, News and Updates by Simon Morden on April 7th, 2012
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