Got the  copyedit through from the litpixies at Orbit, and as always eye-openers come thick and fast. With emphasis on the word thick. Just goes to show – you really do need other eyes to look over that great mound of words and make sure that infelicities are hounded to their lairs and dragged out into the pitiless glare of daylight. To be sure, a lot of the necessary corrections are of the inexplicable words type, requiring clarification; occasionally, however, weird sentences turn up where clearly several words have just vanished, leaving the copy editor going ‘Wuh?’ Luckily, I still have my original longhand draft to refer to – and I was on the point of trashing it too. Mebbe I should keep it for some SF archive someplace.

Or put it on Ebay. Whaddyathink?

As some of you may know, the Humanitys Fire books feature (drum roll)….Scots In Space! Not that I would need any prompting to do such a thing, but the BBC Scotland comedy series, Chewin The Fat, certainly played its part with an inspired sketch from the 2002 Hogmanay special, which you can download from this page at the Weehowff -

http://www.weehowff.com/downloads.htm

Its the 1st in the video section, with a choice of 8mb or 3 mb, ken!

As you can see, this blog comes out courtesy of the WordPress outfit, and the controls and dashboard provide me, the blog owner, with interesting stats and figures. Including search engine terms that people use to find this blog. Among these is someone who just keys in my name – only they misspell it every time. Instead of ‘Michael Cobley’ they put in ‘Micahael Cobley’. I`m not being judgemental about this, its just that its curiously consistent. Still, so long as its gets them here its fine by me!

This Friday, m’self and Graeme ‘Festive’ Fleming are off to see Paradise Lost in the intimate surroundings of King Tuts Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow. Support band, to my utter delight, is Katatonia – they’re new CD, as previewed on their myspace page, is a luxuriant carnival of gothique gloom, and I hope they`ll be selling it at the gig. 2nd support is a band called Engel, who I`ll have to research before.

I think this is the 4th time we`ve seen PL, and they just seem to keep getting better. As I `ve opined elsewhere on this blog, the new album is a corker, well worth checking out if you’re into the glories of doom metal!

Gig Report

Helluva good night at King Tuts Wah Wah Hut. In the company of Graeme, the prince of prog, on a pouring wet Glasgow night, we threaded through the hot downstairs bar and up to the gig floor, getting ready for the noise. The merch table had plenty of Tshirts and Engel’s CD but sadly no CDs for either Paradise Lost or Katatonia, bit of a blow as I really wanted to get the latter (the former I already got).

Then Engel came on for an energetic 30-odd minutes, a competent groove tho the vocals were a bit too death-squally for me. After them came Katatonia who, after a hesitant start, really got into it and put out an excellent performance; there were a good number of Katatonia fans there last night and they got right behind the numbers.

Then it was the turn of the headliners, Paradise Lost, out on tour promoing their sparkling new CD, Faith Divides Us… And they kicked into gear from the off, and the crowd went WILD….in a doomtastic, head-moshing kinda way. The tracks of the new CD sounded crisp and electric, and had real bite, as did most of the rest of the set, which included quite a few songs from Draconian Times, out in 1995. The band finished with a 3-song encore which had the crowd stomping and yelling along.

All in all, an excellent night although mention should be made of those who sat over in the side-located bar area, chattering away at the top of their voices, making it difficult to us to hear what Nicky Holmes was actually saying between songs. I dont know what thats all about – why would people come up into the gig floor then spend their time not watching the band but flapping their noisy gobs at each other for 2-3 hours?

And a big hi to Ritchie, the Royal Navy writer that we met – Ritchie, mate, we`re still convinced that Engel means ‘garden hose’ in some european language or other!

Yes, my short story, The Makers Mark, a Humanitys Fire story no less, will appear in the CONFLICTS anthology, edited by Ian Whates, and published by Newcon Press in time for its launch at Eastercon next year (to be held at the Heathrow Radisson Edwardian). For your edification, here is the anth’s running order:

Psi.Copath – Andy Remic                                       

The Maker’s Mark – Michael Cobley                     

Sussed – Keith Brooke                                             

The Cuisinart Effect – Neal Asher                           

Harmony in My Head – Rosanne Rabinowitz       

Our Land – Chris Beckett                                        

Fallout – Gareth L. Powell                                      

Proper Little Soldier – Martin McGrath                

War Without End – Una McCormack                    

Dissimulation Procedure – Eric Brown                   

In the Long Run – David L. Clements                    

Last Orders – Jim Mortimore                                  

Songbirds – Martin Sketchley

…which is a pretty terrific lineup! Time I got my Eastercon membership sorted out, I reckon.

So, to the Ferry, well-known Glasgow venue, being an actual former ferryboat converted and moored at the north bank of the Clyde, near the city centre. With a capacity of about 500, the Ferry is a popular, all year-round venue.I was there with me ol’ mucker (and ex-call centre groover) Graeme Fleming, and also chanced to meet an old friend of mine, Lorna Shields, who it turned out was with Abel Ganz, as she knows em! So, Abel Ganz are a Glasgow prog band which has sprung back into life in the last coupla years (they were previously active in the 80s). I last saw them in 1985 at one of the rock festivals held in Kelvingrove Park back then, at the park’s crumbling, post-Victorian bandstand. The next time was at King Tuts Wah Wah Hut 2 years, supporting…Pallas. Not such a surprise since AG’s former lead singer, Alan Reed, left them to join Pallas back in…1985. Ah, connections. So this night they played three long tracks, So Far, Rain Again, and Sheepish, all complex prog epics faultlessly played. Word is that AG are about to head for the studio to lay down a new album. Can’t wait.

Aberdonians Pallas always put on a great show, always hard-working and committed heart and soul to live musical excitement. Tonight was no exception with a set drawn from all the eras of the band’s history, from Sentinel right up to Dreams Of Men. They also included a surprise taste of next year’s new album, 3 tracks, Monster, Falling Down (I think), and a third track whose title I didnt hear. All were excellent, continuing at the superlative level of the last CD, Dreams Of Men, a highwater mark easily matching the magnificence of The Sentinel. And of course, we were treated to the inimitable Euan Lowson putting in a special guest turn to sing Cut & Run.

A couple of hitches niggled – problems with the synth/FX device taking time to reboot, and a slight hoarseness in Alan Reed’s voice. But these didnt even slow the onrushing juggernaut of uplifting prog excellence which was the bands performance. Roll on 2010 and The Sentinel Pt 2!

For those not in the know, Keith Olbermann is a news and political commentator on MSNBC channel in the States, with his own show, Countdown. Olbermann has in the past come out with some astonishing, straight-from-the-shoulder critiques of, first, the Bush administration and more recently the actions of the Obama administration. Well, about a day ago he delivered what was practically an essay-like speech lasting 42 minutes on the question of healthcare reform, viscerally illustrated by his personal experience of his father’s illness.

Watch it – even at 42 minutes, it is rivetting:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23672.htm

Yes, got this info from Pete Crowther at PS Publishing a while back and it kinda fell through the cracks. So belatedly here it is, the running order for the next double issue of Postscripts Quarterly, entitled Edison’s Frankenstein, which also contains a story from me:

Y’know, one thing I’ve learned about the publishing industry is that whatever timetable is agreed, provisionally or otherwise, you can usually assume that rescheduling will take place somewhere along the line. As it is with the ongoing progress relating to the republication of Dave Wingrove’s Chung Kuo epic by Atlantic Books. As mentioned before, David has written a prequel to the saga which itself will be published as a larger number of books, ie each volume of the original printing will equate to about 2 volumes in this new reprint.

As DW himself says:

“What you might (say), however, is that I am working – even now – on the reworking of the final books. I’ve re-structured THE MARRIAGE OF THE LIVING DARK and it will be coming out as books 15-18 of the sequence. I’ll be adding something like 300,000 words.”

My advice? – plan ahead, buy more bookshelves!

Additional Snippet – seems that the 1st volume is due to be published in September 2010 and in total there will be 19 volumes.