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If you missed the January 2011 Analog and are wondering what to consider nominating in the current awards season, my story Enigma can now be read on my website. Enigma combines the first contact theme with graffiti, and explains why we may never meet a live alien. The humans in the story are no longer entirely human either, but I think that's only a matter of time. Enigma is on the NESFA 2011 list of Hugo recommendations under novelette.
Our New Year's Eve 2011 ended on a literary and musical high at the Trash Masquerade hosted by Neil Gaiman (left) and Amanda Palmer (far right).The Beginner's Guide to Being Nervous at the Hugo Awards
Getting a briefing from George RR Martin on the filming of the second season of his epic 'Song of Fire and Ice' during the Reno World Con. Over the past decade I have attended four Hugo ceremonies while standing in for other people, so I assumed that the 2011 Hugos would be pretty familiar territory for me. Big mistake. Now I know that there is nothing quite like actually being a nominee and having a personal stake in the results to thoroughly shred one's nerves. There was a rehearsal in the afternoon, during which I had to hold a Hugo trophy, so that I would be familiar with the weight and not drop it if I won. I remember thinking that I was holding a Hugo officially for the very first time, and that I now officially knew that Hugos are very heavy. In past years the pre-Hugo drinks seemed to stretch out for hours, but this time my perception was that they flew past in about fifteen minutes. I remember the drinks, but not the food. My daughter assures me that there was food, and that I ate some. My mind was a bit like a car with the accelerator and brake pedals both flat to the floor. Suddenly we were being escorted to the hall for the big show, but it seemed way too early. During the ceremony I had to try to keep a blank mind for the whole 140 or so minutes before Best Novelette was announced, to stop the rather ominous pain behind my left eye getting any worse. Once I knew I had not won, everything became a lot easier. I sat back, relaxed, enjoyed the Novella and Novel presentations, and looked forward to the Loser's Party. At the Losers' Party the breakdown of the voting was posted, however, and I realised that the official Hugo ceremony was not the end of the story. My novelette Eight Miles turned out to be the runner up for Best Novelette! This was like just missing out on an Olympic gold medal, starting to walk off the field, then being called back by the officials and told: "What? Didn't you know about the silver medal for coming second?" Suddenly I had something to celebrate, which is a bit odd for a Losers' Party. Now I want to know if being nominated for a second Hugo is quite so hard on the nerves. Sean's novelette Eight Miles, published in last September's Analog, was shortlisted for the 2011 Hugo Awards and voted runner-up. If you wish to read it, click here.
The Hugo nominated 'Eight Miles' was hailed as the best story of the September Analog in the August issue of Locus, and is in the Locus Recommended Reading for 2010. If you want to know what aeronautics was capable of in 1840, and if you like your steampunk to have more steam and less punk, check out 'Eight Miles'. Click on the link at the top right to read the full story. It has now been picked up by the audiobook anthology The Top TenTales of Science Fiction 3 and The Year’s Best SF 16. Back in 1840 they could build balloons to go twice as high as Everest, but humans tended to die at only five or six miles. 'Eight Miles' is about a man trying to push the envelope, but even with leading edge 1840s life support it is rather tricky at that height. Why eight miles? His passenger has breathing problems at lower altitudes. "The Iron Warlock" The Iron Warlock online novel experiment A year ago, in June 2010, I decided to join the ranks of those experimenting with internet publishing and put the first draft of a novel on my website, one chapter per month, for ten months. As well as 155,000 words of text, I also added pictures and research notes that showed what was happening in the real world in real history. Judging by the responses that were sent to me, readers liked the novel, and really appreciated the pictures and footnotes. There was just one problem: only one or two readers actually suggested corrections or improvements. I'm not sure what to conclude from this. There were certainly plenty of errors in Draft #1, I know because I have just finished changing vast areas of the text and expanding it by 25,000 words. Are readers just too polite to point out errors or suggest improvements? Whatever the case, the exercise certainly did wonders for my website's hit rate. Now I am withdrawing the Draft #1 version of The Iron Warlock, because it's time to start waving Draft #2 at publishers. By way of thanks to all those who checked out Draft #1, I now include the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Draft #2 on my website for your entertainment. Fingers crossed that some publisher likes them enough to express interest in the entire new version of the novel. The story could probably be described as faerie steampunk, and goes thus:
Sean has just sold the novelette Ninety Thousand Horses to Analog. Set in 1899, it is a story of war, intrigue, love, revenge, and a ninety thousand horsepower steam train. It begins: Can revenge be successful if nobody knows about it? I have been asking myself this question ever since Walter Shelton's revenge on his father, on the Yorkshire Downs, on the last day of the last June of the Nineteenth Century. Only I knew about it, and I was not free to speak out, so from 1899 to 1943 I told nobody about the marvel that Walter built out of love and hate. When I did finally break my silence, it was only because the fate of Britain, and possibly the world, was in my hands. Analog has published 'Enigma', in the January/February issue for 2011, and this story features a rather novel new method of first contact. First take a planet with an atmosphere of pure oxygen but no life at all, then cover it with a city with no level surfaces and a lot of empty tunnels.
Sean's short story 'The Precedent' was published in Fantasy and Science Fiction (July/August edition). 'The Precedent', which began life as a movie script. This movie script is now on submission, so fingers crossed. The story takes an earlier example of climate change (Europe's Little Ice Age) and applies one of its consequences (witch trials) to us. So, if you think you will be safely in a retirement home by the time climate change gets really annoying, think again. You might be in court, on trial for your life, for using a leaf blower. 'The Art of the Dragon' is featured on the cover of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August/September 2009, which begins "I was there when the dragon first appeared - and ate the Eiffel Tower." The two mile long steampunk dragon rests quietly after eating most of the world's significant art. His story 'The Spiral Briar' appeared in the April/May Fantasy and Science Fiction. Although fantasy, Sean invented a new type of steam engine for this story. "The best story is Sean McMullen's "The Spiral Briar" ... does an entertaining job of merging the atmosphere of fantasy with the hard-edged nuts-and-bolts of engineer SF ..." Locus, May 2009, Gardner Dozois
The robot seems a bit depressed that 'The Spiral Briar' is the lead story of the April/May Fantasy and Science Fiction. Oh well, you can't please everyone. 'Mother of Champions' is in issue 222 of Interzone: be nice to cheetahs, they are earth's dominant lifeform in this story.
Sean's story 'The Constant Past' features a librarian and a borrower who is a time-travelling serial killer. It appears in 'Dreaming Again' edited by Jack Dann.
Sean's story "A Ring of Green Fire" provides the grand finale in the 'Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy' alongside the extreme fiction of 24 of the genre's most popular authors.
To the Cat's great relief, (see pic below) Sean passed his PhD with flying colours and no need for a rewrite! The Cat claims credit for the immaculate references, and now only answewrs to Dr Cat.
Before the Storm, Sean's novel for young adults, was published in July 2007. Although marketed to young adults, the book has proven a big hit with older adults too. (Check back here for news about a sequel.) Here are just what some reviewers thought about Before the Storm: Publisher's promo trailer for Before the Storm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMszXUGnRTM <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMszXUGnRTM>
Sean's previous Moonworlds novel, Voidfarer, was published by Tor in February 2006 (see Excerpts).
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Artwork for the March/Aprll 'Fantasy and Science Ficton' cover features Sean's story 'Electrica'. Imagine Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe wandering into a Jane Austen novel and you have the basis of 'Electrica'. Regency electronics with harpsichord wires very nearly vanquishes Napoleon five years before Waterloo.
A very punk steampunk character features in 90,000 horses but he sets a speed record that lasts half a century. He does it in the engine modelled below. Read it in the January 2012 Analog.
A magnificent Russian impression of the heroes of 'Eight Miles' published in the Russian magazine 'Esli' October 2011.
To read Sean's Hugo 2011 nominated story - and runner up in the Award "Eight Miles" In 1862 the British aeronauts James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell ascended to 36,000 feet in a balloon - without an oxygen supply. As this very striking Victorian engraving shows, they very nearly lost their lives as they floated on the edge of the stratosphere. The engraving haunted me for many years. The artist certainly worked the situation for maximum drama, yet surely real life must have been pretty close to this. There just had to be a story in it. Finally in 2009, during the Montreal worldcon, I Stan Schmidt cornered me at a party and I promised to write a technically rigorous steampunk story for Analog. On the way back to my hotel room I remembered this engraving, and before going to bed I roughed out the plot of Eight Miles. It was nine miles back then, but that was before I had done any research. It turned out that eight miles might be a very bad idea, but nine miles is certain death.
(The Cat caught red-pawed correcting typos in Eight Miles.) "Changing Yesterday" Sean's latest steampunk young adult novel was released on 1 July and can now be bought from your local bookstore. It is distributed by Pan-Macmillan for Ford Street Publishing. (More information below)
Changing Yesterday continues the story of Before the Storm, and is mostly set aboard a luxury passenger steamship travelling from Melbourne to London in 1901. This is the age of giant steam engines and spark gap radios, when motorcycles were leading edge transport, and the first aircraft was still two years in the future. Daniel is being sent to school in England by his parents, in the hope that he will get over being dumped by his girlfriend Muriel. Barry the Bag is aboard the same ship with the aid of stolen papers, money and clothes. He is travelling to London to see the king, hoping that he can sell him a stolen weapon from the future. Liore, the deadly cadet from the future, is chasing Barry on another ship. It is her weapon that Barry stole, and she is very, very angry. Liore needs her weapon back, because the future of the world is still in danger. The trouble with changing the past to save the future is that time tends to repair itself. The Century War that was prevented in Before the Storm keeps threatening to break out, no matter what Liore does. To really stop it she must break a time loop, and to do this she must cease to exist.
First copy of the latest novel hot off the press - no typos so far.
Featuring a cover by Julie Bell, The Time Engine, the fourth Moonworlds novel completes the series. "McMullen's skillful blend of fantasy and sf, leavened with his idiosyncratically arch humour, makes this one of the better cross-genre series in speculative fiction." "... nonstop action ..." " ... this book is a fitting capstone to a fine tetrology. Like L. Sprage de Camp in his prime, McMullen is an exotic adventurer of authentic, if wayward, genius." "A very enjoyable tale of swords and sorcery, dragons and derring-do, with plenty of unexpected angles … Inspector Danolorian narrates with a combination of gaucherie and self-confidence that the reader, along with nearly every woman he meets, should find endearing. "
Don't miss Sean's young adult story 'Striking Fear' in 'Trust Me', edited by Paul Collins and containing over 50 stories. Publisher's romo trailer for Trust Me!, where Striking Fear is published: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLe8uTXYHbM <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLe8uTXYHbM>
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Great reading in any language Sean's books are published in over a dozen languages. Recent editions include:
"Dragon Links" in Portuguese, from a concept by Sean McMullen
"Dragon Fang' in Portuguese, from a concept by Sean McMullen |
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