various news
by uzwi
For a project, I’m collecting fictions that appeared here but didn’t make the cut for You Should Come With Me Now. If you have favourites, suggest them below. There’s a Selected Short Stories in the planning stage, so the same goes for that: leave your picks below–the whole motley lot will be considered, if anyone can find a copy of The Machine in Shaft Ten & Others, although I don’t actually promise to include anything from that. In other news there are three gigs forthcoming in October–two in Sheffield, one in Kent. One of them is with a Famous Person–exciting details here & on twitter nearer the time. The new novel is down to three chapters of 4000 words each but they are crucial & then there will be Overall Structural Adjustments, so expect silence, hysteria, panic, bad behaviour. I have no idea how to describe this book, although I predict that others will manage fine & I have a fairly clear idea how. Nothing new there then.
the m john harrison blog 
We definitely need to get “The 4th Domain” in one of these collections. I was disappointed when it didn’t show up in YSCWMN.
Hi Paul. I’ve got other plans for that one.
I didn’t even have to leave my seat to find a copy of TMIST!
If you do go back that far, Running Down was a landmark in your early work, and I always liked London Melancholy; that must have been the first appearance of the interstellar insects.
As ever, I’m looking forward to anything new.
Well, as someone who loves “The Machine in Shaft 10” and still proudly owns the copy they’ve had for decades, I definitely would like to see some of its stories turn up in the new collection – maybe some of the ones which haven’t ever been reprinted??? For example, the excellent title story which I don’t think has appeared anywhere else???? 🙂 Waiting with bated breath….
I mean, I’d actually like to see a “Complete” stories one day with everything all gathered together – that would be amazing!
Hi Kaggsy: I was thinking of having another look at that, also “The Causeway”.
Hi ColinM: I haven’t had a copy for years now. Back in the early 80s, when we did The Ice Monkey collection, the only things I wanted to save from TMIS10 were “Running Down” & “The Incalling”.
Hi Kaggsy, “The Machine in Shaft 10” has appeared in one other place…
New Worlds Quarterly 3, 1972
ColinM
Sorry, should have been a pic there. It’s at
ColinM
the year so far, tidelines, hastings, and some of those you’ve already labeled as not having made the cut: algorithm angels, passing the sump, i don’t know what happened to the bear…
If anything else comes to mind, I’ll feel free to add it to the list…
Great news!
I love “The Machine in Shaft Ten”–especially the title track, “The Lamia and Lord Cromis,” and “Coming From Behind.” I wish there had been a hardcover edition. My paperback is wearing down.
“Small Heirlooms” is probably my favourite of your shorts, and among the best horror stories I’ve read. Very hard to pick. “GIFCO” needs some love because (as far as I know), no one has made a significant stab at interpreting it. I wanted to do so as a 4th section of my collection paper; alas, word count got in the way.
Ought that airplane dream post of yours that keeps racking up views be considered?
P.S. I agree with Paul re: 4th Domain
“Science and the Arts” is a favourite. Also “The Neon Heart Murders”. I am unsure what the reveals.
Hmm, also “The Causeway” is interesting.
Popped up after YSCWMN, I think, but definitely “The Year So Far”: almost every phrase restructures the deeper narrative, and the ending’s a killer (maybe literally).
And if we’re going back before you went electric, I always thought “The Bait Principle” pretty neat. Derangement, zombie committee life, death by ailurophobia – Staff Pick at Waterstones, and no mistake.
I’ve always been fond of “I Did It” – and reading it again in the now, after only encountering it for the first time eight years or so ago, it’s interesting where that world has gone and how it persists,
Hi everyone, thanks for the picks, keep ’em coming.
Ryan E: GIFCO is a definite. Will: “Science & the Arts” is too. MartM: yep, “The Year So Far”. I never think of things like “The Bait Principle”, somehow.
Matt Thomas: very yes to “I Did It”. I love that story because it completely opened writing out for me; I suddenly got how to lay back off things & be fluid. I’d been struggling for two decades to find a personal way round the grunching mimetic genre seriousness (“Reader, this is *really happening*, in a real world, make no mistake, right here in front of you, a really real world, step inside, here: real. Real here!”) that is such a limitation.
Personally what I’d like to see is a collection of all the bits on the blog where you write about your working process. My dream would be a How to Write book by MJH. It is one of the few genres you haven’t actually worked with, and it’s a genre that’s surprisingly full of cheerful positivity and ‘Follow Your Bliss’ homilies where ‘creativity’ is often equated with a sort of You’re-Worth-it journey of self discovery. In contrast your Lacanian description of the creative process as a search for something that almost doesn’t exist by someone that probably doesn’t exist is a sort of antidote.
I’d also like to see a collection of all your interviews.
dllo: “a search for something that almost doesn’t exist by someone that probably doesn’t exist”, can I quote you on that?
How to Write a Book is too difficult, because I’d have to try & see past the way *anyone else* would do it. Assembling all the writing posts into a numbered but intellectually unconnected sequence might work.
Singling out individual stories is not easy, but the following are definite favourites: “Seven Guesses of the Heart,” “The Horse of Iron,” “Black Houses.”
I know this says “appeared here” but are there stories that have been published but not collected?
Hi Paul: Not unless you count “Elf Lands”, New Scientist Christmas 2017, which is the 1000 word condensed fantasy novel I always kept meaning to assemble from the relevent supershort blog material. Hopefully, after I’ve finished the novel in progress, I’ll be able to complete a couple of short stories I’ve had on the go for a while (one since about 2006).
Oh, and “The 4th Domain” for which, as I said, I have other plans.
Colin, thanks for the image! Yes, I think I meant more in one of MJH’s later collections. I’ve been known to search old magazines and Sci Fi collections for missing stories…. 😉
Late runner: “The Dead,” with Simon Ings.
Being one of those who was disappointed not to see it icluded in YSCMWN , i must say that mention of those ‘other plans’ for the 4th domain does stir my curiosity…
Will it resurface as a netflix series? A three-part epic destruction of fantasy?
An annotated How To Write according to MJH?
Currently reading Lamia and Lord Chromis in some yellowed eighties paperback that also features an Alan Garner story.
Very excited for those Greatest Hits; i hope it means i finally get to read all that stuff i’ve heard so much about ( Egnaro, Gifco, The Incalling ).
Is Jack of Mercy’s a hit?
I would certainly be delighted to see all the fiction from MACHINE IN SHAFT 10 reprinted in a good sturdy well-presented collection. Also others such as VISIONS OF MONAD and GREEN FIVE RENEGADE from NWinSF. I well remember getting the first (and only?) issue of MACHINE IN SHAFT 10 when it was first published in the mid-70s and being very impressed. A good block of material along with THE COMMITTED MEN and CENTAURI DEVICE which I already knew.
Now I am aware, I think, that this era of your career is not one that you look at favourably; that’s all well and good but perhaps you could have a care for your enthusiastic readers and collectors and just bite the bullet and take the money.
And when that’s done, how about that ‘Gasmasks and Firehydrants’ thing?
Hi Greg. In this post I’m really looking at suggestions for a selected short stories, in which twenty items will represent fifty-odd years of work in that medium–which to me seems to have paid off best between 1975 and 1985, then again between 1995 and 2017. Although I’ll look at TMIS10 again, I don’t suppose much of it will survive the selection process. As to reprinting the whole collection: while I don’t rule it out entirely, it’s very unlikely while The Course of the Heart, Signs of Life and Things That Never Happen remain o/p. If you prefer my earliest stuff, you’ll have to keep exercising your doubtless considerable skills as a collector for a while yet… 🙂
Ibrahim, you should be able to find THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN on Amazon, which is where I think those stories were collected. It may be out of print but there’s usually someone selling used copies of just about anything.
Paul, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve seen it offered on Amazon, of course, but for protection i draw a line at 2nd hand internet buys; if i don’t i may find myself bidding for antiquarian Machens or whatnot. Also, happy to wait & put some pennies in our host’s pocket.
I daresay these are shoo-ins, but please include:
– The Ice Monkey
– Running Down
– The Incalling
– Black Houses
– I Did It
Egnaro.
Fucking brilliant story.