The Bookman Histories – now in audiobooks!

The full set of the Bookman Histories have now been released in audio book form by Audible.

The Bookman, narrated by Jonathan Keeble, 20 hours, 50 minutes.

Camera Obscura, narrated by Karen Cass, 11 hours, 20 minutes.

The Great Game, narrated by Jonathan Keeble, 10 hours, 22 minutes.

A Brief History of the Great Pubs of London

… is now available free in audio at Dark Fiction Magazine, read by the fantastic Emma Newman (who just signed up with Angry Robot Books for 3 books in her Split Worlds series – congratulations Emma!).

Here’s an appropriate illustration, alongside extract…

Not the sort of thing you normally see in a lift…

The Crypt, St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields

Not a pub in the traditional sense but we like it, having spent at least one boozy occasion there. Also they serve a mean apple crumble with custard. An 18th century crypt below the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, it has high stone arcs and a hushed but convivial atmosphere. Rumours that this is where Count Dracula made his abode upon arrival in England on board the Demeter are probably false, though it is worth noting many of the staff are notoriously pale. Vampire aficionados do make pilgrimage to the otherwise quiet cafe, and the use of flash lights, like the carrying of wooden stakes, is discouraged. – listen to the full guide (years of research!)

Camera Obscura – the audio book!

So only a day after the audio book release of The Tel Aviv Dossier comes Camera Obscura!

Narrated by Karen Cass, it runs to 11 hours 20 minutes. The Bookman and The Great Game should follow in short order.

The Tel Aviv Dossier, Now in Audio!

I’m delighted to announce that The Tel Aviv Dossier, my 2009 novel co-written with Nir Yaniv, is now available as an audiobook!

The audio book runs 7 hours and 35 minutes and is narrated by Eric Meyers. It is available directly via Audible, or through Amazon.com or Amazon UK.

Note that Nir’s name is missing from the credits, I hope it will be rectified very shortly.

What is it like? Here’s an Amazon review I quite like…

Have you ever thought to yourself, “You know, the books I’m reading just aren’t crazy enough”? If so, THE TEL AVV DOSSIER might be something for you.
This is one of those rare books that defies all explanation. If you try to explain the plot to someone, you end up sounding like a rambling lunatic.
So I will just tell you this: It’s crazy.
And awesome.
And really original.
It’s the kind of book that makes you think WTF?, but I mean that in a good way. I am seriously in love with this book. It stays with you. It haunts you. I have spent a good deal of time thinking about this book. Dwelling on it. Trying to interpret it. I don’t know if I’ve come up with any solid answers yet, but the journey has been a good time.

“Aphrodisia” is now live as audio in Escape Pod

Short on the heels of the podcast of Buried Eyes in Podcastle, its sister-publication, Escape Pod, has just run my story Aphrodisia, narrated by Alasdair Stuart.

It’s quite short – one of my Laos-based stories – and strangely enough, based mostly on a real event, a night spent hanging out with a hunchback tuk-tuk driver in the garment factory district of Vientiane. I have a thing for tuk-tuk drivers, as anyone reading my Laos stories can probably tell… and which is a bit weird, I suppose!

The rest of the story is equal parts Samuel Delany (an obvious reference to his classic “Aye, and Gomorrah…”) and equal parts Richard Calder (though it’s somewhat strange, since I think I only read Calder a couple of years later). And a bit of Gibson thrown in for good measure – which are probably a few too many referents for a story this length.

Still, mostly it’s the true story of one night in Vientiane – as filtered through some futuristic hard-sf goggles and too much vintage science fiction. The excesses of cyberpunk are essentially romantic, I think – which is something I’ve not thought about until now, but seems to me to hold some truth.

In any case, if you’d like to check it out, it’s available as both audio and text at Escape Pod.

“The Smell of Orange Groves” now in audio

The Smell of Orange Groves, published this month at Clarkesworld Magazine, is now also available in audio, read by Kate Baker.

I’m currently working on a new Central Station story! As I mentioned before, this is the first CT story to be published, though one other so far has been sold and should appear next year.

Audio: “The Insurance Agent” now at Escape Pod

Glad to say my latest story to be up at Escape Pod is The Insurance Agent, first published in Interzone. It is read by Christian Brady.

The bar was packed and everyone was watching the Nixon-Reagan match. The fighters were reflected off the bar’s grainy wood countertop and the tables’ gleaming surfaces and seemed to melt as they flickered down the legs of the scattered chairs. The bar was called the Godhead, which had a lot to do with why I was there. It was a bit of an unfair fight as Reagan was young, pre-presidency, circa-World War Two, while Nixon was heavy-set, older: people were exchanging odds and betting with the bar’s internal gaming system and the general opinion seemed to be that though Reagan was in better shape Nixon was meaner.

I wasn’t there for the match.

The Godhead was on Pulau Sepanggar, one of the satellite islands off Borneo, hence nominally under Malaysian federal authority but in practice in a free zone that had stronger ties to the Brunei Sultanate. It was a convenient place to meet, providing easy access to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, Singapore, which resented the island’s role as a growing business centre yet found it useful at the same time.

She wore a smart business suit and a smart communication system that looked like what it was, which was a custom-made gold bracelet on her left arm. She wore smart shades and I was taking a bet that she wasn’t watching the fight. She was drinking a generic Cola but there was nothing generic about her. I slid into a chair beside her and waited for her shades to turn transparent and notice me.

‘Drink, Mr. Turner?’

I liked the name Turner. It was Anglo-Saxon generic, a mid-level executive’s name, white as beige. ‘Call me James,’ I said. I liked James too. You could tell what a James Turner did just by hearing his name. The rest of me was tailor-made for the name, had been for some time: I had the kind of tan that suggested I had been East for just long enough to have acquired it, black hair that was short but not too short and had a decent but not overly-expensive cut, pale blue eyes behind shades that cost a lot of money to look like a knock-off.

There was a suggestion of a smile in the corners of her mouth and she said, ‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Mr. Turner, then,’ I said. ‘One name’s good as another.’ – continue reading, or listen in audio!

“The Night Train” now on Escape Pod

My story “The Night Train”, originally published in Strange Horizons (and additionally reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 5 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty Eighth Annual Collection), is now available in audio at Escape Pod!

Och aye, political!

I have a lot of fun having podcasted stories. Both Escape Pod and Pseudopod have run stories from me in the past, and I love that they reach so many people, and that they have very active message boards where people discuss the stories.

When Revolution Time was published on Escape Pod, the message board thread ran to six pages, with off-shoot threads. My latest story on Pseudopod, meanwhile – that would be Set Down This, which first appeared in Sean Wallace and Paul Tremblay’s anthology, Phantom - has generated a four page discussion. They’re both fun to follow, diverging quite quickly from the story itself into discussions on politics and art. It’s fun to write stories that do that!