Neil Gaiman did not graduate from university. He did not even go to university. Instead he pursued his creative ambitions, and became one of the worlds greatest writers. Here he shares some words of wisdom with graduating students from The University of the Arts. One or two of my favourite Gaiman quotes from this talk: [...]
Over on Twitter and Facebook I asked folk to tell me which SF author they would turn to for life advice, for words of wisdom and guidance through the labyrinth of life. And I got quite a response! [View the story "Wisest of the wise in SF & Fantasy" on Storify] Popular choices include Neil [...]
Last year I wrote a short story called A Vast Bit of Hod, which I published to my blog here. As I mentioned at the time, the story is also a riddle. I have congratulated half a dozen people who emailed me the answer. This evening James Everington tweeted me to ask: btw, when are you [...]
(I was too ill to link this from my blog when it was published on The Guardian online, so here it is now.) I am forced into speech because men of letters refuse to act without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing the publication [...]
So. Today at the Out of this World event at the British Library (which was really rather wonderful), Neil Gaiman shared a fascinating factoid with the audience. While appearing as a Guest of Honour at China’s largest state approved Science Fiction convention, Neil decided to enquire why SF, once frowned upon by the Chinese government, [...]
Chuck Wendig’s notoriety extends it’s reach through the viral network of the interwebs with this little post about Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rockstars. Apparently this would make writers better respected, or at the very least, better paid. I disagree. Vehemently. To show you why, let’s examine some of the unexamined assumptions Wendig builds his case [...]
There’s a terrible meme emerging from the internet writing community. It arises from good intentions and common sense, and like most examples of common sense applied to complex situations it is utterly, utterly wrong. You can see this meme at work in the debate around publishing a book a year following Steph Swainston‘s retirement from [...]
Sarah Crown has started a fascinating discussion on the resurgence of fabulism in literary fiction over on The Guardian book blog, brought on by Tea Obreht’s surprise win in the Orange prize. I didn’t need to read the comments to know there would be at least half a dozen from irate members of fantasy fandom, [...]
John DeNardo challenged a number of writers to think about the speculative fiction they return to again and again. My response is bellow. I would love to see a similar challenge for the nonSF books that Sf writers are influenced by, that would be fascinating. Also, I seem to have declared the death of Science [...]
At Clarion, I was nailed more than once for drawing on America as a setting and source for my writing. Given that I’m British, and my stories were being critiqued by a group of very intelligent and culturally aware Americans from across that vast continent, I really had no defence. After one critique Neil talked [...]
