Reprint: Aliens

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Andrew M. Butler, Arthur C Clarke, Arthur Conan Doyle, Frederik Pohl, Gwyneth Jones, H.G. Wells, Jack Finney, John Wyndham, Keith Roberts, Olaf Stapledon, S Fowler Wright, Vernor Vinge

Back in 1995 (good heavens!) I began a series of columns for Vector in which I would explore various standard tropes of science fiction. The series lasted until 2001, with an extra piece added in 2005. Not a bad run. They all had pretty much the same format: a couple of illustrative quotations, then a very broad historical survey of the trope leading back to the works from which my opening quotes had been taken (it was based on a series by David Lodge that had been running in the Guardian at that time. Andrew Butler gave me a title for the series, ‘Cognitive Mapping’, and this was one of the earliest of them. It first appeared in Vector 188, August 1996.

Christopher Priest: The Interaction

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Andrew M. Butler, Christopher Priest

Some months ago there was an unusual prospect that I would be ridiculously visible at this Worldcon. I was hoping that my book would be available (it wasn’t, and no word from the publisher about when it will be available). We had hoped that the Clarke Award anthology would be published for the Worldcon (but circumstances have forced us to put that back until January). I am due to appear in the Clute festschrift, but that has had to be put back. I have a story in Strange Pleasures 3 edited by Dave Hutchinson, which was rumoured to be published for the Worldcon, and wasn’t (Dave was sounding mighty pissed off with the whole thing and is talking about resigning from the Strange Pleasures series). So, in the end, the only place I was published for the convention was in the essay collection on GoH Chris Priest, Christopher Priest: The Interaction edited by Andrew M. Butler (Foundation Studies in Science Fiction, 6; The Science Fiction Foundation, 2005).