This Blog has moved….

It has now merged with my website at http://www.tonyballantyne.com

 

Colinthology

Colinthology is a collection of light-hearted, uplifting fantasy and SF short stories, put together in memory of Colin Harvey, who passed away suddenly in August 2011. All of the stories have been donated for free by friends of Colin, and all of the proceeds are being donated to Above & Beyond, the Bristol-based charity for which Colin volunteered in his spare time.

I was proud to be asked to contribute to the Colinthology. For some reason I’ve never quite understood, people thought that Colin and I were brothers. It became a standing joke at conventions, with Colin getting his friends to come up to me and pretend they thought I was him. Obviously, we were both blessed at birth with outstanding good looks, prodigious talent and incredible modesty, but Colin had something else that set him apart from me and most other writers. Colin genuinely enjoyed every aspect of the writer’s life. Everyone likes to talk about their own work, even if they pretend not to, but I’ve never known anyone with as much enthusiasm as Colin for other people’s work, other people’s workshops and other people’s talks.

Conventions will seem a little less inviting now that my brother will not be there waiting for me.

http://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/colinthology/

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Stories from the Northern Road (Penrose 2.5)

Out today!

Hardback: http://newconpress.co.uk/books/stories-from-the-northern-road/

eBook: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stories-Northern-Road-Imaginings-ebook/dp/B00993EHMQ/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1347431200&sr=1-1-catcorr

If Only…

This short story appears in the current issue of Nature.  You can read it here for a limited time: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7414/full/489170a.html

Stories from the Northern Road (Penrose 2.5)

Cover art by Fangorn

The first ever collection from one of the UK’s finest SF authors: Tony Ballantyne, who has been a finalist for the Philip K Dick award and whose short fiction has featured regularly in Years Best SF anthologies. A quartet of brand new stories set on the world of Penrose (introduced in the novels Twisted Metal and Blood and Iron) join five stories set in the Recursion universe to produce Stories from the Northern Road. This is Tony Ballantyne at his best.

Contents:

1. Introduction

Stories from the Northern Road

2. A Note from the Author
3. Four Blind Horses
4. Janet Verdigris
5. Isabel and the Outlandish Robots
6. The Robot Behind Me

Recursive Tales

7. LDA ADD STA JMP JIZ END
8. Restoring the Balance 1
9. Restoring the Balance 2
10. Seeds
11. The Sixth VNM

Released September 2012, as a Signed Hardback Edition, limited to 125 copies: £19.99

www.newconpress.co.uk

Where do you get your ideas from?

Here’s a picture of me researching Penrose 2.5: Stories from the Northern Road.

Stories from the Northern Road

Ubuntu 12.04

Upgraded from 11.10 and running well (though the lens is a little slow) .  I like it!  

http://www.ubuntu.com/

The Cleverest Man in the World

This short story, originally published in Nature Magazine, is now up on the Concatenation website…

 

http://www.concatenation.org/futures/ballantyne_cleverest_man.pdf

Interview

Keith Brooke interviews me here…

http://keithbrooke.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/snapshots-tony-ballantyne-interviewed/

War Horse

If I’d written War Horse, it would have been about a horse with machine guns strapped to its side.  It would have run through the trenches shooting down the enemy, and it would probably have been piloted by a monkey.

If Steven Spielberg reads this, I’m open to negotiation for the rights to the idea.