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My story in Ruins Terra features an Underground Druidic Order.

Two days ago, i found out that the story, After the Stonehenge bombing was rejected as a reprint for an SF magazine. The editor wrote and said that the idea of an Underground Druidic Order was not convincing.

But yesterday, I met with my former high school teacher from out of town. She said when her elderly father died she was contacted by a Druidic Order she had never heard of (nor did she know her father, a Scotsman, was a Druid). They offered to pay for her father’s funeral, and hundreds of them attended the ceremony, and then disappeared just as mysteriously.

I conceived the underground druidic order as a tongue-in-cheek idea, but it looks like it could be more true than I realised!

Long live the underground druidic order.

And of course, I couldn’t help sharing the above anecdote with the editor of the SF magazine.

My story in Volume 1 of the Ruins Anthology (Ruins Terra) is After the Stonehenge Bombing.

It was inspired by the bombing of the Bamiyan Buddha and also my first visit to London - where I stopped by Baker Steet (I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes).

In this story you can expect to find, in no particular order: druids and an ArchDruid, the Sherlock Holmes statue at Baker Street Station, a silver clam-shell phone, a glass sculpture, CCTV on Legs!, monocles, academic envy, the UN, a potted fern, and more…

The speculative fiction anthology Ruins Terra (edited by Eric T. Reynolds) is now available for sale in Amazon.com and Fishpond.com.au .

Check it out - it contains my first sci-fi story After the Stonehenge Bombing , as well as other wonderful stories like Jenny Blackford’s Python , and NZ Vogel Award winner Douglas A. Van Belle’s Clonehenge.

The companion anthology Ruins Extraterrestial is also on sale at the above online bookstores. This volume contains “Beyond the Wall” by Justin Stanchfield, recently nominated for a Nebula Award. Read in entirety here: PDF and HTML.

Purple Monkey & Other Tales is a chapbook brought out by my writing group, the Write Club / Wild Yak Writers’ Club - shared with the members last Thursday.

Download cover & Table of contents

Venus Doom & Other Tales is a chapbook brought out by my writing group, the Write Club / Wild Yak Writers’ Club - shared with the members last Thursday.

Download cover & Table of contents

I have received author copies of Ruins Terra but it is not available for sale yet on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk - Barnes & Noble online does have an entry on it -though it states it is not available yet.

This is a sneak preview of an Australian promotional material:-

Ruins Terra
Edited by Eric T. Reynolds

2007, Hadley Rille Books, ISBN 978-0-9785148-5-3, 242 pages

Ruins Terra is a speculative fiction anthology built around the theme of ruins, with 26 stories and a poem from authors all over the world.

Antipodean writers are well represented. It include stories by Melbourne writers Jenny Blackford and Ivan Sun, plus New Zealanders Lyn McConchie and Doub Van Belle.

Ruins Terra is available now from amazon.com for USD$13.95.

Ruins Terra is the first of a series of Ruins-themed anthologies from Hadley Rille books; it deals with ruins on Earth. The second, Ruins Extraterrestrial, will be out soon, and Ruins Metropolis has been announced as the third in the series.

Hadley Rille Books is a US-based publisher of speculative fiction anthologies. Previous books include Golden Age SF: Tales of a Bygone Future and Visual Journeys. Two stories from the Golden Age SF were selected for inclusion in US “best of” anthologies. See www.hadleyrillebooks.com for more information.

For further information please contact Jenny Blackford on jennyblackford(AT)bigpond.com, or Ivan Sun on ivan(AT)ivansun.com

I have decided to post Ode To Emily online under a Creative Commons Licence, inspired by the Masterclass with Cory Doctorow.

I wrote several short poems during 1988 (angsty teenage years) about Emily, in Emily’s style. To this day, I cannot use the em-dash without sparing an affectionate thought for her.

The Ode contains some lines, I think I have not bettered since:

As possible ally
With my borrowed gait
The Fraudian charge
Of Imitate -

Of course, other lines are real shockers.

Enjoy!

One of the fun thing about being part of an anthology is checking out the other writers and artists involved in the project. Today I would like to suggest you check out Bob Eggleton, the artist behind the Ruins Terra coverart, which has a wonderful, atmospheric Constable-feel. He also has an art-a-day blog called bobsartdujour . Highly recommended, particularly if you are into Monsters! He is also a multiple winner of the Hugo Awards, and was a consultant for the 1998 movie Godzilla. I believe his nick is Zillabob…

I was also pleasantly surprised to read about his previous trip to Melbourne.

I have also touched base with some of the other Oz/NZ writers from the anthology: Lyn McConchie, Jenny Blackford, Doug Van Belle… and hope to write a short post introducing the works of each of them in future posts.

Thanks to all who wished me well in a previous post about my efforts to get into an anthology.

I’m over the moon, and all its craters, to announce that the editor accepted the story this morning…

My story, After the Stonehenge Bombing, will be published by Hadley Rille books in the Ruins anthology, coming out this summer 2007 (which I think means very soon…)

Last Friday, went to a very interesting lecture at Melbourne Uni, delivered by a Physics professor. It’s about using the results of atom-splitting experiments to understand more about the big bang theory. Particle accelerator pushing subatomic particle through a tunnel (27km in diameter, according to Rob’s memory) underground, beneath fields of grazing cows, culminating in a collision of particles that spawns energy and new subatomic particles.

Understanding this would help us understand the particle collisions and energy generation that was part of the big bang. Using the microcosm to understand the macrocosm so to speak.

Here are some of the amazing statements made by the lecturer (my paraphrase):-

• We only know about 4% of the matter in the universe. The other is made up of dark matter and dark energy.
• There is the first dimension (lecturer waves hand backwards and forward), second dimension (waves hand left and right), third dimension (hand goes up and down), and of course time is the fourth dimension. We believe there may be six other dimension accounting for the unexplainable behaviour of atoms at subatomic level.

Now, I don’t know to laugh or to cry with the absolute certainty with which the above was declared. In his shoes, I would probably would have been content to say: (1) In truth we know very little, and (2) There is a lot more that we don’t know. But then that sounds so inane I would have been booed out of the lecture hall.

But I did enjoy the evening, if anything it was entertaining, thought-provoking, a crash course in sub-atomic physics. I was also sitting next to two pre-pubescent boy geniuses, who asked stupendous questions about the “singularity” of the experiments. Making me feel very dumb indeed. The lectures were part of the popular July series of public physics lectures run by the university.

Edit: After watching Tombraider the movie, I was impelled to add to this post, the Blake micropoem: ” To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower / Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour. ”