Ugh, weak post title, I know.  Sounds like the strapline for an advertising campaign for a chain of gift shops or a bedsheet company or something.  Let your eye move swiftly past it and on to the content of the post itself.

Which concerns this and this from Solaris.

The former link furnishes pictorial proof of the imminent emergence of The Age Of Odin, conjoined with one of Professor David Moore’s erudite disquisitions.  On this occasion he holds forth on the origin of the names of the days of the week in English, the ones derived from Norse gods, and compares and contrasts them with the names of the days of the week in other European languages, the ones derived from Roman gods.  Interesting stuff.

But never mind that, let’s concentrate on the book itself, shall we?  Snazzy or what?

The latter link displays a selection of cover images for the ebook editions of my backlist, which Solaris are preparing for publication (if that’s the term for what you do with ebooks) in the New Year.  These, too, look very snazzy to me.  I particularly like the little skulls lurking at the base of the anchor on The Hope.  Was unsure about them at first but they’ve grown on me.  A nice touch.  Worldstorm is cool, too.  Something rather 70s-John-Wyndham-esque about it, which naturally endears it to me.  Fine work from Mr Pye Parr.

A fortnight or so ago, Philip Palmer got in touch asking if I’d contribute to the SFF Song Of the Week section on his Debatable Spaces site.  I jumped at the chance, knowing almost immediately which song I’d choose to write about.  Here’s the result.

Philip’s a terrific author.  I’ve just salivated over his third novel, Version 43, for the Financial Times.  Not  literally, as that would be messy.  I mean rave-reviewed it.  The piece should appear in a couple of weeks.

I’ve also included Version 43 in my round-up of best SF novels of the year for the paper.  It really is that good.

Some of you may know that Adam Roberts and I collaborated on an aborted project, a nonfiction book about SF in pop with the working title Geek Musique.  We came up with about 100 songs without even really trying.  Seems like Philip’s trying to do much the same thing online, a very worthy enterprise.