The much-delayed and long-awaited (if only by me) Diversifications is available at last.  Throw your hats into the air, kiss that nice-looking person next to you in the crowd, and holler “Wahoo!”.  PS Publishing, the award-winning small press outfit and “the UK’s foremost boutique publisher of genre fiction”, has produced this most excellent item and is willing to flog it to you for a very reasonable price or, if you want to go wild and get the posh traycased edition, an equally reasonable, if somewhat higher, price.

I’m thrilled with the look of the book.  I suggested the concepts for the cover and interior layout but designer Michael Smith has really taken the idea and run with it.

I’m also thrilled with the contents, but then I would be, given their author.  In here you’ll find what’s probably my all-time favourite story that I’ve written, “The Bowdler Strain”, and the runner-up in that category, “Speedstream”, plus 14 others that are almost as good and may actually be better — it’s so hard to be objective about these things.

Like I said, it’s out now, it’s worth every penny of the cover price, and if you buy a copy you’ll be making not only me very happy but Pete and Nicky at PS very happy too.  So you’ll be spreading the love as well as treating yourself to a very fine collection of tales.

And speaking of very fine collections of tales, lookee what we have here over on the right: the cover image for the soon to be out but not yet Fables From The Fountain.  This is an anthology edited by the estimable Ian Whates, and…  Well, let me quote the promo release here, which says it better than I ever could:

A volume of all original stories written as homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart, featuring many of today’s top genre writers.

The Fountain, a traditional London pub situated in Holborn, just off Chancery Lane, where Michael, the landlord, serves excellent real ales and dodgy ploughman’s, ably assisted by barmaids Sally and Bogna (from Poland).

 The Fountain, in whose Paradise bar a group of friends – scientists, writers and genre fans – meet regularly on a Tuesday night to swap anecdotes, reveal wondrous events from their past, tell tall tales, talk of classified invention and, maybe, just maybe, save the world…

2011 marks the 25th Anniversary of the Arthur C Clarke Award.  This volume is produced in part to raise funds for the Award, which lost its sponsor last year due to the closure of Sir Arthur’s publishing company.  The book will be released May 2011. 

I have contributed to it (of course, why else would I be plugging it here?).  So have many marvellous contemporary genre authors, including Steven Baxter, Eric Brown, Peter Crowther, Neil Gaiman, David Langford, Adam Roberts, Charles Stross, Liz Williams…  The list goes on, and you’d be bonkers in the nut not to give this book a try.  I love the Clarke original, and I’m sure this will be a worthy tribute/successor.

Oh, and the “Rama” gag on the cover?  That was my idea, that was.