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Space junk

‘My previous book, Nor Am I Out of It (Random House/FeedARead, 2015), was a short-story collection dealing with characters who were trying to make sense out of the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland,’ writes subscriber Graham Andrews.

‘But The Stopgap Spaceman (ditto, 2018) doesn’t try very hard to make sense of anything all that much – except in its own demented terms, I hope. Having said that, some wee thinky bits might have slipped in here and there. Perhaps even some big thinky bits.

‘I have dedicated this just-for-fun “personal” novel to the memory of four great science-fiction writers: Philip K Dick, Murray Leinster, Eric Frank Russell, and AE van Vogt. Gene Roddenbery pillaged the books of all these writers – and a whole lot more – when he created the TV series Star Trek. As did I with Stopgap, come to think of it…

‘Paraphrasing the old Army maxim: “There’s a right way, a wrong way, and there’s my way.” I threw anything and everything that helped what the late, lamented Brian W Aldiss called the “extensively recomplicated plot” along into the mix. In other words – spoken by James Blish, who wrote the first Star Trek tie-in books – the Kitchen Sink Technique.

‘In case you’re wondering what the novel is actually about, here’s a would-be helpful hint: Ensign Todhunter Blaine of the Solterran Space Navy feels that the entire Universe has turned against him – and he might be right. Tod sets out to save only himself, but he ends up by – but I’m giving away the plot!

This just in, from Nigel Taylor, the editor of Worlds of Strangeness magazine: “I enjoyed The Stopgap Spaceman – an excellent novel, consistently entertaining and amusing, with some lively word play. Very erudite… everything from DC comics to James Joyce.”’

Queendom come

‘I started to write my first children’s novel some 33 years ago, when I also became a subscriber to Writers’ News,’ writes subscriber Karen Avellano.

‘I worked on the novel for a long time but was unsuccessful in having it published.

‘Some years later, I was inspired to write two short children’s stories. I illustrated these and sold them, as little booklets, to the local bookshops.

‘And then, in the year 2000, I began to write The Queendom of the Skies. As with my first novel, I received rejection letters until a publishing house opened, where I live, in Gibraltar. I took all my stuff to her and she agreed to publish. Alas, her finances were very limited and so she advised that I apply for a cultural grant from the Gibraltar government.