A Christmas cartoon for the Guardian. Happy holidays, everyone!

Christmas Ballet ✂️❄️

Great interview with two-time Clarke Award winner Geoff Ryman in the latest SFX Magazine which landed with me today! #weekendgeeking

Celebrating some big news on the day job front today!

Huge spider currently parked outside our front door. If I go missing, this is Suspect No1! (Kinda cute though)

One of my publishers has just launched an exciting new sci fi / fantasy digital-only publishing division which has a really fair deal and accepts submissions from both agented and unagented writers. If you’re unagented and we’re mutuals, hmu if you want an intro. And please RT!

Oh how cute. Someone tried old school plagiarism instead of generating their plagiarism. Banned.

Clarke Award logo refresh for 2024 and beyond 🤩

Cats dancing in the Witches' Cove! 16th century. www.artnet.com/artists/jan-...

all time best version of this meme

🦇Happy Halloween 🧟‍♀️

I take it for granted that medical AI will help us engineer better healthcare outcomes, but when it comes to the laboratory of the creative arts I’m with @tomgauld.bsky.social

Also spotted at the V&A (but not the Chanel exhibition obvs)…

At the Chanel exhibition, V&A London.

Weekend reading. Hoping to find out if the angle between two walls really does have a happy ending…

This is the event I'm doing Thursday night in London at Trafalgar Sq @waterstones.bsky.social with the brilliant Laura Jean McKay and Ned Beauman - both winners of the Arthur C Clarke Award. Please come by! Ticket info below:

Irrational? this seems entirely sensible to me… “Tom’s in the water. Shark’s in the water. Our shark… Farewell and adieu etc etc”

You wait ages for a Clarke Award winner event, then you get three awesome authors all on one night! Tickets: www.waterstones.com/events/laura...

Good news, everyone! Delighted that THE CORAL BONES, shortlisted for the Clarke Award 2023, has been acquired by Jo Fletcher Books! New print edition coming early 2024 and ebook version available now: amzn.to/48KPX9A

For all your Halloween needs, accept no substitutes. What do you do when every time you bleed, you grow a double that wants to murder you? How do you live? Molly Southbourne knows. 3 novellas. Get 'em while you can.

Hospital of the Future, our major MedTech showcase at New Scientist Live, is taking shape. 14 demo stands across cutting-edge surgical robotics, 3D printing, smart imaging, virtual reality and more!

A great write up of this year’s Ada Lovelace Day Live event (this Tues 10th Oct) on Stylist 👇

Leake St street art

Live footage of me after my first day back at work after a beautiful holiday in Florence…

Footage of me being dragged back to work after a lovely holiday in Florence!

Award-winning author @laurenbeukes.bsky.social is joining me for a chat about how research a book, including deep listening, how to set up interviews, and ethics. Plus how her ADHD diagnosis changed her life and what it was to see Shining Girls adapted for TV. 23 Oct, 19:00 BST, free.

Cafe table art

Florence sunset

Perseus with the head of Medusa

Tuscan sunset

Current view

This year’s Ada Lovelace Day Live event is looking STEM-tastic!

This sounds great

Welcoming our new insect overlords…

Somewhat late to the party, but went to see Melancholia today 🎞️

This week's Writer Wednesday guest is bestselling author Lauren Beukes, who drops in to share her top pieces of writing advice.

"Good evening, greetings, welcome!" Me in full Award Director mode at this year's ceremony for the Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year.

🌈📚 #sapphfic

So I didn't win the Clarke Award (to be fair, I didn't expect to), but this lesbian space pirates book is now out in paperback with the pretty medallion. Grab it now! https://www.gollancz.co.uk/titles/aliette-de-bodard/the-red-scholars-wake/9781399601368/ US edition: https://books2read.com/u/3GWVxL

✨Our 2023 winner✨ Congratulations to Ned, and all our shortlisted authors, and thank you to our judges, and to everyone who came out and made our ceremony night such a great event! 🚀 If you need me, I’ll be in my hyper-sleep chamber for the foreseeable…

It’s Arthur C. Clarke Award night tomorrow night, and happily looks like I can go! 🚀🚀🚀 (I did not have Covid btw, this was precautionary)

In short, AI is free at the moment because you are helping train it. But even trained up, it is far from having practical applications worth the cost. In the future, narrowly defined AI will dominate our lives, but these big "write my essay for me" systems just aren't worth it to the money men.

Me talking Clarke Award shortlists with the Five Books team (who kindly let me talk about 6 books, not 5!)

First fossil evidence for cyclical wet and dry seasons on early Mars — ‘ideal conditions for the formation of complex precursor and constituent compounds of life, such as RNA.’

Dog paw print from oven brick found in wreck of the Mary Rose

5⭐️ review in this month’s SFX for BRIDGE, the new novel from Clarke Award winner @laurenbeukes.bsky.social Out 17 Aug, and very much available for pre-order right now 👉 https://amzn.to/3QjZopO

Not all heroes wear capes. ❤️✊🏼

The Bsky fail whale should be a bowl of petunias saying “oh no, not again”.

It's reminder time again. We have no idea who our Kindle subscribers are, but there are a lot of them. Losing those subscribers is going to be brutal, so we'll keep bringing this up. We have no choice.