Event - Titans of Sci-fi Waterstones 5th Sept

Hi guys

Last night was a Sci Fi readers dream as I got to see four legends in Sci Fi.

These were Peter F Hamilton - author of big space operas including the Void trilogy. 

Adrian Tchiakovsky - fantasy author but Hugo award winner for his Sci Fi novel Children of Time.

Stephen Baxter - author of many books including the Xeelee sequence.

As a bonus the event was hosted by Sci Fi and fantasy author Justina Robson - author of the Quantum Gravity series.

The writers primarily talked about their new novels. 

Stephen talked about Xeelee: Redemption, the latest in his huge Xeelee sequence the first of which written about 30 years ago.  He told us he loved going back to that sequence and wanted it to be like a modern history .  He also described the aliens Xeelee and their motives in the sequence.  He also discussed wormholes and time travel in his novels.

Peter told us of his new novel and series Salvation about finding an alien object on the edge of known space and the journey there.  He said unlike Stephen he likes to refresh his writing with new universes and series as the Commonwealth series had already ran for seven books.

He usually makes notes for six months before he starts a series.

Adrian told the audience that he was writing a sequel to Children of Time which is due May 2019.  He couldn't give much away for people who hadn't read the first one but said that when the humans engineered the spiders then left the planet they were on and the spiders evolved - well it might not be the only species humans engineered and left behind.

Also discussed were the following:

• Humour in Sci Fi - there isn't as much as in fantasy and when Stephen was working on The Long Earth series with Terry Pratchett that Terry couldn't stop putting humour in as Stephen kept it more serious and in check although Stephen did write a sequence that made Terry chuckle.
• Terry had the idea for The Long Earth back in the eighties and nineties .  He wasn't sure it would work.
• The panel discussed the difference between American and British Sci Fi authors in that there was and are more American Sci Fi authors but it's more military Sci Fi .  
• Although there was a surge in the eighties of new upcoming British authors including Peter and Alistair Reynolds thanks to Sci Fi magazine Interzone.  The authors submitted had stories printed in it which publishers saw and offered deals. 
• They also discussed the differences and similarities between writing Sci Fi and Fantasy which Adrian knew most about although Justina had written some and her new Fantasy novel (her first published one) Salvations Fire is out now and is set in a joined universe with Adrians novel Redemptions Blade.

Overall a fun insightful night and even bought more books.

As I got my book signed by Stephen I asked how much he knew Terry Pratchett.  Stephen told me he and Terry had been friends for many years and had the same agent.  He used to go for meals at Terrys house.

As Justina signed my book she recognised me from the Cleckheaton Literature Festivals and asked if I'd been writing.  I said I hadn't recently and she looked sad but I promised I would get back to writing.