WHAT, AND LEAVE SHOWBUSINESS?

Sigh. Sometimes you look at the gulf between you and those who can actually write and wonder what the hell you think you're doing. Just finished Chris Lawson's excellent new collection Written in Blood. It's available from MirrorDanse Books. Buy it: it's the kind of hard SF so few people are able to write-- personal, character-driven, yet frighteningly scientifically plausible. Greg Egan wishes...

To top it all off I've just read the Terry Dowling novella The Man Who Lost Red. Every time I think I can write, I read a Dowling story and realise what an amateur I really am. This story was written something like 17 years ago. You'd think that'd make a difference. Nope. I'm willing to hear from anyone who remembers a time when this man couldn't write. Really, I am. It'd help lift the gloom......