Ahem...

It seems that my short story 'Seaborne' has been listed in the Honourable Mentions by Gardner Dozois in The Year's Best SF 2008. The splendid chrisbutler, who is also name-checked, told me. Many thanks to him!
I am very honoured. I rarely write shorts -- I think I've written around 8 since 1989 and this one is my second to be professionally published. It appeared in the NewCon Press anthology Myth/Understandings, ed. Ian Whates and is one of the two I've written that is set in the same background as Living with Ghosts (the other, 'Clocks', won the fantasy short story competition at the 1995 Worldcon and was published in a fanzine. I'm hoping to put it up on my website at some point soon, along with 'Saltus Lunae' which was the story that kick-started my second (successful!) round of trying to sell Ghosts). 'Seaborne' is about Thiercelin and Gracielis sometime after the events of Ghosts, and is about the non-humans things that live in that world. One day I'm going to work out how they got to the place the story is set! It's still available from Amazon and so forth.

In which purplecthulhu is a star

Spent Monday evening and all day Tuesday at the 'Physics and SF' event at Imperial College, organised by our own purplecthulhu. Excellent experience -- a series of expert speakers gave very informative and fascinating talks on astronomy, astrophysics and physics in relation to things like planet formation and the nature of Dark Matter. (The marquis and I have long been proud inventors of a MUYO --'Make Up Your Own'-- contender for DM. Now we know there's an official category for them.) I enjoyed to hugely, and additionally got to hang out with a bunch of very cool writers and academics, both friends and new acquaintances. Have now met molly_brown, who is charming, and been kissed by Stephen Baxter, as well as catching up with fjm, chilperic, major_clanger, mevennen (I will post frisbee soonest!), maeve_the_red, Ken MacLeod and the ever-lovely Mr Geoff Ryman.
This was an excellent idea and I understand that purplecthulhu is intending to organise another one (possibly with observatory visit). I recommend buying him a drink and asking for details!

Edited to add: and, of course, the wonderful fastfwd was there, also. My memory is appalling.

Homosexuality decriminalised in India

Yes, I know, I'm cluster posting. But this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/homosexuality-decriminalised-delhi-india

is excellent news.

Edited to add: Also, the plans to privatise the Post Office have been shelved.