Steampunk Thursday: Scarlet Traces on the 2000 AD Thrill-Cast

The latest 2000AD Thrill-Cast focuses on the new Scarlet Traces anthology. It consists of an hour-long discussion between Scarlet Traces co-creator and anthology editor Ian Edginton, writer Maura McHugh, Rebellion commissioning editor David Moore join, and 2000 AD publicity droid Molch-R, about the world of Scarlet Traces, the legacy of H G Wells' original novel, imperialism and speculative fiction, and moving from comics into prose.

It's an interesting listen, but when the spectre of steampunk rears its ugly, cog-adorned head, it's clear that people have a problem with steampunk, to the point where Pax Britannia, Rebellion's own steampunk novel series, doesn't even get a passing mention.

You can purchase Scarlet Traces: A War of the Worlds Anthology, which includes my story Wonderful Things, here.

Thought for the Day

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

~ H. G. Wells

Steampunk Thursday: Scarlet Traces - Out Now!

Scarlet Traces: An Anthology Based on H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, edited by Ian Edginton, is available now!

It is the dawn of the twentieth century.

Following the Martians' failed invasion of Earth, the British Empire has seized their technology and unlocked its secrets for themselves. It is a Golden Age of discovery, adventure, culture, invention—and of domination, and rebellion.

Scarlet Traces reveals a world of ant-headed nightmares; vacuum salesmen; war machines; deadly secrets; clockwork marvels; and Sherlock Holmes, T. S. Eliot and Thomas Edison as you've never seen them before...

Including stories by Stephen Baxter, I. N. J. Culbard, Adam Roberts, Emma Beeby, James Lovegrove, Nathan Duck, Mark Morris, Dan Whitehead, Chris Roberson, Maura McHugh, Jonathan Green, and Andrew Lane.

Ian Edginton is a New York Times bestselling author and multiple Eisner Award nominee.

His recent titles include the green apocalypse saga The Hinterkind for DC/Vertigo; Steed and Mrs Peel for BOOM, the steam- and clock-punk series Stickleback, Ampney Crucis Investigates and Brass Sun for the legendary UK science fiction weekly, 2000 AD; game properties Dead Space: Liberation and The Evil Within for Titan Books, and the audio adventure Torchwood: Army of One for the BBC.

He has adapted the complete canon of Sherlock Holmes novels into a series of graphic novels for Self Made Hero, as well writing several volumes of Holmes apocrypha entitled The Victorian Undead. He has also adapted H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as well as writing several highly acclaimed sequels, Scarlet Traces and Scarlet Traces: The Great Game.

He lives and works in England. He keeps a bee.


Also out today is Dr Janina Ramirez's brand new Ladybird Expert book about Beowulf. And yes, that is the same Dr Janina Ramirez off the telly who wrote a cover quote for Beowulf Beastslayer.

Short Story Saturday: Scarlet Traces

When I returned from MantiCon, last weekend, I was delighted to find the hardback of the Scarlet Traces anthology waiting for me. Edited by Ian Edginton, contributing authors were simply given the brief of writing a story set somewhere within the timeline of the Scarlet Traces comics written by Ian, and illustrated by D'Israeli (a.k.a. Matt Brooker).

I first discovered Scarlet Traces when it appeared in the Judge Dredd Megazine, the series having originally been conceived as a partially animated serial, intended for the now-defunct website Cool Beans World.

The premise, for anyone who doesn't know, is that after the Martians' failed invasion of Earth, in H G Wells' The War of the Worlds, the British Empire retro-engineers the aliens' technology and uses it to expand even further. But the Martin menace is not done, and something is draining young women of blood whose bodies are being washed up on the banks of the Thames near Whitechapel...

There are now numerous graphic novels continuing the saga, and I had the original one signed years ago by D'Israeli. I took as the launching off point of my story something that is mentioned in passing in one panel in Book 2, The Great Game. Fans of the Pax Britannia series may find the writing style feels a little familiar and it features two of my ongoing interests, Ancient Egypt and Mars.

Scarlet Traces: A War of the Worlds Anthology is published by Abaddon Books on 5th September, and is the third anthology I have been published in this year.

Short Story Saturday: To Cut A Long Story Short

May is Short Story Month, and this year, for the first time, I have compiled a list of all the short stories I have had published over the years. As the month draws to a close, I thought I would share some of the insights I have gleaned from the process.

First of all, I have not included the colour text I have written for Games Workshop - including Codexes, Army Books, and even Epic 40,000 - or the same that I wrote for Hogshead's Realms of Sorcery. Although these could be considered short stories, they were more pieces of flash fiction, and so for the purposes of this record, I am considering The Hounds of Winter (from Inferno! Issue Zero) to be my first published story, even though the first one I actually wrote for the Black Library was the Ultramarines story Salvation.

In the 22 years since The Hounds of Winter was published, I have written 58 short stories, of which three have yet to see print, and am currently writing my 59th. They can be roughly divided into different periods as well.

For the first 10 years I pretty much only wrote stories for the Black Library. Then I started writing short stories set within my steampunk world of Pax Britannia, which continued for the next 10 years. However, it was also during this period that I began to expand my range of stories and where they were published.

Having worked for Abaddon Books, writing the Pax Britannia series, editior Jonathan Oliver commissioned me to write a ghost story for the horror anthology House of Fear. I was also asked to write tie-in fiction for World War Cthulhu and the video games, Nazi Zombie Army.

From 2010 to 2013, during a period of particular turmoil in my life, I wrote some of my more unusual experimental stories, such as telling stories backwards, and one which was written entirely as an exchange on Twitter. Some worked better than others.

In 2014 I wrote the first of four Judge Dredd short stories. By now I was regularly being invited to write short stories for various anthologies, and continue to receive one or two such invitations a year. In this period I have written stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and set within the same universe as H G Wells' The War of the Worlds. These last two stories are both due to be published this September.

However, more recently, I have started writing stories for a setting I have not visited for some years, and the first of these is due to be published in October. So watch this space...

And two years ago I started self-publishing some of my short fiction as eBooks, most notably my sequel to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, entitled Scrooge and Marley (Deceased): The Haunted Man.

Wellsian Wednesday: Happy Birthday, H G Wells!

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the British Father of Science Fiction, Herbert George Wells. Wells is, of course, most well known, in the modern era, for his novels The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells' original stories have been adapted time and time again, and have inspired countless other tales, including my own. I have an idea for a spin-off from The War of the Worlds that I would like to start work on in the next year or two, but The Time Machine has already massively influenced an already published work of mine - or should I say works?

What started off as a fun idea for a one-off short story expanding the world of Pax Britannia, back in 2008, ended up becoming the core element of trio of Ulysses Quicksilver novels - Dark Side (2010), Anno Frankenstein (2011) and Time's Arrow (2012). I hadn't realised just how much The Time Machine had influenced Anno Frakenstein in particular until I re-watched the 2002 movie version recently, as I introduced it to my children for the first time.

My Wellsian celebrations will continue today with Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds on today's playlist, and possibly a viewing of the 2005 movie adaptation later this evening.

If you happen to be the Woking area today, watch the skies!

Steampunk Thursday moves to Friday: International Steampunk Day 2013!

14 June is (or was) H G Wells' birthday, and as Mr Wells is one of the godfathers of the Steampunk movement, 14 June is International Steampunk Day.

And it just so happens that tomorrow is the start of Steampunk Doncaster*. In the lead up to the UK's newest Steampunk event, I wrote a guest post for Craig Hallam's blog**.

If you are going to Steampunk Doncaster, maybe I'll see you there...

* Anybody'd think they'd planned it that way.

** Craig Hallam is the organiser of the Litarium element of Steampunk Doncaster.

Steampunk Week: Mr Jupitus in the Age of Steampunk

From the BBC Radio 4 website:

If you've ever encountered a person with flying goggles, clad in tweeds and clutching a mahogany laptop or brass smartphone on a chain, what's the explanation? Phill Jupitus steps into an era where the 19th and 21st centuries charmingly collide, to investigate the time travelling cult known as Steampunk. 

Travelling back to the steam-powered future, Phill discovers a cast of modern characters - engineers, scientists, writers, artists and inventors - taking their inspiration from the Victorian and Edwardian arts and sciences, and from the fiction of H.G. Wells. 

"It's still the early twenty-first century. The Victorian world, the Edwardian world carried on", explains Ian Crichton aka Herr Doktor amongst an array of fantastical homemade devices: digital camera modified with rivets, brass-etched ray gun, steam pistol and a space helmet like that worn by Lionel Jeffries in The First Men on The Moon. "We've got steam-powered cars on the streets. We've got huge dirigibles flying to Japan". 

Steampunk speculates on an imaginary overlap between the 19th century and the present day. Phill investigates at a Steampunk convivial, The Houses of Parliament, on an x-ray ward, at a punk gig and in a shed in suburban Surrey. 

With Dr Chandrika Nath from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology ; consultant radiologist Dr Adrian Thomas; comedian Andrew O'Neill; science fiction author, Adam Roberts and lecturer in 19th Century Literature, Dr Christine Ferguson.

Tune in today to Radio 4 at 4.00pm.

Steampunk Thursday: International Steampunk Day

That's right, in case you didn't already know, 14 June (H G Wells' birthday) is International Steampunk Day. And I'm celebrating with another great review of Time's Arrow: Black Swan that's appeared on the Geek Syndicate website:

In 1988 Sylvester McCoy hosted a programme on Children’s BBC called What’s Your Story. For those not old enough to remember, the premise was that you watched a story unfold before you and, when the cliffhanger came at the end, you phoned in with your choice of where the story went next. A great interactive approach and one which Jonathan Green, author of the Pax Britannia series, is adopting himself. 


The Time’s Arrow trilogy, published by Abaddon Books, reunites us with one of Green’s standout characters in Ulysses Quicksilver, general dandy and all round hero. Released as e-books, this steam punk trilogy allows the reader to vote to decide the direction of the story which is a great way to engage with your readership. Part one and two are out now. Read on for Geek Syndicate’s review of part two, Black Swan.


Black Swan follows on from where part one, Red-handed, left off with Ulysses Quicksilver in the Parisian apartments of Monsieur Lumiere as he hunts the killer involved with the Rue Morgue murders. A number of prominent individuals have prematurely shuffled their mortal coil and Quicksilver, prime suspect of the local gendarmes, is out to clear his name and bring the real killer to justice. 


The story rattles on at a fair pace with little time to draw your breath between the action. Rampaging gorillas, mechanical parrots, steam-powered flying bicycles and damsels firmly in command all play their part with a sinister villain plotting worldwide destruction all in the heart ofParis. Gaston Leroux, Conan Doyle and Poe are all paid homage to, amongst others, as we are drawn excitedly towards the cliffhanger ending in readiness for part three. 

I have to admit to not having read Red-handed in advance of this, possibly not the wisest of things when tackling a series but such is the life of a reviewer, so was worried I might be slightly lost starting with book two. However, having previously read Green’s Evolution Expects, well worth a read by the way, I was well acquainted with Mr Quicksilver and found the writing dropped enough previous plot points into the narrative to allow me to catch up quickly. 

Black Swan is a fun story, one which engages you from the off, and you can tell that Green is enjoying his writing. Quicksilver, agent for the British government, is a fantastic character, full of dare-doing, and carries the day with an air of optimism and a stiff upper lip throughout; think James Bond as a Victorian toff. The villains are painted equally well and are just on the right side of moustache twirling dastardliness without being corny. 

There are some parts of the story where the escapes are fortuitous and far fetched but, hey, that’s all part of the playfulness of the writing. Go into this with a complete suspension of disbelief and you’ll come out smiling at the other end. 

I really enjoyed this and would recommend that you pick it up but possibly start with book one like a sane person would do! 

Voting for where part three, White Noise, heads closes on Friday 15 June. To influence where the story goes next visit www.abaddonbooks.com but obviously after you’ve read the book which is available for download now. 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

You can download the eBook of Time's Arrow: Black Swan here.

The First Men in the Moon

Last night I enjoyed Mark Gatiss's sublime adaptation of H G Wells's The First Men in the Moon. Anyone who enjoys the Pax Britannia books or steampunk in general should watch this.



And coming later this month is Pax Britannia: Dark Side, which includes my own homage to the Father of Science Fiction's classic 'scientific romance'.