I meant to post this last weekend, but never managed to. Anyway, I didn’t spend all of 2013 reading, or reading for and then writing a book of the Apollo Quartet. I also managed to contribute some non-fiction here and there – and I don’t just mean reviews on SF Mistressworks, in Interzone, or here on my blog. Or the occasional article-ette/rant I posted here – on topics as diverse as  An epistemological model of (speculative) fiction, gateway sf books, and deep sea exploration and deep sea exploration in science fiction.  In fact, I did the following…

January
I contributed to The Books We Didn’t Love mind meld on SF Signal.

February
I gave a talk at the National Space Centre, with Chris Becket and Philip Palmer. See here.

April
I spoke about “the science in science fiction” to the University of Sheffield Natural History Society. See here (includes the text of my talk).

July
I contributed to The Successors of Orwell’s 1984 mind meld on SF Signal.

I also contributed to the Great SF/F Stories By Women mind meld on SF Signal, which was prompted by my 100 Great Science Fiction Short Stories by Women list on my blog.

And I wrote an introduction to Set it in Space and Shovel Coal into it, an anthology of steampunk(-ish) fiction by the Sheffield SFF Writers’ Group.

September
I contributed to the What’s On Your Mount To Be Read Book Pile mind meld at SF Signal.

November
I wrote a guest post on Why I Turned My Back On The Masters for the Nerds of a Feather blog.

I also wrote a guest post on Women in Science Fiction for the Little Red Reviewer blog.

December
I wrote a guest post on Iain Banks for Fantástica – Ficción – they were kind enough to translate it into Spanish. The post includes a never-seen-before photograph of Banks I took at the 1990 Eastercon in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.

And I guest-edited issue 61 of Focus, “the British Science Fiction Association’s magazine for writers”, on the topics of self-publishing and social media. Contributions were provided by Geoff Nelder, Gary Gibson, William King, Tony Ballantyne, Colin Tate, Keith Brooke, Vaughan Stanger, Darren Nash, Joyce Chng, RB Harkness, Berit Ellingsen, Jonathan McCalmont, Del Lakin-Smith, Donna Scott, Danie Ware and Helen Arney.