Garrick Fincham

It’s amazing how easy it is, and how much difference it makes.

Miles from anywhere, but only one step short of Paradise, say hello to The Amazing Scorn, the Mutant Master of Scintillating Sacrasm and Rapid Reartee, and a whole gallery more of the odd, the outcast, the weird, twisted, hurt, angry, bemused, heroic, but mostly lost citizens of the town of Desolation Road. This is an ensemble novel like no other, a cast of shifting personalities, starting quite simply with Dr Alimantando on a long desert journey across a Mars of the future, halting for the night, ends up staying....

Desolation Road, Ian MacDonald, 1988 Miles from anywhere, but only one step short of Paradise, say hello to The Amazing Scorn, the Mutant Master of Scintillating Sacrasm and Rapid Reartee, and a whole gallery more of the odd, the outc…

You may, or may not have heard of Cordwainer Smith. His untimely death at 53 in 1966 cut short his writing, and his unusual, let's be honest, strange and unsettling style, perhaps relegated him to the realms of curiosity. Suplanted by new-wave, his kind of fiction is, in many ways, a 'what might have been' subgenre. He is regarded as influential, but perhaps more in the influence of his ideas, rather than for his works in their own right, but pick up a book of short stories, and you'll soon find yourself in places like you never quite imagined....

Cordwainer Smith, 1913 – 1966, Norstrilla, and The Rediscovery of Man You may, or may not have heard of Cordwainer Smith. His untimely death at 53 in 1966 cut short his writing, and his unusual, let’s be honest, strange and unsettling style, perhaps relegated h…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0C3XXSMQT/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

If you feel like a quick, but entertaining read, check out my new book, Price of Starlight. Thirty years in the making, with stories published in the US and UK - now available for £1.99, free on Kindle Unlimited. From the Amazon reviews:

Characters that are complex, rounded and, for the most part, sympathetic, even if you wouldn’t necessarily want to meet them...

This is science fiction reminiscent of a bygone era, the kind that deserves to be consumed in a tatty old paperback found in a second-hand shop...

Characters that are complex, rounded and, for the most part, sympathetic, even if you wouldn’t necessarily want to meet them...

Compelling and evocative stuff.

This collection of short stories certainly does not disappoint!

Price of Starlight: Nine short stories - a thousand years of future history. Price of Starlight: Nine short stories - a thousand years of future history. eBook : Fincham, Garrick: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

https://unclekins.wordpress.com/2023/06/15/price-of-starlight-by-garrick-fincham/?fbclid=IwAR2Ocqal3y24RAnmGgv075GjyLQWnxE-8w43mImk_8b-IaeQS_Sq8Y8vkXE

Great review of Price of Starlight, by reviewer James Kinsley: What Price of Starlight offers is something that transcends the sum of its parts... what it creates is almost boundless in its vision.

Price of Starlight by Garrick Fincham As the cover promises, nine short stories, a thousand years of future history. This is science fiction reminiscent of a bygone era, the kind that deserves to be consumed in a tatty old paperback fo…

Welcome to the strange frontier world of Greyskin, seemingly familiar, then, suddenly not. How The West Was Won meets Lord of the Rings with just a dash of H.P. Lovecraft. At one level Greyskin is simple: take fantasy species (mostly Orcs) and drop them in a version of the classic 'wild west'. Almost straight away, however, the book is more oblique, and more interesting than that....

Greyskin, James Kinsley, 2023 Welcome to the strange frontier world of Greyskin, seemingly familiar, then, suddenly not. How The West Was Won meets Lord of the Rings with just a dash of H.P. Lovecraft. At one level Greyskin is …

Price of Starlight - nine short stories, a thousand years of future history. Published on Amazon on Saturday (17th June). Go on, grab a copy on pre-order for just £1.99 - every copy sold before Saturday gives momentum on launch day. It's a great read too (though I would say that, wouldn't I?)!

Price of Starlight: Nine short stories - a thousand years of future history. Price of Starlight: Nine short stories - a thousand years of future history. eBook : Fincham, Garrick: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

'D' - competent, military, and trained to survive. Zach, a civilian, 'trained'? Not so much... but D gets lumbered almost straightaway with looking after him, as they make their way through what's left of the US. D, you see, is on a mission - he has to get to Three Mile Island. The problem is that something has moved pretty sharply to fill the gap we've left by blowing our world to shreds....

Spotlight on new talent: Ultimatum, Vladimir Fleurisma, 2023 ‘D’ – competent, military, and trained to survive. Zach, a civilian, ‘trained’? Not so much… but D gets lumbered almost straightaway with looking after him, as …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0C3XXSMQT/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

17th June, my book of short stories 'hits the stands'... well kindle. Six published in magazines in the US and UK, three new, and currently half-price (£1.25 or local equivalent) as a pre-order.

A high-tech future where the line between being a Starship Captain and a drug addict is a nice uniform. A ruined Martian colony where storms offer the only escape and a flower is the greatest gift. An Earth where those left alive hide under scattered bubble shields and do their best to pretend the world is normal. A far future where the cows ripen in the sun, and robots hope for miracles. An alien world an eternity distant where humanity, of a sort, sing songs of life.

Thousands of years of future history in nine short stories.

Price of Starlight: Nine short stories - a thousand years of future history. Price of Starlight: Nine short stories - a thousand years of future history. eBook : Fincham, Garrick: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

What do you get if you cross Becky Chambers, Andy Weir and James S. A. Corey? You get K. A. Burgess, and I can't wait for the sequel. When we join John Spark - the practical 'help' - we are introduced to an 'ensemble' of characters bound on an expedition to an exo-planet called Aemilia. As the team gell, we get the sense that we are on board with a bunch of pretty nice folk, albeit with some secrets: at this point, we're in Becky Chambers territory....

The Strange Taste of Metal, K. A. Burgess, 2023 What do you get if you cross Becky Chambers, Andy Weir and James S. A. Corey? You get K. A. Burgess, and I can’t wait for the sequel. When we join John Spark – the practical ‘help…

Yes... I'm talking to YOU!

I thought 'I know, I'll sit down and write, but I'll just check my Amazon Stats, Reedsy Stats and Subscriber List first... Some hours later...

After a great weekend with the free offer of Interchange and my interview with Mike Rigby of Eastern Promise, the book is now number 1 out of 1033 books listed under free hard science fiction on Amazon UK.

My interview with the business podcast 'Eastern Promise' about 'the business of being an indy author' dropped today (link below). As a bit of fun, I'm making my SF novel Interchange FREE until the 24th April. Why not grab one? You have nothing to lose but your fear!

Here's the podcast link:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0SmOmab4WGTBfr0dkSVSh9?si=b0a2704a9df24535&nd=1

Amazon Link (come on, all that sweat and blood, and it's free for the next few days!:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B8WTKJGW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

If you do grab one, please do leave me a review and/or star-rating on Amazon - as we all know, reviews and ratings are the absolute life-blood of indy writing! The podcast itself is a bit of a meditation on how indy writing works, and where inspiration comes from. Also teamed with an interview with some of those leading on the emergence of a new 'space science cluster'.

Ever wondered what an SF Norse poem would be like? Read my review of Aniara to find out!

Aniara: Man in time and space Superbly strange, painfully moving, achingly stark: a Scandinavian edda in the stars. Some things fit into categories. Hard SF, action, thriller. When we categorise, we can rank. ‘This book i…

https://www.stellarcatalog.com/stars.php?showStars=15
Spent a few happy evenings vanishing into the Star Catalogue - most up-to-date listings of known exoplanets and cool animations of each system. Great resource if you are writing SF, and ESSENTIAL to play the game of 'Oo, oo, how many planets does random star X from any SF story I can remember actually have?'. I went straight for Epsilon Eridani followed by Wolf 359...

Nearby stars catalogue | Living future Database of nearby stars in Milky Way. Mapped are all stars within $starDistance_display light year distance and some others.

So true…

How to save a dying indie author:

https://youtu.be/m0cJNR8HEw0

If you’ve never seen this, do. The failed film project that underpins much of the SF visual landscape we take for granted today, and which directly influenced Starwars and Alien.

Jodorowsky's Dune | Official Trailer HD (2014) In 1975, Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose films EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN launched and ultimately defined the midnight movie phenomenon, bega...

If this isn’t the interior of an abandoned craft in some diesel punk far future, I don’t know what is…

An abandoned Tupolev tu-104 Jet Interior.

https://unclekins.wordpress.com/2023/02/16/interchange-by-garrick-fincham/?fbclid=IwAR3EbvfdLywkUao3xI0Fc-Tnhn4UeS0oT5sVgUJ9VEIGAYXHP2LKbxXZYlg

Wanted to share this review of my book Interchange. The review was penned by Norfolk writer James Kinsley. There are times when you shouldn't read the reviews... but there are times when you should. This goes right to the heart of the novel with perception and understanding - so much so that I can almost see Mr Kinsley's surface-suit boot tracks in the dust-choked ruins...

Interchange by Garrick Fincham Mars has fallen. It’s been one hundred years since The Fall and the survivors of the human colonies are left to roam the surface, scratching out a living, scavenging what they can from the ru…

"How can we tell what The Experiment requires? The Experiment is The Experiment..." The Doomed City was banned for 16 years. I know this because it says so on the cover! Penned by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky it didn't see the light of day until 1989 and the advent of Glasnost. The story is simple but presents a constantly unfolding puzzle....

The Doomed City, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1973/1989 “How can we tell what The Experiment requires? The Experiment is The Experiment…” The Doomed City was banned for 16 years. I know this because it says so on the cover! Penned by …