1. The Polish language book 2 is out, entitled Kleska Wazki (1), or at least I've got my copies through, so it should be out soon. The title is a straight translation of Dragonfly Falling and Jon Sullivan's UK art is on the cover.

2. The German language books are also out, and I think we have threevolumes hitting the shelves at once, with another two to be released (should have gone for a boxed set maybe). The first two volumes are Empire, the next two Dragonfly, and Mantis gets a book to itself. I and my access to online translators are a little thrown by one of the covers, so maybe I've got it wrong, but Die Schwarmkriege (the Swarm War) series runs to: Invasion des Feuers, Der Gepanzerte Spion, Die Geflugelte Armee, Schwartzer Glanz and Goldene Magie, which Google Chrome's in house translator makes as Invasion of the Fire, The Armoured Spy, The Winged Army, Black Gloss and Golden Magic. I'm not at all sure that "Black Gloss" is right. Any erudite assistance appreciated.

3. The US book 3 is out, with Jon Sullivan's phenomenal artwork on the cover.

4. In this month's SFX I have a little article on China Mieville's Perdido Street Station for their Book Club section (I wrote up Titus Groan for them a little whole ago)

5. I will be contributing to Borders'  SF blog, Babel Clash in the coming week. I'll post individually about topics as they come up, but first off I'ma gonna kick Superman in the nuts and then run away (2).

6. Finally, not exactly news, but Scifi London was a good fun time. Thank you to everyone who turned up at the coffee thing, and also to the audience who pitched up for The Thirty Second Commute, the panel I clawed my way on to. I had discovered fairly shortly beforehand that all the other panellists were Experts On The Future, so I had anticipated being the proverbial fifth wheel (3) but, as it turned out, neither having a strong agenda nor a focused speciality can sometimes mean you get to say more stuff. One of the other panellists also turned out to have a good nominee for Most Interesting Job Ever, as he studies slime moulds in order to produce smarter robots. Or possibly robots driven by smarter slime moulds. It involved robots and slime moulds, anyway, and it's a rare thing to sit there and think, This is an actual Scientist. He Does Science to things. (4) (5)

(1) With some extra bits I couldn't reproduce.

(2) What? He can so take it.

(3) Out of four.

(4) And of course in ten years time, when he's riding around on a cyborg slime mould the size of a house shouting about how everyone said he was mad, we'll all say we saw it coming.

(5) I have somewhat fallen in love with that specific kind of science that gets Done to things, in the general style of Dresden Codak and Girl Genius. Needless to say, Drephos Does Science to things too, and sometimes people.