March 2022 Archives

Sorry about the outage: I just spent the past two weeks being a tourist and visiting friends in Germany—my first journey more than 50km from home since January 2020. It was fun, good beer was drunk, old friends were visited, many FFP2 masks were worn, and I'm now testing daily because of course BA.2 arrived while I was traveling. (LFTs are all negative so far ...)

Shipping delays mean that Transreal Fiction didn't get copies of Escape from Yokai Land before I departed, so if you've been wondering where your order got to, I'm going to try and get up there tomorrow to sign them (assuming Ingrams, the wholesaler, have delivered them the day after I went on vacation).

As it's not going paperback (ever) there's no point holding off on spoilers/questions about Escape, so if you want to ask me anything about it, feel free to do so in the comments below.

Please do not colonise the comments with (a) the permanent floating cars v. bicycles discussion, (b) the permanent floating climate change discussion, or (c) the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I'll start a new topic for those things later.

(Charlie here. I received this open letter from my Ukrainian translator, who I can vouch for. I am republishing it here, in full and unaltered, with permission. I have not fact-checked the contents but have no reason to doubt them. Comments on this blog entry are disabled for reasons that I think should be obvious.)




On Thursday, February 24th the Russian Federation declared war on Ukraine and attacked our country. As we write this letter, the army of the aggressor nation kills our children, bombs cities and civilians, and has already turned more than 835,000 Ukrainians into refugees. In an attempt to further occupy our lands, Russia at the same time uses aggressive propaganda to justify its war crimes. Russian citizens are consistently being lied to about what is really happening in Ukraine.

We believe that not all Russian citizens are fans of Putin's regime and not all of them justify this war. We know that plenty of Russians feel scared to use their voices and speak up against Putin's regime. Many believe it is none of their business. Yet, there are also many who believe in the righteousness of Putin and his propaganda.

So, we plead with you -- writers and visual content creators that have big audiences of readers and followers in Russia. To them, your opinion and your words matter. Your stand on the war in Ukraine matters. Please, stand by us as we fight for our values, our democracy, and our freedom. For the simple right to be Ukrainians and live in Ukraine. Your powerful voices can influence these Russian readers and followers. To encourage them to be brave, connect with their values, and take a stand on ending this ruthless war.

Please, take to your platforms and address your Russian and Ukrainian audiences. The first ones need your encouragement to believe in the power of their voices against Putin's regime. The second ones are in desperate need of support and kindness.

We encourage the international community of fans of science fiction&fantasy, writers, artists, editors to boycott the Russian book market until the war in Ukraine ends and the country is free from Russian occupation. Until Putin's regime is condemned as criminal and Putin and his closest allies are punished. As Ukrainians, we are working on this to happen day and night but there are bureaucratic procedures that make the process so much slower in critical times where every second counts and can save Ukrainian lives.

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Propaganda