Hello and welcome to a few tid-bits of recent interweb activities:

Kate Elliott and Mike Cobley talk about ‘others’ in SF/F i.e. aliens etc. on bookgeeks. Both the science fiction and fantasy genres have a traditional reliance on ‘others’ – from extra-terrestrials and elves to angels and demons. How do you set out to create plausible ‘others’ (do they even need to be plausible?), and make sure that readers relate to them in the ways that you want?

And Sean Williams is interviewed by the Sydney Writers’ Centre, you can see (and then hear, presumably …) the podcast here.

Lastly, but no less interestingly, Jo Graham has posted on how to keep the story of Cleopatra fresh when it is well-known subject matter to many, and we’ve posted a taster extract of Hand of Isis (UK | US ) just out this month.

That’s it for now and have a good weekend with whatever Orbit book you happen to be reading!