Already four months have passed since my last message to you. I’d planned to send out one newsletter per month and drafted several essays for that purpose, but somehow I haven’t found the time to edit any of them to completion. These essays should reach you soon enough. In the meantime, I’m long overdue to update you on how I’ve been keeping myself busy. So here is a rundown on my creative life as we, here in the northern hemisphere, approach the summer solstice of 2024….

Humans in Literary Translation (HILT) Creative people of all stripes—from writers to sculptors—often benefit from comradery and community with others who practice their art. This is no less true of literary translators. Until the pandemic struck, I met regularly with a translator’s collective focused on Japanese  fiction. It consisted of four members: Alison Watts, Louise Heal Kawai, Matt Treyvaud, and myself. We called ourselves Humans in Literary Translation—or HILT for short. I have always liked the double meaning of the word “in” here. The preposition suggests both that we are working in the field of translation and that we ourselves have been translated. This latter nuance resonates with my belief

To help readers better visualize the world of the Jubilee Cycle trilogy, especially the 2nd book, I had two maps designed by artist Logan Fulcher: A map of central Tokyo, including the District of Dreams and Waku Waku City A close-up on the District of Dreams These will be included in all future editions of The Naked World, starting with the paperback. All editions of A Diamond Dream will also include the map of central Tokyo.  For those who purchased the hardcover edition of The Naked World that does not include the maps or who only have them in monochrome, I have posted colour images below.  Map of Central Tokyo

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk OG Anthology Reading the Definitive 1986 Short Story Collection in the 2020s  Discovering Cyberpunk William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the quintessential cyberpunk novel, was released in 1984, the year I was born, and Mirrorshades, the defining cyberpunk anthology, came out just two years later. Although I would later go on to write three cyberpunk novels of my own, I was literally in diapers when the genre took off and, naturally, had no direct awareness of it at the time. I was first introduced to the term “cyberpunk” as a young child in the early 90s, through the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020. I was then exposed in early adolescence to