Hello, hello, come on in, take a seat while the courtesy drone takes your coats (and piles them in a heap somewhere in the hall). My name is Mike Cobley, writer, critic, micropolitician and rant technician, and this is my new home on the net. In this the new and forward-grooving world of tomorrow and the next future after that, webbification is all-important so I is getting webbified with the best of them. And for why, you may ask? Well, the unavoidable truth is that all our heads/minds/cognitive cisterns are being drawn ever further into the paradimestores of cyberspace and if you ain`t got yer stall set up in or near that glittering flowing glow….well, dude, you may as well be writing verse in dactylic hexameter in a backwoods cabin off in wildest Azerbaijan. In the 50`s.

Now, I have a new book coming out in March `09 from Orbit Books, the 1st volume of a trilogy/sequence (never too sure of the difference between those two words these days!) entitled Humanity`s Fire, being an interstellar epic chock full of the most baroque aliens and hyperspace vehicles I can think of. Volume 1 is called `Seeds Of Earth` and tells the tale of a lost human colonyworld rediscovered after 150 years. The original colonists were part of a desperate attempt by the human race to ensure its survival since at the time, a century and a half ago, Earth was under attack from a pitiless insectoid horde called the Swarm,  and humanity seemed on the brink of annihilation. Several colonyships were planned but only three reached completion and were launched off into the depths of space before the Swarm could lay siege to Earth.

The lost human colonyworld is called Darien, populated by the descendants of the original colonists who comprised Scots, Scandinavians and Russians. The Darienans find that Earth survived the attack of the Swarm, and that this region of the galaxy is teeming with a plethora of alien beings, lifeforms, cultures, arguments, wars, faiths and communities and, as fate would have it, they find their world becoming the focus of savage real-politik, newborn hunger for power, and ancient longlived hate.

Before long, I hope to be able to post some extracts from the book, along with some background information, just to sharpen the anticipation!

Also, I`ll be writing posts on the likes of books, music, politics, philosophy, computer games (my own personal life-eating pandora`s box), and anything else that comes to mind.

Oh, and in case you wondered about the odd title of this here blog, well it`s a reference to an earlier persona of mine, waaaay back in the 1980`s, before I was even professionally published; back then, as an eager cyberpunk fanboy (and dementedly energetic letterwriter – oh, letters were blogs except that you wrote them on paper and posted them off? Nutty, eh?), I started a single page broadsheet in homage of sorts to Cheap Truth, the clarioncall cyberpunk pamphlet written and distroed by Vincent Omniaveritas, being the writer Bruce Sterling. So, I started my own, snarkily titled `Shark Tactics`, which ran for 6 snarling, polemic issues. Funnily enough, I unearthed the original masters for the broadsheets (which I`d laid out on A3 sheets of card – hey, none of yer desktop publishing then, matey) just last week before I headed south for the Orbital Eastercon. I have the vague idea of running off some more copies for giving away, maybe even put them together as a pdf so folks can come along and download them, look them over and laugh like drains at my/our febrile naivety!

I had thought about naming this blog Shark Tactics, but that would imply that I`m intending to perpetrate certain anonymous bombardments upon targets in the SF/fantasy field. No – this is a personal blog…with links to my past and future, and possessing inevitable connotations. Besides, I reserve my vitriol these days for those who truly deserve it, those who lied to get us into a war, who concocted immense cathedrals of deceit and ordered good people to do terrible things in Iraq and Afghanistan.