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Synopsis
A memorial anthology celebrating the life and work of the science-fiction writer Eric Brown, edited by Ian Whates for NewCon Press.
Phillip Vine's contribution, 'The Neglected Bookshop', is a quiet piece about the shelves nobody visits and what waits on them.
Author’s notes
Writing 'The Neglected Bookshop'
The story came out of a real shelf: the section of a second-hand shop nobody browses, where the spines have gone the colour of tea. Eric Brown would have gone straight to it.
It was Eric who said, more than once, that a poet who refuses to write fiction is only doing half the job. This story is the argument conceded, several years late, and addressed to him.
2010s
The Pickerel gatherings in Cambridge — Eric Brown, Chris Beckett, Una McCormack, Ian Watson, Ian Whates.
2023
Eric Brown dies; NewCon Press begins the memorial anthology.
2023
'The Neglected Bookshop' written and published in To the Stars and Back.
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Published by NewCon Press, 2023.
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In memoriam
Eric Brown
1960 – 2023
For Eric
Eric Brown was one of Britain's most prolific and most generous science-fiction writers — more than seventy books, from Meridian Days and Bengal Station to the Langham and Dupré mysteries — and, to Phillip, a friend first and a novelist second.
It was Eric who told him to stop writing only poetry and go back to fiction. The Cambridgeshire gatherings in the Pickerel on Magdalene Street — Chris Beckett, Una McCormack, Ian Watson, Ian Whates, Eric — are the reason 'The Neglected Bookshop' exists at all.
This anthology is the thank-you note. Phillip's story sits alongside work by the writers Eric spent his life encouraging, which is exactly how he would have wanted the book arranged.
Stories in his honour by
- Alastair Reynolds
- Justina Robson
- Chris Beckett
- Ian Watson
- Keith Brooke
- James Lovegrove
- Tony Ballantyne
- Una McCormack
- Philip Palmer
- Kim Lakin
- Phillip Vine