70 years young

“We know him as a supporter of young writers, a stern critic of sloppy card tricks and cheap deceits. Just as we can never be certain when we are caught in his tricks, we can be certain of the man.”

(Which were just a few of Simon Spanton’s words to us after dinner.)

Today is Chris’s birthday, and on Friday evening a group of our wonderful friends and colleagues came together in a London pub to celebrate the occasion. We gathered at The Porcupine on Charing Cross Road, a venue we love for its friendliness, its great lunches, and its close proximity to some excellent bookshops and the Curzon cinema. It was a marvellous occasion – Chris deemed it easily his best birthday ever – and it was just fantastic to have so many of those who are most special to us all together in one very cheerful, very talkative throng. Simon Spanton and Al Reynolds made excellent and beautifully contrasting speeches, and when you realise that 2013 marks not just Chris’s 70th birthday, but also his fiftieth year as a writer and the publication of his thirteenth novel (fourteenth if you count The Dream Archipelago) it certainly seemed like there was much to celebrate. For Chris of course, but also for everyone who writes, works, reads, discusses and argues to make SFF the unique and uniquely stimulating literary landscape that it is. Once again, we’d like to offer our heartfelt thanks to those who turned out – some from quite some distance – to make the evening so hugely enjoyable and such a resounding success. It will live long in our memory. Our only regret is that we didn’t take more photos – but we were too busy talking!