Yesterday evening Peter Hamilton did a launch event for his latest book, The Abyss Beyond Dreams. It isn’t quite as thick as my hardcover copy of A Dance With Dragons, but it is fairly hefty. Also it is only half the story.

Peter and his publicist, Sam Eades, are working very hard on this tour. They were in Swindon at lunchtime, and at Forbidden Planet in Bristol in the afternoon, before going on to Bath in the evening. Let no one tell you that book tours are easy.

Having done a short reading, Peter talked a bit about his approach to SF, and why he writes. Having done the Dystopias panel last weekend, I was interested to hear him say that he doesn’t like them, and can only write SF because he believes that the human race does have a long term future. I suspect that’s true of most space opera writers — it was certainly true of Banks.