I'm Ant Jones. I work across three things that lean on each other more than you might expect: engineering leadership, writing, and the wider world of speculative fiction.
I'm a Senior Tech Lead at Future PLC, where I help ship the platforms behind a fair chunk of the company's specialist media. The day job is mostly people, architecture, coding, and trade-offs — in roughly that order.
I've written freelance for magazines and newspapers for years. My byline has appeared in the LA Times, alongside a list of various publications both print and digital. I'm currently finishing my first book; ask me about it and I'll either say too much or too little.
I've been running SFBook.com for over twenty years — a review site for speculative fiction and one of the few places left on the internet that doesn't use cookies, or have adverts. It started as a hobby and quietly refused to stop being one.
I attend speculative fiction conventions whenever the calendar allows. If you spot a name badge that says "Ant Jones" or "Ant @ SFBook", that is probably me; please say hello, I'm mostly harmless.
When I'm not at a keyboard or a convention I'm usually somewhere with an airsoft rifle in hand. I run solo — no team — and gravitate toward gas blowback for the recoil and the ritual of it. My preferred game is intense CQB: tight corners, short sightlines, decisions measured in milliseconds. Outdoor woodland skirmishes are a fine palate cleanser, but the close-quarters stuff is where the sport gets honest.
Favourite site: The Vault (greater Manchester).
I'm a gamer too — the kind who has played on most platforms since platforms first existed. I lose more hours than I should to anything with a good world to disappear into, and the backlog grows faster than I can clear it. Same root cause as the unread paperbacks, really.
I'm a judge for this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award — the UK's longest-running award for science fiction. It's a privilege, an education, and a great deal of reading.
The fastest way to reach me is on the contact page.