What Did I Do Before TV and the Internet?

Been a while, I know. Stevie (the car), Scotland, my ISP and work have knocked the wind out of me of late. Work has reached the point where there is serious talk in the Fox/Hawksmoor household of quitting and moving 100 miles down the road to Chester.

While in Scotland, I read through El Sombra, the second in Abaddon Books’ Pax Brittania world. I’ve passed their first one, Unnatural History around a few people. I wrote an enthusiastic review of it for Steampunk Magazine #6. T’other Paul (we already had one Paul when he started) had it next and loved it like I did. ngaio and Allegra were less than impressed--Allegra didn’t even finish it, and ngaio only finished it so she could understand what T’other Paul and I were talking about.

El Sombra was better, in my opinion. In a small Mexican town, a masked vigilante fights to free his people from the Nazi’s. Loud, bright, explosive, no-holds-barred pulp action Saturday morning pictures extravaganza. Bereft of characters or moral ambiguities. Great fun.

Since coming back to Wales, I’ve also read Rob Grant’s Backwards. I’d read all the other Red Dwarf books years ago, but somehow never managed to get through to this one. Far better than Doug Naylor’s offering, The Last Human. Backwards had a stronger plot, better writing and one bit where I laughed out loud. I haven’t done that when reading a book since... blimey, I can’t recall a single time.

And I simply can’t forget to mention Ray Bardbury’s The Illustrated Man. Fahrenheit 451 is a book which has endured with me and I frequently say is my favourite. The Illustrated Man has some pretty good stories, and some amazing ones. The Highway, The Long Rain and Kaleidoscope are worth a mention. I find it hard to explain what I find so hypnotic about Bradbury’s writing. He’s like a magician: He’s standing there, nothing up his sleeves and you watch him wandering around on stage, perfectly ordinarily. And then he stops, and you realize he’s built this amazing, beautiful home to ideas which whisper gently to you when your brain is just running idle. If I knew how he did it, I’d be copying it. Without shame.

Scotland was an amazing experience. The most enduring part of has been the silence. We had no computers, no television and only watched one video the entire week. We had music playing just one evening, and that was it. There were no neighbours, no road and cars, no people walking around outside. Just the sea and the birds and the wind. Since coming back, Allegra and I only have the television if there’s a specific programme we want to watch. At the moment, it gets turned on at 8:00pm on Sunday for Top Gear, and back off again at 9:00pm. The elimination of just that background noise from out daily lives has made the whole world seem different.

I get +1 Geek Points for following @isaacasimov, and another +1 for buying a mobile so I can update my Twitter when I’m away from the ‘net. The mobile is a Motorola W377, a slim flip phone. I have vague ideas of turning it into something resembling a cigarette case.

The copies of Steampunk Magazine #6 are back from the layout guy. There’s a lot of proof-reading in my future. I may have only had a minor part in putting it together, but it’s going to be amazing to see it all there, together, just like a real magazine! And, of course, Of Mice and Journeymen is appearing in there. I’m very excited about that. My first paying story, ever!

A Week in FoxieLand

It’s been a kind of crappy week.  Work’s been a steady rolling ball of unpleasantness, mainly due to the atmosphere.  The company are treating us like crap, people are feeling like crap and it’s not taking much for people to get bruised. 

The landlord came over on Thursday to deliver a new cooker for us.  That meant the house needed cleaning.  (I don’t live in a sty, but I’ve got more interesting things to be doing than vacuuming every few days and Turtle Waxing my books.) 

The week before, I put down the work I’ve been doing on Bambi to turn an old shirt into a new waistcoat.  I’ve really taken to sewing.  It has a tangible feel of achievement, and I can watch Quantum Leap while I do it.  I just brought Season 2 on DVD and, well, childhood feelings are the sweetest.  The house cleaning meant that I worked, came home, cleaned, went to bed...

On top of that, I’m seriously considering leaving Critters.  Critters is amazing.  It’s a group of writers who exchange critiques on each other’s stories.  Each week, about two dozen short stories are mailed out to members and put on the website.  Everyone reads a manuscript or two, or ten, and submit their 300 word plus critique, which then gets sent to the writer.  You can expect about a dozen critiques on a story.  Writing the crits has helped me as much as getting them back on the two stories I’ve had critted. 

The trouble is, you have to submit three critiques every four weeks.  I’m having trouble doing that.  It’s so damned simple, but this is the sort of thing I’ve always struggled with.  You know, commitment and consistency.  I pick things up, chase them around the living room for a bit, and then sort of get bored and wander off.  I’m changing my nature, but there’s only so hard you can fight against it.

In other news, I’m looking forwards to having a new puppy to play with.  According to the BBC, the British Library are putting 2 million pages from 19th century newspapers online for the public to view.  It costs, but not much and I’m happy to pay.  The opportunity to paw through the minutiae of life over a century ago is making my jaws slather. 

I do apologise for the boring, negative post.  It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I’m trying to keep playing with this toy even after the shine has stopped sparkling.  I just keep reminding myself that it doesn’t have to be perfect.  That’s one of the things which enables me to drop things:  I leave them for a bit, and then the momentum goes and the longer I leave it, the more I’m convinced it’s got to be perfect, so the longer I leave it...  You don’t have to make it up the mountain in one step, Foxie.

The London Adventure

London was a different world to me.  There was such a huge variety of people all doing their own thing.  Almost half of them were plugged into their phones, Nintendo DS, mp3 player...  The other half stared blankly into space, into books or at the person with them.  Everyone was going somewhere, and only worried about arriving. 

The thing which struck me most were the smells of London.  I’d start off at one end of a street with beer and cigarette smoke, and pass through grilled meat, perfume, cars, buses, spices and a whole host of other things I couldn’t identify.  And what is it that the Tube trains smell of?  There’s some grease around the edges of it, maybe some copper, something with hints of rubber and something sharp...  The Tube smells like the Tube. 

I spent my time on the trains and the streets like a kitten in a catnip patch.  I guess the locals can be as angry at me as I get with the tourists who amble down the Welsh roads at 20 m.p.h. while they stare stupidly at the mountains.


Castlevania and Crossbones

Out in Finchley, it smelt of rain and hedgerows.  We had a twenty minute walk to the arcade through tree-lined avenues and the occasional passing car, only to find that the machine was long-gone.  It was a shame, but Allegra took it very well.  We played on the Silent Hill shooter instead, pumping pound coins into the machine as Pyramid Head killed us.

That left the evening free to visit Crossbones.  It was a haunting experience.  The gates were tightly shut but covered in flowers, epitaphs, ribbons, candles and photographs that other people had left for the dead.  Ordinarily, I don’t think the dead can hear.  When they’re close, though, my conviction slips away.  Allegra and I borrowed a pair of ngaio’s nail scissors, (eventually) drew some blood with them and left it at the gates.  I don’t have an explanation for why I did that.


The Espresso Book Machine

Before we left, the EBM had me excited.  With the machine, a publisher no longer has to commit to huge print runs.  You can go into the shop, pick the book you want, have it printed and then leave with it.  I had the idea of shelves being stacked, not with books, but with flashcards showing the front and back covers, the bookshop resembling a Blockbuster more than a library.

My whole experience was terribly British.  I picked out the book I wanted before leaving, and had a map to the store.  I went in, Allegra found the machine and I waited patiently for someone to serve me.  Eventually, I hunted someone down who told me that the someone I needed was on their break, but she’d find him for me.  Ten minutes later, he came back from his break, checked the EBM library and told my assistant--who then told me--that they couldn’t print the book I wanted and did I want to order it instead.  Rather defeated the point, I thought.  I could do that at home.

And that’s what I left thinking.  I go to a bookshop to smell the books, hold them, flick through the pages and be snagged by the covers.  If I want a specific book... I go to Amazon, or eBay, or Play, or Google Shopping, or anywhere else on-line.  The only advantage the EBM seems to have over other print-on-demand is that you have to go to the store to pick up your book.  That's a real... um... pain in the arse?  I think the EBM is going to be an odd side-track on the evolution of publishing rather than the linotype I thought it was going to be.


Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum was great.  I secretly liked Museums when I was a kid.  Every display I walk past, I read and am fascinated by.  I slowly made my way through the human body exhibit, then the dinosaurs, then the natural world and then the restless Earth.  The human body exhibit hadn’t changed since I saw it in around 1992, when I thought Terminator 2 was the best thing in the world, ever.  I walked over the dinosaur skeletons and watched the arms of a iguanodon shake like it was still alive.  The natural world told me a bunch of stuff about global warming I knew already, and the restless Earth showed me how rocks are made and how the planet’s core is mainly iron. 

When we look out to the horizon, the Earth looks flat.  Time’s like that, I think.  Things seem static and set, but only because we’re too small to see the curvature of time’s arc.   Like Eratosthenes, we can prove time’s curve but we can’t observe it.  Maybe one day, we will be able to. 


The Ballet

The ballet was interesting.  The dancers twisted and contorted like creatures from Silent Hill.  I didn’t know humans could move like that without being possessed by forces of evil.  The dance itself explored the evolution of imagination, mathematics, relationships and the space they exist in as they touched each other.  Interesting, but I think I still prefer Giselle.

We were pushed for time, but needed to eat before the performance.  We found an Indian buffet, and I filled up a plate with food, ate it, polished of half of ngaio’s and left within ten minutes.  Yes, I am proud of myself.


Docklands and Doughnuts

On Sunday morning we sat on the Docklands Light Railway from Bank station to the train’s terminus, and then rode it back again.  I watched the houses, apartments, warehouses, gardens, office blocks and rivers go by my window.  I gawked at the Isle of Dogs as it jutted out of London like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.  This random mash of new developments, history and organic human cultural growth is what London has always been for me.  The HSBC building, stations with names like Heron’s Quay and Mudchute, an old abandoned boat lying in the low tide and covered in plants, rows of Victorian terraced houses with their satellite dishes and washing in the gardens, gaudy new apartment blocks full of city boy wankers and DKNYs...  The DLR ride was definitely a high-light.

Waiting in London Victoria for the train back, we visited the Krispy Kreme stall and picked up doughnuts for the office.  All in, I think we ended up buying five dozen, not counting the few single ones we brought.  The people who served us--Martin and Leena--were wonderful and gave us free tea and coffee.

And the rest...

The falafel place was indeed fantastic and well-worth seeking out.  Opposite it, ngaio found a shop selling specialist loose-leaf teas and coffee.  Yes, it was Heaven and of course I spent money I shouldn't.  The Bridge Cafe lost out to time, unfortunately.

Now I’m utterly skint, but very glad I went.

A Review I Didn't Mean to Write

Time for some more spitting into the ocean...

(For full disclosure, Evis T's review provides a suitable counter-point to my little rant.)

I wasn’t going to go into details about the new Star Trek film, because there’s a lot of that sort of thing about right now. The more of it I hear, though, the more I keep on hearing the same thing:
“This film is amazing. The only reason not to like it is if you’re a ‘hard core’ trekkie. The sort of geek that normal geeks shun for being too geeky.”

The above statement is a straw man and tries to lump all those ‘against me’ into a single category, which it then denigrates. You know what? I didn’t think it was amazing.

As I said this morning, the characters were brilliant. The acting and the special effects were, almost without exception, fantastic. They threw the canon out the window, and that’s fine. No, honestly, I’m okay with that. TOS canon was always kind of crappy anyway.

So, why wasn’t it amazing?

1. Lazy writing. In this case, when you just can’t be bothered to come up with a proper explanation for something, and end up saying, ‘sod it, the audience will let me get away with it’. The alternate universe in the movie was created so they could throw canon out the window. The explanation we get in the film is ‘um, yeah... science done it... Look! Here’s Leonard Nimoy!’
2. The movie is the birth of a cash cow. It’s a precursor to a new franchise, and it doesn’t even have the decency to blush. Get into the story you want to tell with your new characters and new universe, and give us the back story in a few well-written, gutsy flashbacks.
3. Lazy writing. Kirk needs to be captain of the Enterprise by the end of the film. He’s just graduated from Star Fleet Academy, and should expect to wait eight years before he gets command of a ship. So... look! Almost TOS music with Leonard Nimoy doing the, ‘Space... the final frontier’ speech!
4. Mr. Spock Snr. Firstly: Oh no! We’ve written ourselves into a corner. What can we do now... hang on, here comes Spock! Look--it’s Leonard Nimoy everyone! (If only I could come up with a phrase for that...) Secondly: his acting isn’t that great in the film. I mean, he’s about seven-hundred-and-sixty (and still younger than Shatner), but still.
5. They want to milk this cow for all they can get, but they’re going to have to square it with the canon sooner or later. So, every time I sit down to watch the latest udder squirt, I’m going to be thinking, ‘are they going to square it now? Is this going to be it? Are they going to write themselves out of this hole by fixing it now?’ The new franchise should end by the new Enterprise crew having to choose to end their existence, and the existence of their entire time line, in order for the proper time line to exist. That’s the ultimate test of their character, and of course they pass. But that’s not going to happen. Kill the cow? Even when she’s old, lame, cancer-ridden and has only got one working stomach left? No! There’s milk in there yet!

So, there we are. It was a good film, but not amazing. I write sci-fi and I know my flaws. I don’t forgive them in myself, so I find it hard to forgive them in others. I’m not over-whelmed not because I’m a hard core trekkie nerd, but maybe it’s because I’m a hard core sci-fi writer nerd.

So there.

Interzone 221's fiction reviewed

About 20 minutes' walk away from where I grew up, there was Pineridge Driving Range and Bowling Alley.  When my uncle came down to visit, he'd sometimes take us down there to whack a few buckets of balls, and bowl a couple of games.  One time when we were down there, a few allies down, there was a guy there with his kid.  The kid couldn't have been more than eight.  They were both kitted up to the nines:  shirts; their own shoes; silly bowling gloves.  The kid was throwing gutter balls almost every time.  He had this really weird way of throwing the ball, sort of twisting his hand and only taking a step before releasing.  If he bowled like a normal person, he could be getting strikes and spares.  But he was doing this weird twisting hand thing.  Every once in a while, though, he'd throw a perfect ball.  Straight down, pins to the wind with more accuracy and strength than an eight-year-old should have.

I think about that kid quite a lot.

Interzone 221 didn't have much for me.  The cover was absolutely beautiful but the fiction left me luke-warm at best.

A Clown Escapes from Circus Town, by Will McIntosh, followed Beaners the clown as he escapes his own circus hell and wanders through various themed villages, looking for a Truth.  The world seemed a bit like Westworld drawn in crayons, so maybe more like Red Dwarf's Waxworld.  The characters, prose and plot all seemed to be going through the motions, which is a shame because the Truth Beaners finds is an interesting idea.  It just gets a bit mangled by the story.

Al Robertson's Fishermen is an evocative story which reads like poetry.  In a renaissance-era world, an artist gets captured by savage pirates and forced to painting their church.  The artist discovers that the pirates aren't savage and, through living with them, discovers the true face of his faith.  It's just as long as it needs to be and makes a worth-while read, but I'm still trying to work out why it was in Interzone--there's hints of something extra-ordinary at the end, but other than that it seems pretty straight-forward and mundane.

An ex-junkie drops his dead-end job and travels across the universe to help a friend from his high-days get clean in Matthew Kressel's Saving Diego.  Set on a world that boarders on a stereotypical Mystical Middle-East (kind of like Tatoonie with daily prayers, bazaars, socially isolated locals and mystical herbs), the titular Diego has become addicted to the mind-enhancing substance the locals use as part of their religion.  His friend, Mikal, slowly weans him off while getting addicted himself.  If we assume the visions the herb induces are real, and not just hallucinations (which is what we're told is happening), then this story of co-dependants becomes a bit more interesting, but not much.  There's no big ideas and no empathy with the rise from and fall into addiction.  (Maybe that's because I'm holding it up Aerosmith's Walk This Way autobiography, which hits me like a cannon ball in the gut every time.)

I was worried that Alaya Dawn Johnson's Far and Deep was falling into the same cultural stereotype habit as Diego for a while.  Island culture, diving for precious gems, all a bit Philippines without the grinding poverty and human rights abuses.  A rebellious elder is murdered, and her daughter sets out to find the killer.  No, she's no Philip Marlow.  Johnson spends her time showing us the island and it's relatively complicated culture, it's social divisions, expectations and rituals, and I came away glad I'd read it.  It was sort of like eating a Bounty bar:  Sweet and tropical; and wickedly indulgent.

Paul M. Berger's Home Again sees a traveller return to his family after a long space trip.  The hook is the ships travel the interstellar distances by altering reality somehow, allowing the pilot to just think about being somewhere, and then the ship is there.  It's an interesting idea, but the story felt like it was missing a couple of hundred words somewhere.  The idea, the family, or the world isn't given enough space to breath and I'm not sure which of those the story was about.

The headline piece for the issue was Bruce Stirling's Black Swan.  Yes, BRUCE STIRLING.  I'll confess my sins and admit that it was the first piece of his I've read.  I have the Difference Engine in the bathroom, waiting to be read...  The prose in Black Swan was a pleasure and the plot took the reality hopping computer geek trope for a spin.  It was all going great until the end.  Then it all went a bit wtf. Massimo, the geek with the magic laptop, takes our narrator through the looking glass, explains the differences between the parallel worlds and then gets killed so he can pass the baton on.  The story didn't prepare me for an ending I'd have to re-read.  It's probably just me being stupid, but it's my blog, damnit.  With a different ending, this story could have been great.  As it is, it feels like a vehicle for a great idea which is dumped by the roadside when it's served its purpose.

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I don't know where the kid from the bowling alley is right now.  I don't know if he's even still bowling.  I just remember him doing his weird twisty-hand thing and throwing gutter ball after gutter ball, maybe hitting the odd pin.  When he scored a strike, though, it was a blinder.  Interzone could consistently print good fiction that gets warm reviews every time.  But they have their own style, their own twisty-hand thing.  When they hit a strike, it's amazing.  All the gutter balls are forgotten.  What's the point in being good, if you can shoot for brilliant?