Macmillan Prador Moon.

Time for a pretty picture, which I had hell's own trouble converting from and adobe file. Here then is the cover of the Macmillan British version of Prador Moon. Not sure yet whether it'll be in hardback, but it certainly looks cool!

Update:
What a silly sod I am. The picture here was taken from a picture of a full dust jacket, so of course there's going to be a hard back. Damn, I must drink less wine - brain cells dribbling out of my ears.

If you're religious, cover your eyes now!

I found this joke submitted to the Normal Bob Smith site (link down on the right) by one of his fans. Not to everyone's taste, but I laughed.

Four Nuns die in a car accident and are waiting to get into heaven through the pearly gates.

St Peter, being the gatekeeper, asks if any of them have had anything to do with a man’s penis.

“Yes,” says the first, “I've seen one.”

“Go wash out thine eyes in the holy fountain and yea may enter the gates of heaven.”

“Well, I've touched one,” says the second nun.

“Go wash thine hands in the holy fountain and yea may enter the gates of heaven.”

St Peter now turns to see the last two nuns beating the shit out of each other, so runs over to separate them and demands to know what’s going on.

“Well,” says the third nun, “I want to gargle before she washes out her arse.”

Orson Scott Card on Global Warming.

Here's the raw truth:

All the computer models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict that past.

That is, when you run their software with the data from, say, the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, they project results that have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.

In other words, the models don't work. The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done.

-- Orson Scott Card


You can read the whole thing here, and very good it is:

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-03-04-1.html

...

Ian M Banks.

Along with Caroline and my mother I went to see and hear an all time favorite author of mine at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. As one event in the Essex Book Festival, Ian M Banks was there to do a reading from his latest non-M book, be interviewed, then take questions from the audience. I was surprised to see that he seemed quite nervous to begin with, but in retrospect I shouldn’t have been, since I doubt that the feeling ever goes away. Once he’d got into his stride, however, he was entertaining, amusing and came across as a likeable chap.

One fly in the ointment was the assumption by the interviewer that since we were all there to see Mr Banks then we all had to be lefty liberals. Mr Banks claims to be a committed socialist who when given a chance always votes for the most left-wing candidate. I was stifling my cynicism since only a few minutes before he’d been telling us about the two Porsches and the Landrover Discovery he’d sold now he was going ‘green’. Mmm, right.

That aside it was still an enjoyable evening. At one point I was tempted to fire off a question at him after he said he hates and avoids research. I was going to ask if that avoidance of research extended to his book about whisky: Raw Spirit. I somewhat doubt that, since it certainly seems to be a passion with him. After he finished talking he sat at a table in the theatre lobby signing numerous books – the queue certainly looked satisfyingly long.

Deservedly so.

Adjustments.

Couple of things I need to update here. A while back I slammed the latest series of Battlestar Galactica and that criticism now needs to be balanced. After the first few crappy episodes set on New Caprica, the series improved hugely with only one or two turds in the punch bowl (‘punch’ being the operative word here with an episode I can only describe as ‘boxing and relationships’ – one of those marking time episodes). Certainly I’ve been enjoying Battlestar lately, though I do feel the Gaius Baltar/ Number Six thread is flapping in the wind and the behaviour of the zylons has descended into the ridiculous. Where will it all end? Will it end?

Smoking. Well, I’m still off the cigarettes, though I did lapse yesterday and have about three puffs on one. I have to say that the graph of cigarette cravings I put on here is complete bullshit. It’s claimed on the website that came from, and others, that cravings last only a few minutes and the worst of them are over after the first 72 hours. I got through the those first three days quite easily and it is now that I’m having difficulties. The few puffs I had yesterday (along with some nicotine gum) where the consequence of a craving that lasted hours.

Writing and so forth. Been a bit of a struggle lately what with the outfall of a death in the family and this attempt at stopping smoking (maybe, like the guy in Airplane, I just chose the wrong time) but I’m still putting down those words. Line War is now approaching 100,000 words with the endgame building to its climax. Nothing much else to add to that really, since the writing life is hardly romantic and consists of sitting staring at a screen for hours on end until beads of blood appear on the forehead (bit too dramatic that, but I couldn’t resist it).

First Class at Last.

Every time a new one of my books comes out a guy who lives over the other side of Maldon from me calls me up and arranges for us to meet in a local pub so he can buy me a pint and get my signature on my latest book. I don’t know how long Patrick Forsythe has been doing this, but I’m fairly certain he now owns signed copies of each of my books. Patrick is a writer of numerous business books (about fifty or so) but now he’s moved on to writing travel books, starting with First Class at Last.

When I read in the local paper that he was signing copies in a local bookshop I felt beholden to go along. I paid my money, got my signed book, but then came the dread of reading work by someone I know, because it’s a right bastard having to turn round and say (if asked), “Well, it was a load of rubbish really.” Fortunately I won’t need to say that with this book since I motored through it in no time and very much enjoyed it. It was almost Brysonish in places. Nice one.

Begins Dusting off Surplice.

Okay, here I am four days after ceasing to put any nicotine of any kind in my body and six days after stubbing out my last rollie, so I’m past the 72 hours mark mentioned here. What have I felt thus far? Have I felt any changes? Hell yes.

Time since quitting	Beneficial health changes that take place
20 minutes	Blood pressure and pulse rate return to normal.
8 hours	Nicotine and carbon monoxide levels in blood reduce by half, oxygen levels return to normal.
24 hours	Carbon monoxide will be eliminated from the body. Lungs start to clear out mucus and other smoking debris.
48 hours	There is no nicotine left in the body. Ability to taste and smell is greatly improved.
72 hours	Breathing becomes easier. Bronchial tubes begin to relax and energy levels increase.

This is not necessarily in the order of the table here (snaffled from the ASH website), but not far off. Within a day my sense of taste improved, within two days it had improved frighteningly and I saw the barriers preventing me becoming as large as Ayres rock just evaporating in the sunshine. However, something else has improved to counter that: I enjoy exercise a lot more. This isn’t often mentioned in the preachy give up smoking sites and perhaps should be. Yes, heavy smoking can result in you being out of breath, but in that respect light smoking isn’t so bad really. What the light smoker does experience is a complete lack of an endorphine rush from exercise – it is just perpetual hard grind to him. Cycling and weight-training have now become less of a chore and more of a pleasure to me.

I am also loaded with more energy to expend and just don’t seem to get tired during the day. Also, come night-time, I am tired and fall to sleep quickly, which is unusual for me.

Another noticeable effect has been a sharpening of my senses. I see hear and feel things a lot more acutely now, as if a deadening layer has been removed from all my nerves. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s definitely a bad thing if you try drinking the same amount of coffee you drank while smoking. Fingernail marks in the ceiling and the like.

Cravings? Yeah, enough of them, but I’m being bloody-minded about my addiction: “No, bugger off you mindless shite! You will not make me smoke!” The problem with the organism is its lack of intelligence when it come to behaviourism. The organism will certainly make the connection between the burning pain and the blow torch applied to the testicles, but has difficulty making the connection between that asthma attack in the middle of the night and the cigar you smoked the day before (on top of all those rollies).

And I shall soldier on!

Born-again Non-smoker

I don’t know what the precise statistics are, but most smokers really want to be non-smokers though have some problems getting over an addiction stronger than that to heroin. I myself am an expert at giving up. I’ve tried just about every year since before I was thirty and have given up for periods ranging from a day to a year. Surprising as some may find this, having read my ranting about smoking bans, I do know precisely what has its claws in me and precisely what it’s doing to me.

I know that before I gave up last time I was starting to need asthma inhalers and within a few weeks of having given up did not need them again, until, that is, I started smoking again. I know that if I smoke below eight cigarettes a day the pain in the left side of my chest fades away, and if I smoke more than ten cigarettes it comes back hard. I know that out of every fifty cigarettes I smoke there’s about half of one I actually enjoy, the rest I smoke just to stop myself feeling the misery of withdrawal. Exercise hurts when I smoke, is a pleasure when I don’t. I find it difficult to lie on one side while in bed and sometimes, when I’ve got up to go to the toilet, I return to bed out-of-breath. I assume this is due to all the crap in my lungs spreading out while I was lying down.

I know that all these symptoms, and others, will only get worse if I continue smoking. The latest one I’ve been getting is ear infections that then work their way into my eustachian tubes. Obviously the fags are not responsible for the bugs concerned, but they create and exacerbate the weakness they exploit. Working at giving up I’ve been trying to chew a piece of nicotine gum before a craving hits – a 4mg piece can normally keep me off the fags past midday almost cutting my cigarette consumption by half.

Prior to my father’s death I contracted another of those ear infections and it just lingered. Over the last week it travelled by eustachian tube from left to right ear, with a nice sore throat stopover in between, finally arriving at crushing eyeball station to play golf with my tooth nerves and attach a compressor hose to my sinuses. I was getting heartily sick of this until I discovered the virus that had arrived was only a scout. The whole army came next and poleaxed me. Flu, flu-type symptoms, bad cold, man-flu, call it what you will. I felt as rough as a pineapple. One day I felt so cold I had the heating at over seventy and additional to my usual garb wore a jumper, Arctic fleece, dressing gown and woolly hat. My throat soon felt like someone had wire-brushed it and I sat in a chair wishing it would all go away.

For three days I chewed nicotine gum in the morning and smoked five cigarettes in the afternoon and evening. I blame paracetamol and Strepsils – without them I might not have been able to smoke at all. This last Saturday I wondered what the hell I was doing and chewed a second piece of gum in the evening and smoked nothing. Same again on Sunday.

But it’s the nicotine I’m addicted to – a fact that was brought home to me by this website from which I’ve borrowed the graph shown. So today I haven’t used the gum since I want to get those 72 hours behind me, and there’s no avoiding them. And the same from now on in … never give up giving up.

Cobh, Cove, Ireland.

A few weeks back I visited Ireland for the first time. Caroline booked us into a guesthouse/B&B called Amberleigh in Cobh, formerly Queenstown after a visit from Victoria and now pronounced ‘Cove’ i.e. when Southern Ireland gained independence the residents changed the name to Cove but spelled it the Gaelic way so it means nothing in Gaelic and is nothing but confusing to English readers. Very Irish.

We took a Ryanair flight from Stanstead that Caroline had booked and paid for some time previously. For this she recently had to pay an extra £20 flight tax because the Anti-Midas Brown has found this new toy called ‘the environment’ that he can use to screw tax payers for further money to fund his legions of diversity managers, focus groups, spin doctors and general thumb-up-bum bureaucrats.

We booked in with hand luggage that then went through scanners along with jackets and belts. Caroline was searched again, but she often is. After this there was another set of scanners for our footwear. As usual, off to one side, there were bins filled with bottles of shampoo, gel, hairspray, deodorant etc.

The flight took one hour five minutes and since we had taken only hand luggage we were off the plane and heading out of the airport very quickly – seeing a taxi driver on the way in with a sheet of paper with ASHER written on it. He took us to Cobh in darkness and there were many of those ‘what?’ moments as we tried to adjust our Essex brains to the Irish accent. Only while being driven there did we discover that Cobh sits on a sort of island in the bay – with one road on and off. Finally our driver deposited us at Amberleigh Guesthouse – the place is actually a B&B but such a description seems inadequate.

Michael and Thelma were very welcoming. The guesthouse was a big Victorian building; high ceilings, spacious, furnished like a stately home and our bedroom, with its double bed rather than twin beds, overlooked the harbour – a view impressive at night, with lights reflecting off the water, and even better during the day.

With little time left we shot out for something to eat. It being out-of-season in Cobh there wasn’t a great deal open, and the restaurant M&T recommended was packed. We ended up eating in a Chinese restaurant, and very enjoyable it was.

The next day we woke to appreciate the wonderful views from Amberleigh. Downstairs we enjoyed a huge Irish breakfast, in my case: cereal with milk, orange juice, fresh coffee then bacon, eggs, sausage, black and white pudding, fried tomato and fried bread. I could feel my arteries creaking even as I ate. The harbour, which we could also see from the breakfast room was surprisingly huge to me, but as, over the next few days I began to learn something of its history (mostly from Michael), I again realised the truth in that ‘travel broadens the mind’. Michael was involved in saving an island, in the mouth of the harbour, from being again built on and was also striving to have it turned into a world heritage site. Spike Island has a wonderful old prison on it and more history per square inch than you would ever find at Alcatraz. Tourism in Cobh would of course benefit hugely.

After breakfast we took the Titanic Tour. Cobh was the last port of call of that massive ship and the history of it is scattered all over the town. Just as is history of many other vessels and events: the Lusitania survivors were rescued by people from Cobh and those that didn’t survive are buried there, something like six million Irish went through this port on their way to America … go right back and the Phoenicians were here. History drips from the gutters.

Our second Michael was very knowledgeable – you could tell by the way he answered out-field questions, in my case one concerning refrigeration aboard the Titanic. He was an ex-Navy guy and an avid historian – even having been consulted for the film. At the end of our tour we drank Guinness while Michael II talked a little more about the plaque from the people of Cobh he organized to be placed on the deck of the Titanic. He also showed us what the pressure down that deep does to a polystyrene coffee cup. Those who laid the plaque took one down in an onion bag, being returned to the surface it was lucky it didn’t fall through the bag’s mesh, since the pressure had reduced it to the size of a thimble.

About the Guinness: it is better over there, but I’ve come to the conclusion this has nothing to do with the water – it’s the frequency of use. Order a Guinness in Britain and because it’s not drunk here very often the pint you’ll receive has likely been sitting in the pipes for hours if not days. Order a pint of the same in Ireland and quite often you have to wait your turn. It comes out black as sin with a texture to the head like double cream on a floater coffee. Nectar.

We spent a few days in Cobh (it was for my birthday), then regretfully headed for home and chaos. Caroline was searched again and a tin of hairspray was confiscated from her bag – one the customs women missed on the way out.

Solaris Science Fiction.

Well, enough doom and gloom. Here’s the excellent cover of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction edited by George Mann. Cool cover and, of course, a cool collection of short stories. To quote:

This is an eclectic collection of all-original science fiction stories from some of the foremost luminaries in the genre. Featuring new tales of far future murder, first contact, love and war from such well-regarded and award winning authors as Peter F. Hamilton, Stephen Baxter, Adam Roberts, Jeffrey Thomas, Eric Brown, Paul Di Filippo, Neal Asher, Jay Lake and Ian Watson, this collection is sure to delight all fans of good science fiction.

Lung Cancer Deaths

Apparently 37,000 people die from lung cancer in the UK each year, and it is figures like this that have supposedly motivated the government to introduce a smoking ban. It is only recently, seeing my father die, and then seeing ‘non-small cell lung cancer’ going down on his death certificate that I think hang on a minute. Doubtless, because he smoked during his life and because that cause of death has been slapped on his certificate he will become one of those statistics, though 10% of those who develop lung cancer have never smoked, he gave up over a decade ago, and ‘non-small cell lung cancer’ was really a case of ‘select one cause because there ain’t room on the certificate for them all’. But my biggest quibble about all this is that he was 79 and WE ALL HAVE TO DIE OF SOMETHING. The Grim Reaper does not negotiate.

Really, we’re not immortal, we all die, and the process is usually, unless we have the foresight to pack ourselves off to a Swiss clinic, lonely, undignified, uncomfortable and often painful. And these facts are not changed by cutting down on the burgers, booze and fags. In fact, I sometimes wonder if taking the so-called healthy route is a practical guarantee of ending up gaga and wearing nappies in some crappy OAP home, where eventually the usual ‘heart failure’ or ‘dementia’ or ‘cancer of–’ will go down on your certificate, doubtless to be picked up by statisticians then pc idiot politicians as an excuse for again telling us what to do.

A reality, avoided by many, is that cancer rates have increased because nowdays we don’t die of the thousands of maladies we’ve found cures for. These high cancer rates are in fact a victory for medical science.

What I would really like to know is how old were those 37,000. Checking, I see that this form of cancer is rare in those below 40 and from thereon the level rises steadily to peak at ages 70 to 79. Take a look at this graph (from 2003).

Working the figures roughly you’ll see that deaths from lung cancer from ages 40 to 69 about equal the number of deaths from ages 70 to 79 when, really, we should expect to die. As such, that 37,000 is very misleading. Don’t you think that if these deaths are to be laid at the door of the evil cigarette the figure should first have the non-smoking 10% subtracted and then be halved? To put it all even more into perspective, the UK death rate of 2006 was 10.13 per 1000 people, which works out at a total of 613,971. And yes, they all died of something…

Bill Asher

He was a jazz musician, a lecturer in applied mathematics, fly fisherman, one-time RAF pilot and the husband of Hazel Asher for 57 years. My mother had heard people say that when someone dies it immediately looks like something is missing. We had difficulty ascertaining that he was dead. I visited him and my mother on the morning of the 15^th and noted that he seemed not to be breathing. We were only sure he was dead after turning off the anti-bed-sore mattress and the oxygen, and then by putting a mirror to his mouth and checking pupil response. Later we observed that the only spirit missing from his body was the whisky – something he stopped liking a few weeks before in a surer sign that he was on his way out.

I began making phonecalls and available family descended: my wife Caroline, brothers Martin and Paul (our other brother Bob lives up in Chester so the logistics are more difficult for him) and Martin’s fiance Kath. We let the district nurses know what had happened and they turned up to remove the morphine feed and tidy up a few bits. The doctor came to pronounce death and a little while after that I removed his wedding ring from his hand for my mother. Next came the funeral guys to collect him, and very professional they were. The guy who first came in immediately assessed the situation. There was none of this hand-wringing pretense of deep sorrow. They took him away.

The following day I nipped to the doctor’s to collect a doctor’s certificate which then needed to be taken along to the registrar, along with other documents, so the death certificate could be issued. Interesting contrast in the registrar’s job, only an hour or so before he had been marrying someone.

On dad’s death certificate the registrar put ‘non-small cell lung cancer’, which is rather misleading since he had also had cirrhosis of liver, cancer of the pancreas and quite possibly his bones (died before that could be checked) and the therapies he’d received had supposedly reduced the growth in his lungs. I guess it’s easier to put something like that down rather than ‘trauma of operation to put in a bile-duct stent, trauma of internal bleeding caused by arthritis medicine taken while in a weakened state and the traumas of chemo and radio therapy which were pointless for a man just a few months away from his 80^th birthday’. Really, in the days when they used to put ‘old age’ on a death certificate they were closer to the truth. Only an extensive autopsy would bring the truth any closer, and what would be the point of that?

Next Martin, my mother and me went to the funeral home to organize things there. While there my mother belatedly produced his donor card. After some discussion we decided that his liver might have made a handy sieve but his other organs were probably a no-no. The only part of him that might have been of use were his corneas, and for some reason the word had been crossed out on the card. I then pointed out that unless there was some big push on toenail transplants there was not much left of him that would be useful. Really, it is rather a waste if your body goes into the grave labelled ‘Hardly Used – One Careful Owner’. Dad certainly got plenty of mileage out of his. You laugh and you use humour, and you cry. What else is there?

Solicitous enquiries then about flowers, death notices, limousines and a religious service (this last received with a snort of laughter by my brother). All of these were rejected by my mother. My dad is dead, what is left is a well used-up husk that needs to be dealt with. Next Monday he is being buried in a woodland grave without marker, in a cardboard coffin. All the family will then celebrate his life at a wake. One of the guys who collected the body said, “Look back a little; look forward a lot,” which is about right.

Book Club Prador Moon.

I just received this from Jonathan K Stephens:

I’ll hand you over to him now:

I've just received the new SF Bookclub catalogue and what do you think I saw? Prador Moon, in a full page spread on the back cover! Great big header "This Time, Crabs Eat Humans". Also nicely blurbed by senior bookclub editor Andrew Wheeler:

"This short, zippy novel is the prose equivalent of a great Saturday-afternoon monster movie, so just sit back and munch some popcorn as the killer Prador launch their assault on mankind. Trust me: you won't regret it."

Very nice.

Gopher Broke

Well, I need a bit of humour right now. Some of you may remember the one I put up some while ago called Rockfish. This is by the same people. I'm seriously impressed.

Cancer.

Just to keep you guys updated with the situation in the Asherverse: though the writing is going well and I fully intend to supply you all with your fix of outrageously violent and complicated science fiction, things ain’t going that great on a personal level. Over the last year, I’ve entered that town called shitsville, the one we all have to enter at some time or other, in that my father is dying of cancer. It’s in his lungs, liver and pancreas and, with the traumas of frequent visits from paramedics and frequent visits to the hospital, he has been steadily going downhill. Now we have reached the endgame. A hospital bed has been delivered, along with an oxygen supply and liquid morphine, and he’s now ensconced in the music room where he used to practise on his saxophone and clarinet (as well as being a lecturer in applied mathematics he was also a jazz musician too). He now looks like someone straight out of Belsen, and is eating less. Dying. That’s all really. Not sure when I’ll be posting here again. Maybe I’ll be doing it lots, maybe I’ll be gone for a while. Bear with me.

Dragon Page Interview.

Well, I’m not entirely sure how this sounds … that is, I don’t want to listen to it myself because I know I was talking too fast, I’d had a beer or two, and listening to myself always makes me cringe, but here’s the Dragon Page interview: http://www.dragonpage.com/2007/02/05/cover-to-cover-249/

Roller Trainers.

A boy was badly injured his morning because he shot in front of a car on his wheeled trainers. Questions are being asked. A&E doctors talk of the injuries kids receive whilst using these things: busted bones and cuts and grazes. Health and Safety commissars demand that children wear protective gear and, of course, there is talk of a ban.

Hang on.

Now, as mentioned here in the comments, must parents bubble-wrap their children? Which would they prefer, an active child who risks a busted elbow and the remote possibility of death, or the fat slob slouched in front of his X-Box who’ll need his jaw wired shut or stomach stapled and risks snuffing it from a heart attack before he’s thirty?

Also, if you bubble-wrap your children they’ll never learn to handle the real world, you know, the one where hammers are made out of steel and not rubber, where knives cut, concrete is not layered with foam rubber, cars smash your bones if you step in front of them and where sticking your hand into the wrong part of the machine on the factory floor results in your arm disappearing into the cogs. Yeah, there’s the compensation claims, but they ain’t going to sew your arm back on.

Warm January.

On Monday when I walked outside to get on my bike, it was like a spring morning. Today, despite the frost outside, the temperature is set to rise to 14 degrees Celsius, which is almost T-shirt weather. As well as snow drops blooming, other later flowers like daffodils are coming up. Farmers are happy with the prices for their crops rising by a third - mainly because of their use in biofuels - and with the fact that their animals have been able to graze throughout the winter because the grass hasn't stopped growing. Whilst the enviro-we-all-need-to-be-poor-and-grow-cabbages-greenies march down the street with their The End is Nigh placards, everyone else turns down the central heating and enjoys the benefits.

Gridlinked the Movie.

Here's something our very own Cameron put together:

Cameron Dadd is an eighteen-year-old freelance graphic designer who lives in the most isolated city on our planet. He does have a small collection, but it's as yet unavailable online, however, there's Leviathan here: http://sharpendofreason.deviantart.com/ which, inspired by Cameron's work, was created by a good friend of his called Carlo - looks like something Dragon put together!

Car Tax.

Apparently there’s a million cars on Britain’s roads without road tax discs, which usually means they are without insurance or MOTs. Some puzzlement is expressed about this, especially when the penalty for getting caught is to have you car taken to the crusher.

It’s the fucking economy stupid!

You can buy a car that runs, for less than £250. That’s about the lower end of the price for just the insurance. Add onto that £40 for an MOT, excluding repairs that might need to be made, and over £100 road tax and … ah do the sums yourselves. Just remember that if someone drives such a car for more than a year they’ll certainly be in profit even if it is taken to the crusher.

Message to government (again): Are you surprised by this? You shouldn’t be, you made these people. You screw them for every last red cent and then go, “Oh dear, why are you breaking the law?” They’re breaking the law because they take one look at you and think, Why the hell shouldn’t I take the piss, you lot are.

African Genes.

Hah, I wonder how many of the people refered to here are members of the BNP: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070124072328.htm

Interface

Not only do I love this sort of stuff, developments like this are pretty damned important: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118121238.htm

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms

Fuckit! I've discovered music videos on You Tube. Um, might not be much writing done for a little while.

Arthur Clarke Cybercast Hal's Birthday

Here's an excellent piece of computer history.

Cormac the Miniseries -- I wish.

Paul Swan’s post reminded me: Some years ago great excitement ensued when Tor US received a query from Blue Train Entertainment about the film rights to Gridlinked. This excitement increased when, after a bit of research, I found out that they had been involved in producing the Jackie Chan movie The Tuxedo along with a couple of other production companies including Dreamworks. Nothing came of this, however.

Frankly, I would love one of my books to be bought by Hollywood, especially if that involved me trousering some silly money. It would also raise my profile and probably lead to more book sales. However, I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that such a sale virtually guarantees the book won’t be seen on the screen. Many thousands have been bought, but how many get turned into a films? Usually all we see are remakes of 60s SF series, something new where when a book is written it’s usually after the film, or stuff produced filmed from books by authors who have made the transition to sainthood and ‘literature’ by shuffling off their mortal coil.

The big problem with this book to film thing is, of course, that books are big. They’ve got a lot of stuff in them and large amounts of it get sacrificed so the rest can be packed into two hours of screen time. Also, a lot of the concepts put across in the narrative of a book are difficult to translate to the screen, especially in that limited time. Really, film directors are better off taking up a short story and running with that. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, anyone? When a book is turned into a film it can succeed artistically (though not necessarily financially – like Dune), but it often isn’t the same beast any more.

Much better, I think, when a book is taken on by a TV production company. First it stands a lot better chance of getting filmed, and if made into a series there’s room for the book to sprawl itself out (Hence the excellent Dune & Children of Dune mini-series’ being true to their source). So this is why I’d like to see the Cormac books made into a series of five seasons with about twelve episodes each. Not too much to ask is it? Anyone out there buying?

(Snort!)

Battlestar Galactica

Well, I managed to sit through the first episode of series 3 of Battlestar Galactica, but only managed to get three-quarters of the way through the second episode before I started to lose the will to live. This seems to be a series that is now rapidly disappearing up its own fundament. Maybe it’s because of those in the cast and those producing it make the claim that it ‘isn’t really that science fiction nonesense’.

This new production of Battlestar Galactica was originally successful because it produced SF with a sufficient injection of reality, but now it seems the producers and actors have started to take themselves far too seriously. I can see the meetings held before they got to work. “We need more of that stuff that made the series successful, let’s do more issues, more relationships. Let’s try and cut down on the exploding spaceships and robots.” “Yeah, great idea! How about we get topical and do stuff about an occupation, more about religion, maybe some obesity too?” “Damned right. We want people to keep taking this seriously, so we have to cut down on that squids in space nonesense…”

I guess we can look forward to future episodes of BSG covering annorexia, homosexuality, racism, the death penalty etc etc. Yup, get it more mainstream. The daft thing is that mainstream doesn’t have to lack action, fun, enjoyment – just take a look at 24. It seems with BSG they’ve gone the route so many writers in the SF world venture along, when they make the assumption that boring = literature. It’s sad, but then I half expected a fuck-up when the franchise got extended.

Parasite.

As Mark Croucher has pointed out, there's a copy of The Parasite out on eBay at the moment (there were two, but he snaffled the other one). It's disappointingly cheap, but go get it while it's hot!

Flames Of Herakleitos

Well, it seems a regular visitor here is climbing that rickety ladder into the publishing world. Congratulations to Bob Lock for getting his book Flames Of Herakleitos published by Screaming Dreams.

Here’s the blurb:

It’s 1969 and a four year old girl witnesses the terrifying death of her father, which is attributed to Spontaneous Human Combustion. The child is unable to explain what she saw, and shortly after the incident, whilst in hospital, almost suffers the same fate as her father when she is attacked by an unknown entity. But she survives.

Thirty years pass, Lucy Fenton, has grown up to be a writer of horror stories and is the star of their film versions. She is haunted by the morbid feeling that her long-ago attacker has not yet finished with her. It turns out she is correct when once again it visits her. This time, however, she manages to not only fight it off but to pursue it – to a parallel world where everything she has ever known is turned on its head.

Flames Of Herakleitos is a 'YouWriteOn.com Top Ten Book'
Due to be published in paperback by Screaming Dreams in 2007

Cover artwork by Steve Upham
(for advance preview only and subject to change)

Don't forget to check out the author's website.

Hair-shirt Environmentalists.

Charlie Stross has made a few pertinent observations about man-made global warming and the hair shirt environmental hysterics amongst us. His post is quite representative of what seems to be happening more and more across the Internet: people are getting sick of preachy environmentalists, they’re getting sick of the insanities of political correctness, they’re getting sick of the lies and spin of the lobby-ists and politicians. This attitude will take a while to reach snail-media like newspapers and television, and even longer to penetrate the thick skulls of the likes of Cameron and Blair, so don’t hold out too much hope of a swift return to sanity in public affairs.

All Skyped- up.

Y’know, the personal computer is a wonderful tool but, if you don’t exercise some self-control, it can also turn into an infinite sponge for sucking up time. I’ve had people ask me if I have ever played so-and-so on my computer – superb graphics and when you machinegun the orc its guts fall out. Well, yeah, I know so-and-so is an excellent game, which is precisely why I avoid it. Some years ago I sat down to write one morning and ended up playing patience all day. At the end of the day, in disgust, I deleted the program and have since never let another game near my computer. Others ask me if I’ve looked at You Tube, Google Earth, this website, that website, then it’s have you tried this program, that program, this bit of hardware, that bit of hardware?

My approach to the pc and its growing list of applications and peripherals is ‘I’ll use what I need and try to ignore the rest’. Though I write SF and take a great deal of interest in science and technology, I do, in the end, have to keep my focus tight. I write books. I’m not an IT manager, I’m not a programmer (well, I was once – different story) and every hour I spend watching You Tube, or trying to get a radio modem to work, or trying to write html is another hour I haven’t spent writing science fiction, which pays the bills.

So, by a rather roundabout route I come to why I started writing this. Summer Brooks of Dragon Page recently emailed me concerning an audio interview for ‘Cover to Cover’. I was interviewed on this program before, at about the time Cowl came out in America (podcast here), and said interview was conducted over the phone at international phone rates. This time round Summer asked me if I possessed a Skype ID. At that point I wouldn’t have recognised a Skype if it had bitten me on the bum. I therefore researched it on the Internet and discovered it to be a way to chat to someone – audibly – over a broadband connection. No extra cost there unless you use Skype to phone a landline, and you can chat to someone on other side of the world.

I’m all Skyped up now – an incredibly simple process involving a few minutes downloading and the purchase of a microphone (well, I’ve got a Madonna headset). This is another useful tool for me, and for the convenience of anyone who wants to interview me from anywhere in the world. See, every new additions for my computer has to be justified by its relation to my writing and earning a living.

Mmmm, in the shop where I got that headset I noticed some nice webcams…

Line War.

Okay, enough of the ranting and back to some writerly stuff. I’ve been wracking my brains with Line War looking for a satisfactory conclusion. Every story, every novel, should, in my opinion adhere to the beginning>middle>end structure (the beginning, the middle, where tension escalates, the end or resolution phase, which consists of a climax which resolves the tension). This is not always an easy thing to do and, to be frank, I’m not entirely sure I’ve managed with every one of my books – probably because I’m a seat-of-the-pants writer who has never really planned any book nor stuck a post-it note anywhere near my screen. And things get even more difficult when, really, every series should adhere to this structure as well.

One of the things I’ve been working hard to avoid is that good old deus ex machina, which has been the downfall of a few space opera series in recent years. It is a difficult option to avoid because it’s such an easy option to take, especially if you’ve written yourself into a corner by making your villains too powerful (ulp!). I also think it’s a cop-out and betrayal of your readership. Now I’m beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel (though it may be a train) and I should be able to bring the Cormac series to an end without lowering Zeus onto the stage from the clouds.

Line War just cleared 60,000 words yesterday and I’ve realised I must keep myself utterly focused on it to achieve the above aims. Seven-day working week from now on.

Bye Max.

Fuck shit cunt bollocks and buggeration gets the swearing out of the way. In the weeks before christmas Max started having epileptic fits again and the only solution to this was to up the dosage of his medication (£40 a month that costs). A few days before christmas we took him for a walk, but he was weak and his back legs kept giving way. He only managed a circuit of a nearby sports field and three times I had to lift him from a sitting position back onto his feet. A subsequent examination by the vet showed him to have a healthy heart and to apparently be quite fit, so the vet gave him an injection to help out with his back legs and was going to supply anti-inflammatories for the problem.

However, on christmas eve he could hardly manage to get up and seeing him anxious to go for his walk yet his legs giving way on the slipper floor of the home’s front hall was heart-breaking. He went quickly downhill from then and further blood tests have revealed that his liver is failing. This is one of the penalties of his spending the best part of his life on anti-epileptics. Because of this failure the drugs are no longer as effective and giving him anti-inflammatories would only worsen his health.

The vet has advised the only option remaining to him and is calling round to the old people’s home to put him down this afternoon. It’s horrible, but stepping back it’s easy to see that Max is a luckier resident of that home, since he has a final option that the others there don’t.

Merry christmas and a happy new year.

Neural Darwinism.

Now, I’ve always ascribed to the dictum ‘use it or lose it’. If you don’t use your muscles they become weaker and if you don’t use them at all, as in the case of someone wheelchair bound, they atrophy. Getting yourself out of breath expands the capacity of your lungs. Swimming, and particulary swimming underwater is especially good in this respect. Putting stress on your bones strengthens them. Those whose bones remain unstressed for a length of time, like astronauts, rapidly lose bone mass.

I’ve always thought that the same rules apply to the brain. If you don’t make any mental effort, your ability to make mental effort declines. I feel that this equally applies to those rather vague cognitive functions like imagination. And this article lays it all out very neatly.

Books thus far.

Okay, Maynard1977 has asked me if I’ve got any more books coming out, so I’ll sum up where things are so far. My (available) books thus far published are:

Agent Cormac Series: 1.Gridlinked, 2.The Line of Polity, 3.Brass Man, 4.Polity Agent,

Stand alone: Cowl, Africa Zero, The Engineer ReConditioned, Prador Moon, Runcible Tales (chapbook of 6 short stories)

On Spatterjay: 1.The Skinner, 2.The Voyage of the Sable Keech.

Books of mine due to be published are: Hilldiggers – a standalone set in the Polity, Line War – number 5 in the agent Cormac series (the last one, I think), Prador Moon (British edition) and an as yet untitled collection of Polity short stories.

I think that’s about it.

Legalize drugs.

What is it now? Six out of ten crimes are now drug-related. Knowing that the police now regard something like a playground row to be a ‘crime’ and ‘solving’ said crime can be added to their clear-up rate figures, I would guess that the other four of the ten are probably almost irrelevant. Likely they’re speeding, drink-driving or saying something unpleasant about T B Liar at a Labour party conference (i.e. terrorism).

So why not legalize drugs? Where are the minuses in this? With a ready cheap supply of drugs there’s a good chance the addicts won’t be mugging grannies or breaking into people’s houses to finance their habit, and with any luck will quickly off themselves. The organized criminals will probably be at a loose end and can focus more on supplying us with cheap booze and fags. Gordon Brown could whack a tax on heroin and crack. And all those disenfranchised farmers in Afghanistan can get back to work and make a tidy profit on this.

I suggest a new T-shirt line:

Snippet.

I found this on the Dawkin’s website courtesy of a comment by one Sancus:

“The association of modern atheism with Stalin and Mao has long got out of hand. I plead with anyone reading this to loudly stand against this association by revealing that Stalin and Mao are closer to religious figures than they are to modern atheists not just because of dogmatism, but because they share rejection of self-ownership.

It is the denial of the right for an individual to own herself that is the common and shared cause of both religious and Marxist injustices.”

Damned right.

Hilldiggers Back Cover.

Ooh, shiny. I've just received the full dust jacket for Hilldiggers from Peter Lavery at Macmillan, (along with some more of the contents to check over). As well at the wonderful front cover picture we now have this from the back cover.

Serial Killer in Ipswich.

Oh dear, it seems we have a serial killer getting up to speed in Ipswich, which is about a three-quarter-hour drive up the A12 from where we live. Last weekend the discovery of two corpses warranted a couple of column inches in the papers about three pages in, now that the killer has bumped off five prostitutes in ten days the media is going into a feeding frenzy. I note that the BBC News anchorman is now at the scene and wonder if the higher-ups in that organization decided to send him, or if he threw his weight around to be in at the kill, so to speak.

One annoying aspect of this is the reporters going on at the police about guaranteeing people’s safety and speculating on how it’s possible for this killer to grab women from ‘under their noses’. Are they too stupid to realise that tens of thousands of cops in the area will not guarantee absolute safety? And that for a lot of the prostitutes there, getting cash for their next drug fix is more important than personal safety, and that lots of police in the area will rather cramp their style so they’ll try to avoid them to get hold of their next customer?

The area where the latest two bodies were discovered (Nacton) is one I know. A friend and workmate of mine used to live up there and I used to visit him. I wonder how he would have been feeling if he still lived there: single bloke living alone in his own house. Of course it’s just as likely that the killer is married with kids, like the Yorkshire Ripper (Caroline and I had a bet on how quickly that name would be mentioned. It was mentioned almost immediately.), and right now some wife is maybe thinking, ‘You never said where you were last night, I thought you were having an affair and now I wonder…’ Another theory posited by someone we know is that there isn’t one killer, that this is the result of some Kosovan gang trying to take control of the prostitution racket. Interestingly, when talking about the murders the police are quite meticulous about saying, ‘person or persons’.

Waffling.

Mmm, perhaps I need to do a little less ranting here, not to stop pissing people off, but to keep myself sane. Really, if you look for it, there’s enough in the media every day to get one frothing at the mouth. Perhaps the anger is rather like depression: it’s there first and then looks around for an excuse to exist.

Nice thoughts. I’m closing on 50,000 words of Line War and maybe I should deliver an early RSI warning: I think this is going to be a big one. I keep going in to writing say section of the story and come out the other side of it having not quite got there. Plenty of drama, but the aim I set out to achieve each time seems to take two sections. Also, at 50,000 words (which for me is usually more than a third of a book) the war itself has hardly got past the digging of trenches stage. I mean … I’ve only blown up one world for goodness sake and the death toll hasn’t moved into eight figures yet.

A hundred edited pages of Hilldiggers are behind me and more are on the way. I’ve had two reader’s reports on it and on the whole they’re good. Sales are looking good too. The hardback sales of Polity Agent are over half again those of Voyage of the Sable Keech, but then I’m finding that I’m getting more readers coming back for more in the Cormac sequence than I am with stuff set on Spatterjay, which was rather surprising.

What else? My weight hovers at about 12 stone, despite the fact that we’ve nearly polished off a barrel of homemade stout (this weekend I’ll be making five gallons of bitter), fitness seems good, despite the cigarettes and, really, I seem to be on top of everything. I just wish I had another set of hands and another brain to keep up with demand … note to those wannabes out there, if you really are aiming for publication success and not just pissing around, produce loads of stuff, loads, because if you do get there, it’ll all soon go.

Suffer the Children.

You know, it is unfortunate and horrible when a child is ill. It is unfortunate and horrible when anyone is ill. But why oh why are all sick children always ‘brave’?

Brave: Having or displaying courage, resolution, or daring; not cowardly or timid.

You act bravely or you act cowardly. Bravery is not bravery unless there is the option available to be cowardly – there’s an element of choice. A child who has had some awful illness resulting in numerous operations and perhaps the removal of a limb or two, doesn’t really have very much choice in the matter, and probably doesn’t have much of a clue about what is going on anyway. The doctor doesn’t go to the child and say, “Well, that leg is going to have to come off,” and the child doesn’t reply, “Go ahead doctor, I’ll hold the tourniquet and bite on this stick while you saw.” This perpetual pathetic misuse of the word ‘brave’ devalues it (just like the use of the word ‘hero’ to describe a football player).

Now, perhaps the mother and father will be able to say that their child has displayed courage throughout the trauma, and maybe that will be true despite the usual parental bias. Perhaps the hospital staff will have some say in this. But am I cynical in assuming that in our ‘inclusive equality-driven society’ that the kid who goes screaming and whining to the hospital is going to get the same ‘bravery’ award as the one who showed resolution and courage?

NHS Come Dancing.

Oh bloody hell. It now seems the porkers of Britain will be able to get dance lessons on the NHS. After spending £2.5 million on ‘Local Exercise Action Pilot’ schemes, this sort of crap is what our Public Health Minister Caroline Flint has come up with. Well, excuse me, people are porky because they eat too much of the wrong food and don’t exercise enough. You didn’t need to spend £2.5 million to find that out or to find out what couch potatoes need to do to be more healthy. And spending money on giving these people dance lessons when others are dying in this country because there isn’t enough money to pay for the drugs they need (though of course this doesn’t apply to Scotland and Wales) is a travesty!

MP's Pay Rise.

Every now and again I’ll read something, blink, read it again, then listen for the theme music from The Twilight Zone playing in the background. I’d like to say that what I’ve just read beggars belief, but it doesn’t, it seems par for the course for the 646 twits in Parliament pretending to run this country. It’s just the normal ‘I’m sitting at the top of the heap so fuck you’ attitude of these lying, cheating, grasping, slobbering Orwellian swine.

These rancid turds claimed a total of £86,700,000 in expenses and office allowances last year, which averages £134,000 each. These 646 septic shitbags each cost us £726,000 a year for which they actually work (if it can be called that) for less than half a year. Their pay has risen by 37% since 1997. They get a £40,000 a year inflation-proof pension

AND NOW THEY WANT THEIR BASIC SALARY TO RISE FROM £60,277 BY 66% TO £100,000!!!

They are on £625 a day before expenses! With expenses they are on £1250! Will the expenses go down? Will they buggery. If they get their way these sodden lumps of fecal matter floating at the top of the parasitic public sector will be on £1500 a day – that’s just about the weekly minimum wage per hour!

Shit! Where is Guy Fawkes when we need him most!

Nuclear Innit.

T. B. Liar is apparently going to announce plans for a new generation of nuclear missile submarines but, as far as Trident is concerned, it seems his own party is divided on the issue, which basically means the far left CND pricks are getting all aeriated again. Our Trident missiles aren’t really ours anyway. Every six months or so they go back to America for an oil-change and an MOT and, frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the big red button in Number 10 is connected to another in the White House with the label ‘Approve?’ stuck underneath it.

But really, thinking in terms nuclear, hasn’t our Tone got some more pressing concerns? Isn’t it about time he really got his thumb out of his arse and allowed the building of more nuclear power stations? They are apparently a ‘green’ alternative to coal-fired power stations and are supported by James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory, who said that “Britain and the world could not reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the 60% scientists see is needed by 2050 without the help of nuclear power.”

But if you take a look at the Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace sites you’ll see that die-hards in those organisations are still looking for reasons to carry on hating anything containing the word ‘nuclear’. Apparently the 'CO2 emissions across the nuclear cycle are about 33% that of fossil-fuel plants.’ This is incredibly vague, and I guarantee doesn’t take into account CO2 production in mining coal and shipping it in from Russia, South Africa and even Australia, since we have so few working mines in this country now. A third also doesn’t seem too bad.

B. Liar, then, seems trapped between the powerful lobby of the green loonies and hard practicalities about the future of this country. But what does he care? He’s preparing to bugger off on well-paid lecture tours of America and leave everything in Brown’s sweaty hands. Or maybe I’m just underestimating the wizard of spin? Maybe he intends to get the nose-ringed greenies all frothing at the mouth about Trident, and safely out of the way protesting up at Faslane submarine base, while he slips through some legislation concerning nuclear power stations?

Interesting side-note here. One of the pictures here is of Bradwell nuclear power station, which is in the process of being decommissioned. At the same time, there were recent plans to build wind turbines in the same area (Dengie peninsular), but the plans were ditched after numerous protests by a group calling itself BATTLE. This group even created a simulation of what the turbines would look like (the other picture here). Similarly, there was talk of recommissioning the power station, and other NIMBYs in the area started writing ‘disgusted’ letters to the paper.

Really, it doesn’t matter what form of power generation is used, anywhere, there will still be some twat there waving a placard.

A little further note. I came across a good description of the usual ‘green’ AGW advocates, which those reading this have probably heard of, but is a new one to me. They are watermelons: green on the outside and red on the inside.

Max Again

For those of you who followed the Max saga, here's an update ... or rather a video clip of him from a week ago, eating far too many biscuits.

Prador Moon Reviews

Other than to say thank you very much every now and again I don’t normally make any reply to reviews. Having seen quite a few of them now I know that every time I come across something negative in one review I can point at a number of others that flatly contradict that negativity in every detail. However (you knew that was coming didn’t you), despite the many positive reviews out there, I am getting a little hacked off with the nature of some of the adverse responses to Prador Moon. It is, apparently a) Too short b) Too expensive c) Too simple.

Now, let me just point out that it is simple because the story … erm, let me think … because it is short? In its way this book is a bit of a reply to those other reviewers who claim my books are far too complex and convoluted (though that wasn’t the intention). It’s a straightforward story with a lot less plot threads than usual – something I’ve been aiming at more lately because my plot threads usually seem to proliferate during the writing of the first two thirds of a book and I then spend as much time extracting and discarding threads as I do writing the last third of the book. It’s short because that is what the publisher in this case requested. As to the price let me just say, “What's that got to do with me?”

Authors have as much to do with the cover price of books as the inventor of sherbet dips has to do with what they sell for in the sweet shop. And as for the kind soul who put up a two star review on amazon.co.uk without even reading the book and because of ‘a’ and ‘b’ above … well, the page count is there and the price is there, you either buy it or you don’t, but you don’t put up a negative review of something you haven’t even read!

Another Translation.

Ah, the juggernaut rolls on: the Czech publisher Polaris have now made an offer for Brass Man, which they intend to publish in the next twelve months. Thus far they have published The Skinner and Gridlinked, with The Line of Polity next. The Skinner won the Salamander Award (the picture here is of the publisher collecting the award) given by the Czech Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror as the best SF book published there in 2004. This was out of a shortlist of Blood Music by Greg Bear, Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds, The Scar by China Mieville and A Deepness Upon the Sky by Vernor Vinge. What an excellent list! The following year Gridlinked appeared on the shortlist, but didn’t win. What’s really good about all this, of course, is that most of the foreign publishers who have taken my first books for translation, are now coming back for more.

Other news: in a recent phone call Jason Williams of Night Shade Books has expressed surprise and delight at the sales of Prador Moon. The first print run is all but gone and orders are still coming in. He also made a book club deal with it too. And it now seems likely that there’ll be a British edition of Prador Moon and a collection of Polity short stories including those published in Asimov’s, Interzone and elsewhere.

I’m presently working through the editing of Hilldiggers, with Line War now at over 40,000 words sitting to one side. Also set to one side at the moment is a another book I’ve started for Night Shade Books, which tells the story of Cormac’s early years.