Writing update

Macmillan emailed me the copy-edited version of Zero Point, along with a list of questions from the copy editor and also a request that I supply acknowledgements and a dedication. They want all these sorted and returned by the 31^st which shouldn’t be a problem, though I will wait on the hard copy so I can sit down with paper and pen to work through it. It’s noticeable how, in the email version, they’re now using a marked-up PDF document and I reckon on that becoming the way things will be done in the future i.e. a saving will be made on printing and postage. I don’t suppose it will take me very long to get used to that.

As for the acknowledgements and dedication, they ask earlier on if I would like a couple of pages saved for them. I tend to say yes, even when I’m not sure who I might acknowledge or who or what I might dedicate the book to (and also be in danger of repeating myself) because I suspect they are a case of ‘use them or lose them’. I also feel that just going nah, I won’t bother, is a bit lazy.

So, Penny Royal is on 32,741 words and I’ll soon be abandoning it for a while to turn my attention to this editing. When I return to Penny Royal I’ll have to deal with a growing feeling of ‘time to introduce another character or twist’ – time in fact to do what Raymond Chandler did when he felt things needed ramping up. His approach was to walk in a man with a gun. My approach has structural similarities to that but might be ‘time to bring in a massive brass android with a penchant for ripping off people’s heads’ or ‘time to bring in the ancient and thoroughly unpleasant Golgoloth’.

It’s something I’ll have to ponder.

Neal Asher Video Clip 15/1/2012

Here's the latest. As always, further questions in the comments section below.

Borgen

The other night we watched two episodes of something Caroline had taped – Borgen – then went on to watch another two episodes shown on Saturday night. It is a political drama set in Denmark and surprisingly, since it involves politicians, I’ve been enjoying it. Stuff like this perfectly illustrates how successful politicians will compromise their idealism to the point of non-existence so as to get their noses in the trough. We’ve seen this sort of stuff before in dramas like State of Play and House of Cards and in what can only loosely be described as a parody: Yes Minister.

The female who rises to the position of Prime Minister is an idealist politically-correct twat of the kind we know well from Labour’s years in power here. This being TV, which is dominated by lefty twats of a similar stripe, her initial portrayal couldn’t have been more saintly if she’d walked around with a CGI halo hovering above her head (I should also add that she was unbelievably naïve for someone so high up the greasy pole). Of course the good guys always want more welfare spending, love Islam and immigration, want to piss money away on International Development. Equally, those depicted as conservative or to the right are racist authoritarians with horns growing out of their heads.

However, I’m hoping this is not going to be too simplistic. Already our saint is finding it necessary to lie and cheat as she scrabbles for power. Quite possibly this will be a riff on the ‘power corrupts’ aphorism, or maybe even something more adult about how idealism fails when it impacts with reality. I will watch it to the end.

25 Years!

Someone bought me a journal for 2012 with a blank page for every day. I had been filling in such journals for many years until a couple of years ago, when I asked for hardcover notebooks without a date on every page because I was getting behind (and bored with the daily recording of  my life) and most of my ‘warm-up’ writing started to go here on this blog. This morning, getting behind as usual, I waffled on back-filling empty pages and, while doing so, realized something: I’ve now been self-employed for 25 years. When I muttered something about this Caroline said, ‘Where’s it all gone?’ but I don’t feel like that. The last 25 years have been quite eventful.

I started paid work while still in school – at the weekends – and when I left school at age 16 I went straight into a full-time job in a factory making steel furniture. From there I progressed through various firms, acquiring a college certificate in ‘Mechanical and Production Engineering’. I worked for an aluminium boat and house window companies and a couple of other engineering companies, mainly using milling machines, but in the early eighties I was getting bored with that and broke away for a disastrous stint in a building company (it went skint owing me £600 in wages). A brief spell of unemployment was followed by me being seconded by someone to help clear up storm damage in ’87 and, thereafter seeing the financial possibilities and freedom of working for myself, I went self-employed.

Throughout all this I was writing of course, working my way up the small press ladder, taking an English A-level to prove a point just to myself, and gradually becoming more successful. I ran my own business cutting both domestic and council grass, cutting hedges, trees, laying concrete, building fences, repointing houses … the list is a long one. I occasionally worked for builders, delivered coal and skips, did bar work, rebuilt and sold a few motorbikes and cars. I met Caroline and moved into her flat (I wrote The Skinner in my first year there) and we then moved together to a bungalow (I have to wonder what people thought of the Sherpa truck parked outside) and then, in 1999-2000 by synopsis and sample chapters of Gridlinked hit at Macmillan.

I continued with the grass-cutting etc. for another year (or two?) then went over fully to writing. Since then we’ve bought a house in Crete, and I did a lot of work on it myself. I’ve had about 20 books published, now live in Crete for 7 months of the year and have had both enjoyable and traumatic experiences throughout the whole process.

Looking back to ’87 I see that figure in some woodland in the pissing rain cutting up fallen branches with a bow-saw. He just had no idea…

The New Space Opera

I do have a bad habit with anthologies I’ve been published in. I tend to receive them then stick them on a shelf as eye-candy yet, of course, they probably contain lots of stories I would like to read. The other day I changed that habit by picking up The New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. It contains a story by me called Shell Game, and has been sitting on my shelf since 2009. I did enjoy this and out of the 19 stories enclosed there were only two I didn’t finish and maybe only a couple more I finished with a ‘meh’. Particular highlights for me were the stories by Robert Charles Wilson, Peter Watts, Kristine Kathryne Rusch, Jay Lake, Sean Williams, John Meaney, Elizabeth Moon and John Scalzi.

Follow Friday, Apparently

So, I just passed 30,000 words on Penny Royal (having been slowed up over the last two days by feeling crap). The backstory I previously mentioned is now at about 29,000 words and looks likely to turn into a book by itself. What more can I say? Nothing. I don’t want come-backs of the, ‘But you said so-and-so was going to happen’ kind. Everything is up in the air at the moment and I’m just writing where the fancy takes me.

People have been recommending me for a ‘Shorty Award’ on Twitter. After contemplating getting my stilettos out of the wardrobe I realized that this is for ‘producers of the best short content on social media’. Since this is Twitter I’m wondering about the redundancy of the word ‘short’. I went over to the site concerned where there was a questionnaire for me to fill in. I don’t suppose they wanted the kind of answer I gave to their question about a hash tag thingy I would like to see more of: #facesICouldNeverTireOfPunching. Today I’ve discovered that #FF means ‘Follow Friday’ wherein people recommend other people to follow. What a strange introverted place the Twitterverse can be.

Another social media site I’ve signed up on is Google+, but with a sigh, desultory attempts at posting and swift fuck-off flashes of irritation when I encountered problems. I think I’m suffering from social media fatigue #SMF … or something.

Video Clips

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of those video clips. I’m told by various people that they like them but, unfortunately, I’m not getting enough questions. Here are the questions in the comments of the previous clip:

ChrisW: You've probably answered this before somewhere, so feel free to ignore, but, what's up with "The Departure"(the HB not the eBook) not being available/published in the USA? Is it going the way of "The Line of Polity"?

Still annoys me that when I look at my Asher shelve that there is no Line HB. Bloody publishers! :)

Spaceoperaghost: Will you ever expand on the story of The Quiet War?

Taylor Preston: When you write, do you revise/edit as you go or do you just hammer out the first draft before you put pen to paper and start making changes? I know you've said before you don't normally outline, so I'm wondering how much revision you end up doing and how you go about it.

Huan: What size are Amistad and Sniper?

arj209: Have you reached the lofty heights of stardom of being recognised in the streets?

Friso: Your Wikipedia article mentions "runcible" is an homage to ansible. Is that how you intended it?

Thezzphai: In an interview you talked about your next Polity book possibly being called "Penny Royal". Can you already tell something about the content (pretty please) and when it will be released approximately? Are you already working on it or is it just an idea for the time being?

The last one here has been answered and is being answered on the blog but I suppose I can go over it again a bit, and the first one here is just a ‘don’t know’ but I guess I could waffle on about the subject for a bit. But I could do with some more questions. Please append some in the comments below. Oh, and I’m saving this one from the last post for the next clip too:

Chrish: ‘I’m finding the writing ridiculously easy (which is worrying)’. I'm puzzled, why worrying?

Writing Update

I’m starting to get the feeling that Penny Royal is struggling to turn into something larger. I started out by jotting down backstory involving the prador/human war and some later events concerning my main character. Then I moved on and wrote a piece of the ‘present day’ story. Next returning to the backstory I began filling it in, also having some ideas concerning hooders that were just too juicy to resist. The ‘present day’ piece is just over 1,000 words long while the backstory is 25,000 words long. Ahem.

That backstory has also grown because of the necessity for conflict, and has grown in much the same way as the ‘B’ plotline for Gridlinked. Let me just revisit that for a moment:

I submitted a sample and synopsis of Gridlinked to Macmillan at the end of 1999 and received a request for the whole book shortly afterwards, which I sent by email. At the time Gridlinked was 65,000 words long and I knew it was too short for present day publication requirements. I suggested, by email, that I could expand it – maybe put in more about the doings of the villains in the story. Meanwhile that email crossed one on the way back with a reader’s report from Simon Kavanagh (now an author’s agent): it’s too short and maybe I should expand the B plotline i.e. the story of the villains. I did as requested, expanding Gridlinked to 135,000 words in, I think, about two or three weeks. Peter Lavery at Macmillan expected a load of padded crap, what he got instead was Mr Crane (who wasn’t in the original version).  

In Penny Royal I’ve been concentrating on a villain – someone who encountered Penny Royal during its time in the Graveyard. I’m finding the writing ridiculously easy (which is worrying) and am starting to contemplate the idea of introducing other characters like her (Isobel Satomi), who have experienced similar encounters with Penny Royal. I can’t really say much more than this … well, I can add that prador and hooders have joined the cast, along with second-child ship minds, shell people, a heavyworlder thug, Jebel U-cap Krong and Sylac (who some may remember from Gridlinked and Prador Moon).

I’d like to get back to work now, but again I’ve got a sty in my eye and feel like crap. Concentrating on a screen ain’t helping.

Dreams and Nightmares

Damn but I wish I had dreams, and nightmares, more often. Last night I was chasing sheep off a vegetable patch I had in my parent’s garden whereupon I came upon a really tough cobweb made by a large green spider. When I cut the web it collapsed into a powerful spring. When I showed this spring to Steven Spielberg he didn’t believe me, so I threw part of it at him and told him to get it analysed. Next I was in a toilet in which the urinals and toilet bowl folded out from concealment, which was good, because they were filthy. There I found another web and another spider, though this spider was larger and covered in flowers. The spiders then made a perfectly natural transformation into worms I kept in a pencil packet and thereafter things got a bit chaotic…

Why do I wish for more dreams and even nightmares? Consider a nightmare I had many years ago. I was on an island covered in jungle, stepped onto a bridge over a stream and saw what looked like trout in the clear flow of water. Then one of the trout lifted its tubular thread-cutting mouth out of the water and I realized it was a leech. Retreating to the beach lying before a wall of jungle I saw long spidery blue hands reaching out and grapping someone (it might have been me – you know how jumbled nightmares are). Later this person was found, still alive, without his skin… I think you can work out where this one went.

Another nightmare involved being trapped in a cellar. The floor of the cellar was mud I was fighting not to sink into, and while struggling I realized the mud was actually alive. Next, out of the darkness came something moving like and ape. It turned out to be the still living body of a man, headless and chopped off at the waist. But he was okay because I knew he was there to help me. This nightmare I turned into a story called The Halfman’s Cellar which got me ‘honourable mention’ in the ‘Writers of the Future’ contest in 1991 and was published in a magazine called Scheherazade in 1994.

So what do I need to do, eat more cheese or something?

Brass Man

Thanks to Geoff Utley for this picture. It seems that Barnes & Noble might be a little bit behind the curve, but nice to see this anyway.

Brass Man on Amazon, Kindle & Book Depository.

The knight errant Anderson is hunting a dragon on the primitive Out-Polity world of Cull, little knowing that far away a man has resurrected a brass killing machine to assist in a similar hunt that encompasses star systems. When agent Cormac learns that an old enemy still lives, he sets out in pursuit aboard the attack ship Jack Ketch … whilst scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about that ancient technology ostensibly produced by the alien Jain, who died out five million years ago.

On a planet roamed by ferocious insectile monsters the people of Cull must struggle to survive, while they build the industrial base to reach their forefathers’ starship still orbiting far above them. An entity calling itself Dragon assists them, but its motives are questionable having created genetic by-blows of humans and the hideous local monsters, before growing bored with that game. And now Cull, for millennia geologically inactive, suffers earthquakes…

Meanwhile a brass killing machine seeks to escape a bloody past it can neither forget nor truly remember. It mindlessly continues its search for sanity, which it might find in an instant or not for a thousand years…

Microbots

Now this is why I don't just go for that SF buzzword prefix 'nano'. It's great for 'technology indistinguishable from magic' but with just a little thought you soon realize that microscopic robots should come first and will be very useful. For example, dealing with cancer doesn't have to be a nanoscale operation unless you actually want to repair the DNA faults responsible. Microbots in the body should be able to nip in and zap the relevant cells.

Journal of Applied Physics - Precise manipulation of a microrobot in the pulsatile flow of human blood vessels using magnetic navigation system (3 pages)

There are many other researchers working on bloodstream robots but we are still about 3 to 5 years away from clinical use because of the regulatory timeline.

Super-Soldier Ants

Over at The Register:

Ants can grow from larvae into many different bodily types, including soldiers, workers, or queens, depending on how they are fed and raised within the colony. The team analyzed the genetic structure of the supersoldiers and found the mechanism for their growth, a juvenile hormone.

When the team applied the hormone to larvae from these species, they found it easy to create the super soldiers. The surprise came when they tried a similar technique with species that don’t normally produce such heavy soldiers. They found that they could still create supersoldiers in these species, by activating genotypes from a common ancestor of the pheidole genus.

Ah, meat and bread for the science fiction writer. Sort of makes me think about Pournelle and Niven's The Mote in God's Eye. It also makes me think about a battle version of the Brumallians in Hilldiggers.

About Those Breast Implants...

So, the moment I heard this story about possible problems with industrial-grade silicon breast implants my knee-jerk reaction was, ‘Hey, you wanna buy bigger tits in France then that’s your problem and I shouldn’t have to pay for it!’ Then I thought about it for a bit and completely changed my mind. I’m guessing that someone who has shelled out for breast implants in France is someone with cash to spare on cosmetic surgery and is unlikely to be a dole scrounging parasite. Therefore, it is probably the case that they’ve been paying into the NHS, and quite likely they have paid in a damned sight more than they’ve had in return, so why shouldn’t they have medical care if there’s a problem with those implants?

...

NHS doctors do not have the right to lecture us on our lifestyle choices or refuse care. They especially do not have that right when we are forced to pay them. I’ve written this before but I'll write it again: it is like going into a chemist’s to buy Aspirin, paying your money, then being asked why you need the pills. When you say you have a hangover the assistant replies, ‘You shouldn’t drink so much and, because you have, that’s your own fault so I’m not giving you your Aspirin, but I’m keeping your money.’

Of course while this has been going on some NHS berk was on TV connecting these breast implants to smoking and drinking. ‘The NHS has to pay for smokers and drinkers!’ she said, righteously offended. Okay, so the NHS has gone out and earned its own money has it? And it is now having to shell out on those evil smokers and drinkers is it? Erm, no, Mrs NHS Berk, that’s OUR money you’ve got there. We gave it to you on the basis that you would look after us when we’re ill. I don’t recollect anything about you being able to pillory people who aren’t behaving as you would wish. You can’t start changing the rules after the fact.

Incidentally, smokers provide huge revenue for the government and, no matter how the righteous try to twist the figures, they cost the NHS less than non-smokers. Did you think dying young was more expensive than the cost keeping you dribbling and in incontinence pants in an OAP home?  

This is a long and slippery slope, whatever your opinion about smoking and drinking, or fat people (or rather, how much you have responded to the constant indoctrination, de-normalization and demonization from NGOs, government and the NHS itself). Where does it stop? Why, for example, should we pay for the rescue and care of a climber who has fallen off a mountain? Why should we pay for any sports injury? Why should we pay for maternity stuff and childcare? I mean, having children is a lifestyle choice nowadays, isn't it? Why should we pay for that guy cutting off his finger – he obviously wasn’t paying attention when using that Stanley knife. Why should we pay for that woman with malaria? It’s her fault she went on holiday. Why should we pay for that guy with AIDs? He should have used a condom. In fact, on that basis, we shouldn’t pay for any STDs.

And so continue the excuses for refusing treatment because a socialist experiment is, as always, running out of money.

The NHS was supposed to be free for all UK citizens at the point of use, but it is not. Foreigners get treatment they’ve paid nothing towards. We get charged exorbitant prices for medications that can be bought over-the-counter in other countries for a fraction of the cost. NHS dental care costs the same as private dental care elsewhere. Prescription charges are uneven, applying in England but not if you happen to live anywhere else in the UK. The NHS should be broken up and privatised and the only enforced requirement for UK citizens should be medical insurance, which would lead to real choices about your medical care. And, if that happened, the dependence on customer money rather than ‘free government money’ would rapidly shut up such righteous pricks like Mrs NHS Berk.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

We went to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yesterday – a film we were looking forward to after seeing that Daniel Craig was in it, and after one glimpse at the actress playing Lisbeth Salander. The title sequence was gobsmacking: James Bondish but in an oily and dark and somewhat disturbing way, thereafter I found the music a bit annoying at first and got that feeling of, ‘Oh dear, they’re doing the intrusive music to cover the crap content,’ but this turned out not to be the case.

As Blomkvist Daniel Craig was excellent, but then he’s excellent in just about any role he takes, though of course he is always Daniel Craig. I’d add that he was excellent in Quantum of Solace and that the reason the film was crap had more to do with the story and direction. Rooney Mara, as Salander, was simply brilliant. I think my criticism of the Swedish version was that both these roles weren’t filled adequately and, certainly, the Salander of that version wasn’t anywhere near enough as edgy, dangerous and disturbing. I reckon it was Mara’s bleached eyebrows that tipped it. The rest of the cast were great too. Christopher Plumber of course could be relied on to deliver the goods, and Salander’s new guardian did a very good job of being thoroughly detestable.

I could see where bits of the book had been excised and I could understand the reasons why. A large book of course has to be cut to fit into the film format and the need for the plot to head in a relatively straight line to the end. I was slightly annoyed by the cutting of what I will call the ‘Australian bit’ but even then could see why it might have been removed. It didn’t fit the tone and texture of the film and was, in essence, after the dramatic ending - subtext.

Thoroughly recommended.  

Writing Update

And another 2,000+ words written today. How many times should I repeat this before you all get bored with it? Anyway, I’ve now reached the stage where I’ve got nine sections, or episodes of the story, chronologically ordered in a large lump of text 17,000 or so words long over 26 pages. I also have a contents list which details what I have, with one brief line describing each section. (I use this list to keep track of the story. I then copy it when I’ve finished and convert it first into a long synopsis, then that into a short synopsis, then that into cover blurbs)

Now it’s time to start deciding how I’m going to structure the book. Usually I divide up what I’ve written into about ten pages per chapter, but in this case I might be working slightly differently, in fact more like I did with Brass Man. A lot of what I am writing now is, essentially, backstory. I’m considering making these sections into ‘retroacts’ to start off each chapter, or to insert where relevant in the current story as reveals. This backstory also comes from two perspectives, so there will also be opportunities, in those reveals, to show stark contrasts.

So far as I plan, the story itself begins during the prador/human war (that backstory), then continues just after the events on Masada in The Technician. So far. Maybe I’ll end up just writing my way through to that point, I’m certainly enjoying myself at the moment. And maybe you’ll end up with more than one book.

Resolution ... well, sort of.

At last, Christmas is over, the New Year is beginning and I can get on… I quite often feel like that at this time of year and, since this is resolution time, many other do too. Now the compulsory gorging, socialising and alcohol excess has come to an end. Now it’s time to sober up and look at the costs.

The first cost I noted last night. Unable to get to sleep I sat up reading a book. While reading I looked down at my torso and noted that it’s measurement front to back is now more than the one from side to side. This is despite doing twenty sit-ups and press-ups every morning for months, and cycling 16 to 24 miles a week. It really is time for me to do something about my big fat gut.

January is our zero alcohol month so that’ll knock off the calories, prove to myself that I’m not an unrecoverable alcoholic and allow my liver to recover… Then again, I read recently an article titled ‘Janopause detox does more harm than good’. Apparently ‘doctors say’ this is medically futile and fails to rejuvenate the liver. Yet, the liver does regenerate very quickly so how can a month off the booze not be a good thing? Of course, reading between the lines it soon becomes evident that this is an article patched together by the anti-alcohol lobby – the kind of people who want the pointless minimum pricing on alcohol. Taking a month off apparently encourages people, who are of course all idiots, to think that they are immune to the effects of alcohol for the rest of the year. And we must all stick to the government advised limit on alcohol units … oh yeah, let’s revisit that (have to pay to see it now):

The safe limits were introduced in 1987 after the Royal College of Physicians produced its first health report on alcohol misuse. In A Great and Growing Evil: The Medical Consequences of Alcohol Abuse, the college warned that a host of medical problems – including liver disease, strokes, heart disease, brain disease and infertility – were associated with excessive drinking. The report was the most significant study into alcohol-related disorders to date.

But Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal and a member of the college’s working party on alcohol, told The Times yesterday that the figures were not based on any clear evidence. He remembers “rather vividly” what happened when the discussion came round to whether the group should recommend safe limits for men and women.

“David Barker was the epidemiologist on the committee and his line was that ‘We don’t really have any decent data whatsoever. It’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t’.

“And other people said, ‘Well, that’s not much use. If somebody comes to see you and says ‘What can I safely drink?’ you can’t say ‘Well, we’ve no evidence. Come back in 20 years and we’ll let you know’. So the feeling was that we ought to come up with something. So those limits were really plucked out of the air. They weren’t really based on any firm evidence at all.

In fact, take a look at this bit of QI on this matter, then google the subject and try to find anything about this in the righteous bansturbation proliferating across the Internet.

I’ll also be ramping up the exercise and cutting down on what I stick in my mouth. I often start this off by spending a day eating nothing – the next day finding I’m no more hungry in the morning than I was the day before – thereafter, eating less and having further ‘days off’ like this shrinks my stomach so I just don’t feel as hungry. Of course this is, apparently, a bad thing to do too. I disagree. What the hell is fat for? It is a way of storing up calories for lean times. So what happens if you don’t eat? You burn up fat rather than the half a pack of chocolate biscuits you ate last night. It’s quite a simple equation.

Okay, I’m off for a cycle now.  

Another Interview

Here's a recent interview with me conducted by Douglas R Cobb. I'm probably repeating a lot of stuff considering how many of these I've done.

Different SF writers have different names for their interstellar civilization. Ian M Banks has the Culture, Star trek has the Federation and the Dominion, empires and kingdoms have been used too. The Polity was my own particular take on this. I wanted something big, sprawling and complicated in which I could set just about any SF story. Its inception was in numerous short stories where similar technology might be used, similar alien life, agents, characters and gradually grew almost like a crystal forming. Runcible gates where a hat-tip to the ansible, but grew into a science whose nomenclature evolved from the poem The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear (a tachyon, for example, is called ‘pea-green’). I wanted my Polity linked up by spaceships and instantaneous matter transmission and the runcible gates are the latter, giving people the ability to step across light-years in an instant.

Conflicts

Nice review of Conflicts here.

Neal Asher's "The Cuisinart Effect" is a romp equal to the earlier story from Andy Remic. A hard-nosed officer leads a group of soldiers into the distant past in order to foil their enemy's plot to kidnap dinosaurs and use them as weapons of mass destruction. (Wow. The sentences I type sometimes.) The dinosaurs are, of course, awesome. And they provide an excellent backdrop for the story's real conflict: the inhuman "by the book" officer versus the flawed but empathetic soldiers. I'm not familiar with Mr. Asher's other work, but got the impression that this was linked into an existing world. I'm sure I missed a few nuances because of that, but, whatever. Dinosaurs.

Where's My Robot Butler?

I’ve been watching some You Tube videos and reading up on some stuff about the ‘technological singularity’. Vernor Vinge’s ideas about this relate more to an explosion in technological development brought about by artificial intelligence, but there are other definitions out there. I was watching one video in which someone tracked the doubling of technological development from two thousand years ago and posited that the first doubling came in about 1600 (I think) and that successive doublings have been getting closer together so we’ve now reached the point where it happens once a year. Following this exponential curve we can suppose that we’ll reach a point where we get doublings every hour.

Without artificial intelligence we’re getting a ramping up of technological development through the Internet. Scientist, technicians and engineers can now communicate instantly, all over the world, which is certainly accelerating things. Ideas can propagate worldwide as fast as someone can type. Admittedly this can also apply to silly ideas following the axiom that a lie can circle the world faster than the truth can get its boots on, but silly ideas can also be torn apart quickly because a lot of brains are at work – the stupidity of crowds is countered by the synergetic intelligence of the Internet (a kind of artificial intelligence, if you like).

But putting all this aside I began pondering on how often now I keep getting those, ‘Hang on a minute’ moments. I love reading the kind of stuff that can be found on The Next Big Future, just as I enjoyed reading about them in science magazines a few decades ago. But my wish is to see these wonderful things actually reaching people and more and more now I’m seeing it happening. Yes, we have the Internet, all those mobile phones and all that instantly accessible data; all that computing power, music, graphics and games. But where’s my robot butler? Where are the physical as opposed to media/communication advances? Where is the hardware that does more than just shuffle about information and actually uses it in the physical world? Deep Blue might have beaten Kasparov at chess, but was incapable of moving its own pieces.

Some car adverts spring to mind. We have the cars that don’t need keys, use voice recognition, can recognize traffic signs and can park themselves. This is quite stunning for someone whose first car was a Vauxhall Viva loaded with filler and driven to the scrapyard after three months. This springs to mind. I used to run and program a big CNC milling machine, which was cool, but now it seems the technology is being developed to ‘print’ solid objects. How long, I wonder, before we’ll be able buy something similar to connect up to a home pc? Then there’s exponential increase in the speed DNA is being sequenced…

These are just a few of those developments, which I expect we’ll be seeing more of, where the virtual is becoming actual; where information technology is reaching out into the real world. I could spend days on the Internet finding more examples; where the computers are actually being given ‘hands’, but I won’t.

Can you think of some more?

Website Updates

I decided a number of days ago to put some extras on the website but for three or four days have been unable to upload anything. No explanations from Virgin - I suspect they were either overloaded or doing some maintenance.

I've now added a my SFF collection to Galleries and the 'scooby' ending on Gridlinked (this latter was an ending that was taken out during the editorial stages of the book because it was too much like a Scooby-Doo explanation).

Even with all the additions the website is only 11.4 megabytes so I will keep adding to it as time goes on. Any suggestions as to what you might like to see there?

Some Tech for the Girls

Or, being an equal opportunities blog, maybe for some of the boys too.

I just noticed Caroline putting on some nail varnish, which she acquired via Amazon. One coat goes on thinly and is allowed to dry, then next coat goes on thick and you hold the magnet over it.

I was reminded of a scene in Total Recall when a receptionist, in the office of the company selling those holiday experiences, was touching some kind of stylus to her nails and instantly changing their colour. I wonder how long it will be before that is a reality? See, advancing technology (well, innovation) is not all about I-phones, E-readers and and how big your RAM happens to be.

Nostalgia Trip.

After putting up that clip of the coming John Carter of Mars film, and then searching for the cover of the first of those Edgar Rice Burroughs books I got hold of, I’ve been pondering on the first SFF books I read. When I do interviews, I often chunter on about first having my mind distorted by E. C. Tubb’s Earl Dumarest saga, but maybe I chose that simply because of its connection to the first bit of creative writing I did in school (wholly derivative stuff about people having their brains removed). But I wonder which book was the first.

There are a few contenders. I know that the first E. C. Tubb book I read was The Winds of Gath. However, did I read that before one of the books my mother – a school teacher – was reading to her kids and kept at home: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. As an aside here I should mention that the second bit of SF I attempted to write, as a teenager, was something called The Crab, the Serpent and the Carpenter … shortly after something called The Planet of the Light Creatures, with drawings.

I also remember my first visit to a library and, when asked by mother what I would like to read, I mentioned that I had enjoyed a story a school teacher had been reading to my class. Knowing the author she directed me to the relevant shelf. The story mention was The Hobbit, and the book I picked up was The Two Towers by Mr Tolkein. But was I already reading the previously mentioned books before that.

Then we get back to John Carter. I picked up A Princess of Mars out of my brother Martin’s collection of books (mostly Louis L’Amour cowboy books), but was I already reading the skiffy stuff then? I don’t know … had I by then started picking up those Robert E. Howard Conan books? And how long was it before I started in on Larry Niven and my first taste of Ringworld Engineers?

Snow in the Desert

Here's another Christmas read for anyone who is interested.

Short Reads, which were first launched for Christmas 2010, are designed to be eye-catching titles at a low price that enable new ebook device owners to sample some of the best Pan Mac writers when they are hunting around for something to read on Boxing Day.

The 2011 list, with each ebook retailing at 99p, comprises three new titles from three bestselling Pan Macmillan writers – Christmas is for the Kids by Peter James (who has already had huge success with The Perfect Murder ebook, which was in the Top 10 chart in iBooks for much of 2010 and has been in the Top 100 consistently since), Three and a Half Deaths by Emma Donoghue and Bedlam by Andrew Lane. Also now available as Short Reads are Minette Walters’ Chickenfeed, Neal Asher’s Snow in the Desert and Water from the Sun and Discovering Japan by Bret Easton Ellis.

It can be found on Amazon Kindle here.

John Carter (2012) Trailer 2 HD 1080p

Okay. I watched one trailer and wasn't convinced, but seeing this one I now know I've got to see this. I think John Carter of (on?) Mars was about one of the first SFF books I ever read. It was the big four-armed green bugger on the cover that attracted my attention.

Update:

I was looking round for the cover picture of 'John Carter of Mars' which shows you how your memory plays tricks with you. The first of these books I read was 'A Princess of Mars'.

Vivisepulture

Here we go. Andy Remic contacted me about maybe submitting a story to Vivisepulture. Now, I don't really have any Polity related short stories that haven't already been published somewhere, but I do still have a few nasties in my files, so I sent him one called Plastipak. You'll find the kindle version here. I'm told:

The official release date is 20^th December, and the antho will be going out for the special Christmas price of £0.99p (to try and get it up those Amazon charts!!). On 26^th December it will revert to £1.99.

                                  Edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons

Welcome to our anthology, a collection of weird and bizarre tales of twisted imagination by Neal Asher, Tony Ballantyne, Eric Brown, Richard Ford, Ian Graham, Lee Harris, Colin Harvey, Vincent Holland-Keen, James Lovegrove, Gary McMahon, Stan Nicholls, Andy Remic, Jordan Reyne, Ian Sales, Steven Savile, Wayne Simmons, Guy N. Smith, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jeffrey Thomas, Danie Ware, Ian Watson and Ian Whates. Artwork by Vincent Chong.

The anthology is dedicated to the late Colin Harvey, with great affection.

In the tradition of Poe, Kafka, Borges and H. G. Wells, this collection of weird stories are written with the primary drive of presenting twisted deviations of normality. Whether it's the deviant factory workers of Neal Asher's Plastipak™ Limited, the pus-oozing anti-cherub of Ian Graham's Rotten Cupid, the acid-snot disgorging freak of Andy Remic's SNOT, or Ian Watson's alternate zombie-crucifixion, each story will drag your organs up through your oesophagus and give your brain a chilli-fired beating.

• WEIRD TALES

• DISTURBING CONCEPTS

• DEVIATED BLACK HUMOUR

• NO GENRE LEFT UNGOUGED

Vivisepulture is an EBOOK original anthology edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons. Vivisepulture can be purchased from www.anarchy-books.com in PDF, EBOOK and MOBI formats.

EPUB versions can also be read on your PC/MAC by installing Adobe’s Digital Editions for free. Check out: www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

www.anarchy-books.com

Names

So I think to myself I’ll call the main character David Spear (second name chosen because of that cool character in Band of Brothers) then I wonder: haven’t I used David before? Of course I have – David McCrooger in Hilldiggers – so I need a rethink. In a piece I wrote off the cuff, prior to starting Penny Royal, I used a Scandinavian name and, glancing at it again, I thought yes, something like that. The first one to pop into my head was Thorvald, and I decided to do a search on it. Now, bearing in mind that this is about the black AI Penny Royal, a monster (sort of), it was interesting to come up with this is relation to the name Thorvald:

Thorvald the slayer of Nidhogg

Then a search of Nidhogg comes up with:

In Norse myth, Nidhogg ("tearer of corpses") is a monstrous serpent that gnaws almost perpetually at the deepest root of the World Tree Yggdrasil, threatening to destroy it.

Also:

(Malice Striker, often anglicized Nidhogg)

And thus the imagination feeds.

Penny Royal

I think I can say firmly that I have now started Penny Royal (or Pennyroyal – I still haven’t decided). A week or so back I started making some notes, but then got distracted by my old website and reworked that. (Incidentally, if you haven’t noticed there are galleries and a forum there so, as far as the latter is concerned, if you have something you want to say that you feel is off-topic, pop over there.)

Yesterday, however, I sat down determined to get back on track and wrote my first 2,000 words. It’s nice to know when I’ve actually started a book. Checking my journals I see that I’ve always noted when I’ve finished one, or rather, finished the draft I send off to the publisher, but the start point has always been vague. Maybe after this one I’ll have a definite maybe answer to that perennial question, ‘How long does it take you to write a book?’

So, the state of play at the moment is this: Zero Point is at the publisher and I’ll soon be seeing it again to deal with the copy edits; Jupiter War is slowly fermenting on my computer and I’ll give it another try next year, to see if the taste has improved and what additives might be required; and my idea about doing some short stories is on hold for the moment. That’s all for now – I must get back to work.

Whatever?

John Scalzi has asked those who read his site what they prefer reading about so, never being one to be shy of nicking a good idea... What have you enjoyed reading about and found interesting here? And what bugs you?

Let me know in the comments below...

The Quantum Thief -- Hannu Rajaniemi

In a way this was more like a fast tour of the post singularity world rather than a story set in it. I’ve been reading science and science fiction for a very long time, but I often felt the need to hold up a finger and say, ‘Hang on Hannu, if you could explain –’ … but no, he’s gone like a tour guide on speed. The ideas hit you like cars in a motorway pile-up giving you no time to deal with them, absorb them. And, of course, while the ideas are hitting you like that you’re not properly processing the plot and can fail to engage with it. My feeling is that before he leapt through the next q-dot membrane to begin his next adventure in some gaming virtuality he needed an editor to catch hold of his collar and force him to stop and smell the roses, even if those roses were laced with an optogenetic virus.

Now for the however... This was all very enjoyable, bubbling with fascinating technology and its resultant life-styles, and a book that really does feel like a glimpse into a post Vingean singularity world. I found myself caught up in the author’s enthusiasm with it all and by the end of it wondered if someone has slipped amphetamines into the printer’s ink. For me it is a book I would like to read again, but with the Internet running so I can track down and nail all that glorious weirdness. And in the end, just like with the previous book I reviewed here, the answers to the questions are mostly 'yes'.   

The Lost Fleet 'Dauntless' -- Jack Campbell

There’s a whiff of antiquity about this book that reminds me of E.E. Doc Smith and other books I read at about the same time I read the Skylark series. This feels like WWII but with space ships and could easily have been written in the 50s. I felt momentary cringes at the name of the character ‘Black Jack Geary’ at the use of ‘hell lances’ and ‘grape shot’ and at crewmen being called ‘sailors’. The technology felt daft, as if the electronics aboard the ships might have employed thermionic valves, as if the corridors were full of steam pipes and the gunners were hand-loading shells. I half expected someone to pull out a slide rule at some point to calculate vectors.

 

However…

Why shouldn’t a beam weapon be called a ‘hell-lance’ and why shouldn’t ‘grape shot’ fired at relativistic speeds be perfectly acceptable? How different is the former to a maser or particle beam, and how different is the latter to rail-gun missiles? And why shouldn’t the kind of command structures seen in our navies be used? Such arguments I tried on myself as I devoured this book. What retired naval officer John G Hemry (his real name) has done here is combine his experience of military service with an obvious (and probably dated) love of science fiction.

To sum up: all of the above is true, but in reviewing a book I have to ask some very simple questions. Did I care about the characters? Did I want to know what happened next? Did I enjoy reading this book? Was it a good read? Will I buy the next book in the series?

The answer to all these questions is ‘yes’, and this book must be included in that long list called ‘guilty pleasures’.   

Website.

Right, I've stuck a forum up on my website here. Why not pay it a visit (all you IT buggers) and let me know what I'm doing wrong. I'm sure there'll be something...

Oh, and as I mentioned in one of my previous comments, I've now added a Galleries Page.

Go Completely Digital?

Here's an email I recently received. Perhaps those visiting here would like to address some of his points? I do have some answers, but let's see what others have got to say....


You should put a section on your blog so people can raise questions without resorting to emailing.

This is a question that's been annoying me for a while. I grew up with books and with tapes, then CD's then crappy windows media player and now all my music's on a 300Gb hard drive as well as every important (and unimportant) photo from my life.

I feel good that all my music's accessible this way and I've binned, or sold all my old CD's. That was easy.

I also threw all my books prior to 5 years ago away, which at the time seemed good but now is a niggling regret. Mainly because my daughter has just started reading ravenously and a lot of the stuff I had she'd love (she got into fantasy via Harry Potter!)

Should we throw away books in favour of digital text? I'd love to think this is progress but most of the writing I've discovered is through browsing bookshops. I buy books from Amazon from time to time
but I don't ever discover anything via that. Discovery's are always made in bookshops, be it from a cover or a few first pages etc... I have never found that from a web based system.

I bought a beautifully bound and illustrated edition of "the secret garden" for my daughter as well as a new edition of Philip Pullman's "Northern lights" Which I know she'll enjoy (she's 7 I can't subject
her to the wonders of masada yet)

A year ago I had this conversation with my partner while considering buying an e-reader. She was horrified that I'd consider sending our books the way of our CD's and at the time I thought that was
ridiculous however now I'm wondering how people will find new fiction without bookshops? I'm happy that I can access medical journals for work instantly and without wasting tons of paper a year plus emissions related to moving articles to me only 5% of which I want to keep and I don't know how I'd work without Zotero to catalogue my articles now but I just can't get comfortable with the loss of bookshops.

Sci-fi never really touches this, writers always just seem to accept that all information is always permanently available at minimal cost to anyone who want's it but never get into how people might access fiction or even look for it? The only time I've heard mention of libraries properly is Ian Banks in "The Algebraist" where the dwellers keep vast uncatalogued libraries stretching back millennia and
further.
Is the future just a library of information where fiction is controlled only by corporations such as Apple and Amazon who "Recommend" the fiction they know you'd like (scary). Or is it vast
quantities of fiction churned out by anyone who feels they can be an author dumped into a huge repository where no one can discover anything of quality? Either way it looks pretty shit for my children or grandchildren.

Sci-fi seems to be comfortable with future tech but lacks depth in social problems. Do you think someone should try writing from that angle?

Kind regards

Marcus

Prador!

From Andy Plumbly:

They're terrified on Masterchef now.

Poster

I found this while sorting through my files. I'm sure I was told not to put it up until it was used, then forgot about it. Nice bit of ego inflation:

Updated Website

Okay, for all you techy minded IT guys. I've rebuilt my website using the program Webplus X4. I still need to do a lot more work on it. A lot isn't displaying as well as it should, it could do with navigation bars and I've yet to make the 'video clip' page.

You can find it here.

Jain Tech on the Way

I love it when a rush of articles like this appear on TheNext Big Future. Here we have a microscopic engine:

"We've developed the world's smallest steam engine, or to be more precise the smallest Stirling engine, and found that the machine really does perform work,"

Here we have further efforts at miniaturization using carbon nano-tubes:

Three dimensional integration is a hot field within electronics since it offers a new way to package components densely and thus build tiny, well-functioning units. When stacking chips vertically, the most effective way to interconnect them is with electrical interconnects that go through the chip (instead of being wired together at the edges) – what are known as through-silicon vias.

Here we have nano-springs:

In order to exploit the particular material properties that appear at the nanoscale, it is first necessary to fabricate materials with nanoscale structures in a controlled and repeatable fashion. Reliable methods for the fabrication of simple shapes such as nanorods, nanocubes and nanotubes are now available, but more complex shapes still pose a challenge. Sungho Park and co-workers from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea have now reported a promising method for the synthesis of palladium nanosprings.

Quantum entangled photons:

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei in collaboration with colleagues in Germany and Austria have now demonstrated a system that allows photons to be entangled and stored in a manner suitable for quantum computing.

And photonic chips for quantum processors:

A multi-purpose optical chip which generates, manipulates and measures entanglement and mixture - two quantum phenomena which are essential driving forces for tomorrow's quantum computers - has been developed by researchers from the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics. This work represents an important step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer.

Of course with steady developments like this we might end up with some sort of self-replicating technology that grows like a plant, or a fungal mycelia…

Out in the Wilderness!

Apparently David Cameron has cast us into isolation and the icy wilderness outside Europe, if you swallow whole the propaganda belched up by the BBC. As someone noted, on one blog I was reading, this is the kind of isolation of the one passenger who failed to board the Titanic on its maiden voyage. Of course the piles and piles of bullshit here are high and ripe. First off, Britain is not the one out of twenty-seven as the BBC would have us believe. And as far as I can gather (I’m no expert) he said ‘no’ at a meeting to discuss having a meeting to work out some way of promoting stability. There was, in fact, no treaty to veto but a draft treaty. If you want more detail, check here.

However, one wonders why sticking a financial transactions tax in there which will screw money out of Britain’s economy has to be part of the deal. Could it possibly be a further power grab that actually has no effect on the vast amount of money countries owe and how, economically, they are rapidly heading down the toilet? Could it be a little bit of payback for Britain’s failure to kowtow to Brussels and join the Euro? Could it also be Merkel, Sarkozy and crew looking for someone to blame –Britain – when it all goes tits-up as it inevitably will?

Nice to note the BBC telling outright lies too. How the financial sector is just an insignificant part of Britain’s economy when it actually accounts for 10% of national income. Meanwhile the reporters all looked like they wanted to be wearing black arm bands as they promoted doom and gloom about Britain not going ‘Baaa!’ with the rest of the sheep. They then delayed for as long as possible before letting Cameron put his side of, ‘We’re not in the Euro, these changes are against our national interest, so I said no, okay?’ Of course I’ve no doubt that later that ‘no’ will become a sort of ‘no’ and eventually slide into being a ‘yes’ because Cameron is as big a europhile prick as most chiselling politicians.

Update:
Incidentally, what are these sanctions they're talking about for profligate governments? It hardly seems logical to financially penalize a government that's overspent: Hey, I find you guilty of shooting yourself in the foot. I am, therefore, going to punish you by shooting you in the other foot.

New Book

Right, I’ve finished with the Peter Lavery edits of Zero Point, have read through it once more, and I’ve now sent it off. Of course this is not the end, because a copy editor will go through it next and doubtless have queries for me and, if I wished, I could now return to Jupiter War and start working it over again. However, I’ve decided it’s time to look at something different.

This afternoon I opened a new file and titled it Pennyroyal, stared at a blank page for a moment and then typed in that same word as the title. I’m now halfway down the page making notes – putting down things I’ve churned over in my mind on and off for a number of months. Here’s the first thing I wrote:

The traveller keeps a piece of Pennyroyal inside his own ship: a black spine a metre and a half long, the width of an arm at its base and tapering to a needle point, pentagonal in cross-section and with corners of atomic sharpness, a ribbed tentacle extending from its base, with a tentacle junction box a handbreadth down it, and a metre of tentacle beyond – torn off at the end with optics and esoteric electronics protruding.

This may be something I’ll use or it may be something to key me into the book and which I’ll discard later. Other ideas are fermenting and bubbling to the surface. There’ll be connections here to the Prador-Human war, but it will be set after The Technician. A spider-thrall might be involved, and I’m considering a guest appearance by Jebel U-cap Krong. I also see one of those giant AI-dreadnought manufacturing stations, maybe a wartime atrocity…

Hey, this post is longer than the notes I’ve made...

Back to work!

The Windup Girl -- Paolo Bacigalupi

My opinion about this book is difficult to nail down. It was rich and textured and engaged all the senses, the characters were fascinating, too, and the extrapolation and some of the ideas were excellent. I particularly liked the kink-spring technology and the semi-retro tech based on it, like the disc guns that are a reminder of a childhood toy. I enjoyed the genetic manipulation and the wind-up girl herself, though of course there were shades of Blade Runner there. However, what gave me pause was the heavy reliance on scares generated by the ‘green’ movement and the MSM, but of course, in present day establishment thinking, it is right on.

We have the scares about global warming and sea-level rise here, and you all know my opinion on them. Yes, we do have global warming, and we’ve had it since the Little Ice Age and it hasn’t come close to being as high as in the Medieval Warm Period and has flat-lined for over a decade. As for sea-level rise, putting aside Al Gore idiocy and desperate IPCC spin, the last time I looked it was few millimetres a year (as it has been for 8000 years), and if we can’t cope with a metre rise in sea-level in three or four centuries then we might just as well give up right now (it has also been dropping for the last three years). However, the clue is in the label. This is science fiction so writing about a future globally-warmed and flooded world is valid, though, extrapolating from historical climate cycles, and writing about a new Ice Age, would be more so.

Then we have the scare about genetic modification or, more specifically, the fear of GM under the control of the evil corporations (sigh). Here we seem to be going into Daily Mail ‘Frankenfoods’ territory, combined with the ‘capitalism is evil’ shibboleth of the left. I am a little doubtful about the idea that our scientists are going to abruptly pull masses of world-devastating monsters out of their arses that billions of years of competitive evolution has failed to manage. But whatever, again this is valid for science fiction, and is of course a very useful spanner in the SF toolbox. I also get tired of that constant portrayal in fiction and film of the evil corporation. It strikes me that corporations seem to come up with most of what improves our lives, while it’s the governments that enjoy bombing people back into the Stone Age.

(I also have to wonder … where are the windmills and tide-generators supplying if not electricity then joules for those kink-springs? Where, with such advanced biotech, are the tank-grown hydrocarbons and the CO2 absorbing microbes? Where, also, are the nuclear power stations? Maybe in the rest of the world?)

Thereafter, if the scares were true, the extrapolation in the book is on the button. I do see Luddite environmental police (white shirts much like Hitler’s brown or black shirts) destroying illegal and dangerous technology and pillorying those who are profligate in energy use. I do see an economy based on calories, and the kind of life-styles depicted in this book. And I do see human life being cheapened.

Now I have to add something more. I have, over time, started to make it a rule that I won’t review books I either don’t like or don’t finish. That I finished this book, considering my personal opinions, is testament to how much I enjoyed it. It’s a valid look at a future from one point of view and, unlike what I have seen in other SF books that venture into this sort of territory, the characters are people struggling to get on with their lives in difficult circumstances, and are not vessels created just to deliver righteous homilies.


Cue the visits by trolls to enlighten me in the ways of correct political thought.   

Higgs Boson

It appears that the good people at CERN have either discovered or are close to discovering the Higgs boson or ‘God particle’:

Rumors swirled today that data may have been found that supports the Higgs boson at ~126 GeV. Reliable sources have speculated the data will show a certainty, that something’s there, to about 4.2 sigma, the threshold for official detection is 5 sigma, but that only triggers many rounds of attempted confirmation.

Physics blogs are alive with chatter about a possible sign of the Higgs boson – or perhaps an entirely unexpected particle – in data from the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. But the claim has not gone through the experiment's vetting process and could easily turn out to be wrong, physicists say.

...

Why does this matter? I submit that knowledge for its own sake is a good thing, but also, who knows what sort of technologies such a discovery would lead to? Similarly, what kind of territory are we being led into by those FTL neutrinos? Here’s an article that purports to explain why the Higgs boson matters but, for myself, one of the commenters nailed my feelings about both this particle and those neutrinos:

Translation: the standard model describes a universe that doesn’t actually exist, and so instead of conceding some fundamental defect in the standard model, they assume it must be right and instead there is a missing piece of the puzzle. Much like dark matter and dark energy, the Higgs boson is another epicycle.

And for illuminaton:

Slang for bad science
In part, due to misunderstandings about how deferent/epicycle models worked, "adding epicycles" has come to be used as a derogatory comment in modern scientific discussion. The term might be used, for example, to describe continuing to try to adjust a theory to make its predictions match the facts.

Yup, there's a lot of that about.

Late Turner Prize Entry?

Apparently a late Turner Prize entry said to depict the failure of capitalism in the modern world didn't quite make the grade:

A fleet of Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo have been involved in one of the most expensive accidents in history after a high speed pile-up in Japan.
  
Meanwhile it is rumoured that an early visitor to the gallery was arrested for planking on the prizewinning exhibit:

Roddy and the Muffin Men

Here's a guy we know out in Crete - he's the guitarist at the back. He's addicted to my chilli sauce and rather likes a drink of raki. His wife, Ruth, makes costumes for panto and recently for The Game of Thrones.

What Diet?

As is usual during the winter, when comfort food tastes so good and exercise outside doesn't seem like a great idea, I'm starting to put on weight. I really do try not to eat too much, but sometimes the temptation is too strong:

After watching a movie we ventured into a Mexican restaurant that serves some huge profitaroles... 

Aaargh! Bloody Computer

Could not load file or assembly sorttbls.nlp or one of its dependencies. The system file cannot be specified.

Aargh!

Kardashev Scale

Noting this article on Next Big Future reminded me about the Kardashev Scale, and reading up on it again can certainly be a stimulus for the imagination.

The Polity, I suspect, is merely a Type I civilization, perhaps sliding into Type II territory with the construction of a Dyson sphere. The Heliothane, of Cowl, are also edging into Type II territory with New London sitting over the sun and tapping energy from it. Go check out the links to get your mind blown … so to speak.

The picture here is one from Halo, which seems to have some seriously cool artwork.

Books in Foyles.

Caroline nipped off shopping to the huge new shopping centre Westfield in Stratford and, as is becoming traditional now, she found a book shop and took photos of my books. Oddly there was no Waterstones there and she found these in Foyles. I have to wonder what Christina Foyle would have thought of this. Many years ago I used to cut a field of grass beside Beeleigh Abbey where she lived. I even got invited in once for a cup of coffee and it was like stepping back a hundred years: manual worker invited into the big house to be inspected by the lord and lady, led through by a maid into an enormous room full of antiques and ancestor paintings. I managed to suppress the urge to tug my forelock, dip my head and clutch my cheesecutter hat against my chest.