Back from Skiathos

Okay, I haven’t put anything in here for a while because Caroline and I have been sunning ourselves in Skiathos. I said nothing about this before going because I feel no overpowering urge to advertise to the world that our bungalow is empty for two weeks. However, I was keeping a journal while away and here’s a little bit:

7/7/06
On the anniversary of the London tube bombing it’s nice to see the good people at Gatwick firmly controlling the really dangerous people: those damned smokers. The smoking pen in the middle of the upstairs shopping area, with its curved over Perspex screens (presumably to prevent escape) and its central location, seems placed to put on display and shame the underclass of nicotine addicts. It’s almost a refugee camp. While inside it, I half expected passers-by to start lobbing over aid packages.

Now I’m crammed into a space on an aircraft which, had I been a dog, the RSPCA would have considered cruel confinement. They would have rescued me from this aircraft and provided me with a bowl of water and some Bonios. Very shortly we’re going to hear all the bull about the exits and life jackets. Does anyone for a moment believe this matters? When was the last time you saw rescue boats picking up life-jacketed survivors from a crashed passenger aircraft? When was the last time anyone picked up passengers from such a crash without the aid of a shovel and some black bin liners?

I just read in the paper that when asked by John Humphries about his other alleged affairs John Prescott replied, “People must judge me by what I do on the job.” You have to wonder if his foot-in-mouth disease is a charade. While people consider him a clown they're less likely to boot him out of his cushy non-job.

When leaving Gatwick I spotted the mock-up aeroplane the airport fire crews practice on. It’s made of steel and about the same size as the real thing. Upon our arrival at Skiathos I spotted a similar plane that appeared to be made out of dustbins. I could see that fire practice probably involved a Greek guy sauntering over with a bucket of water.

As we disembarked the ‘safety demo kit’ – used by the stewardess to tell us all about the intricacies of life jackets – fell out of the hand luggage locker onto Caroline’s head.

More later.

Max Part Three

Max Part Three

What was going to happen to Max? With Marjorie being moved into a ‘recovery home’ for an indeterminate period, he surely couldn’t stay in kennels. We considered the possibility of having him in our house, but ours is a small bungalow with a postage stamp garden. In one winter he would have turned the garden into a quagmire and have trailed in mud to destroy a pale carpet we’d recently had laid. If there was no alternative, we would probably have had him. However, we were in for quite a surprise.

We’d discounted the idea of Max accompanying Marjorie to the home. Surely the HSE would not allow this, surely those running the home would be terrified of being sued by residents or relatives of residents knocked arse-over-armpit by such a large Alsatian roaring about? Surely there were rules about this sort of thing? Surprisingly, those running the home were prepared to have him there. Apparently the rules are that a pet can accompany someone into a home, but people living in homes cannot buy pets.

Though it had now become a twenty mile round trip – travelling to Bradwell where the home is situated rather than to Burnham where Marjorie lived – we decided to continue walking Max. The home was a secluded ivy-covered mansion and when we arrived there, I looked around at some very old and ill people tottering around on Zimmer frames and wondered how having Max here could possibly work. Marjorie looked a lot better: clean, tidy, walking about without her frame. Max, however, looked in a terrible state. He had lost weight, he looked miserable, his back legs kept giving way – a common complaint in Alsatians and the one that usually precedes their visit to the vet’s for that final injection. I felt the staff in the home, who were hard pressed enough as it was, were rather annoyed about having a furry resident to look after too.

We took him out for a walk. It was bleak, windy, cold and wet, and we didn’t know where to go. We ended up heading generally towards the coast and the big grey loom of Bradwell power station. On the way we found a fenced-off football field where we could let him off his lead, beyond that we necessarily walked on the grass verge beside a long road. It was all rather depressing, and I suspected it could not continue. Then things slowly began to change.

After two or three exploratory walks we found an excellent route that took us out to the left of the power station, along the sea wall before it beside the Blackwater Estuary, onto a shell beach, then returning on the other side of the station along a nice walk before hitting the road again. We later discovered that we didn’t even have to walk all the way along beside that road, since there was a footpath in the field adjacent. As we continued walking him the weather grew steadily better into the spring. His legs no longer collapsed underneath him and he began to put on weight. And the staff in the home began to fall in love with him.

One day, when we opened to front door to the home, we saw a Filipino lady running towards us, a big grin on her face, with Max in hot pursuit. Max really liked her and followed her everywhere, so the other carers told us with some jealousy. He also had a bit of a game with the lady who fed him his dinner, for when she gave him his epilepsy pills wrapped up in a piece of thin ham, she necessarily had to chase him for a little while too. Slowly, over a period of months, Max’s usual reserve began to disappear. He went from being the only pet of a chair-bound old lady to a pet that belonged to perhaps ten of fifteen carers. Marjorie wasn’t vastly happy about this. He was her dog, yet it was infrequent when we arrived to find him anywhere near her.

Many of the residents really liked him too, smiling benevolently when he was near and reaching out a hand to stroke him in passing. The night staff thought he was great too. When one of them took a nap on a couch he would sleep on the floor beside her. “I feel safe with him here,” she told us. Nothing quite like the assurance of a large Alsatian nearby when you’re on night duty. Marjorie’s daughter and partner often visited, taking Marjorie and Max up to the nearby pub. When carers went down to the local shop they sometimes took him with them. He was seeing more life, more action, than he had ever seen before. He was having a great time. On the odd occasion, when a door was left open, he wandered off and caused all sorts of worries. But eventually he stopped doing that. We would often turn up to find him sprawled out the back, on the concrete or the lawn, where the carers sat for their tea break.

Things had turned out very well, for him. Marjorie, however, was becoming increasingly confused and though her health had rallied under care, it deteriorated again.

Then she died.

To be continued…

Polity Agent

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity. Those coming through it had been sent to take the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun. From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This, of course, raised questions: why was Dragon, a massive biocontruct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it? Meanwhile an entity called the Legate is distributing Jain nodes ... and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself.
hardback

Barry Beelzebub

My thanks to bascule for pointing me to this: http://barrybeelzebub.blogspot.com/ I'm a rank amateur compared to this guy. I've been chuckling to myself all morning.

Political Rant

Warning: political rant.

I would say that in today’s Labour Party we are seeing the results of a road wreck where the juggernaut called ideology has slammed into concrete motorway support called reality. This was to be expected when you consider the politicians concerned. Most of them have backgrounds consisting of a combination of university political indoctrination, student activism and rebellion against their middleclass roots, or the slide into politics via union activism (i.e. trying to avoid having to work for a living). This mix has been spiced with a reading of turgid left-wing tracts produced by people with a similar background to themselves – similarly lacking any connection with the real world. (Remember, many of these twats have been members of the Communist Party and that madness called CND, and in their past went on jollies to the USSR to sup Vodka with those they considered admirable – the rulers of one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth.)

The constant temptations of wealth and power have been a problem for these politicians. Many of them have gone off the rails as, after years in the wilderness, they’re now kids let loose in a sweet shop. Large mortgage sir? No problem. Large donation to Labour in exchange for honours? No problem. Want to make a little on the side? Just make sure we get that government contract. Ad Nauseum.

Meantime, their approach to ruling was to smash up old institutions and replace them with something that fitted their blinkered fairyland worldview. And of course, being in politics kept them well-insulated from reality (the money helped) because society possesses such inertia that it takes some years of change to fuck it up. Labour has had those years, and now its politicians are beginning to reap the harvest. (Though let’s be honest here, the Conservatives planted similar crops and are now all but indistinguishable from Labour)

Their response, to these fuck-ups, is to try to spin their way out of danger, to manipulate public opinion and the press, meanwhile struggling to put back what they’ve wrecked. Thus we see emphasis on the three Rs and Ofsted to try and patch-up the mess resulting from their reliance on trendy teaching methods, and daft ideas about equality that resulted in pupils leaving their schools equally illiterate and ignorant.

Their other screw-ups have been failed ‘multiculturalism’ (incorporating lax immigration controls) leading to increased racism, and ghettos in which crime (including terrorism) breeds; a soft approach to crime and punishment with emphasis on rehabilitation, which has resulted in criminals holding up two fingers to the establishment and doing what they please because they know they’ll get away with it; flinging money at into the pits called NHS and Welfare to result in a bigger more bureaucratic and unwieldy beasts; going to war in Iraq; and of course the constant application of ‘political correctness’.

(Hey, you bunch of plonkers, just so you know: a racist is not going to suddenly fall in love with the ‘ethnic’ just because you’ve taken away his golliwog and forced him to stop calling a dangerous corner an accident black spot; serial paedophiles and rapists aren’t going to become good citizens after a bit of analysis and psychological counselling – two bricks slammed together in the nether region would have a better effect [Does it hurt? Only if you get your thumbs trapped] but will still do nothing to eradicate their inner scumbag.)

Of course, rather than admit to error, these idiots tighten their grip on the reins of power and want ever more control, but then that is nothing new for them. With political correctness they are already trying to control even what people think. A result of these increasing attempts at control has been a burgeoning parasitic bureaucracy – one we will not be able to afford for much longer. And now, as the politicians see the results of their long hold on those reins, their palms are growing sweaty and the leather is beginning to slip. They play the blame game … but find that too much time has passed for the evil Tories to be blamed (though in reality they are just as much to blame since they’ve been members of the same liberal elite for decades). They turn on each other, squabbling and slavering, ideology pushed out of sight; power, prestige and ministerial salaries well in their sights. Many of the more honest amidst them retreat in consternation and confusion. What went wrong, they wonder.

Unfortunately, too many of them will never actually work out what did go wrong, whilst others think their social-engineering is merely encountering a few bumps along the way. To them the error lies with those they govern, not themselves.

Nanny Government

Further warnings from nanny government. Hospitals have to prepare for an influx of boiled lobsters and additional to the warnings about what to drink and what not to drink, people are being told to stay indoors during the hottest part of the day. Now, really, those who work outside have a lot more tolerance of the sun than others and a better idea of how to handle it. Everyone else works inside and is unlikely to be out in the sun for any serious length of time at midday. Save the warnings for government ministers - they're the only ones who can afford to play croquet on their lawns during the working week.

Admittedly there will be those who'll get broiled out of stupidity, and those whose present health problems will be exacerbated. My annoyance is with government trying to appear so concerned. Well, maybe if they were so concerned about those in the latter case they wouldn't have castrated the police so that pensioners now, even in this heat, keep their windows closed out of fear. Maybe if they hadn't raided pension schemes for tax and allowed council tax to be bumped up those same pensioners would be able to afford to buy themselves electric fans.

Weather Warning

Nanny government has just issued a hot weather warning. We need to wear adequate sunscreen, avoid drinks like coffee and alcohol and drink plenty of water. Excuse me for a moment while I relapse to my Billericay roots. What a bunch of complete tossers! Hey, y’know, there’s this thing that appears regularly on televisions every day. It is called a weather-fore-cast. Thanks for your concern and all that, but despite your efforts to the contrary some of us still have brains and will of our own and can work out what’s going on. Some of us also like to drink beer in the sunshine and you haven’t yet got the power to send your commissars round to stop us doing this, so fuck off and work out how big your next pay rise is going to be!

Dr Who

At last an enjoyable episode of Dr Who after two rather awful ones. The low moment came last week with that ridiculous tossing of a cigar-sized spaceship into the flame of the Olympic torch (at which point I finally had to leave the room). Well, if the ship required heat then put it in the damned microwave or on the hob. Now perhaps this was some obscure reference to ‘Torchwood’ but, if so, it fell flat. At that point the episode finally descended into what it had been teetering on the point of from the beginning: extreme bathos.

It would also seem that, with an instinct I would credit to rats leaving sinking ships (possibly misguided) that Billie Piper is leaving. Thank goodness for that. If her character Rose and the Doctor shared another of those giggly aren’t-we-having-a-laugh-travelling-through-space-and-time moments I swear I would have to buy myself a rifle and situate myself on a Cardiff tower block. Let's hope the Daleks roll over Rose Tyler like a lorry over a hedgehog, though a hedgehog is admittedly cuter.

The only big criticism I have, of tonight’s episode of Dr Who, is the music. One day directors might learn that loud music is no substitute for good acting or drama. It also really puts off those who are hard of hearing – those who have been fans of Dr Who from the beginning. And bringing the Daleks and Cybermen together to slug it out? Excellent.

Max Part Two

Max Part Two.

Marjorie had been deteriorating for some time, really wasn’t well, and it seemed possible she might get worse. Don’t get the impression that we were the only people seeing her. Her daughter visited when she could, but had to shlep down from Ipswitch; a district nurse visited and a couple of neighbours occasionally checked up on her; carers went round regularly to do what could be done in their limited time (after dressing her ulcerated leg), and it was one of them who finally called the nurse. Such situations are terrible, but difficult to resolve when the patient is as headstrong an individual as Marjorie. She feared being hospitalized, being moved to an old people’s home, feared the interference of social services, and this was all because of her bigger fear of losing Max. Eventually she acceded to going into hospital, quite probably because she could not even get out of her chair to feed her dog.

The first we heard of this was when Caroline received a phone call from The Cinnamon Trust at lunch time. She took the afternoon off work and we hurried over to Burnham to find Marjorie’s house locked up (the key in one of those little coded safes beside the door). The moment he saw us Max began rushing about excitedly inside, but we couldn’t get in. We knocked at her neighbour’s house and were let in to find the district nurse there having a cup of tea. We hoped she could let us in because surely by now Max would be getting desperate. She couldn’t – she didn’t have the authority to do so – so gave Caroline the number of the social worker concerned with this case. Despite Caroline having been vetting by the Cinnamon Trust he also could not let us in and put us onto Marjorie’s daughter who, knowing we had been walking Max for some time and had not yet mugged Marjorie nor stolen the family silver, gave us the code to the key safe.

So eventually we got in to find Max’s pills out on a counter and a scrawled note of instructions beside them, we then took a frantic Alsatian for his much-appreciated walk and worked out together how we were going to look after him. Luckily, being self-employed, my time is pretty much my own. In the mornings, after dropping Caroline off at work, I drove over to Burnham, took Max for a walk, gave him his breakfast, gave him his epilepsy pills, then spent some time with him before coming back home. In the evening we both went over there and went through a similar routine. At the end of it we were reluctant to depart, because Max knew we were going, would butt his head against Caroline seeking affection, and wander about morosely. We stayed longer, trying to clean up the house a bit since, with the weather turning wetter and colder, Marjorie’s back garden had become a quagmire and Max tracked plenty of it back inside. But mainly we stayed just to keep the dog company. Even so, we were there twice a day for little more than a couple of hours each time, the rest of the time he spent locked inside. No messes, none at all – that’s the kind of dog Max was.

This state of affairs continued for two weeks. It was March, but winter was hanging on and really bit in then with sub-zero temperatures and driving snow. The ground became as hard as concrete and every puddle turned into a skating rink. Max loved it. A German shepherd like him, with his thick heavy coat, I rather think not bred for the near Mediterranean warmth Essex often receives. Arctic tundra would be the perfect environment. Here’s an email I sent to Caroline during this time, reporting on the morning walk:

Well Max had a wonderful time. I took him down to the point where he did a stand up fall down slapstick routine on a frozen puddle, he was snapped at by a sheepdog, had his willy licked by a very insistent Labrador, and rolled eight times.

Of course things could not continue like this. Speaking over the phone, Marjorie’s daughter and Caroline both agreed that anything more than a couple of weeks would be unfair on Max. At the end of two week the daughter and her partner transferred Max to a local kennel, then went to tell Marjorie what they had done – she had insisted that he stay at home, again fearing that he might be taken away from her. We also learnt, during this time, that Marjorie had lied about her age to us: she had told her she was 74 when in fact she was 84 – rather selfish, I think, to buy an Alsatian puppy when in your 70s.

Max spent about five days in the kennel after which Marjorie returned home and he was returned to her, whereupon we commenced walking him again. We were now taking him out three times a week, for without too much persuasion from her we upped the frequency from twice a week (another walker from the Cinnamon Trust had visited but been rejected). Spring started to make itself felt and obviously Max felt it too, barking uproariously (all his fur standing up), at a cat in the back garden – his territory. This was the most noise we ever heard him make and seeing he like this brought home to us why sometimes people would step off the pavement to go round us when we were walking him. If he had been a vicious Alsatian, he could probably have taken someone’s arm off at the shoulder. He was a pussy (oops – sorry Max) and many other dog walkers in the park, having known him since the days when Marjorie took him there, knew this, and he always received lots of fuss from them.

Social services had provided Marjorie with a portable toilet downstairs, where she now slept, and a Zimmer frame – both of which she hated – whilst her daughter and daughter’s partner were making preparations to completely revamp her house and build a downstairs toilet. This was not to be; old-age removes dignity before everything else. Shortly after she returned from hospital, she began deteriorating again. Knowing we could access the key in its key safe, she no longer expended the energy to get up and let us in, though we always banged on the window to let her know we were there. On a couple of occasions we could not wake her – she was invariably asleep when we arrived – and we entered expecting her to be dead in her chair.
After a month Marjorie was taken back into hospital and Max moved straight to the kennels. She spent three weeks in hospital but still wasn’t well enough to return home, in fact, would never be well enough to return home. She was moved from the hospital into a ‘recovery home’. And Max? I’ll leave that for another time…

To be continued…

The Engineer

It's pretty picture time again. Here first is the original cover of The Engineer published by Tanjen.

‘A thought-provoking operatic romp’ – SFX.

‘This is an astonishing collection of stories’ – Genre.
‘Ambiguous plot and crown style. No Trek morals here’ – Dragon’s Breath.
‘Asher will soon become better known outside his native land’ – Borders.
The Engineer (a novella) and the short stories Snairls, Spatterjay, Jable sharks, The Thrake, Proctors, and The Owner.
Mysterious aliens ... ruthless terrorists ... androids with attitude ...genetic manipulation ... punch-ups with lasers ... giant spaceships ... what more do you want?
And here is the version from Cosmos books with some extra stories and introductory blurbs from me. I called this The Engineer Reconditioned because well ... you recondition an engine.


Apparently it's being distributed by a company called Diamond and is now selling pretty well. If you've got a copy of the one above I recommend you go out and buy a copy of the new edition. It's received further editing, has those extra stories and blurbs, but that's not the reason why. You need to wrap the old version in plastic and lock it away in a safe, since I've seen copies on eBay up for $125.

Then again, I'm not entirely sure they sell for that since it's a 'buy now' price. But buy the new one anyway!

...

I'll shut up now - too much wine.

Here's Rick Kleffel's review.

Sun of Suns - Karl Schroeder

Ah, and there's another one I neglected to mention: Karl Schroeder. Try his 'Sun of Suns' http://www.kschroeder.com/

Reading

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but I’ll do the same again here. This year has been pretty good (to me) for new SFF. The first is Blindsight by Peter Watts – a superb bit of SF. Check out his site here http://www.rifters.com/index.htm and his wonderful 'Vampire Domestication'.

The next book, which I roared through in a very short time is Scar Night by Alan Campbell. This will be out next month from Macmillan and I believe is also being released in America. An excellent fantasy that'll have many other writers of the same looking to their laurels. Alan has a blog here: http://anurbanfantasy.blogspot.com/

In their genres, both of these books are the best I've read in some years.

Here’s some more writers you might like to check out: http://www.hammerjack.net/ is the site of Marc D. Giller who is producing some excellent cyberpunkish stuff, http://www.markbudz.com/ is the site of Mark Budz whose leanings are much more biotech, then there’s Tobias S Buckell over here http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/wordpress/

To be frank, I’m not entirely sure why there’s this idea knocking about that the British are leading the SF field, unless of course it’s only a British idea…

Nice review of Prador Moon over here on Cheryl Morgan’s Emerald City: http://www.emcit.com/emcit130.php?a=18

Sea-Level Rise

Global sea-level rise … apparently, over the last 18,000 years since the peak of the last Ice Age, global sea-levels have risen more than 120 metres. The IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) estimates a rise – factoring in global warming – of 110 to 770mm over the next century. Now, let me get this straight: the average per century rise over the last 18,000 years has been 670mm, which is much more than the mean of the IPCC rate. Could it be that the sea level rise we are presently seeing is just a fluctuation? Remember, we're still not out of the last Ice Age. Anyway, we’ve got a hundred years to raise our sea defences by a maximum of three-quarters of a metre – that’s 7.7mm a year. Goodness gracious, we’re all doomed.

Hedge Fuel

Sir Richard Branson wants to turn Virgin trains into the greenest in Britain by running them on biodiesel rather than pure diesel – 15% from biological sources such as rapeseed and soya. He’s also leading a plan to build the world’s largest bioethanol plant in America. Our next door nieghbour is suffering from a common complaint of British gardeners: an overhanging leylandii hedge (not ours I hasten to add).

What’s the connection?

Well, the conjunction of these two things in my head, along with memories of about 15 years of cutting leylandii hedges led me to speculate on a couple of things. Most biofuels are derived from edible oils taken from what are essentially food crops like the mentioned soya and rape, but do those crops seem oily? After years of trimming leylandii hedges I can attest to the fun of having to scrub blobs of resin from all over me. Also, what about the calorific value of these trimmings? Try burning green maize or rape and you’ve no chance. Put a lighter to a piece of leylandii and once hot enough it bursts into flame. Couldn’t we crop this stuff and turn it into biofuel?

Think of the advantages: it only has to be planted once, it’ll yield large quantities of trimmings once or twice a year. There would be little need for herbicides, insecticides or fungicides – ever see weeds growing under a leylandii hedge, ever see such a hedge wiped out by disease or insects? The areas between the rows, where tractors would necessarily have to run, could be left fallow. These, and the hedges themselves would be excellent refuges for wildlife. After processing for oil, what’s left could also be used as fuel, maybe compacted into briquettes, fed straight into a biofuel-burning power station or turned into bioethanol. It might even be used to make compressed fibre board or paper.

Now, are there any chemists out there who can tell me I’m talking bollocks?

Polity Chronology

Moving swiftly on, here, for reader interest is the Polity chronology I'm presently working with:

2050 – 2250 Expansion into the solar system. Corporate wars and many generation ships, or early U-space drive ships sent on their way. Also the AI takeover of human affairs, in the ‘Quiet War’. Colony ship to Cull in this time.
2130 – Hoop and crew arrive on Spatterjay (mutiny – stolen ship)
2150 – Establishing of Golem series and Cybercorp.
2151 – Algin Tenkian born on Mars.
2190 – Skaidon interfaces with AI and invents the technology leading to the runcible and more efficient U-space engines. Humanity expands into the galaxy.

2260 – First runcible goes online.
2260 – 2350 Massive human expansion into the galaxy.
2330 – Beginning of the Prador Third Kingdom
2339 – Ian Cormac born
2310 – Prador Moon
2310 – 2350 Prador/Human war
2350 – Polity police action on Spatterjay.
2356 – Keech is killed hunting Alphed Rimsc

2407 – Disappearance of Dragon from Aster Colora.
2432 – Destruction of the Samarkand runcible.
2434 – Arrival of Hubris at Samarkand (Gridlinked)
2437 – Destruction of Outlink station Miranda (Line of Polity)
2441 – Pursuit of Skellor (Brass Man)

2450 – Gosk Balem (Ambel) thrown into the sea – 100 years after war.
2500 – David McGrooger born
2550 – Keech finds Corbel Frane on Viridian – 500 years before
2803 – Polity arrives at Spatterjay to establish runcible base
2853 – Frisk hands herself in (apparently). – 200 years before
2878 – Bloc murdered by Aesop and Bones
3056 – Keech Janer and Erlin arrive on Spatterjay (The Skinner)
3078 – Taylor Bloc’s ship launches (The Voyage of the Sable Keech)

Hah!

It was amusing, shortly after publicising this blog, to receive an email containing this from another SF writer:

"A sci-fi writer admitting he's a conservative? If I had the balls (or a big enough audience as of yet), I'd come out of that closet myself."

Conservative is probably about correct since I believe in conserving what is good and what works and not in destroying it on the basis of some misconceived ideology, though perhaps the term libertarian might be better and no label at all even better than that. It wasn't really too much of a risk admitting to my views since anyone who has read my comments on various message boards will have figured them out anyway. It's interesting that the writer should admit to caution about doing the same. I also find it interesting reading new SF writers banging the lefthand drum in the belief they are being radical, when in truth they are only joining the establishment.

Check Elastic Before Jumping

Check Elastic Before Jumping my 'SF short' is appearing in the 22 June issue of Nature. Funny, the envelope I received the magazine in was addressed to Dr. Neal Asher. I guess that's a precaution the editorial staff take with all their contributors. I understand this magazine is a rather prestigious place in which to have your science articles published. My bit is a snapshot into the future that finishes it off. Very nicely presented. Now, can someone tell me what 'The journal can now be accessed on some 8 million desktops worldwide through site licenses.' means? It sounds bloody good to me.

Smoking Ban

I have ranted on about this sort of thing before, but with recent news stories it bears repetition. I confess that I am a smoker, that I chuff away on Old Holborn roll-ups . But y’know, I don’t like being a smoker. I try to give it up but with nicotine being more addictive than heroin this is no easy task. Now obviously, in today’s society, this means that I get less help than a heroin addict, despite the fact that I don’t steal to support my habit, and am more evil than a rapist and a murderer and should be pilloried for my offence. Why? I’m baffled.

Apparently the Government now intends to ban smoking in places like bus shelters and hopes to extend the ban to everywhere outside. They are coming up with this only a few weeks after admitting (in very small articles in the anti-smoking media) to ‘exaggerating’ the effects of passive smoking. Let me illustrate some of that exaggeration:

Apparently, breathing secondhand cigarette smoke increases your chances of getting lung cancer by 25%. Most people, whose acquaintance with mathematics was an unhappy affair from childhood to teens and quickly forgotten, will illogically look at that percentage and think breathing secondhand smoke gives them a one in four chance of getting lung cancer. They don’t seem to realise that to understand the statement you need to first know what your chances are without breathing that smoke. They are about 1% – one in a hundred. A 25% increase in your chances of getting lung cancer means these odds rise by a quarter per cent – giving odds substantially less than those of being killed in a car accident, of committing suicide or being gunned down. But how much passive smoking are we talking about: a lifetime serving behind a bar or a whiff of cigar smoke in your high street? Well, you can guarantee those odds are predicated on the first instance and not the second.

I know that many non-smokers out there will not blink an eye at this. But think about it: apparently the owners of pubs and clubs cannot be trusted with deciding themselves whether or not to allow smoking, and those who work in such places are not adult enough to decide what to tolerate in their working environment. More power to the government, more nanny statism, more of our freedoms eroded. How long before this government, in its wisdom, then decides to limit how much we are allowed to drink or eat, since excess of either is unhealthy? The initial smoking ban in pubs and clubs came on the recommendation of the BMA, who at the same time wanted to limit customers of those same establishments to three drinks an evening. The Government said they could not enforce that one; they didn’t say it would be wrong to enforce it (and you can be damned sure it wouldn’t apply to the House of Commons bar)… How long, I wonder, will it be before you have to buy a permit and fill in a risk-assessment form for farting in public?

It's funny, isn’t it, how on the one hand the government tells us we're living too long and our country won't be able to support us, and on the other, it wants to keep us all healthy and long-lived. The politicians should really make up their minds about this.

Max

Max

Since it is a good idea, I feel, to add variety to a blog (and not be too political all the time), here's a shaggy dog story...

About two and a half years ago my wife, Caroline, decided to join the Cinnamon Trust. This is a charity that gets in people to walk and look after pets for those who are no longer capable. After she joined, a few months passed before anyone contacted her. Finally someone did, giving her the number of an old lady in Burnham (about four or five miles from us) who needed her dog walking. Caroline phoned and though the phone was answered she didn’t get much of an intelligible response, so decided to drive over. A very old lady with a hearing aid attached to an amplifier the size of a modern mobile phone answered the door – hence the problems with the telephone call.

Then there was Max.

At that point Caroline’s experience of dogs included an irascible spaniel and a small black wire-haired bitsa. Here she had been dropped in at the deep end. Max is a German shepherd and not a small one. When I first saw him I wondered where the saddle might be. After having a bit of a talk with Marjorie, and after receiving many warnings about the dangers of letting him off the lead, Caroline took Max for a short walk. Upon her return she asked if it would be okay for her husband came along with on these walks (it would have been understandable if Marjorie had said no, since old ladies living alone are prey in today’s society). Marjorie agreed and so it began.




We started off walking Max two times a week. He was a bit fat and wheezy to begin with since he had not been getting much exercise. We walked him down to the local park and marina. He was rather dismissive of us. Yes, we were taking him for a walk which he liked, but initially he gave us very little response at all. As we walked him we started to take little risks, beginning by resting the lead across his back. Gradually we got more of a response. It often took Marjorie a little while to answer the door. She was deaf and, as we discovered, her hearing aid wasn’t a great deal of help and, though she might not have realised this herself, she was actually lip-reading. After a month or so Max understood that this couple were regularly coming round to take him to his favourite place where he could sniff the sniffs – catch up on the dog news – do his little back and forth dance to urinate in his precisely chosen spot to leave a reply. When we knocked at the door he would gaze out the window at us (he didn’t have to stretch since the window ledge was at back height to him – we are talking about a big Alsatian here), then proceed to run up and down until Marjorie woke up and noticed something was occurring. I think one of the watersheds in our relationship with this dog was the moment he did his first roll. Here was an Alsatian who was cool: he did his doggy things, sniffed and urinated and dropped a dump the size of Gibraltar (which I had to pick up in a bag) but apart from that running up and down performance it was difficult to know whether he enjoyed his walk. To then see a dog of his size getting his head down, flipping down on to wet grass and wriggling about with sheer pleasure was quite wonderful. He did this more and more frequently, hitting a max(imum) of twelve rolls in one walk.
As time progressed we trusted him more and more, despite Marjorie’s assertions that he would run away and we would never being able to get him back. We never told her. We walked Max then stopped for a cup of tea afterwards with Marjorie while we told her of his various exploits and the dogs he had met. Max was never vicious with other dogs. He would meet them nose to nose, sniff, wander around, wag his tail and move on.

There were a few heart-stopping moments. He became healthier and faster with this regular walking and once I had to sprint after him to stop him running out onto a road. We learnt where it was safe to let him off. His character began to show through too. While off the lead he would disappear around side routes then reappear on the route we were walking. He was having a game with us. I remember one occasion when he disappeared down some steps in the park. I chased after him, worried we had lost him then, huffing and puffing at the bottom of the steps, I looked up and saw him gazing down at me from the other side of some bushes at the top of a slope beside the steps (precisely where we had been heading). I climbed back and rejoin Caroline, and Max headed off again, looking back, tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth, grinning. Cheeky bastard.



Here is a good point to look back on what we had thus far learned. Max was about the sixth or seventh German shepherd Marjorie had owned. Prior to us turning up, she had spent three months in hospital having shattered her leg falling down her stairs. Max had remained in the house with someone coming in to feed him and occasionally walk him. Marjorie had reached the stage of life where she was having trouble looking after herself let alone a big dog and a house and garden. Her house and garden were average size, the latter overgrown, muddy and full of what dogs do. Mud mixed with less pleasant substances was trampled into the carpet and spattered up the furniture – you let a dog of that size outside in winter and he’s sure to bring some of the outside back in with him. Max was also epileptic, which resulted in further problems. The house temperature was right for an old woman; it wasn’t right for a long-haired Alsatian. He slept in the porch on the lino-tiled floor – the coolest place. It was a situation that could not last – one we all come to kicking and screaming.

For Max, obedience training seemed alien territory. All the usual commands had absolutely no effect on him and the only reason he walked to heel was because the lead Marjorie provided was a kind with muzzle straps that closed if he pulled. After a little while we detached that lead from the straps and attached it to his collar, then, we discovered treats.

I don’t know how the treats thing came about. I’ve just talked to Caroline about it and we can’t really decide. At some point we began bringing pockets full of biscuits along during the walks and suddenly we acquired a dog that didn’t run away from us, who came when we called and who would sit on command. We were having a great time but, most importantly, so was Max. The high point of the walk was a little peninsular that jutted by Bradwell Marina. The grass grew long there and Max loved to roll in it three or four times, quite often nearly sliding down the slope into the estuary. At the end of this peninsular we sat on the seat and fed him some treats. Then, as winter started to dig its claws in, Marjorie became ill and had to go into hospital again.

To be continued...

The Sharps Committee

It is illegal for anyone in Britain to carry a knife with a blade over 3 inches long, so of course the arsehole who breaks into your house or mugs you in a back alley won’t be carrying anything like that, will he? Also, the teenager carrying a knife ostensibly for self-defence but really because he thinks it’s cool to do so, is going to stop at once, isn’t he? I mean, hasn’t the post-Dunblane ban on handguns (the one that resulted in out Olympic team having to practise in Switzerland) cut down on gun crime?

Cue hollow laughter.

(And hey, why 3 inches? If that’s the average depth to the heart or a major artery then the obesity epidemic is worse than I thought.)

The answer, of course, is to lock up for five years those who are caught carrying knives. Excellent – this from those whose ideology doesn't allow them to believe in the effectiveness of punishment, but who have faith in rehabilitation and re-education. Soon, if you are caught carrying a knife, you might spend about the same amount of time in prison as a paedophile.

Reading about the recent furore concerning knife crime, and the ridiculous calls to ban pointy kitchen knives (Yeah, that 3 inch rule really worked, so let’s make another one!), I can see nanny government introducing an outright ban on carrying a knife of any length. I can see bureaucracy burgeoning as legislation is passed to make tradesmen register all their knives. I can see carpet fitters having to buy licences for their Stanley knives and being forced to go (at their own expense) on two-day courses, organized by the HSE, on how to use them, and that the throwaway blades will have to be disposed of in an environmentally and socially responsible manner at special depots. And in all this (going off at a slight tangent here) I’m reminded of an excellent book called Half-past Human by T. J. Bass.

In his book Bass portrays a far future society in which trillions of humans live in hive cities underground, whilst the planet’s surface is used wholly for growing food. The humans are weak, they have rose-water blood, the survival characteristics of hamsters, and are referred to as ‘four fingered nebbishes’. The number of humans able to exist on the planet’s resources had reached saturation point, so the next step was taken: make smaller humans so more can exist on those same resources. In their society too the people are ‘looked after’ by a concerned state, for they have their ‘Sharps Committee’ whose sum purpose is to relieve citizens of sharp and possibly injurious objects.

Welcome to the future.