The 21st century isn't getting any less confusing. I'm beginning to lose track of the permutations of feeds between Twitter, Facebook, here and my website. I'm worried I'll start clicking through to check they're all working and get stuck in a never-ending loop. Ah well.
In less baffling news, I'm told that Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus is now at the printers for publication in May, and copies are available to pre-order. Just go to the Obverse Books website and click on the Panda. After all Stuart and Paul's hard work, it's all looking rather marvellous.
23 April 2009
140 Characters in Search of an Author
During an idle moment in Tuesday's lunch hour I created a second Twitter account, cleverly named "trapphic ", as a conduit for the 140-character microfictions I've been posting there occasionally. By 2:30 it had been picked up and recommended by Dave Gorman (the famous one, that is), and by the time I left work it had over 100 readers.
(The presence of celebrities in Twitter is strange and confusing, partly because of the possibility of sudden unexpected celebrity endorsements, but also because I haven't a clue who many of them are meant to be. I'm lucky Dave Gorman was someone I'd heard of, really, or I'd have been completely mystified)
The uptake rate has died down a bit since -- it's currently at 122 -- but I'm feeling the pressure to keep them entertained.
Rather than treating the 140-character limit imposed on tweets as a maximum, I've been pretending it's an absolute, and working precisely to that length. The resulting form is an odd one, because it often means exchanging a word or phrase that works perfectly for a slightly less sparkling one which fits the count. (Of course it's possible to fudge this to some extent by fiddling with the punctuation. Names are also useful, because you can always change them if they're a few letters too long or short.) Occasionally, though, the space will unexpectedly open up for an additional adjective (say) which finishes the whole thing off perfectly. It all tends to confirm the Oulipian principle of creative inspiration through willingly accepted constraints.
Being a perfectionist tinkerer, I'm finding the impossibility of going back and editing my tweets frustrating. It's all useful discipline, though.
More generally, it strikes me that the very short story, rather than being the haiku of the prose world, is rather like a cartoon caption without a picture. The trick is to give just enough information that the reader constructs their own mental image, thus completing the story. My favourite of the ones I've posted so far runs:
In a rather delayed response to my sudden following, I've updated my website with a shiny new microfiction page, and a fresher, cleaner design for the front page and some of its subsidiaries. (Aside from the rotating quotes at the top, the design isn't substantially changed from the six-year-old version, but the fonts and colours look a bit more modern. Well, I hope.) The whole site still needs a comprehensive overhaul, but I'm unlikely to manage that any time soon.
I wanted to put a feed from trapphic in here as well, but it doesn't seem as if Blogger allows the existence of more than one Twitter feed on a page (or if it does I'm too dense to work out how to juggle the code). Since this is, when all's said and done, a blog, I've kept the feed from the purserhallard account and included a trapphic feed on the microfiction page. I may fiddle with the template on the right there to link to that.
(The presence of celebrities in Twitter is strange and confusing, partly because of the possibility of sudden unexpected celebrity endorsements, but also because I haven't a clue who many of them are meant to be. I'm lucky Dave Gorman was someone I'd heard of, really, or I'd have been completely mystified)
The uptake rate has died down a bit since -- it's currently at 122 -- but I'm feeling the pressure to keep them entertained.
Rather than treating the 140-character limit imposed on tweets as a maximum, I've been pretending it's an absolute, and working precisely to that length. The resulting form is an odd one, because it often means exchanging a word or phrase that works perfectly for a slightly less sparkling one which fits the count. (Of course it's possible to fudge this to some extent by fiddling with the punctuation. Names are also useful, because you can always change them if they're a few letters too long or short.) Occasionally, though, the space will unexpectedly open up for an additional adjective (say) which finishes the whole thing off perfectly. It all tends to confirm the Oulipian principle of creative inspiration through willingly accepted constraints.
Being a perfectionist tinkerer, I'm finding the impossibility of going back and editing my tweets frustrating. It's all useful discipline, though.
More generally, it strikes me that the very short story, rather than being the haiku of the prose world, is rather like a cartoon caption without a picture. The trick is to give just enough information that the reader constructs their own mental image, thus completing the story. My favourite of the ones I've posted so far runs:
‘It’s true,’ Alice conceded. ‘I can climb from a room into its mirror image. But however would my ability be useful to this Dr Van Helsing?’This requires the reader, having recognised this as an Alice in Wonderland / Dracula crossover, to follow through on the logic and complete the story. The actual punchline lies in the answer to Alice's question, some distance beyond the words themselves.
In a rather delayed response to my sudden following, I've updated my website with a shiny new microfiction page, and a fresher, cleaner design for the front page and some of its subsidiaries. (Aside from the rotating quotes at the top, the design isn't substantially changed from the six-year-old version, but the fonts and colours look a bit more modern. Well, I hope.) The whole site still needs a comprehensive overhaul, but I'm unlikely to manage that any time soon.
I wanted to put a feed from trapphic in here as well, but it doesn't seem as if Blogger allows the existence of more than one Twitter feed on a page (or if it does I'm too dense to work out how to juggle the code). Since this is, when all's said and done, a blog, I've kept the feed from the purserhallard account and included a trapphic feed on the microfiction page. I may fiddle with the template on the right there to link to that.
21 April 2009
The Condition of Moo
The twenty-first century to date has been very odd. The day before yesterday I was sitting in a Lebanese restaurant in Soho listening to someone in California playing "Yesterday" on a pretend ocarina. The Californian ocarinist (who was surprisingly competent, given the instrument they were working with) remained serenely unaware of my existence.
The day before I'd seen another iPhone simulation, this time of one of those plastic cylinders you get with a picture of a cow on them, and if you turn them upside down they go "moo". (The phone has a picture of a cow on the screen. When you turn it upside-down, it goes "moo".)
If nothing else, this demonstrates effectively that science fiction's function isn't predictive. As I said to the friend whose phone the second one was, any aspiring Grubgecks who'd tried to put this in an SF story 50 years ago would have been told by their editor to take it out because it was far too silly.
The day before I'd seen another iPhone simulation, this time of one of those plastic cylinders you get with a picture of a cow on them, and if you turn them upside down they go "moo". (The phone has a picture of a cow on the screen. When you turn it upside-down, it goes "moo".)
If nothing else, this demonstrates effectively that science fiction's function isn't predictive. As I said to the friend whose phone the second one was, any aspiring Grubgecks who'd tried to put this in an SF story 50 years ago would have been told by their editor to take it out because it was far too silly.
15 April 2009
Lack of Brain Error
I feel completely zonked. Every time I try to do something (update this blog with anything of substance, for example) I end up sitting and staring into space and / or my screen, and vibrating gently from side to side. It's a good thing we're about to go on holiday for four days, really.
Well, it would be if I could summon the energy to pack.
I have now -- finally, eventually and at both length and last -- reached the end of Blue Mars, and thus Kim Stanley Robinson's United Colours of Mars trilogy, which I've been reading on and off for nearly nine months since I starting it at Greenbelt last year.
It's... long. God, it's long. Hopefully I'll have the mental capacity to supplement that with some qualitative discussion sometime soon.
This isn't the sole reason for my mental incapacity, of course -- that seems to be primarily down to tiredness and overwork. Never mind, I'm sure everything will calm down once the baby arrives...
Well, it would be if I could summon the energy to pack.
I have now -- finally, eventually and at both length and last -- reached the end of Blue Mars, and thus Kim Stanley Robinson's United Colours of Mars trilogy, which I've been reading on and off for nearly nine months since I starting it at Greenbelt last year.
It's... long. God, it's long. Hopefully I'll have the mental capacity to supplement that with some qualitative discussion sometime soon.
This isn't the sole reason for my mental incapacity, of course -- that seems to be primarily down to tiredness and overwork. Never mind, I'm sure everything will calm down once the baby arrives...
04 April 2009
Undermining Banks
There's a lovely (although perhaps inadvertently) double-edged compliment in the Wikipedia entry on Iain Banks's Raw Spirit:
Banks has said he felt more relaxed when writing this book; critics have said that this comes across on reading it.I did enjoy Raw Spirit, but it reads more like a bunch of rather rambling letters to one of Banks's friends than something he's actually put effort into writing, let alone been given money for.
03 April 2009
Overheard
[Three teenage boys are sitting in the shelter on a railway platform, possibly waiting for a train.]
TEEN 1: His dad was President before, yeah? Like twenty years ago or something.
TEEN 2: [Texting assiduously] Yeah?
TEEN 1: You know the first war in Iraq, yeah? That was George Bush's dad. Then he sent his son in to finish it.
TEEN 3: What war?
TEEN 1: There was this other war in Iraq, like twenty years ago. When George Bush's dad was President. You seen that film Three Kings, yeah? Where they steal Saddam Hussein's gold? With Ice Cube and... what's his name?
TEEN 3: George Clooney.
TEEN 1: Yeah, and Mark Wahlberg. Marky Mark.
TEEN 3: Who?
TEEN 1: Mark Wahlberg. He used to be a rapper, yeah? Marky Mark.
TEEN 3: Mark Wahlberg used to be a rapper?
TEEN 1: Yeah. You heard of Marky Mark, yeah? That was Mark Wahlberg.
TEEN 3: Yeah?
TEEN 1: Yeah. He grew up in the 'hood in, like, Boston or somewhere.
TEEN 2: Who did?
TEEN 1: Mark Wahlberg. He used to be that rapper Marky Mark, like twenty years ago.
TEEN 2: Mark Wahlberg?
TEEN 1: His dad was President before, yeah? Like twenty years ago or something.
TEEN 2: [Texting assiduously] Yeah?
TEEN 1: You know the first war in Iraq, yeah? That was George Bush's dad. Then he sent his son in to finish it.
TEEN 3: What war?
TEEN 1: There was this other war in Iraq, like twenty years ago. When George Bush's dad was President. You seen that film Three Kings, yeah? Where they steal Saddam Hussein's gold? With Ice Cube and... what's his name?
TEEN 3: George Clooney.
TEEN 1: Yeah, and Mark Wahlberg. Marky Mark.
TEEN 3: Who?
TEEN 1: Mark Wahlberg. He used to be a rapper, yeah? Marky Mark.
TEEN 3: Mark Wahlberg used to be a rapper?
TEEN 1: Yeah. You heard of Marky Mark, yeah? That was Mark Wahlberg.
TEEN 3: Yeah?
TEEN 1: Yeah. He grew up in the 'hood in, like, Boston or somewhere.
TEEN 2: Who did?
TEEN 1: Mark Wahlberg. He used to be that rapper Marky Mark, like twenty years ago.
TEEN 2: Mark Wahlberg?
02 April 2009
Twittishness
I finally succumbed to peer pressure and adopted Twitter a little over a month ago. (And yes, if all my friends jumped off a cliff I'd probably do it too. I'd miss them.)
Since then I seem to have posted there 83 times (84 including one I removed, which ill-advisedly commented on... ah, er, never mind). Assuming the code I cutandpasted has done its job properly, you should be able to view a selection of my recent wisdom imparted through the Twitter medium in the sidebar over to your right. (No, about a screenful from the top. That's right, there.)
[Edit to add: Oh, hang on -- not if you're reading the page for this individual post rather than the Peculiar Times homepage. Which you will be, if you followed my link from Twitter. Try here.]
I'm not going to start tediously repeating what others have said about the differences between Twittering and blogging -- suffice it to say that it is a different, and still reasonably novel, way to organise one's thoughts which is a lot more reactive and context-based. When it's used properly it can also help those stray ideas which wander across one's mind avoid becoming irretrievably lost in the spongy crenellations of undergrowth.
It's also a pretty good way to keep in touch with anyone else who spends most of the day parked in front of a screen, without it interfering too much with one's work. It's also handy for breaking news (although note the inevitable date on that article), and... oh, all sorts of stuff. At its best it's a little like being immersed in a direct-brain-fed gestalt stream-of-consciousness of the kind I imagine our grandchildren participating in almost constantly while they're awake. Provided such a thing supplements individuality (blogging in this restricted instance) rather than completely subsuming it, it has its interest and value.
Admittedly I'm making an effort to follow contentful stuff like daily crossword clues, microfiction and even microbiography rather than all the celebrity cigarette-break guff. (It's true that celebrities can occasionally be spontaneous and interesting -- but their interesting moments tend not to be spontaneous, and the converse applies.) I'm also trying hard not to be tugged into the tweeness of the jargon (whereby "tweeness", for instance, would have to mean the Twitter equivalent of a penis, because it begins with "tw" and rhymes).
...OK, so perhaps I am going to tediously repeat what others have said about the differences between Twittering and blogging. Sorry about that.
Anyway. Some of the stuff you've missed (assuming you're not reading them already on Twitter or Facebook) follows. There's probably a high-tech way to reveal them here, but I'm going to stick with what I know and cutandpaste them instead.
Microfiction (140 characters, to fit the post limit perfectly, seems to be the preferred form):
Since then I seem to have posted there 83 times (84 including one I removed, which ill-advisedly commented on... ah, er, never mind). Assuming the code I cutandpasted has done its job properly, you should be able to view a selection of my recent wisdom imparted through the Twitter medium in the sidebar over to your right. (No, about a screenful from the top. That's right, there.)
[Edit to add: Oh, hang on -- not if you're reading the page for this individual post rather than the Peculiar Times homepage. Which you will be, if you followed my link from Twitter. Try here.]
I'm not going to start tediously repeating what others have said about the differences between Twittering and blogging -- suffice it to say that it is a different, and still reasonably novel, way to organise one's thoughts which is a lot more reactive and context-based. When it's used properly it can also help those stray ideas which wander across one's mind avoid becoming irretrievably lost in the spongy crenellations of undergrowth.
It's also a pretty good way to keep in touch with anyone else who spends most of the day parked in front of a screen, without it interfering too much with one's work. It's also handy for breaking news (although note the inevitable date on that article), and... oh, all sorts of stuff. At its best it's a little like being immersed in a direct-brain-fed gestalt stream-of-consciousness of the kind I imagine our grandchildren participating in almost constantly while they're awake. Provided such a thing supplements individuality (blogging in this restricted instance) rather than completely subsuming it, it has its interest and value.
Admittedly I'm making an effort to follow contentful stuff like daily crossword clues, microfiction and even microbiography rather than all the celebrity cigarette-break guff. (It's true that celebrities can occasionally be spontaneous and interesting -- but their interesting moments tend not to be spontaneous, and the converse applies.) I'm also trying hard not to be tugged into the tweeness of the jargon (whereby "tweeness", for instance, would have to mean the Twitter equivalent of a penis, because it begins with "tw" and rhymes).
...OK, so perhaps I am going to tediously repeat what others have said about the differences between Twittering and blogging. Sorry about that.
Anyway. Some of the stuff you've missed (assuming you're not reading them already on Twitter or Facebook) follows. There's probably a high-tech way to reveal them here, but I'm going to stick with what I know and cutandpaste them instead.
Microfiction (140 characters, to fit the post limit perfectly, seems to be the preferred form):
purserhallard To cheat death, Dr Ebbinghaus slowed time to an asymptotic standstill. Nobody experienced anything ever again, but at least they were alive.A handful of random pieces of what one might charitably call microcriticism:
11:29 AM Mar 27th from web
purserhallard Celebrity Exorcism: St Patrick vs Glycon! #sixwordstory
12:42 PM Mar 17th from web
purserhallard Diurnal amnesia is common in incipient lycanthropy. Some women learn of the condition only when an ultrasound scan reveals a litter of cubs.
10:19 AM Mar 17th from web
purserhallard "Eternal life, somatic control – they needed to rebel somehow. Odd though, the young hobbling down the streets, wrinkled and silver-haired."
9:00 AM Mar 16th from web
purserhallard Actually: everyone, I love The Wire. Its humanity, empathy and rage at an obscene world make it everything The Sopranos should be and isn't.Puns:
6:51 AM Apr 1st from web
purserhallard ponders the eschatology of Desperate Housewives.
10:22 AM Mar 21st from web
purserhallard Modern art, n. Term used by lazy, unoriginal people as a byword for laziness and lack of originality.
9:53 PM Mar 19th from web
purserhallard thinks Carnacki the Ghost-Finder is more like Bagpuss than Scooby Doo. When he goes to sleep, all his friends go to sleep too.
10:30 AM Mar 5th from web
purserhallard resists the temptation to add "Abraham van Hesling" and "Buffy Summers" to the list of stakeholders.And a crossword clue:
11:41 AM Mar 23rd from web
purserhallard Tachycardia, n. Medical term for overexposure to Hallmark products.
9:30 AM Mar 9th from web
purserhallard , in self-directed anger, betrays fellow agent with steel (8).Most of those are the kind of random rubbish I wouldn't dream of posting here -- which makes Twitter, where the scrutiny's less intense, the ideal repository for them.
5:56 PM Mar 31st from web
29 March 2009
Missing [Peculiar] Time[s]
This morning I experienced lost time as a result of a government conspiracy. I'm still optimistic that Gillian Anderson will come into the room at some point and show me her mosquito bites.
It's particularly annoying, though, as I'd been intending to placate you all with a nice long post to make up for my silence during the rest of this month. Now I have to be somewhere else too soon, so sadly it'll have to wait. I'm aware that my pledge to update this blog regularly this year is looking pretty hollow now -- oops.
In the meantime... four teasers for the stuff I should have been blogging about, haven't been and hopefully will be soon.
Note "new stories from Paul Magrs, Philip Purser-Hallard and Steve Cole amongst many others", though. Stuart wrote that bit, not me...
It's particularly annoying, though, as I'd been intending to placate you all with a nice long post to make up for my silence during the rest of this month. Now I have to be somewhere else too soon, so sadly it'll have to wait. I'm aware that my pledge to update this blog regularly this year is looking pretty hollow now -- oops.
In the meantime... four teasers for the stuff I should have been blogging about, haven't been and hopefully will be soon.
1. I've read Werewolves in their Youth by Michael Chabon and The Casebook of Carnacki - Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson. They're good. I'm also -- cue angel trumpets and hallelujahs -- within 45 pages of finishing Blue shagging Mars.Finally, Obverse Books have now revealed the final cover for Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, and I've updated my website accordingly. You may notice (especially if you've just read the entry below) that the blurb's rather familiar: this is because the editors decided that I'd put it as well as they could, and asked my permission to swipe it for the cover. This means that now I've put the official blurb up, my Iris Wildthyme page and my Celestial Omnibus page inevitably read almost identically to one another. I may have to write something else to go on the first one.
2. I've been writing a couple of articles for a book about Doctor Who and getting paid for it. More on this once the book in question's been announced.
3. Riding the trough of the wave as always, I've started using Twitter. It's not the hugest time-waster on the web, but like a number of other bloggers I've been finding that my thoughts tend to be more easily entered there in condensed form, rather than elaborated at length here. (In future I'll try to make sure I do both. I may also put a Twitter feed in here, if I can work out how.)
4. Did I mention B. and I are expecting a baby in August? (Er, I may not have done. We are. An actual baby. You know, a human one. With nappies and stuff.) This has been demanding an unpredictably large proportion of my attention of late.
Note "new stories from Paul Magrs, Philip Purser-Hallard and Steve Cole amongst many others", though. Stuart wrote that bit, not me...
25 February 2009
Magnum Omnibus
I've updated my website today with a page about the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme anthology, Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus.
This has meant a certain amount of rearrangement of other material, including a new Iris Wildthyme Short Stories page to go with my Bernice Summerfield and Doctor Who ones. I'm rather pleased with the description of Iris I wrote for it:
I've also updated the F.A.Q., although it duplicates information available elsewhere on the site and I'm now convinced that nobody except me ever reads it, ever. I'll get round to purging it at some point.
Meanwhile, allow me to recommend the Iris Wildthyme season 2 CD boxed set -- three excellent stories (and one reasonably decent one[1]) featuring Katy Manning as Iris and David Benson as Panda, packaged gorgeously in the artwork of the aforementioned Mr Dry[2].
This has meant a certain amount of rearrangement of other material, including a new Iris Wildthyme Short Stories page to go with my Bernice Summerfield and Doctor Who ones. I'm rather pleased with the description of Iris I wrote for it:
What is there left to say about Iris Wildthyme –- transtemporal adventuress (and sometime Time Lady) extraordinaire, metafictional explorer of texts and subtexts, double-decker-dwelling interstellar bag-lady, amnesia-prone political and sexual revolutionary, writer of wrongs, wronger of rights (especially copyrights), all-round champion of freedom, occasional nightclub singer and frequent barroom floozy?The site now incorporates a preview of the cover art for The Celestial Omnibus by former B.B.C. costume designer June Hudson, and the new Iris Wildthyme logo by Anthony Dry.
Well, there’s always something.
I've also updated the F.A.Q., although it duplicates information available elsewhere on the site and I'm now convinced that nobody except me ever reads it, ever. I'll get round to purging it at some point.
Meanwhile, allow me to recommend the Iris Wildthyme season 2 CD boxed set -- three excellent stories (and one reasonably decent one[1]) featuring Katy Manning as Iris and David Benson as Panda, packaged gorgeously in the artwork of the aforementioned Mr Dry[2].
[1] No, of course I'm not going to say which one.
[2] "Mr Dry lived in Dryland. Everything in Dryland was very, very dry. Dry sand -- dry river beds -- even dry books! One day, Mr Dry bought a novel called Wetlands..." Sorry, I've started free-associating now.
20 February 2009
Obverse Gear
You remember -- well, probably you don't, as I was a bit busy to blog much at the time, and only mentioned it once -- that I spent a substantial chunk of December writing a 5,000-word short story for a new anthology? And that I was going to announce it here when the publishers had made their own announcement?
Well...
Obverse Books, a new publishing venture owned by the estimable Stuart Douglas, has just announced the author line-up for its debut anthology Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, featuring -- naturally -- transtemporal heroine and barroom floozy extraordinaire Ms Iris Wildthyme, created by Paul Magrs. The collection includes my short story "Battleship Anathema", along with stories by Faction Paradox authors Mags L Halliday and Jon Dennis, sundry Doctor Who authors and the category-defying Mr Magrs himself.
Iris's history has been a convoluted one, taking in Paul's Phoenix Court series of magic-realist novels, the original Doctor Who novels and short stories which Paul has written, her own series of CD audio drama adventures[1] -- and one previous short story anthology, Wildthyme on Top, published by Big Finish and including my Shakespeare-rewrites-Iain-M-Banks story "Minions of the Moon", of which I'm still absurdly proud.
I'll be creating a Celestial Omnibus web page on my site shortly. For the moment, though, suffice it to say that my story involves Iris trying to revisit the scene of a series of colourful -- indeed, garish -- space-opera adventures she experienced some thirty years ago, but finding that the people and starships she left behind have become strangely drab and gritty during her absence...
Well...
Obverse Books, a new publishing venture owned by the estimable Stuart Douglas, has just announced the author line-up for its debut anthology Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus, featuring -- naturally -- transtemporal heroine and barroom floozy extraordinaire Ms Iris Wildthyme, created by Paul Magrs. The collection includes my short story "Battleship Anathema", along with stories by Faction Paradox authors Mags L Halliday and Jon Dennis, sundry Doctor Who authors and the category-defying Mr Magrs himself.
Iris's history has been a convoluted one, taking in Paul's Phoenix Court series of magic-realist novels, the original Doctor Who novels and short stories which Paul has written, her own series of CD audio drama adventures[1] -- and one previous short story anthology, Wildthyme on Top, published by Big Finish and including my Shakespeare-rewrites-Iain-M-Banks story "Minions of the Moon", of which I'm still absurdly proud.
I'll be creating a Celestial Omnibus web page on my site shortly. For the moment, though, suffice it to say that my story involves Iris trying to revisit the scene of a series of colourful -- indeed, garish -- space-opera adventures she experienced some thirty years ago, but finding that the people and starships she left behind have become strangely drab and gritty during her absence...
[1] As luck would have it, the postman put my copy of the Iris Wildthyme Series 2 CD box set into my hands an hour or so ago. It's a thing of quite remarkable beauty, the intricately detailed Target novel theming of the covers being offset wonderfully by the shocking pink box and vaguely Buffyesque logo. An awful lot of love and care has gone into designing it, and I'm really looking forward to hearing the stories.
17 February 2009
The Archetype Ark
This morning a Facebook application reminded me: "Valentine's Day is just around the corner! Send a cuddly anima".
Clearly the timekeeping processes at work here could do with some attention, but given the existence of fluffy microbes and plush subatomic particles, the idea of cuddly Jungian archetypes seems, in retrospect, almost inevitable.
They'll probably branch out into Freudian psychic apparatus next. Here, stroke my ego.
Clearly the timekeeping processes at work here could do with some attention, but given the existence of fluffy microbes and plush subatomic particles, the idea of cuddly Jungian archetypes seems, in retrospect, almost inevitable.
They'll probably branch out into Freudian psychic apparatus next. Here, stroke my ego.
11 February 2009
66 out of 149 out of 1000
I missed blogging about it at the time, but a few weeks ago The Guardian, ever hungry to add value to their news coverage, started publishing a series of supplements which between them make up a list of recommendations for 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read.
Inevitably the category of this list which most interests me is the rather impressive Science Fiction and Fantasy section. The whole thing's online:
Admittedly there are one or two occasions when I think they've been too inclusive -- the authors' other work notwithstanding, it's difficult to see The Wasp Factory or Kavalier and Clay, for example, as fantasy or S.F. -- but I'd far rather that than the alternative. Similarly, I don't agree with all the choices -- in Banks's case again, Consider Phlebas is probably his least good S.F. I'd have preferred a Philip K. Dick Top 3 to a Ballard one and in particular I don't think Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is Dick's best, rather than his best-known, work. (The Man in the High Castle's an excellent choice, mind you.)
Nevertheless, many of the right books and nearly all the right authors are listed, and the selection as a whole gives an excellent overview of the history of the novel in these genres -- in English, at least -- from their origins to the present day. The people who put the list together are literate, knowledgeable, intensely well-read and deeply respectful towards the genres they're writing on. Which of course is entirely as it should be, but still, it isn't altogether the sort of thing we S.F. readers have come to expect.
However, this is the internet, so let's skip over the detailed analytical discussion and dive straight for the tickable booklist. (I presume there are people on the web memeing up the entire list of 1000, but frankly I have too much lust for life.)
I've separated out the sidebar entries and stuck them on at the end (except for the "Novels that Predicted the Future" list, which doesn't seem to count). Books I've read are in bold, books I own are underlined, books I want to get around to reading are italicised and books I have no interest in whatsoever arestruckthrough. Is that reductionist enough?
By my count I've read 66, which comes to a moderately respectable 45%. What about you?
Inevitably the category of this list which most interests me is the rather impressive Science Fiction and Fantasy section. The whole thing's online:
IntroductionAs those sidebar headings make clear, the net's cast fairly wide here, which I approve of -- it's far better that the Guardian's readership be educated to see the continuity between Asimov and Heinlein on the one hand and Rushdie and Self on the other, than that they be encouraged to believe in S.F. as a ghetto literature. It's lovely to see the fantastical and science-fictional elements in such non-genre novels as Cloud Atlas, Ada or Ardor and The Handmaid's Tale embraced in the mainstream press rather than explained away.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Sidebar: The Best Dystopias
Sidebar: Radical Reading
Sidebar: Imagined Worlds
Sidebar: The Best Gothic Novels
Sidebar: The Best of JG Ballard
Sidebar: Novels that Predicted the Future
The Full List of 1000
Admittedly there are one or two occasions when I think they've been too inclusive -- the authors' other work notwithstanding, it's difficult to see The Wasp Factory or Kavalier and Clay, for example, as fantasy or S.F. -- but I'd far rather that than the alternative. Similarly, I don't agree with all the choices -- in Banks's case again, Consider Phlebas is probably his least good S.F. I'd have preferred a Philip K. Dick Top 3 to a Ballard one and in particular I don't think Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is Dick's best, rather than his best-known, work. (The Man in the High Castle's an excellent choice, mind you.)
Nevertheless, many of the right books and nearly all the right authors are listed, and the selection as a whole gives an excellent overview of the history of the novel in these genres -- in English, at least -- from their origins to the present day. The people who put the list together are literate, knowledgeable, intensely well-read and deeply respectful towards the genres they're writing on. Which of course is entirely as it should be, but still, it isn't altogether the sort of thing we S.F. readers have come to expect.
However, this is the internet, so let's skip over the detailed analytical discussion and dive straight for the tickable booklist. (I presume there are people on the web memeing up the entire list of 1000, but frankly I have too much lust for life.)
I've separated out the sidebar entries and stuck them on at the end (except for the "Novels that Predicted the Future" list, which doesn't seem to count). Books I've read are in bold, books I own are underlined, books I want to get around to reading are italicised and books I have no interest in whatsoever are
1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)Why they stop at 149, I've no idea. (Or maybe I've left one off -- do feel freel to check.) Never mind.
2. Brian W. Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
5. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
6. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
7. Iain M. Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
8. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
9. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
10. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
11. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
12. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
13. Poppy Z. Brite:Lost Souls(1992)
14. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
15. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
16. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
17. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
18. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
19. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
20. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
21. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)
22. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
23. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
24. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
25. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
26. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
27. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
28. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
29. G.K. Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
30. Arthur C. Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
31. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
32. Michael G. Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
33. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
34. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
35. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
36. Samuel R. Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
37. Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
38. Philip K. Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
39. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
40. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
41. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
42. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
43. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
44. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
45. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
46. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
47. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
48. M. John Harrison: Light (2002)
49. Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
50. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
51. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
52. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
53. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
54. Michel Houellebecq:Atomised(1998)
55. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
56. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
57. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
58. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)
59. P.D. James: The Children of Men (1992)
60. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
61. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
62. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
63. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966) [I own and have read the short story, but this is a list of novels.]
64. Stephen King:The Shining(1977)
65. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953)
66. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
67. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
68. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
69. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
70. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
71. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
72. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
73. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)
74. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
75. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
76. Cormac McCarthy:The Road(2006)
77. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
78. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
79. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
80. Walter M. Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)
81. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
82. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
83. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
84. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
85. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
86. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
87. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
88. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970) [Not entirely sure I own this one -- if I do, it's in the loft.]
89. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
90. Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
91. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
92. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
93. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
94. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
95. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932) [I sincerely tried -- it's just so huge...]
96. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
97. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
98. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
99. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
100. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
101. JK Rowling:Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone(1997) [My wife owns this one, but I disown it.]
102. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
103. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)
104. José Saramago: Blindness (1995)
105. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
106. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
107. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
108. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
109. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
110. Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
111. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
112. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
113. Mark Twain:A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court(1889)
114. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
115. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
116. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
117. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
118. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
119. H.G. Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)
120. T.H. White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
121. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
122. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
123. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
124. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)
125. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) [Yes, they did get the title right.]
126. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
127. Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
128. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
129. Thomas M. Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
130. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
131. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
132. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
133. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
134. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
135. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
136. C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)
137. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
138. J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
139. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)
140. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) [Well, nearly all of them.]
141. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990) [Edit to add: I've just realised that I've only read the first trilogy, not the more recent supplemental volumes, so this one might strictly be a "no".]
142. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
143. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
144. M.G. Lewis: The Monk (1796)
145. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
146. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
147. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
148. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
149. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
By my count I've read 66, which comes to a moderately respectable 45%. What about you?
06 February 2009
Recent Products of My Brain
Forecast, adj.: Having a bifurcated bottom (cf fork-tongued).
Pillowcase, n.: The enzyme responsible for digesting pillocks.
A: I just found my wife hiding behind an evergreen oriental shrub.
B: Japonica?
A: Well, something must have.
[Edit 7-2-9 to add:]
A: I think my wife's joined a Japanese organised crime syndicate.
B: Yakuza?
A: No, I wouldn't dare.
Pillowcase, n.: The enzyme responsible for digesting pillocks.
A: I just found my wife hiding behind an evergreen oriental shrub.
B: Japonica?
A: Well, something must have.
[Edit 7-2-9 to add:]
A: I think my wife's joined a Japanese organised crime syndicate.
B: Yakuza?
A: No, I wouldn't dare.
04 February 2009
More Books, More Spooks
The Servants by M. M. Smith is a rather different offering from the author's previous books as Michael Marshall and Michael Marshall Smith -- some of which I've discussed here in the past.
It has the same core premise as Only Forward and Spares (and to some extent One of Us), of a solidified subconscious realm where the protagonist's psychological issues are worked out through surreally allusive imagery. Unlike those stories, however (and even despite the fact that it's set in Brighton, like certain key scenes in Only Forward), it's a tighter, more disciplined work. It eschews the genre-bending, heavily cyberpunctuated S.F. setting of those books for a mundane, though compelling, narrative of difficult family dynamics seen through the eyes of a painfully alienated present-day eleven-year-old.
If it wasn't quite so dark, and so demanding of emotional maturity from its readers, this could even be a "Young Adult" book. As it is, it seems to have most often been described as a ghost story. It's not, or not really -- there's no sense that the titular servants (who are sometimes to be found hard at work in the otherwise empty and long-abandoned basement area of Mark's stepfather's Brighton-seafront house) are the surviving spirits of the dead. Rather, they're a function either of Mark's subconscious or of the house itself -- or, this being a work of symbolism, of both. The Servants places us firmly inside Mark's head, and forces us for much of the time to see his well-meaning though sorely tried stepfather as the monster Mark needs to believe he is. The reconciliation between them, desperately needed by Mark's sick mother, is achieved only through her son's under-stairs work experience with the eponymous nonexistent domestics.
Although I doubt more than a dozen other people on the internet have read the thing, the story reminded me of nothing so much as David "A Voyage to Arcturus" Lindsay's psychological fantasy The Haunted Woman, where a specific room in a house awakens the higher consciousnesses of otherwise mundane human beings, whose everyday selves are tragically incapable of retaining the enlightenment they receive there.
Peculiarly enough -- and I swear I'd forgotten this until this moment -- that book was also set partly in Brighton, and features a major character named Marshall.
The Servants is shorter than Smith's other books and more focussed, inspired by a humanistic (I might almost be tempted to say "christian") view of the value of vocation and of losing oneself in service to another. It's a very effective demonstration of his paradoxical versatility as a writer.
Andrew Cartmel's Prisoner novel, Miss Freedom (no Amazon link, for reasons elucidated here) is a decent enough Prisoner story, but -- for all its aspirations to be "a classic 1960s-style spy novel, in the tradition of John Le Carré, Adam Hall and Len Deighton" -- little more than that. It certainly hasn't the intellectual pyrotechnics to match Jon Blum and Rupert Booth's The Prisoner's Dilemma. Dilemma had a real sense of urgency about it, of having something important to impart which could only be told as part of a Prisoner story; by comparison Miss Freedom is... not lazy exactly, but certainly languid.
There's certainly much that's taken directly from the seventeen TV episodes -- Number 6 faces a clinically insane Number 2 (Hammer into Anvil) and a beautiful woman of ambivalent loyalties (The Chimes of Big Ben and passim), who place him in a subsidiary reality (A, B and C, Living in Harmony) where he's encouraged to tell a spy story with himself as the central character (The Girl Who Was Death), etc etc etc. Such elements as might seem newish (there's a rescue mission afoot to spring Number 6 from the Village, and the ousted Number 2 was actually on his side) are actually ringing the changes on these established elements.
Cartmel clearly knows his Prisoner, but most of his story is essentially pastiche -- well-written and perfectly competent pastiche, but unambitious. The most interesting thing, perhaps, is the way Number 6 redrafts his spy story as he's telling it, constantly revisiting earlier story elements and rewriting them. The fact that his fiction comes dangerously close to overlapping his reality might indeed suggest -- again, not exactly a new idea to the Prisoner aficionado -- that the Village itself is the product of Number 6's shellshocked fantasies.
Cartmel's biggest innovation, though, is in making his psychotic New Number 2 a sexually-motivated serial killer, which makes for some deeply uncomfortable moments. Given that a criticism frequently levelled against Cartmel's previous fiction has been his willingness to play the "violence against women" card, I might almost have found this creepy, if there hadn't been some evidence that he was attempting to address this tendency with a degree of complexity on a thematic level.
Basically, though... with this one, you're not really missing much. I feel less guilty about picking up one of the only 100 copies in existence, now.
It has the same core premise as Only Forward and Spares (and to some extent One of Us), of a solidified subconscious realm where the protagonist's psychological issues are worked out through surreally allusive imagery. Unlike those stories, however (and even despite the fact that it's set in Brighton, like certain key scenes in Only Forward), it's a tighter, more disciplined work. It eschews the genre-bending, heavily cyberpunctuated S.F. setting of those books for a mundane, though compelling, narrative of difficult family dynamics seen through the eyes of a painfully alienated present-day eleven-year-old.
If it wasn't quite so dark, and so demanding of emotional maturity from its readers, this could even be a "Young Adult" book. As it is, it seems to have most often been described as a ghost story. It's not, or not really -- there's no sense that the titular servants (who are sometimes to be found hard at work in the otherwise empty and long-abandoned basement area of Mark's stepfather's Brighton-seafront house) are the surviving spirits of the dead. Rather, they're a function either of Mark's subconscious or of the house itself -- or, this being a work of symbolism, of both. The Servants places us firmly inside Mark's head, and forces us for much of the time to see his well-meaning though sorely tried stepfather as the monster Mark needs to believe he is. The reconciliation between them, desperately needed by Mark's sick mother, is achieved only through her son's under-stairs work experience with the eponymous nonexistent domestics.
Although I doubt more than a dozen other people on the internet have read the thing, the story reminded me of nothing so much as David "A Voyage to Arcturus" Lindsay's psychological fantasy The Haunted Woman, where a specific room in a house awakens the higher consciousnesses of otherwise mundane human beings, whose everyday selves are tragically incapable of retaining the enlightenment they receive there.
Peculiarly enough -- and I swear I'd forgotten this until this moment -- that book was also set partly in Brighton, and features a major character named Marshall.
The Servants is shorter than Smith's other books and more focussed, inspired by a humanistic (I might almost be tempted to say "christian") view of the value of vocation and of losing oneself in service to another. It's a very effective demonstration of his paradoxical versatility as a writer.
Andrew Cartmel's Prisoner novel, Miss Freedom (no Amazon link, for reasons elucidated here) is a decent enough Prisoner story, but -- for all its aspirations to be "a classic 1960s-style spy novel, in the tradition of John Le Carré, Adam Hall and Len Deighton" -- little more than that. It certainly hasn't the intellectual pyrotechnics to match Jon Blum and Rupert Booth's The Prisoner's Dilemma. Dilemma had a real sense of urgency about it, of having something important to impart which could only be told as part of a Prisoner story; by comparison Miss Freedom is... not lazy exactly, but certainly languid.
There's certainly much that's taken directly from the seventeen TV episodes -- Number 6 faces a clinically insane Number 2 (Hammer into Anvil) and a beautiful woman of ambivalent loyalties (The Chimes of Big Ben and passim), who place him in a subsidiary reality (A, B and C, Living in Harmony) where he's encouraged to tell a spy story with himself as the central character (The Girl Who Was Death), etc etc etc. Such elements as might seem newish (there's a rescue mission afoot to spring Number 6 from the Village, and the ousted Number 2 was actually on his side) are actually ringing the changes on these established elements.
Cartmel clearly knows his Prisoner, but most of his story is essentially pastiche -- well-written and perfectly competent pastiche, but unambitious. The most interesting thing, perhaps, is the way Number 6 redrafts his spy story as he's telling it, constantly revisiting earlier story elements and rewriting them. The fact that his fiction comes dangerously close to overlapping his reality might indeed suggest -- again, not exactly a new idea to the Prisoner aficionado -- that the Village itself is the product of Number 6's shellshocked fantasies.
Cartmel's biggest innovation, though, is in making his psychotic New Number 2 a sexually-motivated serial killer, which makes for some deeply uncomfortable moments. Given that a criticism frequently levelled against Cartmel's previous fiction has been his willingness to play the "violence against women" card, I might almost have found this creepy, if there hadn't been some evidence that he was attempting to address this tendency with a degree of complexity on a thematic level.
Basically, though... with this one, you're not really missing much. I feel less guilty about picking up one of the only 100 copies in existence, now.
On the Fly
The other day at work I was strolling along the top-floor corridor towards the Gents', texting my other half as I went. When I arrived at the urinal, I found my flies already undone.
It's possible, of course, that I hadn't zipped up again after a previous visit. That would be embarrassing, but only mildly so. We all do it occasionally, after all.
What bothers me far more is the possibility that whilst wandering along the corridor past colleagues of varying seniority, contentrating on pressing buttons on my phone but subliminally aware that I was heading for the lavatory, I might have absent-mindedly unzipped as I walked, to save time later.
It's possible, of course, that I hadn't zipped up again after a previous visit. That would be embarrassing, but only mildly so. We all do it occasionally, after all.
What bothers me far more is the possibility that whilst wandering along the corridor past colleagues of varying seniority, contentrating on pressing buttons on my phone but subliminally aware that I was heading for the lavatory, I might have absent-mindedly unzipped as I walked, to save time later.
30 January 2009
Holland Takes On Norway
I've had a frustratingly unproductive week -- I've only produced only about 700 words of a sample chapter. The rest of the time I've been waiting in for building contractors, journeying fruitlessly into town and arsing around on the internet. Not a good set of outcomes, although the 700-odd words do seem to me to be rather good ones.
Meanwhile, I've finished two books written (presumably rather faster) by other people, both of which I've been meaning to blog upon. I've probably only got time for one now, so I'll pick Millennium: the End of the World and the Forging of Christendom by Tom Holland.
Like its predecessors, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic and Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (both of which I wrote a little about here), it's a chatty, pacy, well-written narrative of a turning-point in western history. If you want a clear sense of the turmoil in European thought of the 9th to 11th centuries which led to the eventual revolutionary idea of the separation of Church and State, this would be the book to read.
Unfortunately, that wasn't really what I was after. What I most admire in Holland's work is the way he makes cultures which are radically foreign to any modern worldview seem familiar and sympathetic, and in this book the distance wasn't really there to start off with. Our western Anglophone culture is of course post-Hellenic and post-Roman in the same way as it's post-Christian... but it was christian an awful lot more recently than it was either of those other things. The machinations of kings, popes, knights and even emperors (of the "Holy Roman" variety, at least) seem rather banal and mundane, in a way which even republican Rome, despite its familiarity, never does.
Inevitably perhaps, my favourite parts of the book are those which deal with the borders of christendom -- the Islamic Caliphates (whose appearances are sadly brief) and heathen-turning-christian Viking nations. Somehow the Vikings -- who are almost certainly prominent among my actual ancestors -- seem "alien" in that ancient-history way, whereas their contemporaries of the Romance and Saxon cultures simply don't. This despite the fact that the contemporary history of Britain at the time (which Holland fortunately covers extensively) is largely a power-struggle between different Viking factions for control of these islands.
As Holland points out, the Normans (who were of course of Viking descent, "Norman" being a rather unconvincing romanisation of "Norseman") didn't conquer an England that was still ruled over by Saxons: both Harold Godwinson and Edward the Confessor had Viking mothers, and had in any case inherited the throne from a bunch of Norwegians. The last King of England of pure Anglo-Saxon heritage (which is to say, of course, that he was descended from an ethnically slightly different bunch of Odin-worshippers) was the ill-remembered Edmund Ironside, who died a full 50 years before the Conquest.
The Viking stuff was fascinating, and brought home to me the extent of their cultural influence -- which extended from Vinland to Kiev, and as far south as Byzantium itself -- in a way I'd never realised before (despite reading Henry Treece's splendid Viking Saga trilogy as a lad). If only someone had been able to unite them so that they stopped spending most of their history chopping one another up with axes, the Vikings could have built an empire spanning the Northern hemisphere from America to Russia -- something which has never been achieved in our history.
(I suspect this may in fact be what Harry Harrison and John Holm were writing about in their own trilogy, beginning with The Hammer and the Cross, none of which I've never read. Certainly it's an occupational hazard of being an S.F. writer that reading actual history always diverts one into alternatives.)
Unfortunately, the Viking material accounts for barely a third of the book, the rest being taken up by the aforementioned pope-jockeying. There's a certain amount of entertainment to be had from the shocking corruption, quick succession and occasional startling simultaneity of the contemporary popes, but it palls quickly.
Holland has also developed an irritating verbal tic which I didn't notice in either of his previous books: the construction "[X amount of time] later, and [Y event happened]" is repeated on average once a page, and the repetition of all those needless "and"s quickly becomes tiresome. A canny editor could have cut nearly half a thousand words just by excising them. If I'd been more involved in the narrative I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed it -- indeed, it's entirely possible that this is what happened with Rubicon and Persian Fire. Ah well.
I did at least learn that the Olympic year of 2012 will be the 1100th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's great-to-the-32nd-grandfather converting to christianity from the worship of Odin One-Eye, All-Father, Victory-Bringer, Master of Ravens and Wolf of Battle, the Hanged God. Which is nice.
Vikings are cool. Fact.
Meanwhile, I've finished two books written (presumably rather faster) by other people, both of which I've been meaning to blog upon. I've probably only got time for one now, so I'll pick Millennium: the End of the World and the Forging of Christendom by Tom Holland.
Like its predecessors, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic and Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West (both of which I wrote a little about here), it's a chatty, pacy, well-written narrative of a turning-point in western history. If you want a clear sense of the turmoil in European thought of the 9th to 11th centuries which led to the eventual revolutionary idea of the separation of Church and State, this would be the book to read.
Unfortunately, that wasn't really what I was after. What I most admire in Holland's work is the way he makes cultures which are radically foreign to any modern worldview seem familiar and sympathetic, and in this book the distance wasn't really there to start off with. Our western Anglophone culture is of course post-Hellenic and post-Roman in the same way as it's post-Christian... but it was christian an awful lot more recently than it was either of those other things. The machinations of kings, popes, knights and even emperors (of the "Holy Roman" variety, at least) seem rather banal and mundane, in a way which even republican Rome, despite its familiarity, never does.
Inevitably perhaps, my favourite parts of the book are those which deal with the borders of christendom -- the Islamic Caliphates (whose appearances are sadly brief) and heathen-turning-christian Viking nations. Somehow the Vikings -- who are almost certainly prominent among my actual ancestors -- seem "alien" in that ancient-history way, whereas their contemporaries of the Romance and Saxon cultures simply don't. This despite the fact that the contemporary history of Britain at the time (which Holland fortunately covers extensively) is largely a power-struggle between different Viking factions for control of these islands.
As Holland points out, the Normans (who were of course of Viking descent, "Norman" being a rather unconvincing romanisation of "Norseman") didn't conquer an England that was still ruled over by Saxons: both Harold Godwinson and Edward the Confessor had Viking mothers, and had in any case inherited the throne from a bunch of Norwegians. The last King of England of pure Anglo-Saxon heritage (which is to say, of course, that he was descended from an ethnically slightly different bunch of Odin-worshippers) was the ill-remembered Edmund Ironside, who died a full 50 years before the Conquest.
The Viking stuff was fascinating, and brought home to me the extent of their cultural influence -- which extended from Vinland to Kiev, and as far south as Byzantium itself -- in a way I'd never realised before (despite reading Henry Treece's splendid Viking Saga trilogy as a lad). If only someone had been able to unite them so that they stopped spending most of their history chopping one another up with axes, the Vikings could have built an empire spanning the Northern hemisphere from America to Russia -- something which has never been achieved in our history.
(I suspect this may in fact be what Harry Harrison and John Holm were writing about in their own trilogy, beginning with The Hammer and the Cross, none of which I've never read. Certainly it's an occupational hazard of being an S.F. writer that reading actual history always diverts one into alternatives.)
Unfortunately, the Viking material accounts for barely a third of the book, the rest being taken up by the aforementioned pope-jockeying. There's a certain amount of entertainment to be had from the shocking corruption, quick succession and occasional startling simultaneity of the contemporary popes, but it palls quickly.
Holland has also developed an irritating verbal tic which I didn't notice in either of his previous books: the construction "[X amount of time] later, and [Y event happened]" is repeated on average once a page, and the repetition of all those needless "and"s quickly becomes tiresome. A canny editor could have cut nearly half a thousand words just by excising them. If I'd been more involved in the narrative I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed it -- indeed, it's entirely possible that this is what happened with Rubicon and Persian Fire. Ah well.
I did at least learn that the Olympic year of 2012 will be the 1100th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's great-to-the-32nd-grandfather converting to christianity from the worship of Odin One-Eye, All-Father, Victory-Bringer, Master of Ravens and Wolf of Battle, the Hanged God. Which is nice.
Vikings are cool. Fact.
28 January 2009
When I Survey...
I know that at least some of you have enjoyed the theoretically regular monthly columns on science fiction and faith which I've been writing for Christian Aid's webzine, Surefish, over the past couple of years.
At present new material from Surefish, including my column and those of various pals of mine, is on hold while Christian Aid considers the future of Surefish's authored content... the (perfectly reasonable) question being the extent to which commissioning said content serves the charity's ends, at a time when public giving to charities in general is inevitably in retreat.
As part of this review there's a reader survey currently in progress, inviting the opinions of regular readers on the material they read at the website. Without in any way wishing to skew the results of the survey, I would urge those of you who have been reading the site (even if it's just my column) just to pop across and register the fact. There may even be Divine chocolate in it for you.
Of course it would be unconscionable of me not to point out that this exercise, whatever its personal implications, is inestimably less important than Christian Aid's non-partisan, humanitarian Gaza Crisis Appeal, to which I naturally encourage you to give whatever money you might feel able to spare.
I don't believe in pressuring or guilt-tripping my readers, though, so follow the dictates of your conscience on that one. Just remember that a fairy dies every time you don't fill in that survey.
At present new material from Surefish, including my column and those of various pals of mine, is on hold while Christian Aid considers the future of Surefish's authored content... the (perfectly reasonable) question being the extent to which commissioning said content serves the charity's ends, at a time when public giving to charities in general is inevitably in retreat.
As part of this review there's a reader survey currently in progress, inviting the opinions of regular readers on the material they read at the website. Without in any way wishing to skew the results of the survey, I would urge those of you who have been reading the site (even if it's just my column) just to pop across and register the fact. There may even be Divine chocolate in it for you.
Of course it would be unconscionable of me not to point out that this exercise, whatever its personal implications, is inestimably less important than Christian Aid's non-partisan, humanitarian Gaza Crisis Appeal, to which I naturally encourage you to give whatever money you might feel able to spare.
I don't believe in pressuring or guilt-tripping my readers, though, so follow the dictates of your conscience on that one. Just remember that a fairy dies every time you don't fill in that survey.
25 January 2009
The Post with No Name
All names have meanings, at least originally. (Admittedly some of them mostly mean "Look how stupid my parents are.")
"Philip Alexander Purser-Hallard", for instance, means "Lover of Horses, Saviour of Men, Steward, Steward" in Greek, Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon[1]. Even in English, a good many names are more transparent than that, as both Heath Ledger and River Phoenix could attest if they didn't have that other thing in common.
In some cultures, personal names routinely have entirely transparent meanings, so that the most common Chinese surnames mean things like "Fruit", "King" and "Willow Tree". Generally, however, when people have transparent names, we refer to them by the same sounds they use when speaking their own language, rather than attempting to translate them.
The major exception to this, bizarrely enough, would appear to be members of the Lakota tribes of Native North Americans, such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud et al, all of whose names sound -- unless you have a problem with "foreign" words per se -- perfectly reasonable in Lakota.
The other borderline instances -- that I can think of, at least -- are fictional Chinese women, such as Rupert Bear's friend Tiger Lily (who may in any case be named after Peter Pan's friend Tiger Lily, who is -- very broadly speaking -- a Native American). There's a walk-on Hong Kong masseuse in Die Another Day who's named Peaceful Fountains of Desire, but that seems to be a throwaway racist / sexist joke for the old-guard Bond fans. In any case, the intention is to make the exotic seem less threatening (and therefore fit for childhood companionship and / or shagging) by familiarising it.
Sitting Bull and co I'm less sure about. Is the idea that people who name themselves after everyday objects must be inherently more primitive than people with perfectly sensible names like, say, Earp or Custer? The practice doesn't seem to extend even to other Native American tribes, so I'm guessing it's something very specific about the Lakota's interaction with Anglophone settlers.
I wonder whether a history of North American colonisation written in, say, Spanish would talk about "Tatanka Iyotanka" or "Toro Sentado"[2]?
"Philip Alexander Purser-Hallard", for instance, means "Lover of Horses, Saviour of Men, Steward, Steward" in Greek, Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon[1]. Even in English, a good many names are more transparent than that, as both Heath Ledger and River Phoenix could attest if they didn't have that other thing in common.
In some cultures, personal names routinely have entirely transparent meanings, so that the most common Chinese surnames mean things like "Fruit", "King" and "Willow Tree". Generally, however, when people have transparent names, we refer to them by the same sounds they use when speaking their own language, rather than attempting to translate them.
The major exception to this, bizarrely enough, would appear to be members of the Lakota tribes of Native North Americans, such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud et al, all of whose names sound -- unless you have a problem with "foreign" words per se -- perfectly reasonable in Lakota.
The other borderline instances -- that I can think of, at least -- are fictional Chinese women, such as Rupert Bear's friend Tiger Lily (who may in any case be named after Peter Pan's friend Tiger Lily, who is -- very broadly speaking -- a Native American). There's a walk-on Hong Kong masseuse in Die Another Day who's named Peaceful Fountains of Desire, but that seems to be a throwaway racist / sexist joke for the old-guard Bond fans. In any case, the intention is to make the exotic seem less threatening (and therefore fit for childhood companionship and / or shagging) by familiarising it.
Sitting Bull and co I'm less sure about. Is the idea that people who name themselves after everyday objects must be inherently more primitive than people with perfectly sensible names like, say, Earp or Custer? The practice doesn't seem to extend even to other Native American tribes, so I'm guessing it's something very specific about the Lakota's interaction with Anglophone settlers.
I wonder whether a history of North American colonisation written in, say, Spanish would talk about "Tatanka Iyotanka" or "Toro Sentado"[2]?
[1] Actually, I'm not altogether sure what "Hallard" means. This site gives two entirely different etymologies, but family tradition tends to go with the first one, "hall-ward" -- supposedly meaning something along the lines of a butler or estates manager. Although it could equally mean the bloke who guarded the door, I'm amused by the idea that it means essentially the same as B.'s original surname of "Purser".
[2] Any linguistic solecisms are my own. [Edit: And actually, a quick google would have given me my answer there.]
23 January 2009
Miss Freedom? Yes, you probably have.
Ah. OK. I was going to point out, further to this post from the other day about the death of Patrick McGoohan, that I've actually discovered the second of the Prisoner novels published by Powys Media, Miss Freedom by former Doctor Who scriptwriter and novelist Andrew Cartmel, available at a not particularly steep price just over here.
But, as you can see, it isn't.
Which is a bit disconcerting, because I ordered one as recently as Monday, and now have it quite literally in my possession. It's number 70 of a limited edition run of 100 and is personally autographed, apparently by one "Ann Cxl".
So, er, yes... it looks as if I may have picked up the last one, in fact.
It's a lot shorter than The Prisoner's Dilemma -- just under half the page count, at the same font size -- and I've no idea about the quality, because I haven't read it yet. But it definitely exists, and some of Cartmel's other work (The Wise and Foreign Devils particularly) has been very good. Miss Freedom claims to be a 1960s-style spy thriller "in the tradition of John Le Carre, Adam Hall and Len Deighton". All in all I'm rather looking forward to it.
So, as I was going to say, if you're a Prisoner fan and want to join the elite group of Prisoner fans who actually own the thing...
...erm, you can't. But I have. Sorry about that.
But, as you can see, it isn't.
Which is a bit disconcerting, because I ordered one as recently as Monday, and now have it quite literally in my possession. It's number 70 of a limited edition run of 100 and is personally autographed, apparently by one "Ann Cxl".
So, er, yes... it looks as if I may have picked up the last one, in fact.
It's a lot shorter than The Prisoner's Dilemma -- just under half the page count, at the same font size -- and I've no idea about the quality, because I haven't read it yet. But it definitely exists, and some of Cartmel's other work (The Wise and Foreign Devils particularly) has been very good. Miss Freedom claims to be a 1960s-style spy thriller "in the tradition of John Le Carre, Adam Hall and Len Deighton". All in all I'm rather looking forward to it.
So, as I was going to say, if you're a Prisoner fan and want to join the elite group of Prisoner fans who actually own the thing...
...erm, you can't. But I have. Sorry about that.
No Really, Some of My Best Friends Are Human
Clicking idly along a string of links from a friend's LiveJournal brought me to the "Are You a Humanist?" quiz at the British Humanist Association website.
Now, it's possible I'm reading too much into a harmless piece of fun on the internet. But the notes do state that the quiz is "a more or less serious set of questions designed to help you think about whether you are committed to a religious view of the world, and how this affects your moral beliefs," so I feel entitled to be equally "more or less serious" in investigating its assumptions.
Although the quiz is of the "which of these statements do you agree with?" type, the introductory spiel does specify that you're allowed to choose as many answers as apply. That being the case I actually get twenty answers from the ten questions, but never mind. While I get three or four each of the As, Bs and Cs, I end up with nine Ds -- and it would have been a full 10 if question 3 hadn't appended a stunningly mendacious question-begging rider to the end of that option ("How did the Universe begin? D. The scientific explanations are the best ones available -- no gods were involved.").
Since the Ds are clearly the desirable answers, why doesn't this make me a humanist? According to the interpretive notes, "Humanists don't agree about everything, and you may have collected some other answers too, though if they include As and Bs you’re unlikely to be a humanist."
Well, possibly. It's clear that some of the As ("I can tell right from wrong by... A. reading a holy book or listening to a religious leader") are supposed to be expressive of an uncompromisingly fundamentalist position (so much so, in fact, that it's obvious the quiz compiler has never bothered actually listening to any religious people, but instead has been conversing with a tiny straw man they carry round in their pocket for the purpose). Others, however ("Animals should be treated... A. with respect because they are part of God' s creation"), are ones from which even the most liberal of christians could hardly withhold their assent. (Admittedly I also agree with both the C and D options there, albeit I wouldn't claim C as a philosophical position.)
It's clear enough that the quiz is designed to distinguish between humanists and people "committed to a religious view of the world" -- the elephant in the room being the assumption that these two philosophies are incompatible. Said assumption being in turn, and with all due respect to the B.H.A. and the invaluable social service they provide in the form of, for instance, funeral services for families of a non-religious persuasion, a quivering pile of bollocks.
The fundamentals of humanism -- which emerged as an essentially christian movement during the Renaissance -- are the value and dignity of human life, and the centrality of human freedom and aspirations to the decisions we make about the present and future. I mean, surely. Aren't they?
All of which are things I believe absolutely, based on my religious faith. I'm also very happy to get behind the B.H.A.'s "Vision" of "A world without religious privilege or discrimination, where people are free to live good lives on the basis of reason, experience and shared human values." Honestly, how could I not?
You see, that thing about humanity being created in God's image (see question 8, where it seems the strongest argument the B.H.A. can muster in response is the frankly feeble "Other people matter and should be treated with respect because... D. we will all be happier if we treat each other well")... it's not an anomaly, or a concession, or a platitude. It's the absolute bedrock of anything I'd recognise as christianity.
Christian humanism is a vibrant and fertile philosophical tradition in its own right, as even Wikipedia seems to be aware. (Hell, even the B.H.A. website itself acknowledges that such thinking has existed.) So why does the B.H.A. elect to define humanists as "atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values"? Why not just people who do that, for God's sake? Or for Allah's sake, or the Buddha's, or for the sake of our common humanity, or for the sake of future generations or of society or...
...well, for pity's sake, basically. If the B.H.A. are honestly committed to "A world without religious privilege or discrimination," why do they actively exclude the large numbers of people whose humanism derives from, or walks hand-in-hand with, a religious faith? Can it really be sheer prejudice?
Or do they really want to be the British Atheist Foundation? Because, honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with that, if they had the nerve. Meanwhile, they're co-opting a word I've used for years to describe myself, and telling me I'm not allowed it any more. And that pisses me off.
Now, it's possible I'm reading too much into a harmless piece of fun on the internet. But the notes do state that the quiz is "a more or less serious set of questions designed to help you think about whether you are committed to a religious view of the world, and how this affects your moral beliefs," so I feel entitled to be equally "more or less serious" in investigating its assumptions.
Although the quiz is of the "which of these statements do you agree with?" type, the introductory spiel does specify that you're allowed to choose as many answers as apply. That being the case I actually get twenty answers from the ten questions, but never mind. While I get three or four each of the As, Bs and Cs, I end up with nine Ds -- and it would have been a full 10 if question 3 hadn't appended a stunningly mendacious question-begging rider to the end of that option ("How did the Universe begin? D. The scientific explanations are the best ones available -- no gods were involved.").
Since the Ds are clearly the desirable answers, why doesn't this make me a humanist? According to the interpretive notes, "Humanists don't agree about everything, and you may have collected some other answers too, though if they include As and Bs you’re unlikely to be a humanist."
Well, possibly. It's clear that some of the As ("I can tell right from wrong by... A. reading a holy book or listening to a religious leader") are supposed to be expressive of an uncompromisingly fundamentalist position (so much so, in fact, that it's obvious the quiz compiler has never bothered actually listening to any religious people, but instead has been conversing with a tiny straw man they carry round in their pocket for the purpose). Others, however ("Animals should be treated... A. with respect because they are part of God' s creation"), are ones from which even the most liberal of christians could hardly withhold their assent. (Admittedly I also agree with both the C and D options there, albeit I wouldn't claim C as a philosophical position.)
It's clear enough that the quiz is designed to distinguish between humanists and people "committed to a religious view of the world" -- the elephant in the room being the assumption that these two philosophies are incompatible. Said assumption being in turn, and with all due respect to the B.H.A. and the invaluable social service they provide in the form of, for instance, funeral services for families of a non-religious persuasion, a quivering pile of bollocks.
The fundamentals of humanism -- which emerged as an essentially christian movement during the Renaissance -- are the value and dignity of human life, and the centrality of human freedom and aspirations to the decisions we make about the present and future. I mean, surely. Aren't they?
All of which are things I believe absolutely, based on my religious faith. I'm also very happy to get behind the B.H.A.'s "Vision" of "A world without religious privilege or discrimination, where people are free to live good lives on the basis of reason, experience and shared human values." Honestly, how could I not?
You see, that thing about humanity being created in God's image (see question 8, where it seems the strongest argument the B.H.A. can muster in response is the frankly feeble "Other people matter and should be treated with respect because... D. we will all be happier if we treat each other well")... it's not an anomaly, or a concession, or a platitude. It's the absolute bedrock of anything I'd recognise as christianity.
Christian humanism is a vibrant and fertile philosophical tradition in its own right, as even Wikipedia seems to be aware. (Hell, even the B.H.A. website itself acknowledges that such thinking has existed.) So why does the B.H.A. elect to define humanists as "atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values"? Why not just people who do that, for God's sake? Or for Allah's sake, or the Buddha's, or for the sake of our common humanity, or for the sake of future generations or of society or...
...well, for pity's sake, basically. If the B.H.A. are honestly committed to "A world without religious privilege or discrimination," why do they actively exclude the large numbers of people whose humanism derives from, or walks hand-in-hand with, a religious faith? Can it really be sheer prejudice?
Or do they really want to be the British Atheist Foundation? Because, honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with that, if they had the nerve. Meanwhile, they're co-opting a word I've used for years to describe myself, and telling me I'm not allowed it any more. And that pisses me off.
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