On Monday when I walked outside to get on my bike, it was like a spring morning. Today, despite the frost outside, the temperature is set to rise to 14 degrees Celsius, which is almost T-shirt weather. As well as snow drops blooming, other later flowers like daffodils are coming up. Farmers are happy with the prices for their crops rising by a third – mainly because of their use in biofuels – and with the fact that their animals have been able to graze throughout the winter because the grass hasn’t stopped growing. Whilst the enviro-we-all-need-to-be-poor-and-grow-cabbages-greenies march down the street with their The End is Nigh placards, everyone else turns down the central heating and enjoys the benefits.
Author: Neal Asher
Gridlinked the Movie.
Here’s something our very own Cameron put together:
Cameron Dadd is an eighteen-year-old freelance graphic designer who lives in the most isolated city on our planet. He does have a small collection, but it’s as yet unavailable online, however, there’s Leviathan here: http://sharpendofreason.deviantart.com/ which, inspired by Cameron’s work, was created by a good friend of his called Carlo – looks like something Dragon put together!
Car Tax.
Apparently there’s a million cars on Britain’s roads without road tax discs, which usually means they are without insurance or MOTs. Some puzzlement is expressed about this, especially when the penalty for getting caught is to have you car taken to the crusher. It’s the fucking economy stupid! You can buy a car that runs, for less than £250. That’s about the lower end of the price for just the insurance. Add onto that £40 for an MOT, excluding repairs that might need to be made, and over £100 road tax and … ah do the sums yourselves. Just remember that if someone drives such a car for more than a year they’ll certainly be in profit even if it is taken to the crusher. Message to government (again): Are you surprised by this? You shouldn’t be, you made these people. You screw them for every last red cent and then go, “Oh dear, why are you breaking the law?” They’re breaking the law because they take one look at you and think, Why the hell shouldn’t I take the piss, you lot are.
African Genes.
Hah, I wonder how many of the people refered to here are members of the BNP: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070124072328.htm
Interface
Not only do I love this sort of stuff, developments like this are pretty damned important: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118121238.htm
Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms
Arthur Clarke Cybercast Hal's Birthday
Cormac the Miniseries — I wish.
Paul Swan’s post reminded me: Some years ago great excitement ensued when Tor US received a query from Blue Train Entertainment about the film rights to Gridlinked. This excitement increased when, after a bit of research, I found out that they had been involved in producing the Jackie Chan movie The Tuxedo along with a couple of other production companies including Dreamworks. Nothing came of this, however.
Frankly, I would love one of my books to be bought by Hollywood, especially if that involved me trousering some silly money. It would also raise my profile and probably lead to more book sales. However, I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that such a sale virtually guarantees the book won’t be seen on the screen. Many thousands have been bought, but how many get turned into a films? Usually all we see are remakes of 60s SF series, something new where when a book is written it’s usually after the film, or stuff produced filmed from books by authors who have made the transition to sainthood and ‘literature’ by shuffling off their mortal coil. The big problem with this book to film thing is, of course, that books are big. They’ve got a lot of stuff in them and large amounts of it get sacrificed so the rest can be packed into two hours of screen time. Also, a lot of the concepts put across in the narrative of a book are difficult to translate to the screen, especially in that limited time. Really, film directors are better off taking up a short story and running with that. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, anyone? When a book is turned into a film it can succeed artistically (though not necessarily financially – like Dune), but it often isn’t the same beast any more. Much better, I think, when a book is taken on by a TV production company. First it stands a lot better chance of getting filmed, and if made into a series there’s room for the book to sprawl itself out (Hence the excellent Dune & Children of Dune mini-series’ being true to their source). So this is why I’d like to see the Cormac books made into a series of five seasons with about twelve episodes each. Not too much to ask is it? Anyone out there buying? (Snort!)
Battlestar Galactica
Well, I managed to sit through the first episode of series 3 of Battlestar Galactica, but only managed to get three-quarters of the way through the second episode before I started to lose the will to live. This seems to be a series that is now rapidly disappearing up its own fundament. Maybe it’s because of those in the cast and those producing it make the claim that it ‘isn’t really that science fiction nonesense’. This new production of Battlestar Galactica was originally successful because it produced SF with a sufficient injection of reality, but now it seems the producers and actors have started to take themselves far too seriously. I can see the meetings held before they got to work. “We need more of that stuff that made the series successful, let’s do more issues, more relationships. Let’s try and cut down on the exploding spaceships and robots.” “Yeah, great idea! How about we get topical and do stuff about an occupation, more about religion, maybe some obesity too?” “Damned right. We want people to keep taking this seriously, so we have to cut down on that squids in space nonesense…” I guess we can look forward to future episodes of BSG covering annorexia, homosexuality, racism, the death penalty etc etc. Yup, get it more mainstream. The daft thing is that mainstream doesn’t have to lack action, fun, enjoyment – just take a look at 24. It seems with BSG they’ve gone the route so many writers in the SF world venture along, when they make the assumption that boring = literature. It’s sad, but then I half expected a fuck-up when the franchise got extended.
Parasite.
As Mark Croucher has pointed out, there’s a copy of The Parasite out on eBay at the moment (there were two, but he snaffled the other one). It’s disappointingly cheap, but go get it while it’s hot!