Here’s the latest. As always, further questions in the comments section below.
Category: Articles
Borgen
The other night we watched two episodes of something Caroline had taped – Borgen – then went on to watch another two episodes shown on Saturday night. It is a political drama set in Denmark and surprisingly, since it involves politicians, I’ve been enjoying it. Stuff like this perfectly illustrates how successful politicians will compromise their idealism to the point of non-existence so as to get their noses in the trough. We’ve seen this sort of stuff before in dramas like State of Play and House of Cards and in what can only loosely be described as a parody: Yes Minister.
The female who rises to the position of Prime Minister is an idealist politically-correct twat of the kind we know well from Labour’s years in power here. This being TV, which is dominated by lefty twats of a similar stripe, her initial portrayal couldn’t have been more saintly if she’d walked around with a CGI halo hovering above her head (I should also add that she was unbelievably naïve for someone so high up the greasy pole). Of course the good guys always want more welfare spending, love Islam and immigration, want to piss money away on International Development. Equally, those depicted as conservative or to the right are racist authoritarians with horns growing out of their heads.
However, I’m hoping this is not going to be too simplistic. Already our saint is finding it necessary to lie and cheat as she scrabbles for power. Quite possibly this will be a riff on the ‘power corrupts’ aphorism, or maybe even something more adult about how idealism fails when it impacts with reality. I will watch it to the end.
25 Years!
Someone bought me a journal for 2012 with a blank page for every day. I had been filling in such journals for many years until a couple of years ago, when I asked for hardcover notebooks without a date on every page because I was getting behind (and bored with the daily recording of my life) and most of my ‘warm-up’ writing started to go here on this blog. This morning, getting behind as usual, I waffled on back-filling empty pages and, while doing so, realized something: I’ve now been self-employed for 25 years. When I muttered something about this Caroline said, ‘Where’s it all gone?’ but I don’t feel like that. The last 25 years have been quite eventful.
I started paid work while still in school – at the weekends – and when I left school at age 16 I went straight into a full-time job in a factory making steel furniture. From there I progressed through various firms, acquiring a college certificate in ‘Mechanical and Production Engineering’. I worked for an aluminium boat and house window companies and a couple of other engineering companies, mainly using milling machines, but in the early eighties I was getting bored with that and broke away for a disastrous stint in a building company (it went skint owing me £600 in wages). A brief spell of unemployment was followed by me being seconded by someone to help clear up storm damage in ’87 and, thereafter seeing the financial possibilities and freedom of working for myself, I went self-employed.
Throughout all this I was writing of course, working my way up the small press ladder, taking an English A-level to prove a point just to myself, and gradually becoming more successful. I ran my own business cutting both domestic and council grass, cutting hedges, trees, laying concrete, building fences, repointing houses … the list is a long one. I occasionally worked for builders, delivered coal and skips, did bar work, rebuilt and sold a few motorbikes and cars. I met Caroline and moved into her flat (I wrote The Skinner in my first year there) and we then moved together to a bungalow (I have to wonder what people thought of the Sherpa truck parked outside) and then, in 1999-2000 by synopsis and sample chapters of Gridlinked hit at Macmillan.
I continued with the grass-cutting etc. for another year (or two?) then went over fully to writing. Since then we’ve bought a house in Crete, and I did a lot of work on it myself. I’ve had about 20 books published, now live in Crete for 7 months of the year and have had both enjoyable and traumatic experiences throughout the whole process.
Looking back to ’87 I see that figure in some woodland in the pissing rain cutting up fallen branches with a bow-saw. He just had no idea…
The New Space Opera
I do have a bad habit with anthologies I’ve been published in. I tend to receive them then stick them on a shelf as eye-candy yet, of course, they probably contain lots of stories I would like to read. The other day I changed that habit by picking up The New Space Opera edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. It contains a story by me called Shell Game, and has been sitting on my shelf since 2009. I did enjoy this and out of the 19 stories enclosed there were only two I didn’t finish and maybe only a couple more I finished with a ‘meh’. Particular highlights for me were the stories by Robert Charles Wilson, Peter Watts, Kristine Kathryne Rusch, Jay Lake, Sean Williams, John Meaney, Elizabeth Moon and John Scalzi.Follow Friday, Apparently
So, I just passed 30,000 words on Penny Royal (having been slowed up over the last two days by feeling crap). The backstory I previously mentioned is now at about 29,000 words and looks likely to turn into a book by itself. What more can I say? Nothing. I don’t want come-backs of the, ‘But you said so-and-so was going to happen’ kind. Everything is up in the air at the moment and I’m just writing where the fancy takes me.
People have been recommending me for a ‘Shorty Award’ on Twitter. After contemplating getting my stilettos out of the wardrobe I realized that this is for ‘producers of the best short content on social media’. Since this is Twitter I’m wondering about the redundancy of the word ‘short’. I went over to the site concerned where there was a questionnaire for me to fill in. I don’t suppose they wanted the kind of answer I gave to their question about a hash tag thingy I would like to see more of: #facesICouldNeverTireOfPunching. Today I’ve discovered that #FF means ‘Follow Friday’ wherein people recommend other people to follow. What a strange introverted place the Twitterverse can be.
Another social media site I’ve signed up on is Google+, but with a sigh, desultory attempts at posting and swift fuck-off flashes of irritation when I encountered problems. I think I’m suffering from social media fatigue #SMF … or something.
Video Clips
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of those video clips. I’m told by various people that they like them but, unfortunately, I’m not getting enough questions. Here are the questions in the comments of the previous clip:
ChrisW: You’ve probably answered this before somewhere, so feel free to ignore, but, what’s up with “The Departure”(the HB not the eBook) not being available/published in the USA? Is it going the way of “The Line of Polity”?
Still annoys me that when I look at my Asher shelve that there is no Line HB. Bloody publishers! 🙂
Spaceoperaghost: Will you ever expand on the story of The Quiet War?
Taylor Preston: When you write, do you revise/edit as you go or do you just hammer out the first draft before you put pen to paper and start making changes? I know you’ve said before you don’t normally outline, so I’m wondering how much revision you end up doing and how you go about it.
Huan: What size are Amistad and Sniper?
arj209: Have you reached the lofty heights of stardom of being recognised in the streets?
Friso: Your Wikipedia article mentions “runcible” is an homage to ansible. Is that how you intended it?
Thezzphai: In an interview you talked about your next Polity book possibly being called “Penny Royal”. Can you already tell something about the content (pretty please) and when it will be released approximately? Are you already working on it or is it just an idea for the time being?
The last one here has been answered and is being answered on the blog but I suppose I can go over it again a bit, and the first one here is just a ‘don’t know’ but I guess I could waffle on about the subject for a bit. But I could do with some more questions. Please append some in the comments below. Oh, and I’m saving this one from the last post for the next clip too:
Chrish: ‘I’m finding the writing ridiculously easy (which is worrying)’. I’m puzzled, why worrying?
Writing Update
I’m starting to get the feeling that Penny Royal is struggling to turn into something larger. I started out by jotting down backstory involving the prador/human war and some later events concerning my main character. Then I moved on and wrote a piece of the ‘present day’ story. Next returning to the backstory I began filling it in, also having some ideas concerning hooders that were just too juicy to resist. The ‘present day’ piece is just over 1,000 words long while the backstory is 25,000 words long. Ahem.
That backstory has also grown because of the necessity for conflict, and has grown in much the same way as the ‘B’ plotline for Gridlinked. Let me just revisit that for a moment:
I submitted a sample and synopsis of Gridlinked to Macmillan at the end of 1999 and received a request for the whole book shortly afterwards, which I sent by email. At the time Gridlinked was 65,000 words long and I knew it was too short for present day publication requirements. I suggested, by email, that I could expand it – maybe put in more about the doings of the villains in the story. Meanwhile that email crossed one on the way back with a reader’s report from Simon Kavanagh (now an author’s agent): it’s too short and maybe I should expand the B plotline i.e. the story of the villains. I did as requested, expanding Gridlinked to 135,000 words in, I think, about two or three weeks. Peter Lavery at Macmillan expected a load of padded crap, what he got instead was Mr Crane (who wasn’t in the original version).
In Penny Royal I’ve been concentrating on a villain – someone who encountered Penny Royal during its time in the Graveyard. I’m finding the writing ridiculously easy (which is worrying) and am starting to contemplate the idea of introducing other characters like her (Isobel Satomi), who have experienced similar encounters with Penny Royal. I can’t really say much more than this … well, I can add that prador and hooders have joined the cast, along with second-child ship minds, shell people, a heavyworlder thug, Jebel U-cap Krong and Sylac (who some may remember from Gridlinked and Prador Moon).
I’d like to get back to work now, but again I’ve got a sty in my eye and feel like crap. Concentrating on a screen ain’t helping.
Dreams and Nightmares
Damn but I wish I had dreams, and nightmares, more often. Last night I was chasing sheep off a vegetable patch I had in my parent’s garden whereupon I came upon a really tough cobweb made by a large green spider. When I cut the web it collapsed into a powerful spring. When I showed this spring to Steven Spielberg he didn’t believe me, so I threw part of it at him and told him to get it analysed. Next I was in a toilet in which the urinals and toilet bowl folded out from concealment, which was good, because they were filthy. There I found another web and another spider, though this spider was larger and covered in flowers. The spiders then made a perfectly natural transformation into worms I kept in a pencil packet and thereafter things got a bit chaotic…
Why do I wish for more dreams and even nightmares? Consider a nightmare I had many years ago. I was on an island covered in jungle, stepped onto a bridge over a stream and saw what looked like trout in the clear flow of water. Then one of the trout lifted its tubular thread-cutting mouth out of the water and I realized it was a leech. Retreating to the beach lying before a wall of jungle I saw long spidery blue hands reaching out and grapping someone (it might have been me – you know how jumbled nightmares are). Later this person was found, still alive, without his skin… I think you can work out where this one went.
Another nightmare involved being trapped in a cellar. The floor of the cellar was mud I was fighting not to sink into, and while struggling I realized the mud was actually alive. Next, out of the darkness came something moving like and ape. It turned out to be the still living body of a man, headless and chopped off at the waist. But he was okay because I knew he was there to help me. This nightmare I turned into a story called The Halfman’s Cellar which got me ‘honourable mention’ in the ‘Writers of the Future’ contest in 1991 and was published in a magazine called Scheherazade in 1994.
So what do I need to do, eat more cheese or something?
Brass Man
Thanks to Geoff Utley for this picture. It seems that Barnes & Noble might be a little bit behind the curve, but nice to see this anyway.
Brass Man on Amazon, Kindle & Book Depository.
The knight errant Anderson is hunting a dragon on the primitive Out-Polity world of Cull, little knowing that far away a man has resurrected a brass killing machine to assist in a similar hunt that encompasses star systems. When agent Cormac learns that an old enemy still lives, he sets out in pursuit aboard the attack ship Jack Ketch … whilst scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about that ancient technology ostensibly produced by the alien Jain, who died out five million years ago.
On a planet roamed by ferocious insectile monsters the people of Cull must struggle to survive, while they build the industrial base to reach their forefathers’ starship still orbiting far above them. An entity calling itself Dragon assists them, but its motives are questionable having created genetic by-blows of humans and the hideous local monsters, before growing bored with that game. And now Cull, for millennia geologically inactive, suffers earthquakes…
Meanwhile a brass killing machine seeks to escape a bloody past it can neither forget nor truly remember. It mindlessly continues its search for sanity, which it might find in an instant or not for a thousand years…
Microbots
Now this is why I don’t just go for that SF buzzword prefix ‘nano’. It’s great for ‘technology indistinguishable from magic’ but with just a little thought you soon realize that microscopic robots should come first and will be very useful. For example, dealing with cancer doesn’t have to be a nanoscale operation unless you actually want to repair the DNA faults responsible. Microbots in the body should be able to nip in and zap the relevant cells.
There are many other researchers working on bloodstream robots but we are still about 3 to 5 years away from clinical use because of the regulatory timeline.