Fascinating stuff.
Category: Articles
Some Tech for the Girls
Or, being an equal opportunities blog, maybe for some of the boys too.
I just noticed Caroline putting on some nail varnish, which she acquired via Amazon. One coat goes on thinly and is allowed to dry, then next coat goes on thick and you hold the magnet over it.
I was reminded of a scene in Total Recall when a receptionist, in the office of the company selling those holiday experiences, was touching some kind of stylus to her nails and instantly changing their colour. I wonder how long it will be before that is a reality? See, advancing technology (well, innovation) is not all about I-phones, E-readers and and how big your RAM happens to be.
Nostalgia Trip.
After putting up that clip of the coming John Carter of Mars film, and then searching for the cover of the first of those Edgar Rice Burroughs books I got hold of, I’ve been pondering on the first SFF books I read. When I do interviews, I often chunter on about first having my mind distorted by E. C. Tubb’s Earl Dumarest saga, but maybe I chose that simply because of its connection to the first bit of creative writing I did in school (wholly derivative stuff about people having their brains removed). But I wonder which book was the first.
There are a few contenders. I know that the first E. C. Tubb book I read was The Winds of Gath. However, did I read that before one of the books my mother – a school teacher – was reading to her kids and kept at home: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. As an aside here I should mention that the second bit of SF I attempted to write, as a teenager, was something called The Crab, the Serpent and the Carpenter … shortly after something called The Planet of the Light Creatures, with drawings.
I also remember my first visit to a library and, when asked by mother what I would like to read, I mentioned that I had enjoyed a story a school teacher had been reading to my class. Knowing the author she directed me to the relevant shelf. The story mention was The Hobbit, and the book I picked up was The Two Towers by Mr Tolkein. But was I already reading the previously mentioned books before that.
Then we get back to John Carter. I picked up A Princess of Mars out of my brother Martin’s collection of books (mostly Louis L’Amour cowboy books), but was I already reading the skiffy stuff then? I don’t know … had I by then started picking up those Robert E. Howard Conan books? And how long was it before I started in on Larry Niven and my first taste of Ringworld Engineers?
Snow in the Desert
Here’s another Christmas read for anyone who is interested.
Short Reads, which were first launched for Christmas 2010, are designed to be eye-catching titles at a low price that enable new ebook device owners to sample some of the best Pan Mac writers when they are hunting around for something to read on Boxing Day.
The 2011 list, with each ebook retailing at 99p, comprises three new titles from three bestselling Pan Macmillan writers – Christmas is for the Kids by Peter James (who has already had huge success with The Perfect Murder ebook, which was in the Top 10 chart in iBooks for much of 2010 and has been in the Top 100 consistently since), Three and a Half Deaths by Emma Donoghue and Bedlam by Andrew Lane. Also now available as Short Reads are Minette Walters’ Chickenfeed, Neal Asher’s Snow in the Desert and Water from the Sun and Discovering Japan by Bret Easton Ellis.
John Carter (2012) Trailer 2 HD 1080p
Okay. I watched one trailer and wasn’t convinced, but seeing this one I now know I’ve got to see this. I think John Carter of (on?) Mars was about one of the first SFF books I ever read. It was the big four-armed green bugger on the cover that attracted my attention.
Update:
I was looking round for the cover picture of ‘John Carter of Mars’ which shows you how your memory plays tricks with you. The first of these books I read was ‘A Princess of Mars’.
THE HOBBIT Trailer HD
Vivisepulture
Here we go. Andy Remic contacted me about maybe submitting a story to Vivisepulture. Now, I don’t really have any Polity related short stories that haven’t already been published somewhere, but I do still have a few nasties in my files, so I sent him one called Plastipak. You’ll find the kindle version here. I’m told:
The official release date is 20th December, and the antho will be going out for the special Christmas price of £0.99p (to try and get it up those Amazon charts!!). On 26th December it will revert to £1.99.
Edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons
Welcome to our anthology, a collection of weird and bizarre tales of twisted imagination by Neal Asher, Tony Ballantyne, Eric Brown, Richard Ford, Ian Graham, Lee Harris, Colin Harvey, Vincent Holland-Keen, James Lovegrove, Gary McMahon, Stan Nicholls, Andy Remic, Jordan Reyne, Ian Sales, Steven Savile, Wayne Simmons, Guy N. Smith, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jeffrey Thomas, Danie Ware, Ian Watson and Ian Whates. Artwork by Vincent Chong.
The anthology is dedicated to the late Colin Harvey, with great affection.
In the tradition of Poe, Kafka, Borges and H. G. Wells, this collection of weird stories are written with the primary drive of presenting twisted deviations of normality. Whether it’s the deviant factory workers of Neal Asher’s Plastipak™ Limited, the pus-oozing anti-cherub of Ian Graham’s Rotten Cupid, the acid-snot disgorging freak of Andy Remic’s SNOT, or Ian Watson’s alternate zombie-crucifixion, each story will drag your organs up through your oesophagus and give your brain a chilli-fired beating.
• WEIRD TALES
• DISTURBING CONCEPTS
• DEVIATED BLACK HUMOUR
• NO GENRE LEFT UNGOUGED
Vivisepulture is an EBOOK original anthology edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons. Vivisepulture can be purchased from www.anarchy-books.com in PDF, EBOOK and MOBI formats.
EPUB versions can also be read on your PC/MAC by installing Adobe’s Digital Editions for free. Check out: www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
Names
So I think to myself I’ll call the main character David Spear (second name chosen because of that cool character in Band of Brothers) then I wonder: haven’t I used David before? Of course I have – David McCrooger in Hilldiggers – so I need a rethink. In a piece I wrote off the cuff, prior to starting Penny Royal, I used a Scandinavian name and, glancing at it again, I thought yes, something like that. The first one to pop into my head was Thorvald, and I decided to do a search on it. Now, bearing in mind that this is about the black AI Penny Royal, a monster (sort of), it was interesting to come up with this is relation to the name Thorvald:
Thorvald the slayer of Nidhogg
Then a search of Nidhogg comes up with:
In Norse myth, Nidhogg (“tearer of corpses”) is a monstrous serpent that gnaws almost perpetually at the deepest root of the World Tree Yggdrasil, threatening to destroy it.
Also:
(Malice Striker, often anglicized Nidhogg)
And thus the imagination feeds.
Penny Royal
I think I can say firmly that I have now started Penny Royal (or Pennyroyal – I still haven’t decided). A week or so back I started making some notes, but then got distracted by my old website and reworked that. (Incidentally, if you haven’t noticed there are galleries and a forum there so, as far as the latter is concerned, if you have something you want to say that you feel is off-topic, pop over there.)
Yesterday, however, I sat down determined to get back on track and wrote my first 2,000 words. It’s nice to know when I’ve actually started a book. Checking my journals I see that I’ve always noted when I’ve finished one, or rather, finished the draft I send off to the publisher, but the start point has always been vague. Maybe after this one I’ll have a definite maybe answer to that perennial question, ‘How long does it take you to write a book?’
So, the state of play at the moment is this: Zero Point is at the publisher and I’ll soon be seeing it again to deal with the copy edits; Jupiter War is slowly fermenting on my computer and I’ll give it another try next year, to see if the taste has improved and what additives might be required; and my idea about doing some short stories is on hold for the moment. That’s all for now – I must get back to work.
Whatever?
John Scalzi has asked those who read his site what they prefer reading about so, never being one to be shy of nicking a good idea… What have you enjoyed reading about and found interesting here? And what bugs you?
Let me know in the comments below…