On Mr Smith

I'm been working flat out on my new novel Red Claw for the last few months, and have made a remarkable discovery.  When I have far too much work to do, the only way to get it all done is to commit to EVEN MORE.  And so I took time out from the novel to write a clutch of short stories, and then found the novel was going faster than ever.

I don't know why this should be!?!  Maybe it's connected to the old adage of 'Always give a job to a busy man (or woman)'.  Or maybe it's simply that writing these stories - all very different from Debatable Space in genre and tone - fired up my creative energies. 

Anyway, the first of these stories is called Mr Smith, and I'm delighted to say that it's been accepted by Andrew Hook of The Elastic Press, for publication in his short story collection New Horizons next year. 

Mr Smith is a tale of the extraordinary, set in the present day, in and around a South Wales B & Q. I shall say no more...

On Aliens in Aidensfield

I recently got a DVD through the post of a television drama which I hope will go down in history - as the first ever science fiction episode of the ITV drama Heartbeat.

I'm the writer of said episode and, frankly, I can't believe they let me get away with it.  For those not familiar with the show, it's a cosy Sunday night drama about folk in the country, featuring a blend of gritty police stories, heartwarming village stories, and out and out slapstick stories featuring the local poacher, Peggy Armstrong. 

My episode, however, begins with a meteorite landing in the woods outside Oscar Blaketon's pub.  An alien landing is soon suspected, glowing alien rocks go on sale, and some of the characters become convinced that monsters from space are stalking the woods. 

It was a delight to write this piece of mainstream, primetime TV drama - the 'alien' story is in fact the B story, and the A story is a more conventional crime drama featuring 'hero cop' Joe McFadden as an undercover cop at a quarry.  But the fact I was allowed this alien subplot is a clear sign that the makers of this hugely popular show really do have a sense of humour, and enjoy teasing their audience. 

I've loved Heartbeat for years, and a number of writers I know have written for it - including the brilliant Jane Hollowood, who has written some of the most genuinely moving episodes in the history of the series, telling tales of grief and loss and pain and anguish amidst the comedy and the rural idyllness.

I think the secret of the show's success is threefold.  Firstly, my friend, the gifted Archie Tait, has been producing it for the last 100 episodes. (Good on you, Archie!) Secondly,  the original producer of the show, Keith Richardson, still overseees it as executive producer, and has thus been able to keep his vision intact. And thirdly, the series works because it's varied.  It's not grim, or one-note; it's sad, funny, serious, silly, schmaltzy, provocative, all at the same time.  I love variety in drama, as in fiction - the ability to switch from pure tragedy to pure comedy, and back again - and this is a show which has always been able to do just that.

My episode is called 'It Came From Outer Space', and it's due to be broadcast sometime in the autumn.

I now hope to do an episode of Waking the Dead in which the detectives are replaced by alien clones...

On the Future of Batteries

I'm reading Charles Stross' Halting State at the moment, which is a gripping and tautly written piece,  and full of wonderful extrapolations about the future.  (It starts with a virtual bank robbery, and gets stranger from there.)

I've met Charlie at a couple of conventions - he's a very likable, charismatic, larger than life guy, of astonishing fluency and cleverness.  And I also saw him talk at Easter Con on his vision of the future - not about his SF per se, but his more general thoughts on what he guesses will happen in technology and science. 

This is very much Charlie's area of expertise - he's a computer guy as well as a science guy. And he's absolutely on the ball about the kind of technology that's about to hit us - from quantum computing to 'smart spectacles' (which allow us to see the world and the virtual world of computer info or games simultaneously.  Think of Arnie in Terminator with his computer screen POV; that'll be all of us in just a few years.)

At Easter Con, Charlie also spoke fascinatingly about the 'plateau' effect that's affected a number of major technological developments. Because in the 1940s and 50s, many sensible speculators assumed that by the twenty first century there'd be men on the Moon, and men on Mars and a Moon colony, and maybe even starships, as well as flying cars and suchlike.  Well, man did reach the Moon in the 1960s; but none of the rest has come true. And this is because it all costs so much. A graph representing the limits of the possible would shoot up in an almost vertical line; but a graph of the limits of the affordable would be a horrible, boring flat line.  Progress goes so far at Fast; then it slows down.

In computing, by contrast, Moore's Law applies - the rule that says that the number of transistors than can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 2 years.  This is not really a Law of course - it's just the way it's been up till now.  And it explains why computers are getting smaller, and more powerful, and yet also cheaper...!   And it explains too why we are now living in a world in which science fiction seems to have come true - with Bluetooth, Wi-fi, mini-computers, and Nintendos that double as phones. (Have you seen those? They're so scary.) And yet - we don't have spaceships, we don't have teleportation, we don't even have very many electric cars. We are a twentieth century industrial society with twenty first century computing power.   

In other words,  computers have improved exponentially; every other dang thing is stuck on the plateau.

Charlie's view,  though, is that the same plateau effect may start happening in the world of computing - UNLESS quantum computing comes on line, in which case, who knows? 

But his thoughts on the future, in that talk and in Halting State, have made me think a little bit about my own vision of the future. 

That's assuming I have such a thing of course -  because the truth is, I wrote Debatable Space to be fun and entertaining and thought-provoking. I didn't sit down and spend months working out the science and the rules of the future history.  The story, and the characters, came first.

However, after writing DS, and revising it, and after working on Red Claw and Ketos, I've started to realise that my future universe depends on a number of key assumptions. 

And in a nutshell; in my future universe, there is no plateau effect.  Science progresses fast, and keeps progressing faster.  Many many planets are colonised.  Spaceships are huge and reliable and go very very fast.  Doppelganger Robots can be easily manufactured - whole armies of them if need be - and planets can be terraformed at extraordinary speed.  And in the Earth system, no one is poor, resources are limitless, and the Solar System even has its own lighting system so that it's constant day.

This is a far cry from the dystopian vision of much SF.  It's a world of plenty, and of endless resouces.  So how could that be possible?

In a word, batteries.

Yeah, I know, that last line was a ghastly belly flop.  If the word had been 'magic' or 'science' or if I'd used a phrase like 'the exaltation of the human spirit' it would have been much cooler. But batteries? How utterly nerdish is that? A future forged by Duracell?

Let me use another word then; energy.  As a planet and as a civilisation we are now experiencing a major energy crisis: oil and gas supplies are becoming depleted, nuclear fission energy is dirty and too expensive, nuclear fusion still isn't commercial, and 'green' energy sources are hard work. (And can be highly non-ecological - look at all those damned wind farms.)

In addition, of course, we're facing global warming because of the way we run our profligate industrial society. And it's by no means ridiculous to suppose that in 50 or 100 years we'll be experiencing climactic disasters on a global scale.

All this puts a terrific damper on scientific progress - apart from being, of course, awful in itself.   As SF readers we're all familiar with the amazing variety of new inventions that could and we hope will transform our lives - quantum computing (as mentioned above), nanotechnology,  robotic fabricators which can turn every home into a factory, quantum teleportation, etc etc etc. But none of this is much use if we can't turn the lights on.

So in the Debatable Space Universe, to make all the cool toys possible, I make a major supposition; I suppose that some clever spark has invented a battery (perhaps a development of SMES, superconducting magnetic energy storage, or a supercapacitor incorporating nanotechnology, or both) that is phenomenally efficient, small, and can hold vast amounts of energy in compressed form.  In Debatable Space these batteries are assumed; in the later books, I name them - I call them BBs, or B Bats. 

So let's assume we have a BB that is able to contain in compressed form as much energy as the Sun emits in a day, assuming also you have a vast solar panel in orbit around the Sun to capture that energy.  And when I say vast I mean vast - after all, no one is going to complain that it blocks their view.  The orbiting solar panel can be far enough away from the Sun that melting does not occur, but near enough that the full value of the Sun's heat is received.  And all that energy is then stored in the BB.

You then send a spaceship from the solar panel to the Earth carrying the BB; or you transmit the energy via laser beams to a satellite in orbit around the Earth,  if that's possible, though my science advisor let me get away with it; or you find some other mechanism. But essentially, once you have you have lots of batteries all full of huge amounts of power, the energy needs of the world are over.  You can use the BB to power factories to build spaceships to collect more BBs.  You can use BBs to power robot miners to hew metals out of the asteroids.  BBs power the robot fabricators; BBs run our homes, so we don't need a National Grid.

You'll notice this above account is a little short on maths and engineering data and diagrams of solar panels in orbit. I adore writers like Asimov and Clarke and Greg Bear (and, indeed, Alastair Reynolds) who can back up their extrapolations with heavy duty science.  That's not something I can do, not off the top of my head anyway; and it's not where my focus is.

My point is simply this; this one invention makes everything else possible.  The sheer lunacy of the British government's policy in promoting nuclear power (because it makes a loss! it fails on its own terms) is an indication of how inward-looking our policy of seeking out energy sources is.  We use oil and gas - which are the remains of carbon forests, but which ultimately constitute an organic stored form of the energy of the sun.  And we split the atom, to generate energy. And we dream of clean and cold nuclear fusion, which allows us to replicate on Earth the process by which energy is generated in the Sun.

But why not just cut out the middleman - go to the Sun. If we had materials strong enough, we could fire solar panels into the Sun itself.  Our entire planet - our forests and trees and plants and hence our animals - is fuelled by the energy from the Sun which, let's face it, is way far away. But this is a tiny proportion of the energy the Sun spews out every day.

And once you have space travel - there are the stars.  Every single star is a burning mass of energy; and if you take a look at how many stars there are even in our tiny bit of the Galaxy, and how many other Galaxies there are, the mind starts to swim.  Even the human race couldn't use up all that power.

The Universe of Debatable Space is therefore based on three assumptions.  1) That instantaneous space travel is possible by a combination of virtual technology and quantum entanglement.  2) That a new kind of battery makes energy virtually limitless.  3) That humanity continues to screw things up, big time.

Because the universe of Debatable Space is no Utopia, it's no rosy-eyed vision of a world where no one wants for anything. It's a nasty ruthless universe, where limitless resources are distributed in the most appallingly unfair way possible. That's the drama and the ultimate source of jeopardy in these stories; that's the war that Flanagan and Lena fight.

But it's taken me three books to realise that I am essentially an optimist about the possibilities of scientific progress. I don't believe there will be a plateau; I think we'll either blow ourselves up, or we'll spread through the galaxy with gadgets galore. 

And I also believe that even global warming will have a technological solution.  The solution may come too late - the crisis is imminent, as almost all commentators now agree. And the solution may be undesirable; is it morally right to solve the problems caused by technology by using more technology?

 Well, maybe not; but I still think it will happen. Because scientists are smart, and science is powerful; and if it can be done, we will do it. (Or rather, others will - I'll still be writing SF.)

With great power comes great responsibility, as Peter Parker is told, rather too often.  So if at some future date - when? I have no idea? - our energy crisis is solved,  that doesn't solve all our problems. Far from it. 

But it would be nice if all the other things I predict in Debatable Space - tyranny, oppression, brutality, genocide - don't come true.  It would be nice if the human race were better, and wiser, than that. 

Let's hope...

On Iron Man

I've just seen the movie of Iron Man, which is just as good as everyone told me it was.  Jon Favreau, the director, is an actor who did a wonderful job on a kids' movie called Zathura.  And he's brought some lovely qualities to this latest Marvel superhero pic - zest, coupled with rich levels of irony, combined with out-and-out slapstick humour.  Robert Downey Jr. just doesn't seem to be taking it all that seriously - and yet, he is just as driven and obsessive as the next guy who happens to have a double life as a superhero.  It's that wonderful balancing act between spoof and serious-but-funny which I adore.

The movie has a dark political undercurrent, as this comic book character series always did.  Tony Stark is dying of a heart attack, he becomes an alcoholic; and, the killer punch, he made his fortune selling weapons of mass destruction. And this last  element from the original comic books now seems even more shocking and terrible in the context of today's screwed-up world. 

Gwyneth Paltrow gives excellent support as Tony's female sidekick - there's a wonderful scene where she has to insert the electromagnet that is keeping him alive into a  HUGE GREAT HOLE in his chest. 

And Tony Stark kicks the whole superhero ethos on its big fat backside in one delightful moment, which I won't spoil. 

The movie was preceded by a trailer for a spoof superhero movie in which a Tobey Maguire lookalike has the powers of a dragonfly. But the joy of Marvel is that you can't spoof them - the humour is already there. 

Stan Lee makes his customary appearance, as Hugh Hefner, unless my ears deceived me.  What a great life that guy is having. He's now surely one of the most powerful men in Hollywood (after sueing the studios to ensure he got his fair share of the gross - no one ever called Stan a sucker.) 

The Hulk is the next one out of the blocks - after the (for me) staggeringly disappointing Ang Lee version, it'll be nice to see how Ed Norton shapes up.  I still yearn for a movie about the Hulk series (scripted by Peter David? who has an encyclopedic knowledge of these things?) in which the Hulk works as a Mob enforcer in Las Vegas, squeezed into a pin-striped suit.   

I saw this on the same night as the new Indiana Jones movie, which I also enjoyed, though a little less.  The queues for these movies, plus Sex and the City, were amazing.  And it's a joy to see how many people enjoy their movies these days.

And yet...

It would be nice to see a couple of highly commerical movies that AREN'T based on old comic books or TV series.  Get Smart is coming soon - which I remember fondly, but was probably crap.  Hollywood is generating great movies; but they are getting timid.

A possible exception to this rule may be the movie of Wanted, based on Mark Millar's daring and iconoclastic graphic novel of the same name.  I just hope they haven't de-fanged it, or toned down its scatalogical and hilarious humour.

All Cannes-ed Out

I'm now back in the real world, after 5 days in Cannes, networking, partying and, well, more networking, and more partying.

I'm not in fact the world's greatest networker, but the Cannes Film Festival is one of those events that lure in shy, tongue-tied film-makers and turn them into crazed party animals.  Normally, I huddle in the corner at all social gatherings,  staring at the wall,  and avoiding anyone who is important or good-looking or who could be useful to me.  But during those days away in the South of France, I became - I hesitate to say it - dammit it's true - actually quite sociable.

I went with my writer friend Emma, who is also a non-networking type personality, and who nevertheless shone and sparkled for day after day, until the last evening, where the two of us just slumped and became zombies. 

There is a reason and a purpose behind Cannes; it's not all fun and frivolity.  (Although a hell of a lot of it is fun and frivolity).  Yes, it's a Film Festival where films are shown (though watching films there is ridiculously inconvenient unless you're famous and get proper Invitations to screenings.)  It's also a sellers and a buyers marketplace, where sales agent pitch to distributors and distributors pitch to studios and film-makers pitch to anyone who isn't dressed as a waiter. 

But more than anything, I realised after this latest trip, Cannes is a community.  It's where the film-makers of the world converge and explode over each other; and just being there makes you part of that world.  Mike Figgis was there, and so was Tim Bevan of Working Title, and so were Emma and I.  And okay, we didn't talk to either Mike or Tim - but we were close to them!

The world of science fiction of course has a fabulous sense of community - fans and writers and publishers are linked by blogs and websites and cons.  And in the film world, festivals provide the same function.

But it's a very weird thing out there, to be honest.  The glamour is ever-present, and often fraudulent.  I saw (on a telly in a bar, I couldn't get close enough to view it in real life) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the red carpet outside the Palais, exuding wealth and glamour.  But many of the film-makers sipping cocktails in bars and wearing gowns or dinner jackets were, in reality, struggling to find the price of a coffee.  And yet we all feel impelled to join in this mad process of touching the hem of the glamour garment.  Just to walk along the Croisette - admiring the vast yachts in the Bay - soaking in the Mediterranean sun - nodding at friends and acquaintances, and maybe even sipping a glass of wine or a cocktail at the Majestic or the Carlton - it's just an impossibly glamour-soaked experience.  It's like being a film star, without having any acting talent, or having to make any films.

And it's also complicated. It's the third time I've been to this particular festival, and I now have a grasp of the basic principles.  In order to get access to any of the buildings,  you have to be Accredited - essentially you have to prove you have ever worked in the film business.  That's tricky enough in itself, though I'm used to it by now.  But if you want tickets for films, you have to queue on-line;  which means you stand by a computer terminal and log in on the very second the new hour begins, and then the screen tells you how many hours you have to wait to actually reserve a ticket for the film you want to see.  (It could be 2 hours, it could be 10 hours, or even 24 hours.)  And so, 24 hours later, you stand in front of that same terminal and click; and then it's a race to see who has the fastest typing fingers.

What?  How dumb is that?

Tickets are free; but the expense of energy required to operate and understand this system is extraordinary.  There are hand outs to explain it, but they are baffling. There are people at the Information Desk to explain at which cinemas you can get tickets just with a Badge, but they never write anything down and what they say rarely tallies with reality, or maybe it's just that they don't understand my Welsh accent.

And of course you have to know the right people to go to the right parties,  and where to go to get free breakfast,  and where to be seen, and who to schmooze and when.  I used to think that going to this festival was like being trapped in an American High School movie, where you're either in the In Crowd or you're a Geek.  (Naturally, I'd rather be a Geek, but that's not an option.) But my new theory is that the Cannes Film  Festival is a parallel reality, a version of Second Life where for a few days you can live by complicated rules untouched by domestic concerns or real life. 

I'm proud to say I made it to two parties on yachts - the yachts are essentially floating offices for the richer companies, so it's essential to know someone who can blag you on board.  And I met an amazing range of interesting people.  An Irish film-maker who was making a short movie about people's feet as they walked up the red carpet (no, I didn't understand it either - but I spotted her later, filming my feet.)  Two sisters, who comprise 2/5ths of an American movie company called Five Sisters - each of the sisters is a producer, and each has a project, making their slate formidable.  An American writer/producer with an exclusive deal with a major US company who warned me passionately that America was turning into a fascist country, and that concentration camps had already been built in every US state (!!!?)  And a fantastic bloke I met who, when I asked him about his movie project, replied that hd didn't actually have a movie - but he had built a boat that flies!  Yes, a boat, that flies, which he had designed and engineered, and built! And, er, it flies! (So what the devil was he doing at the Cannes Film Festival...?)

And, as always, I saw lots of pals who had turned up, pitching their movies via their newly formed companies, and ensuring I always had someone to talk to in the UK Pavilion.

My own reason for going to Cannes was to meet potential financiers and the like, to get some movies of mine into production.  Like many film writers, I've learned to be pro-active; never wait for the phone to ring, ring other people. And I'm fortunate in that over the last few years I've built up a circle of gifted people who know how to help new producers get their movies made.

But in tandem with the offical Cannes, I was living a separate and alien life, reading and thinking about science fiction.  At the airport, I bought my copy of SFX, which was my constant reading in all the lulls between meetings. I also, I'm ashamed to say, had a look to see if Debatable Space was available at the Gatwick Airport bookshop (it is!)  I then bought my anxiously awaited copy of The Digital Plaugue by Jeff Somers, which I will read just as soon as I've got through Alfred Bester's extraordinary The Demolished Man.

Yes, I'm a true Geek; surrounded by glamour and beautiful women and gorgeous men and beautiful Mediterranean skies, I sit and read science fiction novels.

For this, to me, is the true reality; impossible and magical worlds existing in my head.  

Alt Fiction readings

This is fun...Sam Smith filmed Brian Ruckley, Charles Stross, Mike Carey and myself reading from our novels at Alt.Fiction, and the results are here.

On Going to the Cannes Film Festival

Last year many of my friends went to the Cannes Film Festival - lucky devils - while I stayed behind.

This year, I'm glad to say, luck is on my side. And I'm able to take a few days off to sun myself in the South of France, meet some old friends, and hopefully pitch some movie projects.

The first time I went to Cannes I stayed in a friend's hotel room, on the floor, and we were so broke we had a no-food budget - we weren't allowed to spend anything on food or drink, we had to live on free champagne and canapes.  It was tough, but someone had to do it...

This time, I've booked an apartment off the Rue D'Antibes, and I may even pay for the occasional meal.  And, together with a writer friend, I'll be meeting film financiers, attending a party on a yacht, and generally enjoying myself.  (Though of course - it's hard work too!) 

Cannes is a crazy event. All the film people who live in London and have offices in adjoining buildings move to France for a week and meet each other over there.  The scale of the festival is vast - it's a film festival but also a business conference and also an opportunity for wanabee film-makers to hang around in the hope that fame and fortune are contagious.  I suppose it's like having WorldCon and a Book Fair in the same place and same time. 

And so, my bags are packed, my schmooze has been well oiled; time for the networking to commence...

On the Clarkes and Sci Fi London

Richard Morgan is the worthy winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award for 2008, for his blistering and complex thriller Black Man. I found it gripping and evocative, with a dangerously bad hero who at the start of the story makes a living hunting down mutants known as variant 13s...even though he himself is a variant 13.

But what happened to variants 1 through 12 I wonder? Is there a sequel about them?

Richard gave a very honest and sweet and funny acceptance speech, and walks away with a cheque for £2008, and much kudos.

The award ceremonies were held as part of the Sci Fi London season, and we were greeted by a host of Star Wars characters including a scary Darth Vader and a scantily attired Princess Leia.  I got a chance to meet all the people I only just left behind at the Alt Fiction Festival (oh Lord, it's not Palmer again), and I also had time for a longer chat with the very likeable fantasy writer Stephen Hunt.  As many of you know, he's a real multi-tasker - he writes epic fantasy novels, founded and still presides over the sf crowsnest website and has a demanding day job in the private equity sector.

I also had a chance to tell Ken Macleod how much I admire and love his Execution Channel.  For me, it's a 'stayer', one of those books that stays with you long after you've read it, as you think back on the ideas and the themes. 

After several hours of mingling and sipping (ha! sipping! who am I trying to fool?!) wine, I then rashly went on to watch one of the films in the Sci Fi Festival, Marc Caro's intriguing and allegorical Dante 01.  I found it beautifully shot, with amazing French actors, and full of great moments. But I have to confess that, after watching Battlestar Galactica with all its fabulous action scenes and varied alien planets, I do now find it hard to watch an SF yarn set on a spaceship which hardly ever gets out of the standing set. 

Still, there' s a great finale, and Caro has a magical way with the camera.

Before the big film, we had a sneak preview of the new Batman movie, with a trailer which has been scratched and defaced and mucked about with by the Joker.  This was just so cool....

On Alt Fiction

I've just returned from Alt Fiction in Derby, and I can't beat Brian Ruckley's hilarious and lyrical account of the goings-on there, and on the way there, and on the way back.

Brian and I both read excerpts from our respective works in a Mass Book Launch, with Stephen Hunt and Simon Spurrier.  This was a smorgasbord of fiction fare, ranging from heroic epic fantasy (Brian and Stephen) to neo-noir (Simon's novel about a hitman whose victims keep coming back to life) to whatever Debatable Space might be.

I also did a panel on screenwriting with Graham Joyce and Michael Marshall Smith which was wild and excitable and I hope informative. 

Darren Turpin and Sam Smith, Orbit honchos both, were in attendance, and I was delighted to share a dinner table with Mike Carey, who is currently writing the X Men and working for Sci Fi Channel, and is hence officially the Jammiest Beggar around. 

Alt Fiction is currently funded by Derby City Council and we're all hoping they continue to give their support to the event in future years - it's clearly a huge success and deserves to thrive.

I've come away with a pile of books by authors who I met and admire, and will be reading Brian's Winterbirth, Graham Joyce's Smoking Poppy, Simon Spurrier's Contract and Tony Ballantyne's Recursion as soon as possible.

Apart from the sheer joy of socialising with so many smart and entertaining people, this was a forum for ideas to be thrown around, and insights to be gleaned.  I came back with my head exploding with ideas for new stories, and a yearning to write some fantasy and horror as well pursuing my core passion, hard but quirky sf....

On Eagles That Fly

I found this hilarious and touching - it's Kate Elliott explaining where she got her 'Big Idea' for her Crossroads series, on John Scalzi's Whatever site.

Among the highlights of this piece is a wonderful evocation of a marriage which began with a  double kill.

I haven't read Kate's work yet - but after reading this delightful blog-essay from her, I really have to...

On the Raw Shark Texts

On the 30th April the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best SF novel published last year will be announced, at a ceremony held in tandem with the London Science Fiction Festival. 

This year's shortlist has attracted some controversy, since, as well as works by established masters like Ken McLeod and Richard Morgan, it includes a number of book which aren't obviously SF at all.  Some in the biz have argued that the judges have passed over some excellent candidates for the shortlist in favour of more 'literary' fare. (My own agent, John Jarrold, has argued this pithily, and with his usual authority - he's read every book on the shortlist, plus every single SF novel that he feels should have been on the shortlist.

I'm not so well read, so I'm attempting to educate myself by reading some of the novels on the shortlist that might otherwise have passed me by.  I have Sarah Hall's The Carullan Army on my shelf; and I've just finished reading Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, which I thought was delightful and funny and often very moving.

But is it SF?  Hall himself argues, very sweetly, that he's happy for it to be called SF, because it's not for him to tell the reader how to read it.  That's a devastatingly good and wise argument. 

Being a genre nerd, however, I love to have things more firmly pigeonholed than that.   Dammit, Steven, stop being so fair-minded!

And for my money, though I loved it, I don't think of Hall's book as an SF novel.  Because I didn't, ultimately, believe a word of it, and I don't think I was meant to.

And what I mean by saying this is that for me SF is a genre that demands total suspension of disbelief. However silly the story elements may be (dilithium crystals, Barsoom, Stargazer aliens, variant 13s, um, flame beasts, etc) we, the SF readers, like to believe it might all be true.  We will forgive occasional science cheats, and plot cheats, and even moments of utter absurdity; we'll forgive almost anything really, if we're enjoying the read. But when I journey into outer space, or inner space, I want to believe I'm really going there...

Hall's novel, however, is much more postmodern than that.  It's a book which requires to believe its story; and also to disbelieve it.  It's overtly metatextual, as some literary theorists might say.  And it's very much in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges - the writer of wonderful metaphysical conceits - and Paul Auster, the postmodern crime novelists who is referenced several times, rather than the tradition of Heinlein and Asimov and Reynolds and Grimwood and Macleod and Hamilton and Macdonald, who all wrote about or write about worlds they believe in.

To explain what I mean, I have to talk about the plot of Hall's book so

BEWARE!!! PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

The Raw Shark Texts is about a man called Eric Sanderson who wakes up and doesn't know who he is.  A psychologist explains he is suffering from amnesia, induced by pscyhic trauma after the tragic death of his girlfriend Clio. But then Eric gets a note from his former self (the First Eric Sanderson) explaining that he, Eric Two, is being stalked by an actual monster called a Ludovician Shark, which is a creature that exists in the n-dimensional realm of ideas. 

There's some science to justify this - on the basis that life is a hardy little bugger and can evolve in the strangest of places. So why can't it evolve in the realm of ideas????  As Eric 1 explains to his later self:

     The animal hunting you is a Ludovican. It is an example of one of the many species of purely conceptual fish which swim in the flows of human interaction and the tides of cause  and effect....The Ludovician is a predator, a shark. It feeds on   human memories and the instrinsic sense of self.

 This is superb; but for me, it's also knowing, defiantly metaphorical, and not intended to be believed literally. And I like that aspect of the storytelling.  The hero travels through a tunnel made of books - well which of us hasn't, metaphorically?  And he is almost killed by a conceptual fish - as his personality is unpicked because of his deep grief at the tragic death of the woman he loved.  And again, the postmodern strings are showing, as the novel reveals itself to be 'really' about something other than what it seems to be about.

But, by contrast, a similiar but totally science fictional piece would be Eric Brown's masterful short story The Time-Lapsed Man.  I won't plot-spoil this one, but I would just say that, though the premise is utterly absurd, just as absurd as the notion of the Ludovician shark, the writer made me believe it was true for the duration of my reading.  And of course, because I believe the story is true, I care.

Having said all this, I have to quickly add that if anyone wants to argue that Hall's book genuinely is science fiction, I'd be happy to give that view credence, and shelf-room, and indeed to argue the point over a pint or two, since that's always a good way of enlivening a pint or two.  It's not for me to be the Ferryman on the River Charon, deciding who and who shouldn't get across. 

But my only anxiety is that any lover of SF who reads this book expecting to have a science fictional experience might be disappointed.  It doesn't, in my view, deliver as SF; but it does deliver as what it is, a tour de force piece of lunatic idea-spinning which is full of gags and has some of the most tender love scenes I've read in a long time.

I guess the judges' aim is to challenge our preconceptions about what is and isn't modern SF. I argued in another blog that Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods isn't, in fact, an SF novel, though some claim it is.  (On this score, I'm as one with Winterson, who witheringly refuses the SF label.)

But my point really is to passionately stress and affirm the common purpose of pretty much all the SF that I've ever enjoyed - namely, an underlying respect for rationality and of the ideas and sense of wonder which underly the scientific enterprise.

I may be wrong, however, in my opinions on this book. I may in fact be destined to become the next victim of a conceptual shark that swallows up all my ideas and memories and leaves me gibbering, and indeed, in much the state I was in on the morning after the last Eastercon.

But I would strongly recommend The Raw Shark Texts to anyone who wants a rollercoaster ride through the realm of ideas.  (And I hope my plot spoilers don't give away too much - it's no more than is explained on the back cover.)

On Eastercon

Bella Pagan has written a lovely piece about her experience at Eastercon...which include getting lost in those scarily winding corridors at the Renaissance Hotel.  I had a wonderful time also, and I'm left with a number of rich memories that will stay with me:

 - drinking too much wine with John Jarrold, Darren Nash and Bella Pagan, and hearing John sing a medley of songs from Guys and Dolls;

- marvelling at Charles Stross talking about the future, in his Guest of Honour Speech, with such effortless articulacy and attention to detail and casual charisma;

- listening spellbound to Neil Gaiman reading from his new novel, about a little orphan boy raised by ghosts;

- meeting the wonderful and very charming Tanith Lee, who is astonishingly young considering she's written nearly 100 books. Tanith admits that her writing method involves very little planning, and few revisions; her process is more like the 'channelling' experienced by a medium who is possessed by spirits than mere humdrum writing. 

It's rare to meet so many engaging people in such a short space of time; and (as an avid reader of SF who has never been to a convention before)  a pleasure to so quickly become part of that science fiction community.  I'm looking forward to the next Eastercon already.

Ariel in Orbit

Great news for Ariel, the webguy who is the mentor and designer of this site...He's now been hired by Orbit in a senior capacity as a Marketing Executive, in recognition of his book-selling experience and exceptional online expertise. 

And, over and above all else, Ariel aka Darren Turpin is a man who knows and loves his science fiction.

It's nice to see the good guys doing so well...

Meet the Author?

I'm thrilled to say that today (Sunday March 23rd) Debatable Space is Book of the Day on the Meet the Author site. 

And after today, if you google me you'll see a clip of my interview in which I say various things.

Festivals Galore

I'm off to Eastercon this weekend, for what promises to be a fabulous convention.  Two of my favourite writers - Neil Gaiman and Tanith Lee - are Guests of Honour - and I notice that the magnificent and prolific Charles Stross will also be attending.  My agent John Jarrold, a veteran of Worldcons and Eastercons, will also be there.  I'm new to the SF convention experience, but I expect to be a duck impacting water. 

And in fact, from now on my year appears to be cluttered with festivals and conventions - I'm on a panel at Alt. Fiction in Derby, with the gifted Stephen Gallagher, and then in May I spend a week in Cannes, for the Film Festival.

And between those two events comes another great festival, which I would like to shamelessly pimp - the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film.    If you can get to London do check it out.

Now I need to find some time to actually write novels.  

Don’t Give up the Day Job, Phil

There's a great site called Meet the Author in which you can watch clips of your favourite writers talking about their books.  It features Gregory Maguire singing the title of his new book, Son of  a Witch; and among the SF writers, my favourite clip features a barnstorming performance from Iain M. Banks.

I went along on Friday of last week to do my own 'piece to camera'.   Strangely, I wasn't too nervous, largely because these days I never have time to get nervous (I used to spend days, nay weeks, getting nervous about things! Ah, happy times.) 

And, though I'd mentally prepared a few things to say, I hadn't managed to write anything down. I thought, what the hell, I'll busk it. And, to my own considerable surprise, I began calmly, and spoke fluently, and didn't forget anything I wanted to say when suddenly

 Nothing.

My brain emptied. My throat wouldn't work. I totally 'dried'.

The very nice camera guy then explained I was way over length anyway - the ideal time for these things is 2 minutes, and I'd already passed the 6 minute mark, with footnotes and a prose poem sketch of my experiences running in Crystal Palace Park. So I gulped, resolved to be less verbose, and started again.

This time, I'm glad to say, I was far more economical. I got through about a minute and half's worth of chat effortlessly and then

Nothing.

My brain emptied. My throat wouldn't work. I totally 'dried', for the second time.

This, have to say, is the moment when I realised when I could never be an actor.  It's not just that I don't look right, and I can't act, and I get embarrassed in public, though those are major handicaps. It's my brain. It doesn't remember the end of things. 

     To be or not to be, that is the

Um? What comes next?

That would be me.

Interestingly, the art of classical rhetoric was very much concerned with the art of memory. Greek orators used to memorise their speeches by associating each section with their living room, as part of a visual mnemonic system. You start with the door, move across to the sofa; and when you reach the main part or 'focus' of your argument, you're at the fireplace. (The word 'focus' comes from the Greek word for 'hearth', for precisely this reason.)

I've never learned any such rhetorical tricks; I relied on luck to get my through, and luck failed me miserably.

By this point, furious and battle-scarred, I wanted to start the whole thing again; but the camera guy just got me to carry on from where I'd stopped.  His plan is to edit it together seamlessly, but I'm convinced you'll be able to see a few seconds of dead air, and a panic-stricken writer with a fish-eye stare who has clearly had his data banks wiped.

In the interests of my own public mortification, I'll post a blog to say when the interview has gone online. 

On Heroes

I recently attended the last in this year's SPARKS workshops up in Yorkshire.  It's been six months of intensive work with 3 bunches of writers.  My lot were developing TV series, and a damned good job they did too. And the other groups were working on feature projects, creating a wonderfully diverse range of projects.

I did a brief talk on one of my favourite shows, Heroes. Not everyone loves this show (Jeff Somers is agin it, and he's someone whose opinions I very much respect) but I find it exhilarating and fresh and, damn it all, wonderful.  But, as is always the way, when you have to teach a movie or a TV series,  you look at it with fresh eyes.

And what I discovered about Heroes, on a second viewing with notepad in hand, is how much of it is not great; and how little that matters. 

The stuff that's not great is, really, all the voiceover narration by the Mohinder character. On first hearing, it seems fine; but when you listen again, and focus in on the content - well, it's so much tripe really. It's all platitudes and generalisations, and doesn't advance the story. (And of course, almost all the of the 'science' that Mohinder spouts in his actual dialogue scenes is, um, pretty dodgy.)

And yet, this doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter because Mohinder's voiceover is there for a complex and subtle reason, and not because the narration is needed to move the story.  It was added, in fact, in post-production, always a sign of a panic last measure; and what it does is add style. 

There's a scene in Ep 3, which I screened, in which the Nikki character is burying some bodies in the desert.  (If you want to know why, you need to watch it.) It's classic thriller stuff, well shot admittedly, but very much the kind of scene you might get in any crime show.  So it could easily look, well, B movieish, or cheap tellyish.

But when the scene is played out with actor Sendhil Ramamurthy's beautifully spoken voiceover on top of it, it becomes special, and evocative, and stylised.  It's more than a woman burying bodies; it's a scene of sublimity and pathos.

This is one of the great tricks of the show; everything is stylised,  enhanced, 'more so.'  The colours are richer than life, with yellows and oranges and browns and fabulous set designs, and Indian streets stalls selling brightly coloured fruit, and shockingly bold shirts, and vividly rich lighting.  And the angles are cleverly chosen, bold and striking and disorienting, the shots develop swiftly and in a complex way, and every single shot has a three dimensional quality (something in the foreground, something in the background, something in the mid-ground, so the eye is constantly tantalised and entertained.) 

And the voiceover adds a whole level of stylisation on to this; it makes us aware that what we are watching is meant to be thought provoking and idea provoking and assumption provoking.  The voiceover teaches us how to 'read' what we are watching, in other words.

But Mohinder's prose, as I say, is painted on with a very broad brush; I have a feeling, really, that it was written in a hurry.  But I'm not carping, just observing; and the narration is spoken so beautifully that it's a pleasure to hear it, even if I often don't bother listening to it.

And I came away once more confirmed in my belief that American TV series are better than their British counterparts because they really really care about style, as much as they care about content.  Every great American show has its own visual aesthetic, its own style rules - from the jerky camera movements of NYPD Blue to the staccato explorations of urban New Jersey in The Sopranos, to the lush malice implicit in the cinematography of Desperate Housewives. Whereas British shows tend to be shot in one of two ways; cinematically (if it's high budget telly) and cheaply (if it's factory telly.)  But there's no real attempt to do what movie directors to - to create a unique visual look.  (Compare Spielberg's Minority Report, with Spielberg's ET, and compare them both to Spielberg's Schindler's List - they represent three totally different directorial 'looks'.)

After my brief talk to the SPARKS group,  we did a question and answer session, and it quickly emerged that Heroes  is a show which has really captured the imagination of almost all the writers present.  It's Marvel comics merged with prime-time US TV storytelling skills (Stan Lee even has a cameo as a coach driver.)  And it is, I would argue, one of the most visually beautiful TV shows ever made.

Later in the course of this residential weekend, we had a screening of the classic British film The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp, one of Powell and Pressburger's most outrageous, and funny, and satirical, and thought-provoking films. It features a very different type of hero - a moustachio'd Colonel Blimp who appears in the first scene as a figure of fun, and emerges after the film has told his story, as a man of romance, passion, and integrity, and heroism.  It's a homage to an old fashioned kind of British hero.

There are plans for another SPARKS workshop next year; I hope very much to be involved in it. 

On Jumper

Great film! See it.

Imagine if you could travel anywhere, whenever you wanted.

It's that simple really. A science fiction extrapolation of the back-packer's wanderlust.  You can travel to London, Rome, and Egypt - and still be home in time to watch your favourite show on telly.

There are villains, rather good ones, if dubiously motivated; and Samuel L. Jackson plays a bad guy with a scary haircut. But the real conflict is between two Jumpers, who bicker and end up having a fist fight that zaps exhilaratingly from location to location.

It's a film that has no resonance, and leaves no lasting insights or profundities in the mind. It's just - zap - zap - zap - great fun.

On Eating Elephants, and Ketos

A while ago, I quoted Karen Miller's wonderful Book Swede Quote of the Week about the eating of elephants - her way of describing the process of how to write vast, panoramic, multi-character novels, by eating the elephant a bite at a time. 

I love these wise words; and I've had reason to recall them while working on my own vast, panoramic, multi-character epic Ketos.  The process of writing it has been fantastic, I've had wonderful responses to early drafts I've sent out to friends, but I'm way behind schedule.

Munch, munch.

This means, unfortunately, that Ketos  is not going to ready for a 2008 slot as originally planned.  But I'm glad to have more time to work on it and let it grow.  And I reassure myself by reading the acknowledgements pages of other big books which were delivered late.  Richard Morgan admits that the writing of Black Man took him past several deadlines; Neil Gaiman admits the same about American Gods.  So I'm in good company.

I'm also aware of the terrific importance of editors in this whole writing process.  I've worked with great editors and producers in television (Zanna Beswick and Archie Tait to name but two) and at Orbit, I'm lucky enough to have, in Tim Holman, an editor of great wisdom and rigour and, dash it all, he's very nice too.  He loved Debatable Space and I always admired the fact that he never tried to tame it or make it more 'ordinary'. And he's been highly supportive of the various not-there-yet drafts of Ketos he's had to plough through (if you've never read a writer's rough draft, trust me, it can be a painful experience!)  What's more, his notes have been insightful and superb.  But I did take the hint when, in giving his notes on the last draft, he very kindly said, 'I'm confident this will be absolutely wonderful, Philip, when it's, um, finished.'

Oops.

So it's more work from Palmer on this one!  In order to get it to the point where it looks as if it was written with no effort whatsoever.  And, at Tim's savvy suggestion, I'm now multi-tasking, having started work on the book that was originally meant to come after Ketos. It's called Red Claw, it's a thriller, and an exploration of what it is to be a scientist, and I'm having the most wonderful time writing it. 

The reason for doing two books at once is that, to be honest, it keeps both novels fresh.  There usually comes a point in writing a novel or script when you get jaded, and have to put it aside for a week or two, or even a month or two, then go back to it when your brain is clear again and it all looks new and shiny, and the flaws are easy to spot. So this way, I can balance the downtimes of the two projects nicely; it's like being on a spaceship with two rockets.

Interesting, Lilith Saintcrow also uses this approach; her novels are published one at a time, but she admits that she wrote her first Dante Valentine stories almost simultaneously.

So next year, expect Red Claw and Ketos to start jostling for position in the bookshops. 

Ideally, I'd love Red Claw to come out first, giving me a bit more time to bite chunks of elephantine Ketos. 

And although, quite deliberately, I haven't attempted to write a trilogy, I do hope that together the three books will add up to more than the sum of their parts.  They show different visions of the Cheo's universe, they span a range of styles from tragedy to comedy, and for all the similarities and shared content that will exist between them, they represent three different ways of writing a science fiction novel.

As readers of this blog will know, I love variety in writing - and I hope all three books will give readers a similar buzz, but will also stimulate with their quality of difference. 

On Cloverfield

Was the hype worth it?  Is Cloverfield as scary as its trailer?  (I was blown away when I first saw those wild hand-held camera images  culminating in the head of the Statue of Liberty crashing to earth.)

Pretty much, I'd say. Cloverfield is great scary action, and has one nail-biting sequence that had my vertigo working overtime. I once walked up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and was appalled at how nauseous it made me feel - because of the lean, up and down didn't feel right and I was convinced I was falling.  The Rescue Scene in  Cloverfield had a similar effect on me.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie - it's brief, exciting, and exceptionally well shot.  But I found in the end I resisted the central conceit - the idea that the whole movie we're watching is actual footage from a DV camera held by one of the characters.  I'm not normally slow to withold my suspension of disbelief; but this was a step too far for me.  A monster (no plot spoiler here, we all know this is a monster movie) is approaching, and you're running for your life - and you take time to pan the camera around to take in the view? 

There was several points where only an utter lunatic would have carried on filming, and each of those moments kicked me out of the film.

I think the movie would have been stronger if it had just allowed us to imagine there really was a monster.  The Bourne Supremacy has a similar, jittery hand-held camera feel throughout - but we never query that.  It just feels natural, part of the movie's style.

And the restricted POV of the movie - we only see what our main characters see - was used to equally good effect in Spielberg's  War of the Worlds without any need for explanation.  The most chilling moment is when the Tom Cruise character sees bodies floating down the river; far more powerful visually than seeing the people being killed and becoming bodies...

But I did love the film's complete absence of exposition and narrative information.  There's a great big monster - that's all we know. Is it an alien? Did it have a spaceship? We don't know; and we don't care.

Because it's coming for us and it's time to run...