So, I’ll be uploading the first chapter of my second book once I’ve ironed out some difficulties with formatting on wordpress. It should be up by the end of the day
Sample chapter
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Author Archives: B. John Shaw Liddle
The sick, slow slide into fantasy land.
After the painful debacle that was Immortals, I have watched two films that reassured me as to the state of the movie industry. The first was Ides of March, which was almost good. It had a good plot, good actors, good characters and no ludicrous hats. But unfortunately it also didn’t have any feeling of resolution. It tells the story of a Democratic primary in the state of Ohio. And that’s it. There’s some sex, some betrayal, some death and a lot of politics. Oh, and people looking depressed. A lot.
Thing is, Ides of March would have been a brilliant film, if I had stopped watching films for the night once it was finished. But I didn’t. Instead I went from the movie equivalent of a 20 year old single malt in an Oxford library (Very well put together, quite subtle, a bit strange in a nice way) to cheap ecstasy tablets in a warehouse rave in Manchester. I watched the new version of The Three Musketeers.
Now I might get a bit confusing at this point, because I genuinely got angry at bits of this film, and shouted at it (not as much as at Clash of Titans, but still) – while loving every second of it. It was fantastic. Orlando Bloom plays the bad guy, but using the word ‘plays’ is a bit strong, because Orlando is simply reading the words and flourishing occasionally. He actually does not act throughout the entire film, it’s wonderful. D’artagnan is played by a chopsy fourteen year old, and the film opens with Athos in a steampunk diving suit, dual-wielding some weird pistol/crossbow hybrids. They introduce each character by freeze-framing them and overlaying them with a line-drawn version of themselves. Oh, and Milla Jovovitch plays a slutty steampunk spy, who’s special skills involve duplicity, acrobatics and confusing underwear. This film is almost painfully bad in every way except the one that really matters – the enjoyment factor.
I knew what would happen in every scene. The foreshadowing was basically done with neon crayon, and the plot twist…didn’t happen. The only slight surprise was the end, and even then it only keeps you guessing for a moment before explaining that, no that was just the set up for the obvious sequel. But I loved it. There were airships, there was a generous amount of cleavage, people got stabbed, people got shot, people swung from ropes – and while there were a few lines that need to be excised from the film (The blatant theft of “…and anyone who tells you different is selling something” from Princess Bride), the dialogue is hilarious, assuming you don’t attempt to take it seriously. Also there’s that bit where Milla Jovovitch has to go through a laser – I mean wire – security system which reminds me just a little bit of Resident Evil. At least it doesn’t cut her clothes off.
From the dreadful to the terrifying now – picture a world in which the government is privatising the police force, the rich and powerful exercise terrifying control over the economy, and people who are considered ‘disabled’ are being slowly phased out into a totally passive role in society. Scary, right? Well, turn off the news and watch The River – an excellent series which focusses on the adventures of naturalist Dr Emmet Cole, and the people who are trying desperately to find him. It’s a fun romp through the Amazon rainforest, with magic, creepy dolls and some kind of prophecy being hinted at. And it’s bloody scary, in a creepy, psychological way that has you watching the background of every shot in a desperate attempt to see what’s going to try to kill everyone next. It’s shot using that documentary style, which borders on shakey-cams at times. But it’s done well, and all of the characters know that they are under constant observation – which only leads to an increased sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. It’s excellent TV, and I highly recommend it.
But this isn’t just about visual media, this little blog o’ mine. See, we’ve had a string of news stories over the last few weeks that have made it very difficult for me to write effectively and accurately and without using the word “Sh*tchomper” to describe people. The NHS has been seriously damaged, Alfie Meadows is on trial for headbutting a policeman’s truncheon, Cameron is dining with large business interests who may or may not have directly influenced the demon lizard’s policy decisions, and the tax rate for the richest people in the country has been cut. But it’s okay, because the Olympics are coming, and they’ll make everything better.
So how does this come about? Surely there’s something a little odd about all these revelations, happening at the same time. Surely the end is, in actual fact, nigh.
Well, no. There’s another explanation, no less bizarre or troubling than the end of the world, but one which stands cursory examination. Let us assume that within a discrete society, isolated from external influence, the beliefs of the people shape the ‘reality’ that they experience. The shaman truly dies, journeys to the land of the dead, and returns. Humans really can take on the form of animals. When another culture encounters our model society, they label these magical abilities as delusional. And as far as we can tell, they are. When we investigate the reality tropes of isolated societies we discover that the same logic can be used to ‘prove’ very different things. I would suggest that this is because personal empirical knowledge is impossible to accrue. I watch Three Musketeers and see a brilliantly camp, steampunk film filled with Milla Jovovitch’s legs. My parents could easily watch it and see a dreadful misappropriation of Alexandre Dumas’ seminal work, complete with improbable airships. We’d both be right. It is only by contrasting differing views of reality that we can create a new hypothesis regarding reality.
This is basically a Hegelian analytical tool – thesis (reality idea #1) meets anti-thesis (reality idea #2) and in the resulting explosion, hypothesis (Reality Idea #1 – Reality Idea #2) is born. There are better explanations out there, but I’m going for speed, rather than accuracy. So my thesis is that humanity has become discrete. With rapid communication across most of the world, and the potential to exchange concepts freely (as with in a single society), people now feel that they are part of a truly global community.
And our reality tropes are changing. They are becoming fantastical, based on prophecy and snake oil sales. We have bought into free-markets, we’ve bought into nutritionists, and we’ve bought into the dangers of the terrorist next door, and by doing so we’ve made them real. Okay, so there’s still societies that haven’t been fully assimilated, but it won’t take long. Our reality is being magicalised, only it’s being magicalised wrong. And until the aliens land and go “What? You guys still have poverty, malnutrition and ideological wars?”, there is no one to tell us different.
By the way, I know that I’m right about this. I used deductive reasoning and empirical observations, which means I can’t be wrong. Ha!
Wasn’t Immortals such a brilliant film?
Dear Hollywood,
Fear the awesome power of this chick's head
Fear the awesome power of my shouty face
Fear the awesome power of my ludicrous hat!
Stop it.
Stop it right now. Seriously, you’ll go blind. And I’m not saying this to be mean, or to try and stop you from making money in any way – I’m doing it to protect you.
See, I just sat down and watched a rented copy of Immortals. It’s relatively new, it’s produced by the guys who did 300, and it features Ancient Greek mythology. Also one unnecessary sex scene which manages to be both unfeeling and uncomfortable, a load of rape references and more gravity defying kill-shots than a Mortal Kombat tournament on the moon. I wish I could say it wasn’t dreadful, but it was. Here’s a list of do’s and don’ts while building a ‘historical epic’.
1) Mythology is an important part of our socio-historical development. The philosophies developed by various Greek states are interesting, often beautiful, and inform our culture to this day. Don’t take a legend everybody knows and mess it up with bits and pieces from other stories, simply so you can pad out your film with 3D bits. It’s offensive, and it’s sloppy storytelling.
2) 3D. No one really likes it. The 3D effects, while wearing the glasses, are moderately effective, but nothing that couldn’t be replaced with, say, better writing. And when you’re watching a 3D film in 2D, because you don’t have a 3D TV, it just becomes painful. You are forced to watch as the cinematography becomes obviously slanted towards the 3D audience. Entire sequences have been put into the film purely to show off the new technology, and most people don’t have the technology to watch it in the way it was originally envisioned. Also, 3D gives a lot of people headaches – speaking of which…
3) Writing and plot. Firstly, the epic voice-over died with Dune. It was a little embarrassing in Lord of The Rings, and that should have given you a hint. If a narrative technique fails in a genre-defining film series, don’t try and resurrect it within that genre. As my favourite Wizzard once said; “That doesn’t work.” Even if you go back in time, it’s still not going to. Secondly, your writers are all bitter about the fact that they’ve had to add in ludicrous 3D sequences, and so have given your all of your lead characters Advanced Stage Stupid syndrome. Perseus (Clash of the Titans) whines about how the Gods won’t help anyone, then turns down the gifts that Zeus offers him. Theseus (Immortals) is a ball of mother issues with only two advantages – the assistance of a hot virgin oracle, and his ridiculous speed hacks. The oracle works because she’s a virgin. The magic only works as long as she’s a virgin. Can you guess what happens? Of course you can, because it’s tediously predictable.
4) Combat. It doesn’t work like that. For a start, removing a spear from anything is quite an effort. Even a face. Secondly, if you must write a film set in ancient Greece, make sure you are using the correct period weaponry. Bronze swords were bendy, and had to be a certain shape to maintain their integrity. They were short and wide, used for slashing and stabbing, and they were nowhere near as popular as spears. Also, the Greeks weren’t that fussed on archers, preferring to throw spears. And if I’m honest, I find the whole super-speed thing annoying. Basically, if you want to make a film where one guy is really fast while everyone else moves at half speed, call it “Captain Whizz VS the Ketamine Crew”. I’d be more inclined to watch it then.
5) Women! Know your place. Seriously – what the hell? Women, for the creators of this kind of pap, are apparently some kind of mystical jizz rag. Sometimes they have these weird feeling things, usually sent by the gods, and might express some displeasure about how awful everything is. In Clash of the Titans, Io even manages to follow Perseus around for a bit before she dies of being stabbed by a scorpion dude. Then Zeus (I shit you not, faithful reader) brings her back at the end as a gift for Perseus. In 300 I will credit the writers with a small amount of sense – they allow Leonidas’ wife to be a strong political leader. But she has to use her sex as a bargaining tool first. In Immortals there is a quite frankly creepy relationship between Zeus and Aphrodite (his daughter), and the sex scene between Theseus and the virgin oracle is just irritating. He’s blatantly not that into it (as I shall go on to explain), and she’s meant to be a virgin. No foreplay either – he just drops straight in like she’s a vert ramp on Tony Hawks 3, with no regard for physics or potential pain. Just because you’ve set your film in the past doesn’t mean you can be hopelessly misogynistic and then go “Well, they were mean to women, weren’t they?”. Oh, and while we’re on the subject
6) Everything else. Like the weird homo-erotic vibe that carries through all these films about men, going out into the world together and being manly, and spending time talking about their feelings and rubbing oil into their muscles. Don’t ignore this – it’s probably the only good thing in the film. Make it more obvious, and let your writers run with it. Why not have a gay hero? Gleaming muscles, sword, good hair and totally safe with the virgin oracles.
How about the fact that almost every character is bland and uninteresting, or so archetypal it’s hard to work out which film you’re watching. Or the inherent fascism in the ethos of the films, in which might makes right at the end of the day. Or the fact that Pegasus in Greek myth was born when Perseus cut off Medusa’s head. I could go on.
Instead of going on for days, though, I’m going to try and wrap this up, like a bag of vomit. See, I have such a massive problem with these films because they are badly written, badly acted, and for the most part, they are poorly shot as well. Yet somehow they have been accepted as the vehicle for fantasy in our age. Fantasy is about making important philosophical statements accessible to those who need to know them. It should free people from prejudice. It should give them something to aspire to. It should teach people how to get on in this life. Watch Willow, or Legend, or even Krull. Hell, watch Hawk the Slayer! Watch Dark Crystal. Please. These films are set in another world, purely so we can achieve the distance necessary to observe the morality of the characters unfettered by our links to them. Once you start messing with mythology in an overt manner, you risk that distance, because mythology is our history, even if it didn’t happen. That might sound like a crazy thing to say, but it’s true. Our society is based on myths, a lot of our values come from them, and we use them as analogues for current events. Myths are dangerous, and should be treated with respect. I said at the start that I was trying to protect you. Well sooner or later, Hollywood, you’re going to cause some serious damage to an important ethical resource. And then you’ll probably all die in the resulting irony.
By the way, in Clash of the Titans there are Djinn, a creature from Middle Eastern legends. Their leader blows himself up. This could have only been made more insensitive if he had actually screamed “Durkha durkha Jihad” beforehand. Please. This has to stop.
–The views expressed here are my own, not Deadstar Publishing’s. If I have offended, sorry. Unless you had something to do with making any of the three films I’ve been railing against, in which case I hope bits of you drop off and your condition is investigated by various doctors who all agree that it’s because of shame. There’ll be more blogging later, and I might even do some kind of fiction for you–
Today is a rest day
So, basically it’s a bit of a slow news day. Cameron’s shooting his mouth off about how Britain is still relevant in the most blatant display of denial since Jeremy Clarkson began wearing a jacket and jeans (a move that screams ‘I’m still young’ in sixteen different languages), Lucy Lawless has begun fighting against an oppressive empire, defying the people who think that they control our world like some kind of divine pantheon, and the western war machine is almost ready to swing into action to protect the Syrian people, just as soon as all those buildings on the site of the new McDonalds mega-complex have been bulldozed out of the way by Assad’s tanks.
So I’m not doing a proper blog today. This is a placeholder while I do a load of economics research and start putting together an article. Love to you all.
Some kind of review type thing
Reviews? On a day full of politically charged news like today? When UNITE have declared war on British patriotism by unreasonably suggesting that strikes would be really quite effective during the enormous dick-waving contest that is the Olympic Games? On a day when little Jimmy Murdoch is facing enquiries in America? With my reputation? Are you mad?
Seriously, I’m trying not to let this become a totally political blog, and the guys at Bearded Skull have impressed me time and again with their comic Dexter’s Half Dozen. Also there’s a quick review of the iPhone 4S, and Thomas Blackthorne‘s Point.
Dexter’s Half Dozen
A reanimated Viking
There are a thousand different comparisons I could make while talking about Bearded Skull’s comic series Dexter’s Half Dozen. I could talk about how there’s Nazis and the Occult, linking smoothly with Hellboy. I could talk about the core group of characters, which include the old professor, the hulking slow guy and the nerdy scared one – a clear reference to any number of books for boys from the late sixties, when characters could get away with having names like Derek Dangerous, the Dangerous Man*. I could even talk about the slightly Lovecraftian feel to the whole series – but I’m not really going to.
Instead, I’d like to mention that this is a comic book that features a resurrected Viking warrior called Gorstagg. And werewolves. And sucubi. And clear, easily read dialogue that doesn’t come off as clunky or irritating. The characters develop. The plot is excellent, and the art, while very stylised, works beautifully with the feel of the comic as a whole. It’s an action comic, and each issue contains a decent amount of head-bashing, gore and shouting, which makes a real difference to me. This isn’t the kind of comic to go for if you want a mirror for your angst, or people standing around brooding for entire issues. But if you want stiff upper-lips, lots of tea and the occasional duffel coat, Dexter’s… is your comic. As long as you don’t mind the duffel coat being splashed with brains.
So far the guys at Bearded Skull have released stand-alone issues and multi-part stories, all of which tie together into a coherent plot. My only gripe is that it is sometimes difficult to work out the order of reading, so really, I’d like to see some kind of collection. And basically, more of it. More Gorstagg, more occultism and Nazis, more brains, more plot development and more recognition. I see a lot of small press comics, and not all of them are good in every department. This one is. Read it.
-Dexter’s Half Dozen #7 out now through Bearded Skull Comics. They’ll be at the Bristol Comic Expo, looking bearded and awesome.
*Not actually a real character. Sorry, I know you got excited there, but there is no scope for a movie adaptation, in 3D, with Shia LaBouf.
iPhone 4s
An innovative solution
I don’t care. I really don’t care. It was made by an unethical company who treat their workers like battery-hens, for people who don’t really care about anything more than the status the product affords them. Anyone who says that it’s a quality product needs to go back and look really hard at the price tag. £499 sim-free. At that price, I expect it to run true 4G speeds, be Sirri enabled and make my coffee while it fellates me – that would be a quality product. I can understand that people who produce music or film might, at one point, have had an easier time with Apple. But with all the products on the market for Linux and multi-system users I’m not so sure this really applies any more. And I fully expect that this might draw some flak from iFans, but I’ll take it. Because Apple have delivered sub-standard products, dressed up in a premium skin, since the release of the first iPhone. Hell, even the iPod Touch was lousy. It’s almost like taking bad debt and packaging it up as a AAA rated commodity. And no one would do that, now would they?
So, Apple, please stop trying to tell me how much better my life would be with a new iPhone 4S. It won’t, because if I get one I’ll have to shave off my beard and keep my moustache, wear skinny jeans and no socks, talk about bands that ‘you’ve probably never heard of’ and be a cock. Yes, that’s right, I’m re-branding Apple as a product for people who care too much about themselves. And they’ll never know I’m doing it, because my blog isn’t cool enough to be properly underground.
Point
Thomas Blackthorne's Point
A week or so ago I looked up from the pages of Thomas Blackthorne’s latest offering, Point, and realised two things. Firstly, that I was not going to be getting up before noon on Saturday, and secondly, that I have missed reading science fiction.
Last year I was drowning in futuristic visions – I had three books from Angry Robot (Edge by T Blackthorne, Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, and Robert J Saywer’s Wake) Larry Niven’s Ringworld, a bunch of William Gibson novels and the excellent True Game series by Sheri Tepper. I devoured them all and sat to write what I thought would be a science fiction epic, heavily drawing on themes of dystopia and oppression. It turned into a fantasy book, and I left science fiction by the wayside. But then I re-read Point, and suddenly found myself remembering what it is about this genre that touches me so profoundly.
Point follows on from Edge, the first in the series, in that it still follows the life of Josh Cumberland, an ex-special forces veteran who, in the previous book, made a decent attempt at taking down the corrupt British government. On telly. Yes, that’s right, Blackthorne has written a character who is media savvy. In fact, he’s written a whole host of them. Suzanne, the female protagonist, is a capable, strong woman, who very rarely needs rescuing, and even when she does need it, Point manages to avoid the subtle sexism that makes a lot of science fiction difficult to read. The romantic sub plot is interesting and touching, with several different relationships that effectively mirror each other. It is easy to care about the characters, and to understand what drives them.
The action is a little less intense than it was in the first book, with more emphasis on the political side of things, rather than on the knife fighting and free running. We hear less about Josh’s exercise regime and more about his mental struggle to drive away depression in a hostile world. This shift in pace and emphasis gave me a little trouble at first – I spent three days on the first half of the book, and six hours on the second- but that didn’t really matter that much. I loved Edge, but I prefer Point. Why? Because of the politics.
I don’t like the way that British politicians look at the future. They seem to be thinking in the short term, with an emphasis on the personal pay-off. That isn’t the job of a politician, and Blackthorne points that out beautifully. The corporations are there to make money, the government is there to safeguard the people. In Edge and Point the government has failed in that duty. A lot of my friends would level the same charge at the people in power now. But Josh, after a bit of moping about how nothing changes and those in power remain in power, realises something phenomenal – that they are still just people. They don’t have superpowers, or omniscience, or a special brain that lets them make all the decisions we mundanes aren’t capable of making. And, without giving too much away, he reminds them that they are just humans, same as the rest of us.
Point is an excellent book, a sequel that demands to be read. It reminded me that science fiction isn’t about what new technology we’ll be using in twenty years time. Science fiction is about what we have the potential to become. When someone in science fiction finds themselves in a cage, it means that the author is telling us ‘Be free.’ And I think now, more than ever, we need telling.
-Edge and Point are both published by Angry Robot. You should probably order their entire catalogue and start reading it now.
By the way, I feel I should point out that I don’t think the unions are unpatriotic. I think that trying to hold the Olympic Games here in Britain while the poor suffer is unpatriotic. If you really want to throw money into a crude gesture of faux opulence that devalues the credibility of the entire country, I would suggest we all chip in and get the Queen a vajazzling. She’ll love it, and it’ll only cost us a few pence each.
Children of the Straw
So, it looks like the Murdoch empire is crumbling. Real journalism is making a resurgence, honesty, transparency and ethical practice are the order of the day, and even the government is starting to worry about the power of the press – to the point where they have to consider the desires of the people over corporate interest. All because James Murdoch has stepped down.
Yeah, right.
I didn’t have access to computer games that much when I was a kid. My friends had early Amiga consoles, and later, SNES. I would hear about this miraculous idea that after school, most people went and kicked balls around, but a few (and this was far more interesting to me) played on their computers. They had epic adventures, with graphics that were, quite frankly, mind-blowing. I wanted in to this astounding fantasy world. So every few days I would go home from school, boot up my mum’s PCW, which could word process and save and print and pretty much nothing else, and I would write stories. That was my version of playing on the computer. It wasn’t until much later that I got my first console, a PS One. And that’s when my life, and my politics were irrevocably changed.
See, I’d played console games before – I’d run around collecting rings as Sonic, stars as Mario and chicken drumsticks as that dwarf from Golden Axe II. But now I encountered something new – Final Fantasy VII. Here was a game that matched up to the games I’d played on my mum’s word processor. There was a plot, and lots of characters, and twists and villains and real development throughout the game. And you had to think to win. It was the same with the other game that I got around the same time as FF7. Metal Gear Solid was a story. Not only that, but it was a post-modern story where the characters in the game communicated with you, the player. MGS broke the fourth wall before I even knew it was there. I was entranced, and affected by these games.
By now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with Murdoch, especially if you never played FF7. See, the big bad guy at the start of the game is SHINRA. And the president of SHINRA is a big fat dick.
President Shinra
He’s a corporate wet dream, obsessed with the accumulation of wealth and power. It’s because of him that there’s a private police force in Midgar. It’s because of him that the wealth gap between the super-rich and the poor is so dramatic. He’s in charge, with his lieutenants under him, each controlling a section of SHINRA. Now, the President has a son, Rufus. He’s also a dick. He wants to control the world through fear, and accumulate wealth and power. And once the President of SHINRA dies, Rufus takes over. He’s easily as bad as his old man, and he’s got a shotgun too. In Metal Gear Solid, the over-arcing theme is that even with Big Boss (the bad guy from the previous game) out of the way, his genetic legacy is still putting the world in incredible danger. His actions lead to fear, manipulation, betrayal,
Like this, but more nuclear and less scary.
loss and genetic engineering.
And invisible cyborg ninja and bipedal missile system robots.
Getting rid of James Murdoch is nothing. Getting rid of Rupert Murdoch is nothing. Rebecca Brooks is the same. They are all just indicative of a control obsessed system. Now that I’ve been around for a little while, I’ve discovered something else about games. Even the ones I really liked as a kid will never match up to the ability to create my own reality that was given to me by that old, green-tinted PCW. Games as constrained. When you kill the bad guy in a game, you are simply fulfilling your role in a pre-ordained chain of events. When we turn Murdoch into a straw man and celebrate the passing of his power, we’re doing exactly the same. Or if we want another example, let’s take Thatcher. I find it difficult to write about her without using asterisks, but I’ll give it a go.
Thatcher was a bitch. She broke union power, helped deregulate the banks and was part of the system that has led us into dramatic economic crisis. When she went, she left us with John Major, who I believe may have been dead long before he took the Prime Minister position (clasp your ankles and worship the banks). After Major we had Blair. Joy! So I can say that a lot of the economic issues we face now are a direct product of Thatcher’s deregulatory doctrine. She’s President Shrina, or Big Boss. But killing her, or removing her would achieve very little, as we can see in Final Fantasy 7 and MGS. To win we need to summon Holy,, destroy the economic Meteor and change the very system that is in charge. It’s why as the Metal Gear Solid series goes on, Snake gets more and more bitter. He realises that shooting people in the back of the head, as satisfying as it is, doesn’t change anything. You have to go bigger than that (which is what I reckon Liquid was probably going for). So until the story changes, and we have a free press that scares the ever-living crap out of the government, ignore Murdoch. Think bigger. That is the very opposite of what the people who are in power now want. And that’s no conspiracy, it’s just sound business planning. Just because President Shinra is dead doesn’t mean that SHINRA’s expansionist tendencies have been curbed, and just because James Murdoch has stepped down doesn’t mean that Newscorp have given up their drive for power.
But it does mean that when someone develops Slash-All, there’s one less enemy to hit.
Department of Work and Peasants
Two posts in as many days, you say? I am spoiling you, aren’t I? Well, this one’s short, doesn’t contain many facts, and is more of a short morality story than anything else. And it’s because of this, which a friend of mine posted on the book of face. Thanks.
When I was younger, so much younger than today, I was told that I would be able to achieve anything in this life, as long as I put my mind to it. That was the qualifier, that was the deal – you decide you want to be something, you work hard, and you achieve it. It’s a causal fiction that a lot of my generation and later will be familiar with. My work at school was filled with instructions to ‘apply myself’, as if determination were some kind of magical poultice that would allow me to suddenly become good at leaping into the air, avoiding a precariously balanced metal pole and landing on my back in a heap of foam rubber.
Needless to say, as a short young man with the muscle tone of six-day old milk, the high jump has never been my thing, except for during one bizarre PE lesson where I swear to the omniscience, I flew. Every time my turn came up I cleared that bar. I gathered what strength I had, glared with hatred at my PE teacher and flew over that bar. Eventually, there were only seven or so of us left still jumping. Me, one of my mates, and the sporty kids. I was baffled – this had never happened before. I was applying myself, and it was almost fun. Until the teacher, a short, aggressive and power-hungry man, who I shall refer to as Mr Bonaparte henceforth, informed us that we would be staying in over lunch to continue ‘training’. He was impressed, and he wanted to see just how high we could jump. The lesson was close to ending, and I knew that I could probably manage one more increase in height, and then that would be it. I’d be stuck in PE during lunch, and I’d be the worst person there, failing.
But I had one more jump before everyone left, and it was then that I learned the first lesson of winning. You can achieve anything if you put your mind to it. It’s just that sometimes you have to think about what you truly want to achieve. Had I wanted to be a world class athlete, I could have been. I could have made that jump, failed at all the others and used that failure to fuel me – leading me to become the Olympian I am not today. Instead I realised that I wanted to be sat in the library reading Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. I stretched, shook my limbs and launched myself under the pole, rolled into a kneeling position with a huge grin on my face and was roundly told off for taking the piss. No one thought I was cool, except for the tiny group of friends I already had. But I made people laugh, and I made our PE teacher look like a twat, which was worth it.
See, what a lot of people don’t realise is that the whole “You can achieve anything…” trope is dangerous on a number of different levels. First, you set people up for hideous depression when they discover that this isn’t a short term thing. You can’t just decide to become an awesome artist and then have it happen. You need to work at it, hard, for a long time, until you can draw hands and cups of tea. And that’s upsetting, for a lot of people. But far more dangerous is the knowledge that you can, if you choose to, and if you are prepared to sacrifice comfort, reputation and the skin on your elbows (those mats generated a lot of friction) you could make a Corsican dictator look like an oily little scrote. There are people telling us that we need work experience in Tesco to make something of our lives. I’m saying we don’t, and I’m just as qualified to say it as they are. If you want to work in Tesco, or you can see some kind of way to twist it to your advantage (especially all you burgeoning Tyler Durdens out there), then go for it. Work for free until you can screw them in a way so monumental they have to pretend it didn’t happen. Make them look like twats, and when they ask you why, tell them it was because you just wanted to, like they didn’t want to pay you. But if you don’t see the point in working for free, for a giant multi-national who doesn’t care about people beyond the level of economic production they can generate – don’t do it. Use your brain, and think your way around the situation. If you can’t, talk to your friends. Become a community oriented animal – oh wait, you already are, it’s written into your cultural and personal identity. Use the power that you already possess. Shift the goalposts. Apply yourself.
In every school there are good and bad teachers, and when you’re a kid it’s easy to say “That teacher is bad, why is he/she here, teaching kids. She/he obviously hates them.” But as you get older, you have to realise that most people do things because they think they are in the right. That teacher who gave you stick in school didn’t give you detention four nights out of five because they hated you, it was because they thought you’d learn something from it. And you did, just not necessarily what they wanted you to learn. The government wants to teach young people about work by making them work for their benefits. I think what they’ll learn is to hate it, resent it and fear it. Our economy will constrict further, and times will be increasingly hard. But should we shift the goalposts we can use that hatred, fear and resentment of mindless drudging work to bind us closely together as communities, to instil in us an appreciation of art and effort and love for our goals. We can begin to produce again, to take power away from the multi-nationals, to inform people beyond our immediate groups, to form new, interlinked but independent communities. It is not beyond out power.
As long as we put our minds to it, nothing is.
Manatees in the UK
These are my opinions, not the opinions of Deadstar publishing.
Eric Pickles
This is a manatee. At one time in our fantastic history, people believed that stories of mermaids were linked to sightings of this generally docile sea creature, instead of being totally separate, and linked to mermaids. Manatees are generally docile, have a prehensile upper lip and no hind legs.
A Manatee
This is Eric Pickles. No relation. You will however note the prehensile upper lip, and the apparent lack of hind – oh wait, look we’ve been distracted by the fat man. Okay, so comparing Pickles to a Sontaran from Doctor Who, or pointing out that David Cameron has a very shiny (synthetic) face is fun, but it doesn’t achieve anything, not in the long term. I’ve been watching the news and reading about economics, and getting interested in politics for a while now. My activism has mostly involved standing around chanting and being pushed by policemen, but that’s just me. I like to observe, to learn and to confirm. But I often end up watching people who are intelligent and funny and politically minded get distracted by the outward appearance of the policy makers, or by a few bumbling words. Let me tell you a very short story to demonstrate my point:
Once there was a shepherd. He was worried that wolves might be coming in a stealing his sheep, so he took his bow and arrows and patrolled his fields at night. In the first week he shot three wolves, injuring two and killing one. Then, on the second night of the second week, one of his sheep was acting strangely, cavorting about the field on its own, as if something was wrong with its brain. So the shepherd went over, chuckling to himself about daft old sheep, and the sheep promptly savaged him, ripping his throat out and bathing in the blood. Because he’d been too busy laughing at the stupid old sheep to notice that it was a wolf in disguise.
True story.
This is what happens all too often in politics. We’ve all noticed that Cameron’s a toffee nosed posh boy with crumpet butter running down the inside of his leg, but quite a few people seem to have missed that he’s trying to sell the NHS to private interests, at huge cost to the common citizenry. Eric Pickles looks like other, less massive conservatives orbit him, and we can all have a good laugh about that, oho yes isn’t morbid obesity hilarious, but he’s also launching a series of devastating cuts targeted at local government, which weakens the ability of the local, and therefore national economy to recover. Less funding = fewer jobs = less money being spent = weaker economy. Donald Trump looks like he’s stolen He-man’s scalp and stuck it on top of his own head – he’s apparently giving £10 million to prevent Britain developing alternate, green energy programs. Because it would interfere with his golfing.
Our politicians, the people who are meant to be looking out for us, seem to be dedicated to protecting private interests at the expense of taxpayer happiness or welfare (as in ‘how well the taxpayer fares’ not subsidies). They get away with it by convincing the general public that politics is too complicated for them, that you need qualifications to understand basic economic theory, that the only option we have is to let them take care of it. And to bolster the effectiveness of this discourse, they dress up as clowns and pantomime villains and they say or do things that make it so damn easy for us to laugh at them, or boo and throw handfuls of peanuts. But as long as we’re laughing, we’re not stopping them.
But the worst thing is, in this story, the wolf doesn’t rip out the shepherd’s throat, it just bites him in the leg. The wound goes septic and he loses his left leg from the knee down. And the next time he sees a sheep acting all funny, the shepherd just laughs again, goes ‘Silly old sheep’ and goes to see what’s wrong. And is surprised when it’s actually a wolf again. And again. And again.
We have to stop letting politicians be caricatures – or, if we must allow them their vaudeville, let them be the unremitting villains of the piece – and insist that the people around us understand the actual impact of the policies these people are trying to put in place. They aren’t evil, they probably aren’t members of a demon owl cult, and they don’t need to be trying to cull the global population to be screwing things up for us. They’re self-interested, scared and inflexible. Add those ingredients to money, power and insulation from the economic difficulties faced by the majority of the population, and you have a meal that even Eric ‘Dewgong’ Pickles would have difficulty wolfing down.
Shit. Did it again.
20 Years Later (or why I’m scared of doing reviews)
I met Emma Newman at the recent BristolCon, and walked off with a copy of 20 Years Later, promising to review it. And, after a few days I read it, enjoyed it, put it down and then lost it in the terrifying pile of stuff that is my bedroom/workspace. Seriously, if you’ve seen Labyrinth, that room with all the stuff piled up in it – I’m jealous of how neat tha
t is. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost girlfriends in my room. So I’ve not reviewed the book yet, and every so often I’ll sit down and think – “How do I review this? What can I say that will make it appeal to people?” Because it’s a good book, but its a book aimed at teens, and I’ve always had a reading age well in advance of my years. While most kids at school were reading Point Horror, I was reading ‘Hound of the Baskervilles‘ and ‘At the Mountains of Madness‘, so I sometimes have trouble reading fiction for younger readers.
But I decided today was the day. Here, as Lando Calrissian says, goes nothing.
20 Years Later
The world is in ruins. London is a realm of street gangs and the terrifying spectres of an apocalyptic event seem to haunt the shadows of this scarred city, twenty years on from 2012. Here we meet Zane, living with his mother, a healer. But Zane isn’t the same as the other people who live in this world. He cares about the sanctity of life, and seeks knowledge about his long dead father. 20 Years Later follows him, and three other special children as they grow into the broken world they have inherited.
So I could carry on with a synopsis, or I could tell you what you really want to know – whether this is a book worth reading, and why. I went through the book in a couple of days, which is an average speed. It manages to grip the reader well, delivering a steady drip of information about the Event without feeling too formulaic. I’ll admit, I didn’t like the fact that the apocalypse was referred to consistently as ‘It’, but I can see why Newman chose this device. And to be fair, there is very little detail on the cataclysmic event that has reduced humanity to this state until the very end.
The main characters are archetypal, but since the entire book is framed (skilfully) as a legend, told by an unknown narrator, the archetypes work – and they aren’t sexist, which is refreshing. There is a degree of character development, quite a lot of it focusing on adolescence and the quest to be free of adult control. If I were to be analysing the characters academically I’d have plenty to work with, as the characters rebel against the ‘parent’ figures, and then begin the process of replacing them. But the characters that made this book truly interesting were the antagonists.
All too often in fantasy for younger readers antagonists are portrayed as EVIL with big spooky claws and dodgy faces. I’m guilty of making monsters myself, because monsters are easy, and they are perfect personifications of the Shadow (I’ll come back to this concept in a later post). But Newman has shied away from that, and developed well rounded antagonists who are truly creepy. The Red Lady uses sexuality as a tool to control her soldiers, and while her laws are cruel, she is prepared to negotiate. The Bloomsbury Boys are more the violent, rapacious type, but even they have character, and manage to be more than copy and paste villains. And the other group, who I won’t name or really touch on – well, read the book and you’ll see for yourself. I’d just say that they are well written, and surprising.
Speaking of surprise, we get to the pacing and the plot. Pacing is one of the two area where I found myself struggling. We’re stuck at low speed for the first half of the book, which I found a little off-putting. But, beyond the halfway point, the action accelerates (with a little bit of a lurch at first) and drags the reader to a very interesting conclusion. The plot is well built, and delivers twists well. At no point did I detect overuse of foreshadowing (a serious crime in my opinion), and there were several points where I was lulled into a false sense of security, confident that I had the next event figured out, only to be faced with a completely different scenario. The dénouement is skilfully delivered and borderline disturbing, dealing as it does with some very adult issues, and revealing just enough about the Event to be satisfying.
But reviews cannot be 100% positive, no matter the book. 20 Years Later falls down on language, by which I mean the simplicity of the language used. The book feels like a book for children, but deals with themes for young adults (15+), and that disharmony is noticeable. Dialogue for some characters is crafted well, but others are less believable in their speech patterns. Some of the scenes lose a sense of tension, purely because of the simplicity of language and the lack of sensory focus. The framing device, while nicely executed, removes the reader from the action, leaving us in no doubt that our main characters will survive.
That said, 20 Years Later is a book I would recommend to younger readers who are unfamiliar with the dystopian future genre, and even to people who’ve been reading about post-apocalypse worlds for years. I was impressed by the world building, and by the fact that Newman displays the ability to deal with serious issues, without overloading her characters with neurosis. All in all, a damn good read.
7/10
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And there you have it. Hope it helps you make the right decision – ie. buying more books. And giving them to people. And making everyone read, because reading is important and if you don’t encourage people to read, I’ll come and write passive-aggressive notes on your fridge.
“Glad you’re taking time out of your busy schedule to read this. Maybe you could, y’know, pick up a book instead? It probably won’t hurt at all.”
Like that. Only on your fridge.
Peace
Such fail, the world has never seen
Okay, this isn’t actually as negative as the title suggests. I’m actually feeling pretty good right now, which is nice. I have to tell you that I didn’t make the finalist spots in the Kitchies, but then again, there were some blisteringly good texts among the final five, so I’m not that upset.
The reason I fail is that I have a habit of writing the opening of something really interesting, uploading it to my dropbox or google docs, and then, for some reason now long forgotten, leaving it. Unfinished.
My essay on the transformations of the archetypal Shadow in fantasy literature. Unfinished. My explorations of doubling in the work of Jorge Luis Borges. Unfinished. My discussion of the concept ‘reality’ in science fiction – finished, but so unpolished that it cuts my eyes. Hell, even when I’m doing that whole ‘three examples used to form a trend’ thing I can’t finish it.
But there is one thing that I finished – an essay on Postmodernism and T S Elliot. Which will blow you away, if you’re interested in either of those things. I am, so I’m pretty chuffed with it, especially as it was awarded the highest mark that my tutor (the head of humanities at the time) had ever given out. Because of that, I’m going to have a word with my publishers and see if they might ever want to publish some of my essays (should I ever finish more than one of them). Depending on the response, I’ll post it up here.
But in the meantime, cos I can finish short fictions, honest, here’s one I call…”This never had a name because I didn’t finish it the first time round” or
‘The Number 37 Bus of the Martyr’
The girl sitting opposite me has stumpy fingers and I have to say, I find that appealing in a weird way. It’s weird because I’m thinking of mass murder and she’s distracted me from it. Don’t get me wrong, she’s good looking, but that combination of striking pointed eyebrows and pursed lips could be off-putting in a girl with long fingers. On her it’s sexy as hell. I’m not going to Hell, no matter what they say. The device in my pocket (right beneath my own, stumpy little fingers) says it’s not a sin, not when there’s this much corruption, when the taint is malign and it’s everywhere. I’m just being a pragmatist. Pragmatically sexy, that’s how she looks, but that’s not a sentence that you think often, mostly because we’re force-fed this stupid idea that sex is beyond the mundane – that it’s somehow special and pure and made of fucking cinnamon and glitter, but it isn’t. So often the sexiest things are the apparently mundane, like the way she bites her knuckles when she concentrates. Or the way her hair falls into her eyes every couple of moments and she makes a
-pfffff-
noise when she contorts her mouth and blows to send the wave of fringe back to its rightful place. She’ll still be a beautiful woman when she gets old, I decide, and I decide that I decided to tell her to get off the bus at the next stop a few minutes ago when she stretched like that – not a self conscious sexy stretch, but an honest, practical stretch designed to simply re-locate the muscles and tendons and bones that make up such an economically designed body. She’s ergonomically designed for me, aesthetically. That means she’s fit.
It’s not often I get to make an ergonomics joke. I even manage a little smile.
I catch her eye. Pale blue, like mine but with less grey. That’s good, because this girl’s blonde, and I believe in diversity. Diversity is the soy sauce of genetics, essential if you want to actually taste something. She’s got a shy smile, as if she were a little afraid of me. Just a hazard of the way I look. I can get pretty intense when I’m thinking of a lot of different things at once and trying just to focus on the one but really focusing on another and listening to the music in my designer headphones which are designer, bought because of the quality and not the name and I can say that honestly because I went through the shop and checked. Every single pair.
The next stop comes and she doesn’t get off. I will have to try harder. The next time our eyes meet I will unbutton my shirt a little and lick my lips. That should encourage her to leave the bus. I can’t do it while this short-fingered minx is sitting across the aisle from me, cracking her knuckles in a way that I find unavoidably erotic.
There. Our gazes collide again and I moisten my lips and undo the first button of my shirt. She mirrors me, second for second per second. The skin beneath her shirt is smooth, and marred – no, decorated with a single mole. Her tongue flicks out and oh so gently wets her top lip. We have accelerated with the same motive force. She blows the hair out of her eyes with that
-pfffff-
noise again and mimes taking headphones off.
I am completely off guard. She must be a cop. Or intelligence. Or some kind of psychic. Or she’s not even real and I’ve created an ideal woman to prevent me from doing it. I take the headphones off and her voice is like buttered toast landing butter side up – unbelievable, but I want to try it again and again to see if the result stays the same. I doubt it, but I’d be willing to try.
She doesn’t tell me her name, just that if I try harder and don’t stress so much, things will start to happen for me, that I’m a nice-looking guy with sexy clavicles and that realistically I should get off the bus and find a way to make everyday into a holiday for myself.
I nod numbly and get off at the next stop and walk through terrifying urban jungle wishing for some kind of sign to direct me back to the girl on the bus with her short, cracking knuckles and her weird noises and the nose slightly too pointy to be classically beautiful and the downward turning smile and then I stop, because suddenly it all makes sense and I’m laughing like Jack Nicholson playing the Joker as sirens flash past me towards the burning wreck of the bus. I spend the next six days terrified and hiding, before I realise I’ve done nothing wrong. Then I spend hours trawling the newspapers and the internet sites and the memorials, trying to picture how her fingers must have looked as she pressed the button. I try, but the moment’s gone.
I get on the bus again, every few days, and try to catch the gaze of someone, anyone, daring them to push the button. No one does. I catch a couple of them with their hands in their pockets, and when we lock eyes I blow the loose hair away from my eyes like
–pfffff-
and smile, as if to say “we’re all complicit. We’re all cowards, one way or another, aren’t we’
and then, when they turn away, pulling their hands from wherever they were, long spindly fingers waggling in the breeze, I lean in close and whisper through clenched teeth:
“Is there anybody on the bus who isn’t a terrorist?”
And not a single one of them will answer.