Alastair Reynolds at Royal Observatory, Greenwich

It’s been awhile and you can only put off your blog for so long. Last night I had to climb the steepest hill in Greenwich to see Al Reynolds give a 90-minute talk at the Royal Observatory of the National Maritime Museum. By the time I’d reached the top I was so out of breath I could only care to take one picture of the view - it’s hardly glamorous, as you can see it hadn’t been a very bright day and the image is not helped by my hands still shaking from the ascent (I don’t really remember pointing the camera at anything particular by the way, just hanging over the rail and clicking the button once).

All in all, it was worth it and it was great to see Al in the flesh and hear him talk about writing, his career, as well as SF and science. The talk was titled as “Science and Science Fiction” and a lot was said about the role of the former in the latter. I wouldn’t want to give away too much about the lecture, but I would recommend it to any fan of SF or Al’s work.

 

One more thing, after the talk was over Al signed my copy of “Revelation Space” and I couldn’t stop smiling throughout the evening – this was the first time I had a book signed by the author and it happened to be one of my favourite writers.

No Blogging Hero

Sorry not to have written here for so long (I wonder if anyone had noticed), it’s not that I’ve been a lazyass about posting on the blog but things have been getting in the way; both, my wife and I having to run between hospitals in the past couple of months and with all the stuff going on in our life at the end of the day I find myself not up to writing here on the blog or anything else really. We’ve had a very personal tragedy recently. Hopefully, a few things will be resolved soon and I should be able to spare more of my attention and time to the blog.

I still manage some reading every day, mostly horror and SF at the moment and plan to move to some more serious, demanding classic works soon, most likely beginning with Hemingway or Conrad.

Here, in Britain, after a number of crappy summers we have been told that this one was going to be the hottest so far and I must say that it was, for around two weeks, now the weather in South East is shite again, which is hardly surprising but extremely annoying. Instead of going out I ended up spending days shut in my flat watching the last 3 seasons of “Lost” back-to-back, practically non-stop until my eyes bled and at night I’d started having dreams and nightmares about the island.

You have to admire the number of twists and turns the writers throw in that show; though it might seem that originally they had no real direction to the story or idea how it might end and were simply chucking things in, hoping for the best, it appears that they knew where they were going all along. Looking forward to the final sixth season (due to premiere in January) to see how it all ties together.

One more thing to get off my chest: got ripped off by the cashier when buying a train ticket to East Croydon earlier this morning. She gave me a funny look before I walked off and only later had I realised why – the lady had kept some of my change. Nice.

Reading List

Well, the summer is finally here; we’ve had some really hot days and hopefully they won’t be the last. The missus and I spent one whole day last weekend just chilling out on the balcony, reading and enjoying the sun (too lazy and too hot to go outside).

On one of the recent trips to charity shops I was delighted to find a copy of Dan Simmons’s “The Terror” which I’ve been wanting to read for some time. The paperback is over 900 pages long but it’s really worth reading, it is so well written and the story will chill you to your core – just like it says on the front cover. The book is based on a true story of the famous Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to find the North-West Passage through the Arctic Ocean on two massive ships Terror and Erebus. The real terror begins once they reach the freezing waters of the Arctic Circle and the ships get trapped in the constantly shifting ice threatening to crush them. A mysterious woman appears and there is something out there on the ice, in the darkness, stalking the ships, snatching men – mutilating them.

I’ve been diving more and more into the horror genre lately; yesterday I went to the local library where I finally managed to get my hands on the latest Stephen King short story collection “Just After Sunset” (they only had one copy and – to my frustration – it had been on loan since December) and Joe Hill’s (who happens to be S.K.’s son) debut horror novel “Heart-Shaped Box”. I would also like to read his collection of horror stories “20th Century Ghosts“. Usually, I try to plan my reading list ahead, but there is always some book or two that I just can’t wait to read and can’t resist the temptation once I get them, so the list is continuously changing, some books are pushed back, others jump the queue.

As for actually writing something myself, I’m currently trying to finish a short story I started few months ago – I always find it easy to start writing a new story, but never to get that middle and end done, unless I already know how it ends.

Valkyrie

Yesterday, I finally got around to watching “Valkyrie” with Tom Cruise (not that I was watching it with him), and I must say I really enjoyed the movie. You really feel for the main character, Colonel Stauffenberg (portrayed by Cruise), despite already knowing that he will not (did not) succeed in his carefully planned attempts to bring down Hitler and his regime. The movie is very tense and urgent, and you can almost feel the paranoia of the characters. In the end you can’t help yourself but wonder what if Stauffenberg had succeeded?

On a more humorous note and while on the subject of Hitler… I saw this Youtube clip and found it rather amusing. Hitler gets upset about Twitter:

Some Like It Short

When reading a novel would you stop every 20 pages and go online to watch a three-minute video based on that book just to see what happens next rather than reading it? Anthony Zuiker seems to think so.

According to USA Today:

Anthony Zuiker, creator of the hit TV series CSI and its two spinoffs, says his new multimedia “digi-novel” will launch a “revolution in publishing for the YouTube generation.”

Level 26: Dark Origins, to be published by Dutton Sept. 8, is the first in a series in which each book will be supplemented with 20 videos, or “cyber-bridges,” featuring actors playing characters from the novel.

The series, written with Duane Swierczynski, features a rogue investigator who hunts serial killers.

After every 20 pages or so, readers will be able to go online to watch a three-minute video. The videos are designed, Zuiker says, “to embellish the novel and drive readers to the next book.”

Zuiker, 40, brings TV experience to what he calls “a triple platform”: books, videos and an interactive fan website, designed by the creators of lonelygirl15, the popular teenage blogger who turned out to be fiction.

Even if it catches on, it hardly seems to be a threat to regular (and I hate to define them as such, because in the past we never had to) books at the moment.

Another report on “Variety” also tells us:

…Zuiker came up with the idea when he set out to write a crime novel and realized he had problems with the traditional format.

“I personally don’t have the attention economy to read a 250-page crime novel from start to finish,” he said. “I realized that the way I’d like to consume a novel is to be rewarded every couple of chapters by seeing something visual that enhances the narrative.”

Zuiker will write a 60-page outline for each book, then supervise a novelist who’ll turn it into a 100-chapter book. Zuiker will write and direct 20 “cyber-bridges,” the two-minute video segments that supplement the pages.

The footage “will drive the reader ferociously back to the book,” said Zuiker. “For instance, you’ll watch a live snuff film that figures in the plot, you’ll give the killer your phone number, and he’ll call you back, and you’ll see an analysis of photographic forensic evidence.”

Hmm…If you don’t have patience to read a 250-page novel then why bother at all? There is short fiction, novelettes and novellas. Flash? Or does it mean you have to turn the world upside down and invent something new where people don’t really have to read “as much”? Many of us don’t read enough as it is, especially the younger generation. It surprises me even more that it seems A. Zuiker would only have ”attention economy” to write a 60-page outline for the book and hire somebody else to do the rest.

It seems that as the technology advances and new ideas, new ways of reaching a consumer are thought of, the entertainment industry is struggling to keep up and with all the new directions opening up ahead it gets its feet tangled up. When I read about these “revolutionary” ways for publishing to find a new niche, a new medium to conduct itself through, I can’t stop thinking that there is just as much confusion still there.

Zuiker’s idea would have more appeal if you could read the book and watch the video on one device rather than having to get on your computer and log on to a website, and then go back to the book or join the online discussion. The ideal medium for this choice would be the Amazon’s Kindle or Sony Reader but neither can stream video (yet).

Living in the so ever expanding digital environment that is being continuously transformed by technology, I sure hope future generations won’t buy into this nonsense and lose their touch with reality. But the current trends speak for themselves: fewer kids read books, and more use the internet and play video games. I bet some text or twit more than they read in a given day. Wonders of the digital age…with this came the minimisation of everything – our technology and our language. The minimalistic approach of texting, twitting and e-mail has changed the way we communicate, the way we express ourselves. It has changed the way we read too. Everywhere we are surrounded by wires streaming not just a current of electrons but data, there is a continuous flood of invisible information being transmitted around us wirelessly. We are immersed in this digital environment and spend hours every day hooked up to machines that produce it, like slaves.

Thoughts about today

In your lifetime you will encounter some (perhaps many) ”bad” people who will, for one reason or another, try and succeed in getting you down, or angry, or both.  Sometimes it will happen when you least expect it. The only consolation you can take away with you is knowing that you are not one of them, and that, thankfully, they are still a minority, a minor obstacle in your life’s path.

Raymond Carver on Writing

“Writers write, and they write, and they go on writing, in some cases long after wisdom and even common sense have told them to quit. There are always plenty of reasons—good, compelling reasons, too—for quitting, or for not writing very much or very seriously. (Writing is trouble, make no mistake, for everyone involved, and who needs trouble?) But once in a great while lightning strikes, and occasionally it strikes early in the writer’s life. Sometimes it comes later, after years of work. And sometimes, most often, of course, it never happens at all. Strangely, it seems, it may hit people whose work you can’t abide, an event that, when it occurs, causes you to feel there’s no justice whatsoever in the world. (There isn’t, more often than not.) It may hit the man or woman who is or was your friend, the one who drank too much, or not at all, who went off with someone’s wife, or husband, or sister, after a party you attended together. The young writer who sat in the back of the class and never had anything to say about anything. The dunce, you thought. The writer who couldn’t, not in one’s wildest imaginings, make anyone’s top ten possibilities. It happens sometimes. The dark horse. It happens, lightning, or it doesn’t happen. (Naturally, it’s more fun when it does happen.) But it will never, never happen to those who don’t work hard at it and who don’t consider the act of writing as very nearly the most important thing in their lives, right up there next to breath, and food, and shelter, and love, and God.”

—Raymond Carver (Introduction, Best American Short Stories, 1986)