Is Urban Fantasy Really ALL About Sex?

I remember the moment when the truth dawned on me...I was  just a nipper and I was watching a Hammer House of Horror movie featuring Christopher Lee as Dracula - and it struck me that what vampires do is JUST LIKE SEX.

Except, in fact, it's not; when vampires feed, they take fluid out; but when you have sex,  you...okay okay I'm moving on.  But the basic insight - which came to me when I was 12 or 13 - is this: vampirism is a compelling and unmistakable metaphor for sexual intercourse.

And, of course, I'm  not exactly the only person who's noticed this fact...

The American TV vampire series True Blood takes the implicit metaphor and really bangs it out there. It's sex, sex, sex all the way...the high point for me came when Sookie's brother takes vampire blood in a pill and gets a hard on so enormous he's in agony and has to have all the blood surgically removed from - no, no, that's another sentence I'm not going to finish.

The old Hammer vampire films were relatively tame ; it's not until you get to classics like The Vampire Lovers (1970) that it all starts getting steamy.  (Okay, film nerds out there, correct me if you wish!)  But the icky-sticky sexy stuff was there all along; for The Vampire Lovers was based on Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire short story Carmilla, arguably the first ever vampire story (okay book nerds, shoot me down there too!) Here's a flavour of Le Fanu:

Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, 'You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever'. (Carmilla, Chapter 4).

Of course vampire stories and urban fantasy stories aren't necessarily the same thing; though to be honest, the distinctions seem elusive to me.  Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot is a definitive reinvention of the vampire myth; but it's not urban fantasy, it's small town America fantasy/horror.  And Kim Newman's great Victorian vampire novels Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron are awash with sex (like the vampire stripper scene in which  - no, I'm really not going to speak that one out loud) but they're aren't contemporary.  And as I understand, urban fantasy has to be urban, cool, & now. 

But the general point is this: urban fantasy is a booming genre, as publisher Tim Holman has conclusively demonstrated. And urban fantasy seems to me to be awash with sex.

And are those two things connected?

Of course urban fantasy is often (always?) horror, and horror is by definition a sensationalist genre.  But the thesis I'm reaching towards here is this: urban fantasy readers like sex - more than that they like stories about CHARACTERS having sex - and the whole genre is dominated by an assumption that stories have to be about people, relationships, and feelings. And - sorry, a four letter word is about to be used here - LOVE.

And this is why there's such a huge gulf between the hardcore SF reader and the died-in-the-wool urban fantasy writer. SF thrives on gadgets, gizmos, and huge space battles; urban fantasy is about characters and their emotions.

Wild generalisation? You bet!

I'm not, I stress, arguing that science fiction is prudish; far from it. Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land tapped into the 60s free love ethos and its advocacy of polyamory still exerts a strong pull over the core SF readership.  Anyone who's on the mailing list for this year's Odyssey will know there has been a huge debate about the connections between science fiction/fantasy and bondage, polyamory, and other sexual life choices.

And modern SF writers are far from shy about writing explicit sex scenes.  Charles Stross' superb Saturn's Children, for instance, is written as a homage to Heinlein but is FAR filthier. It's set in a world where humans have died out, and robots are left behind; and these robots are horny and love sex.  It's an adorable tongue-in-cheek novel that's as amusing as it is graphic.

Or take Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, in which  the character of Araminta has sex with a 'multiple human' - one personality shared between multiple bodies - called Mr Bovey. Araminta wakes from a dream to find the Mr Boveys are pleasuring her:

The gossamer breath of nebula dust firmed up into strong fingers sliding along her legs; more hands began to stroke her belly, the another pair squeezed her breasts. Sweet oil was massaged into her skin with wicked insistence. Tongues licked with intimate familiarity.

'Time to wake up,' a voice murmured.

On the other side of her, another voice encouraged, ''Time to indulge yourself again.'

(And after that, it gets REALLY steamy...)

So there's no way that the modern SF writer is shy about writing 'down and dirty' sex scenes in the far future; and all too often these may involve differently evolved human beings, or even acts of exophilia, ie sex with aliens.  (As in Eric Brown's masterly short story 'Star Crystals and Karmel' in the collection The Time Lapsed Man and Other Stories.)

But my point here is that in science fiction and traditional fantasy, sex is an element of the storytelling - it's something characters do in the course of the story.  But in certain subgenres of urban fantasy, sex IS the story. 

In other words, the very premise of a vampire story is a sexual metaphor; the deflowering of a virgin, the loss of innocence, the ravishing of a nubile woman or a virile man, often in bed, by a monster. 

And by the same token, the very premise of a werewolf story is also a sexual metaphor; the beast unleashed, the shapeshifting, the feet that grow (!!! that's called 'metonymy', think not 'foot' but some other body part) and the surrender to wild bestial passion.

Urban fantasy IS sex in other words.  

Of course sometimes the sexual metaphor is underplayed, and is drowned out by other metaphors.  Charlie Huston for instance is writing a terrific series about a vampire in a version of New York (I've just read the first, Already Dead) in which vampires run the gangs; here vampires are the Mafia, rather than being sexual monsters. There are some racy scenes, admittedly, but the dominant metaphor isn't sexual. 

But all too often, these two subgenres - vampire and werewolf stories - offer the writer a way to explore the human condition ESPECIALLY WITH REGARD TO HAVING SEX, and falling in love.  Buffy The Vampire Slayer, for instance, is many things; but the dominant strand (for me) is the story of a young woman's sexual awakening (the whole Angel romance) and her discovery of herself as a independently minded sexual being.  I love the fights in Buffy; but the moments and images I remember most vividly are when Buffy is haunted by sorrow because she has a broken heart. 

Nicole Peeler's heroine Jane True (in her series which begins with Tempest Rising) offers an intriguing variation on this 'urban fantasy is all about sex' approach. For Jane is not a vampire, she's a selkie - half-seal, half-woman - and let's be frank about this: that's REALLY sexy.  If you don't believe me, listen to THIS SONG (chosen by Nicole) about a murderous selkie, and then read Nicole's hot prose.  In fact here's an excerpt (note: Old Sow is the local name in this New England town for a dangerous whirlpool):

I used the riptide caused by one of the Sow's piglets to help me shoot up into the air so I could dive back down like a porpose.  I landed more heavily than I'd anticipated, the piglet forcing me into a strong current that wanted to carry me to her mother. I fought hard to free myself but the current had me in its vicelike grip. The Old Sow was nowhere near the most powerful of the Earth's whirlpools, but she was far too strong even for my freakish swimming abilities.

You see what I mean! If being caught up in a whirlpool as a half-woman, half-seal isn't a metaphor for sex, then I don't know what it is.  And okay, that's pretty extreme and kinky and, er, damp sex; but the sensuality of the language and the intensity of the 'surrendering to passion' subtext are, in my view, undeniable. (Unless, ahem, I'm just really odd?)

There are, I should add, some very graphic sex scenes between Jane and her vampire lover later on in the book; but my point is that it's the very premise that's sexy.  The whole concept of the book is about what it is to be a sensual beast; rather than being a sensible, cerebral geek in nerdy clothing (as I, for instance, am for most of the time.)  

I'm also, as readers of this blogsite will know, a huge fan of Dante Valentine, Lilith Saintcrow's ass-kicking private necromance character in the series of books which begins with Working fot the Devil. These books have a fabulously well worked out future history, and the action scenes are intense and exciting. But the whole point of the book, really, is Dante's love life; her passions, her confusions, her love/hate relationship with her various lovers. And, more than anything, it's about the intense and toxic love between a human being (who becomes part-demon) and an actual demon.  That's Japhrimel of course;  powerful, arrogant, wearing a black cape, patronising  to Dante yet adoring her, and terrifyingly protective of 'his' woman.  He's a demonic Heathcliff; a man so sexy he sizzles. 

And again there are exceptions to this rule; there are plenty of urban fantasy books (especially YA books) which AREN'T all about sex.  (Although even then, if you  think of Stephanie Meyer's tales about a celibate vampire - isn't the absence of sex another way of being ABOUT sex?)

My simple point though is that there's a strong subgenre of urban fantasies which are love stories as much as they are kick-ass supernatural thrillers; and that fact intrigues me.  You couldn't write a crime novel that was more about the sexual and emotional desires of the main characters than about the who-dun-it unfolding of the plot; but in SFF, all things are possible. 

And this is where the subgenre of 'paranormal romance' comes into the argument.  This is a subgenre that buds off from 'romance' rather than from SFF; there's nothing wrong with that in my view, though I've seen comments on the blogosphere that are deeply hostile to this whole literary trend.  Most people who love SFF are attracted to great stories, wonderful concepts, and compelling characters; we're not looking for 'romance' as such.

And yet - a good romance is possibly the greatest story which any writer can tell.  So I'm happy to read SF or fantasy or urban fantasy with sex and love and romance as vital story strands.

But I have to reluctantly concede that it's only the urban fantasy writers who get to write ALL about sex...

Paintings of the Week: Self Portraits

I never recognise myself in photographs; the tall, muscular, heroic man that I know myself to be always get strangely reduced into being a short tubby Welsh bloke.  This just proves that THE CAMERA ALWAYS LIES.

But self portraits by artists always intrigue me. It's said that to paint a great portrait, you have to see into the soul of your sitter.  To paint yourself, therefore, you have to know yourself; you have to see past the facial features to the essence of the man or woman beneath.

There is (or at least was) a  fabulous juxtaposition in the National Gallery between two portaits of Rembrandt - one as a young man, one as an old man. Because of the ways the eyes look to one side, you can stand and be stared at by both men at the same time. There is no more potent visual expression of how the boy becomes the man.

Caravaggio plays a similar trick in the self portrait below, in which he is both David AND Goliath; the young man and the older man in the same painting.

Here's a glimpse into the souls of some great artists.

Henri Matisse

Francis Bacon, 1973

Caravaggio as both David and Goliath

Artemisia Gentileschi: Self Portrait as a Lute Player

Lucian Freud

Claude Monet, 1886

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso on a bad day

Gwen John

Raphael

Michelangelo - self portrait?

Tolouse Letrec

J.M.W. Turner

Rembrandt Van Rijn as a young man

Rembrandt Van Rijn in 1660

The Battle Between Good and Evil

Eagle-eyed Adrian Reynolds has alerted me to this rare piece of good news in the Battle Between Good and Evil...

In a nutshell, a bankruptcy examiner has concluded that Lehman Brothers may (MAY - it's not yet proved as these things have to be) have been engaged in dodgy accounting practices in the weeks before their collapse.  This is hardly news...but the good part is that the principle of Financial Sector White Collar Crime is Still Crime is being asserted here.  No one's arguing that Lehman Brothers can't be prosecuted because they're 'too big to fail'. (They already HAVE failed.)

No one is above the law in other words.

The Week Reviewed

This week I was invited - thanks to those nice people at Working Title Films - to a cast and crew (plus invited guests) screening of Paul Greengrass's new film The Green Zone.  These screenings are always a treat, because you're sitting in the cinema with the people who actually made the film. There's not the usual rush to leave when the credits appear; in fact, applause breaks out every time a new crew member's credit appears.  And to cap it all, Paul Greengrass made an impressive and heartfelt speech at the start.

The film is a KNOCKOUT. It really is astonishing. And its themes resonate strongly with me. Greengrass is a man who is actively engaged in the Battle Between Good and Evil (see the Category on your left for my own blogs on this theme.) And this film is essentially a deeply political expose of one of the greatest lies ever told: WMD. The astonishing opening sequence has Matt Damon and his team of soldiers risking their lives to find WMDs in Iraq where the intel says they are - only to draw a blank.

That's because they never existed! The whole war in Iraq was launched on the basis of outrageous deception; it's one of the worst scandals of modern history. But, you know, politicians bank on the fact that WE FORGET THESE THINGS.

So Greengrass has come along to remind us...

This powerful political film also functions as perhaps the most exciting action movie I've ever seen; my God, Greengrass can really move that camera...as can his Oscar winning DOP Barry Ackroyd.  My one reservation is that to make this movie work as an action thriller Greengrass and his writer Brian Helgeland (who also wrote LA Confidential) have had to create a fictional story at the heart of the true story. And that's a slightly awkward fit. 

But even so, for me this is one of the best films of this, or any year.

The rest of my time this week has been taken up with this pesky little bugger:

Yes, it's the novel that Orbit are publishing this October; and not only did they force me to actually write it, they've now had the goddam temerity to ask me to do some REWRITES.  Polishes no less!  And that's been my week's work really.

It's strange when you revise a novel you haven't looked at for some months. It kind of felt like someone else's book. I kept thinking - Ooh, I don't remember THAT happening.  And it's subtly different to my first two books, Debatable Space and Red Claw; there's more of a single focus, and the style is less baroque. It is however still within the 'Debatable Space' universe; the three books together constitute what I call a 'triptych' (pretentous moi? un peu!) - not a trilogy in other words, and you can read them in any order. But if you read all three they should connect up in various (and hopefully interesting) ways.

I've also been looking at cvs for cinematographers whose work I love...yes, it's that stage in the on-going saga of the movie (Inferno) wot I am producing, with the aid and inspiration of a gang of film people who actually DO know what they are doing...Hope to have more news on that front soon.

I finished Jesse Bullington's fab The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, a full-blooded, blood-thirsty, witty and erudite medieval thriller with supernatural elements.  And I'm currently lost in the embrace of John Scalzi's splendid first novel Old Man's War, a hommage to Heinlein, and a great piece of storytelling.

Oh and I've just started watching Series 3 of Heroes, after a long gap. I'm struggling to remember what happened in Series 2 (ah yes - the girl whose eyes go black!) and I'm afraid I am having a sense of time standing still. Sylar is STILL the villain? But it looks great so I'm expecting to warm up to it soon.

SFF Heroes: Neo

Actually I prefer Trinity...brrr!  But let's not go there.

Neo is the coolest of the cool. He is Christ (aka the One), he is kick-ass, he wears shades, he has superpowers, and he is here to rescue us from the horrible terrible place that is The Matrix.

I love The Matrix; Matrix 2 (Reloaded) not so much, Matrix 3 (Revolutions), let's not go there.  But the first Matrix film came as an absolute shock; who could have thought cinema could be so kinetic, so visually wonderful, so like a comic book? 

There's a lot of great writing in the script by the Andy and Larry (or Lana, if you believe the rumours) Wachowki. Not great dialogue (why don't they get Joss Whedon to write dialogue for ALL science fiction movies?) but really clever ideas. The movie borrows ideas from Buddhism, Joseph W. Campebell's book on myth, Alice in Wonderland, and gnosticism.  And it weaves that into a narrative that makes computer geeks look cool. 

There's one flaw in the story - the good guys are all trying to destroy the Matrix. But I LOVE the Matrix. Who wants to live with the boring rebels in their boring hideaway, when you could be on the inside of a whizz-bang computer game where people can have superpowers?

The screenplay can be read here; and now here's some pretty pics of brooding Keanu in what may be his best ever role, following by the wondrous trailer.

Inglourious Paintings

Stuart McGregor kindly sent me the link for these wonderful images - artworks inspired by Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

SFF Song of the Week

Mike Carey is an inspiration to all lovers of comic books and fantasy. His credits range from X-Men comics to Constantine epics, to magnificent original graphic novels like God Save the Queen. As a novelist he has created a highly original protagonist, free lance exorcist Felix Castor, who walks the streets of London vanquishing and exorcising evil, er, sometimes with the use of a tin whistle. Mike's also one of the nicest guys in SF.

I love his choice for today - my generation too! - but this particular song it's WAY too long to feature on this blog, or even on YouTube. So I feature an excerpt, with a link for you to buy the album if you want to hear more.

Mike Carey writes:

Supper’s Ready Part 2

In Supper's Ready (from their 1972 album, Foxtrot), Genesis created a sprawling sci-fi epic and played it out in the space of a suite of songs whose combined length is more than twenty minutes. Beginning with a first inkling of disaster to come when the narrator sees something alien and inexplicable in his lover's face, it escalates through total war, millenarian cults, extreme body modification and finally the end of the world - although we're not sure whether this is devastation or redemption.

The lyrics are elliptical, and it's never possible to paraphrase exactly what's going on, but the orchestration of emotion throughout is amazing, as is the bravura finish, which swipes the imagery of the Book of Revelations and puts it through its paces - so that when we come full circle to the announcement that "supper's ready", it's the supper of the king of kings, announced by the angel who stands in the sun. Pretentious? Maybe. But back in 1974 (which was when I discovered the album) that didn't put me off at all. I just loved it for the insane head-trip it was. Moreover, it paved the way for the greater glories of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway two years later - The Lamia, Lilywhite Lilith, The Colony of Slippermen et al.

Yes, kids, that's how old I am. I remember when Genesis weren't boring...

Lovers' Leap

Walking across the sitting-room, I turn the television off.
Sitting beside you, I look into your eyes.
As the sound of motor cars fades in the night time,
I swear I saw your face change, it didn't seem quite right.
...And it's hello babe with your guardian eyes so blue
Hey my baby don't you know our love is true.

Coming closer with our eyes, a distance falls around our bodies.
Out in the garden, the moon seems very bright,
Six saintly shrouded men move across the lawn slowly.
The seventh walks in front with a cross held high in hand.
...And it's hello babe your supper's waiting for you.
Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true.

I've been so far from here,
Far from your warm arms.
It's good to feel you again,
It's been a long long time. Hasn't it?

The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man

I know a farmer who looks after the farm.
With water clear, he cares for all his harvest.
I know a fireman who looks after the fire.

Can't you see he's fooled you all.
Yes, he's here again, can't you see he's fooled you all.
Share his peace,
Sign the lease.
He's a supersonic scientist,
He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man.
Look, look into my mouth he cries,
And all the children lost down many paths,
I bet my life you'll walk inside
Hand in hand,
gland in gland
With a spoonful of miracle,
He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary.
We will rock you, rock you little snake,
We will keep you sad and warm.

Ikhnaton And Itsacon And Their Band Of Merry Men

Wearing feelings on our faces while our faces took a rest,
We walked across the fields to see the children of the West,
But we saw a host of dark skinned warriors
standing still below the ground,
Waiting for battle.

The fight's begun, they've been released.
Killing foe for peace...bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang...
And they're giving me a wonderful potion,
'Cos I cannot contain my emotion.
And even though I'm feeling good,
Something tells me I'd better activate my prayer capsule.

Today's a day to celebrate, the foe have met their fate.
The order for rejoicing and dancing has come from our warlord.

How Dare I Be So Beautiful?

Wandering in the chaos the battle has left,
We climb up the mountain of human flesh,
To a plateau of green grass, and green trees full of life.
A young figure sits still by a pool,
He's been stamped "Human Bacon" by some butchery tool.
(He is you)
Social Security took care of this lad.
We watch in reverence, as Narcissus is turned to a flower.
A flower?

Willow Farm

If you go down to Willow Farm,
to look for butterflies, flutterbyes, gutterflies
Open your eyes, it's full of surprise, everyone lies,
like the fox on the rocks,
and the musical box.
Yes, there's Mum & Dad, and good and bad,
and everyone's happy to be here.

There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag,
he used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag.
The frog was a prince, the prince was a brick, the brick was an egg,
the egg was a bird.
(Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail)
Hadn't you heard?
(They're going to change you into a human being!)
Yahoo, we're happy as fish and gorgeous as geese,
and wonderfully clean in the morning.

We've got everything, we're growing everything,
We've got some in
We've got some out
We've got some wild things floating about
Everyone, we're changing everyone,
you name them all,
We've had them here,
And the real stars are still to appear.

ALL CHANGE!

Feel your body melt;
Mum to mud to mad to dad
Dad diddley office, Dad diddley office,
You're all full of ball.

Dad to dam to dum to mum
Mum diddley washing, Mum diddley washing,
You're all full of ball.

Let me hear you lies, we're living this up to the eyes.
Ooee-ooee-ooee-oowaa
Momma I want you now.

And as you listen to my voice
To look for hidden doors, tidy floors, more applause.
You've been here all the time,
Like it or not, like what you got,
You're under the soil (the soil, the soil),
Yes, deep in the soil (the soil, the soil, the soil, the soil!).
So we'll end with a whistle and end with a bang
and all of us fit in our places.

Apocalypse In 9/8 (Co-Starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)

With the guards of Magog, swarming around,
The Pied Piper takes his children underground.
Dragons coming out of the sea,
Shimmering silver head of wisdom looking at me.
He brings down the fire from the skies,
You can tell he's doing well by the look in human eyes.
Better not compromise.
It won't be easy.

666 is no longer alone,
He's getting out the marrow in your back bone,
And the seven trumpets blowing sweet rock and roll,
Gonna blow right down inside your soul.
Pythagoras with the looking glass reflects the full moon,
In blood, he's writing the lyrics of a HIP brand new tune.

And it's hey babe, with your guardian eyes so blue,
Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true,
I've been so far from here,
Far from your loving arms,
Now I'm back again, and babe it's gonna work out fine.

As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs (Aching Men's Feet)

Can't you feel our souls ignite
Shedding ever changing colours, in the darkness of the fading night,
Like the river joins the ocean, as the germ in a seed grows
We have finally been freed to get back home.

There's an angel standing in the sun, and he's crying with a loud voice,
"This is the supper of the mighty One",
The Lord of Lords,
King of Kings,
Has returned to lead His children home,
To take them to the new Jerusalem.

Download from Amazon here.

Are Shit Reviews Good for a Writer’s Soul?

In the last few weeks I've been dabbling in controversial topics on this blogsite. First I DARED TO DEFY the great John Scalzi by pointing out that he's totally (utterly! completely!) wrong to argue that Inglourious Basterds is not a science fiction movie.  (It's multi-genre, but one of its genres is definitely alternate history, a subgenre of SF.)  Then I launched an attack on one of the greatest SF directors of all time by asking, Is James Cameron a Traitor to His Own Species? (Answer: Yes!)

This week however I'm going to delve into the murkiest, darkest topic of all: the topic of how writers should deal with crap reviews of their work.

The truth is that all writers, however established, however talented,  get crap reviews from time to time. However, it's also the case that really CRAP writers get crap reviews, and deservedly so.  Thus,  every writer is disheartened, demoralised, and let's face it, humiliated when the stinky reviews come along.  Writing is a lot to do with maintaining self confidence and self esteem; and the crap review can often be the pin that bursts the balloon.

The great John Scalzi (I love this man - how the HELL does he write so many blogs, AND write novels, and consult for TV, and have a family, and still have a sense of humour?) has confronted this delicate issue head on by actually publishing crap reviews of his own books on his own website.  All the two star and one star reviews he gets on Amazon - he doesn't pretend they don't exist, he just prints them.  And a couple of other writers have followed suit. It's a great way to diminish the writer's agony;  a bit like easing the pain from a stubbed toe by breaking your own little finger.   

I haven't got that much courage, but I am going to give a link to a recent review of my novel Red Claw which is really REALLY bad.  In fact, I've never had such a bad review (well, apart from the Amazon review that said Debatable Space was 'the worst book ever written' or similar.)  It's a STINKER. And here it is.  (Be warned, there's a major - in fact THE major - plot spoiler dropped into the critique at about the mid-point.)

I've  read the entire review; it's intelligent, well argued, well written, and is a devastating demolition job of a novel I don't recognise.  But I can't deny that The Blogger Who Hates My Book is smart and sincere and entirely entitled to his opinion.

Other critics have been kinder, and the major press crits have been highly favourable (though the guy from SFX clearly thinks I'm really weird.)  But the views of bloggers are hugely important in this genre - bloggers tell it like it is, and I value that.  So to restore my battered pride I'm also going to link two reviews by bloggers who DID read the book I thought I wrote. So there's this one,  and this one.  

These things are subjective - blah blah. We all know that.  But I'm beginning to think there's something interesting about the way my work seems to polarise readers in the SFF community.  My publishers, Orbit Books. are also fascinated by this - they actually think it's a good thing! (Rather to my surprise.)  And they even published a flyer for Red Claw containing a blend of my good and crap Amazon reviews for Debatable Space. This came as something as a shock for me - as a point of policy, I stopped googling myself and reading my Amazon crits about a month after DS was published - so I hadn't even seen some of these negative crits.  I'd thought that everyone loved the damned book!

Gulp.

Anyway, the point is there are things about my work that some people love, and others hate.  In Debatable Space, it was Lena's story that divided people - for some it made the book special, more than just a space opera shoot 'em up.  For others, it was a foolish digression.  Stick to the point, you idiot! seemed to be the gist. 

The one critical comment that haunts me - from a blogger called Liviu - is the suggestion that Red Claw is in some way less maverick, less bold, less iconoclastic  than Debatable Space. I hope that's not true; but it might be.  But I guess I would counter-argue that with DS I never intended to 'break the rules' just for the hell of it.  All I wanted to do is write an SF novel that shocked and enthralled the reader.  And I think the only 'rule' I broke is a dumb and stupid rule, and it's this:

Everything should be about the plot.

This is a guiding principle of much mediocre television drama; the note producers and directors give to writers all the time, because they think they're being 'focused'.  (But watch a great TV drama by McGovern or Abbott or Russell T. and it's the minor characters, the digressions, the turns of phrase, all the things that create the texture of the world that make the stories come to life!)  And in my years working as a television writer,  it used to drive me mad.  Because plot is just what happens in the story; the story is why it happens. 

So in DS, the plot involves a war between Flanagan, Lena and the Cheo; but the story is WHY these people get involved in this war, and why we should care. So the 'digressions' about Flanagan's life, and the long sections with Lena, are about the Why. That's why these bits matter; they don't advance the plot, they advance the STORY. And, more than anything, the story of the book is the story of Lena - a thousand years of fucking up, getting it wrong, being too passive, being too arrogant, falling in love with the wrong guy, finally finding the right guy - that's the story that interests me.  The fact she gets embroiled in a galactic war is almost a side-issue set against all that.

That's how it seems to me anyway.  But I think everyone who hates the book hates it because they LIKE plot.  They like plot more than anything else.  And that's fine; but it's just not the way I write books. (In Red Claw, the Story begins with Hugo Baal writing about the biosphere of the planet - the thriller stuff is the plot but the STORY is that - scientific passion for the myriad forms of life on a world run by evil bastards who don't care about alien bugs and their morphology.)

Here's another thing some people seem to hate: Irony.  I use a lot of irony.  But some folks don't care for it, and maybe don't even see when it's there.  And that's fair enough.  There are plenty of books I love which have no irony. But it's clearly  something that's deep in my soul, a warped love of not saying what I mean but letting it emerge through the cracks. 

Here's an example of my kind of irony, from Red Claw. It's a diary passage written by Hugo Baal after the death of Jim Aura - a minor (very minor) character who Hugo, as a self-obsessed geek type, has never really noticed or cared about, until Jim's horrific demise.

From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal.

June 44^th

The death of Jim Aura has affected all of us badly. 

I didn’t know him well, I have to admit. I’ve never really connected with the Noirs.  And there was something about Jim’s staring black eyes that repelled me. Though he was a fine Scientist, albeit of a practical bent.  And, apparently, so I’m told, he had a wonderful singing voice.  A lyric tenor, of professional calibre. Though he never sang for us.  In fact,  to be honest, we hardly ever spoke to him.  Or at least, I hardly ever did.  He was such a reserved and distant individual.  He never got animated, even when the Fungists were in full rant.  He always wore black, and apparently he always knew he was a Noir, though he didn’t have his eyes and the tattoos done until we reached Xabar.  In fact, I think it was only a few months before the Hooperman attack that he made the final surgical commitments.  Though I might be wrong about that, I didn’t really notice him to be honest.

And, as I say, he never talked about himself much. Or, indeed,  at all.  He kept himself to himself, even after our shared trauma at the Depot. Though perhaps by that point, he was in mourning,  for the rest of the Noirs? I suppose he was, in a sense,  the last of his kind?

Even so, we all thought he was rather spooky. Or at least, I did.  Although, looking back, I wonder if -

Well,  I suppose. Maybe - 

But no. No maybe about it!  We definitely should have made more effort to talk to him.  After all, we’re all in this together aren’t we?

Except he’s not. Not any more.

But those black eyes! So alienating.  And yet -

Anyway.  His death has shocked us.  It was an unnecessary death. A foolish death.

The impact of Jim’s body hitting the earth created a vast hole in the ground, deeper than any we have dug.  We attempted to retrieve the body but a landslide took it away from us.  We have analysed soil samples and discovered that at a depth of forty metres and more the soil here is infested with and almost possessed by a complex interlocking micro-organism.  The soil in this region is, it seems, alive.

But I have no zest for analysing this in any more detail. Jim was a bright and brilliant  spirit, so I’m now told, and had a dark wit and a wonderful sense of humour, though I never experienced it myself, as well as black eyes.  I feel his death as though it were my own, well okay, not quite, but I am certainly very moved by it. 

Things are not good.

How does that advance the plot? It doesn't!  But have you ever had that shocking experience - of realising that someone 'ordinary' who you've barely noticed is actually complex and intriguing, and has just as much of a rich inner life as you do? And you've missed the moment to find out more, to get to know this person properly?   If so, you might like the way I write here. If not, well, not.

But my honest feeling is - and I know I shouldn't say this!  -  if you're someone who  likes everything to be about the plot,   and who  doesn't like irony, then please,  steer clear. Don't read my books.

(But do BUY my books; buy half a dozen copies of each in fact; and give them as Christmas presents to your enemies.  It will, trust me, be a hugely satisfying and deeply ironical revenge...)

That just leaves the question that started this blog: Are Shit Reviews Good for a Writer's Soul?

Curiously, I think they are.  I had three comments about Red Claw  over the weekend. On Saturday morning,  I spoke on the phone to my former Bill script editor - the smartest, most creatively impressive woman I know  - and though she' s no SF fan, she told me how much she adored Red Claw and the way it's written. Then later the same day, a female friend who is a social worker and who also doesn't read much SF told me she'd just read Debatable Space and loved it - mainly because of the portrait it gives of the flawed, fallible 1000 year old Lena.

And that's nice. Writers like to be praised. If fact, we like it too  much; we spend our days writing just IN ORDER to be praised.  And although praise is nice, it doesn't do much to help the quality of the work.

But that same day I read the piece by the Blogger Who Hates My Book - and it filled me with a huge creative energy.  It helped define me as a writer; it energised me in the writing of my new novel.

Without occasional shit reviews, in other words,  writers can get flabby, lazy, and timid. 

So I truly believe that a certain amount of virtriol - ah! I can taste it in my nostrils now! - can be good for a writer's soul.

Paintings of the Week: the Thames

Houses of Parliament, Sunset, by Claude Monet

This week all the paintings I feature, by various artists, are of the River Thames.

I remember when I first came to London from University, and a gang of us stood at the bank of the Thames, and looked at the light display on the roof of the Hayward Gallery, and it was well...magic.  Venice has the same effect on me; so does Paris; but it's the combination of water and city that = magic.

Edinburgh is the one exception; there's  a furrow through the city where the river ought to be, but there isn't one; and it's the castle on the hilltop that makes the city magic.   

Years ago I had a conversation with an Indian man living in my street who talked of a region in India which locals believed was haunted; or, more accurately, it was as if the place itself had a soul.  And I certainly feel that often; that's why I love certain places, which create in me certain particular moods. 

My first radio play Gin and Rum was about a man obsessed with London who could actually hear and see the ghosts of those who had died in the streets of London; he had an extraordinary memory for facts, but he didn't just remember history, he felt it.

I'm not quite as bonkers as that; but I do believe cities have souls.   And London's soul is best felt along the river Thames.

Several of the paintings below (and above) are by Turner, Whistler or Monet.  These artists connect in complex ways. When Monet visited London in 1870-1 he visited Whistler in his studio, and saw some of the great works of Turner (who died in 1851) at the National Gallery. 

Like Turner (who once allegedly had himself tied to the mast of a ship at sea in order to paint the effects of wind and water) Monet took pride in braving physical dangers to paint 'en plein air'.  Ironically, though, it was the London smog which was most injurious to the health of artists; and it was the smog too which helped created the astonishing sunsets which Monet painted. Even taking into account Monet's impressionist technique, London simply doesn't look like that now.

Also featured are Canaletto, who loved London almost as much as Venice, and Fauvist Andre Derain.

A View of His Majesty's Dock Yard at Woolwich by John Clevely the Younger

Brown and Silver, Old Battersea Bridge by James McNeill Whistler

Somerset House from the Thames by Edward Dayes

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by J.M.W. Turner

The Thames Estuary by Philip Wilson Steer

London Seen Through the Arches of Westminster Bridge by Canaletto

Nocturne in Blue and Silver by James McNeill Whistler

Old Battersea Bridge by James McNeill Whistler

Houses of Parliament, Effect of Sunlight in Fog by Claude Monet (subtly different to the top one!)

The Thames and the City of London from Richmond House by Canaletto

The Burning of the House of Lord and Commons by J.M.W. Turner (more flames than the Burning of Parliament, above)

The Pool of London by Andre Derain

The Week Reviewed

A package arrived in the post this week, and inside I found this:

Yes, it's the actual paper version of the cover of Version 43.   I'm currently working on some tweaks and cuts on the maunscript, and then the book goes into proof stage.  It's a bit of a shock looking at it again - it's a while since I delivered it to Orbit - because it's a time capsule of the person I was when I wrote it.  And it's not, by any means, your usual cybernetic cop in a universe founded by renegades and outlaws kicking ass in a Beckettian nihilistic universe pulp thriller science fiction fantasy horror novel - nope, it's even stranger than that.

Last week I went to see a highly enjoyable fantasy epic - Solomon Kane, based on the stories by Conan creator Robert E. Howard. And that gives me an excuse to show the poster:

 The movie was, I noticed, co-produced by Davis Entertainment who made Predator, and it's written and directed by Michael J. Bassett, a Brit who has been able to steer a path through the studio system to create a movie that is commercial, kick ass, and wonderfully visual; but also full of heart and moral intelligence.  I met Michael some years back when I was a development executive at Scottish Television, so I dropped him a line to say how much I enjoyed his movie.  And I'm glad to say he has now spent a little time lurking on Debatable Spaces.

Also this week, I got an email from some friends of mine with THIS image:

Fabulous isn't it?  It's a kid's book but I'm a big kid at heart, so I've ordered it at Amazon.  The story appears to be what the title says - a Quest for Warrior Sheep.  Author Christopher Russell is a hugely successful TV writer, who's written for major crime series like The Bill (where we met), A Touch of Frost and Midsomer Murders, and he is now an award winning children's writer, and he's cowritten Warrior Sheep with his wife Christine.  Chris and Christine are a class act and it's lovely to see them writing a novel that is even more ridiculous than, um, the ones I write.

It's felt like a major week for me in terms of my Welsh film noir, but nothing is definite yet so I'll just keep fingers crossed for now.  And I'm continuing to explore art stories for my radio drama which records in November. 

Debatable Spaces meanwhile has been as busy as ever...Mike Cobley popped in with an SFF Song of the Week with what I think must be the most hilarious intro to date.  If you've not listened to any of these, explore - they're in the Category on the left - because I really feel it's an amazing way to a) waste time and b) really get to know what inspires talented SFF writers like Lilith Saintcrow, Nicole Peeler, Al Reynolds, Tony Ballantyne and a fair host of others. (I've scheduled Mike Carey in for next week.)  Where else would you meet these guys and learn the secrets of their souls! (Unless you resort to stalking and the use of covert surveillance equipment.)

Also, I've been writing some rather forthright opinion pieces recently - like, Why John Scalzi is Wrong, and Is James Cameron a Traitor to His Own Species? And I'll be writing a few more of these in months to come, though that'll depend on how fast the novel is progressing.   

And treats in store include (I hope!) a guest blog about graphic novels writer Warren Ellis whose books I just LOVE.  And also a guest blog about telly drama and why it should be RUDER.

The Battle Between Good and Evil: Let’s Save Capitalism

My friend Adrian Reynolds has once again sourced a definitive piece about the current financial crisis which we are living  through, and which threatens to destroy our livelihoods and wreck our children's future. (Yup, THAT crisis.)

It's a piece in the Huffington Post by Les Leopold. Read it here.   It's a an argument which I don't think anyone could seriously contest; compare and contrast with the pieces by Polly Toynbee and Mark Taibbi I've already referenced in this on-going feature. 

The point is, some people want capitalism to fail; but I'm not one of them. I want capitalism to return. For what we have at the moment is not capitalism at all; it's a billionaire bail-out society which is unfair, unstable,  and profits no-one apart from rich bastards.  Think about the Russian Tsar's empire in the early years of the twentieth century; that's just about how crap it is now.

Leopold ends his piece with a series of practical solutions, all of which are doomed to fail.  Because they lack theatricality. They are technical solutions  to what is essentially a moral and ethical crisis. For that reason, I prefer the RICO Act solution.  It sends a message: astute business practices and racketeering ARE different things, and must not ever be confused; hence, white-collar crime should lead inexorably to jail time.

Hey, serious stuff, for what is essentially a frivolous website about science fiction and fantasy and movies.  Next week will feature some cool images of Neo in the Matrix; that's the kind of site this is, most of the time.  Neo, of course, is a HERO, who saves his world from a terrible conspiracy that denies ordinary people the chance to live ordinary decent lives.

In real life - there are no heroes! We surrender to evil conspiracies! We allow our ordinary decent lives to be totally fucked up by short sighted selfish bastards!

Or do we?

SFF Song of the Week

This week's song comes from my fellow Orbit author Mike Cobley, author of widescreen SF epics Seed of Earth and The Orphaned World, numerous short stories, and the Shadowkings trilogy.  Mike and I shared a magazine feature recently when a British weekend magazine published a list of presents suitable for gadget fiends...and we both got our books on the shelves, next to some utterly ridiculous gadgets.

Mike Cobley writes:

 Last century, at about the 4/5ths mark, I had just been sorrowfully yet firmly ejected from Strathclyde University (BSc Production Engineering & Beer Bar Lager), having failed to pass the 2nd year exams. Such are the twists and turns of life's twisty turny laundry chute. However, I had got involved with the entertainments department at Strathclyde Students Union, persuading 1st the internal radio station to let me have a stab at playing records and, like, being a DJ, man! before becoming an official Ents crew member (in as much as any of us reprobates were, like, official). This was 1979, so it was a pre-digital and inherently grimy world of discos and gigs and guzzling tins of lager (free to Ents staff, heh heh) and smoking Benson & Hedges (this was before my body staged a revolt about a decade later). So anyway, amongst the very many now-classic choons and toetappers that passed across the twin decks (usually a Citronic Mk2 with Garrard turntables) was - Space Station No 5, as sung by Sammy Hagar, from the live album 'Loud and Clear'.
 
The song originally appeared on Montrose's self-titled album, out in 1973. But when I first heard it, about 1980, this was of course years and years before Babylon 5 was even so much as a twinkle in JM Straczynski's eye. But listening to it again soon after B5 hit the screens it struck me as the natural, if unofficial, theme song for the series. The original album version is cool in its way, but the live version just completely tears loose, hammers along with a breathless urgency. Entirely fantastic.

Start, with the sun
And move on out
The future's in the skies above
The heavens unfold
And a new star is born
Space and time makin' love

Chorus:
Oh what a time we had
Living on the ground
I've moved to station Number 5
See you next time around,
Next time around

As far you want, as close as you need
It's all in the mind, you know
This old world hasn't really seen it's day
It's here, time to go

Chorus

Remember when it was so clear
We were young, but the memory still remains
To pick fruit from a tree
Fish from the seas
Now nothing's left here, but the stains
Well I can't cry no more
Can only be glad
There's other places we can be
If the time suits you right
I'm leaving tonight
Come fly away
With me!
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Oh, yeah
Start, with the sun
And move on out
The future's in the skies above
The heavens unfold
A new star is born
Space and time makin' love

Chorus

Is James Cameron a Traitor to his Own Species?

 Let me get one thing straight, before I commence my rant for today: Avatar is one of the best things to happen to the science fictional world in years.  It's raised the credibility of the genre in the movie theatres - after all those Harry Potters and Hobbits in Pursuit of Rings movies and other fantasy epics of recent years. It's got the world excited about aliens and space exploration. And it's at the vanguard of a whole new generation of incredibly exciting and visually extraordinary blockbusters.  To cap it all, James Cameron is a director I admire enormously.

But he is, as I say, a traitor to his own species.

And he's also made a film that in my view - despite breaking all box office records, and although it's  pretty damned good - isn't THAT good, or that special.  It's fun, it's certainly beautiful, the ending is exciting.  But I don't really 'get' what's so revolutionary about the 3D effects. Compared to Up, it's no big deal; that movie set the bar for CGI 3D movie spectacle and Avatar comes nowhere near it.

Nor do I think the film is as visually extraordinary as everyone claims. The scenery and action scenes are marvellous, but it all lacks imagination. How come the aliens are blue, but the trees are made of bark and the leaves are GREEN? It could all be, well, much more alien. 

There's nothing in this film to compare with Predator, perhaps the most visually spectacular SF film ever made. Director John McTiernan and cinematographer Donald McAlpine created a movie that is both a nail-biting kick-ass actioner, and a piece of modern art - by which I mean that every time we switch to Predator-POV the screen becomes filled with colours as vivid as a Kandinsky. 

But Predator plays a cleverer game.  It isn't just about the scenery, it's built around mythic concepts - chiefly, Arnie as the mud-coated (think woad-coated Celt) warrior going mano a mano with an alien.  The explosion scenes in that movie, too, are astonishing - visions of a Dantesque Hell on Earth.

Avatar, by contrast, has blue gazelle-like creatures running through what looks like the Amazon rainforest. Sweet - but not astonishing.

But that's just my opinion - which in view of the box office triumph of the film, shouldn't be taken too seriously (and, indeed, won't be).  There's no doubt that SOMETHING extraordinary is happening with this film to make it such a phenomenon.  And the media coverage in the press has been awesome. 

Online, too, Avatar has been covered extensively, and I've been taking a peek at some of the comments to be found out in cyberspace. There have been rave reviews, like this one in the Hollywood Reporter.     Fantasy SF Blog revealed that Cameron's volcanic temper eclipses that of our our British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (once you've clicked the link, scroll down to 'James Cameron, Benevolent Tyrant'.) John Scalzi got pretty much what he was expecting, and (unlike me!) felt no moral outrage at the 'noble savage' strand. Ann Wilkes' Cherokee blood boiled at the way the natives were treated, and she loved the story. Revolution SF drew attention to the alarming phenomenon of Avatar fans who feel like committing suicide because they can't live on the planet of the Na'vi. SF Gospel made some very smart points about the movie's provable theology, and asks - would it be okay to kill the Na'vi if they DIDN'T have a provable God?

And the definitive review came from Richard Morgan. (He said it was 'Very pretty.')

But my final take on Cameron's masterwork is, as I say: TRAITOR!

I'm referring of course to the second part of the film when (SPOILER ALERT! BUT I THINK THIS HAS ALL BEEN GIVEN AWAY IN TRAILERS) our hero dons the body of a blue-skinned alien and goes to war against the humans.

Think about it. Our main character is human! We are human. And yet we're being asked to root against our own species, in favour of the aliens?

It's not as if this is a minor spat between alien and human. It's a brutal war.  Dozens and dozens of human beings die horribly, and we are invited to cheer.  Almost as many aliens die in the carnage, and we are clearly meant to be sad as each of them perishes.

This defies all the rules of rooting. You root for you own team, not the opposition. As a Welshman, even of the non-sporting variety, I am obliged to root for Wales every time there's  Wales v. England rugby match. If I cheered on the English, I would be surgically de-Taffed.

The disloyalty to humankind comes, of course, cloaked in liberal good intentions.  The Na'vi are, you see, noble savages; they are metaphorical of the Native Americans and the Australian aboriginals and all the other Stone Age tribes who have been wretchedly treated by invaders from Europe.  And the movie manages to function simultaneously as a) a shoot-'em-up kickass action movie and b) as an ecological hymn to the glories of the nature, and the crapness of being an evil corporation that wants to destroy the rainforest and doesn't care how many natives die in the process.

Well, I'm all in favour of hating those who pillage the natural world; and I certainly don't condone the way the Native Americans or the aboriginals were treated.  So at one level, I'm certainly on Cameron's side.

But on other hand - per-lease! Couldn't the morality be a little more subtle?  The guy from the corporation virtually slavers with evil, his treatment of the Na'vi is both incompetent and buffoonish, and there's a complete absence of moral ambiguity.  Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) and Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and a couple of others are good;  all the Na'vi are good; but all the soldiers and the horrible white capitalists who run the mining corporation are all utterly and irredeemably evil.

This kind of black & white morality is forgiveable, of course, in an action movie where you don't look for rich characterisation and moral subtlety.  But in a movie that proclaims itself to be a moral force for good - well, maybe the script could have had just a LITTLE more work done on it. 

But that's not my gripe. My gripe is - what's so bad about humans? I mean - I'm human,  my friends are human:  all the people I like and  admire,  alive and dead, are human. Humans are - well, what can I say? We're not SO very bad.

But in science fiction, we get a bad press, as the ignoble history of colonialism gets writ into stories set among the stars.  And Avatar is for me part of this syndrome - of neglecting the virtues and glories of humankind. 

And the chief virtue and glory of  humankind is - we're not all jocks. We're not all heavily bicepped, macho monsters who are so obsessed with gadgets and weapons of war that we lose sight of the finer things in life - like Nature, and art, and being nice to each other.  In fact, none of the people I know are like that.  All MY friends are weedy, cowardly, bookish, kind, and, well,  nice.

But in Cameron's parallel universe, all humans are either soldiers or cruel capitalists (admittedly Signourney Weaver is a scientist and there are a couple of other scientists helping Jake Sully fight his good war - but these characters don't really have much character.)

Contrast this with the weedy science graduate geek played by Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, cursed with a wisecracking dad, and always banging on about scientific things. A broad caricature yes - but there's hope for humanity if there are a few of THESE entertainingly anal-retentive guys about.

Avatar would, in my view, been a richer and better film if there'd been more diversity among the characters, and less idealisation of the Na'vi.  They are supposed to be like the Native Americans - but they aren't, not really. The Native Americans were a Stone Age tribe with a flair for war, especially of the sneaky variety;  as I recall from my past reading, ambush was considered by many tribes to be a worthy way of attacking an opponent. And, once confronted by an invasion of white-skins, the Native Americans proved themselves to be adaptable and savage; they learned to ride horses, they learned to shoot guns, they even copied the invaders' trick of scalping their enemy.

All of which makes the Native Americans REAL, and flawed, and complex, as opposed to the holier-than-thou Na'vi, who can't kill another creature without an act of gaian communion.

Cameron over-eggs it all in other words; the Na'vi are so perfect that I hate them. They don't even LOOK like real aliens; they have the wide-eyed blank-faced look of characters in a manga comic.  For all the much vaunted brilliance of the CGI, I never forgot for a moment that I was watching blue simulations.  Indeed, in some ways I felt these aliens felt less 'real' than the animatronic aliens in Farscape.

Of course, I freely concede that in my own novels I don't shirk from making the humans the bad guys -  it makes for a better story that way.    But I think we shouldn't forget to celebrate the best of humanity - the geekiness, the wit, the camaraderie, the cleverness, and the heart-bursting loyal love of which humans are capable. 

Admittedly, Jake DOES fall in love, with the girl alien Neytiri, who IS quite pretty in an eerie 'she looks like a blue Bambi, is he really going to do it with a deer?' kind of a way.  But he's a pretty dull character in other respects; we root for him because he's the hero, not because he's all that interesting.

A sequel to Avatar is being planned, I gather; I'd love to think that it involves a spaceship full of Jewish comedians who are airlifted down to teach the Na'vi the skills they clearly lack; self deprecation, grumbling, and the cruel taunting of the afflictions of others.  Not to mention, cake!

For my part, living on the planet of the Na'vi would be like living in the English countryside: beautiful, spiritually uplifting, and BORING.  I'd rather live in New York and eat bagels and pastrami with the aforesaid Jewish comedians, and indulge in daily rituals of sarcasm and ironic hyperbole. 

That's what it is to be human.

Astronomy Photo of the Day

How to clean windows without a ladder ....

Paintings of the Week: Van Gogh

The Week Reviewed

Writing isn't the hardest job in the world - not by a long chalk.  In fact, it comes very near the bottom of the list of hard jobs, well below surgeon, mountain rescue team member, paramedic, astronaut, President of the United States, and soldier serving in Afghanistan.

Being a writer is, however, quite possibly one of the the most annoying and frustrating jobs it's possible to do. With any other job, you turn up for work, and you start work - then you work!  Hard! All day! Till it's time to stop, then you stop.

With writing, however...some days it doesn't come. Nothing happens. Or it happens painfully slowly;  9/10ths Freecell to 1/10 actual creative writing. Or it comes fast and easily but it's CRAP - really bad writing starts appearing on the screen and the terrible fear kicks in that someone could hack this material, and realise HOW BAD I REALLY CAN WRITE.  And when that happens, you just have to let it go. Take a walk. Watch a movie. And slowly let the back of the brain do what it does best; solve the real problem. 

I've had that experience this week...after a frenzied start on my new book Hell Ship, I could feel the energy slipping away. I read the first few chapters over and thought, hell, these don't read like the first chapters of a novel  - there's not enough action, not enough is happening.  And then it hit me:

I was starting in the wrong place. 

I had thought I was about a third of the way through the book; now it turns out that I'm three quarters of the way through, and I have a huge huge chunk missing at the beginning.

Whew. This discovery comes as a huge relief. I thought I'd just FORGOTTEN HOW TO WRITE!

And now I can get back to work, with a new beginning, and a former beginning that's now the middle...no more floundering, no more sad walks.  I can actually do some work! 

And that in a nutshell is why writing is a frustrating and annoying job; you have no authority over your own time, or your own creativity.  You just have to sit there waiting for the back brain to wake up; because that's the bit of the brain that does all the real work.

Oh by the way - if my editor and publisher are reading this blog - I'm just kidding! I wasn't floundering at all. Or stuck. Or blocked. Or desperate. Or panicky! Not one bit!

(Phew! Think they fell for that?)

Meanwhile, in the hours when I haven't been writing, I've been working hard on my mission of turning Debatable Spaces into something more than just a place for me to blather randomly, as indeed I am now doing. I was thrilled that screenwriter Danny Stack (a maestro of the scribosphere and co-founder of the Red Planet prize) came on board to write a guest blog, about Misfits.  And I've been getting a lot of traffic from John Scalzi's site, after writing a red-hot blog attacking his opinions about Inglourious Basterds and accusing him of 'sophistry'. (Scalzi, clearly much amused, posted a referral link on his site and kindly reminded me that he is ALWAYS RIGHT.)

This prompted me to spend some time perusing the archives of Scalzi's blog - he is of course a king of bloggers, and was thus even before he started writing SF.  And I found a piece (sorry, didn't keep the link) which has been hugely valuable to me about the perils of blogging.  His gist, really, is that blogging works for HIM, but it can easily become a way for writers to avoid writing. 

And that's something I'm anxious to avoid; the novels are the point and purpose of it all, the blogging is just for fun and a way of making efriends and touching base with readers. And I guess my solution is to generate features on the blog which as well as entertaining readers (I hope!) directly feed into my own writing.

Hence, for instance, Paintings of the Day - I'm currently writing a drama about  art fraud so I'd be looking at these paintings anyway. So I figure - why not share that?

Another feature is The Battle Between Good and Evil, in which I briefly stop being such a wise-ass and start talking about what I regard the various clear and present threats to our civilisation. This is stuff that matters to me, of course; and it's important.  Of course it is! But I couldn't afford to spend so much time on these features if I didn't know it would directly affect the content of stories I am writing or will write. 

Most of all, I want Debatable Spaces to grow into something more than just an occasional casual read for internet browsers...with more guest blogs, maybe even some pieces on science, as well as continuing the features on movies, TV, politics, and the Lies That People Tell Us.

Plus, of course, news about views about SF and fantasy...

The Battle Between Good and Evil: The Rico Act

Earlier this week I linked to a Rolling Stone article written by Matt Taibbi which gave the best account I've ever read of the corrupt activities of certain financial organisations. These are the companies who led us to the brink of financial doom last year; now they're doing it again. 

The brilliance of Taibbi's critique is that he creates a witty and clever connection between the activities of con artists and the way banks and hedge funds operate. The comparison is not a metaphor - it's an allegation.  These people are stealing money, from us! (the examples Taibii gives are all to do with Wall Street, but hey, it's exactly the same over here and in other parts of the world).

But oh gosh, sigh - what can we do?  Nothing I guess, so let's just roll over and -

HOLD ON A MINUTE.  Let's get this clear. There's a reason this feature is called the Battle Between Good and Evil; because it's a battle and those suckers are EVIL. (They may also be very nice human beings in other respects - cultured, loved by their families and kind to dogs.  But guess what: these are the guys who will one day know what it's like to have a grandchild spit in their eye, and say 'Grandad, there are no jobs anymore, and the cashpoint machines don't work, and I can't afford to go to college - and it's all YOUR fault.') 

Because there will undoubtedly be dire consequences if we continue on our present path of doing nothing. The collapse of Western civilisation is unlikely, but not impossible.  Companies going bankrupt is one thing; countries going bust is another.  And that's close to happening now, and will certainly happen  next time the dominos take a nasty tumble.

The enemy here is mild moderation.  Take this article, in the UK Guardian - it rebukes the bank Royal Bank of Scotland chief Stephen Hester for paying staff £1.3 billion  in bonuses at a time when the company has posted losses of £.6 billion; and warns him and other rich execs to 'stop complaining'. 

Never mind stop complaining - pay the damned money back! Then spend a year working as a nurse or an ambulance driver, and see what a REALLY hard job is like.

Because - as we all know - no privately owned 'real business' could  ever issue vast bonuses when the company is making a loss! It's lunacy, and lunatics should not be running such a big and important organisation.

But the mild moderation is part of the Big Con. 'We are the grown ups', that's the subtext. 'Don't make a fuss about nothing.'  And, the real killer (bear in mind that ALL these top finance guys seem to be middle aged men) is the patronising assumption that  'Daddy knows best.'

Why am I reminded of the scene in Titanic when the ship's crew insist on sending down lifeboats of first class passengers even though they are half empty, while the third class passengers are locked up in steerage? Oh I know why - BECAUSE IT'S THE SAME.  We rage at obscene immorality when we see it in movies, but we give in to it meekly when it's our actual lives. Because no one wants to be seen as a RANTING RAVING ANGRY PERSON.  But - why not, if the anger is justified?

I say all this as a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. I like capitalism! Capitalism is what gives me my iPod, my computer, restaurants at the top of the hill and bookshops with cafes.  It's a great system, for me, though I know I'm lucky.  And I'm in no hurry to live in a yurt on a hillside in North Wales, tending goats and growing vegetables.

This is the way capitalism is SUPPOSED to work: A bold person has a idea for a new business, borrows money from his or her family and the bank and puts up some of his or her own savings, and launches the business. It does well! He or she then sells a large stake in the business to a venture capital/private equity firm or floats it on the Stock Exchange or the Alternative Investment Market and thereby makes big bucks.  The big bucks are the entrepreneur's reward for having the idea, seeing it through, risking bankruptcy, living with stress - all those things.  And I doubt if anyone would put themselves through all that shit without the prospect of making a fortune at the end of it.

And okay - if you hate capitalism, you won't like even this idealised version of it; it's based on cruel meritocracy and ruthless competiton, and because it's a system which distributes wealth disproportionately, it is rendered socially acceptable only by the dream we all have of making it big through our own talents OR (everyone's plan B) winning a fortune on the lottery.

But that's not what we have any more.  Here's how it works these days: The entrepreneur sets up his or her business, has a couple of sticky years and can't get loan capital from the back to fund the ACTUALLY QUITE VIABLE BUSINESS and the company then goes belly up. The banks, meanwhile, using money they've embezzled from tax-payers, embark on complex deals which (by fraudulent means) enrich them, but contribute nothing to society.

And to cap it all, these modestly talented managers without an enterpreneurial bone in their bodies think they are Masters of the Universe. They're not! They're just middle-men.  But the middle happens to be where, um, all the money is kept. 

Anyway, we all read the papers; we all know this stuff. My question is; what can we do?

I think I have an answer.

Before I explain my idea, I should stress that I don't, not for a second, speak as an authority on financial affairs; for the facts in detail, look to Taibbi, and look to your own newspaper. No I'm just the guy who believes that if your house is on fire - you should shout Fire! and then dial 999.

Anyway: if we accept Taibbi's argument that what the investment banks and hedge funds are doing IS a form of organised crime, then the answer in my view is simple.

It's called RICO.

RICO is a word that gets mentioned a lot in The Sopranos. It's a word that scares mobsters. It's not just a word, it's a concept that was introduced to avert the very real possibility that organised crime was going to end up running all of America in the pre-1970 period known (by gangsters) as 'the Golden Age'.

RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act)  is a piece of legislation which decrees that anyone working for an organisation which is guilty of certain criminal offences can be arrested and charged, and obliged to pay financial penalties, and also sued in the civil courts.  It's used against Mafia bosses but has also been employed against other corrupt organisations. 

And it can most certainly also be used against white collar criminals. Indeed, the drafter of the bill, Professor George Robert Blakey, wrote: 'We don't want one set of rules for people whose collars are blue or whose names end in vowels, and another set for those whose collars are white and have Ivy League diplomas.'

Hey, Prof, you got that right!

Of course, it may be that Taibbi is WRONG in his analysis of the way these financial organisations are operating.  Let his analysis be tested, by smart lawyers and prosecutors; and if he's substantially wrong, fair enough, I'll shut up. But if he's right - if the way Wall Street operates amounts to con artistry, then RICO surely applies. 

And there have already been cases where RICO has been applied to very similar offences. Financier Michael Milkin was arrested under RICO statutes for insider trading.  And Scott W. Rothstein is currently accused under the RICO laws for operating a Ponzi scheme - which is what Taibbi alleges the banks were and are doing with their credit swap schemes.

Obviously, of course, we do need to get this into perspective. Much of what the banks do is fine, and indeed essential to the functioning of our complex technological consumer society.  And it's certainly not the case that all bankers are corrupt;  and much of the baffling stuff like short-selling and futures markets do in fact serve a valuable role in creating 'liquidity'; and liquidity is the oil that keeps the machine of capitalism running. 

And it's also the case that, whether we like it or not, not all the things we disapprove of are illegal.  Being a smug bastard in a pin-stripe suit is not, and nor should it be,  a crime.

But Taibbi alleges very specifically that THE KEY PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE  SHIT THAT WENT WRONG DO KNOW  WHAT THEY ARE DOING, AND MUCH OF WHA T THEY ARE DOING IS CROOKED.

So let's test that accusation.

The laws are there to be used; and the reason they haven't been used is fear. If the banks are too big to fail, they're certainly too big to be dragged through the courts. But the threat and indeed the reality of prosecution has to be there...otherwise we will end up with another financial collapse, from which we might not recover.

Anyway, that's my small contribution to the debate. But will anyone out there take up the challenge?

Well of course not. The world is far more wicked than that.  And if you read Taibbi's other piece on naked short-selling, you'll gather by the end who shakes the hand of whom and why, frankly, we might as well all give up.

But this is a rant,  so I'm going to give myself licence to pretend there IS some hope. 

So, assuming there is justice in the world, what's the merit of the RICO strategy, as opposed to utilising any of the many regulatory bodies and their many regulations to, in a subtler and more softly-softly way, rein in the bad boys? 

It's the PRINCIPLE, dammit! These people haven't stolen paper clips, they've stolen tens millions, and squandered hundreds of millions more.    And they should be treated like any other criminals - fairly, with every chance to present their defence, but with the full wrath of the law lurking in the background if they prove to be Guilty as Charged.

And it's the PRECEDENT.  The very mention of RICO will spread fear among people who ought to be afraid. It's already well established that individual fraudsters who use the Ponzi scheme can be arrested and sent to jail, sometimes for staggeringly long terms (see Bernie Madoff.)  And everyone knows that major companies involved in complex financial shennanigans can also face prosecution if they break the law - as we saw with Enron. But firms working in Wall Street and the City of London and other financial centres have been told they are above the law, immune from prosecution, untouchable.  That's the message we get, and that they get; and it's WRONG.

A single RICO prosecution would change that perception, and would, I predict, change the behaviour of financiers radically. 

And if it were clearly decreed that flagrantly illegal activities will from hereon in be classified as 'racketeering', then some sanity might start returning to the markets. 

I'm talking here about the Swoop and Squat.  Naked Short-Selling.  Asset-Stripping.  The Selling of Toxic Assets,'The Pig in the Poke - all the cons which Taibbi so brilliantly anatomises in his article.

Or there's what Taibbi calls the Dollar Store scam, whereby, at the height of the financial crisis, investment banks presented themselves to the Fed as commercial banks; received loans at zero interest; then used the money to buy Treasury bills that paid interest of three or four per cent. Goldman Sachs did this, and made huge profits. No wonder!  That kind of behaviour may not technically be 'fraud', but there's a strong chance it would be considered as 'racketeering'.  Because these guys are just taking the piss!

Remuneration committees are also a form of racketeering which Taibbi doesn't touch on in his piece, though I'm sure he has elsewhere.  The idea is that independent Committee Members make objective decisions about how much a CEO and other key Board members in a company should earn.  But the scam is that I sit on your remuneration committee, and vote you a salary of, let's say, £100M a year; then you sit on my remuneration committe and vote ME a salary of £99M a year. We're both happy! Then we go to Vegas, hire a suite, and buy ourselves a hundred hookers. What's not to like?

Except - these mega-salaries impoverish companies, and are an affront to natural justice.  It's just too much to pay, for the jobs these people do; and it's bad for the industry, and bad for the world.

The other trick the banks are currently playing is a form of Extortion Racket.  If we don't pay these vast bonuses, these smooth talking souls tell us, we'll lose all our best people and start making huge  losses which will cripple the economy.  And you wouldn't want THAT!

But if all the doctors in the country insisted on being paid £10M a year each - with the tacit threat that if they are paid less they'll stop working and let patients die in their thousands - no one would accept it.  It would be seen as naked blackmail, and I'm sure the government would start throwing people in jail, 'pour encourager les autres', as the French nicely put it.  The difference, though, is that doctors would never DO a thing like that that; they are a profession with a moral code, and integrity.  Bankers - as they openly brag - can't help themselves.

The danger of course is that by taking criminal action against one financial institution, there's a risk the whole house of cards may come tumbling down. But remember, there are some astonshingly arrogant and shortsighted guys at the top; and they are doing their damnedest to shake their own house of cards down.  And when it falls, it will fall big. 

My abiding fear is that if we DON'T take a step as bold and shocking as this, we'll end up with a devasting out-of-control crisis that will wreak havoc with the lives of millions and which will, eventually, lead to a broken system that is far worse than what we deserve.   We could, in short, end up losing the best of capitalism - the enterprise, the energy, the amazing new ideas, the investments in new ventures, the availablity of credit when we're broke or want to buy a house we can't afford, the whole lifestyle, frankly, of 21st century man and woman.  I'm no Marxist - I really want to keep my iPod!  But the Robber Middle-Men are getting so greedy, they risk jeopardising everything. 

Or, as Taibbi puts it: 'We're in a place we haven't been since the Depression.  Our economy is so completely fucked, the rich are running out of things to steal.'

Er - so let's stop them?

Marvellous Misfits

Why I Love Misfits by Danny Stack

** MINOR SPOILERS **

Five teenagers get struck by lightning and develop strange super powers, blah, blah, blah. On paper, Misfits, E4’s new supernatural series, shouldn’t work. We’ve seen this idea before. Or at least, it certainly feels like it. Anybody within a five feet radius of the spec script pile will tell you it’s groaning from the weight of similar sci-fi ideas. All of a sudden, thanks to Heroes (the American smash hit series) superheroes were thrust into vogue. The geeks hadn’t just inherited the Earth, they’d taken over the TV.

In the UK, the success of Dr Who, Torchwood and Merlin (BBC) and Primeval on ITV meant that hey, the audience must really want to see these kind of shows, right? ITV tried again with Demons, which didn’t exactly work out, but at least ITV2’s sitcom No Heroics was a playful send-up of the genre. Still, enough superheroes. Time to move on, yes? And so, when it came to E4’s Misfits, the heart didn’t exactly jump with excitement. ‘Heroes meets Skins’, apparently. Hmm, an easy pitch, sure, but it would be so easy for Misfits to misfire. Luckily, within minutes of the first episode, you just knew that the show was going to get everything right. An instant classic was born.

First, why it works. The show is created and written by Howard Overman (a TV regular: Merlin, Spooks, Hustle, amongst others). You can’t over-emphasise the importance of the writing for a show like this to succeed. Right from the very start of Misfits, you can tell it’s got a style and assurance all of its own. You think: ‘yeah, Heroes meets Skins… but better’.

The characters are a bunch of teenage ASBOs, enslaved to community service. There’s gobby Nathan, chav Kelly, sexy Alisha, athletic Curtis and meek Simon.

Episode 1 pep talk

When they get hit by lightning, they discover they’ve got supernatural traits but their powers are far from cool or useful. Sexy Alisha gets a disturbing power where anyone who touches her skin is consumed with violent lust for her. Or as meek Simon puts it when Alisha touches his neck: “I want to rip off your clothes and piss on your tits”. This dialogue edge continues in its unashamed and bold fashion, making you do a double take of ‘did they just say that?!’ on a regular basis. The gobby Nathan won’t stop talking but thankfully what he has to say is always cheeky and witty. “I’m pretty sure this breaches the terms of my ASBO” he says when burying their community officer. Fun, fun, fun.

Oh, did I say they had to kill their community officer? Self-defence, obviously, because he had turned into some kind of crazed zombie who was going to kill them all. You begin to realize that the ‘Heroes meets Skins’ pitch is totally off. This has no American overtones whatsoever. This is ‘Dead Set meets Skins in a bastard world of Heroes’.

Meek Simon

Kelly holding Nathan's, um, wank sock.

Why it works, the second. The direction. It seems if you want a show to have a distinctive look and feel, then you got to hire directors called Tom. In this instance, Tom Harper and Tom Green. They give Misfits a delicious cinematic vibe with their careful composition and grading. ‘Let’s give it a cinematic look’ is a phrase often heard in the early rounds of TV development, only for the execs to change their minds in the edit suite as they panic whether the audience will hear the dialogue when the action stays in a wide shot. Thankfully, we get no such interference here as Misfits establishes a visual style that just reeks of class and cool. These are two hip directors to watch out for. Tom Harper has the film Scouting Book for Boys in the bag and we haven’t seen the last of Tom Green, that’s for sure.

Why it works, the third. The actors. Robert Sheehan (Nathan), Lauren Socha (Kelly), Antonia Thomas (Alisha), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis), Iwan Rheon (Simon). They may be misfits, but they’re perfect. Then you have the brilliant Alex Reid out to find the truth about her missing boyfriend (the dead community officer) and guest star Amy Beth-Hayes who nearly steals the show in episode two. The main cast is where it’s at though. They’re characters we care about, and want to spend time with. Most importantly, we want to know what happens next.

Curtis and Alisha

Why it works, numero four. The setting. A community centre on the banks of a murky river. Possibly London, who knows, it could be anywhere, but what’s particularly genius about the choice of setting is that it keeps the action contained. This means that the production budget doesn’t spiral out of control, especially as it has to cough up some wonga for special effects. It’s also testament to the two Toms (directors) that they keep everything visually interesting. You never get bored of looking at what would be a very drab location in real life.

The drama and fun of the action zips by at a thoroughly enjoyable pace, and there’s effective character development for all concerned. The only Misfit misgiving is that the main arc of the series ends a bit sooner than you might expect, leaving the final episode to introduce something new and not altogether satisfying. Still, the final pay-off reveals Nathan’s super power and leaves things nicely open-ended to ensure that series two can pick up where they left off.

‘Nuff said. Stop reading. Get thee to your nearest DVD outlet and purchase Misfits immediately. Enjoy.

SFF Song of the Week

It's a busy week this week on Debatable Spaces...further down the page, the great Basterds debate still rages...and tomorrow we have a guest blog from screenwriter and co-founder of the Red Planet Prize, Danny Stack. And today:

It's this! A delightful, fall-around-on-the-floor laughing song choice from Stuart Angell McGregor, screenwriter and blogger, who is a regular contributor to this site's TV and Movie and Book Zones. (Look out for his marvellous analysis of The X-Files, a wonderfully comprehensive and witty account of the classic show.)

Stuart Angell McGregor writes:

Years after Laika - the perky and bright-eyed soviet space dog -  barked his last and burned up a hero in earth's atmosphere, Gerry Anderson created Fireball XL5, a children's show in which goggle-eyed space puppet Colonel Steve Zodiac patrolled the stars in the eponymous super rocket.

XL5 was a fun, wobbly-stringed, space western with only one really exceptional element to call its own: 'Fireball', the theme that swung proudly over the show's closing credits. Fireball wasn't so much crooned, more sensually exuded from the pores of chocolate-voiced Australian Don Spencer.

XL5 began in '62, and ended a year later, the exact time that American astronauts Alan Sheppard and ol' John Glenn were freewheeling, for the first time, way up there, in machines held together with little more than pure hope and bubblegum.

And, ultimately, that's what holds Spencer's Fireball together, too - not that cool retro sound you can imagine spooling easy and smooth from the glossy speakers of some Kubrickian space station - but hope, the dreams of small men wanting to touch, wanting to be, something far bigger.

When I was a mere slip of a thing, my Dad would sing me to sleep with his own garbled and half-remembered version of this song. And though he could never quite carry the tune far enough, and forever fiddled with the tips of his cigarette yellow fingers, that glorious and hopeful chorus always managed to come out just right.

'My heart would be a fireball 
A fireball 
Every time I gaze into your 
Starry eyes'

Amazing, no?

Now, there's nothing left to do but pass the space martins, and dance.

I wish I was a spaceman,
the fastest guy alive
I'd fly you ‘round the universe.
In Fireball XL5.
Way out in space together.
Conquerors of the sky.
My heart would be a fireball.
A fireball.
Every time I gaze into your starry eyes.

We’d take a path to Jupiter and maybe very soon.
We’d cruise along the Milky Way and land upon the Moon.
To a wonderland of stardust.
We’ll zoom our way to mars.
My heart would be a fireball.
A fireball.
And you would be my Venus of the stars.

But though I’m not a spaceman
Famous and renowned
I’m just a guy that’s down to earth
With both feet on the ground
It’s all imagination
I’ll never reach the stars
My heart is still a fireball
A fireball
Every time I gaze into your starry eyes

SFF Heroes: Kara Thrace

Ripley was the trail-blazer; but Kara Thrace (call sign 'Starbuck') is, for many of us, the quintessential female SF action hero.  She's a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, maverick daughter-of-a-bitch who hates authority and always breaks the rules - but is, just, the best.  The bravest, the boldest, the best at piloting, the most-tattooed - what's not to love?

By the last season of Battlestar Galactica, the show which made Kara famous, the plot twists were so complex and so numerous that any actor who dared to ask 'Er, what's my motivation in this scene?' would receive a 400 page email in response.  Kara's character suffered more than any other from this plot-monster syndrome - her character arc was abandoned in favour of a narrative twist so immense it actually squelched all the drama.  But before then..Kara's on-off relationship with Lee Adama, her daughter-father relationship with Admiral Adama, and her open contempt for Colonel Tigh (who she punches in, I think, the pilot episode), all these are compelling and bewildering - in the way that real people ARE bewildering.  Kara is brave - but she's also a mixed up kid. 

So frak all detractors; Kara Thrace (played by actor Katee Sackhoff) is my SFF Hero of today.