Archive for February, 2010
And last week, I went to an exhibition at the Royal Academy of the works of Vincent Van Gogh, whose brief career alternated between bursts of astonishing creativity and bleak periods in a mental asylum. The exhibition focused around Van Gogh's life and letters - letters which he wrote to his brother Theo, often accompanied with dazzling sketches of the paintings he was working on.
It was evident from the letters that Vincent was a staggeringly obsessive man - no, 'How are you? How are the kids?' chit chat, his letters (or the ones I read) are all about his own artistic processes and challenges and ideas. All creative people tend to be self-obsessed; Vincent was clearly at the far end of that spectrum.
There have recently been rumours that Van Gogh didn't, as the legend have it, cut his own ear off - but that he and his friend Paul Gauguin fought a duel and the ear was lopped off by Gauguin's blade; then a lie had to be told to protect Gauguin from prosecution.
However, I prefer the time-hallowed story, which is that Van Gogh in a fit of madness threatened his friend with a razor, then ran off to a brothel, cut off his ear, and handed it to a prostitute with the words, "Keep this object carefully."
The intensity of Van Gogh's vision is palpable; you feel that he saw too much, and looked too hard, for his own good. And his death was as tragic as his life was lonely; he tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun but failed, walked back to the local tavern, admitted what he had done - then later died of his injuries.
Personally, I would have been happy for him to be just a bit less talented, if that could have made him happier. I mean, I know we all love the myth of the tortured artist - but really? Doesn't it break your heart?
Anyway, here are some drawings and lesser known Van Goghs, followed by a few of the more famous ones.
NOTE: The painting of Gauguin's empty chair was (I learned at the exhibition) Vincent's way of showing the absence of the man who used to share his home, but who was forced to flee after the razor incident. In which case - what does the portrait of Vincent's empty chair symbolise? A harbinger of his own death?
Enclosed Field with a Sower in the Rain
Field with Factory
Quay with Men Unloading Sand Barges
Backyard of Old Houses in Antwerp
Avenue at D'Argenson Park at Asnieres
Coal Barges
Japonaiserie, Bridge in the Rain
Nude Woman Reclining
Paul Gauguin's Armchair
Wheatfield with Crows
Vincent's Chair with his Pipe
Self Portrait, after cutting off his ear
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...
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?
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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.
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
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.
I've been longing to share this for some time - and here it see. Lauren Panepinto's cover design for my next book Version 43 (available in all good bookshops from October; or if you telephone me, I'll sell it to you a word at a time.)
Lauren has written some lovely stuff about her approach to this cover, and the whole issue of an author's 'look'. (In reality: scruffy, & ill coordinated - but I think she means the books).
Now I want to see the book on some actual shelves...
I woke up mulling about the John Scalzi column I read yesterday about why Quentin Tarantino's movie Inglourious Basterds is NOT a science fiction movie as some (e.g. me) claim it is.
As always, Scalzi is judicious in his diatribe, so though he does a comprehensive job of demolishing the 'Basterds is SF' argument, he also acknowledges that if fans want to claim it as SF, they should feel free to do so. As he puts it, 'Hey, if you mess with the timeline, the geeks are going to come out of the woodwork and start chanting, "One of us! One of us!" I wouldn't suggest that scifi fans shouldn't feel as if Basterds fits into their genre. Take it! Love it! And, if it wins the Best Picture feel free to claim it as yours.'
I've written a rebuttal to Scalzi's comments in my Comment to his blog; but I'm still left feeling there are big issues here to be thrashed out. It takes us into the murky waters of genre theory. And it involves asking some major questions: What is genre? What is SF? What is the difference between SF and fantasy? Millions of words have been expended on answers to these questions and yet, no one seems to agree.
And at some level, that fact kind of annoys me. Healthy disagreement is, well, healthy; but this level of disagreement reeks of mental chaos. And as someone who loves science, and the rigour and logic of scientific methodology, it irks me; because if scientists were this 'open-minded' about every topic under the sun, there would be no science. (To put it another way: if arts graduates had invented the space rocket, it would look exceedingly pretty, but it wouldn't fly.)
So let me go through Scalzi's points one by one; and then I'm going to put my head on the chopping block and offer my own attempted answers to all those big questions.
Scalzi argues that Basterds isn't SF because:
'1) It wasn't marketed as SF.'
'2) The science fictional aspects of the story are not necessarily essential to it.'
'3) It's kinda more like fantasy than SF anyway.'
'4) If Inglourious Basterds is science fiction, so are most historical movies.'
For those new to this debate, who haven't seen the movie, the point to bear in mind is: Tarantino's film is set in World War II, and tells a fictional but plausible story about a team of US guerrillas (the 'Basterds') operating in Hitler's Germany; but certain events that take place in the movie most emphatically DID NOT happen in real life. In other words, it's an alternate history drama; and alt-history is a recognised sub-genre of science fiction.
Okay.
Scalzi's point 1) is a good one. It's generally acknowledged that 'genre' is something that is in part created by marketing. The crime genre wouldn't be as vividly defined as it is if the publishers didn't market their tales of criminal activity under the banner of Crime Fiction. There are Crime bookshelves in bookshops; specialist Crime awards, etc etc. And it's a fact that a Margaret Attwood novel with 'science fictional' elements will be treated as a literary novel; but a Philip Palmer or a John Scalzi with SF elements will be sold, marketed, and branded as 'SF'.
But that's not good enough. Genre is more than a marketing tool; it's a vivid, real thing, a slippery but true concept that adds value to the fiction we read, and the movies we see. Genre is like language; you can't 'explain' it, but you can learn to understand it.
To back up that opinion, I will call upon my second favourite Professor (after the ineffable Professor Nicole Peeler - hi Nicole!) namely Professor Rick Altman, of the University of Iowa, whose book Film/Genre is a definitive and brilliant analysis of what genre is, and how it works, and how it changes depending on the way it is perceived.
In Altman's film theory jargon, 'Genres are most commonly taken to come into being when a body of texts shares a sufficient number of semantic and syntactic elements. This production-driven definition needs to be matched with a reception-driven definition recognizing that genres do not exist until they become necessary to a lateral communication process, that is until they serve a constellated community.'
Ouch. That was ugly! Sorry to inflict the jargon on you - but bear in mind, this is a specialist academic book and these guys feel the need to talk that way. Elsewhere in the book, however, Altman is more readable; and the reason I think THIS GUY KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT is because he actually does research. He uses a literary version of the scientific method; he studies a great deal of data, he finds the patterns that are hidden there, and thus draws his conclusions from evidence, not out of his own arse.
And much of the data Altman assesses is to do with actual movies produced by actual movie studios. He's sifted through the files of most of the major studios to find out how THEY define genres. And the conclusions are startling. The genre of 'musical' for instance, didn't actually exist in the early days of movies. Instead, it was used as an adjective, modifying nouns like comedy, romance, or melodrama. Here's an abbreviated version of a list of movies of the 20s and 30s and the genre descriptions that were attached to them in their publicity material:
Weary River - epic
The Broadway Melody - all talking, all singing, all dancing dramatic sensation.
The Vagabond Lover - romantic musical comedy
Devil May Care - romance punctured with subtle comedy.
The Tender Foot - a Merry Western Comedy full of Laughs and Ginger.
The Love Parade - light opera.
The Rogue's Song - operetta.
Roadhouse Nights - melodrama and button-busting comedy
College Love - 100% talking, singing, college picture.
There are two points here; The first is that we wouldn't now necessarily define the genres of those films according to the way they were marketed THEN. So Scalzi's Point 1) falls off a cliff.
Point 2) is that genre is clearly evolutionary. The very words we use to describe genre can change over time; and as far as movies are concerned, new genres are born all the time. Altman is particularly brilliant about analysing this; he points out that Hollywood studios love to copy their own hits, and the hits of others. So one successful movie about gladiators (a 'history drama') will spawn a dozen more movies about gladiators (creating the 'gladiator movie genre'.) In the same way, the film Rififi is a brilliant movie about a gang of low lives staging a heist; and it's now a template for the entire 'heist movie genre'.
In the UK film industry, this 'genre born out of coypcatting' tendency is most clearly examplifed by the movie The Full Monty. It was a hugely successful movie; so for years UK producers have tried to produce other movies that are 'like' The Full Monty - ie ensemble comedies with quirky loveable British characters and rude moments based on an unlikely but true story. Now I know that doesn't sound like a genre - but it is! My friend Geoff Deane wrote one of the most successful of the Full Monty copycat movies - Kinky Boots, an ensemble comedy with quirky loveable British characters and rude moments based on an unlikely but true story. (The inspiration for the movie was a documentary about a guy up North who owned a shoe factory and started making fetish footwear.) I'm not decrying the movie by saying it's a copycat picture, nor I am in any way undervaluing the fabulous job Geoff did on the script. But that was always the deal - Geoff was told from the start that the producers wanted a 'Full Monty type hit' and they got one.
Thus are genres born...
That's a long rebuttal to Scalzi's point 1). But my underlying intent here is to suggest that you can't define genre by what it says on the poster. Any serious film scholar has to have a beady eye for what the genre really is, according to the actual material in the movie.
Point 2) is, I'm sorry, a dubious argument. The ending of the film is great, and it depends TOTALLY on this alt-history twist. Take that away, and the story collapses, and becomes a less good movie. So yes, it IS essential to the movie. A similar argument applies to Ken MacLeod's splendid The Execution Channel, much of which takes place in a world that is very like our contemporary world, but which has a dazzling SF twist in the closing chapters. If Ken had written a different ending, his publishers might have queried whether this was 'really' SF; but he didn't! He knew all along the coup de roman he was going to pull off, and he pulled it off.
Point 3) is a tricky one. Does alt-history have to have a scientific explanation to be SF? Does The Man in the High Castle have such an explanation? Does The Yiddish Policeman's Union have such an explanation? Okay in Star Trek stories there were often tales that take place in alternate histories that depend on the Enterprise passing through a black hole, or some such. But alternate history stories to my mind work best if they're just presented 'as if'.
So does that make them fantasy, or SF? Strictly speaking, the answer should probably be neither: Alternate History could and maybe should be treated as a separate genre. But because it's a subgenre that evolved out of SF, it kind of fits there. And of course 'science fiction' is a term that by no means covers the full range of possibilities of the genre it describes. It drives me mad when people say: '1984 can't be an SF novel because it has no science' (though in fact it does.) For SF is about more than just science! It's about speculation, and extrapolation - hence the attempt by some writers to rename the entire genre as 'speculative fiction'.
But this gets to be angels dancing on pins stuff. Alternate History IS Science Fiction, in my view, because that's the genre that spawned it. It can also be fantasy (as in Naomi Novik's fantasy series about the dragon Temeraire that fights in seabattles in Napoleonic times.)
Scalzi's Point 4) is that lots of historical movies get the history wrong; so can't they be classed as SF too? The answer; no they can't. That's just, sorry, dumb-ass sophistry. All drama relies on fictionalising, even the historical stuff! And when in doubt, print the legend; that's the golden principle of storytelling. John - it's just not the same thing!
This leaves one final question; does this actually matter? I mean, really? I don't think it matters hugely to Scalzi, to be honest. He's just having fun, sounding off, teasing geeks like me. Scalzi is a guy I admire hugely; he's a fine writer, and a master polemicist, who does one of these columns every week and is a master of arguing the contrary point just to get everyone talking. So why, let's be blunt about this, am I getting so genuinely hot under the collar?
The answer is: for me it DOES matter. It matters because Inglourious Basterds is a fine film, and a valuable film. Yet though it's had commercial success and Oscar nominations, it was pissed upon by all the critics I read, who mocked its excessive violence (which is in fact essential to its genre!) and Tarantino's woeful ignorance of history.
But Tarantino knows his history! And he's deliberately falsifying it, as part of his artistic strategy of 'genre-mashing', and playing games with the audience. So though I'd argue it's technically correct to class this as an 'SF movie', it's equally correct to call it a war movie, and an action movie, and a B-movie hommage. It's all those things, all at the same time. That's the game Tarantino plays; he makes movies for a sophisticated audience who know genre, and love genre, and enjoy the rollercoaster ride experience of totally changing genre a reel before the end.
Genre is a label but it's not a straitjacket; it's a creative tool, that offers a direct route to the audience's imagination via their own insights and knowledge and expectations of 'this kind' of film. Ultimately, many of Tarantino's films (excluding Jackie Brown which plays a different game) constitute a genre of their own - the postmodern, genre-hopping, genre-mashing 'Tarantino movie' genre.
And smarter critics, steeped in the traditions and tropes of speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy fiction, would have spotted all that, and not written such dumb reviews.
Inglourious Basterds is in my view, a fine and startling piece of work. Like Hitchock's Psycho - which also changes genres in mid-movie - it shocks by doing the truly unexpected just when you least expect anything so unexpected to occur....
Here, courtesy of NASA, is an amazing image of a sillhouetted space shuttle Endeavour about to dock with the ISS.
Some internet treats, recent and not so recent, you might have missed...
Graham Joyce betraying his father with a superglue story.
Nicole Peeler revealing her musical taste to be wonderfully down and dirty.
My moodboard for Debatable Space, which a few readers of this blog have been glancing at recently.
John Scalzi with news of the Nebula Award nominations, which include him.
Adrian Reynolds sent me this, a definitive account of how the big banks are screwing us and risk destroying our economies and our entire way of life They are acting like Mafia gangsters - and even sober conservative columnists pretty much admit that fact. But Matt Taibi shows is, in detail, how we and our children are being robbed blind by bastards in pin-stripe suits.
Whew. Serious stuff. If you need to lighten up - go down an item and check out Stuart's song choice.
(For last week's feature - go left across this page to Categories and click Paintings of the Week. It's there!)
The artist William Blake was also, in his lifetime, considered to be mad. He had visions of angels and other strange creatures all his life, and held heretical views about religion that shocked his contemporaries; though to my mind many of Blake's religious ideas are no madder than the non-heretical versions.
Blake features in Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell, where he is seen having one of his visions just as - well, I shan't give away the story.
William Wordsworth wrote of Blake: 'There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.'
Blake was a poet (he wrotes the verses 'And did these feet in ancient time' which are now immortalised in the anthem Jersusalem), draughtsman, painter and book illustrator. His techniques for book illustration were revolutionary at the time - blending words and images on a single plate. And many of his greatest images are illustrations of the Book of Job and other Biblical texts.
Lose yourself for a while in a madness that is richer than most sanities:
Beatrice Addressing Dante (illustration for Dante's Inferno)
Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion
Nebuchadnezzar
Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun
Plate 7 of the Book of Urizen (a deity invented by Blake)
Plate 9 of the Book of Urizen
The Ancient of Days
The great John Scalzi is almost always right. But this time - on the subject of whether Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is science fiction - he is, in my humble view, totally WRONG.
Check out what Scalzi says here. If my comment gets through the moderation process (!) it should appear soon.
Last weekend I vanished into a deep well of nostalgia and Welshness...it was my mother's 80th birthday, which we celebrated down in Port Talbot, South Wales. And to honour the event my brothers and I arranged for a local Welsh male voice choir to hold a concert in her honour.
Yes, I know that sounds crazily over the top...! The context is that my mother has been President of this choir for twenty or so years, and all the choristers are her friends. So the concert was their way of marking the occasion, and honouring her contribution to the choir's work. And organising the event has been my 'hobby' (hollow laugh!) for the last few months.
The choir was superb; they sang in a beautiful local church, St Paul's, to an audience of 200+ people, accompanied by a succession of gifted musicians on the piano, with solo spots from a young and talented guest artiste, Catrin Sian Harris. I felt, as always, so ashamed to be unable to sing in tune outside the bathroom (and inside the bathroom, the tiles have strong views about my vocal accuracy.)
Afterwards we held a reception in a local hotel where the choir performed their 'afterglow' routine - a non-stop medley of songs.
A further highlight came when a friend of my mother's - Evelyn White, formerly a soloist with the choir - did a fantastic version of an Ivor Novello song. Evelyn worked in an office in the steel works for most of her career, but has had an amazing career as a solo singer on an amateur basis, and has WAY enough talent to have sung professionally...and I was thrilled to hear that her voice is as strong as ever. Then former Welsh rugby international John Collins -a friend of my mother and step-father, and also a close friend of my father - was invited to come up and tinkle the ivories. I was somewhat alarmed at this prospect - for I'd been speaking to John a few minutes previously, and after a day watching the rugby he was EXTREMELY pissed - but he played, with astonishing virtuosity and expression, a wonderful version of Georgia on My Mind. It was, in my view, good enough to get him a spot at Ronnie Scott's.
This is the astonishing thing about this world of Welsh culture from which I hail - the wealth of musical talent is just awesome.
Except, of course, for me!
The following day I attended a Valentine's Day concert in Oxford, where I went to University (as did Mike Carey - it's clearly a breeding ground for deranged writers.) I spent a while in my old college and walking the streets of the city, awash in memories, most of them involving, er, alcohol or books.
Now that the choir have sung, and the birthday is over, it's business as usual for me. I'm about to start writing my art crime drama for the radio, so I have a mountain of books on art to read. And I've well into my latest SF absurdity - Hell Ship. Sadly, though, writing duties mean I haven't had time to go to the Berlin Film Festival - which I much prefer to Cannes, except for the weather.
I'm now, very slowly, gearing up for Odyssey at Easter, which will be my next major social occasion. Until then - I'm going back to being a sedentary, anti-social writer for a while....
Other stuff: I read a great book in this period - Already Dead by Charlie Huston, a brilliant noir vampire novel. And I've just started Jesse Bullington's astonishing Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart. And I saw and really enjoyed the new version of The Wolfman, with Port Talbot boy Anthony Hopkins as the evil dad. (He is utterly terrifyng.)
The SFF Song of the Week slot has been enlivened by choices from Brian Ruckley (this week) and Paul Raven last week. And I've just had a new and spiffing song choice from Robert Grant, of Sci Fi London - so watch this space!
Soon after I first became a published Orbit author, I shared a book reading session at Alt Fiction in Derby with Stephen Hunt and Brian Ruckley - two delightful and highly gifted authors.
And today's SFF Song of the Week is from Brian - who writes compelling heroic epic fantasy among other things, and who sets his books in a godless universe so bleak and violent that's a surprise to find what a pleasant man he really is. Look out for his first three books - Winterbirth, Bloodheir, and Fall of Thanes.
Brian Ruckley writes:
Here’s some musical fantasy from a creator who was himself a unique, larger than life, vaguely numinous presence in the last quarter of the 20th century: Freddie Mercury. Lots of Queen’s songs have a slightly science fictional or fantastical vibe – elaborate concoctions fuelled by a shifting, vivid, sometimes surreal imagination – but The Seven Seas of Rhye is a rather different beast.
This is explicitly epic, secondary world fantasy fiction done as a brief, grandiose rock song. Rhye and its seas existed, but only in the minds of Freddie Mercury and his sister, who dreamed it up together when they were children. Others might settle for imaginary friends; they invented a whole world, and stories to inhabit it. Rhye is the setting for several early Queen songs (including the brilliantly titled Ogre Battle, which sounds like it ought to be a D&D soundtrack), but The Seven Seas of Rhye is the (modest) hit that immortalized it. And with lyrics like these:
Be gone with you, you shod and shady senators
Give out the good, leave out the bad evil cries
I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours
And with a smile I'll take you to the seven seas of Rhye
Doesn’t it sound as though there’s a hell of a book in there somewhere?
Fear me you lords and lady preachers
I descend upon your Earth from the skies
I command your very souls you unbelievers
Bring before me what is mine, the seven seas of Rhye
Can you hear me you peers and privy counsellors
I stand before you naked to the eyes
I will destroy any man who dares abuse my trust
I swear that you'll be mine, the seven seas of Rhye
Sister, I live and lie for you
Mister, do and I'll die
You are mine, I possess you, I belong to you forever
Storm the master-marathon, I'll fly through
By flash and thunder-fire I'll survive, I'll survive, I'll survive I'll survive, I'll survive
Then I'll defy the laws of nature and come out alive
Then I’ll get you
Be gone with you, you shod and shady senators
Give out the good, leave out the bad evil cries
I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours
And with a smile I'll take you to the seven seas of Rhye
Tomorrow in fact - it's Brian Ruckley's wonderful, electrifying, blow-me-it-takes-me-back-a-few-years choice of SFF SONG OF THE WEEK. Be here or be, um, somewhere else.
I've been thinking quite a bit this week about conspiracy theories.
But I guess you already knew that, huh?
FOR THE REST OF THIS GUEST BLOG ON THE ORBIT WEBSITE, CLICK HERE.
This is a night launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Amazing!
An extra treat: this is from a series called 'Alien Landscapes on Earth'. The copyright belongs to Martin Rietze, and you can see it if you click
Here are two examples of 'art brut' from Swiss artist Adolf Wolfi.
Art brut is a concept coined by the French artist Jean Dubuffet, and is sometimes called 'naive art' or 'outsider art'. It's used about artists who are untrained, sometimes uneducated; artists who don't belong to the mainstream of art but have access to a rare creative vision.
Dubuffet collected many examples of art brut; and he was particularly interested in art created by inmates of psychiatric hospitals. 'Mad art', if I can be so politically incorrect.
And that's where Wolfi comes in. He was physically and sexually abused as a child and spent his childhood in a variety of foster homes. As an adult, he was convicted of sexual molestation, and was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland; and spent his entire life behind bars. He was psychotic, and violent, suffered hallucinations; and he created some amazing pieces.
Wolfi reminds me eerily of the Joker in Arkham Asylum; deranged, and evil, but talented.
General View of the Island
Irren Anstalt Band Hain
I read a funny little article in my paper on Saturday by a witty, liberal, sweet columnist called Simon Hoggart. Here's what he said:
As a climate change agnostic – and I suspect most of us are, especially now, and more especially after the Guardian series this week – I've been bothered by two aspects of the argument. The first is the religious overtone. Humankind has always wanted to blame its own behaviour for natural events, whether Noah's flood, plagues of frogs, or volcanos which demonstrate that the gods are angry.
Three years ago a British bishop announced that gay marriage had caused our floods. I've often wondered whether global warming is another example of this, an irrational belief designed for a rationalist world.
In hs first paragraph Hoggart is referring of course to the Climategate 'scandal' concerning the British scientists who falsified data and deleted emails to protect their dubious views on global warming. Thus, the 'greatest scientific fraud in this history of mankind has been exposed!
Except, of course, if you read enough articles, it's clear that nothing of the kind occurred. A group of scientists at the University of East Anglia reacted to what they thought were idiotic attempts to muck up their working day with childlike rebellious gusto; but frankly, if someone used the Freedom of Information Act to get access to MY emails I would be similiarly enraged. (No scientific papers were censored; no scientific data, so far as I know, was wilfully falsified.)
But the damage is done; the mud sticks; and now liberal commentators like Hoggarts are 'agnostic' about climate change.
This isn't an isolated opinion; another recent press report says that many Tory MPs in the UK are also 'sceptical' about climate change.
And if you want to go deeper into the science, here's an interesting article setting out the case for and against climate change as an actual phenomenon.
Here's my own particular take on the subject: Simon Hoggart walks with evil.
I haven't, I should stress, ever met the man (though I once almost bumped in to him at a BBC Radio party); but I know, from his columns, that he's a sweet loveable cove who is devoted to his family, has a delightful sense of humour, and often talks a good deal of sense.
So I'm not saying he IS evil. I'm sure he's a really nice man! Nor am I crazed enough to believe that anyone who disagrees with me is wicked - far from it. I'm wrong far more often than my right; I love my opinions because they are my own, but I would never make a claim to be infallible.
But what is evil here is the wilful telling of lies. There are some who argue on the topic of climate change in a reasoned and scientific fashion, and whose views don't exactly and in every respect tally with the consensus/mainstream. And that's normal. But anyone who argues that there's no such thing as global pollution is clearly talking nonsense. And anyone who argues that global pollution has and can have no effect on the biosphere is totally straining credulity.
And anyone who then goes on to argue that there is a global conspiracy of scientists to invent a phenomenon that does not exist is on a moral par with those that argue that 9/11 was caused by a global conspiracy of Jews. It's just off the scale lunacy; but it's out there, as an opinion, and an undercurrent. It's the fuel of the anti global warming campaign. And it's an opinion that denies and repudiates the notion that science has any authority in this - and by extension in any - sphere.
This is evil. Lies are evil. Sophistry is evil. Saying something is so when you know it is not so is evil. And pandering to the myth - by which I mean ******* falsehoold - that global warming is a lie cooked up by evil scientists is evil. Because that ludicrous opinion is clearly not a random lie; it's a lie that suits the interests of the powerful interest groups I ranted at in the Tuesday blog on the BBGAE
A global conspiracy of scientists? Get real, they're not that smart. A global conspiracy of the rich elite whose privilege depends on the football pitch sloping in their favour? Yeah, well, it's happened before, it'll happen again, and it's a fair bet it's happening now.
And that's why so many scientists are jittery and angry and - at times - irrational. Not in their work, so far as I know, but certainly in their emails. (See below.) Because they GET it - this isn't the usual process of scientific debate. It's a war.
It's the war between aspiring-to-the-truth and downright lies; a battle , as I say, between Good and Evil. And Hoggart, bless him, doesn't get it at all.
There's a saying that it is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.
And THAT'S what Hoggart is doing - he's doing nothing, and he should stop it forthwith.
He calls himself a 'climate change agnostic'. But that's like saying you're an electromagnetism agnostic; it's a nonsensical thing to say!
The fact is, I don't really understand the science that underlies the scientific consensus that global warming is taking place at a dangerous level, as a consequence of human pollution. If I spent a couple of months reading up on it, I'd have a pretty good knowledge of the issues; but as a non-scientist, there would still be major gaps in my understanding. So on this matter, as on so many other matters (hel-lo? how does my television work?) I have to take it on faith that scientists know what they're talking about.
I don't understand general relativity either - not really, not in detailed mathematical detail. I also don't entirely grasp quantum mechanics, though for a layperson, my reading in this area is fairly extensive. But I do understand scientific method, and the nature of scientific theories. And I know that for a 'consensus' to exist, a lot of very smart scientists must be very sure of their ground. That doesn't mean global warming is a FACT, or is 100% certain. It's a theory. The theory may be superseded by a better theory. Or the Earth's biosphere may behave in ways that scientists don't expect and can't predict. It may be that the warming of the Earth will cause cryogenically frozen aliens in the Earth's crust to wake up and conquer us - ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. But some things are more likely than others.
If there is a scientific consensus on this matter, and there is, we have to heed it. We can't expect to understand it - not to the degree of sophisticated understanding that world authorities in the field possess - but we have to believe that a huge number of people who know what they are talking about, using a system of peer review that involves a constant intellectual challenging of the theories and the data, are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that global warming is happening and is a threat to all of us. And the expertise of these experts, and the integrity of their time-hallowed scientific approach, has to be respected.
The trouble is, climate change science isn't as scarily hard as quantum physics; so there are plenty of bungling amateurs out there who think they know better. They don't! They are just bungling amateurs. (Former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson is one such bungler - my God, this man used to run our ECONOMY.)
So that's why I strongly take exception to Hoggart's casually uttered remarks. He's the ultimate arts graduate, who is used to being able to judge the merits of an argument on the basis of common sense, and by employing the guiding principle of 'If X argues one thing strongly, and Y argues the opposite equally strongly, then the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.'
But the truth is NOT somewhere in the middle. The truth is the truth, and it has to found, and searched for; but in this debate, there are people (scientists) who wants to find the truth and other people (rightly and rudely called the climate change 'deniers' ) who claim to know The Truth regardless of the scientific consensus. These 'deniers' are Flat Earthers, they are Creationists; they should not be humoured or indulged. They may - like Hoggart - be nice people, but they fellow travel with Evil.
Lies are Evil; so shame on you Simon for coming up with such lie-indulging claptrap.
Remember: like all scientific theories, the 'climate change hypothesis' is falsifiable. And it is also, because it's a theory about a system full of variables (the biosphere) possible that this theory is correct in theory, but its predictions are totally wrong.
Or it could be the world goes to hell; and is that a risk you would be willing to take? I wouldn't; only fools would ignore such a clear and present threat to the wellbeing of our planet, and of our children.
Evil. There's a lot of it about. It's like dog shit; it doesn't matter how nice you are, you can still tread in it.
So my advice is: if you DO tread in dog shit, don't believe the people who assure you - passionately and plausibly - that shit does not smell.
'Cause it does.