Novel Writing
If you are squeamish, stop reading this blog now. I mean NOW.
Here goes. Imagine you are in London in the early twentieth century, watching a vampire stripper on stage. And this is what you see:
Isolde clamped the blade between her thin lips and used both her hands. She worked the edge of her self-inflicted wound with her nails and peeled back the skin of the right side of her chest. As she moved, exposed muscles bunched and smoothed. With...
No - let's stop there! A striptease in which the stripper flays herself?????
That is truly the most scary and appalling piece of prose I've read in many a year; it's also astonishingly vivid and skilfully written. It appears in Kim Newman's awesome The Bloody Red Baron, which I've just read, and which will haunt me for some time to come.
Let's be frank; if you write horror novels, you can't be namby-pamby about it. They have to be scary. However, I've always had a very limited appetite for blood and gore for its own sake; this is why I've never read widely in the horror genre. But some writers - Stephen King is one, Kim Newman seems to me to be another - who can shock and appal and yet never lose sight of the heart and humanity of their characters.
The Bloody Red Baron is a sequel to Newman's Anno Dracula (which I have to read next!) It's an alternate history story in which Dracula's Terror at the end of the nineteenth century has created a world in which vampire and humans ('warmfellows') co-exist. But Dracula's rampant ambition has caused him to start World War I; he is now commander in chief to the Kaiser, and the world is plunged into carnage.
In this version of World War I, we still have trenches, there are still aerial dogfights, and there is still a Baron von Richthofen with his Flying Circus of fighter pilot killers. But vampires fight side by side with warm soldiers; and night flights are far more common because vampires see so well in the dark.
It's a daft, baroque, but rather persuasive premise, executed with astonishing skill. Newman is a master stylist - his prose is restrained, cadenced, beautifully in period, and hauntingly visual. He has a genius for stamping vivid images in the reader's imagination - I can still see and smell and savour the thrilling events which make up the book's major setpieces. I can see a prostitute being sucked dry by vampire mouths; I can see the desolate wilderness of No Man's Land; I can still, shockingly, see every moment of the scene in which our hero Winthrop has to climb from the back seat of his fighter planet into the front seat, whilst airborne.
Writing images is the hardest thing to do - words flow easily enough on to the computer screen, but images have to be hinted at, with prose that states the image but also evokes the experience of seeing it. Newman achieves this with astonishing confidence, and also has the knack of creating characters we truly care about - from the weary Charles Beauregard, to the heroic but increasingly deranged intelligence officer Winthrop, to the bespectacled vampire journalist Kate Reid.
It's also a slyly witty book, full of injokes and metajokes. This alternate reality is littered with fictional characters who are real, co-existing with real characters who are radically changed, such as the vampire Churchill, lacing his blood with Madeira, and Von Richthofen himself, a real historical figure here portrayed as a chillingly inhuman killing machine. (And that's before he became a vampire.) One of the main characters is Edgar Allan Poe - who now prefers to be known as Edgar Poe - and he co-exists in the evil castle lair with Dr Caligari and Dr Mabuse, both characters from classic movies. A No Man's Land deserter is called Mellors - the gamekeeper from Lady Chatterley's Lover - but D.H. Lawrence himself is also referenced as existing in this world. And, my favourite twist of all, Beauregard's secret missions are run on behalf of the Diogenes Club, a society of establishment figures dominated by Mycroft Holmes, cleverer brother of Sherlock.
The cover of my edition of the book is deliciously schlocky - it features a vampire German soldier hanging upside down. And as a horror novel, it delivers all the thrills and chills you could hope for. (There's a great story twist, which I won't betray, which leads to some of the most fantastic action sequences you could ever hope for.)
But this is, at heart, a rather serious book. Newman writes knowledgeably and lovingly about his period, and he achieves the rare trick of making the reader think hard, and worriedly, about the calamity that was World War I. The horror of the war itself - all real! - far eclipses the horror associated with the vampire characters.
And so Newman achieves the rare trick of creating a genre novel that has a real 'literary' substance - it's not just shock 'n' scares, it's a novel designed to make the reader think, and feel, and regret.
Till now, my favourite vampire novel ever has been Stephen King's masterly epic 'Salem's Lot; but The Bloody Red Baron seems to me to be just as good, in its very different way. King's approach was to create a vampire story that is also a portrayal of a 'typical' (and hence quite extraordinary) mid-Western town. His model was Moby Dick - which is not a horror novel, and has no vampires, but which represents the 'bar' for a modern epic American novel.
Newman is steeped in a different literary tradition. His book is slim, it's not an epic; but it follows in the footsteps of great English genre writers, from Conan Doyle to Wilkie Collins to Margery Allingham (less well known, but who in my view is one of the greatest of the English detective novelists.) His book is a 'shocker', but it's also understated, and full of British stiff-upper-lippishness. Almost all the characters speak almost all the time with a calm, grave courtesy, and yet behave monstrously. The effect is a delightful blend of the terrifying and the well-mannered.
If you are squeamish, even just a little bit, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. But if you can cope with horror that curls darkness around your heart and makes you wake screaming in the night - this is the novel for you. It blends fantastical horror with real-life terror; and this wicked chimaera is then slivered with eerie eroticism, and seasoned with artfully clever wit.
I've just written a short piece on 3 of my favourite books on my Recently Read shelf, for the Cologne-based blog Mimesis Virtualis (cool name!) run by the indefatigable Frank Dudley.
To see what I had to say, click here.
Star blogger Ariel, aka Darren Turpin the marketing wizard at Orbit, has now given this website a revamp...check out The Books section and see what happens when you click those covers.
I realise with chagrin and alarm that it's been positively ages since I wrote my last blog...the period since Christmas has been a non-stop whirl. Apart from pursuing what I laughingly call my day job (teaching TV drama), of which more anon, I've been heavily into rewrites on two projects. One of them is a feature film set in Wales, which I've been working on with a top-notch director. And the other is the much-awaited (by my editor and publisher - 'Damn you Palmer'; they've been screaming, 'where is that new book?') new novel RED CLAW. It's an action-packed shoot 'em SF thriller on an alien planet with, I hope, a serious undercurrent. My new editor DongWon Song has given me some splendid notes, and so has Orbit publisher TIm Holman, and I've almost through the rewrite. But I haven't had time to come up for air for some weeks.
I gather that some novelists fear and dread rewrites - but having been a TV writer for so long I expect and rely upon a chance to do a second or third draft, and I relish the insights an editor can bring. For me, rewriting is one of the best bits of the writing process; that terrible fear of wondering 'what happens next' has gone, and you can focus on finding more and better in what you've already written.
Rewriting can be a drug, in fact; I had to write a note to my daughter's teacher last week and after fifty seven drafts and a coffee break, I was icily informed that I'd missed my moment - she'd already gone to school, some hours before. But hey! You can't just dash these things off. This was one hell of a note to Teacher!
I'm also immersed in research on another project, about art fraud and art forgery; so my head is a very strange place at the moment. But I shall endeavour to get back into blogging mode. I've just been reading SF Crowsnest, which always boosts my energy level and reminds me of what an active community the SF/fantasy world really is. And I was chuffed to get a mention in the Fantasy Book Critic's Best of 2008 blog. But generally, I have become a hermit crab, oblivious to what other writers and fans are writing and saying and thinking.
But, I'm back...
It's now two weeks since I returned from the AFM (American Film Market), and I'm only just returning to reality.
It is, I concede, a curious hobby for a science fiction novelist - being a film producer, going to Film Festivals, and pitching movies. But producing is something I started to do before the Debatable Space book deal. And it's a phase in my career that emerged quite naturally being a screenwriter; because when I worked in television I was also involved in script development and creative producing, as well as working as a head of development and head of drama of a small indie company.
And so these days, when I write a screenplay, rather than waiting around for producers to snap it up and steal all the fun, I tend to actively market the project myself. My company Afan Films has a small slate of projects, most written by me, but also including a wonderful and highly commecial family movie called The Big Bad by Emma Adams (already part-financed).
Until now, however, my film producing activities have been confined to meetings in London, and trips to the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals. The trip to the AFM was an attempt to break into the largest and most powerful market for movies in the world - Hollywood!
And oh boy, what a nerve-wracking, and exhilarating, and amazing experience it turned out to be.
The key to all such movie pitching events is planning; and in my case the work began in July of this year, when I recruited an Associate Producer aka Guy Who is Smarter Than Me At Such Things based in the US. His name is Jay - hi Jay! - and he's a New York/Maine writer/producer/director/ web producer/man-of-many-hyphens. We connected over Debatable Space - he sent me an email to say how much he'd enjoyed reading it back in January - and we've been planning this US trip for about five months.
Step 2 was getting organised. I am not, as my wife will tell you, at the drop of a hat, or even without the hat-drop, the world's most organised person. I often turn up on holidays without shirts or underpants. I rarely organise family trips, I never know where my passport is, and I have so little sense of direction, I often get lost in my own street.
But to go to the American Film Market - possibly the largest and busiest market for feature films in the world - ferocious organisation is required. So I had check lists, I had files, I had folders, both paper and electronic. And as the rest of my life turned to rack and ruin due to my inability to open letters from the bank marked URGENT, in this one small area of my existence, total efficiency ruled.
The next stage was the Cold Calling. This was somewhat tricky for me - because writers and producers who have an LA agent would expect to get all their meetings arranged for them. However, although I have two superb and unsurpassable British agents - one for books (hi John!) and one for drama (hi Meg!) I don't yet have an agent in the States. So, I realised, there was no dignified way of doing this thing. I had to just pick up the phone and call.
And there is, I learned, an art to Cold Calling Hollywood. You have to be persistent. You have to be shameless. You have to be nice. And you have to schmooze.
To my relief, Jay ended up doing the lion's share of the cold-calling; but when his day job became a monster, it was up to me to finish up organising the meetings. At 6pm every weekday, I picked up the phone...and transformed myself from being Taciturn Writer Person with No Social Skills to being Smooth Talking Movie Guy.
And overall, we did amazingly well. We got meetings with major Hollywood companies, we got scripts sent across, after signing Hollywood Release Forms, we fixed up an encounter with a leading Canadian entertainment lawyer, and we got a cluster of meetings at the AFM itself with British and American producers, sales agents and distributors. I also sold two mobile phone contracts and a free holiday in Bahamas, but I think I was a bit crazed that day, and I hope those guys never get back to me.
Next stage was Assembling the Crew. (You'll appreciate, of course, that I was treating this like a heist movie; but fortunately, we never got to the Double Cross bit....) Once I got to LA, my Crew was both virtual and real. I had my agents back in Blighty, responding to my increasingly crazed emails, together with Carlo, a bona fide film producer who gives me calm and wise advice on all matters difficult, and there was my Board - hi guys! - the really quite distinguished business people who hold Afan Films together.
But first and last, in my 'real' world, there was Jay. Jay, for reasons best known to himself, had rented a black station wagon that was undeniably the least cool vehicle on the LA freeway. We christened it the Bluesmobile, and toyed with the idea of wearing black suits and dark glasses and pretending we were the Blues Brothers. Tragically, however, neither of us was tall enough or lean enough to pass for Elwood; so we both had to be Jake Blues.
Next came the Briefing. I had come, as I have explained, and to my wife's total astonishment, extremely well prepared. (Shirts! Underpants! Files!) But Jay was uber-prepared. He had spread sheets and colour charts, he had a laptop with a powerpoint presentation, he even had a talking GPS who we christened Doris to get us to those vital meetings. (Since Jay, too, turned out to have a pitiful sense of direction. Is this a writer thing?)
I'd suggested that we should hold our briefing session in a chic LA bar where we could hob nob with famous movie directors and movie stars and possibly make eye contact with Halle or Nicole or Brad or Angelina. Jay sadly misheard, or misunderstood, or probably wasn't even listening to me in the first place; so we ended up in a Boston Irish Red Sox bar off Santa Monica Boulevard, where we found ourselves in a the midst of an amazingly raucous karaoke session. (The highlight was that fabulous girl who sang 'Whole Lotta Love'.)
I loved it there, of course - that's what I call a bar. And by this point, I was beginning to realise a profound truth about myself; that even in the midst of Hollywood glamour, I am essentially still just a Welsh bloke who likes a pint.
The next day, we Cased the Joint. The American Film Market isn't actually in Hollywood, it's in nearby Santa Monica, a stunningly beautiful beach resort which has a famous fun fair with illuminated ferris wheel. And the Market is spread between two high-class hotels, Loews and Le Merigot. When we entered Loews, we found ourselves engulfed in ultra-cool hubbub. Unknown film directors were being interviewed, meetings were being held in corners, guys with badges saying FOX or WARNERS were being followed Closeau-style by bug-eyed wannabee producers. An American guy strolled across, befriended us instantly, and told us about his slate of horror movies, then introduced us to his co-producer who owned the rights to a classic soul song written by his dad. Gorgeous young women in halter tops handed out fliers for the movies they had helped to produce; angry men in suits stomped down the boulevard snarling into their Blackberries.
Film Festivals are places of anarchy and chaos where buyers (film distributors, who put movies on in cinemas) haggle with sellers (sales agents, who sell completed movies on behalf of producers) whilst surrounded by a whirling swarm of desperate aspirant film-makers anxious to squeeze money or deals out of unwitting big-shots.
Each floor of the hotel was flanked with booths where bored looking assistants sat in front of often graphic and outrageous movie posters, fending off the desperate wannabees in the hope of, from time to time, encountering an actual Buyer. And all the luxury suites had been converted into offices where the richer sales agents plied their wares.
Jay and I had one conversation with a glamorous distributor's assistant who had set her office up in the bathroom of her company's luxury suite; her laptop was on the basin surface, next to jars of moisturiser and Dead Sea skin balms.
Some of the most urgent meetings took place next to the Loews Hotel pool; deals were haggled and re-haggled in a constant buzz of energy, as hotel guests swam lazily up and down in the actual water.
And finally, once we had Cased the Joint, the work began. We started to Pitch.
Pitching is addictive. It's a strange way of talking to people - you bend over backwards to be calm, relaxed, chatty, witty, not desperate, not anxious, not sweaty; you will yourself to be full of savoir faire and sang froid and other such French things, and all the while you are thinking FUND MY DAMNED MOVIE.
We spent two days pitching in the market; then two days pitching to actual Hollywood companies in their offices. We met a fabulous and powerful guy who raises money for movies from corporate sponsors - a dashingly handsome man dressed in a black Oscar Pomeroy suit and a matching Oscar Pomeroy tie, and a black beard flecked with grey, who admitted that Rupert Murdoch calls him the Prince of Darkness - and managed to persuade him to read our script. (He did; he liked it; and if and when we get a US distributor, he may raise several million dollars to help us make the film - so, Prince of Darkness, blessings to you!) We met the President of a major LA company which has helped make some of the most spectacular movies of recent years, including The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Golden Compass. We pitched to a charming story editor in the offices of Dean Devlin, producer of Independence Day - and, forgive me bragging here, but this really is the highlight of my producing career to date - we not only saw Dean Devlin enter the office and stand almost quite near us, but we actually saw the valet parking guy park Dean's car.
(That little story makes me sound rather sad, doesn't it? Damn!)
A further highlight was pitching to the company who made Predator - they actually keep the ten foot high model of Predator himself in the lobby, to scare their guests.
At some point in this whirl, I encountered Jay's friend Rob, who - coolest of things - makes promos for one of my favourite TV shows, The Shield. We went to see Rob at his editing suite in the Fox headquarters, and were able to have a tour of the Fox lot - acres and acres of offices and studios, featuring a perfect replica of several New York streets. Every stage/studio is painted with a mural - so there's the Simpson's Studio, and there's the Star Wars Studio, and so on - and yes, executives do actually drive from building to building on golf buggies.
On the last night, Rob took Jay and myself on a guided tour of Los Angeles, and we saw everywhere. The street where O.J. Simpson didn't, according to the jury, do the thing he was accused of doing. The Viper Rooms. The hotel where James Belushi died. And, the absolute highlight of the trip, the moment when the car came screeching to a halt and Rob said, 'You must see this!' was -
- by the way I have to explain at this point that both Jay and Rob and uber-nerds. Really, they are very very nerdy indeed. I am virtually not nerdy at all next to these guys. We spent an hour one night looking at photos of J.J. Abrams design for the new Starship Enterprise on Rob's iPhone. (Way cool!) So, with that bit of vital backstory in place, I can now explain that we saw -
This:
Isn't that just amazing? Isn't that the most...
What? What do you mean what's amazing? Can you not see?
Ignore those two guys in the front. (The tall one is Rob, the other is Jake, harumph, Jay.) But behind them. That black thing. See it now.
It's the original Batmobile. And it lives in a car showroom somewhere in LA, I have no idea where (I told you I have no sense of direction.) The walls of the showroom are covered in movie posters; they specialise in stocking cars that have been used in movies and TV shows; and they do actually have the original Batmobile.
Here, for a closer look of the Bat-vehicle, see this pic (and do ignore that guy on the left, he's very weird, and he follows me around everywhere):
A few ruminations.
Why do I make my life so complicated? Most writers just write. They stay at home all day. They watch Ironside in the afternoons. They emerge, blinking into the light, to meet their editor or agent from time to time; and such a life has a real appeal for me.
However, if you love movies, you have to hustle. It's the only way to do it. You have to meet people, go to Festivals, be around. And the truth is, I not only love movies, I love the buzz that producing movies gives. It's the nearest I get to living dangerously - I'm responsible for making things happen. I have to persuade people to give me money, I have to build creative teams, and know how to get the best out of them. And I get to be a Player, in however small a way.
That's one reason; the other reason, of course, is that I have movie projects I love, in genres that I love, and I want to see them made.
And I don't just want to see them made - I want to be part of the whole process, from fund-raising to casting to being on the set and actually knowing what's happening. When I worked as a regular writer on The Bill - which in many ways was one of the best times in my career - I used to get hugely frustrated at being so far away from the fun bits. I'd write a script, drive to the office, drive home, drive back for a script meeting, drive home; and then the danged thing would pop up on the telly. Admittedly, I would generally try and turn up at the set for an hour or so when my eps were filming - when I would always be in the way and not know what to do. But otherwise, the camaraderie of film-making, the adrenalin-rush of film-making, the sheer joy of film-making - I knew none of that.
Writers often miss these best bits of it when it comes to film and television drama. It's about belonging. And I'm determined not to miss out again.
In radio, however, the process is very different - with every radio play I've ever written, I've been in rehearsals, I've been present for every minute of the recording process, I've got to know the actors - I have been part of it. And I absolutely love the moment when the script becomes real; when the actors make the words flesh.
With novels, it's different again; for there is no 'part of it'. There's the joy of writing it; the pleasure of having lunch with your editor (hi Tim!), or your marketing executive (hi George! hi Sam!) or your agent (hi John!) But the actual process of making a book - typesetting, printing, driving the books in vans to the bookshops, selling the books - these things are all, let's face it, awfully boring. That is an "it" of which I do not want to be part.
But as a film producer - the kind of film producer who helps to raise the money, but doesn't spend all his time on the set - I get to be part of a magical buzz. And - damn it all - two weeks after coming back from Hollywood - I miss it.
I've just come back from a trip to LA (on this, more anon) and I'm joyous about the fact I had two long plane journeys in which to read actual books. The truth is, I'm finding it harder and harder to clear headspace for reading other people's books when I'm writing my own. So being trapped on an aeroplane for the best part of two whole days was a treat. (Though I did manage to fit in some movies too - including the execrable Journey to the Center of the Earth which, um, I actually enjoyed.)
I've also recently had a week away in Cyprus, visiting my wife's sister, and that too gave me ample opportunity to lose myself in books. And in the course of those two reading jags, I've managed to work my way through some of the best genre fiction around. These are books which, in my view, put genre writing up there with the best literary work. These books are beautifully crafted, beautifully written, and combine great storytelling with wonderful characters and evocative prose that lingers in the mind's ear.
I'm excluding here the fun but not quite so good books I've read over the last few months. But these are the best of the bunch. (There are two Stephen Kings here - I'm working my way through his collected works.)
First, and by no means least, the superlative Brazyl, by Ian McDonald. This is an astonishing piece of alternative-reality writing, set in various futures, and relying brilliantly but subtly on the multiverse theory which is one of the possible ToEs surrounding quantum theory. The hard sf is in there, and is cogently explained at one point. But the book is first and last an explosion of colour and life and character, evoking the real Brazil with astonishing detail, including a glossary of phrases, and weaving together disparate stories to create a seamless shocking whole. John Jarrold advised me that this book is one of the best SF novels to be published in recent years - and dang, he was right.
'Salem's Lot, by Stephen King. It takes a writer of superlative confidence to start a novel's title with an apostrophe; it refers of course to the town of Jerusalem's Lot, haunted by vampires, in a stunningly rich exploration of small town American life. This predated Buffy by yoinks; it's the author's second novel, written when he was still in his 20s. And despite some slightly hurried storytelling in the latter stages, it's an astonishing achievement. King ruefully admits that in his youthful arrogance he wanted to write a horror novel that had the texture and resonance and allegorical depth of the American classic Moby Dick; and (as a fan of the Melville) I think he actually succeeds. The vampire story is scary as hell; but over and above that, the way King creates his small US town in painstaking and compelling detail is entirely marvellous. His characters are utterly real; his tone is finely judged; and he has the eerie knack of reaching out a hand and placing haunting images in the reader's mind.
The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson. This is one of the SF classics I've only recently got around to reading, from the author of I Am Legend. It tells the story of a man who is shrinking - boy, these Golden Age writers didn't mess around! What it says in the title, it does.
I have fond memories of the film which was made of this - The Incredible Shrinking Man - but the book has its own genius. It is a terrifying portrait of a man losing his manhood; it is a religious parable; and it is an exalting, inspiring story of how to fight adversity, in the form of despair, depression, and monster spiders. Matheson's prose has a jewel-like precision; and he wastes no time on unnecessary backdrop, but tells his story out of sequence and suspensefully, and conjures up characters who ache with feeling with the briefest of scenes.
The Secret Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. This was the winner of the Hugo award for 2008. It's a piece of literary fiction which plays expertly with the well-worn SF trope of an alternative present based on a moment when history turned left, instead of right. In this version, the Jews were kicked out of Palestine in 1948, and were resettled in Alaska. (This was a serious possibility in the 1940s; it's just historical chance it didn't happen that way.) Chabon tells a shaggy dog detective story with chilling implications; he creates an astonishingly funny and enjoyable cast of characters; and most of all, he pulls off the amazing feat of making Yiddish the language of his characters, even though the book is written in English. There are hilarious flights of linguistic madness, there is Jewish humour in abundance, and there is a surreal account of a world in which bits of string can be used to demarcate territory, in the form of eruvs, allowing Jews to observe the Sabbath even while technically outdoors. (This bit, bizarrely, is true.)
And finally, though I'm still three chapters away from the end, there's
Duma Key, again by Stephen King. This is his latest novel, the work of an author in his 60s, at a time when authors are supposed to be getting lazy, stale and soft. However, King is none of these things; the older man's voice comes through, but the energy and audacity that were present in 'Salem's Lot are still present here. It's a really great story, scary and thought-provoking, based around the story of a man who loses his arm and then becomes a great painter in an evocative Florida location.
As you'd expect, there are very scary sections; but the triumph of this book is its account of the psychology and pain of a man who has suffered a ghastly accident, when his vehicle is hit by a crane. (In real life, King suffered an appalling car crash, which changed his outlook on life, but didn't in any way diminish his zest or creative energy.)
Every time I check my Good Reads site I discover that Jennifer Rardin and Fantasy Book Critic have notched up another stunning tally of books read. I fear I am lagging badly by comparison; but hope I have made up for it by reading, in quite close sequence, some of the greatest SF/horror novels around.
Now I need to start taking longer holidays, to read even more great books....
I was recently interviewed by Gary Reynolds, over at Concept Sci Fi. It's a beautifully designed site, full of great content, and has a special feature on how writers write.
To read the interview, which consists of me rabbitting on at great length (try shutting me up!), click round about here.
This week has turned into something of a perfect storm for me - one of those freak moments when many events coincide to create a whole larger than the parts - though, I hasten to add, in a good way, not in a smashing-up-ships actual storm way.
Firstly, I've just emerged blinking from the studio at BBC Broadcasting House, where my radio adaptation of Tayeb Salih's classic novel Season of Migration to the North has (almost!) completed recording. This is my first Radio 3 project, and it's been very exhilarating - I'll write more about it when I get my daylight eyes back.
And also, this week, Debatable Space continues to be the SF/fantasy/horror Book of the Month in Waterstone's. Sales are brisk I'm told, and, the telling detail here, the books are £2 cheaper than they will be on the 1st September.
And on top of all this, I've discovered (rather belatedly, since I haven't had time to read the Radio Times) I have an episode of Heartbeat being broadcast this Sunday, 31st August. This is the first ever science fiction episode of Heartbeat; and, buoyed up by my success in selling this notion, I'm now pitching a proposal to the BBC about an an alien family that moves in to Albert Square. (They will be squat and bald-headed and will talk in an eerie whisper - ah, you guessed it! Phil Mitchell was part of the advance party of the alien invasion!)
Next week things go back to normal. I'll spend my time worrying about being late with my deadlines, no one will phone me, and my emails will all be spam or virus threats. But for these few days, it's nice to savour the adrenalin-rush that comes from having a show in post-production, and a show on the telly, and a book in the shops, all at the same time.
This in from my spies in Sheffield...
The Waterstone's blurb is 'Imagine Firefly rewritten by Iain M. Banks', which I rather like....
I've just discovered that Orbit are recklessly giving away free copies of Debatable Space every Friday lunchtime, from this week until the end of August.
All you have to do to be eligible is sign up as a Fan of the exciting Debatable Space Facebook site. Click here for further details of the comp, and click here to get straight on the site.
I love the idea of a book being on Facebook - let's face it, my novel has more friends than I do, and a far better social life! In fact, my book has travelled around the world, and has been read by lots of charming and likeable people. Whereas I sit in my attic and work, and fester, and rarely see anyone from one month to the next. (Hmm, maybe I should be reincarnated as a novel?)
The Facebook site also features the Afterword to Debatable Space, which was included in the trade paperback but isn't in the new mass market edition. You can find this under Notes.
If you already have an edition of Debatable Space and get a new free copy - then that's your chance to give it away to a friend who you think might be seduced by its evil appeal.
Hurrah! Signed copies of the mass market edition of Debatable Space are now available from my local bookshop, the adorably named The Bookseller Crow on the Hill. Mr Crow was delighted at the brisk trade he did in internet sales of the large format edition, via this site. And he's now acquired a pleasingly large stack of the little beasties, which are available at the discount rate of £7.19.
It's been a good year for Debatable Space, and indeed for me. I've been delighted at the many nice responses I've had from SF fans. And I've also been thrilled at the reaction from friends who aren't SF fans who have loved the book, and said nice things about it, and, most importantly, let's face it, cutting out the wishy-washy mimsy euphemstic shilly-shallying, have bought the book.
In fact, I had a meeting this week with a producer who had (accidentally) bought two copies of the book from Amazon. That's the way to do it! Buy more! If you need something to go under that wobbly table leg, buy Debatable Space! It'll do the job nicely.
Oops, okay, sorry, I went off the rails a bit there. That's writers for you. We want to be loved, we want to be creatively fufilled, but most of all, we want to have our books bought.
Sad, I know.
Anyway, continuing this theme, of books being bought, I'm delighted to say that Debatable Space has been re-born (or rejuved?) in its new format mass market edition.
The cover is very subtly different, it's smaller, it's got a nice quote from Eric Brown on the front, and an interview with me in the back. But basically, I have to admit, it's exactly the same. So, damn it, if you already have a copy of Debatable Space, there's really no point you buying this new version. Don't bother. It's okay. I shan't be offended!
The new and smaller (and just as enjoyable (I hope!)) Debatable Space is published on the 7th August, which is next week isn't it? (I have trouble keeping track of time (there, another unnecessary bracket!) these days). Available in all good book stores, including and especially Waterstone's, who have been wonderfully supportive of the book, and have, ahem, sold copies of it.
And for those who haven't read it yet, but plan to do so - I hope you find it a strange but satisfying journey into a weird imaginative place.
I'm reading Charles Stross' Halting State at the moment, which is a gripping and tautly written piece, and full of wonderful extrapolations about the future. (It starts with a virtual bank robbery, and gets stranger from there.)
I've met Charlie at a couple of conventions - he's a very likable, charismatic, larger than life guy, of astonishing fluency and cleverness. And I also saw him talk at Easter Con on his vision of the future - not about his SF per se, but his more general thoughts on what he guesses will happen in technology and science.
This is very much Charlie's area of expertise - he's a computer guy as well as a science guy. And he's absolutely on the ball about the kind of technology that's about to hit us - from quantum computing to 'smart spectacles' (which allow us to see the world and the virtual world of computer info or games simultaneously. Think of Arnie in Terminator with his computer screen POV; that'll be all of us in just a few years.)
At Easter Con, Charlie also spoke fascinatingly about the 'plateau' effect that's affected a number of major technological developments. Because in the 1940s and 50s, many sensible speculators assumed that by the twenty first century there'd be men on the Moon, and men on Mars and a Moon colony, and maybe even starships, as well as flying cars and suchlike. Well, man did reach the Moon in the 1960s; but none of the rest has come true. And this is because it all costs so much. A graph representing the limits of the possible would shoot up in an almost vertical line; but a graph of the limits of the affordable would be a horrible, boring flat line. Progress goes so far at Fast; then it slows down.
In computing, by contrast, Moore's Law applies - the rule that says that the number of transistors than can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every 2 years. This is not really a Law of course - it's just the way it's been up till now. And it explains why computers are getting smaller, and more powerful, and yet also cheaper...! And it explains too why we are now living in a world in which science fiction seems to have come true - with Bluetooth, Wi-fi, mini-computers, and Nintendos that double as phones. (Have you seen those? They're so scary.) And yet - we don't have spaceships, we don't have teleportation, we don't even have very many electric cars. We are a twentieth century industrial society with twenty first century computing power.
In other words, computers have improved exponentially; every other dang thing is stuck on the plateau.
Charlie's view, though, is that the same plateau effect may start happening in the world of computing - UNLESS quantum computing comes on line, in which case, who knows?
But his thoughts on the future, in that talk and in Halting State, have made me think a little bit about my own vision of the future.
That's assuming I have such a thing of course - because the truth is, I wrote Debatable Space to be fun and entertaining and thought-provoking. I didn't sit down and spend months working out the science and the rules of the future history. The story, and the characters, came first.
However, after writing DS, and revising it, and after working on Red Claw and Ketos, I've started to realise that my future universe depends on a number of key assumptions.
And in a nutshell; in my future universe, there is no plateau effect. Science progresses fast, and keeps progressing faster. Many many planets are colonised. Spaceships are huge and reliable and go very very fast. Doppelganger Robots can be easily manufactured - whole armies of them if need be - and planets can be terraformed at extraordinary speed. And in the Earth system, no one is poor, resources are limitless, and the Solar System even has its own lighting system so that it's constant day.
This is a far cry from the dystopian vision of much SF. It's a world of plenty, and of endless resouces. So how could that be possible?
In a word, batteries.
Yeah, I know, that last line was a ghastly belly flop. If the word had been 'magic' or 'science' or if I'd used a phrase like 'the exaltation of the human spirit' it would have been much cooler. But batteries? How utterly nerdish is that? A future forged by Duracell?
Let me use another word then; energy. As a planet and as a civilisation we are now experiencing a major energy crisis: oil and gas supplies are becoming depleted, nuclear fission energy is dirty and too expensive, nuclear fusion still isn't commercial, and 'green' energy sources are hard work. (And can be highly non-ecological - look at all those damned wind farms.)
In addition, of course, we're facing global warming because of the way we run our profligate industrial society. And it's by no means ridiculous to suppose that in 50 or 100 years we'll be experiencing climactic disasters on a global scale.
All this puts a terrific damper on scientific progress - apart from being, of course, awful in itself. As SF readers we're all familiar with the amazing variety of new inventions that could and we hope will transform our lives - quantum computing (as mentioned above), nanotechnology, robotic fabricators which can turn every home into a factory, quantum teleportation, etc etc etc. But none of this is much use if we can't turn the lights on.
So in the Debatable Space Universe, to make all the cool toys possible, I make a major supposition; I suppose that some clever spark has invented a battery (perhaps a development of SMES, superconducting magnetic energy storage, or a supercapacitor incorporating nanotechnology, or both) that is phenomenally efficient, small, and can hold vast amounts of energy in compressed form. In Debatable Space these batteries are assumed; in the later books, I name them - I call them BBs, or B Bats.
So let's assume we have a BB that is able to contain in compressed form as much energy as the Sun emits in a day, assuming also you have a vast solar panel in orbit around the Sun to capture that energy. And when I say vast I mean vast - after all, no one is going to complain that it blocks their view. The orbiting solar panel can be far enough away from the Sun that melting does not occur, but near enough that the full value of the Sun's heat is received. And all that energy is then stored in the BB.
You then send a spaceship from the solar panel to the Earth carrying the BB; or you transmit the energy via laser beams to a satellite in orbit around the Earth, if that's possible, though my science advisor let me get away with it; or you find some other mechanism. But essentially, once you have you have lots of batteries all full of huge amounts of power, the energy needs of the world are over. You can use the BB to power factories to build spaceships to collect more BBs. You can use BBs to power robot miners to hew metals out of the asteroids. BBs power the robot fabricators; BBs run our homes, so we don't need a National Grid.
You'll notice this above account is a little short on maths and engineering data and diagrams of solar panels in orbit. I adore writers like Asimov and Clarke and Greg Bear (and, indeed, Alastair Reynolds) who can back up their extrapolations with heavy duty science. That's not something I can do, not off the top of my head anyway; and it's not where my focus is.
My point is simply this; this one invention makes everything else possible. The sheer lunacy of the British government's policy in promoting nuclear power (because it makes a loss! it fails on its own terms) is an indication of how inward-looking our policy of seeking out energy sources is. We use oil and gas - which are the remains of carbon forests, but which ultimately constitute an organic stored form of the energy of the sun. And we split the atom, to generate energy. And we dream of clean and cold nuclear fusion, which allows us to replicate on Earth the process by which energy is generated in the Sun.
But why not just cut out the middleman - go to the Sun. If we had materials strong enough, we could fire solar panels into the Sun itself. Our entire planet - our forests and trees and plants and hence our animals - is fuelled by the energy from the Sun which, let's face it, is way far away. But this is a tiny proportion of the energy the Sun spews out every day.
And once you have space travel - there are the stars. Every single star is a burning mass of energy; and if you take a look at how many stars there are even in our tiny bit of the Galaxy, and how many other Galaxies there are, the mind starts to swim. Even the human race couldn't use up all that power.
The Universe of Debatable Space is therefore based on three assumptions. 1) That instantaneous space travel is possible by a combination of virtual technology and quantum entanglement. 2) That a new kind of battery makes energy virtually limitless. 3) That humanity continues to screw things up, big time.
Because the universe of Debatable Space is no Utopia, it's no rosy-eyed vision of a world where no one wants for anything. It's a nasty ruthless universe, where limitless resources are distributed in the most appallingly unfair way possible. That's the drama and the ultimate source of jeopardy in these stories; that's the war that Flanagan and Lena fight.
But it's taken me three books to realise that I am essentially an optimist about the possibilities of scientific progress. I don't believe there will be a plateau; I think we'll either blow ourselves up, or we'll spread through the galaxy with gadgets galore.
And I also believe that even global warming will have a technological solution. The solution may come too late - the crisis is imminent, as almost all commentators now agree. And the solution may be undesirable; is it morally right to solve the problems caused by technology by using more technology?
Well, maybe not; but I still think it will happen. Because scientists are smart, and science is powerful; and if it can be done, we will do it. (Or rather, others will - I'll still be writing SF.)
With great power comes great responsibility, as Peter Parker is told, rather too often. So if at some future date - when? I have no idea? - our energy crisis is solved, that doesn't solve all our problems. Far from it.
But it would be nice if all the other things I predict in Debatable Space - tyranny, oppression, brutality, genocide - don't come true. It would be nice if the human race were better, and wiser, than that.
Let's hope...
I found this hilarious and touching - it's Kate Elliott explaining where she got her 'Big Idea' for her Crossroads series, on John Scalzi's Whatever site.
Among the highlights of this piece is a wonderful evocation of a marriage which began with a double kill.
I haven't read Kate's work yet - but after reading this delightful blog-essay from her, I really have to...
I'm thrilled to say that today (Sunday March 23rd) Debatable Space is Book of the Day on the Meet the Author site.
And after today, if you google me you'll see a clip of my interview in which I say various things.
I'm off to Eastercon this weekend, for what promises to be a fabulous convention. Two of my favourite writers - Neil Gaiman and Tanith Lee - are Guests of Honour - and I notice that the magnificent and prolific Charles Stross will also be attending. My agent John Jarrold, a veteran of Worldcons and Eastercons, will also be there. I'm new to the SF convention experience, but I expect to be a duck impacting water.
And in fact, from now on my year appears to be cluttered with festivals and conventions - I'm on a panel at Alt. Fiction in Derby, with the gifted Stephen Gallagher, and then in May I spend a week in Cannes, for the Film Festival.
And between those two events comes another great festival, which I would like to shamelessly pimp - the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. If you can get to London do check it out.
Now I need to find some time to actually write novels.
A while ago, I quoted Karen Miller's wonderful Book Swede Quote of the Week about the eating of elephants - her way of describing the process of how to write vast, panoramic, multi-character novels, by eating the elephant a bite at a time.
I love these wise words; and I've had reason to recall them while working on my own vast, panoramic, multi-character epic Ketos. The process of writing it has been fantastic, I've had wonderful responses to early drafts I've sent out to friends, but I'm way behind schedule.
Munch, munch.
This means, unfortunately, that Ketos is not going to ready for a 2008 slot as originally planned. But I'm glad to have more time to work on it and let it grow. And I reassure myself by reading the acknowledgements pages of other big books which were delivered late. Richard Morgan admits that the writing of Black Man took him past several deadlines; Neil Gaiman admits the same about American Gods. So I'm in good company.
I'm also aware of the terrific importance of editors in this whole writing process. I've worked with great editors and producers in television (Zanna Beswick and Archie Tait to name but two) and at Orbit, I'm lucky enough to have, in Tim Holman, an editor of great wisdom and rigour and, dash it all, he's very nice too. He loved Debatable Space and I always admired the fact that he never tried to tame it or make it more 'ordinary'. And he's been highly supportive of the various not-there-yet drafts of Ketos he's had to plough through (if you've never read a writer's rough draft, trust me, it can be a painful experience!) What's more, his notes have been insightful and superb. But I did take the hint when, in giving his notes on the last draft, he very kindly said, 'I'm confident this will be absolutely wonderful, Philip, when it's, um, finished.'
Oops.
So it's more work from Palmer on this one! In order to get it to the point where it looks as if it was written with no effort whatsoever. And, at Tim's savvy suggestion, I'm now multi-tasking, having started work on the book that was originally meant to come after Ketos. It's called Red Claw, it's a thriller, and an exploration of what it is to be a scientist, and I'm having the most wonderful time writing it.
The reason for doing two books at once is that, to be honest, it keeps both novels fresh. There usually comes a point in writing a novel or script when you get jaded, and have to put it aside for a week or two, or even a month or two, then go back to it when your brain is clear again and it all looks new and shiny, and the flaws are easy to spot. So this way, I can balance the downtimes of the two projects nicely; it's like being on a spaceship with two rockets.
Interesting, Lilith Saintcrow also uses this approach; her novels are published one at a time, but she admits that she wrote her first Dante Valentine stories almost simultaneously.
So next year, expect Red Claw and Ketos to start jostling for position in the bookshops.
Ideally, I'd love Red Claw to come out first, giving me a bit more time to bite chunks of elephantine Ketos.
And although, quite deliberately, I haven't attempted to write a trilogy, I do hope that together the three books will add up to more than the sum of their parts. They show different visions of the Cheo's universe, they span a range of styles from tragedy to comedy, and for all the similarities and shared content that will exist between them, they represent three different ways of writing a science fiction novel.
As readers of this blog will know, I love variety in writing - and I hope all three books will give readers a similar buzz, but will also stimulate with their quality of difference.
John Scalzi does an interesting feature in which he asks writers to talk about their 'Big Idea' - the guiding principle behind their writing.
I've had a stab at explaining my own Big Idea - which I call 'More is more'...if you want to check it out, click here.
Yesterday was the official UK publication date for Debatable Space...friends kept asking if I was having a launch party, but somehow that never came together. So instead my wife took me up the Hill and we had a launch coffee in the local Cafe Nero.
New on this site: Ariel has resdesigned the format of the two extracts on the Books page. He's modelled it on the Orbit extract page but decided to create an even better skull & crossbones....
And if you want to win a free copy of Debatable Space, click here.
It's one more day till the official UK Launch Date of Debatable Space, but I was delighted to find that the early editions at my local bookshop, The Bookseller Crow on the Hill, have all been sold. Some went to friends and neighbours, but the last book was sold to a reader of this blog based in Lancashire, who followed the link to Crow.
I'm a great believer in the value of local bookshops, and I love the fact that thanks to the wonders of the internet, my local bookshop can be your local bookshop too....
I've now signed a new batch of copies, so if you want a signed edition from the first print run, click here to order.