Life in the Palmer Universe has been highly frenetic over the last month…I’ve been planning to do a lot more blogs but there just ain’t enough hours in the day.

Good stuff and bad stuff keeps happening. The bad stuff includes a lorry sideswiping my car when it was parked near the house.  A friendly fork lift truck driver saw the incident and regaled me with a long account of how it happened when I bumped into him in the street the following day.   The upshot is that as well as smashing in the window, the lorry cracked the frame of the car, which has now been written off. So my wife and I have spent the last two weeks trying to find a replacement vehicle pronto.  (We have her now – a Fiat Punto – our plan is to park the car in North London from now on, to keep it safe from those roving trucks.)

Grr…

Good stuff includes a new radio commission. I’m already doing a three part radio drama about military war games, featuring role-playing exercises as done FOR REAL by those chaps in the military. It’s a fascinating, political, and utterly absorbing subject and I’ve been immersing myself in global politics for some weeks now. Don’t ask me about the situation in Kurdistan and the respective roles of Jalal Talabani or Masoud Barzani, or I might actually tell you.   The new project sounds a bit the same – it’s war crimes as opposed to war games.  Clearly I have a thing about war…! Essentially it’s a dramatised account of the pursuit and successful prosecutions of Bosnian and Serbian war criminals after the war in the former Yugoslavia; highly topical stuff, and an amazing true-life story.

Meanwhile, Hell Ship is still steaming ahead  out there…had some nice responses to it from friends at Fantasy Con. And my next novel Artemis is due out surprisingly soon – in December – and marks a return to the Debatable Space universe.

AND I’m now doing some part time lecturing on cinema and storytelling at the University of York…so that means catching up on some much loved films like His Girl Friday and Once Upon a Time in the West for my lectures. I love this academic side of thing and it’s great to be doing a bit more of it again.

Onwards…

The T Party sesssion was an eye-opener for me in terms of the quality of the work, and the exemplary, detailed, utterly professional and extremely insightful level of critiquing.  This is a great Writers Group and I support it; and I hope to go along to one of their sessions at the George Pub in London sometime.

I also took part in a panel called Writing 101: How to Become a Writer, with Jaine Fenn and Stephen Deas. We all talked about our different experiences in becoming writers and tried to pass on tips and words of wisdom. Jaine’s break came after a meeting with a commissioining editor at an Eastercon; Stephen’s cunning plan was to self-publish a book which, darn it, turned out to be so good he got an agent and a publisher. My approach was many-fold, since I have ‘become’ a writer many times. First I was a TV and film writer (my strategy; become a script editor first). Then I was a radio writer – and this came about after I joined a writers’ group called Paines’ Plough. They produced a rehearsed reading of my 45 minute play GIN AND RUM – written in a day, in a writers’ group session – and it was seen by a radio producer who loved it and made it into a radio play. And the rest of my radio oeuevre (as they say) flowed from that.

And finally I became an SF novelist, and my strategy there was – John Jarrold! Best agent ever. I wrote a book, John read it, and sold it. And it strikes me that of all these different fields of writing, novel writing and SF writing is the easiest to ‘break into’ – because there are simply so many places to start, and there isn’t the hostility to newcomers that you get (I’m being utterly candid here) elsewhere. Self-publish; join a writers’ group; write a novel and send it to an agent; attend cons; keep writing. Of course you’ll only succeed if you’re good; but the doors really aren’t closed.

In fact what struck me forcibly at the Birmingham Eastercon is HOW MANY WRITERS THERE ARE.  We had a room full of them in Writing 101.  A blogger who I met last year (Adam Christopher) came up to me and told me he now has several book deals lined up – which I’m thrilled about.  Everyone I met in the bar was a writer or wanted to be a writer. And it’s clear the lines are well and truly blurred.  It’s not a case of fans going to cons to meet writers and wondering how it’s done; EVERYONE is doing it.

Occasionally I wonder – why?  I mean, why do people write? Why do I write? It’s not for the money (hollow laugh!) Although I’ve managed to make a living as a professional writer for, er, 21 years; and some writers of course make millions. (My first ever job was working for TV writer Murray Smith, the only Brit TV writer to earn a million pounds in a year – and that was a long time ago…)  But really, get a job as a dustman and if you average it out, you’ll probably do better financially, and you’ll have a lot less stress.

No, writing is a drug.  And I am a facilitator.  Later today I’m going to London Film School to work with an outstandingly talented group of international students – a Mexican, an American, a Brazilian and a Serb – on their feature film projects, now at first draft stage.  Last term I assessed four other writers on the same course – brimming with talent!  My boss at the London Film School Brian Dunnigan is also of course an accomplished writer – and I’m currently script editing his movie JOURNEY INTO SPACE (of which, more anon.)  I have many many friends who are writers who were formerly my students on other courses (at the National Film and Television School and Leeds Metropolitan University) or who were commissioned by me during my stints as a literary manager and development executive.

The wealth of talent is astonishing. But there is a problem. Yup, you’ve got it – too many writers!  All chasing the same jobs. So that’s why writing as a career really isn’t the shrewdest of choices – be a banker instead!  But it’s not a career of course, it’s a passion.  Writing is something you do because you HAVE to do it.

Why is that? Is it because we learn more about human nature through the act of writing about it? Duh! Writers spend all their time writing; it’s other folk who are out there living life, and learning about human nature!  Do we become wiser, kinder people through the act of writing? Duh! Spend an hour in the bar with a bunch of writers and you’ll soon learn what vain, avaricious, ungrateful oiks we all are.  Does writing make the world a better place? Duh!  Campaigning for world peace or inventing a cure for cancer or setting up a bank that doesn’t fleece its customers would all be ways to make the world a better place. We just write books.

I think I write for the same reason that I read; I love to get lost in different worlds.  And I love to CONNECT with readers  (or viewers, or listeners) in a way that touches their souls, with something I have created.

Books, let’s face it, are like children.  In the case of Peter F. Hamilton, big fat children who talk all the time (and none the worse for that!)   But unlike children, books can be shaped and created and moulded; you can be the god of the book you are writing.

Which is not the case with children. I have one, she’s fifteen years old, and she’s the best thing I’ve ever done.  But she’s not mine; she’s her own creature.  Children – let me be clear about this – are better than books. And living life is more important than writing about it.

And yet – must write that next chapter. I need to know how it comes out!

And, if you don’t have a radio (‘cos I don’t!) you can listen to it ONLINE for a week after broadcast on BBC iPlayer.  To hear ep 1, click:

HERE.

My director Toby Swift has done a superlative job; and the remarkable cast is led by David Schofield (Daniel Ballantyne) and Hattie Morahan (Jessica Brown.) 

As my research for this piece, I spent much of my free time this year reading books about art and artists and making slideshows of my favourite paintings.  And from time to time I’m going to feature Paintings of the Weeks about some of my favourite artists, including and especially the wicked ones.  As Ballantyne explains in Ep 5: 

 BALLANTYNE: Oh of course.   I love artists who are evil.  Caravaggio was a bastard and a murderer.  Gilbert Reynolds was a shit.  Picasso used people.  Michelangelo crucified a boy then painted him as he died. 

 JESSICA: Did that really happen? 

 BALLANTYNE:  Yes. I have a letter from Michelangelo in which he talks about his feelings as the boy died.  It’s in my Swiss vault. I’ll show you one day. 

 JESSICA: Yeah?  What else do you have in your Swiss vault? 

 BALLANTYNE:  Treasures. Many treasures.  It’s a gallery in miniature, in the basement of a Zurich bank.  It’s an experience. 

 JESSICA: Next month. Take me. I insist. 

 BALLANTYNE:  As always, your wish is my command. But I digress. Bernini, as you know, slashed his lover’s face.   Sickert may or may not have been Jack the Ripper.  But for sheer unrequited evil – Cellini is your man. 

 JESSICA:  Murderer, liar, fraud, cheat. 

 BALLANTYNE:  Altogether a man after my own heart.  

So today I will explore the misdeeds of one of these aforesaid evil bastards . 

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio 

Like Don Corleone, Caravaggio was named after his home town. He was the master of chiarascuro, and his paintings have an incredible cinematic intensity. He arrived in Rome in 1592 and within a few years had revolutionised the world of art with his realistic scenes of low lifes, and his searing sensual depictions of the sacred.  

He also spent a lot of time in bars, mixing with whores, and getting pissed. Two of his best friends were Fillide Melandroni and Anna Bianchini, both practitioners of the art of the courtesan, with a reputation for getting involved in violent assaults.  Helen Langdon* writes of the ‘raucous life of street battles with the Roman whores, where beating and kicking down doors, throwing stones, yelling rude insults was routine. In one incident, Fillide attacked a woman who was sleeping with her lover; she left a sfregio, a mark on the woman’s face, carved with a knife, as well as stabbing her in the hand.  Fillide became a wealthy woman; and Caravaggio often used her as as a model – she was Mary Magdalene and St Catherine in two of Caravaggio’s most celebrated paintings. 

Like many bravos of the time, Caravaggio lived two lives; he mixed with refined society, attended soirees,and was the protege of a cardinal.  But he also mixed with low lives, carrying a sword and dagger, and had a ferocious temper.  And as his fame grew, his temper worsened.  The Dutch artist Carel Van Mander described how Caravaggio would work in a frenzy for weeks then  sally forth ‘for two months with a rapier at his side…going from one tennis court to another, always ready to argue or fight.’   Caravaggio was also intensely jealous of other painters, including Federico Zucarro; and Caravaggio and his friend Longhi shockingly attacked one of Zuccaro’s pupils (Marco Tullio) in the street. Insults were hurled: ‘Let us fry the balls of scum such as you’, then punches were thrown and stones were hurled.  

The following year, in 1601, Girolamo Spampa, a young pupil at the Accademia di San Luca, was knocked down in the street and beaten with a cudgel – and identified Caravaggio as his attacker, though the motive for the attack is unclear.  But it cannot be denied that the ‘youth of today’ are a mild, moderate and peaceful bunch compared to the youth of yesteryear.  I mean-  Caravaggio and his gang were a bunch of bullying shits! 

In 1605 our man was in trouble again, firstly for carrying a sword without a licence, and then for attacking the home of two women.  Then he got into a dispute with a notary called Mariano Pasqualone.  According to one account (Langdon),  Caravaggio was spurred by jealousy of a model of his called Lena, who was seeing Pasqualone.  According to another account (Schama**) Caravaggio was offended by comments met by Pasqualone about Lena, which cast doubt upon her virtue:  Pasqualone alleged that Lena was known to ‘stand in the Piazza Navona’, a subtle way of  saying she shagged around with little or no discrimination.  Because Pasqualone didn’t carry a sword, Caravaggio was unable to challenge him to a duel. So instead, he attacked him from behind and hit him on the head with a sword.  A witness describes the attacker: ‘a man with an unsheathed weapon in his hand. It looked like a sword or a hunting knife He turned around at once and made three jumps and turned towards the palace of the Cardinal Del Monte…He wore a black cloak on one shoulder.’  The witness added: I only heard the wounded man say it could not be anyone but Michelangelo da Caravaggio.’ 

This wasn’t the end for Caravaggio; he fled to Greece, paid some bribes, and returned to his life of fame and glory.  But then he killed a man.  It’s a miracle, really, that this hadn’t happened earlier; but even in Rome in the early seventeenth century, a murder could not be ignored. 

In fairness to Caravaggio, his act of murder was probably one of the LEAST shabby things he had done in his life – in that the death occurred in a fair fight, a duel – rather than involving, as in the past, the artist sneaking up on an enemy and  clubbing them from behind with a cudgel or sword.  The duel was with Ranuccio Tomassoni, whose family dominated the neighbourhood, and who was also a keen player in the street brawling milieu.   As Caravaggio passed Ranuccino’s house, Ranuccio grabbed a sword and a rumble ensued.  Caravaggio and Ranuccio fought one on one for some time, then Ranuccio fell – and the sword thrust that had been aimed at his thigh caught him in the stomach.  His brother Givoan rushed to protect him and Caravaggio tried to kill HIM too, but was dragged away. 

Ranuccio died and Caravaggio fled, yet again.  But he was never brought to justice; his fame was too great, his talent too important to the Catholic Church – whose power over the people was enhanced by the visceral sensuality of Caravaggio’s sacred paintings. He fled to Naples, and then to Malta, where he sought redemption by applying to become a Knight of St John.  After he painted for them a magnificent version of The Beheading of John the Baptist, the Knights decided to make Caravaggio one of their own. Corruption yes; but at least they had taste. 

Then the darned rascal screwed it up AGAIN by getting into yet another fracas, after which he was interned in a dungeon.  After a daring escape, he fled to Naples, where he was attacked by unknown assailants and left for dead.  No one knows who was responsible; friends of the Tomassoni family, perhaps, or allies of Pasqualone? Or, some suppose, this was revenge by the offended party in the Maltese fracas. 

Frankly, he had a lot of enemies.  Caravaggio died, sad and alone, in suspicious circumstances after being abandoned by ship ship in the port of Palo 

It’s an astonishing life; because in between being a bully, a carouser, and a killer, Caravaggio transformed and enrichened the world of art by creating three-dimensional tableau of astonishing sensuality. You can feel these paintings, as well as seeing him – when Doubting Thomas puts his finger into Christ’s open wound – Yuk! It’s like being there.  And very often the paintings tell a story – you are lured into imagining what happens next… 

* CARAVAGGIO: A Life by Helen Langdon (Pimlico) 

** THE POWER OF ART by Simon Schama (Bodley Head) 

Young Sick Bacchus

Boy Bitten by Lizard

The Crucifixion of Peter

Judith Beheading Holofernes

The Decapitation of John the Baptist

The Stigmatisation of St Francis

David and Goliath

Medusa

Supper at Emmaeus

The Incredulity of St Thomas - yuk!

The Taking of Christ

The Card Sharps

Mary Magdalen, as portrayed by Anna Bianchini, a whore

Fillide Melandroni, notorious brawler and whore, as Judith

Fillide again as St Catherine, whose appalling demise inspired the Catherine Wheel

Mary Magdalene in esctasy; model unknown, but she seems to be enjoying herself

A huge number of people (well actually on a few people) (okay truth be told, hardly anyone) have asked me how they might be able to listen to Series 1 of this drama about art, forgery and murder, featuring the brilliant but utterly duplicitous  Daniel Ballantyne.  And I’m now pleased – and indeed rather astonished – to reveal that Series 1  is now AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD.  It’s a snip at £6.59. 

If you listen to both versions you will notice a subtle – nay, a glaringly obvious – character transformation experienced by the character of Jessica Brown, who in series one is interviewing the dying Ballantyne for her book on his life as a forger.  You may also notice that the character’s voice changes somewhat between the two series. This is because in series 1 Jessica was played by the astonishingly gifted Indira Varma; and in series 2 she is played by the equally astonishingly gifted Hattie Morahan. 

This is forgery, radio drama style. 

Here are some pics of the actors in the show:

Hattie Morahan, who plays Jessica

David Schofield, who plays Daniel Ballantyne, and who rather pathetically fails to notice that the woman he loves IS A DIFFERENT WOMAN

Bear in mind here that normally being a writer of drama is a really boring thing. We write the words; but actors make them come to life. We never get to actually BE our characters.

Except on this show.  Yes, the moment that I’d always anticipated finally came – the director turned to me and said, ‘Phil, we need you in this scene.’  Oh   * blush *

Admittedly, my role was a small one.  That great thespian David Schofield was playing the lead role of Daniel Ballantyne.  That fine actress Hettie Morahan was playing Ballantyne’s nemesis Jessica Brown.  And the delightful radio rep actress Sally Orrock  was playing the pivotal role of DS Morgan, who has, count ‘em, two entire lines in the vital scene where Ballantyne is finally nicked.  And I played DC Beckett,  the subtly underwritten role of DS Morgan’s sidekick during the arrest scene.  My lines were – well, I had no lines actually. My job was to walk with DS Morgan from the wall to the table where the actors were sitting, and then to indicate by gentle breathing noises that there were actually TWO coppers present, not one.

Yes, I had a non-speaking role in a radio drama; and I AM proud of it.

The first take was something of a disaster I have to admit.  Somehow, Sally and I managed to march in unison, which means that for the radio listener, we were in effect one person.

Having mastered this basic radio technique – if you don’t speak, WALK LOUDLY – I felt my performance improved with every take.  I walked behind Sally, again and again, carefully watching her pacing and stepping out of synch with it.  And after Sally spoke her first line, when the waiter came along, I stepped to one side to make way for him  with several thundering footsteps, and exhaled in annoyance. Yes, that’s me – the annoyed exhalation moment!

I have to say, being in the scene is a great way to get close to the actors’ performance. Normally in radio, after the initial readthrough around a table, the writer sits in a different room to the actors, except to chat or discuss a scene.  But to be so close to these amazingly gifted guys  at work was a joy. David and Hettie, who had never met before this recording, had an amazing chemistry right from the start; and their two characters rip the piss out of each other all the time, sometimes shockingly so,  using verbal articulacy as both bludgeon and rapier.

So I was as I say inspired to see them act  at such close quarters.  And they, in turn, were doubtless inspired by the feet-thumping and audible exhalations of DC Beckett.  Yes, I stole the scene, and perhaps even the show, and I’m not too humble to admit it. (!)

The Art of Deception Series II will be broadcast on Radio 4 mornings and evenings from the 20th December; the final ep is on Christmas Eve.

David is a fabulous actor , and a tremendoudly nice man. But the truth is, he was born to play an evil genius…as we in the radio studio are discovering with his portrayal of art forger, robber, liar, thief and murderer (?) Daniel Ballantyne.

But David is no stranger to evil, as this wonderful tribute below, mainly but not exclusively drawn from his work on Pirates of the Caribbean, shows:

Mike Carey was there…as was Suzanne McLeod, Robert Grant from Sci-Fi London, my agent John Jarrold, and a gang from Orbit Books – Anna, Rose, Jo, Sam, and Bella Pagan, whose steam punk outfit (complete with bandolier) complete stole the show. 

I went dressed as Palaeo, who is the little known older brother of Neo.  After a while however I had to abandon my shades because I couldn’t see who I was talking to, and without those, I looked like a renegade priest. 

Tomorrow I enter a different reality entirely…I’m at Broadcasting House for the recording of my new radio drama The Art of Deception 2.  This, as you may have guessed, is the sequel to The Art of Deception 1, and tells the tale of arch forger, liar, cheat, and (possibly) murderer Daniel Ballantyne. It’s a serial written in 5 x 15 minutes which is a tricky but a wonderful format.  Each episode has to be SO precise, tell a story, recap the story that has come before, and yet not be expositional. 

I’m paired up once more with the wonderful Toby Swift, director & producer & Yorkshireman, in that order.  And the cast include David Schofield (who you will have seen in Pirates of the Caribbean), who reprises his role of Daniel Ballantyne, and Hattie Morahan, daughter of the great director Christopher Morahan.  I haven’t met Hattie yet but I’ve seen in quite a few shows, including Outnumbered, and she’s a fab actor.

The scripts I’ve written are very intense – several of the eps are two-handers for David and Hattie.  And it’s a world I love, and a tone that feels very special to me.  Ballantyne is evil; but he is articulate.  And I do love that in a villain….

Radio is a strange old fashioned medium that seems to have leaped into the digital age with one bound; because you can now listen to plays on your computer, or your mobile phone or whatever iGadget you happen to own.  And there’s something very comforting about drama that depends just on voices; if it hadn’t been invented, someone would invent it round about now.

It’s still the Cinderella medium however.  TV honchos turn up their noses at radio dramatists; and it’s rare for the front page of the Radio Times to be devoted to a radio programme, rather than a TV show.  The good news is that radio is still a place where the dramatist’s voice is still treated with respect.  On TV, there are fewer and fewer outlooks for quirky maverick voices creating original stuff – the Pennies From Heaven/Edge of Darkness/Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment  kind of weirdness.  But radio drama thrives on originality, and vision, and passion.

I’m about to start work on a new radio drama (er, already missed one deadline so I really HAVE to start) which is a sequel to my art fraud drama THE ART OF DECEPTION starring David Schofield and Indira Varma.  This ’further adventures of’ piece is a five part serial about a devious art forger and his various nemeses; it’s the kind of piece I’ve been wanting to write ever since I saw Stanley Donen’s CHARADE. 

After that, it looks as if (provided the budget is approved) I’ll be writing a 3-part radio drama about war games, for transmission in 2012/13 (yes, that’s years away, but radio execs like to schedule ahead!) This is no less than a mega state of the nation project about the decisions that go into the fighting of wars; it’s inspired by seeing how THE WEST WING handles major setpiece action sequence ie entirely through dialogue. 

I love TV and am keen to do more week in that medium at some point; and my film projects are simmering away nicely.  But it’s my radio plays that give me a chance to do things that are different, and contemporary, and politically challenging.

And I’m looking forward to the day when the BBC finally (finally!) gets its act together and puts the radio archive on line as a permanent resource.  In fact, they could start to do it now, if they were smart enough to embrace an open source strategy – let writers put their own plays on their own websites!  But that’s never going to happen, so unless you embrace the illegal download approach (hardly illegal if you pay your licence fee!) then there’ll be a long wait before radio dramas start to emerge from dusty closets and take on a new life again. 

Even out of print books can be bought second hand; but most radio plays, once transmitted, just vanish; which is a real shame.  And I’d truly love to see my previous plays get a further life – such as GIN AND RUM, my first play, a ghost story set on a roof; my wild adaptation of Spenser’s fantasy epic poem THE FAERIE QUEENE; or my ‘cleverer than Sherlock Holmes’ detective drama about Isaac Newton, THE KING’S COINER. 

One day…

It’s the story of a son who agrees to donate a kidney to his sick father…and how that affects the family relationship. The wonderful cast includes Philip Jackson, Ashley Kumar and Daniela Nardini…director was my favourite Russian, Sasha Yevtushenko. 

It’s not science fiction…but it IS the kind of story I most love; a tale about characters in crisis.

It’s Pick of the Day in the Guardian Guide, which writes:

Season of Migration to the North is an adaptation of Tayeb Salih’s lauded story of a man’s return to his home in Sudan after seven years of studying in Europe.  Suleyman reflects poetically on the comfort he feels on returning to the village of his birth, which is shaken when a dangerous stranger arrives in the town. Philip Palmer’s dramatisation captures the sense of menace that hangs over the apparent unchanging safety of a Nile village.

If you miss it, then you can catch it on BBC iPlayer for 7 days after broadcast.

It’s on BBC Radio 4.  The broadcast times are:

10.45 am, Monday 22nd-29th June (repeated 7.45pm every day.)

And then it’s on BBC  iPlayer for a 7 day window after each live broadcast.  Just follow the link, or click your iPlayer icon, and type the name of the drama into the Search box. There’s a lovely picture image to accompany the broadcast which those iPlayer boffins have conjured up. 

I’m told iPlayer works abroad – so this is a truly global transmission!

It broadcasts in the Woman’s Hour slot at 10.45am, then is repeated at 7.45pm, every day from Monday to Friday.  Each ep is just 15 minutes long – that is SO not easy, to get all the story in about 13 mins and a bit, which is all they really give you. 

For cast details, click here.

It’s not science fiction – it’s a straight thriller set in the world of art forgery and art theft.  It stars Indira Varma and David Schofield, and is directed by my long-time collaborator and dashed nice chap Toby Swift.

This is a passion project for me; I’ve always been fascinated by art forgers.  One of the greatest was Hans Van Meegeren, whose fake Vermeers made him rich and famous in the 30s and 40s. At this height of his fame, he even managed to sell a Vermeer to Herman Goering.  Bizarrely, to modern eyes, the Van Meegeren Vermeers look awful - the people look plastic and the colours are wrong. And there’s none of the quiet perfection of the real Vermeer – who had a genius for making us feel we are eavesdropping on domestic reality, not looking at a mere painting.

But that’s the art of deception! Van Meegeren’s first Vermeer forgeries were actually rather good, but all the art dealers declared them them to be fakes. So he hit upon the trick of forging early Vermeers, in a very different style to the more mature work everyone knew about. And that fooled everyone…l

There’s a great lesson there in how to deceive; it is, it seems, the big ridiculous lies that work better than the small credible lies. 

The climax of Van Meegeren’s story came when the Allies won the Second World War and it was discovered that Van Meegeren had sold a Vermeer to the fat, greedy, evil Goering - who was by then classified as a war criminal.  It was of course an act of treason to sell a Dutch masterpiece to a Nazi, and Van Meegeren faced the death penalty. But his defence in court was to argue that it’s not treason to sell a forgery to a Nazi; in fact, by duping the enemy, he was striking a blow on behalf of the Dutch people!

Unfortunately, by that time the critics were so convinced that the Van Meegeren-type Vermeers were masterpieces that no one believed a mere hack like Van Meegeren could forge one. So he set up a easel in court, and in front of the assembled judges, over the course of several days,  he forged a Vermeer.

The result – Van Meegeren was convicted of forgery,  but spared the death penalty. 

Anyway, this is all background stuff – it’s just one of many stranger-than-fiction true stories I uncovered in the course of researching the play. My actual story takes place in the present day, and features a dying art forger, Daniel Ballantyne, who is telling his life’s story to an art historian, Jessica Brown. 

But then it emerges that the dying art forger is a pathological liar – and an art robber – and possibly even a murderer…And Jennifer finds herself trapped in a game of bluff and counter-bluff, in which her reputation, and her life, are in peril.

The drama is being broadcast as a serial, in 5 x 15 minute episodes in the week of the 22nd June, for 5 days (morning and evening).  It’ll also be available on iPlayer for a week after that. 

Cunningly, my final words on the draft script I submitted were: 

TO BE CONTINUED

So I’m hoping there will be further adventures of Ballantyne and Brown to come in the future….

I’ve been keeping up to date with stories and news by reading my favourite e-zines, SF Crowsnest and the Hub.  But I’ve only just realised that Concept Sci-Fi has been going from strength to strength, with some very beautifully designed cybermags for download, with great covers and first rate stories. 

Hey, why bother writing that radio play when I can spend my time reading other people’s work….

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…

All this was in the cause of my radio adaptation of Tayeb Salih’s wonderful novel Season of Migration to the North, directed by the very fab Jonquil Panting.  The adaptation is now being broadcast this coming Sunday, the 28th September; for details click here.

And if you miss it, go to bbc.co.uk and Search for BBC Radio and you can Listen Again for a week after the broadcast date.

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. 

Many years ago I studied Anglo Saxon as a module at University, and could actually read and speak a few snippets of that of that long dead, resonant, rhythmic, repetitive, blood-drenched-battle filled ancient tongue.  (‘Biter was the baduraes, sword edg onfeng’ – that’s the only bit I can remember. Meaning ‘Bitter was the battle, sword clashed against um, ‘onfeng’? Lance? Forgive me, it was a long time ago.)

 I also read Beowolf, in translation not in the original Anglo Saxon, and I remember finding it tough going.  A wonderful core story – Grendel is the monster, but when he’s killed, Grendel’s Mother stalks the land – hilarious but chilling.  And great passages of rhythmic epic writing. And I don’t doubt Seamus Heaney’s claims that it’s one of the greatest  poems ever written. But it is without doubt a tough read - very repetitive, and full of bragging alpha males.

And so I have to take my hat off to Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, for what they’ve done with their script for the Robert Zemeckis’ directed Beowulf.  They turn a turgid yarn into a ripping yarn.  And without taking any credit away from Avary, surely it was Gaiman’s influence that turned a macho blood-fest into a subtle dissection and critique of the nature of heroism?  Quoting from memory: late in the story, Beowulf (Ray Winstone) says, ‘Men are the monsters now,’ beautifully turning a reactionary tale into a critique of war.  And the extraordinary twist in the story, featuring a near-naked CGI Angelina Jolie, most certainly was not in the original….

This is, all in all,  a very very smart movie.  You wouldn’t know that from the rather sniffy reviews, which all tactitly imply that Gaiman/Avary are playing fast and loose with a flawless classic, rather than making a magnificent hero’s journey morality tale out of a dense and bloodthirsty and at times impenetrable text. 

The final sequence is fabulous in every sense of the word – a brilliant tour de force spectacle every bit as thrilling as the best bits in the first Lord of the Rings. 

There are flaws, as in every movie – Anthony Hopkins is fine as Hrothgar, but Robin Wright Penn makes an attempt at a matching Welsh accent that was ill-advised and, for a Welshman, deeply annoying.  And John Malcovich?  Um? 

But I found this beautiful and spectacular and thought-provoking.  And like The 300, this is a film which stretches the visual possibilities of film. It’s eerie, at first, to see such almost-real CGI animations; but by the final climax I had suspended my disbelief totally, and could totally see why they just had to do it that way.

The nude scenes have been much mocked, because of the way the naughty bits are always cunningly concealed. I didn’t mind that – am I really ready to see a CGI willy or vulva? I think not!  And to my mind, it was very like the coy way nudity has always been handled in Marvel Comics, which I’m sure is the intended vibe. (But it still manages to be genuinely sexy. Especially Angelina as Grendel’s mum! – quick, cool me down with swamp water immediately..!)

The 3 D experience added enormously to the richness of the experience. I remember seeing House of Wax in 3D in a cinema near Piccadilly Circus many moons ago.  The modern incarnation of 3D is streets ahead of that – and for a spectacular movie like this creates a truly remarkable viewing experience. 

‘I’ve come to kill your monster!’ says Ray Winstone/Beowulf in an early sequence. Good lad, off you go then….

And okay, that bit is maybe just a tiny bit unintentionally funny; though I wouldn’t swear to that.  Gaiman of course has the most delicious sense of humor, and he doesn’t mind leavening drama and tragedy with belly laughs.

One of the pieces of writing I’m proudest of is my own adaptation of another literary classic for radio – Sir Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. (That also had a dragon, in fact…)  The experience of making that was fabulous, though extremely risky;  I kept closely to the story, but I iconoclastically wrote the whole thing in my own very different Hollywood-influenced style.

But at that time, I never would have imagined that these dusty greats of Eng Lit would start making their way into the multiplexes of the world….

Still, even a tiny minuscule chip off the edges of an award for a very short play is good enough for me.  It beats my abject failure to win a BAFTA for my episode of the TV series Rebus (I was short-listed for the Best Newcomer award, but then some smarty-pants noticed that I’d had over a dozen Bill episodes broadcast, and hence wasn’t strictly speaking a newcomer, and so I was de-nominated – sob!)

Anyway, I’m proud to have a stake in this glorious shard of an award, and thanks to Sasha and the rest of the team.

If you miss it, you get another chance to listen via the BBC’s wonderful Listen Again facility. For those who haven’t used it before, just go to the BBC website (www.bbc.co.uk) and scroll down to Radio, then click on ‘Listen to shows you’ve missed.’ Then click on Radio 4, and scroll down the list of shows until you reach The Friday Play (under ‘f’).  The programme will be available on the internet for a week after its broadcast (TX) date.

The first actor I meet is Simon Treves, playing Colonel Reynolds in the play. Simon likes the piece, and is pleasingly flattering in the nicest kind of way, then asks if I’ve been in the Army. The answer – good heavens, no, they’d never have me! I have two left feet, two cack hands, no sense of direction, and I’m a snivelling coward. But it’s reassuring to know that the story feels real.

The rest of the cast arrive – Naomi, Bertie, John and Elliot. John is a mild mannered man with an English accent who, once the readthrough begins, immediately reverts to his native Glaswegian and chills my bones with his portrayal of SAS man Danny.

The play is read, in a little room off the main offices, in a relaxed but committed way, and all goes well. I think back to the most embarrassing readthrough I ever experienced, for my play Rubato, when Nicholas Farrell was absent and I had to read in his role. I did so, giving, I felt, rather a decent performance till I reached the last section of the script when I remembered I had to sing three verses of a Destiny’s Child song. I th0ught about ducking out, but chose to carry on, belted out the song with huge energy – and the actors fell about laughing. Oh boy.

On this occasion, blessed relief, I don’t have to sing.

Saturday 19th May. We are in Studio N41 – an airless room in the bowels of Bush House. The process is, as always, efficiently, cheerful, and astonishingly fast. Two days to record a one hour play. It would take Francis Ford Coppola three months to cover the same amount of material. Toby, the director, is a hawklike, calming presence, and he gently talks the actors through the text and their approach until every line, every beat has a meaning for them. His great talent is not to impose an approach, but to coax the actors to imbue every moment with meaning.

Elliot, as Captain Starkey, is a cheerful, big man, brimming in testosterone and charm. His idea of relaxation is to cycle to Agincourt, as preparation for playing Henry V (later this year at the Royal Exchange). And as the day progresses, Elliot becomes increasingly scary and deranged; in his performance, I hasten to add, rather than in real life. John Dougall blasts through his role and suddenly, he’s gone. He only has one scene; his part is played.

Sunday 20th May. And amazingly, we are half way through. Everyone is more relaxed, and I’m starting to feel that ‘one big family’ feeling which I find so totally addictive.

The play is about psychological manipulation, and how to ‘break’ people in interrogation. It’s a subject I’ve researched thoroughly, and though I’ve invented elements of story, everything in the play is based on truth. And in the course of a day, Richard shows me a newspaper article about a German who lost his mind after experiencing US interrogation methods over a period of 5 months. As the play makes clear, this is not torture; it’s far worse.

The last part of the day features long long scenes between Eliot and Naomi. They kiss, they quarrel, they experience post coital bliss; and at the end of the day they go home to their different families. This is the part of the process of writing I most love; seeing words become flesh, seeing the actors become the characters I created.

Toby points out that I’ve given this play exactly the same structure as our previous radio play, Blame (about industrial manslaughter.) In other words, there’s a series of short scenes leading up to a very long climactic scene full of huge speeches. This is the great indulgence of radio; unlike cinema, where ‘less is more’ and the picture is worth more than a thousand words, the radio dramatist can write and write and write…

At 6.05 pm, the recording ends. The play is done. These are my favourite days in the year – after months of lonely slog, I get to sit on my backside and watch other people make the words come alive.

On the way home, I have a new idea for a radio drama…

Photos of the actors and technicians involved in the recording of Breaking Point can be found here.

Scripts of several other broadcast radio plays by Philip Palmer can be found in this other place.

Crime has been good to me over the years. One of my first and best jobs in television was as a script editor on the cult BBC series The Paradise Club, created by Murray Smith, starring Leslie Grantham and Don Henderson. It was a seedy London crime drama with shootings and heists and yakuza, set against a backdrop of deliciously improbable and larger than life characters. Murray was himself a larger than life character, who had served in the Foreign Legion and (so he claimed) had a close association with an SAS. As a member of a shooting club, Murray owned a gun, a formidable Sig Sauer which he once showed to me during a difficult script conference. He pointed it at me, smiled his evil smile, and even though I knew the gun was unloaded, I immediately modified my notes and told him what a great script it was – don’t change a word, Murray!!!

After Paradise Club I worked for years as a regular writer on The Bill. Later I worked as a script editor on crime dramas like McCallum and Taggart, and wrote thrillers and noir film scripts. I spent a large part of one year hanging out with the West London murder squad, attending post mortems and drinking with coppers. I once spent an evening with an armed robber who had recently been abducted at gunpoint and hustled into the boot of a car, before being dumped on to the street in Glasgow. (I never had the courage to ask him why.) Another armed robber gave me a guided tour of all the banks and sports arenas he had armed robbed; only later did it occur to me that I would be appearing on the CCTV cameras loitering outside banks with a convicted blagger. ‘Guv, who’s that sinister looking Welsh bloke? Put him on the surveillance list…’

Then one day in the Science Museum, standing under a massive space rocket which hung from the ceiling, a vast phallic remnant of the days of space exploration, I had the germ of an idea that eventually evolved into Debatable Space. My aim was to write in a genre I love, with as much passion and bravura as I could muster. I wanted it to big, bold, and crazy (and in all honesty, I would say that it is.)

In writing Debatable Space, I became aware of the many differences between writing drama and writing prose – there are more words! Many many more words. (Actually, that really is the main difference. That, and the absence of producers, script editors and heads of drama all adding their wise and tactful insights to the evolving text.) I also experienced the joy of knowing that in telling this particular story, money was no object. This is a book with numerous space battles and bizarre aliens and black holes and flaring suns. If it were made as drama, it would cost the equivalent of 2,000,000,000 episodes of The Bill…

I also relished the freedom I felt I had to switch genres and styles, whenever the characters felt like a change. It’s a book about slavery, and entrapment; but in writing it, I’ve never felt freer.

As well as being a book about evil, though, it’s also a book about joy. One of my most truly joyful experiences in cinema was seeing the trailer for Raiders of the Lost Ark as a young man. It evoked the wonder of childhood, impossible stories of derring-do, and had a retro nostalgic tang that was fabulously compelling.

Debatable Space is born of a similar impulse. With Raiders, Lucas and Spielberg set out to make a movie that was like the movies they watched as kids. And in similar fashion, I wanted to write a story that evokes the spirit of wonder and delight that I remembered from reading science fiction as a boy. I’d buy and read a half dozen novels a week, and when I didn’t have money I’d stand in W.H. Smith and read the books that way. I’d borrow SF novels from my Uncle Bob, who had shelves and shelves of them in his motor repair garage. And I’d lose myself in strange worlds, from A.E. Van Vogt to Asimov’s Foundation universe, to the Known Space of Larry Niven.

It was Niven’s vision of weird, witty aliens and a morally conflicted hero that has most haunted my memories. The cowardly puppeteers, the furry Kzinti, the space yachts propelled by the solar wind…that was my starting point. But in the process of evolution, Debatable Space became more than just a rip roaring space opera. It become a biography, and a political allegory (evil rich humans controlling an empire by means of remote control technology – hel-lo?) and an ensemble show about a bunch of misfits bonded by humour and a mission.

But does that mean I’m now a science fiction writer? Well yes I am, and proud to be so. But a large part of me is an unrepentant genre-buster, with a love of mixing it up as much as possible. I love Blade Runner – a science fiction film noir. Alien, of course, is an SF horror movie. And The Matrix is a science fiction allegory of Jesus. Bring it on…!

Genre-busting is one of the most lively strands in modern SF, too. Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Alastair Reynolds do wonderful things in the world of SF noir. The astonishing Neil Gaiman gets his books on the SF shelves but, so far as I can gauge, manages to be a genre all of his own. And Peter F. Hamilton, one of my favourite SF writers, seems to be a Victorian novelist writing triple decker novels with rich, bravura characters, who also has a penchant for aliens and techno-talk. (And his Gregor Mandel novels are of a course a fine example of the busted genre of SF detective novel, following in the tradition of Asimov’s Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw.)

Casablanca was once described as a thriller, a love story, a political drama and a musical all rolled into one. And for me, one of the joys of SF is the freedom it offers to play with style and genre with complete abandon. Any story can be told in the SF genre, in any style, with any degree of political seriousness, or not, and with no limits on the degree of intellectual seriousness at work. So long as it’s exciting, and extrapolative…it can be SF.

I worry, though, that after Debatable Space I will no longer be allowed to write in other genres without putting an extra ‘M’ in my name. But even so, after a writing career living on the proceeds of crime, it’s a liberation to be a ‘British SF author’.

To me, that’s an invitation to have some serious fun…