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....

Next July we collide with Mars

Well, did you evah,

What a swell party this is....

These Cole Porter lyrics (from the movie High Society) popped into my head yesterday at the news that Mars is due to make its closest approach to Earth in recorded history.  To the naked eye, it will appear as large as the full moon, according to one account I read.

No one alive today will ever see this again; so check it out. August 27 seems to be the day...

STOP PRESS! I wrote this piece yesterday, after receiving an amazing powerpoint about this phenomenon from a trusted source.  However, one of the eagle-eyed readers of this site spotted that the article I linked above dates to 2003.  And according to this site http://www.hoax-slayer.com/mars-earth-close.html I've been duped.

Since the blog that follows this is called The Art of Deception, I guess it's appropriate I've been deceived.

Sorry guys!

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.

Check out Danny's Facebook site for the film here.

By sorry contrast, here are some crap fantasy covers,  rounded up by James Manchester at Speculative Horizons.  He's clearly become obsessed with tracking down terrible, inappropriate or just plain naff covers in his adored fantasy genre.

It's an addictive game to play; you end up wishing the covers were even more crap than they actually are.....Some of the Robert Jordans really do take the biscuit.

And here, courtesy of Paul McAuley, are some photos of Saturn, its moons, and its rings. There are 24 astonishing images on this page alone, taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

Paul writes interestingly on the need for writers to use pseudonyms if they want to write in other genres.  He had some crime novels published under his real name and was warned he now had to stop writing SF as Paul McAuley to avoid confusing crime readers!

Michael Marshall Smith has a cunning strategy to avoid this. He publishes SF under this real double-barrelled name; and crime novels/thrillers as Michael Marshall.  This is clearly unfair, since has has more names than most writers.....

But why can some writers switch genres effortlessly without changing their names, and others aren't allowed to? Michael Crichton has written contemporary political thrillers like Rising Sun and Disclosure, as well as a Western (The Great Train Robbery), as well as creating ER, all under his own name, whilst also generating imaginative concept-rich SF novels from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park to Prey.  But his readers don't mind the genre switches; each of his books is still a 'Michael Crichton novel'.  (Poignantly, Crichton now has two more novels slated for publication, posthumously.)

Cunningly, I've contrived things so that my current SF novel Belladonna is also a crime novel, in the classic hardboiled tradition. It's  written in loving hommage to the greatest detective novel ever written, Dashiell Hammet's Red Harvest, and features a Cyborg Cop solving crimes in my new creation, the Exodus Universe.  

But if I did ever want to write a non-SF novel, would I need a new identity?  Philip M. Palmer maybe? Or Philip Marshall Palmer Smith?

To see what I had to say, click here.

I'm now aiming to post a little more regularly - this year has been a whirlwind for me and my blogging has suffered! And in particular, I want to introduce a new semi-regular feature of movie and TV show reviews and 'stuff' about movies and telly.  I'm going to call this MOVIE ZONE and, er, TV ZONE.  (Cue spooky 'Twilight Zone' music...)

In previous blogs, I've written about science and science fiction and movies and TV shows I like, and also generally about the movie and TV businesses.  I've also posted entries on what it's like to script edit for telly, and my experiences of going to the Cannes Film Festival and the AFM. 

And the Movie Zone blogs are my way of combining my two passions and areas of work - science fiction, and film.  They're also an excuse for me to watch some old classic genre movies, some for the second or nth time, some for the first time. And what the hell, TV Zone is reason to write about my favourite TV shows - Battlestar Galactica, The 4400, Supernatural, Smallville, and others.

So to launch this new 'space' on the Debatable Spaces site, here's a comparison between two totally different films: Outland and Watchmen, whose only common factor is that they both belong to the movie SF genre, and I love 'em both. (Watchman is pure genius; Outland is  half great, half crap - but love is love!)

 Outland (1981)

Logline:  High Noon on Io, one of Jupiter's moons.  An action SF thriller starring Sean Connery as a police marshal pitted against a evil mining corporation whose greedy conspiracy is causing miners to kill themselves, gorily.

Writer/director: Peter Hyams

Cinematographer: Stephen Goldblatt

Composer Jerry Goldsmith (he of Star Trek fame!)

Watchmen (2009)

 Logline: I'm guessing you know the story...retired superheroes kick ass!

Writers: David Hayter (X2, XMen, Scorpion King) and Alex Tse.

Directed by Zack Snyder.

Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons.

Cinematography: Larry Fong

Music by Tyler Bates

Watchmen is cinema as sensory and moral overload; that's what I love about it.  Alan Moore has disowned it, as is his wont; and most civilian critics found it to be rambling and digressive to an annoying degree.  But anyone who loves Alan Moore's original graphic novel will find, I hope, little to rage against here; this is Moore's vision, and Gibbons' visual anarchy, rendered with love and as much accuracy as is desirable.

It is of course just so damned wicked. Former super-hero Edward Blake aka The Comedian is a rapist, and a monster.  And his fellow superhero Rorschach is a seriously disturbed individual who brutally murders a dwarf convict and exudes sleaze. Even squeaky-clean Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) learns to embrace the morality of evil-for-a-greater-good by the story's shocking end.

Most readers of this blog wil have read the graphic novel, but I won't take the risk of stumbling into plot spoilers for a film so recent.  Go and see the damned film!  And don't wait for the DVD or the BluRay; this is a film designed to be seen on the big screen.  It's full of explosive action and images that pound the retina.  Like Zach Synder's previous movie 300, and Robert Rodriguez' Sin City, this is a film which delights in the graphic novel's exaggerative style and rich visual palette and renders it on to the big screen, with knobs on.  All three of these movies challenge the way films are normally shot - the colours, the framing, the preposterousness of the images - they're all leached from the comic book artist's crazed visual cortex.  They simply don't look real.   They are more than real.

The Matrix also played this trick - it's the greatest graphic novel adaptation that is not in fact based on a graphic novel.  I can still remember with awe the first time I saw that movie - and I still recall jolting foward in my seat when Neo started to fly and karate punch and zoom at superspeed. It felt as if the possibilities of the cinema image had just been expanded.  And when I read the screenplay, I felt it to be a masterpiece of intelligent allegory coupled with knock 'em dead movie action - though admittedly it's marred by often ponderous and humourless dialogue that only very great actors can render as credible, natural speech.

And this - the hallucinogenc hyper-reality - is to me is the great triumph of the Watchmen.  It takes a great story - it doesn't screw it up - it organises the story material with care and  intelligence, unspooling a series of origin stories followed by a stand-out action climax - and along the way it makes images that shine and resonate.  The Nite Owl's flying ship in erratic, ludicrous flight over the city; Doctor Manhattan, his resplendently blue male organ bobbing (bet he never gets emails inviting him to have his penis enlarged!) on his base on Mars; the shocking revelation that beneath his ink-shimmering bandage mask Rorshach is actually - normal.  All this for me is visual poetry.  I even found the gratutitous sex scenes between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre enchanting. My cineaste friend Archie Tait advises me that this scene is just, urggh, eggy! and over the top; but damn it all Archie! This sex scene is rich in truly beautiful images, in a film which devotes itself to celebrating beautiful and extraordinary images.

Of course, pretty images do not a great movie make. But the story was already great!  And Synder, Hayter and Tse had the courage of Moore's convictions; they didn't try to rebuild and sanitse the story, to make it suitable for the target movie demographic.  (As the makers of Wanted, shame on 'em, did - it's a fun movie but a pale imitation of Mark Millar's scurrilous, vicious, amoral graphic novel satire.)  And in three staggering hours, Snyder does more than not screw up a good plot; he makes us live in a land of image.

In 300, he did the same.  It is, at one level, a preposterous erotic fantasy for gay guys (and nothing wrong with that!) And it's also, for me, a daring movie made up of pure myth, rendered in images that are beyond-real.

And I think films like this mark one of the futures for cinema - even more visual, even more spectacular, even more extraordinary.  As an SF novelist, I'm a lover of amazing heart-stopping images; and it's movies like Watchmen that inspire me to write words that aim to conjure wondrous images in the reader's mind.

But compare and contrast that with Outland!  Outland is a really fun movie, but in many ways it's a relic of an older style of (relatively) lower-budget film-making.  It's a chamber piece with extras, a studio drama enlivened by a few great images of Io floating above the great red globe of Jupiter.

It's also a film cursed with dialogue even clunkier than that which clunked through The Matrix.  There are some painful scenes in Outland, especially those in which Sean is declaring his love for his saccharine wife and son.  And Mr Connery has one speech in which he laboriously utters a series of repetitious platitudes, when he visibly struggles to find a way to add vocal variety to lines which are all saying the same thing - sure evidence that the screenwriter doesn't read his own damned stuff.

But mixed in with the dross is a gem of a story.  It's an old fashioned, horny handed SF yarn.  Miners on one of the moons of Jupiter are commiting suicide; and only the marshal can find out why, and save the day.  The Western parallels are overt, from the poster image to the naming of Connery's rank (not 'Captain' or 'Lieutenant' or any of the other police ranks, but 'marshal') And there are two stand-out action sequences.  In one, Connery's character O'Niel (they sure can't spell in the far future!) spots someone with a sac of the (fictional) drug that is killing miners (polydichloric euthimal, no less). And he sprints athletically through futuristic corridors and recreation rooms before finally confronting the bad guy in the kitchen - where he has to plunge his own hand in boiling water to retrieve the vital evidence. And then - he winces - just a tiny bit. Now that's what I call a tough guy...

And in the final setpiece, which I won't describe for fear of spoiling, Connery fights to the death against assorted bad guys, assisted on by the ship's cranky female doctor, played superbly by Frances Sternhagen.  The rapport between her and the lean, tanned, older but still shockingly sexy Connery is one of the highlights of the film.  Sternhagen has no glamour, she's no looker,  she's rude and irritable; but the two of them together light up the screen!  Screen chemistry like this isn't about looks; it's about two vivid personalities interacting.  Who gives a shit about Connery's pretty but pallid wife, when there's a wily old bird like this to make him come alive!

The story is genuinely clever, and it's a really gripping movie.  I'd recommend it strongly. But it's the contrast between the visuals of this movie and Watchmen that intrigues me.  Outland wasn't a cheap 'quota quickie' film made by an impoverished British company.  It was a Hollywood epic, made with state-of-the-art special effects (it was the first film to use Intro Vision to create credible backdrops.)

And the budget for the film was around $16 million - which was a lot back in 1981! But you got far fewer bangs for your bucks in those days; and the film has that hemmed-in TV studio feel that for me is evocative of Doomwatch and the old Dr Who. So all in all, it's not visual poetry; it's just an oldfashioned great yarn.

And yet, though I admire the visual poetry approach, and get wonderfully overexcited at show-off action sequences, I do like this pared-back aesthetic too.  Not every movie can be an X Man or a Watchmen or a Matrix; the eyes can eat too many sweets. So I'm very attracted to the idea of SF films that focus more tightly on character and world-building, rather than going for the phantasmagoria SFX route.  As such, Outland is a template for a whole subgenre - suspense SF that's about people, not just about action. (Even if the character writing in that particular movie isn't ALL that it might be.)

We need both sorts of movie of course!  And I'd love, also, to see more special effects visual-smorgasbord movies that ALSO make us care about the characters. Because all too often, action films deliver nothing but action.  In particlar, I found the various X Men movies, which I'd been looking forward to for decades,  to be terrifically enjoyable - but over complicated, and ultimately heartless.  There are so many damned people on screen, it's hard to root for any of them!  And there was never any time to explore the psychology of each and every X Man, as the comics have done so richly. (So I'm hoping the X Men Origins: Wolverine will redress that balance. On the basis of the trailer the prospects look good.

So let's live in hope that we get some rich science fictional variety in the movie theatres in the years to come - character-based SF that moves us, and touches us, existing side by side with Snyder-style eye-banquets.

Thanks Dave!

The story has now been published online, by those splendid people at the Hub (thanks Lee!)  If you don't already subscribe, click here to get the link, then go to the pdf.  (The mag doesn't charge, but donations are highly welcome.)

There's a chance too that there will be a Hub-connected anthology publication of the story later this year, which would be great.

Red Claw is very like Debatable Space, except for the fact that it's completely different in every respect. It's not set in space, it doesn't have antimatter bombs and black holes, or space battles, or Flanagan and Lena.  What it does have aliens. Many many aliens.  Very very very many aliens. And Doppelganger Robots. 

With this book, I set out to write a reflective, analytical study of scientific method and the joy of discovery. 

Then I thought, what the hell! and wrote Red Claw, which is a reflective, analytical study of scientific method and the joy of discovery combined with relentless KICK-ASS ACTION and a ticking clock narrative in which the end of the world is increasingly, and alarmingly, nigh. 

Check out the cover too. This was the subject of great debate between myself and the Orbit guys and (in my opinion!) what they've come up with is wildly audacious and vivid.  It evokes all those SF pulp covers I used to love so much, but in a very modern way.  The toy spacemen, by the way, were borrowed from the extensive collection of toy action figures that I keep in my attic, next to my Airfix spaceships  (sigh...I'm so sad.)

I hope to publish an excerpt from the book on this site in due course; watch this space.

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...

I first came across this blog when I was researching for my Fact to Fiction radio play about Gaza - written in the week when the borders were closed.  The blog was a great resource for me in terms of its insights into everyday life in that world; it's an inspiring blend of family news and gossip  replete with photos of the writer's children, mixed with accounts of life as it's lived by modern Palestinians.  The author now lives in the US, but her parents, both doctors, are still in Gaza, dealing with a world where terror now rains from the skies on a daily basis. The two home-made videos on this site are particularly vivid.

The political arguments about what should happen in Gaza and occupied Palestine are complex, and we've all been in arguments in which this side is blamed, or that side is blamed.  But the blaming game doesn't help the Gazan police officers who see their bombed colleagues in pieces beside them, or the schoolchildren who flee their burning schools. So, lest we forget,  the human consequences of the political impasse are truly appalling, and a lasting solution must surely be found,  sometime soon. 

Sorry for the untypically bleak tone of this post-Christmas blog...the world is full of dark stories, but this is the one that reached out to me at this particular moment.

Let's hope the New Year brings hope and happiness to all those who deserve it.

I'll certainly see the movie, just to judge for myself. But this film has already broken the all-time cinema box office record for the widest release.  Normally, movies opens on dozens or sometimes scores or sometimes hundreds and sometimes even thousands of screens.  But the Standing Still Earth movie has topped all this; it has been digitally transmitted to Alpha Centauri,  in an audacious studio publicity stunt.

I'm reminded of the scene in Cinema Paradiso, where the projectionist projects the movie out of the window, on to the side of the building opposite. On that basis, I'm assuming that if you were orbiting Alpha Centauri on your space ship, you would see Keanu's image bouncing off the rocks of some uninhabited rock. 

I'm damned if I can remember the name of it now, so addled is my memory, but I do recall reading an SF tale in which the evil aliens decide to shun and boycott the Earth, because they've been tuning in to our TV and radio shows for the last hundred years - and since it's such crap, they have decided to steer well clear. 

So maybe Keanu is in fact helping to save the world ....?

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.

A classic case of life imitating art - I had a similar moment in my recent Heartbeat episode...

Harry is a film director, whose debut film The Kitchen Toto was a wonderful story set in his African homeland.  Since then he has been rash enough to work me with on a couple of projects, notably a BBC film about Canadian con-artist and murderer Albert Walker.  (The Many Lives of Albert Walker.)

And, as well as juggling his movie and TV projects, Harry now has a parallel career as a photographer of African and other landscapes.  Some of his photographs are on display on an amazing site called Getty Images. Tragically, it's not possible to download them for free as screensavers - the cheeky blighter wants paying for all his hard work! - but I might purchase a couple of them as a Christmas present to myself.

Check them out, by clicking on this smiley face thing:     

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....

However, my favourite science site recently has in fact been the awesome Encyclopedia of Life.  It's an amazing global enterprise, which in similar fashion to Wikipedia, relies on input from mad zealots all over the world who take the time to write up detailed accounts of, eventually, EVERY SINGLE SPECIES ON EARTH.

This has been my background research for Red Claw - which features, would you believe it, an Encyclopedia of Alien Life, that's even longer and more incredible than the earthly archive.  

So do take a look at the EoL, and feast your eyes on this bird, a peregrine falcon, and also on this amazing Frigatebird.  Or you might like to gawp at this ray-finned fish, or its fellows on the same page, or this Cora notaxantha Ris, aka weird insect.  Or this wonderful creature, which you can access via its complex taxonomy from Family to Superclass and via all the other taxonomic categories until you reach its genus and species - and hence, tracking it like a hunter in the jungle, you go from Animalia, to Chordata, to Mammalia, to Carnivora, to Felidae (Cats), and to Acinonyx, and finally, to jubatus, until you eventually discover it is a Cheetah.

This is a game anyone can play - all you have to do is photograph and taxonomise a creature that isn't yet in the Encyclopedia. 

And eventually, when every single species is recorded and taxonomised and photographed, this will be one of the greatest achievements in the history of humanity. 

Until, that is, the xenobiologists come along...

My television watching tends to come in fits and starts these days, because of novel writing commitments. But I'm now in a TV-viewing frenzy because I've just started up my course in TV drama in Brighton, for those lovely people who call themselves Lighthouse

I've been running this course for the last four years or so, and it's one of the not-writing jobs I love the most.  We gather together six talented writers, all of them with professional experience, and each comes up with an idea for an original series. Then, with the help of our top BBC executives, including the fab Sarah Stack, we select one show to be 'greenlit', and the writers then go on to write the script collaboratively. It's team writing, pure and simple; everyone is the author of their own ep, but the team is at the heart of it.

Because, however, this is 'just' a course, we don't ever get to put the scripts into production. But in every other respect, we regard this as a broadcast commission; the writers have tight deadlines; the camaraderie is intense; and we aim to make the best damned show around.

I'm the tutor/ringmaster of the whole event (which means I don't get to write a script! Damn!) and it's very much a case of teaching by rowing the canoe over the waterfall and seeing what happens.

One of my major concerns is to encourage newer writers who may have done a Doctors or a Holby to explore the wider, fuller, richer resources of television writing.  Complex story telling, rich characters, challenging scenes, vivid dialogue, and most of all poetry. The great TV writers - David Chase, Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, David Milch, David Simon, Jimmy McGovern, Alan Bennett and more - are all poets.  They savour words and rhythms, they make dialogue that actors can relish, and relish saying, and they use verbal wit and sardonic humour to energise and illuminate even the darkest moments. A lot of British TV is written in pared-down 'A Script Editor Has Been Chewing On This' dialogue.  So much more is possible; and my job is to ask the writers to reach for that more.

This year's intake is phenomenally impressive - two of the writers have had movies made, one writers has had 20 novels published, and all the rest are seasoned professionals who see this 'course' as a chance to test themselves and stretch themselves and to better their previous best.

So for the next six months I'll be helping to create a brand new drama series, and catching up with back episodes of Heroes and The Wire and The Shield and Deadwood and who knows what else as I go along. 

I'll write more about this process as it develops; this will be the inside story of the genesis of a new drama series, though we don't yet know what the show will be...

Six treatments will be arriving on my desk in about a week; then the selection process begins...

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.

I was reminded of Kill Bill, with its amazing use of colour, and its balletic swordfight in the snow, and its effortlessly kinetic flair. 

The director of Babylon A.D., Mathieu Kassovitz, uses every directorial trick in the book - jerky cameras, fast moving cameras, saturated film stock, rapid-cutting and blazing white light to render a normal image eerie (Battlestar Galactica and Minority Report use this white light trick brilliantly too.) It's action film-making that has a right to be considered poetry in motion.

The French Kassovitz also directed the acclaimed movie La Haine, and the more recent Gothika.  He gets  great performance out of Vin Diesel; and turns a workaday SF thriller into a jolt of pure adrenalin.

I have say, though, that the script and the story of Babylon A.D. don't exactly inspire.  There's a great set up - our hero has to take The Girl from Russia to America. But we never really know why until quite late in the day a bloke turns up, tells us all the plot in a few long speeches, and then gets popped.  Soon after the movie ends, just as the story was getting started. There's also an illogicality, concerning what the girl does to help our hero; though I can't be more specific without spoiling.  See if you agree with me. 

So all in all, don't go to this film if you want to be made to think; just go with eyes open, and watch, and watch, and watch.

To read the interview, which consists of me rabbitting on at great length (try shutting me up!), click round about here.

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....

But this report shows that there is a real danger the movie will never get released at all.  There's a copyright dispute between two studios - Warner's, who just made the film, and Fox, who claim they owned the darned rights.

And chillingly, Fox have said that if the judge rules in their favour, they would prefer to kill the movie entirely rather than take a share of the profits.  This would be a shocking waste of creative talent. Come on guys!  Can't this be settled amicably?

I'm reminded of a previous incident where a great film wasn't released because of copyright issues - Luchino Visconti's Ossessione, an Italian language version of the James M. Cain roman noir The Postman Always Rings Twice. Stupidly, Visconti made the film without even trying to acquire the rights - I suspect he didn't realise you had to - and the film was lost to audiences for decades.  When it finally surfaced, it turned out to be one of the greatest film noirs ever made. 

So let's just hope we don't have to wait twenty years to see how The Watchmen comes out...

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. 

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.   

 Hell yes! I loved Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (which as well as directing, he co-wrote with his brother Jonathan).  It's exciting, exhilarating, it's richly written, it's a class act all round. And Heath Ledger's Joker (apparently modelled on Sid Vicious - how come all the best characters in movies are based on music biz stars? think of Captain Jack Sparrow, based on Keith Richards) is (I'm putting in another section in brackets here, for no good reason, I just love 'em!) utterly brilliant and compelling.

It's a weirdly structured movie though.  The genius idea is that the Joker brings anarchy to the city - this isn't an old-style Batman villain dastardly plan, it's a subtle strategy to shatter the very fabric of goodness in society.  (I'm not giving any specifics here, and I don't think that counts as a spoiler.) Harvey Dent, the DA, has a role to play in the Joker's evil thing; and it's wonderful stuff.

But before we get to this, the meat and blood of the story, there's an awful lot of other stuff to get to, involving the Far East and Mob money.  And I have to say, it does make the movie very long.  I loved the whole thing; but my adrenalin would have raced faster if it had been shorter. 

Morgan Freeman is eerily superb in his role as the gadget guy, Lucius Fox.  And Michael Caine clearly had a clause inserted in his contract that this time he would have to have a couple of major scenes and great speeches, to make his role more than incidental.  He does have those scenes, and those speeches; and boy, he's stunning.  Caine has such composure and stillness, and Christian Bale has the charisma sucked out of him ever time he's fool enough to stand next to our East End boy. 

Next year's comic book blockbusters are The Watchmen, and Wolverine: Origins.   Can't wait...

To be honest, most of the British comics I read as a kid were reprints of the American comic books - Spider Man, Thor, X Men, all that mob - which I also read in their full-colour American versions.  (I was nothing if not blindly loyal.) And for years a love of Marvel comics was my secret vice.  I once had a script meeting with Geoff Deane - screenwriter of Kinky Boots and It's a Boy Girl Thing and the TV comedy A Many Splintered Thing - which was totally derailed when a), ah, shucks, we ordered that second bottle of wine and b) we started talking about Marvel comic books.

Now of course comic books are so much the mainstream that that secret buzz is utterly lost.  Comic book movies are not a cult thing; movies in which no one wears tights or has super powers have become the new cult thing.  Drama, let's face it, is the cult thing.

For me, though, the influence of comic books and graphic novels on movies has been a wonderful thing - it's led to audacious cinematography (Sin City, the 600), rollercoaster family action (Spider Man, Fantastic Four), and a deep-rooted understanding of the fact that spectacular doesn't always mean stupid.  The Matrix is perhaps the greatest of all modern comic book movies - even though it isn't based on a comic book, the original pitch was accompanied by storyboarded images, and the sheer intelligence of the mythology betrays a knowledge of Chris Claremont, Peter David, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Mark Millar, and more. 

It's possible to have too much of a good thing though. I adored Iron Man, and I'm looking forward hugely to the Dark Knight next week.  But it would be great to see spectacular mythological movies that create some new mythology, and break some new ground.  The Hollywood way is to cherry-pick the tried-and-tested and the famous, to 'acquire properties' like Narnia and His Dark Materials and Lord of the Rings.  Sometimes the results are fabulous - Lord of the Rings, especially the first one, was a blast of raw energy, and a labour of love.

But sometimes the results are less compelling. The Golden Compass is a glorious spectacle - but it squashes and simplifies the genius of the original in a way that is painful.  It's a sprint through the Uffizi gallery, with never a moment to pause and look at the paintings.  And the recent Wanted is a really great action movie, for those who love action movies, and that includes me; but it really is a pale imitation of the subversive graphic novel on which it is (very loosely) based. I liked it when I saw it; but it really hasn't stayed with me, and I doubt I'll ever watch it again.

That's why I loved Albion - it's full of forgotten mythologies, and cult characters.  These are comic book creations, not 'properties'.  And the quirkiness, and the differentness, and the non-mainstreamness, that's what really appeals to me.

It's an amazing shot of three 'stars' lined up with the moon - two of the stars are in fact planets, ie Saturn and Mars, and the third is a star called Regulus.  Also in shot you can see wildfire on the mountains of California. 

A little image to treasure.

I don't know why this should be!?!  Maybe it's connected to the old adage of 'Always give a job to a busy man (or woman)'.  Or maybe it's simply that writing these stories - all very different from Debatable Space in genre and tone - fired up my creative energies. 

Anyway, the first of these stories is called Mr Smith, and I'm delighted to say that it's been accepted by Andrew Hook of The Elastic Press, for publication in his short story collection New Horizons next year. 

Mr Smith is a tale of the extraordinary, set in the present day, in and around a South Wales B & Q. I shall say no more...

I'm the writer of said episode and, frankly, I can't believe they let me get away with it.  For those not familiar with the show, it's a cosy Sunday night drama about folk in the country, featuring a blend of gritty police stories, heartwarming village stories, and out and out slapstick stories featuring the local poacher, Peggy Armstrong. 

My episode, however, begins with a meteorite landing in the woods outside Oscar Blaketon's pub.  An alien landing is soon suspected, glowing alien rocks go on sale, and some of the characters become convinced that monsters from space are stalking the woods. 

It was a delight to write this piece of mainstream, primetime TV drama - the 'alien' story is in fact the B story, and the A story is a more conventional crime drama featuring 'hero cop' Joe McFadden as an undercover cop at a quarry.  But the fact I was allowed this alien subplot is a clear sign that the makers of this hugely popular show really do have a sense of humour, and enjoy teasing their audience. 

I've loved Heartbeat for years, and a number of writers I know have written for it - including the brilliant Jane Hollowood, who has written some of the most genuinely moving episodes in the history of the series, telling tales of grief and loss and pain and anguish amidst the comedy and the rural idyllness.

I think the secret of the show's success is threefold.  Firstly, my friend, the gifted Archie Tait, has been producing it for the last 100 episodes. (Good on you, Archie!) Secondly,  the original producer of the show, Keith Richardson, still overseees it as executive producer, and has thus been able to keep his vision intact. And thirdly, the series works because it's varied.  It's not grim, or one-note; it's sad, funny, serious, silly, schmaltzy, provocative, all at the same time.  I love variety in drama, as in fiction - the ability to switch from pure tragedy to pure comedy, and back again - and this is a show which has always been able to do just that.

My episode is called 'It Came From Outer Space', and it's due to be broadcast sometime in the autumn.

I now hope to do an episode of Waking the Dead in which the detectives are replaced by alien clones...

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...

The movie has a dark political undercurrent, as this comic book character series always did.  Tony Stark is dying of a heart attack, he becomes an alcoholic; and, the killer punch, he made his fortune selling weapons of mass destruction. And this last  element from the original comic books now seems even more shocking and terrible in the context of today's screwed-up world. 

Gwyneth Paltrow gives excellent support as Tony's female sidekick - there's a wonderful scene where she has to insert the electromagnet that is keeping him alive into a  HUGE GREAT HOLE in his chest. 

And Tony Stark kicks the whole superhero ethos on its big fat backside in one delightful moment, which I won't spoil. 

The movie was preceded by a trailer for a spoof superhero movie in which a Tobey Maguire lookalike has the powers of a dragonfly. But the joy of Marvel is that you can't spoof them - the humour is already there. 

Stan Lee makes his customary appearance, as Hugh Hefner, unless my ears deceived me.  What a great life that guy is having. He's now surely one of the most powerful men in Hollywood (after sueing the studios to ensure he got his fair share of the gross - no one ever called Stan a sucker.) 

The Hulk is the next one out of the blocks - after the (for me) staggeringly disappointing Ang Lee version, it'll be nice to see how Ed Norton shapes up.  I still yearn for a movie about the Hulk series (scripted by Peter David? who has an encyclopedic knowledge of these things?) in which the Hulk works as a Mob enforcer in Las Vegas, squeezed into a pin-striped suit.   

I saw this on the same night as the new Indiana Jones movie, which I also enjoyed, though a little less.  The queues for these movies, plus Sex and the City, were amazing.  And it's a joy to see how many people enjoy their movies these days.

And yet...

It would be nice to see a couple of highly commerical movies that AREN'T based on old comic books or TV series.  Get Smart is coming soon - which I remember fondly, but was probably crap.  Hollywood is generating great movies; but they are getting timid.

A possible exception to this rule may be the movie of Wanted, based on Mark Millar's daring and iconoclastic graphic novel of the same name.  I just hope they haven't de-fanged it, or toned down its scatalogical and hilarious humour.

I'm not in fact the world's greatest networker, but the Cannes Film Festival is one of those events that lure in shy, tongue-tied film-makers and turn them into crazed party animals.  Normally, I huddle in the corner at all social gatherings,  staring at the wall,  and avoiding anyone who is important or good-looking or who could be useful to me.  But during those days away in the South of France, I became - I hesitate to say it - dammit it's true - actually quite sociable.

I went with my writer friend Emma, who is also a non-networking type personality, and who nevertheless shone and sparkled for day after day, until the last evening, where the two of us just slumped and became zombies. 

There is a reason and a purpose behind Cannes; it's not all fun and frivolity.  (Although a hell of a lot of it is fun and frivolity).  Yes, it's a Film Festival where films are shown (though watching films there is ridiculously inconvenient unless you're famous and get proper Invitations to screenings.)  It's also a sellers and a buyers marketplace, where sales agent pitch to distributors and distributors pitch to studios and film-makers pitch to anyone who isn't dressed as a waiter. 

But more than anything, I realised after this latest trip, Cannes is a community.  It's where the film-makers of the world converge and explode over each other; and just being there makes you part of that world.  Mike Figgis was there, and so was Tim Bevan of Working Title, and so were Emma and I.  And okay, we didn't talk to either Mike or Tim - but we were close to them!

The world of science fiction of course has a fabulous sense of community - fans and writers and publishers are linked by blogs and websites and cons.  And in the film world, festivals provide the same function.

But it's a very weird thing out there, to be honest.  The glamour is ever-present, and often fraudulent.  I saw (on a telly in a bar, I couldn't get close enough to view it in real life) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the red carpet outside the Palais, exuding wealth and glamour.  But many of the film-makers sipping cocktails in bars and wearing gowns or dinner jackets were, in reality, struggling to find the price of a coffee.  And yet we all feel impelled to join in this mad process of touching the hem of the glamour garment.  Just to walk along the Croisette - admiring the vast yachts in the Bay - soaking in the Mediterranean sun - nodding at friends and acquaintances, and maybe even sipping a glass of wine or a cocktail at the Majestic or the Carlton - it's just an impossibly glamour-soaked experience.  It's like being a film star, without having any acting talent, or having to make any films.

And it's also complicated. It's the third time I've been to this particular festival, and I now have a grasp of the basic principles.  In order to get access to any of the buildings,  you have to be Accredited - essentially you have to prove you have ever worked in the film business.  That's tricky enough in itself, though I'm used to it by now.  But if you want tickets for films, you have to queue on-line;  which means you stand by a computer terminal and log in on the very second the new hour begins, and then the screen tells you how many hours you have to wait to actually reserve a ticket for the film you want to see.  (It could be 2 hours, it could be 10 hours, or even 24 hours.)  And so, 24 hours later, you stand in front of that same terminal and click; and then it's a race to see who has the fastest typing fingers.

What?  How dumb is that?

Tickets are free; but the expense of energy required to operate and understand this system is extraordinary.  There are hand outs to explain it, but they are baffling. There are people at the Information Desk to explain at which cinemas you can get tickets just with a Badge, but they never write anything down and what they say rarely tallies with reality, or maybe it's just that they don't understand my Welsh accent.

And of course you have to know the right people to go to the right parties,  and where to go to get free breakfast,  and where to be seen, and who to schmooze and when.  I used to think that going to this festival was like being trapped in an American High School movie, where you're either in the In Crowd or you're a Geek.  (Naturally, I'd rather be a Geek, but that's not an option.) But my new theory is that the Cannes Film  Festival is a parallel reality, a version of Second Life where for a few days you can live by complicated rules untouched by domestic concerns or real life. 

I'm proud to say I made it to two parties on yachts - the yachts are essentially floating offices for the richer companies, so it's essential to know someone who can blag you on board.  And I met an amazing range of interesting people.  An Irish film-maker who was making a short movie about people's feet as they walked up the red carpet (no, I didn't understand it either - but I spotted her later, filming my feet.)  Two sisters, who comprise 2/5ths of an American movie company called Five Sisters - each of the sisters is a producer, and each has a project, making their slate formidable.  An American writer/producer with an exclusive deal with a major US company who warned me passionately that America was turning into a fascist country, and that concentration camps had already been built in every US state (!!!?)  And a fantastic bloke I met who, when I asked him about his movie project, replied that hd didn't actually have a movie - but he had built a boat that flies!  Yes, a boat, that flies, which he had designed and engineered, and built! And, er, it flies! (So what the devil was he doing at the Cannes Film Festival...?)

And, as always, I saw lots of pals who had turned up, pitching their movies via their newly formed companies, and ensuring I always had someone to talk to in the UK Pavilion.

My own reason for going to Cannes was to meet potential financiers and the like, to get some movies of mine into production.  Like many film writers, I've learned to be pro-active; never wait for the phone to ring, ring other people. And I'm fortunate in that over the last few years I've built up a circle of gifted people who know how to help new producers get their movies made.

But in tandem with the offical Cannes, I was living a separate and alien life, reading and thinking about science fiction.  At the airport, I bought my copy of SFX, which was my constant reading in all the lulls between meetings. I also, I'm ashamed to say, had a look to see if Debatable Space was available at the Gatwick Airport bookshop (it is!)  I then bought my anxiously awaited copy of The Digital Plaugue by Jeff Somers, which I will read just as soon as I've got through Alfred Bester's extraordinary The Demolished Man.

Yes, I'm a true Geek; surrounded by glamour and beautiful women and gorgeous men and beautiful Mediterranean skies, I sit and read science fiction novels.

For this, to me, is the true reality; impossible and magical worlds existing in my head.  

This year, I'm glad to say, luck is on my side. And I'm able to take a few days off to sun myself in the South of France, meet some old friends, and hopefully pitch some movie projects.

The first time I went to Cannes I stayed in a friend's hotel room, on the floor, and we were so broke we had a no-food budget - we weren't allowed to spend anything on food or drink, we had to live on free champagne and canapes.  It was tough, but someone had to do it...

This time, I've booked an apartment off the Rue D'Antibes, and I may even pay for the occasional meal.  And, together with a writer friend, I'll be meeting film financiers, attending a party on a yacht, and generally enjoying myself.  (Though of course - it's hard work too!) 

Cannes is a crazy event. All the film people who live in London and have offices in adjoining buildings move to France for a week and meet each other over there.  The scale of the festival is vast - it's a film festival but also a business conference and also an opportunity for wanabee film-makers to hang around in the hope that fame and fortune are contagious.  I suppose it's like having WorldCon and a Book Fair in the same place and same time. 

And so, my bags are packed, my schmooze has been well oiled; time for the networking to commence...

But what happened to variants 1 through 12 I wonder? Is there a sequel about them?

Richard gave a very honest and sweet and funny acceptance speech, and walks away with a cheque for £2008, and much kudos.

The award ceremonies were held as part of the Sci Fi London season, and we were greeted by a host of Star Wars characters including a scary Darth Vader and a scantily attired Princess Leia.  I got a chance to meet all the people I only just left behind at the Alt Fiction Festival (oh Lord, it's not Palmer again), and I also had time for a longer chat with the very likeable fantasy writer Stephen Hunt.  As many of you know, he's a real multi-tasker - he writes epic fantasy novels, founded and still presides over the sf crowsnest website and has a demanding day job in the private equity sector.

I also had a chance to tell Ken Macleod how much I admire and love his Execution Channel.  For me, it's a 'stayer', one of those books that stays with you long after you've read it, as you think back on the ideas and the themes. 

After several hours of mingling and sipping (ha! sipping! who am I trying to fool?!) wine, I then rashly went on to watch one of the films in the Sci Fi Festival, Marc Caro's intriguing and allegorical Dante 01.  I found it beautifully shot, with amazing French actors, and full of great moments. But I have to confess that, after watching Battlestar Galactica with all its fabulous action scenes and varied alien planets, I do now find it hard to watch an SF yarn set on a spaceship which hardly ever gets out of the standing set. 

Still, there' s a great finale, and Caro has a magical way with the camera.

Before the big film, we had a sneak preview of the new Batman movie, with a trailer which has been scratched and defaced and mucked about with by the Joker.  This was just so cool....

Brian and I both read excerpts from our respective works in a Mass Book Launch, with Stephen Hunt and Simon Spurrier.  This was a smorgasbord of fiction fare, ranging from heroic epic fantasy (Brian and Stephen) to neo-noir (Simon's novel about a hitman whose victims keep coming back to life) to whatever Debatable Space might be.

I also did a panel on screenwriting with Graham Joyce and Michael Marshall Smith which was wild and excitable and I hope informative. 

Darren Turpin and Sam Smith, Orbit honchos both, were in attendance, and I was delighted to share a dinner table with Mike Carey, who is currently writing the X Men and working for Sci Fi Channel, and is hence officially the Jammiest Beggar around. 

Alt Fiction is currently funded by Derby City Council and we're all hoping they continue to give their support to the event in future years - it's clearly a huge success and deserves to thrive.

I've come away with a pile of books by authors who I met and admire, and will be reading Brian's Winterbirth, Graham Joyce's Smoking Poppy, Simon Spurrier's Contract and Tony Ballantyne's Recursion as soon as possible.

Apart from the sheer joy of socialising with so many smart and entertaining people, this was a forum for ideas to be thrown around, and insights to be gleaned.  I came back with my head exploding with ideas for new stories, and a yearning to write some fantasy and horror as well pursuing my core passion, hard but quirky sf....

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...

On the 30th April the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the best SF novel published last year will be announced, at a ceremony held in tandem with the London Science Fiction Festival. 

This year's shortlist has attracted some controversy, since, as well as works by established masters like Ken McLeod and Richard Morgan, it includes a number of book which aren't obviously SF at all.  Some in the biz have argued that the judges have passed over some excellent candidates for the shortlist in favour of more 'literary' fare. (My own agent, John Jarrold, has argued this pithily, and with his usual authority - he's read every book on the shortlist, plus every single SF novel that he feels should have been on the shortlist.

I'm not so well read, so I'm attempting to educate myself by reading some of the novels on the shortlist that might otherwise have passed me by.  I have Sarah Hall's The Carullan Army on my shelf; and I've just finished reading Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, which I thought was delightful and funny and often very moving.

But is it SF?  Hall himself argues, very sweetly, that he's happy for it to be called SF, because it's not for him to tell the reader how to read it.  That's a devastatingly good and wise argument. 

Being a genre nerd, however, I love to have things more firmly pigeonholed than that.   Dammit, Steven, stop being so fair-minded!

And for my money, though I loved it, I don't think of Hall's book as an SF novel.  Because I didn't, ultimately, believe a word of it, and I don't think I was meant to.

And what I mean by saying this is that for me SF is a genre that demands total suspension of disbelief. However silly the story elements may be (dilithium crystals, Barsoom, Stargazer aliens, variant 13s, um, flame beasts, etc) we, the SF readers, like to believe it might all be true.  We will forgive occasional science cheats, and plot cheats, and even moments of utter absurdity; we'll forgive almost anything really, if we're enjoying the read. But when I journey into outer space, or inner space, I want to believe I'm really going there...

Hall's novel, however, is much more postmodern than that.  It's a book which requires to believe its story; and also to disbelieve it.  It's overtly metatextual, as some literary theorists might say.  And it's very much in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges - the writer of wonderful metaphysical conceits - and Paul Auster, the postmodern crime novelists who is referenced several times, rather than the tradition of Heinlein and Asimov and Reynolds and Grimwood and Macleod and Hamilton and Macdonald, who all wrote about or write about worlds they believe in.

To explain what I mean, I have to talk about the plot of Hall's book so

BEWARE!!! PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

The Raw Shark Texts is about a man called Eric Sanderson who wakes up and doesn't know who he is.  A psychologist explains he is suffering from amnesia, induced by pscyhic trauma after the tragic death of his girlfriend Clio. But then Eric gets a note from his former self (the First Eric Sanderson) explaining that he, Eric Two, is being stalked by an actual monster called a Ludovician Shark, which is a creature that exists in the n-dimensional realm of ideas. 

There's some science to justify this - on the basis that life is a hardy little bugger and can evolve in the strangest of places. So why can't it evolve in the realm of ideas????  As Eric 1 explains to his later self:

     The animal hunting you is a Ludovican. It is an example of one of the many species of purely conceptual fish which swim in the flows of human interaction and the tides of cause  and effect....The Ludovician is a predator, a shark. It feeds on   human memories and the instrinsic sense of self.

 This is superb; but for me, it's also knowing, defiantly metaphorical, and not intended to be believed literally. And I like that aspect of the storytelling.  The hero travels through a tunnel made of books - well which of us hasn't, metaphorically?  And he is almost killed by a conceptual fish - as his personality is unpicked because of his deep grief at the tragic death of the woman he loved.  And again, the postmodern strings are showing, as the novel reveals itself to be 'really' about something other than what it seems to be about.

But, by contrast, a similiar but totally science fictional piece would be Eric Brown's masterful short story The Time-Lapsed Man.  I won't plot-spoil this one, but I would just say that, though the premise is utterly absurd, just as absurd as the notion of the Ludovician shark, the writer made me believe it was true for the duration of my reading.  And of course, because I believe the story is true, I care.

Having said all this, I have to quickly add that if anyone wants to argue that Hall's book genuinely is science fiction, I'd be happy to give that view credence, and shelf-room, and indeed to argue the point over a pint or two, since that's always a good way of enlivening a pint or two.  It's not for me to be the Ferryman on the River Charon, deciding who and who shouldn't get across. 

But my only anxiety is that any lover of SF who reads this book expecting to have a science fictional experience might be disappointed.  It doesn't, in my view, deliver as SF; but it does deliver as what it is, a tour de force piece of lunatic idea-spinning which is full of gags and has some of the most tender love scenes I've read in a long time.

I guess the judges' aim is to challenge our preconceptions about what is and isn't modern SF. I argued in another blog that Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods isn't, in fact, an SF novel, though some claim it is.  (On this score, I'm as one with Winterson, who witheringly refuses the SF label.)

But my point really is to passionately stress and affirm the common purpose of pretty much all the SF that I've ever enjoyed - namely, an underlying respect for rationality and of the ideas and sense of wonder which underly the scientific enterprise.

I may be wrong, however, in my opinions on this book. I may in fact be destined to become the next victim of a conceptual shark that swallows up all my ideas and memories and leaves me gibbering, and indeed, in much the state I was in on the morning after the last Eastercon.

But I would strongly recommend The Raw Shark Texts to anyone who wants a rollercoaster ride through the realm of ideas.  (And I hope my plot spoilers don't give away too much - it's no more than is explained on the back cover.)

 - drinking too much wine with John Jarrold, Darren Nash and Bella Pagan, and hearing John sing a medley of songs from Guys and Dolls;

- marvelling at Charles Stross talking about the future, in his Guest of Honour Speech, with such effortless articulacy and attention to detail and casual charisma;

- listening spellbound to Neil Gaiman reading from his new novel, about a little orphan boy raised by ghosts;

- meeting the wonderful and very charming Tanith Lee, who is astonishingly young considering she's written nearly 100 books. Tanith admits that her writing method involves very little planning, and few revisions; her process is more like the 'channelling' experienced by a medium who is possessed by spirits than mere humdrum writing. 

It's rare to meet so many engaging people in such a short space of time; and (as an avid reader of SF who has never been to a convention before)  a pleasure to so quickly become part of that science fiction community.  I'm looking forward to the next Eastercon already.