Philip Palmer's Debatable Spaces

Space Fiction

Philip Palmer — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:52:16 +0000

This Sunday I’ll be travelling to Leicester to take part in the 2 week long Space Fiction event at the National Space Centre.

I’ll be giving a talk & reading at 12.15 and signing books later…my fellow John Jarrold authors Chris Beckett and Ian Sales will also be there, and it’ll be great to catch up with them.

For more info on our bit of the event, see here.

I’ve never actually been to the Space Centre, but it’s an awesome building, by Nicholas Grimshaw.

And here’s the schedule for the rest of the festival, including visits by Peter F. Hamilton and a session with Brian Aldiss..

Fantasy Con 2012

Philip Palmer — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 08:41:52 +0000

Off to Fantasy Con today! For more details, here’s the website.

I’ll be arriving this evening in time for the mass signing. Then on two panels on Saturday – one on SF: What’s the Bleeding Point? (or something like that) with panellists including Jaine Fenn and James Lovegrove (so far as I can tell, the website has teensy-tiny type.) And then I’ll be moderating a panel on writing for television with gifted guests Stephen Volk, Stephen Gallagher, Muriel Gray and Mark Gatiss in the coveted 1opm slot (to work up a thirst for post 11pm…)

Sarah Pinborough will be there, so will Maura McHugh, Tim Lebbon, Robin Hardy (director of The Wicker Man), Kim Newman, and the Angry Robot himself Lee Harris, Chair of the British Fantasy Society.

On Sunday at the famed Fantasy Banquet (unicorn is off this year sadly) there will be awards and prizes aplenty.

If you’re there, I’ll be in the bar…

Radio Bookcase

Philip Palmer — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:01:51 +0000

One of the best kept secrets in the world of BBC Radio is the site called Audiogo. It’s where they sell audio books; and then some smart cookie had the idea of making radio plays available on this site once they fall off of iPlayer.

And I’ve recently discovered I now have my own Author Collection on this site, comprised of my two very different radio series The Art of Deception (a thriller about the devious art forger Daniel Ballantyne) and Red and Blue (a drama about wargames).

This means I now have my very own shelf on a virtual RADIO BOOKCASE. Loving it.

The Bloody Red Baron

Philip Palmer — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:21:12 +0000

NB: QUITE SOME TIME AGO I WROTE THIS BLOG ABOUT THE WONDERFUL NOVEL BY KIM NEWMAN, THE BLOODY RED BARON, WHICH AT THAT TIME WAS OUT OF PRINT. IT’S NOW BEEN REPRINTED BY TITAN BOOKS AND IS AVAILABLE AT ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES AND ON THAT AMAZON THING. I”VE MET KIM A NUMBER OF TIMES SINCE READING THIS; HE’S A LOVELY MAN, A LEGENDARY FILM CRITIC, AND ONE OF THE FINEST SF/F WRITERS IN THE BUSINESS. HE WRITES ABOUT EVIL, LIKE AN ANGEL.

NOW FOLLOWS MY ORIGINAL BLOG:

If you are squeamish, stop reading this blog now. I mean NOW.

Here goes. Imagine you are in London in the early twentieth century, watching a vampire stripper on stage. And this is what you see:

Isolde clamped the blade between her thin lips and used both her hands. She worked the edge of her self-inflicted wound with her nails and peeled back the skin of the right side of her chest. As she moved, exposed muscles bunched and smoothed. With…

No – let’s stop there! A striptease in which the stripper flays herself?????

That is truly the most scary and appalling piece of prose I’ve read in many a year; it’s also astonishingly vivid and skilfully written. It appears in Kim Newman’s awesome The Bloody Red Baron, which I’ve just read, and which will haunt me for some time to come.

Let’s be frank; if you write horror novels, you can’t be namby-pamby about it. They have to be scary. However, I’ve always had a very limited appetite for blood and gore for its own sake; this is why I’ve never read widely in the horror genre. But some writers – Stephen King is one, Kim Newman seems to me to be another – who can shock and appal and yet never lose sight of the heart and humanity of their characters.

The Bloody Red Baron is a sequel to Newman’s Anno Dracula (which I have to read next!) It’s an alternate history story in which Dracula’s Terror at the end of the nineteenth century has created a world in which vampire and humans (‘warmfellows’) co-exist. But Dracula’s rampant ambition has caused him to start World War I; he is now commander in chief to the Kaiser, and the world is plunged into carnage.

In this version of World War I, we still have trenches, there are still aerial dogfights, and there is still a Baron von Richthofen with his Flying Circus of fighter pilot killers. But vampires fight side by side with warm soldiers; and night flights are far more common because vampires see so well in the dark.

It’s a daft, baroque, but rather persuasive premise, executed with astonishing skill. Newman is a master stylist – his prose is restrained, cadenced, beautifully in period, and hauntingly visual. He has a genius for stamping vivid images in the reader’s imagination – I can still see and smell and savour the thrilling events which make up the book’s major setpieces. I can see a prostitute being sucked dry by vampire mouths; I can see the desolate wilderness of No Man’s Land; I can still, shockingly, see every moment of the scene in which our hero Winthrop has to climb from the back seat of his fighter planet into the front seat, whilst airborne.

Writing images is the hardest thing to do – words flow easily enough on to the computer screen, but images have to be hinted at, with prose that states the image but also evokes the experience of seeing it. Newman achieves this with astonishing confidence, and also has the knack of creating characters we truly care about – from the weary Charles Beauregard, to the heroic but increasingly deranged intelligence officer Winthrop, to the bespectacled vampire journalist Kate Reid.

It’s also a slyly witty book, full of injokes and metajokes. This alternate reality is littered with fictional characters who are real, co-existing with real characters who are radically changed, such as the vampire Churchill, lacing his blood with Madeira, and Von Richthofen himself, a real historical figure here portrayed as a chillingly inhuman killing machine. (And that’s before he became a vampire.) One of the main characters is Edgar Allan Poe – who now prefers to be known as Edgar Poe – and he co-exists in the evil castle lair with Dr Caligari and Dr Mabuse, both characters from classic movies. A No Man’s Land deserter is called Mellors – the gamekeeper from Lady Chatterley’s Lover – but D.H. Lawrence himself is also referenced as existing in this world. And, my favourite twist of all, Beauregard’s secret missions are run on behalf of the Diogenes Club, a society of establishment figures dominated by Mycroft Holmes, cleverer brother of Sherlock.

The cover of my edition of the book is deliciously schlocky – it features a vampire German soldier hanging upside down. And as a horror novel, it delivers all the thrills and chills you could hope for. (There’s a great story twist, which I won’t betray, which leads to some of the most fantastic action sequences you could ever hope for.)

But this is, at heart, a rather serious book. Newman writes knowledgeably and lovingly about his period, and he achieves the rare trick of making the reader think hard, and worriedly, about the calamity that was World War I. The horror of the war itself – all real! – far eclipses the horror associated with the vampire characters.

And so Newman achieves the rare trick of creating a genre novel that has a real ‘literary’ substance – it’s not just shock ‘n’ scares, it’s a novel designed to make the reader think, and feel, and regret.

Till now, my favourite vampire novel ever has been Stephen King’s masterly epic ‘Salem’s Lot; but The Bloody Red Baron seems to me to be just as good, in its very different way. King’s approach was to create a vampire story that is also a portrayal of a ‘typical’ (and hence quite extraordinary) mid-Western town. His model was Moby Dick - which is not a horror novel, and has no vampires, but which represents the ‘bar’ for a modern epic American novel.

Newman is steeped in a different literary tradition. His book is slim, it’s not an epic; but it follows in the footsteps of great English genre writers, from Conan Doyle to Wilkie Collins to Margery Allingham (less well known, but who in my view is one of the greatest of the English detective novelists.) His book is a ‘shocker’, but it’s also understated, and full of British stiff-upper-lippishness. Almost all the characters speak almost all the time with a calm, grave courtesy, and yet behave monstrously. The effect is a delightful blend of the terrifying and the well-mannered.

If you are squeamish, even just a little bit, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. But if you can cope with horror that curls darkness around your heart and makes you wake screaming in the night – this is the novel for you. It blends fantastical horror with real-life terror; and this wicked chimaera is then slivered with eerie eroticism, and seasoned with artfully clever wit.

Resurrection Engines

Philip Palmer — Sat, 05 May 2012 12:27:25 +0000

I absolutely love this cover! It’s an anthology of steampunk stories edited by Scott Harrison, and I’m delighted to be part of it.

For an account of the book and full list of writers, here’s Scott on his blogspot.

Red and Blued…

Philip Palmer — Sat, 05 May 2012 12:19:38 +0000

Series 1 of Red and Blue has been and gone…I’m thrilled with the response. And the consensus seems to be that Tim Woodward (above) stole the show as former Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Shoreham, wargamer and people-manipulator. Some people say he’s evil; I always saw him as the good guy. Just, well, ruthless about his objective; which is to make people think deeply and properly about what they are doing and how, BEFORE they’re in a real-life war situation.

The show was not without its controversy. There were six complaints, which is five more than any other radio drama I’ve ever worked on (I did get one complaint about my free adaptation of Spenser’s Fairie Queene, saying it wasn’t faithful to the original – which, hey, it wasn’t!) The complaints all focused on the final episode Terror, in which Bradley Shoreham and a senior British officer discuss ways in which terrorists might attack London. Some felt it was a ‘how to’ manual for terrorists. But in reality, if you’re a terrorist, you will already know this stuff.

Terror was a character study, and a piece of real life horror writing; forget vampires and ghosts, these are the things we should really be worrying about…

The series couldn’t have been more timely – since London, in the buildup to the Olympics, is turning into a military zone. There was a recent story about residents of a tower block alarmed to find that the military were installing rocker launchers on their rooftops, to shoot at the enemy, if there is an enemy. Exactly the kind of scenario that Bradley might have wargamed.

I’m now pitching for a second series – Red and Blue 2 – the creative team (especially Toby and Sasha) are absolutely fantastic, and I’d love the chance to write for Bradley Shoreham again.

PS RED AND BLUE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD AT AUDIOGO, FOR BRITISH AND OVERSEAS LISTENERS. You can buy it an ep at a time or have the box set for less than a fiver in English money.

TX: Hearts and Minds

Philip Palmer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:50:43 +0000

Today is the broadcast date for Episode 1 of my new radio drama series RED AND BLUE. This is a fast-talking drama about the world of military wargames – wars fought with words.

Episode 1, Hearts and Minds, tells the story of a large scale military wargame featuring a major conflict between the Reds and the Blues, after the Reds have invaded Yellowland. The Noirs, meanwhile, have secret plans of their own…

Sounds wacky but our beloved military spend a huge amount of time and money rehearsing wars with such wargame scenarios; as my main character Bradley Shoreham says at one point, we live in the era of the wargame.

Bradley Shoreham is played by the wonderful Tim Woodward, a television and stage star whose father was the late lamented Edward Woodward. Jeremy Howe, the senior BBC radio drama commissioner, calls his performance ‘mesmerising’, and I thoroughly agree.

Tune in at 2.15, BBC Radio 4, or catch it on iPlayer. If you live outside the UK, it’ll be available on another website next week.

SFF Song of the Week: Jaine Fenn

Philip Palmer — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 07:41:56 +0000

One of the busy-bee panellists at Eastercon last was Jaine Fenn, a delightful and greatly talented SF writer. I met Jaine some time back when we shared a panel at the Sci Fi London Oktoberfest in Greenwich, in a room at the top of the observatory. And I have fond memories of the time she turned up for the Gollancz Halloween party with actual fangs. (Her teeth are fakes, the fangs are real, I’m sure of it.)

And Jaine has chosen a quirky SFF Song of the Week for this site, which I hadn’t heard before, but which is now haunting me. (In fact I HAVE heard it before – it’s on the creepy soundtrack of Michael Mann’s under-rated Hannibal Lecter movie, Manhunter.)

Jaine Fenn writes:

When Philip was kind enough to invite me to write a piece on SF music for this blog, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. Music is very important to me. I write to music (and it has to be the right music) and trying to pick just one piece of SF-related music was going to be tricky. Should I go for Bowie, my first love and the Eternal Rock-God? Or Hawkwind, untrendy as hell but a fine soundtrack to my misspent youth? Or Kate Bush? Rush? Eat Static? Blue Oyster Cult?

Faced with such a wide choice I decided to pick a band who deserve to be better known than they are: Shriekback. Their 1985 album, Oil and Gold, was the soundtrack propelling me through the innumerable rewrites of my first novel, Principles of Angels and I’ve borrowed quotes from that album to preface the first three Hidden Empire books. Shriekback’s sound is hard to describe. Rock? Sometimes. Dark? Always. Rhythmic? Compellingly. Frantic? Often. Twisted? Definitely.

As for picking a single song … . In the end I’ve gone for This Big Hush. It’s not overtly SF, but is crammed with evocative SFnal phrases. It’s also one of the slowest songs on Oil and Gold; I’d even use the word haunting. It certainly sends a shiver up my spine when I hear it, as well as transporting me to the Undertow, a place where, in my head at least, I’ve spent quite a lot of my life already.

Is there a fire in the sky
Is there a moon up there
Is anything alive now
This darkness is what I hear
This is a breathless silence
A moment out of time
I see your face in the shadows
The tell-tale signs are in your eyes

More than I can hold in my hand
Running through the gaps like water
Aching with a passion inside
Deep as the river
All desire
The ashes and the fire
Turning this night inside
And the light from you

Is there a flame in the dark
is there a bright heart star
These creatures look the same now
We freeze wherever we are
We wake alone in the blackness
We sleep whenever we fall
One dream all around us
This big hush infects us all

Holding up an animal fear
Soaking up the waves underwater
Tuned to music no-one can hear
Forever in this half-light
All desire
The ashes and the fire
Turning this night inside
And the light from you

All desire
The ashes and the fire
Turning this night inside
And the light from you

More than I can hold in my hand
Running through the gaps like water
Aching with a passion inside
Deep as the river
All desire
The ashes and the fire
Turning this night inside
And the light from you

All desire
The ashes and the fire
Turning this night inside
Turning this night inside
Turning this night inside
And the light from you

Best and worst of genres

Philip Palmer — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:42:34 +0000

I had a delightful time at Eastercon, zipping in for one day only before embarking upon a rare family holiday in Dorset…

In my few hours there I met a wealth of lovely folk, including Lavie Tidhar, Juliet McKenna, Paul Cornell, Adam Christopher, John Jarrold, Bella Pagan, Simon Morden..and a host more. I also witnessed a fascinating panel on genre which concluded a) genre is a bad thing and b) genre is a good thing. Oh I love these bitter debates!

It was frustrating not to have more time but it was still hugely refreshing for me to re-enter SF-universe space and time, after some months working on radio and film projects.

The day was marred by the whiff of the ugly side of SF – blog ranting which turns into personal abuse. This was the now legendary attack by Christopher Priest on the current Clarke short list, which I’ve now read, and which is a curious blend of insight, wisdom, muddle-headedness, opinions different to mine, and downright rudeness.

Of course blog culture flourishes on such furores, but guess what, real people don’t like them much.

However, Charles Stross – much abused by Priest as an ‘internet puppy’ – has lightened the tone inimitably by issuing T-shirts (see above) with an image of an internet puppy. Bravo Charles. And John Scalzi has performed his usual magisterial summary, infused with warmth and wit and an equal amount of wide reading (I’ve only read one of the books on the Clarke short list and I’m just not qualified to offer an opinion – but if I did offer an opinion, that’s all it would be!)

Controversy is a good thing I guess, but there are times when SF folk harm their genre by indulging in behaviour that would be out of order in the most parochial parish council. Most writers have thick skins and can tolerate intelligent critiques of the negative variety. But to call upon judges to resign because you don’t agree with them isn’t on; Priest, as my Scottish friends would say, has spat his dummy.

Philip Palmer, Renaissance Man? No way!

Philip Palmer — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:59:59 +0000

For the last few weeks I’ve been doing an interview for the Irish blogger and writer Bob Neilson, who does a lot of stuff for the Irish online mag Albedo One. My friend Juliet McKenna suggested we get in touch and I’ve had the most wonderful time answering his weird and wonderful questions. Bob’s cunning technique is to email one question at a time…and his approach is probing and imaginative and oddly therapueutic. To be honest, now he’s not asking me questions any more, I feel lost!

For Bob’s insights into the weird and wonderful career of former lavatory attendant (sic) turned SF writer P. Palmer, click here.

More about Red and Blue

Philip Palmer — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:28:06 +0000

I met the Woman in Black yesterday!

That’s Liz White, the actress who plays the title role in what is apparently the most successful British horror film ever. She plays Julie, a Special Forces soldier seconded to a tough SAS team on a secret mission in the deserts of Troy, in the second episode of my radio series about military wargames, Behind Enemy Lines.

Yes I know there’s no such place as Troy any more; but in this drama the Blues – the soldiers playing the Allies – attack fictional countries with imaginary missiles. And Troy is as good a name for a made up country as any. It’s all make believe, just like the theatre and the cinema; except IT’S A REHEARSAL FOR REAL WAR.

Episode 1 was the story of a large scale military wargame featuring thousands of characters, played by half a dozen actors using different voices. I wrote 10 pages of ‘radio babble’ to play in the background of some of the scenes. And the drama concerns the attempts by the Blues (the Allied Army) to prevent the Reds from attacking Yellowland. Yes, it sounds daft, but after a while, you start to really care about the Reds and the Blues; although frankly, no one likes those bloody Yellows!

The key role in that episode was played by Northern Irish actor Lloyd Hutchinson, who I worked with on a previous drama, an adaptation of The Faerie Queene, with Simon Russell Beale. Don Gilet (Eastenders, 55 Degrees North) was also superb as a British officer, as was Tracy Wiles as a ‘numbers wonk’; and so were the rest of the fabulous cast – many of them members of radio’s ‘rep company’, who can act in as many as 4 or 5 plays in a single week.

The hero of the story though is Bradley Shoreham, played by Tim Woodward – who was the youthful star of the World War II drama Wings quite some time ago, and is an actor of astonishing power and versatility, and who has made the role his own. Bradley Shoreham is an ‘Exercise Writer’; he’s the guy who actually writes the wargames, devises the scenarios, and even doles out the weaponry. In the world of his wargame, he is God.

Today Bradley meets a senior British officer played by Bill Paterson. Can’t want to see sparks fly.

Future War

Philip Palmer — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:51:01 +0000

I’ve spent the last few months immersed in stories of war. Some of them are well known wars – I read a long account of the SAS in the Second World War, and a number of accounts of the British war in Malaya. Some of them are secret wars – like the 20 year war between the West and Iran, a story replete with assassinations and bombings and spies. (Recent news stories include the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists by We Know Not Who, as a method of discouraging the Iranians from developing their own nuclear bomb.)

I’ve read about the Kurds and their peshmerga Army. I’ve read about the war in Afghanistan and the platoon house strategy, in which British platoons set up camp in small Afghan villages and towns and effectively taunted the enemy to attack – which they did, wrecking the towns and creating a massive refugee crisis. I’ve been to the Defence Academy – where soldiers study war in classrooms – and I’ve stood inside in a tank! I’ve even had a go at a military fighter pilot simulator, with catastrophic results (I crashed in minutes – you really DO not want me in your army.)

All of this is the research for one of the biggest projects I’ve ever been involved in – a 3 part radio drama about military war games. My inspiration for this project was The West Wing, in which characters sit in a room and talk about exciting events happening several continents away – and it’s rivetting. I also wrote a radio drama with a similar oblique approach a few years ago called Breaking Point, about military interrogation – aka torture of the kind that’s practised in Guantanamo Bay – starring the wonderful Eliot Cowan. There my premise was that the main character was being TRAINED in how to torture, rather than being a torturer; a framing device that works especially well in radio, where you have to use words to create images, not images themselves.

The series records on Sunday for 6 days, and will be broadcast once a week for three weeks later in the year.

After writing SF for the last few years, this has been, on the one hand, a change of gear; and on the other hand, more of the same. Because in writing about wargames I am in effect writing about future wars; extrapolating global conflicts some if not all of which might lead us into World War III. And once you start researching what terrible things might happen, it becomes truly chilling; the world is a very dangerous place.

The lead character of Bradley Shoreham is to be played by a superb actor called Tim Woodward, (whose father was Edward Woodward) and who I first saw as one of the stars in the TV series Wings, about the RAF. Episode 2 features several exciting new talents – Warren Brown, who is apparently a former Thai boxing champion (!) and was in the fabulous Iraq drama Occupation, and Ifan Meredith, who’s also played a soldier before in the TV drama Warriors, and is an exhilarating Welsh actor who plays the leader of an SAS team in my piece.

And episode 3 features one of my favourite actors ever – Bill Paterson, who’s been in absolutely everything…

More news of the project to come as I enter the rehearsal/recording period next week.

And some nice pics of the actors below…

Tim Woodward, reading the paper to find out which countries are at war today

Ifan Meredith

Warren Brown

Bill Paterson, who seems to have stolen Tim's newspaper...

The Art of Deception: AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD HERE

Philip Palmer — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:21:31 +0000

Series 2 of The Art of Deception, Philip Palmer’s 5 part drama about art forger extraordinaire Daniel Ballantyne, is available for download here.

Red and Blue: AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

Philip Palmer — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:15:36 +0000

Philip Palmer’s series about the art of military wargames is available for download here.

Artemis Speaks!

Philip Palmer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:40:03 +0000

Just before Xmas, I got this from those lovely guys at Recorded Books, who did the audio version of Artemis…

Here’s Artemis McIvor, narrating part of the first chapter of the novel which bears her name…(Click on Artemis Speaks, then click again when it reappears on another page.)

Artemis speaks!!!

Happy New Year!!!!

Philip Palmer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:35:31 +0000

Happy New Year one and all! Can’t believe it’s 4th Jan already.

I came out of my fun and alcohol stupor to read this rather delightful blog about Hell Ship. That’s nicely helped me out of my Wednesday-morning-drat-I-have-to-start-working-again feeling….

Orbit Blog

Philip Palmer — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:06:02 +0000

Artemis is now definitely in the shops…in Barnes & Noble in the US, and in all good bookshops in the UK…just wrote a small blog about it on the Orbit site.

Steampunk Anthology

Philip Palmer — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:09:43 +0000

To my delight, I’ve been asked to contribute to an anthology of steampunk stories ‘inspired by’ classics of literature. My choice is Wilkie Collins – who is up there with Dickens as the inventor of the detective story, and was one of the greatest writers of the Victorian age. Other contributors include Adam Roberts, Lavie Tidhar and Kim Lakin-Smith.

Scott has more details here.

That sorts out my Christmas reading…It’s Woman in White for me, and maybe even The Moonstone, two of Wilkie’s best books.

Countdown to Artemis

Philip Palmer — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:00:14 +0000

It’s now been confirmed by my new Orbit editor Jenni Hill that the official UK publication date of Artemis is – drum roll! – 1st December.

That’s er, soon.

Artemis is my fifth SF novel with Orbit, and as well as telling its own wild and wacky and complex tale, it also picks up some of the loose ends left dangling in my first novel, Debatable Space. I shall say no more…

Why Write?

Philip Palmer — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:18:06 +0000

I’ve just been reading this engaging blog by John Scalzi on why he writes, and how much he loves writing.

THIS GUY LOVES WRITING!!???!!!!!

Unbelievable. Most writers hate writing. That’s why Raymond Chandler drank. It’s why some writers (not me!) have clean houses, because they use cleaning as a writing-avoiding activity. The sheer act of confronting that Blank Page has often been described as the most traumatic thing a person can experience next to, um, finding there are no more cookies in the jar.

For my part I love rewriting. And I love those days when the writing just flows, and the mind just has to keep out of the way of the back brain’s creative energy.

Those days don’t happen often. Though I had one recently. On a journey to York where I’m currently teaching a module on film, I had forty five minutes in Starbuck’s before 7am, followed by 2 hours on the train there and the same on the way back. And during that time I wrote an entire radio drama script. (PS Don’t tell my producers this – they think I take my time about it!) It was an awesome outpouring from the back brain, though admittedly it came after some months of research. And, to my relief, when I read it over the next day – it DID all make sense…

But usually, writing is frustrating. You stare at the page. And it’s blank. And you stare harder.

And it’s STILL blank.

Maybe the trick is to be ridiculously busy – as I am at the moment – so there’s literally no time for prevarication.

Rewriting is a joy though. That’s when the hard work is done; and the creative teasing out of the full potential of the story can start to take place. I’m rewriting several projects at the moment; a whole bundle of joys.

But Scalzi! Man, that guy is MUCH too happy. He’s going to give writers a bad name at this rate.

Space Truckers

Philip Palmer — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:01:44 +0000

The latest in my occasional series of blogs about SF movies;, good, bad, and all points in between…

Space Truckers (1996) is one of the greatest films never made…instead they made a much worse film with the same title. Enjoyable, yes. Good, no.

The premise is genius – Dennis Hopper plays a trucker driving a rig through space. His space-truck looks like a bendy bus, with its vast containers of cargo. And when he delivers his first load, he’s ripped off by the Company, he acts wise, he gets into a bar room brawl. What more can you ask for!

Visually it’s a tour de force with bright colours dazzling the eye, and suitably dingy space ships, and Hopper lending his own brand of creative integrity to the project; namely, you know that even it’s bad, he’s going to give a gazillion per cent to it.

The plot is that Hopper has to take a secret cargo through space. An accident causes the heating to go haywire (reminding me of a Farscape episode where this same spaceship malfunction scenario was used as an excuse to get Claudia Black and Ben Browder hot and horny together). Sure enough, in Space Truckers it’s used as an excuse to get Stephen Dorff and Debi Mazar hot and horny together…hilariously, she has a green bra beneath her dayglo outfit.

Then our motley crew of truckers (Hopper, Debi who in the story is Hopper’s fiance despite being thirty years younger than he is - don’t ask! – and fellow trucker Stephen Dorff) are kidnapped by space pirates. At this point the plot gets clever, in ways I won’t describe, because you might actually watch this someday. But I would say that the great reveal of the film is when the cyborg villain who sounds a lot like Charles Dance turns out to be – Charles Dance! Lending his own brand of urbane dignity to the affair, even when he has to wind up his cybernetic penis.

There are a couple of great lines of dialogue. At least, there’s definitely one, and there may well be another. It comes when Dorff rashly taunts the cyborg, and Hopper pours honey on troubled waters by arguing, ‘He respects the brave way you confront your disability.’

And the bad guys – robots with heads like plugs with lights – are impressively scary, though it’s a bit naff that they can be switched off whilst in a killing rage by a device that looks like and basically is a TV remote control.

But the story doesn’t sustain, and the narrative gaps and lurches are rather appalling really, when you consider the writer (Ted Mann) wrote 18 episodes of NYPD Blue and should surely know how to plot a story.

There are some truly terrible lines too. The worst is when the dying Dance – his body severed at the waist, and only his cauterized arteries keeping him alive – says, ‘If I had an anus I’m probably soil myself.’ Oh Charlie! Has it really come to this!

And when the villain of the piece, Sags, is killed we’re told, ‘Somebody fragged Sags.’ Now is that great dialogue or crap dialogue? I can’t decide.

This feels like one of those films where the creative team lost faith in the script, by TV pro Mann, and starting making it up as they went along . Or maybe he was off form. As a result, a movie that ought to have been a solid piece of entertainment – an SF thriller with comic brio – falls through the floorboards into the ‘so bad it’s good’ territory.

The director, Stuart Gordon, made Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Re-Animator; so has a variable, but an impressive CV. His mistake in Space Truckers is to settle for a screenplay that tells the story – instead of allowing a gifted writer to really enjoy the wit and quirk and character of these characters. There’s a whole world of story to be teased out of Hopper’s career as a space trucker… think of Robert Shaw’s character in Jaws as the object lesson in how to create a vivid three dimensional character by means of quiet and character revealing scenes within an action thriller narrative.

I found a cool site by the guy who made the spaceships. Check out these models for the film…by model maker Steve Howarth.

The Lost Flanagan Story

Philip Palmer — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:37:51 +0000

I recently did an interview for the charming blogger Alan Kelly, who runs a really cool site called Horror Reanimated.

One of the things Alan asked me about were the Sharrock stories and flash fictions which have been quietly appearing on this site (which are complemented by The Legend of Sharrock, which appears in Further Conflicts). My aim in posting these stories was to explore further the world of this, one of my favourite characters from Hell Ship. Because of the way that novel works, I never had time to fully develop the universe which Sharrock inhabits (because I destroy it! Yes, that’s kind of guy I am.) So I hope to add more Sharrock stories and other bits and pieces from Hell Ship in due course.

This question reminded me of something I did quite some time ago, namely, I wrote a story (or a couple of stories) about Flanagan, the hero of Debatable Spaces, and then hid them somewhere on this website.

It was, as I say, a long time ago, and I can no longer find where I put the darn things. So if anyone spots them – let me know!

Howard Hawks

Philip Palmer — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:03:17 +0000

Last night I watched His Girl Friday again, for the nth time. It’s one of my favourite ever films. One of those sharp sassy black and white movies with machine-gun fire dialogue, wit, edge and amazing screen chemistry. It tells the story of a group of unscrupulous newspapermen, including one ‘newspaperman’ who is a woman, covering the case of convicted murderer Earl Williams, who is due to be hanged in the morning. Earl escapes and – well, to say more would be a spoiler.

But the extraordinary thing about the film is that it’s so FAST. Not only fast, devious, nimble-footed, and bewilderingly cynical. It is at heart a coruscating satire of the amorality and immorality of newspaper folk But yet, we love them. Many people have gone into journalism after watching this movie, on the misapprehension that all journalists will be as clever, witty and beguiling as Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell (they’re not.) And though both the leads, Grant and Russell, behave appallingly we love them, and we want them to fall in love.

If you’ve never seen it, do so; if you’ve seen it as often as I have, you haven’t seen it often enough.

All this is the segue for a wee bit of a discourse about movies and authors and the like. On this website I’ve featured a number of long and sometimes quite scholarly (cue Archie Tait and Stuart McGregor) articles on movies, books and TV. And in a little while I’ll be featuring a major piece by Stuart on the graphic novel author Warren Ellis. Yes, Debatable Spaces does occasional venture beyond me blathering about my new novel release and pimping my own work (oh, by the way – Artemis goes on sale in – shut up Palmer!)

I was watching His Girl Friday as part of my current venture of teaching on a course in film up at the University of York. It’s a job that came about by the usual circuitous route (my entire life is a series of random coincindences) and for me it’s been a great chance to reconnect with old movies and new movies in a rather more systematic fashion than has been my wont over the last year or so. And a chance also to think about what movies mean, and how they work, which is invaluable to me in my other role as a screenwriter and co-producer of a feature film.

So what’s the story with His Girl Friday? Why is it so good?

Firstly, I’d argue, it’s a prime example of that cultural movement known as Pulp. Think Raymond Chandler, think Dashiell Hammett; think also Billy Wilder’s fast and furious comedies, or the gangster movies of Jimmy Cagney (which I’ve also been revisiting). They’re different things in different genres, but the one thing they have in common is blistering speed. Paul Cain wrote a pulp crime novel called Fast One; that could be the name for that whole movement. Compare and contrast with the novels of George R. R. Martin, which explore a world in a thorough and detailed and – though hugely exciting – slow fashion. But in the 30s and 40s the vogue was for fast and furious; you get to the point, you make it, you move on. In White Heat, for instance, by the third shot we know that Jimmy Cagney is about to rob a train. In Reservoir Dogs, we spend AGES listening to the guys nattering on before we realise a bank job is about to occur.

There’s no right or wrong about this; it’s just the issue of how pace in storytelling can change. I find that fascinating. And when you watch an old movie by Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges, the first reaction is panic – my God, this is all happening so quickly, can I keep up? We cod ourselves that we live in the age of fast editing and multi-tasking brains; but the average modern action blockbluster is a snail compared to the racing hares of yesteryear.

Then there’s the hat. Rosalind Russell’s hat. And her suit too – big shoulders, very mannish, sexy in a totally empowering way. His Girl Friday is one of the great feminist movies of all times because Rosalind’s character is, from first to last, one of the guys; but on her own terms. She’s ambitious, ruthless, smart-witted, fast-talking. Allegedly, Russell hired her own screenwriter to amp up her own dialogue so she had just as much witty repartee as the guys; if so, that proves the actress became her character. Take no shit, Rosalind. Get in there and do the job.

Nowadays, it’s much rarer to see such a powerful and guileful woman in a mainstream movie; we live in the age of Lady Gaga and Beyonce. It’s still a world of empowered women – both those ladies certainly are – but to see Rosalind’s brand of edge and wit and velocity in a female character in a movie is not as common as it ought to be. Film-makers, take note.

If I may just slip in a week academic beat; there’s a famous semiotic study (stay with me! don’t flee!) about the pop singer Madonna, by academic John Fiske (in a book called Reception Study, edited by James Machor and Philip Goldstein). According to the editors, Fiske ‘construes fans as active viewers and listeners for whom Madonna’s persona and music become a “site of semiotic struggle between the forces of patriarchy and feminine resistance of capitalism and the subordinate.” ’ Phew. And according to Lucy, a 14 year old Madonna fan, as quoted by Fiske, ‘she’s tarty and seductive…but it look alright when she does it you know, what I mean, if anyone else did it it would like right tarty, a right tart you know, but with her it’s OK, it’s acceptable.’

‘Reception study’ by the way is that academic discipline that deals with the way that real people – you and me – respond and react to cultural phenomena. Its method involves talking to people, finding out what they really believe, then discussing those conclusions. So it’s not some arid theoretical discipline; it’s an evidence-based study of the phenomena of our everyday life.

And what Fiske learns about Madonna is that she dresses like a whore on stage in a ‘post-modern’, ironic, empowering way. Girls feel good about themselves watching Madonna sing; she’s no dumb blonde. She’s using exaggerative versions of the icons of sexuality (those conical breasts!) to say, Hey, look at me, I’m a woman and I’m sexy and I’m cool with it.

But the hat worn by Rosalind Russell playing the role of Hildy Johnson – especially when tipped back, as it is in the photo above – tells a different story. This woman is sexy but doesn’t have to flaunt it. She just wants to do her job, the best she can. She’s not playing any artful erotic game; damn it all, she’s best ‘newspaperman’ in the business! That’s actually, to be honest, a little bit more feminist than Madonna’s schtick. It’s also inspirational. And, for a film made in 1940, it’s a beacon and a symbol for all women in all audiences everywhere. No more dumb blondes; this is the way of women in the future.

All that is conveyed by the hat; not just the hat the whole demeanour of the character; not just the whole demeanour of the character, but the very tang and pace and dash of the film. The film means more than just the story in other worlds. It’s the epitome of a whole way of being.

That’s as much semiotics as I will perpetrate in this blog; forgive me my moment there.

Interestingly, the feminist subtext to the movie arose by chance. In the original version – - a hit Broadway stage play called The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur – the role of Hildy Johnson was played by a man. But after hearing his secretary read the lines, Hawks decided to make Hildy Johnson a woman; which turned out to be an act of genius. A whole new subplot and subtext arose; a love story within the satirical comedy. (In the 1931 film Hildy Johnson was played by Pat O’Brien; in the 1974 version Hildy was played by Jack Lemmon.)

There now follows a visual retrospective of some of the works of Howard Hawks (1896-1977):

How careers begin…this early (1927) crime drama was directed by Joseph Von Sternberg and written by Ben Hecht, who wrote the play of The Front Page, on which His Girl Friday is based. But – uncredited – Hecht’s cowriter was the young Howard Hawks.

After producing more than 60 movies, and directing quite a few silent movies, this was Howard’s first talkie:

An all-male cast… a pressure cooker environment…does that ring a bell?

In an interview with Joseph McBride (in the book Hawks on Hawks) the director spoke of his approach to dialogue in this movie: ‘People liked the scenes because they were underdone, because they were thrown away. Nobody emoted in the pictures that I made.’ This is the very definition of what makes a Howard Hawks film; a casual thrown away approach to dialogue that roots the characters in the real. I’ve worked with directors who used this as their defining aesthetic – ‘Just throw the line away’. ‘Don’t act it, just throw it away,’ etc etc. The opposite approach is to be big and emotional and for a character to ‘beat his chest’.

Of course, some directors and indeed actors still to this day prefer ‘big’ acting. Think Al Pacino in Scarface… (as opposed to Paul Muni in Scarface, the Howard Hawks’ movie with the same name – see below.)

This is a stunner of a movie; Muni is brooding; the acting is laconic. Muni has a trick with a coin that is mesmerising. This is still, post-Godfather, one of my favourite gangster movies.

This is the one where Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn inadvertently adopt a leopard. Hawks has travelled the road from an all-male cast (Dawn Patrol) to directing a movie which has one of the best roles for a woman ever. His strategy for the writing /directing of female roles both here and in His Girl Friday was identical; just treat ‘em like men. The women are just as sassy, just as bold, just as annoying as the men. This utterly non-sexist approach also underpins the writing role of Starbuck (Kara Thrace) in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica; in the original series, Starbuck was a guy. In the reboot, Starbuck is a cigar-smoking whisky-swilling fist-fighting gal; same difference, huh?

Only Angels Have Wings features Cary Grant again, in a comedy about a guy who runs an air service. This is one I haven’t seen; must rectify!

And now we see Hawks’ range – from comedy back to war movie; this one was the highest-grossing film of its year.

His Girl Friday followed, in 1940, with this crap poster for a great film:

Then it was To Have and Have Not…Based loosely on the Ernest Hemmingway story, this was Lauren Bacall’s first role. She was spotted on the cover of a magazine by Hawks’ wife Slim; Hawks trained her how to pitch her voice low. And on the set, Bogie and Bacall fell in love…one of the greatest movie romances of all time, of the off-screen variety. William Faulkner worked on the script, with Ernest Hemmingway.

Hawks once broke his hand when he hit Hemmingway in the face, to prove to he knew how to throw a punch. Hemmingway laughed like a drain and the hand never healed. Sigh. Those were the days.

No, no, what am I saying – the writer should hit the DIRECTOR. That would be more like it…

(I’m kidding, honestly!)

Moving swiftly on to The Big Sleep, up there with The Maltese Falcon as one of the greatest detective movies of all time based on Chandler’s famously brilliant but narratively incoherent novel. (No one, not even the novelist, ever figured out who killed the chauffeur). And in this we get more of that unique Bacall/Bogart chemistry. (If you look hard, you’ll see the title The Big Sleep underneath the words BOGART AND BACALL, which tells you all you need to know about how this film was marketed).

By 1948, a change of direction – from the maker of sassy contemporary comedies and hardboiled noir thrillers and war movies, we have….a Western. Perhaps the greatest Western ever. This is (as memory serves) the Western in which they cry ‘Yee-hah!’ , as parodied in City Slickers.

John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, the cattle drive across a river. THE river. The Red River.

From there it’s a small step to science fiction… The Thing From Another World is based on the short story Who Goes There? by legendary SF editor Joseph W. Campbell. Years later John Carpenter re-made it as The Thing. The Carpenter version is a much better thriller, and those opening shots of the dog in the Arctic snows are stunning. But, bluntly, the dialogue in the Carpenter version is workmanlike and the performances are vivid but not richly observed.

In the Hawks’ version, however, you get great dialogue, great character, great faces…shame the action peters out but it’s still a classic.

Around about now, 1949, Hawks put Cary Grant in a dress:

The premise of this movie (I Was a Male War Bride) is that Grant is a French officer (!) during the War who marries an American girl; but the only way he can travel to America to be with her is under the terms of the War Brides Act. Hence, the cross-dressing…this is not one of the best known Hawks’ movies but it’s a sheer delight.

After knocking out a musical starring Marilyn Monroe,

Hawks returned to Westerns with Rio Bravo, his rebuttal to High Noon, a film which he and John Wayne loathed for its wishy-washy liberalism. And so instead of a story in which the townsfolk refuse to help the Marshal, we have a story in which the community rallies round. Even the town drunk (played by Dean Martin) shows his mettle, and there’s even a song. For my money High Noon is a greater film; but this is still fab.

Then in 1967 Hawks made another Western with similar themes, also starring John Wayne. Another cracker, though it’s quite some time since I’ve seen it.

This had a screenplay by Leigh Brackett, the (female) screenwriter who wrote The Big Sleep and also wrote The Empire Strikes Back; she was a successful SF author too, in the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ mould; I have a couple of her books on my shelf. When Wayne is about to shoot a bad guy in the belfry of a church, he says, ‘Let’s make music.’ This is the film in which Wayne makes his horse walk backwards…an under-taught skill in many drama schools.

Then it 1970 it was back to Westerns and Wayne with Rio Lobo; to be honest, I don’t think I’ve seen this one (yet!)

This isn’t the comprehensive list – and I’ve left out the silent films, none of which I’ve seen. But it’s an extraordinary back catalogue.

And, despite the range of genres, there are clear common factors in these movies. First, the dialogue – fast, snappy, vivid, wonderful. Second the depth of characterisation for even the minor roles. Third, the in depth casting; which is another way of saying Second, because a great and perfectly cast actor can conjure up a character in almost no words. Think of the guys sitting around the table waiting for Earl Williams to die in His Girl Friday; even one of them a lived-in face, with laconic throwaway delivery. We know nothing about these guys but they are utterly real.

Here’s one of the best bit-part actors Hawks ever worked with; Walter Brennan:

Never has an actor looked less than an actor…and in Red River, he steals the movie.

All these distinctive common factors make it possible to instantly recognise a ‘Howard Hawks’ film. But in his own time, Hawks was regarded as a journeyman director; it’s the films which were famous, not him. But then, in the 60s, Hawks was rediscovered as an ‘auteur’, namely a director with an individual voice and vision. And that’s absolutely right, and a great corrective to a culture which (at that time) often disparaged the vital and hugely creative role of movie director. And from that moment on, the director’s role has come to be regarded as pivotal to the creative vision on any and every film. And the cult of the ‘auteur’ has come to dominate the international film industry. Which again is fair enough; since directors do work terribly hard, and you really can’t make a movie without one.

However…

Oops. Here we go. Rant alert!

Like all or most professional screenwriters, I have come to hate the word and concept ‘auteur’ . Not because of what it means, but because of what people THINK it means.

In other words, there’s a whole assumption in the film industry that every director should be an ‘auteur’ and hence should write or rewrite every movie he or she directs. But this is silly. A writer who also directs is fine – that’s what Quentin Tarantino does, and he was getting high value writing jobs before he became a director. The same is true of John Huston, and Preston Sturges.

But if there’s already a writer in place, and if that writer knows his/her stuff, then it’s a director’s job to support that writer’s vision, and talent, in a collaborative way. It’s called script editing. Stephen Frears, one of the greatest directors in the world, is great precisely because he understands that process perfectly. He began his career working with Alan Bennett, one of the finest writers in the world; and Frears knows he’s a better director if he trusts his writer. And when I was teaching TV at the National Film and Television School (the very cradle of British auteur theory), Frears arrived for a term’s teaching and raised hell with the directing students who were refusing to work with the writing students. He told them how it SHOULD be done; and taught them how to give script notes, the rarest and most precious of skills.

The problem really is that the word ‘auteur’ has been corrupted and abused to mean the opposite of what it originally meant. Originally, it emerged from the very reasonable and smart point made by a bunch of French critics that the supposed ‘hack’ directors of Hollywood often in fact had a very distinctive ‘authorial’ influence on their movies. Hawks was one of the directors singled out, as was Alfred Hitchcock – both directors who prided themselves on working with top notch writers, as opposed to those directors (like Jean Renoir) who largely wrote their own stuff.

And the American critic Andrew Sarris, whose article on the auteur theory really started the hare running, also included Hawks among his pantheon of top ‘auteur’ directors. But he also relegated directors like Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and David Lean to the second tier, which proves that for all his cleverness, the man was a fool; and his version of the ‘auteur theory’ was in effect no more than a way of codifying his own preferences/prejudices. I mean, let’s get a grip here. (Wilder in particular pretended not to be bitter at Sarris’s sniping, which means he was REALLY pissed off. But Wilder was truly one of the greats; if he’d only ever made Some Like it Hot he’d be a genius, but he did a whole lot more…)

And now, ‘auteur’ is loosely used to mean a director who writes; or a director who RE-writes, usually in the process snaffling a co-writing credit. I’m treading on eggshells here, because there are so many stories I could tell to illustrate this general point, but I can’t, for fear of not eating lunch in this or any town again. I cite the example of a well known screenwriter who recently told me (no, I can’t tell THAT story.) The only example I can/will give is of the time I worked on a Bill episode by a new director who went on to be quite famous, but whose script meddling was notorious and highly unwelcome. He wrote a significantly changed draft of the script I’d written, not in a nice or collaborative way, breaking all the rules of good conduct on that show, and when the script editors saw the result they were appalled. Because it was bad; the wrong tone, the wrong rhythm, no sense of the characters I’d created. Luckily, in that environment – on a show where the writer’s voice was respected – I got most of my stuff back. But elsewhere, this kind of meddling is widespread and condoned, nay, encouraged.

But how is this different to having Howard Hawks rewrite your script? His whole method depended on collaborating so closely with the writer he became the de facto cowriter; he would also sometimes work with actors on set, reworking their lines, sometimes changing the character’s character. Why is that allowed?

Well, because that’s part of the collaborative process, and as long as the writer is there, or welcome to be there, no one minds this stuff. In fact, we relish it; we like being part of it; we ‘get’ it. And Hawks was smart enough to know that you can impro lines and bits of business on set; but if you meddle with the heart and soul of the story, the invisible narrative structures carefully put in place by the screenwriter, the whole house of cards will fall down.

Many writers, including the gloriously outspoken William Goldman, have spoken out against the prevailing cult of the ‘auteur’ director, on the grounds it ignores the vital role of the screenwriter.

Goldman even claims (in Adventures in the Screen Trade) that Jean-Luc Goddard, one of the originators of auteur theory, said in an interview “that the whole thing was patent bullshit from the beginning, an idea devised by the then young scufflers to draw some attention to themselves” Of course, being Goldman, author of a book about his experiences in Hollywood called Which Lie Did I Tell?, this quote from Godard may be apochryphal.

Goldman also offers a classic example of the preposterousness of auteurism:

“Peter Benchley reads an article in a newspaper about a fisherman who captures a forty-five-hundred-pound shark off the coast of Long Island and he thinks, “What if the shark became territorial, what if it wouldn’t go away?” And eventually he writes a novel on that notion and Zanuck-Brown buy the movie rights, and Benchley and Carl Gottlieb write a screenplay, and Bill Butler is hired to shoot the movie, and Joseph Alves, Jr. designs it, and Verna Fields is brought in to edit, and maybe most importantly of all, Bob Mattey is brought out of retirement to make the monster. And John Williams composes perhaps his most memorable score. How in the world is Steven Spielberg the “author” of that? Why is it often referred to today as “Steven Spielberg’s Jaws”?… There’s no author to that movie that I can see.”

One American critic has coined the term Schreiber theory (from the Yiddish word for writer) as a counterbalance to the prevailing auterist approach. However, only screenwriters subscribe to this theory; and no one takes us guys seriously.

And, getting back on track, I would argue that Hawks is a great director BECAUSE he worked with such great writers. And he knew it too. He was asked why he rarely took a writing credit on his movies, and he said, ‘Because if I did, I couldn’t get such good writers to work with me.’

He did have a very particular method, however, based on working long hours with a writer, and working on scenes by each person taking a character and busking lines. And out of this came the kind of dialogue that Hemmingway (one of his collaborators) called ‘oblique dialogue’ and Hawks himself called ‘three cushion dialogue’. Because you hit it over here, then over there, to get the meaning. Aaron Sorkin uses a similar type of three cushion dialogue in The West Wing.

That’s collaboration; and Hawks is an auteur ie a great and distinctive director because he was a great collaborator. And his particular directorial style is virtually unmistakable. Okay, maybe sometimes you might wonder if a film is directed by Hawks or by Billy Wilder – also a master of three cushion dialogue. But it’s certainly pretty special.

Interestingly, for me the weakest film of his is The Thing From Another World because of the lack of thriller tension. And though it’s SF, that’s definitely a thriller story. His other films are all in genres where thriller tension isn’t that important. In the screwball comedies, it’s character that counts. In the kind of Westerns he made – as opposed to the Sam Peckinpah or Sergio Leone action Westerns – it’s character that counts. Even The Big Sleep, a classic detective noir, it’s not the thriller tension that matters, it’s the characters, as they are revealed by the machinations of a (as all concerned admitted) at times impenetrable narrative.

However, it would be interesting to see what had happened if Hawks had managed to (as he tried to) get the rights to the Bond movies; instead they were snapped up by his former assistant director Cubby Broccoli.

Imagine how Hawks might have re-envisioned that suave secret agent:

BOND: Hello. My name is Bond. James -

BOND GIRL: Will you shut up and listen to me?

BOND: – Bond. Hey! You’re not meant to -

BOND GIRL: Guys like you, you drive me mad!

BOND: – interrupt me. (SOBS)

Ah well, we’ll never know.

Character is at the heart of these Hawks movies. And he choose his collaborators because a) they liked to work with him and b) they were great at dialogue and c) they were great at character. Hence his long term relationships with, in particular, Leigh Brackett, Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer.

Anyway – rant over. Now I have to track down Rio Lobo and Dawn Patrol, to fill in the gaps in my Hawks-watching…

Lifeforce

Philip Palmer — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 13:49:54 +0000

At the recent British Fantasy Convention in Brighton, I was privileged to share a panel on movies with the inimitable Kim Newman, a man who has seen more movies than I’ve had hot meals; which, if you know me at all, means an awful lot of movies.

I can’t pretend to compete with Kim’s encyclopedic knowledge of weird, wonderful SF and fantasy films. But I have been quietly studying some of the great and not so great movies of yesteryear; in particular, alien movies (since aliens are very much the subject of my novel Hell Ship.)

One of the best of this bunch is Lifeforce (1985). Has anyone else seen Lifeforce? It’s not a great film, I admit. It’s too long. It’s unremittingly salacious. But damn it all, it’s fun. It’s vampires in space. It stars Peter Firth, the real star of the BBC series Spooks, in the role that OUGHT to have catapulted him into the A-List of movie actors. It also features Patrick Stewart, in his pre-Picard days, showing that SF is in his blood. It’s a 1980s movie that didn’t achieve the fame or acclaim of Alien or Terminator. But it’s one to be treasured as a home grown SF gem.

Although, admittedly, it’s not an entirely British affair. The story is based on a novel by Brit Colin Wilson, who has written some very eerie stuff about serial killers. The cast, as I’ve mentioned, is awash with Brits. But the screenplay is by co-written by Dan O’Bannon, the special effects whizzo who is also one of the most successful SF screenwriters ever. His student film Dark Star (which he made with director John Carpenter, and in which he played a key role) secured a theatrical release and launched Carpenter’s career. And, using ideas filched from his own first movie, Dan O’Bannon then wrote the screenplay to Alien.

Yes, THAT Dan O’Bannon.

A bitter man, it must be said, after considerable furore over the screenwriting credits for Alien. But let’s gloss over that.

Lifeforce is a movie about space vampires.

Yeah, that is just SO good, isn’t it?

Originally they are found on a space ship by astronauts from Earth; these winged creatures are very eerie, and can be seen here….

When they attack their victims, they drain the bodies and turn them into corpses, thus.

And one of these space vampires, played by Mathilda May, escapes from custody and has no clothes for a considerable part of the film. Hey, this is a B movie after all. A scientist, played by Frank Finlay, correctly guesses that the aliens have the ability to suck ‘lifeforce’ from humans, and speculates they may have come to Earth before. Colonel Caine of the SAS (played by Firth) comes to sort this out, and he’s assisted by Steve Railsback as a surviving astronaut ( an actor later acclaimed for having ‘the scariest eyes in the business’). They track the space vampire to an asylum run by Dr Patrick Stewart, baldy-headed even then; and for reasons I forget, he is drugged and starts talking like a girl.

And then London is aflame! It’s a genuinely exhilarating action finale which merges SF and horror seamfully, but enjoyably.

It’s not well directed, by and large, by Tobe Hooper, of Texas Chain Saw Massacre fame. There’s a fair amount of dead air in the dialogue scenes. But the actors in the film who happen to be genuinely great thespians (including Railsback) know how to make their scenes come alive; Firth and Finlay are electrifying together, and give a masterclass in how gifted actors can take ordinary lines of dialogue and invest them with urgency, rhythm, and screen chemistry.

For me it’s the perfect schlock experience. Enough great moments to make the lame bits forgiveable; a genuinely fab concept; and a bunch of British actors at the top of their game. It’s SUCH a shame Peter Firth never became a movie star; and Finlay was truly one of the greats. Patrick Stewart is the only one of that gang to have broken into the international big league, though only when in his Federation uniform.

And Mathilda May is now officially on my list of Top Ten Best Aliens in Movies, despite being not very scary.

And this is a list I shall be adding to in due course, in future blogs.

Artemis Arrives

Philip Palmer — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 08:58:00 +0000

Oh Frabjous Joy! An author’s copy of Artemis, my latest novel, just appeared at my doorstep, delivered by a wary postman who had heard of the reputation of this stone cold killing bibliophile.

Artemis is the ‘sort of’ sequel to Debatable Space. It has some familiar characters, and many new characters, including Artemis herself. It’s space opera with a bit of urban fantasy kickassitude mixed in.

The novel arrives in bookshops sometime in December…

Most Haunted City

Philip Palmer — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:04:15 +0000

I’ve been giving some lectures on genre cinema up in York recently, and spent Monday night there – aka Halloween.

Amazing. York is a city full of beauty; and also full of ghosts. Every pub has its own ghost trail. I was walking down one street and came across a gang of tourists who were being told about a ghost that haunts the Punch Bowl pub. Apparently when you light the fire, smoke emerges, and forms into a face – the face of the previous pub landlord who burned to death in a fire..

Add to this people dressed as zombies or with horns on their head and you have a truly spooky ambience.

I met Lee Harris of Angry Robot fame – he’s a resident there, despite being alive. And we stumbled into a superb pub called the Yorkshire Terrier, with fine local beer and cobwebs sprayed on the handpumps. The first person I saw on arrival was a man dressed as a nun. When Lee turned up the nun sat at the piano and began to play – beautifully.

It was one of those surreal, wonderful evenings; fine conversation, good booze, and a pianistical nun belting out, among other things, Space Oddity. I shall treasure my memories of that evening for some time to come.

Fantastical TV

Philip Palmer — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:54:36 +0000

I’ve been racing around the country for the last few days so haven’t had time to write about the panel I did at the weekend for the London Screenwriters’ Festival. The topic was Fantastical TV, and my fellow panellists were Paul Cornell, Adrian Hodges and Jason Arnopp. The chair was the ebullient Tom Hunter, who runs the Arthur C. Clarke Awards; it’s now been agreed that Tom should chair every panel, everywhere in the world. And damn he does it well.

I’d not met Jason Arnopp before – lovely guy, he’s just made a low budget horror movie which I’m yearning to see. Adrian was the showrunner of fantastical shows including Primeval and Survivors, and he’s got a new movie coming out called My Week With Marilyn. And Paul Cornell has of course written numerous splendid Dr Who as well as a spooky BBC 3 thriller called Pulse.

I was the imposter at the feast - I’ve worked a lot in TV but it was always on crime shows not SF or fantasy. I was script editor on Taggart for a while, which under Glenn Chandler was famous for its baroque amazing stories – like the episode where the killer is an old woman living in a gingerbread house in the woods who bakes children. But Paul Cornell poured scorn on the idea that Taggart could be called ‘fantastical’ (it wasn’t a real gingerbread house.) I also once wrote the first every science fiction episode of Heartbeat, in which aliens land in Aidensfield. But Cornell asked if they were REAL aliens, which they weren’t; so he poured scorn on my claim that it was an SF episode at all.

Sigh.

I did also script edited a series by Geoff Deane called A Many Splintered Thing which had a magic realist episode in which Hugh Lloyd floats in mid-air – does that count Paul?

The debate was lively and spirited, which you’d expect. And sober, which you wouldn’t. Tom chaired with his usual deft eloquence, like Dylan Moran without actually being Dylan Moran. We began by all agreeing that there wasn’t much great British fantasy/SF TV out there if you exclude Dr Who; then we ended up agreeing that there IS lots of great British fantasy/SF TV out there. I put in a plug for Misfits, which for me is the only British show that reaches the heights of Buffy, Battlestar, etc , etc etc. It’s not a rip off of anything; it’s utterly unique, with a powerful writer’s voice (Howard Overman) and a stunningly good cast.

The Festival is a great event. It’s very very well attended indeed – the room was overflowing with would be TV writers, and I saw a few familiar faces in there. The passion to write the fantastical is clearly out there…

Murder in Midsomer

Philip Palmer — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:32:17 +0000

There is one county in England which is notorious for its high murder count and the weirdness of its locals – they get up to all sorts there, including ritual murder, incest, and every kind of skullduggery imaginable.

The county is called Midsomer – and it’s the (fictional, honestly) setting for the ITV series Midsomer Murders, which has been running for yoinks. And this Wednesday’s episode (26th October, 8pm) is cowritten by my wife Sally Griffiths, together with her writing partner Rachel Cuperman.

I’ve read the script (numerous times!) and it’s fab. If you’re based in the UK, do try and tune in. If you live elsewhere in the world – catch a plane to Blighty for heaven’s sake!

London Screenwriter’s Festival 2011

Philip Palmer — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:22:07 +0000

I’ve spent the last week or so watching old movies, as preparation for a part-time teaching job I’m currently doing up in the University of York. High Noon, Rio Bravo, The Maltese Falcon are among the highlights. I am having SO much fun here.

And then next Saturday, 29th October, I’m appearing on a panel about Fantastical Television for the London Screenwriter’s Festival. This is a remarkable event – annoyingly expensive for participants but still very worthwhile. I’m sharing with panel with Adrian Hodges, who has written for Primeval and Survivors and who I’ve known for many years – he’s a great cineaste, and started his career as a journalist with Screen International. Paul Cornell is also on the panel – polymath, comics writer, Dr Who scribe, who wrote an excellent BBC4 horror piece called Pulse which I recently caught up with. Also Jason Arnupp, who I don’t know; and the event is moderated by the highly immoderate and shamelessly talented Tom Hunter. Iif you’re planning to be there, do let me know via this site.

Life, Car Crashes and Everything

Philip Palmer — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:11:15 +0000

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

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

Grr…

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

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

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

Onwards…

SFF Song of the Week: Kim Lakin-Smith

Philip Palmer — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:45:22 +0000

I’ve already written about the Fantasy Con at Brighton…which also featured many book launches, including an amazing-looking book by Kim Lakin-Smith called Cyber Circus. I got to know Kim when we both had stories published in the New Con Press Further Conflicts 2 anthology – hers was ‘The Harvest’, and it’s a peach. And she’s very kindly selected a science fiction song of the week for me.

Over to you Kim:

Kim Lakin-Smith writes:

Science Fiction/Double Feature’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Scream queens and mutants and creatures from outer space and crazed scientists and the destruction of ALL MANKIND!… to quote the inimitable Julia Andrews, these are a few of my favourite things. Another is 1950s Americana. For me, Chevvies, juke boxes, and hightails and bobby socks are joined at the hip with drive-ins theatres and the Golden Age of science fiction. In a time of post-war boom but also pre-Cold-War paranoia, movie studios were quick to reflect a nation’s terror of alien invasion. While dating couples necked on back seats, 30 foot screens showed the likes of The War of the Worlds, It Came From Outer Space, Godzilla, King of the Monsters!,

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Overacting, limited special effects, pseudo-science, and climactic music scores all added to the greatness of these pulp-fiction’esque double-bills.

So then, what do we get when we combine a risqué cult musical with the 1950s horror and science fiction sub genre? A suspender-wearing amalgam of kitsch-cool, that’s what! Mix in a good grating of sexual subversity and a generous dollop of rock ‘n’ roll, and there can only be one result – Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its opening anthem ‘Science Fiction/Double Feature.’

Covered by as diametrically opposed artists as Joan Jet and the Blackhearts and Naya Rivera’s cheerleader character from Glee, SFDF is a lascivious ode to great pulp SF. In the film version, O’Brien provided the vocal. The original intention was to play the song over the opening credits and feature faded clips from the movies mentioned. But when rights to such classics as The Invisible Man and When The Earth Stood Still proved too pricey, production designer Brian Thomson turned to Patricia Quinn’s character Magenta. With her head strapped to a board to restrict movement, Quinn provided the now iconic red lips against a black background.

While the use of actual movie footage proved a no go in this opening sequence, it did not stop O’Brien from peppering the script with nods to the genre. The creature, Rocky Horror, is dressed in bandages before being brought to life, a wink to Claude Rains’ Invisible Man. When Rocky carries Frank’s lifeless body up the tower of the RKO logo, it is an overt homage to King Kong and his scream queen, Fay Wray. From the young couple mentored by a creepy scientist, to the anthemic Time Warp, to the ray gun touted by Riff Raff when he and Magenta return a certain sweet transvestite to transsexual Transylvania, Rocky Horror as a movie pays tribute to its pulp origins and thereby creates its own iconic science fiction/picture show.

But enough from me. Time to let those luscious red lips do the talking.

Fantasy Con Furore

Philip Palmer — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:12:16 +0000

This blog takes no sides in the growing furore over the British Fantasy Con Awards – a controversy that threatens to tarnish my enjoyment of that delightful event.

If you’ve missed the fuss, this blog by Steve Jones kicked it off. And winner Sam Stone is now aiming to give her award back in response; though many are urging her not to do so.

Let’s be clear about this. Awards are fun. Winning an award is nice. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s nice. And writers don’t deserve this shit. I have no views on the politics of the affair but I am convinced that Sam Stone is an honourable writer and this should never have been inflicted on her.

During the banquet in which these awards were given, I chatted with writer Maura McHugh about the terrible experiences writers often have in film and television. My killer story was the one about a writer whose short film won an award in France; and the director and producer went and received the award on his behalf – without telling him! Maura topped that with the exact same story about a DIFFERENT short film and a different writer.

There’s a reason writers are paranoid; because they really are treated badly, in so many different ways. So I hope in future no other writer gets this kind of mauling as a result of a SF/F convention award ceremony. The people who organise these cons do so out of love – not for money! – and they deserve our support. But please, let there never be a repeat of this fiasco.

It was still a great convention.

UPDATE:

This statement from the British Fantasy Society.

Um, if David Howe wasn’t involved in the nominations and selections, then he’s not corrupt.He shouldn’t have resigned; Sam Stone shouldn’t have given her prize back. Or am I missing something?

It would have been smarter to make a joke of it; ‘This is my girlfriend but I’m NOT on the selection panel so honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks.’

Fantasy Con 2011

Philip Palmer — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:15:41 +0000

Last weekend I attended my first ever Fantasy Con….I felt like an interloper, a science fiction writer sneaking into the land of dragons and men with beards and big swords.

Sadly, no dragons; but I think this was my favourite ever con. It was a small event, with only one panel at a time rather than the complex agendas you get in Eastercon with multiple panels at opposite ends of the hotel. But the intimacy helped. I met a lot of established friends and made some new ones. And, greatest joy of all, this con was in a beautiful location – Brighton with its glorious Regency architecture and adorably naff pier amusement arcades. The first Eastercon I went to was in that big hotel in Heathrow, in a row of big hotels where airline staff stay; and despite the energy of the conference goers there’s a strange vibe in a place like that. Even worse in terms of ambience was the hotel on a roundabout just outside Bradford that hosted my next Eastercon (not IN Bradford, a beautiful city). And earlier this year I went to Eastercon in Birmingham, near the NEC; there was a lake outside the hotel with ducks but it was all utterly false and soulless; an artefect created by designers anxious to make the area feel ‘real’. It’s not – the National Exhibition Centre buildings have all the atmosphere of Heathrow at three in the morning. And being there felt like being an extra in The Truman Show.

So as I say, this was a con set in the ‘real’ world. And for me, it wasn’t a business trip – I wasn’t there to network or sell books. I just wanted to go, in order to enjoy myself . A liberating feeling.

I’ve been looking at bloggers describing their own experience of the con, which featured a lively disco and the ribald burlesque in which apart from scantily clad ladies brandishing tentacles there was a man who ripped apart a toy rabbit and ate its heart. I missed both events I’m afraid. Some, like Simon Unsworth, took a while to get into the swing of things. Others, like Floor to Ceiling Books, challenged aspects of the content. Most of us, like Rob Spalding, spent rather too long in the bar. And I enjoyed Danie Ware’s beautifully illustrated blog a great pic of everyone’s hero Brian Aldiss – Most Special of the Special Guests of Honour – book signing.

I met some fellow SF authors like Ian Whates and Jaine Fenn; failed to meet some friends like Jon Courtenay Grimwood who I saw in the bar when I arrived but who had gone by the time I emerged from a long discussion with my pal Archie Tait. I re-encountered Graham Joyce, nominated for a British Fantasy Award, who in my view is one of the finest authors working in the fantasy genre; though if you quiz him, he admits that what he does is not REALLY fantasy. And I had the great delight of attending a panel of screenwriters bitching gloriously about their industry, and mine: Stephen Gallagher, Stephen Volk, Pete Atkins and Peter Finch. I’d never met any of them before but I share mutual friends with both Volk and Gallagher. And Stephen Gallagher and I also shared a panel on the best and worst films of 2011, with Anne Billson and Kim Newman (whose Victorian horror novels are very close to my heart – do read Anno Dracula which Titan are now publishing, but remember that The Bloody Red Baron is EVEN BETTER.)

Mike Carey was there – also nominated for a British Fantasy Award – he’s one of the nicest and most inspirational writers I know. I spent a very pleasant couple of hours with steampunk author Stephen Hunt and the Angry Robot himself, Lee Harris. Maura McHugh, the witty and wise comic book writer and screenwriter from Ireland, shared a table with me at the banquet. Meg Davies the agent was on a number of panels; and Jo Fletcher launched her new imprint Jo Fletcher Books at this con, which means I have a FREE BAG with her company’s name on it. Freebies matter!

Why did I enjoy it so much? Partly I suspect because I didn’t treat it as ‘work’, which is what often happens when writers go to conventions. We hustle to be on panels, we do book signings, we hope to sell books. Well this was a fantasy convention and I’m an SF writer so I didn’t worry about any of that. And so I just enjoyed myself, drank moderately but without cessation, and touched base with the fantasy and SF community in the most creative of ways. I came back fired up, with a list of books I need to read and an even longer list of books I want to write.

Thanks to the organisers…and look forward to the next one.

Hell Ship Reviews

Philip Palmer — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:52:23 +0000

It’s been a crazy busy time…I’ve spent all today planning a war in the Middle East, trying to decide whether I should invade Syria in my first wave of attacks or leave it till later. More on that – anon – it connects up to my current project, a radio drama about military wargames. Recently I spent a day at a top secret location being briefed by an Army boffin…I even got to go inside a tank. And my days are spent reading about Hezbollah and Mossad and the like.

Whilst all this has been happening, blow me, people have been reviewing HELL SHIP rather nicely. Orbit have collected some of the reviews which you can read here. Embarrassingly, I’ve been too busy to read my own crits so most of these comments came as a complete surprise to me.

Some previous reviews which I did manage to read can be found below:

First, a FAB review of Hell Ship from the New York Journal of Books

And an equally enthusiastic review from Erik Lundqvist, who I met at a signing session at Forbidden Planet. His blog has the ace name of ‘I Will Read Books’.

B is for Beelzebub

Philip Palmer — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:59:57 +0000

What is it with vampires? That’s the question that prompted me to start exploring the many mythological beasties other than Count Dracula and his kin who might or indeed have been used as the subject for novels and movies. Previously we’ve had Ammet the Egyptian Devourer and Golem, the Jewish private detective made of clay.

Today’s favourite is Beelzebub, Prince of Demons. A familiar name, but did you know he looks like this?

Beelzebub is Lord of the Flies; and when he doesn’t look like this he is a monstrous being who sits on a high throne; and has a swollen face and chest, huge nostrils, horns, bat wings, duck feet, a lion’s tail and hair.

You’ve heard the phrase ‘ugly as sin’? That was this baby.

Beelzebub was the demon of choice for witches in their Sabbats; they would summon him by shouting ‘Beelzebub goity, Beelzebub beyty’ (meaning Beelzebub above, Beelzebub below) and then he would appear and, um, fornicate with them all.

He was also, according to some sources, the most powerful demon in Hell, outranking even Lucifer. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, this happened when Satan rashly dragged Jesus to Hell after the crucifixion, despite being warned not to do so by his ugly-as-sin second in command Beelzebub. Jesus arrived in hell, ran amok, trampled over Satan, broke the chains of the imprisoned souls and rescued the trapped saints, then departed.

Now THAT’S a movie. Brad Pitt as Jesus. Paul Giametti as Satan, thwarted.

After this fiasco, Satan felt obliged to hand over control of his empire to the wiser head of Beelzebub, with the words ‘Satan the Prince shall be subject to thy dominion forever’.

Now we’re into gangster movie territory. Beelzebub is Michael Corleone, Satan is Don Corleone choosing retirement.

This Prince of Demons, and lord of hell, and shag-meister extraordinaire has a predominant place in demonological lore, and was one of the many demons bound by that old bugger Solomon (who commanded armies of demons and djinns to build his temple; imagine Richard Rogers doing that.) He is, frankly, the most powerful and evil mythological demon of all time. Beelzebub versus Count Dracula; no contest! And any magician foolish enough to summon him risks apoplexy, epilepsy and strangulation; plus, if you summon Beelzebub you will end up with a giant slavering fly in your living room, crapping upon the carpet; try explaining THAT to the wife.

There have of course been many demons featured in novels and movies and TV series. My favourites include Japhrimel, in Lilith Saintcrow’s Dante Valentine books, Hell Boy (the comics more than the films), and the Meg Masters demon in Supernatural. That show also features the green-eyed demon Azazel , who in real life (?) looked like this.

Azazel was also the inspiration for the mutant-demon character Azazel in the X-Men, who looks like this:

And, for the hell of it, let’s end on Hell Boy:

Awesome Trailer

Philip Palmer — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:44:41 +0000

Here’s a truly awesome book trailer for Brent Weeks’ new book The Black Prism, courtesy of our very own Orbit Books:

Now all us other Orbit writers are going to want one like it…

Here’s a bigger pic of the cover:

Fantasy Con 2011

Philip Palmer — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:50:33 +0000

I’ve just been looking at the schedule for the forthcoming Fantasy Con in Brighton which I’ll be attending (September 30th – October 2nd). Guest speakers include Christopher Paolini, Gwyneth Jones and Joe Abercrombie and the extra-special guest is Brian Aldiss. And there are lots of goodies, including Saturday masterclasses from Mike Carey on how to write for comics and Meg Davies on How to Write a Book That’s Impossible to Film. Er, Hell Ship Meg.

There’s also an Artist’s Row and I took this opportunity to look at the website of one of the featured artists, Ben Baldwin. He has some fabulous images on his website. And here’s one of my favourites.

The Age of America

Philip Palmer — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:00:23 +0000

Last week I suggested we were living in the Age of X – at a time when the X-Men are the dominant heroes of our culture, and X-Men movies are coming thick and fast.

I’ve now seen the new Captain America movie – Captain America: The First Avenger. Clever title huh – you see the way they sneak in the fact this is the first in a long-running franchise? Imagine if they’d called the first Harry Potter movie: Harry Potter: The First of Many Adventures Which Will Allow Lots of British Actors to Buy Conservatories.

Anyway – it’s fab. It’s fast, funny, delicious, and the 3D action is the best I’ve seen – lots of scenes in the Alps, and the Cap swinging through the air, and hurling his shield at the audience. I’ve been getting bored with 3D of late, but here it’s used with genuine finesse, and with a shallow focus effect I’ve not seen in 3D before - ie when the main character is in focus, but the background is slightly out of focus – which is true to the way our eyes work and gives a lot more texture to an image.

The director is Joe Johnston who did the under-rated The Wolfman, in which Anthony Hopkins exudes Gothic menace in a Port Talbot accent. The writers are Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who worked on the Narnia screenplays. Chris Evans plays the Captain; the Brit actress Hayley Attwell is superb as the British agent who befriends him; and Hugo Weaving is suitably evil as the Red Skull. My pal Priscilla John did the casting.

I don’t think it’s any kind of a spoiler to reveal that the film takes place in the 1940s, with weedy Steve Rogers turned into a hunk by a super-soldier machine. It’s a brilliant concept, which so far as I’m aware doesn’t feature in any of the comics (but to be sure of that I’d have to ask Mike Carey…) And it immediately makes me love the central character; Captain America is no longer a jock, he’s an underdog, the ‘ little guy’ who gets beaten about but never gives up. Briliantly, Bucky who in the comics is a kid sidekick now becomes a hunk (played by Sebastian Stan) who is appalled when the girls start ignoring him and talking to STEVE.

There’s another clever plot twist which I won’t reveal, which explains the costume and made me smile; and a ‘fondue’ joke that delighted me. It’s a clever and witty script that allows us to love the good guys and hate the bad guys without checking in our brains at the popcorn franchise stall. And when Hayley cries…boy, I was lost.

The genius of the film is that it never made me feel uncomfortable about enjoying a movie about an icon of American imperialism which, ahem, this actually is. Because there’s no doubt that in real politics and in the real world this is the Age of America. And Captain America exemplifies that spirit, not always in a good way. The shameless and admirable liberalism of the Marvel Universe has for me always sat uneasily with a superhero who is defined by the American flag – especially now, in the age of Guantanamo Bay.

Look, I know – it’s only a movie! But I would argue that the myth of American rightness and American virtue and the belief of some Americans that they have a (literally) god-given right to kick ass whenever they feel like has become one of the most dangerous follies of our time. Balanced against that is the fact (or rather, opinion, ie mine) that in certain arenas, and at certain times, America has used that power for good, and has acted as a stabilising factor in world politics – and I’d support that totally. But the growth of the Tea Party with their zany ideas and their absolute commitment to protecting the privileges of the billionaire elite shows how dangerous it is when people start believing their own lies.

And the makers of this movie are savvy to all that – and being children of the Marvel Empire, which for generations has created kick-ass superhero stories with moral integrity, in a world where racism, sexism and Other-ism are never on the agenda, they have taken care to make us love Captain America without waving the American flag in our faces. The period setting helps in that; and the fantastic closing credits, with 40s poster images, adds to the message; this is a movie ABOUT the myth of America, it’s not a movie which is peddling the myth of America.

Having said all that, Captain America has never been my favourite hero; and I would love to see some different myths out there. Buffy was a Myth; a Zeitgeist-defining creation who pioneered the idea that cute ditsy girls can also be super-smart AND kick ass. Storm (Ororo) in the X-Men has for me a similar Zeitgeist-defining feminist quality to her; though the movies have shamelessly used her as no more than eye-candy. But I am starting to yearn for new Mythic Characters – not Captain America, not Conan, not Professor X, but a genuinely new icon for the age. As Indiana Jones was in the 70s – a retro creation, but (in its time) an original one.

Still, for now, do go and see the Cap..it’s a great ride.

Now some photos….

Hayley Attwell as Agent Carter; how to hail a taxi in New York

Captain America, after being injected with loads of muscles

Captain America wondering why he's the only one wearing a ridiculous uniform that makes him an easy target for snipers

The Red Skull wearing his Hugo Weaving Mask, wondering why his Rubik's cube doesn't have any coloured squares

A stand in with his back to the camera, killing time while Chris Evans goes for a wee

G is for Golem

Philip Palmer — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 06:30:55 +0000

I recently asked, What is it with vampires? In other words, why don’t horror and fantasy writers make more use of all the other weird mythological monsters that exist in legendary lore; rather than offering us endless variations of the vampire myth. Like Ammet, the Egyptian Devourer. Or, today’s offering:

THE GOLEM.

I’ve always loved the word golem, and the idea of a Jewish monster called Golem, without ever understanding what it really is, or was. There’s a golem in Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Klay which is rather cool, and is carried in a coffin by our hero. Although to be honest the introduction of the supernatural Golem in an otherwise naturalistic novel struck me as a bit odd.

But recently, as part of of my research into a new project, I learned a bit more about the Golem. It’s a demon; and it’s also also a Frankenstein’s monster, but made of clay rather than out of cut-up body parts.

According to legend, the Golem was created by Jews in 16th century Prague in order to protect the Jews from persecution. But the Golem ran amok, perhaps inflamed by its love of a Jewish woman – a love that was never meant to be. (For flesh and clay can never mix….imagine horny Play-Doh, and you have some concept of how terrible that might be.) According to some legends, Adam was originally created as a golem; and it’s legend that crops up in Medieval times too. But the Prague Golem is the most famous example of the myth; it was eventually killed by its creator Rabbi Loew, who cunningly rubbed out the first letter of the word ‘emet’ meaning truth or reality from the golem’s forehead, so that it now said ‘met’, meaning death. Many believe the Golem’s body is still kept in a synagogue in Prague.

I’ve been reading some fascinating stories by Chayim Bloch about Rabbi Loew and his golem. These are rememberings of legends, but with some embellishments along the way I suspect.

Rabbi Loew is very much the hero of these stories – as much warlock as rabbi it seems. At that time in sixteenth century Prague anti-semitism was rife, and it was commonly alleged that Jews were murdering Christian babies in order to use the blood in their Jewish rituals – the ‘blood libel’. And then Rabbi Loew had a dream in which he was told: ‘Make a Golem of clay and you will destroy the entire Jew-baiting conspiracy.’ And so the Rabbi made a clay figure the size of a man; and gathered his pals around this artefact; and told one person to walk seven times around the clay body, while reciting charms, from right to left; at which point the body became red like fire. Then a second person walked the same number of times from left to right, reciting other charms. And the creature grew hair; and the Golem was born.

The tales of Rabbi Loew are a little on the repetitive side – there’s a blood libel, the Golem comes to the rescue, and the blood-libel is disavowed. Or – a common story trope – a couple get married and they turn out to be brother and sister. Or – an even more common story trope – the evil Thaddeus (a Christian cleric) wickedly persuades a Jewish girl to marry a gentile; but it is thwarted. These are the legends of a distant age; and offer a fascinating insight into the fears and anxieties of that culture.

But the Golem himself is so darned CUTE. He is not given the power of speech. He’s a bit gormless – if you ask him to draw water from a well he’ll keep drawing water until there’s none left. But he has superstrength and the gift of invisibility. And he is a warrior against injustice – a kind of Private Eye in Prague. He has an amulet of invisibility. One of his main tasks was to track down Jew-haters who were prone to murder children with the aim of planting the bodies in Jewish houses – but when that happened, they would have the wrath of the Golem to contend with. The Golem was strong and was well able to beat up his enemies; but mostly he was guileful, adept at disguising himself even though he was made of clay and unable to speak.

In the Chayim Bloch stories there’s no mention of the Golem killing gentiles or Jews – it’s clearly the expurgated version. And so the story in which the Rabbi – on a whim – decides to kill the Golem is more than a little heart-rending.

But let’s assume the Golem DID run amok and start killing people – is it any wonder? He was treated as a slave, given no respect, and not allowed the power of speech. He was deliberately created without any sex-instinct; ‘for if he had had that instinct, no woman would have been safe from him.’ He had a name – Joseph. And he was referred to by the Rabbit as ‘Joseph Golem’. But he was never treated as a friend of the family; just a tool to be used.

And he was a demon. Or rather the spirit of a demon – the demon Joseph – in a body of clay. That’s REALLY weird.

I saw a great production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre recently – directed by Danny Boyle – which managed to really make you feel the pain and pathos of the ‘monster’ created by Dr Frankenstein. I feel the same for the Golem. Poor bastard. He’s treated like shit, bossed about, not allowed sex; no wonder he started murdering Jews and gentiles.

It’s a sad story; the creature made of clay with no soul; just a broken heart.

The Age of X

Philip Palmer — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:20:31 +0000

Mike Carey recently and very kindly sent me a copy of his X-Men series, The Age of X; I did a swapsies and sent him a copy of Hell Ship.

Mike is one of the most versatile and wonderful writers in the field of SF – he writes franchise comics like Constantine and X-Men, he writes original comics like his punk faerie story God Save the Queen, and he writes fab novels too about a freelance exorcist, the Felix Castor novels. And Age of X is a peach of a story. So high concept I can say no more, otherwise I would have to banish myself into an alternative reality or, at the very least, drink a cup of liquid adamantium. It’s beautiful and violent and really makes you think about the characters who we know as the X-Men and New Mutants; and, too, really makes you think about what makes a person be a certain person in the first place.

It’s been a good year for X-stuff – the new X-Men movie X-Men First Class is the first I’ve seen that really does justice to the spirit of the original comics; mainly because it kicks free of all the familiar stuff and takes us into deep origin territory. Michael Fassbender as Magneto totally steals the movie.

And, though I find the movies over-populated and over-frenetic, I am truly in awe at the way the X-Men legend has grown and grown. These were the comics I read as a kid; they’re now a cultural phenomenon. Great stage actors yearn to play THEIR version of Professor X or Magneto…how hilarious is that.

Anyway, as my visual hommage to the gang of mixed up kids with superpowers who have survived supervillains, cross overs, alternate versions AND aliens, here’s some X-Stuff:

That’s as many as I can cram in for now. For the uber-nerds, here’s a list of known team members:

Archangel
Cable
Changeling
Banshee
Cannonball
Colossus
Beast
Dazzler
Thunderbird (I)
Bishop
Forge
Warpath
Chamber
Havok
Cyclops
Jubilee
Emma Frost
Longshot
Gambit
Maggott
Iceman
Magneto
Lifeguard
Marrow
M
Polaris
Nightcrawler
Shadowcat
Northstar
Sunfire
Phoenix
Professor X
Psylocke
Rogue
Stacy X
Storm
Thunderbird (III)
Wolverine

And here are some group pics:

X-Men in the 1970s

X-Men in the 1980s

X-Men in the 1990s

Hell Ship Speaks

Philip Palmer — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:01:17 +0000

A huge envelope arrived through my door this week, and inside were Sharrock, Jak and Sai-ias – the three protagonists of my novel Hell Ship.

This was the audio book version, made by Recorded Books in New York, and narrated by Gideon Emery, Bianca Amata and Timothy Reynolds. To my astonishment, it’s unexpurgated – which means not a word has been cut, not even the very many alien swear words.

As a radio dramatist, I love hearing my word spoken aloud; so I have a real soft spot for this audiobook. And to whet your appetite, here (once again) are three excerpts from the book. It features Sharrock narrating the start of the book; a short clip introducing Jak; then a much longer excerpt from Sai-ias, which is one of my favourite things ever.

Here they are:

Sharrock

If the audio widget above doesn’t work for any reason, click here to download the MP3 file.

Jak

If the audio widget above doesn’t work for any reason, click here to download the MP3 file.

Sai-ias

If the audio widget above doesn’t work for any reason, click here to download the MP3 file.

A Glimpse of Dystopia

Philip Palmer — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:00:51 +0000

The riots are over for now. Some people have lost their businesses; four people have died; and those of us who were lucky enough not to be directly involved are still left with a sense of dread. There was a day last week when I was afraid to walk the streets of my own neighbourhood, amid rumours that a mob was on the march.

The rumours came to nothing. But I’ve never before felt like that; for about twenty four hours I had a glimpse of what it would feel like to be in a world where you are not safe even in your own back yard. I actually couldn’t believe that so much violence could happen so quickly; and the images of looters arrogantly swaggering away with stolen trainers or flat screen plasma TVs sent a cold tingle through my soul.

Actually, in the scale of things, this wasn’t so bad; it wasn’t Bosnia in the the 1990s. But for those direly affected, it was bad enough; and as many have commented, it was a glimpse of dystopia. Here’s one report I read in the Guardian on that theme; and this is a fascinating blog by Charles Christian picking up on that idea.

My point is that the reality was pretty bad; but my panic was that this was the harbinger of something far worse. Complete meltdown. Well, okay, I’m a science fiction writer so maybe I’m over-inclined to extrapolate. But my initial reaction was: things must have really fallen apart for riots to spring up so quickly and so wildly.

But a few days later, I can start to see some of the underlying causes of the mass riot. I’m not talking here about the alienation of modern youth and the effect of the cuts – I think there are truths in those arguments, which are being expounded at length in every Sunday paper today. But at a nitty gritty level, this was I would argue a criminal event which is explicable as part of the evolution in the nature of crime.

I’m talking about gangs.

When I was working on police dramas I did some research on gangs. I spend time in Thamesmead talking to coppers investigating a gang-related murder, and even got to listen to an interview with a gang member, which was an eye-opener. By ‘gangs’ I mean teenage gangs of an organised or semi-organised variety. Not as cool as the Sharks and the Jets, but in that territory. London is full of these gangs. They all have silly names, such as the Causeway Gang; Puff City; the Red African Devils, Asian Auto Takeaway Inc. the Barrier Boys, the New World Order. [My source here is the book Reluctant Gangsters by John Pitts, an intensely detailed sociological study of gang culture in London.)

Puff City is one of the most feared gangs; it's a supergang really, made up of the Wordsworth Hall Man Dem, the Cromwell Close Gang, the Keats Close Boys, the Shelley Fam and the Byrne Gang; in total it has about 100 members. The Puff City tag originally came from a real person; but now anyone who commands the gang is called Puff.

The Cruise gang is more recent and is smaller, and is made up of members between 14 and 17 from four streets. Four streets! We're talking territorial gangs with a small 't' here; this is where the concept of 'postcode wars' arise. There are gang members who rarely venture from their own estate; a estate four blocks away might as well be in another country.

Sometimes the gangs have an older leader; like the Asian Auto Takeaway Inc, whose boss (allegedly) is a property developer; the gang target high value cars and get paid in cash for each theft. These gang members are like 'joeys' - children used by gangsters to commit crime. Think Fagin, and you're in the right ballpark.

Here's a 25 year old gang member who I shall call X bragging about his gang: [My source here is One Blood by John Heale]

‘Because we’re independent we don’t have time to fuck around. The Trident stats [Operation Trident is the Metropolitan police team that deals with gun and gang crime] imply we’re better shots than other boroughs. I’d say that’s wrong. It’s not that we aim better, it’s that we’ve got it in us to walk up to the target, look him in the eyes and pull the trigger. The other thing about Hackney boys is that we’re very well connected. I’ve spent years inside.’

There have always been street gangs; and there have always been kids who hang out together and claim to be in a ‘gang’; I was in one such gang as a child. We used to jump off walls and sneak into derelict buildings; nothing worse.

But these gangs are organised and territorialised; and as X admits, they are also connected. Because one level above the street gangs are the ‘gangster gangs’. Like the Krays; or the Arifs; or the Triads. And there are increasingly close links between the Faces (i.e. the established gangsters) and the street gangs. There are hierachies within gangs - e.g. Youngers and Elders – and the so-called supergangs (including Puff City) are in effect teen gangs that have evolved into organised crime gangs.

This is all very disturbing; and at the same time, all very normal. There have always been criminals, and they have often started young; and this is how they organise themselves now. You still have ethnic gangs – Yardies, Triads, Eastern European gangs and Asian gangs. In my days shadowing the West London murder squad I had a few encounters with victims of the Holy Smokes and the Tooti Nungs – the two dominant Asian gangs in that area, who worked in much the same way as the Mafia – ie they are based around families. But the white gangs are also family based; when I spent time with the South London Robbery squad, their main nemesis were the Arif family, who for years had a bloody feud with the equally large Brindle family which left many dead, shot to bits in South London pubs.

But awful though it is, there’s an architecture to this criminality that makes sense to me, and scares me less than the idea that ordinary nice decent young people can suddenly out of the blue becoming ruthless looters. From all the accounts I’ve read, the London gangs and supergangs were very much to the fore in the recent riots. It’s in a day’s work for them; foment a riot then loot the shops. I would bet that all the serious gang members were properly ‘ballied up’ (wearing face masks or balaclavas) and will not be easily captured from cctv footage. It’s the opportunist looters – the daft kids who saw a riot kicking off and thought they’d join in – who are going to go down for their role in the riots. The likes of X, the well connected Hackney gang member, are not that dumb; they’ll have covered up, then flogged the gear fast, possibly via an established network of older criminals who are hungry for looted gear.

I do understand how some idiots got caught up in the riot frenzy – like the lad who stole a bottle of mineral water from a looted shop because it was there, and was sentenced to six months. We all do daft things when we’re young; though in my case, never THAT daft. But I didn’t, at the time, comprehend how anarchy could descend so fast. And then I got it; it’s not anarchy; it’s all very well organised. This was a city-wide burglary, with territorial gangs sending messages via their Blackberry and pillaging the same shops that they would normally, of a Saturday afternoon, shoplift from.

I’m not intending this as the definitive argument about the riots; social alienation remains a key issue to be explored. But my view is that the core of the riot was, indeed, criminality, not revolution.

I hope such chaos never happens again; and I hope, also, that the real grievances of the disaffected and alienated and, let’s face it, shat-upon-by-their-elders youth of today, don’t get overlooked as politicans engage in their weary old passing-the-buck blame game.

Fantastic Fiction: SF Rebranded

Philip Palmer — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 07:59:51 +0000

A little while back I read a fascinating series of articles on SF Signal (Part One here, Part Two here) about the Death of Science Fiction – which, like the death of Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated.

This is one of those great debates in the genre. Does the lack of interest in the space program mean the death of science fiction? Does the growth of pseudo-science mean that science fiction no longer has a place in our culture? Or, the nitty-gritty one, does the fact that fantasy novels outsell SF novels by a factor of many mean that SF writers are wasting their time in a dying genre? This was (put more brilliantly than my crude summary) the argument of Mark Charon Newton a while back, which I responded to in a blog of my own.

In his two highly articulate SF Signal pieces, John H. Stevens takes an unusual approach to this argument. He doesn’t ask if the death of science fiction is really occuring – it’s not, so long people still read and write SF – but he asks WHY is the question always being asked?

His response, which is erudite but rather brilliant I feel, is that:

‘My proposal, at least for now, is that the fables of this death and their effects on the readers and writers who narrate, read, and respond to them are attempts to grasp, codify, and represent the mythogenic rejuvenation of SF. These narrative episodes are part of SF’s mythology, reiterating and reestablishing aspects of it, seeking to understand SF’s storied, contested, confabulated history and the genre’s frequent renewal by its practitioners and readers. SF is based less on clear lines of relation to the past than other genres, is much more mutable and predatory, and relies on the redevelopment and proliferation of mythical ties and sources in the past and linkages laterally to contemporary genres and trends to maintain both its longevity and its freshness.’

Whew!

He also says:

‘Talking about SF is often as important to many producers of the literature and its adherents as the production and reception of the literature itself. The far-flung fandom community is bonded not by just what they read, but by what they say about what they read, and this holds true for individuals in all social positions, from writer to editor to reader (which, at the end of the day, everyone is).

What brings people together in conversation is not just love of fantastical stories or the pleasure of strange ideas, but also moments of contention about their meanings and broader significance. “The Death of Science Fiction” creates a sort-of ritual discursive space for this; as Brooks Landon noted “[s]ome of these considerations are laments, some are warnings, and some are celebrations, but all posit some form of end to SF, or at least to SF as commonly recognized.” This flexibility creates potential for a lot of debate and for reification of positions as people try to predict this death or refute it.’

Double Whew! Serious discourse of the brain-hurting variety; but I do see what he means. And I think it’s fascinating that he’s describing a debate about science in terms that are more congruent to the world of fantasy – using words like myth, regeneration, and rejuvenation; science fiction as the Fisher King who dies and is reborn.

There is a mythical, irrational aspect to our love of science fiction in other words; and fandom itself is a participation in a mythic process of belonging. SF/F writers create worlds; readers inhabit them; and create ‘meta-worlds’ of their own through fora and journals and blogs. We belong to the world of SF/F, in a way that’s comparable to the way that Bilbo Baggins belongs to the world of the Shire.

I can’t believe I used the word ‘meta’ then. You know what I mean.

Die-hard SF purists might well rebut this entire argument. Because there is a pure intellectual exhilaration in the original, pure ‘hard SF’ project of the 30s and 40s and 50s that was all about predicting the future, extrapolating social trends; guessing amazing things that might happen. And there was a time when there were genuinely NEW ideas in hard SF – Robert Heinlein’s story ‘By His Bootstraps’ for instance was, for me, my first introduction to the concept of temporal paradox caused by time travel; now it’s the staple of every DR WHO episode. Generation ships or colony ships are now a cliche of science fiction; but once upon a time, someone wrote about this idea for the very first time.

Originality and novelty were once, in other words, key elements of the science fictional project. But for now – until aliens are discovered for real – it’s hard to think of a modern SF novel that has a scientifically credible extrapolative idea we’ve never seen before. There’s just too much darn stuff published; SF is now like the romance story – there are only so many ways of being in love, and they’re all already known about.

So what now makes science fiction unique? Anything? Nothing? Does it actually need to be unique or fresh at all? Can’t we just happily carry on reading variations on themes and enjoy them for their own sake?

Well actually yes of course we can. There’s plenty of stuff I read and love that isn’t especially fresh or new; and I enjoy it BECAUSE of the sense of the familiar.

But I’m attempting to reach for a brainy idea here. So stick with me a moment.

What Stevens is essentially arguing is that myth is at the heart of science fiction fandom; and by extension, is at the heart of science fiction itself. ’Myth’ is a slippery word at the best of times – it can mean ‘the collective unconsciousness of mankind’ but that’s a fairly woolly and unscientific hypothesis really. But in looser terms, we all know that certain ideas and concepts and stories have a ‘mythic resonance’. STAR WARS for instance did have huge mythic resonance when it was first released, and ever since – and it’s a movie based very closely on the ideas of myth propounded by Joseph W. Campbell in his book THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. Lucas himself wrote:

‘I came to the conclusion after American Graffiti that what’s valuable for me is to set standards, not to show people the world the way it is…around the period of this realization…it came to me that there really was no modern use of mythology…The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction…so that’s when I started doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe’s books. Before that I hadn’t read any of Joe’s books…It was very eerie because in reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces I began to realize that my first draft of Star Wars was following classic motifs…so I modified my next draft [of Star Wars] according to what I’d been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent…I went on to read ‘The Masks of God’ and many other books.’

So following that idea:

The Golden Age science fiction novels embodied the myths of Exploration and Adventure; they were, all too often, imbued with the can-do optimism of Americans who wanted mankind to conquer new worlds the way the settlers had conquered the West. [MASSIVE generalisation, I know, but the American optimism of great like Asimov, Heinlein and Niven is a huge element in their appeal.]

Cyberpunk is a different myth, a different aesthetic; cynical, modern, challenging.

But what do we have now?

Well, sifting through books I’ve read recently, we have ZOO CITY, an award-winning great SF novel that’s really more fantasy, written by the South African Lauren Beukes, about a world in which criminals are ‘animalled’.

We have LIGHTBORN by Tricia Sullivan, an award-nominated fine novel about ‘shine’, a scientific extrapolation that allows minds to be expanded; but which is really more an atmospheric exploration of characters in crisis.

We have THE CITY AND THE CITY, by China Mieville, a fine SF novel which is really more a fantasy novel since there’s no scientific explanation for its premise; except, in my view, it’s really more a magic realistic fable after all.

And there’s THE WIND-UP GIRL by Paolo Bacigalupi, a near future thriller extrapolative thriller about a world in which genetic experimentation has screwed up crops. It’s been mildly criticised by some for being ‘overfamiliar’ in its concepts – in other words, it’s all been done and said before, in terms of the actual extrapolations. But it’s a hugely acclaimed book, absolutely deservedly so, because of the richness of the world-building, the brilliance of the writing; and the mythic power of the storytelling. [I've no idea WHY it's mythic, it just is.]

And there’s Peter F. Hamilton’s DREAMING VOID trilogy, the purest of space opera by one of the the most established of SF writers – which is a) brilliant and b) full to the brim of mythic resonance and actual magic.

This is a random sample – I spend more time writing than reading so I rely on critics like John Stevens to provide the definitive overviews of these things. But I’m fumbling for a general conclusion here, and it’s this:

1) There’s no such thing as Science Fiction any more. Or if there is, it’s a subgenre not a genre. I say this because so many of the best recent, and best ancient SF novels, mingle fantasy with science fiction shamelessly. Anne McCaffrey does it in her Dragonworld Books; Peter F. Hamilton does it, as noted above. According to some, the real genre is speculative fiction. However, efforts to rebrand ‘SF’ to mean ‘Speculative Fiction’ have died the death; it’s like trying to replace English with Esperanto. Nevertheless, it’s a worthy cause. Because the things that connect science fiction, heroic fantasy, urban fantasy and certain kinds of horror are far greater that those things which divide them.

2) Almost by definition, all hugely popular fiction speaks to the zeitgeist of its age – from Harry Potter (who writes about magic in the ordinary world) to Dan Brown (who writes about dark hidden conspiracies which don’t exist) to Stieg Larsson (who writes about the dark hidden conspiracies which DO exist.) By reading popular fiction, therefore, we are exploring the preoccupations of the age in which we live; as well as participating in those preoccupations.

3) Since werewolves, vampires and wizards are so dominant in popular fiction, that tells us we live in a world in which we yearn for magic, and for better-than-natural sex.

4) ‘Myth’, ultimately, is another name for ‘Story’; and stories are what help define us as communities. Which brings us back to John Stevens’ argument about ‘mythogenic questions’.

5) There’s a point where generalisations about stuff like this gets a bit silly, and we may have hit that by point 5). But on a personal note, I would say there are three kinds of novels I read:

a) Fantastic Fiction (aka speculative fiction)

b) Crime Fiction

c) Everything Else

There are still those who use ‘speculative fiction’ as a genre definer , but I’ve come to find it a bit arid a term for my taste. So I shall therefore take the initiative in referring to FF when writing about my favourite books, rather than using the clunky acronym SF/F & UF or suchlike. I am, from now on, an FF writer, not an SF writer. It’s already of course used as a genre definition by some websites, and damn it, it has a ring to it.

My rebranding of SF is a futile thing to do of course, since no one in the real world will pay any attention; but it is a way of highlighting that what truly excites me in science fiction is not the science, it’s the way that the extrapolations of science lead one inevitably into the realms of the fantastic. Parallel universes; time travel; particles with no mass; quarks; it’s all fantastic, yet real. Knowing the science is important; just as you’d expect an historical writer to know the facts about the period. But science IS fantastic; that’s the great appeal.

But urban fantasy also qualifies as FF, since it’s a genre of stories set in a real world with elements of the fantastic. And heroic fantasy doesn’t count as fantasy if it has no element of the fantastic – GAME OF THRONES without the dragons? Please! Ursula Le Guin writes fantastic fiction; so does China Mieville; so does Neil Gaiman.

So that’s my counter to John H. Stevens’ Death of Science Fiction article; call it Fantastic Fiction and it’s suddenly it’s part of the dominant genre. And the mythogenic rejuvenation of SF will have led to the creation of a wholly new creature, emerging Phoenix-like from the internet babble.

But, less whimsically, I’m left with questions not answers. What are the new myths that will capture the imagination of our culture? What are the stories that speak to the zeitgeist? Naturally I have no idea; but if I do find out, I shall start writing them.

And if YOU know, do let me know…

Conan: Coming Soon

Philip Palmer — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 07:03:48 +0000

I truly can’t wait for the spectacle and silliness of the new Conan the Barbarian Movie…I love Robert E. Howard’s stories and understated stories, and always loved the Arnie version. As a teaser, here are the posters for the Jason Momoa version:

SFF Song of the Week: Eric Brown

Philip Palmer — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 07:01:57 +0000

I met Eric Brown at my first Eastercon; he’s a charming guy, and is universally admired as one of the finest and most imaginative writers in SF, equally adept in short stories and novels, as well as being the firm-but-fair leading SF critic of the Guardian.

Fortunately he recently gave me a very nice review for HELL SHIP; but even if he hadn’t, I’d still be delighted to feature this, his blogjay choice of the week.

Eric Brown writes:

Silver Machine by Hawkwind

Hawkwind released Silver Machine, composed by Dave Brock with lyrics by Robert Calvert, in 1972, and it reached number three in the hit parade. It was released again in ’76, ’78, and ’83. It must have been around ’78 that I became aware of it. I liked its energy, its allusion to SF – which I’d discovered a few years earlier while living in Melbourne.

Robert Calvert has written: “I read this essay by Alfred Jarrey called, “How to Construct a Time Machine”, and I noticed something which I don’t think anyone else has thought of because I’ve never seen any criticism of the piece to suggest this. I seemed to suss out immediately that what he was describing was his bicycle… I thought it was a great idea for a song. At that time there were a lot of songs about space travel, and it was the time when NASA was actually, really doing it. They’d put a man on the moon and were planning to put parking lots and hamburger stalls and everything up there. I thought that it was about time to come up with a song that actually sent this all up, which was ‘Silver Machine’. ‘Silver Machine’ was just to say, I’ve got a silver bicycle, and nobody got it. I didn’t think they would. I thought that what they would think we were singing about some sort of cosmic space travel machine.”

Well, I certainly did.

In the early eighties I went to a concert by Hawkwind at St. Georges Hall, Bradford. The only track I knew by them was Silver Machine – I’d heard a few others, but they did nothing for me. I was hoping to hear more tracks like Machine. As it happened I was wearing an old Hawkwind t-shirt, given to me by a woman I worked with in a factory in Keighley: her son was or had been a roadie with Hawkwind, and she was clearing out some of his rubbish… Anyway, there I was, an overawed fellow in my early twenties wearing this heavy metal t-shirt surrounded by what looked like a convention of Hell’s Angels in the bar of St. Georges Hall. At one pint I noticed a vast bearded guy staring at me, and I shrank into my half of bitter and wondered what I’d done to offend him. A minute later I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to find this hirsute giant glaring down at me. I felt, I can safely report, like shitting bricks and building myself a barricade. He said, “Like the t-shirt.” He went on to say that it was very rare and he’d give me a tenner for it. I was astounded. A tenner was a lot of brass to me, back in the early eighties. I said, “Ber-but… but I don’t have…” He vanished, to return a minute later by a new, cellophane-wrapped t-shirt that were on sale in the foyer. He gave me a tenner and I stripped off the t-shirt and donned the new one, a tenner the richer… All parties were happy.

That’s all I recall of the concert.

I haven’t heard Silver Machine for years.

I still don’t much like heavy metal, or Hawkwind.

I just took a ride
in a silver machine
and I’m still feeling mean
I got a silver machine
Do you want to ride
see yourself going by
other side of the sky
Well I got a silver machine
It flies sideways through time
It’s an electric line
To your Zodiac sign
It flies out of a dream
It’s anti-septically clean
You’re gonna know where I’ve been
In my silver machine

A-Z of the Palmerverses

Philip Palmer — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 08:15:57 +0000

I’ve just been proof-reading ARTEMIS, which is my fifth novel for Orbit Books, and is published later this year. And I had a bit of a ‘wow’ moment.

Wow!

Four of these novels are set in the same universe as DEBATABLE SPACE, what I might call the ‘Lena-verse’. DS itself spans at least a thousand years; and in the other books I range widely through time and galaxies. There’s a complex chronological relationship, which I’ve described elsewhere as a triptych; now it’s a triptych in four parts. (Thanks Douglas!) The events of RED CLAW happen DURING the events of DEBATABLE SPACE. ARTEMIS comes next, though it hasn’t been published yet; then VERSION 43. Is that clear? Um…

HELL SHIP however is set in a myriad other universes – all the characters are alien to us, and to each other. Again, aeons elapse in the course of the story. Immense battles take place; and, as I keep proudly telling people, more characters die in HELL SHIP than in the rest of the English literature put together.

But for all the interplanetary carnage, genocide, and shoot ‘em up encounters, these books for me are all about the characters. So here’s my potted A-Z guide of some of the people (by which I mean humans, genetically modified humans and aliens) who populate these five novels.

A is for Artemis. Artemis McIvor is the protagonist and (arguably) heroine of the novel called ARTEMIS. She’s a rebel, a stone cold killer and a bibliophile, who leaves the library planet of Rebus to pursue a life of adventure, murder, and crime. Artemis has kickassitude, poor manners, and a passionate personality.

ARTEMIS IN ACTION: ‘ “Kiss my finger,” I told the six mollyfockers, calmly and quite politely.’

A is also for Alliea, one of Flanagan’s crew in DEBATABLE SPACE. Feisty, cheeky, fearless; named after a good pal of mine who is all of those things, but not a pirate.

ALLIEA’S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE: ‘That was the buzz. Risk everything. Live for the moment.’

A is also for Alby, the blues-loving superintelligent flame beast who also features in DS.

ALBY WAXING LYRICAL, SIBILLANTLY: ‘I mussse, for a while, at the infinite folly and entertaining variety of humankind. Then I feel a flicker of weariness, and I die.’

A is also for Andrei, the love of Lena’s life, in DS.

A is also for Aretha, the uniform cop in Version 43 who mocks and taunts Version 43, but eventually comes to fight side by side with the Cyborg Cop against the bad guys. ’Sergeant Jones sat in the black armchair. She stared up at me. I stared back. She was rather beautiful, I observed, despite being, to put it mildly, a stranger to fashionable skinniness.’

A is also for Albinia, the beautiful Olaran Star-Seeker who communes with the Explorer craft in HELL SHIP and yearns to experience love. ’ ” I fear that I’ve lost my olarinity,” said Albinia.’

(What can I say – I love ‘A’!)

B is for Baal, as in Hugo Baal. Hugo is a minor character and co-narrator of RED CLAW; but for my money, HE’S the hero. He’s tubby, swotty, nerdy, and addicted to footnotes.1 But he’s redeemed by his passion for science and nature; for Hugo is a xenobiologist who is blessed to live in the Golden Age of naturalism, where millions of new species, and hundreds of new sentient species, are being discovered somewhere, by someone, every day.

EXTRACT FROM HUGO’S DIARY:

‘This has been a ghastly period. Many of my friends are dead. We face, I believe, certain death on this godforsaken planet, pursued by monsters, led by fools. I am fatigued beyond all measure, my arse stings because I just accidentally kicked over a carton of sulphuric acid near the toilet hole just as I was voiding myself, and I am bored and angry and frustrated.

But none of this matters. I am the first to find the New Amazonian octopod.

And I can hardly speak for joy.’

B is also for Brandon, one of Flanagan’s crew in DEBATABLE SPACE. Another nerd; I truly love nerds.2 Brandon is the kind of obsessive who names his watch. ‘People, by the way, tell me I’m weird. I guess I am.’

B is also for Bompasso; John Bompasso is one of the three inventors of quantum teleportation, as explained in VERSION 43; and is the only one who avoids dying a horrible death as a consequence (though he IS laterally inverted). He doesn’t feature as a character but VERSION 43 features as an afterword his paper on the principles of quantum teleportation, which is rich in bile.

B is also for Beebe, as in William and Mary Beebe, scientists who feature in RED CLAW. My books often contain evil cruel characters; but these two are the kind of people I WOULD like to share an alien planet with. They’re good people; there really are some out there.

THE BEEBES DISCUSSING THE ALIEN BUTTERFLY-BIRD:

‘”Beautiful,” murmured Helms, entranced.

“Yes but,” mused William, “why? Why do they fly at all?”

“Indeed,” said Mary.

“Since they don’t need to,” William added unnecessarily.

Mary sighed; and William repented of his unnecessary words.

Helms realised: these two didn’t fully realise he was there, so lost were they in their rapport.’

B is also for Billy, who will feature in ARTEMIS. (Not yet published).

C is for Cheo; the Chief Executive Office of the Galactic Corporation, which means he is the darkest of villains. He is the major antagonist in DEBATABLE SPACE; the off-page antagonist of RED CLAW. The Cheo is also a character we get to know in some detail from Lena’s thought-diary in DS; but to say more would be to risk spoilers.

C is also for Cuzco, a major character in HELL SHIP; angry, cantankerous, and huge; a dragon-like beast with two torsos whose species used to enjoy eating sentient bipeds; a great friend to have, if he doesn’t eat you.

CUZCO. REFLECTIVE: ‘ “I did not know a parent could love a child, and a child a parent, until I came to this place.” ‘

SAI-IAS DESCRIBING CUZCO: ‘like a cloud of golden armour made up of hope and poetry.’

D is for Doro, a shapeshifting alien in HELL SHIP; he is very strange.

D is also for Djamrock, a magnificent giant sentient, also to be found in HELL SHIP.

E is for Explorer 410; this is the spaceship commanded by Jak in HELL SHIP, which has a mind, and maybe even a personality, of its own. ’Revenge is not enough, Star-Seeker Jak. Someone must bear witness to that revenge.’

F is for Flanagan, the anti-hero of DEBATABLE SPACE; a pirate who beheads an innocent ship’s captain to prove a point, and kidnaps Lena; a rude vulgar and opinionated chap; who is also the only man in the universe with the balls to defy the Cheo’s regime.

LENA TO FLANAGAN: ‘ “You are seduced, awestruck, pitiful,” I tell him, with relish. “I humour you but, in truth, I despise you.”‘

ON FLANAGAN IN A DOPPELGANGER BODY: ‘I glance at Flanagan, with his grizzled hair and fierce eyes. At my instructions, the beard has gone. He looks younger somehow. And his body is stretched out, arms ahead, rocket pack on his back. He is the very image of the ageing Superman returning from a trip to the stars.’

F is also for Fray, a vast rhino-like beast who is a major character in HELL SHIP; the Frayskind like to eat their young; they fart often; and the earth shakes when they run; but Fray has a big heart, metaphorically and literally.

F is for Fernando Gracias, one of the gangsters who runs Lawless City in VERSION 43.

F is also for Filipa; the barmaid from Hecate, who features in VERSION 43.

G is for Grendel, a pirate chief based in the outlaw region known as Debatable Space, who joins forces with Flanagan.

G is also for Grogan, in particular Billy Grogan; a gangster in VERSION 43; a bad man, but we like him anyway.

G is also for Galamea, the Commander of the Explorer craft which features in HELL SHIP; a tough and ruthless leader, who yearns to be treated as an equal by a male of her species; rather than as a goddess, which is what tends to happen.

GALAMEA WITH JAK, WHILE IN HEAT:

‘ ” I will never,” said Galamea, “need a male ever again!”

Her body was trembling with repressed passion.I was awed at the strength of will she was displaying in refusing my offer.’

H is for Hooperman, one of the major characters in RED CLAW. He’s a typical scientist; brilliant, nerdish, evil, and manipulative. And, oh yes, inspired by the love of knowledge. He is the author of Hooperman’s Tree of Life; the second best (according to Carl Saunders) guide to alien life ever written.

H is also for Harry, a genetically engineered Loper – think mane and claws – who serves with Flanagan as a pirate and rebel.

‘And when I run I forget all my doubts and regrets. All my hesitations and pauses. All my uncertainties. All my fears. I run, I am the run, the run is me.

I am complete.’

H is also for Hari Gilles; one of the gangsters who runs Lawless City in VERSION 43.

H is also for Hera, who narrates a story in DEBATABLE SPACE; for all the jokes, this is a serious book, and this is the most serious bit.

H is also for Heath, as in Sheriff Heath; he’s a lawman who lives in Lawless City; which pretty much tells you he’s wasting his time. Sheriff Heath is one of the small team assembled by the Cyborg Cop in VERSION 43, to fight the bad guys.

I is for Isaac, another major character in RED CLAW. He’s a sentient alien bird-like creature of the Gryphon species who dwells on the planet of New Amazon; smart and sweet and (in my view) cuddly; his kind have a VERY bizarre way of giving birth.

J is for Jamie, a man in the body of a child, and one of the crew members in DEBATABLE SPACE ’What a fucking mess I just caused! What a total gross-out fucking up of reality!’

J is also for Jak, one of the three narrators of HELL SHIP. He an elegant and beautiful humanoid alien belonging to a species, the Olara, who adore beauty and trading in equal measure; the female Olarans are vastly more intelligent than the males, and the men know their place. (Much like my house.)

‘After five days in the simulacrum tank, I was stiff and muscle-wasted and yearned to lie down and die. But I pushed myself hard, shaking out my shoulder muscles, and turning my head – with a satisfying crack of my neck vertebrae – in a perfect circle, to get it nicely limber.’

K is for Kalen, a genetically modified ‘cat-person’, who serves on Flanagan’s crew in DEBATABLE SPACE. Miaow.

K is also for Kim Ji, a gangster who features in VERSION 43.

THE CYBORG COP’S TAKE ON KIM: ‘I noted that Kim’s hair was red like flames…Kim was, in summary, a woman of considerable beauty. I was fully aware of this datum.’

K is also for Kirkham, as in Dr Ben Kirkham; a Scientist in Red Claw who is the epitome of a snide vicious psychopath; and not at all the person you’d want to be trapped with on an alien planet.

‘ “Don’t you be fucking whatchmacall with me,” Sorcha snarled.

“Do you mean perhaps ‘ironic?’ Ah I think you do.” Then Ben did a rapid double take of shock and horror. “Me? Ironic? Heaven forbid!”

Sorcha felt like punching him.’

L is for Lena, the anti-heroine of DEBATABLE SPACE. She’s vain, deceitful, selfish, sometimes cowardly, and she tells fibs (even though she’s our narrator.) Some might hate her; I love her; it’s was Lena’s sarcastic voice that pulled me into DEBATABLE SPACE and gave me the entire novel; I channelled the mind and emotions of an evil bitch who was born in the very early years of the 20th century, my entire career as a science fiction novelist arose from that. (By the way, I’m very strange; I actually believe my characters are real people.)

FLANAGAN ON LENA:

‘She is very opinionated about everything. Society has decayed. Courtesy is a forgotten art….She is in short, old. She’s selfish, self-contained, cautious, cowardly, bigoted, small-minded, self-pitying, spoiled, self-indulgent, arrogant, uninterested in the feelings of others…she is cocooned.’

PHILIP ON LENA: But she’s also, thanks to rejuve, extremely hot.

L is also for Lirilla, a sweet bird-type who appears in HELL SHIP.

M is for Monroe; Admiral Monroe no less, who serves in the Cheo’s Navy and is eaten arsehole-first by a sentient hive-mind creature and finds himself trapped in the thought bubbles which comprise one entire narrative strand of VERSION 43. Okay, yeah, these books are maybe a BIT strange.

M is for Morval, a seasoned Explorer who is old and bald with eyes like black holes, and features in HELL SHIP.

JAK ON MORVAL: ’This wizened old spacefarer had skin like withered hide, and a scowl that made me shudder. I conjured up my most charming smile, and vowed never to let myself become so decrepit.’

M is also for Macawley, a hospital receptionist in VERSION 43; a minor character who is a cat-person and who (to my utter astonishment, but hey, these characters have minds of their own) turns out to be one of the major protagonists in the battle against the bad guys. ‘And Macawley laughed, and her green eyes glittered and she opened her mouth and her teeth were sharp points, and she hissed, and then she roared a perfect roar.’

M is also for McCoy, as in Private Clementine McCoy; one of the nicer characters in RED CLAW. Hugo Baal writes of her: ‘And, I must concede, I’m fond of Clementine. There’s a wonderful quality to her, and she’s an undeniably attractive young woman. And to be perfectly honest, I never thought that a girl like that would look at a tubby and annoying little geek like me.’

M is for Mia, as in Mia Nightingale; a documentary film-maker making a movie about genocide of aliens, in RED CLAW.

M is also for Minos; read HELL SHIP to know more.

N is for Naurion, as in Mayor Abraham Naurion, who runs Lawless City in Version 43.

O is for Olara; not a character, but a species to which Jak belongs. So that’s cheating really. Go on – sue me!

P is for Phylas, a young naive Explorer who features in HELL SHIP. ’ ” Occasional comments of mine have not always, um, accorded with common sense.” ‘

Q is for Quipu, a three-headed superintelligent alien who features in HELL SHIP; whose favourite pastime is arguing with himselves.

R is for Roger Layton, saviour of humankind, who will feature in ARTEMIS.

S is for Saunders, as in Professor Carl Saunders, one of the greatest xenobiologists of all time, author of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ALIEN LIFE. See RED CLAW.

S is for Sai-ias, one of the three narrators of HELL SHIP. She is kind, and funny, and generous, and big-hearted; and would be my ideal of the perfect woman if it weren’t for the fact she is vast, carapaced, with tentacles. An alien, in short.

‘And so I resolved to change my world. Instead of fighting, I would make peace. Instead of hating, I tried to spread love.

And I was mocked for it.’

S is for Sharrock, who also narrates some of HELL SHIP. He’s a warrior in the Conan mould, from a civilisation which has sword fighting but can also travel the stars. Sharrock is humanoid, but has red skin with ridges; and a fearsome temper.

SAI-IAS ON SHARROCK: ‘Sharrock had a way of being still in a fashion that conveyed boundless inner energy; he reminded me of the many four-legged predators that stalked through the forest, who lived only to hunt.’

S is also for Sorcha, as in Major Sorcha Molloy, the ruthless Soldier in RED CLAW; she has been bred for war, brainwashed into unthinking obedience to the Galactic Corporation; and HATES nerdy Scientists. ‘Sorcha was ten years old when she killed her first man….And so, and then, her childhood ended.’

T is for Tinbrain, the Earth’s quantum remote computer, which Lena is able to access with her thoughts in DEBATABLE SPACE.

T is also for Tonii, as in Private Tonii Newton; an hermaphrodite Soldier (well endowed in every way) in RED CLAW.

T is also for Teresa Shalco, capobastone of Giger Pentientiary, in ARTEMIS.

U is for Um, let me get back to you on that.

V is for Version 43. Version 43 is a cyborg cop, who features in the novel called, er, VERSION 43. He has the intellect and body of a robot, but the personality of a human being; and no memories of who he once was.

V is also for Vishaal; one of the bad guys in VERSION 43. A truly evil awful person; and older than he looks.

W is for Wong-Kei, a gangster defeated by Lena in DEBATABLE SPACE.

X is for Xabar, which for complicated reasons, is what Lena Smith once called herself.

Y is for – um, I don’t seem to have ever written a character beginning with ‘Y’!

Z is for Zala, who fights Sharrock in Chapter 1 of HELL SHIP.

1 Not a bit like me!

2 Though I’m not a nerd myself, of course. Harumph.

SFF Song of the Week: My Top 10

Philip Palmer — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 07:43:36 +0000

For some time now I’ve been running a feature on my website called SFF Song of the Week. Like a bar which sells books and also serves chocolate, this has the merit of combining several really good things under a single roof. And I’ve invited a number of writer friends and other folk connected with the genre to contribute their choices – as ‘blogjay’ of the week.

The selections have been fabulous, as you’d expect, with such a huge wealth of science fiction and fantasy related songs to choose from. But for my money, the intros have been even better than the music – some of them are love poems to favourite songs, many are rich in autobiographical detail, and all offer insights into the writer’s heart and soul.

I relish Mike Cobley’s account of his experiences at University when selecting Space Station Number 5. Stephen Hunt has written a gorgeous account of his youth as a young geek in love with Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip; before maturing into the very grown up and sophisticated geek that he now is. Mike Carey wrote a joyous piece about Genesis, a band who also dominated my teenage years. Adam Roberts wrote a piece about Gary Numan that made me laugh out loud. Lilith Saintcrow chose a filk song that made me laugh out loud even louder.

I have to confess that I’m not, myself, a great musical aficionado; I love music, but I can never remember the names of tracks, and I’m never the one who knows in which year a particular single was released. I’m not like Al Reynolds, with his encyclopedic knowledge of cutting edge bands, and I certainly can’t compete with the coolest of musical dudes like Richard Morgan and Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Paul Raven; or indeed Adam Roberts and James Lovegrove, who once had plans to write the definitive book about SFF music (and I hope one day they do.)

No, I’m just someone who love particular songs inordinately and excessively, and will play them endlessly over and over while running or at the gym. Things I’ve Seen by Spooks was one such song that carved grooves into my brain; at one point, I even quoted from it in Debatable Space, before rights issues forced me to pen some original lyrics. Crazy by Gnarls Barkley is another song that I became besotted by - no rude comments please! – and I Put a Spell on You by Nina Simone has cast a similar spell more recently. Darkness at the Edge of Town by Springsteen is tattooed into my frontal lobe; as is Maria Maria by Carlos Santana; not to mention Hope by Shaggy. I listen to lots; but some songs I love so much it hurts.

These days, I must admit, I’m one of the iPod Shuffle generation – skipping from Dad Rock to Avril Lavigne (my daughter loads it on to my iPod for long trips) to the Hold Steadies to Shakira to Beyonce & Destiny’s Child (*blush*) to Theolonius Monk. But my teenage passions, in the 70s, were the prog rocks bands like Yes (whose Starship Trooper was selected by Ian Whates, to the great annoyance of Pete Hamilton) , Genesis (Carey’s choice), Pink Floyd (strangely overlooked), Bowie (thanks James Lovegrove!) and mind-numbing stuff like Black Sabbath (I think Paranoid was my first ever album purchase). Patti Smith at Knebworth lingers in my memory as one of those great moments in growing up. Brand X were at the same gig, I seem to recall. Tangerine Dream (chosen by Stephen Palmer) in Cardiff. Blue Oyster Cult in Swansea (why has no-one picked Don’t Fear the Reaper?). 10 CC at Cardiff Castle (look, what can I say, I was a total nerd and really loved them, then.)

Frankly, no music I’ve heard since has QUITE the same potency as the teen year faves – or maybe I just don’t listen as much, or with such quasi-religious intensity. Then, I could listen to an album ten times in a week. Now, it’s 2 or 3 times then it goes on to Shuffle. So I have great sympathy with the blogjays who travel down the Nostalgia Road when making their choices.

But the younger and/or cooler blogjays are always there to freshen my references. I’d never heard Feist until Nicole Peeler chose her version of the awesomely evocative old English ballad Sea Lion Woman; listen to the song, read Nicole’s books, and you’ll FEEL the synergy. My producer friend Archie Tait (from the hippy generation, but totally up to date with his musical preferences) chose Yoshimi and the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips, which I’d never heard before and which really wowed me. And Jesse Bullington introduced me to the band Bal-Sagoth, who are SERIOUS fantasy dudes, and that was a real eye-opener.

Because of my own time constraints, I’ve not managed to run one of these songs EVERY week – but I’m hoping to up the frequency in the next year or so. Until I run out of writers; or run out of songs with SF or fantasy elements; which I suspect will not be for a very long time.

Anyway, if you want to listen in, click on this link.

And here is my selection, not in any order, of my Top Ten SFF Songs of the Week from Debatable Spaces.

After the Gold Rush by Neil Young: Selected by Peter F. Hamilton – THIS WEEK’S SELECTION!!!!

Beat the Devil’s Tattoo by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Selected by Richard Morgan

Manhattan Project by Rush: Selected by Ken MacLeod

Wings by The Fall: Selected by Alastair Reynolds

Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden: Selected by Tricia Sullivan

Time by Tom Waits: Selected by Robert Jackson Bennett

Banned from Argo by Leslie Fish: Selected by Lilith Saintcrow

Sweet Thing by David Bowie: Selected by James Lovegrove

Marquee Moon by Television: Selected by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Sea Lion Woman by Feist: Selected by Nicole Peeler

Are Friends Electric? by Gary Numan: Selected by Adam Roberts

That’s a top 10 consisting of 11 choices; in hommage to Spinal Tap.

(This feature originally appeared on the Orbit website, and can still be found there if, duh, you want to read it again. – Ed).

Book Signing Weekend

Philip Palmer — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 08:16:15 +0000

Yesterday I spent the afternoon signing books at Forbidden Planet…as jobs go, this was a bit like being forced to eat chocolate in a chocolate factory. This is the Shaftesbury Avenue branch of FP, whose basement is a place of joy and magic; it’s cheaper to be mugged than to venture in to THIS particular bookshop.

This was all part of the Orbit Summer Signing Day A hand picked team of four Orbit writers were requested, nay summoned, to attend, consisting of me, Nicole Peeler and Simon Morden, both good pals, and Tim Lebbon, who I’d never met before but who proved to be a delight. We sashayed through the store like boxers on their way to fight the world champion before, um, sitting on our bums and signing books for an hour.

Bizarrely Tim was introduced on the tannoy as Tim Le Bon (better looking brother of Simon?); his book Echo City is, I gather, brilliant and full of swearing. Simon is legendary for his Metrozone novels, with their extraordinary Bridget Riley-type covers. And Nicole is a writer whose work I adore – I’m working my way through her Jane True books and was thrilled to hear she’s just finished Volume 5.

FP do look after authors superbly well, and all the staff their have a great passion for their work and the genre. The highlight of the event was when Nicole was given a boa (scarf? a long object that goes around the neck – hey, I’m a guy, what would I know) hand-made by one of her fans. That’s what I call real dedication.

Later we convened for drinks with a number of Orbit folk including Anne Clark and Rose Tremlett. A great chance to catch up.

And earlier today I ventured along to my local bookshop Crow on the Hill; they’ve sold most of the copies of HELL SHIP I signed for them a week or so ago so I had a new batch to scribble upon. Jonathan, who runs the store, is a bibliophile who has made his shop a key part of the community in my little neck of the woods; so if you’re nowhere near Shaftesbury Avenue but want a signed copy of HELL SHIP, do get in touch with Crow online.

SFF Song of the Week: Peter F. Hamilton

Philip Palmer — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:46:32 +0000

This week’s blogjay is Peter F. Hamilton, who in my view is one of the greatest writers of space opera around – master of widescreen storytelling but able to create brilliant vivid characters. And many of ‘em! Peter and I shared a panel at the recent Illustrious con, and I’m delighted he has this song to play for us.

Peter Hamilton writes:

One song? Really? Just one? You do know I’m somebody who can’t even pin down a top ten? Now give me a hundred favourites and we’re getting closer to it. And those would only be favourites, actually numbering the list is impossible.

Still only one?

Oh, all right then. I have to admit some ire that Starship Troopers has already been taken. My claim to that one was very legitimate, I actually saw Yes live back in the seventies and they played it. Ah well, I also saw Bowie, and Starman is definitely in the SF top ten faves. But, is that a cliche? I have to admit I nearly played my joker, and nominated Angels and Demons by Toya Wilcox, but one line “Ten thousand spaceships filled the sky” doesn’t really qualify it as true SF. Though it does mean I can dig it out again soon to check. Of course there is the easy option, and just yell out: 2112 by Rush. Nahh. Best not. It’s like original Star Trek, I don’t want to spoil the memories by revisiting it again, so let’s leave that well alone. What about something modern, a song that’ll prove I’m up there getting down with the youth of today. Humm, not a very convincing sight at the best of times, though Exogenesis part I by Muse is also high up there on that impossible list. Only, it doesn’t actually have words, even if it is the best late-night driving crank the volume to 11 song there’s ever been. This is getting quite hard now, can I have music that was played in an SF film? If so, the moody and magnificent Love Theme from Blade Runner would be the one. Again, no lyrics. Is this a theme developing here? No, I will chose one that’s evocative and yet still quite moody at the same time. In which case there really is no question: After The Gold Rush. Which then produces a whole new problem. Which version? No no, not the Dolly Parton one (you don’t believe me? Go ahead, try calling my bluff on that, I dare you). But I’ve got to say the k d lang cover is really very good. But no, I will be true to myself, and the quiet teenage dreamer and reader who first heard Neil Young singing about silver spaceships and mother nature on the run and carrying seeds to a new sun, and was hopelessly lost in the romance of the music in those far off days of youth when everything meant so much more than it does today.

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
There were peasants singing and
Drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing
To the sun
That was floating on the breeze.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.

I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst thru the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Nature’s
Silver seed to a new home in the sun.
Flying Mother Nature’s
Silver seed to a new home.

Sai-ias Speaks

Philip Palmer — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 06:00:06 +0000

This is the longest of the excerpts provided by Recorded Books from their audio book version of Hell Ship. It’s narrated by Sai-ias, who is the heroine of the story – a complex, powerful, tenderhearted alien from a universe not our own.

There are a LOT of universes not our own in Hell Ship. You won’t meet Flanagan, or Lena, or Saunders, or Hooperman, or Version 43 in this story. There’s no Cheo, no Galactic Corporation. No, this is a story of terror and treachery that takes us on a journey through the multiverses, in the company of a ship of aliens who are also alien to each other. It’s a big canvas piece. And it’s dark, and serious, though leavened I hope with humour, and heart.

It’s a story about violence, and pacifism, and love, and hate, and weird monsters.

If you hate spoilers, don’t listen to this clip until you’ve read the book; it’s a revealing moment in the story, but I can’t resist playing it because of the wonderful way Bianca Amato voices the role of Sai-ias.

If the audio widget above doesn’t work for any reason, click here to download the MP3 file.