I never recognise myself in photographs; the tall, muscular, heroic man that I know myself to be always get strangely reduced into being a short tubby Welsh bloke.  This just proves that THE CAMERA ALWAYS LIES.

But self portraits by artists always intrigue me. It's said that to paint a great portrait, you have to see into the soul of your sitter.  To paint yourself, therefore, you have to know yourself; you have to see past the facial features to the essence of the man or woman beneath.

There is (or at least was) a  fabulous juxtaposition in the National Gallery between two portaits of Rembrandt - one as a young man, one as an old man. Because of the ways the eyes look to one side, you can stand and be stared at by both men at the same time. There is no more potent visual expression of how the boy becomes the man.

Caravaggio plays a similar trick in the self portrait below, in which he is both David AND Goliath; the young man and the older man in the same painting.

Here's a glimpse into the souls of some great artists.

Henri Matisse

Francis Bacon, 1973

Caravaggio as both David and Goliath

Artemisia Gentileschi: Self Portrait as a Lute Player

Lucian Freud

Claude Monet, 1886

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso on a bad day

Gwen John

Raphael

Michelangelo - self portrait?

Tolouse Letrec

J.M.W. Turner

Rembrandt Van Rijn as a young man

Rembrandt Van Rijn in 1660

In a nutshell, a bankruptcy examiner has concluded that Lehman Brothers may (MAY - it's not yet proved as these things have to be) have been engaged in dodgy accounting practices in the weeks before their collapse.  This is hardly news...but the good part is that the principle of Financial Sector White Collar Crime is Still Crime is being asserted here.  No one's arguing that Lehman Brothers can't be prosecuted because they're 'too big to fail'. (They already HAVE failed.)

No one is above the law in other words.

This week I was invited - thanks to those nice people at Working Title Films - to a cast and crew (plus invited guests) screening of Paul Greengrass's new film The Green Zone.  These screenings are always a treat, because you're sitting in the cinema with the people who actually made the film. There's not the usual rush to leave when the credits appear; in fact, applause breaks out every time a new crew member's credit appears.  And to cap it all, Paul Greengrass made an impressive and heartfelt speech at the start.

The film is a KNOCKOUT. It really is astonishing. And its themes resonate strongly with me. Greengrass is a man who is actively engaged in the Battle Between Good and Evil (see the Category on your left for my own blogs on this theme.) And this film is essentially a deeply political expose of one of the greatest lies ever told: WMD. The astonishing opening sequence has Matt Damon and his team of soldiers risking their lives to find WMDs in Iraq where the intel says they are - only to draw a blank.

That's because they never existed! The whole war in Iraq was launched on the basis of outrageous deception; it's one of the worst scandals of modern history. But, you know, politicians bank on the fact that WE FORGET THESE THINGS.

So Greengrass has come along to remind us...

This powerful political film also functions as perhaps the most exciting action movie I've ever seen; my God, Greengrass can really move that camera...as can his Oscar winning DOP Barry Ackroyd.  My one reservation is that to make this movie work as an action thriller Greengrass and his writer Brian Helgeland (who also wrote LA Confidential) have had to create a fictional story at the heart of the true story. And that's a slightly awkward fit. 

But even so, for me this is one of the best films of this, or any year.

The rest of my time this week has been taken up with this pesky little bugger:

Yes, it's the novel that Orbit are publishing this October; and not only did they force me to actually write it, they've now had the goddam temerity to ask me to do some REWRITES.  Polishes no less!  And that's been my week's work really.

It's strange when you revise a novel you haven't looked at for some months. It kind of felt like someone else's book. I kept thinking - Ooh, I don't remember THAT happening.  And it's subtly different to my first two books, Debatable Space and Red Claw; there's more of a single focus, and the style is less baroque. It is however still within the 'Debatable Space' universe; the three books together constitute what I call a 'triptych' (pretentous moi? un peu!) - not a trilogy in other words, and you can read them in any order. But if you read all three they should connect up in various (and hopefully interesting) ways.

I've also been looking at cvs for cinematographers whose work I love...yes, it's that stage in the on-going saga of the movie (Inferno) wot I am producing, with the aid and inspiration of a gang of film people who actually DO know what they are doing...Hope to have more news on that front soon.

I finished Jesse Bullington's fab The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, a full-blooded, blood-thirsty, witty and erudite medieval thriller with supernatural elements.  And I'm currently lost in the embrace of John Scalzi's splendid first novel Old Man's War, a hommage to Heinlein, and a great piece of storytelling.

Oh and I've just started watching Series 3 of Heroes, after a long gap. I'm struggling to remember what happened in Series 2 (ah yes - the girl whose eyes go black!) and I'm afraid I am having a sense of time standing still. Sylar is STILL the villain? But it looks great so I'm expecting to warm up to it soon.

Actually I prefer Trinity...brrr!  But let's not go there.

Neo is the coolest of the cool. He is Christ (aka the One), he is kick-ass, he wears shades, he has superpowers, and he is here to rescue us from the horrible terrible place that is The Matrix.

I love The Matrix; Matrix 2 (Reloaded) not so much, Matrix 3 (Revolutions), let's not go there.  But the first Matrix film came as an absolute shock; who could have thought cinema could be so kinetic, so visually wonderful, so like a comic book? 

There's a lot of great writing in the script by the Andy and Larry (or Lana, if you believe the rumours) Wachowki. Not great dialogue (why don't they get Joss Whedon to write dialogue for ALL science fiction movies?) but really clever ideas. The movie borrows ideas from Buddhism, Joseph W. Campebell's book on myth, Alice in Wonderland, and gnosticism.  And it weaves that into a narrative that makes computer geeks look cool. 

There's one flaw in the story - the good guys are all trying to destroy the Matrix. But I LOVE the Matrix. Who wants to live with the boring rebels in their boring hideaway, when you could be on the inside of a whizz-bang computer game where people can have superpowers?

The screenplay can be read here; and now here's some pretty pics of brooding Keanu in what may be his best ever role, following by the wondrous trailer.

I love his choice for today - my generation too! - but this particular song it's WAY too long to feature on this blog, or even on YouTube. So I feature an excerpt, with a link for you to buy the album if you want to hear more.

Mike Carey writes:

Supper’s Ready Part 2

In Supper's Ready (from their 1972 album, Foxtrot), Genesis created a sprawling sci-fi epic and played it out in the space of a suite of songs whose combined length is more than twenty minutes. Beginning with a first inkling of disaster to come when the narrator sees something alien and inexplicable in his lover's face, it escalates through total war, millenarian cults, extreme body modification and finally the end of the world - although we're not sure whether this is devastation or redemption.

The lyrics are elliptical, and it's never possible to paraphrase exactly what's going on, but the orchestration of emotion throughout is amazing, as is the bravura finish, which swipes the imagery of the Book of Revelations and puts it through its paces - so that when we come full circle to the announcement that "supper's ready", it's the supper of the king of kings, announced by the angel who stands in the sun. Pretentious? Maybe. But back in 1974 (which was when I discovered the album) that didn't put me off at all. I just loved it for the insane head-trip it was. Moreover, it paved the way for the greater glories of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway two years later - The Lamia, Lilywhite Lilith, The Colony of Slippermen et al.

Yes, kids, that's how old I am. I remember when Genesis weren't boring...

Lovers' Leap

Walking across the sitting-room, I turn the television off.
Sitting beside you, I look into your eyes.
As the sound of motor cars fades in the night time,
I swear I saw your face change, it didn't seem quite right.
...And it's hello babe with your guardian eyes so blue
Hey my baby don't you know our love is true.

Coming closer with our eyes, a distance falls around our bodies.
Out in the garden, the moon seems very bright,
Six saintly shrouded men move across the lawn slowly.
The seventh walks in front with a cross held high in hand.
...And it's hello babe your supper's waiting for you.
Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true.

I've been so far from here,
Far from your warm arms.
It's good to feel you again,
It's been a long long time. Hasn't it?

The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man

I know a farmer who looks after the farm.
With water clear, he cares for all his harvest.
I know a fireman who looks after the fire.

Can't you see he's fooled you all.
Yes, he's here again, can't you see he's fooled you all.
Share his peace,
Sign the lease.
He's a supersonic scientist,
He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary man.
Look, look into my mouth he cries,
And all the children lost down many paths,
I bet my life you'll walk inside
Hand in hand,
gland in gland
With a spoonful of miracle,
He's the guaranteed eternal sanctuary.
We will rock you, rock you little snake,
We will keep you sad and warm.

Ikhnaton And Itsacon And Their Band Of Merry Men

Wearing feelings on our faces while our faces took a rest,
We walked across the fields to see the children of the West,
But we saw a host of dark skinned warriors
standing still below the ground,
Waiting for battle.

The fight's begun, they've been released.
Killing foe for peace...bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang...
And they're giving me a wonderful potion,
'Cos I cannot contain my emotion.
And even though I'm feeling good,
Something tells me I'd better activate my prayer capsule.

Today's a day to celebrate, the foe have met their fate.
The order for rejoicing and dancing has come from our warlord.

How Dare I Be So Beautiful?

Wandering in the chaos the battle has left,
We climb up the mountain of human flesh,
To a plateau of green grass, and green trees full of life.
A young figure sits still by a pool,
He's been stamped "Human Bacon" by some butchery tool.
(He is you)
Social Security took care of this lad.
We watch in reverence, as Narcissus is turned to a flower.
A flower?

Willow Farm

If you go down to Willow Farm,
to look for butterflies, flutterbyes, gutterflies
Open your eyes, it's full of surprise, everyone lies,
like the fox on the rocks,
and the musical box.
Yes, there's Mum & Dad, and good and bad,
and everyone's happy to be here.

There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag,
he used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag.
The frog was a prince, the prince was a brick, the brick was an egg,
the egg was a bird.
(Fly away you sweet little thing, they're hard on your tail)
Hadn't you heard?
(They're going to change you into a human being!)
Yahoo, we're happy as fish and gorgeous as geese,
and wonderfully clean in the morning.

We've got everything, we're growing everything,
We've got some in
We've got some out
We've got some wild things floating about
Everyone, we're changing everyone,
you name them all,
We've had them here,
And the real stars are still to appear.

ALL CHANGE!

Feel your body melt;
Mum to mud to mad to dad
Dad diddley office, Dad diddley office,
You're all full of ball.

Dad to dam to dum to mum
Mum diddley washing, Mum diddley washing,
You're all full of ball.

Let me hear you lies, we're living this up to the eyes.
Ooee-ooee-ooee-oowaa
Momma I want you now.

And as you listen to my voice
To look for hidden doors, tidy floors, more applause.
You've been here all the time,
Like it or not, like what you got,
You're under the soil (the soil, the soil),
Yes, deep in the soil (the soil, the soil, the soil, the soil!).
So we'll end with a whistle and end with a bang
and all of us fit in our places.

Apocalypse In 9/8 (Co-Starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)

With the guards of Magog, swarming around,
The Pied Piper takes his children underground.
Dragons coming out of the sea,
Shimmering silver head of wisdom looking at me.
He brings down the fire from the skies,
You can tell he's doing well by the look in human eyes.
Better not compromise.
It won't be easy.

666 is no longer alone,
He's getting out the marrow in your back bone,
And the seven trumpets blowing sweet rock and roll,
Gonna blow right down inside your soul.
Pythagoras with the looking glass reflects the full moon,
In blood, he's writing the lyrics of a HIP brand new tune.

And it's hey babe, with your guardian eyes so blue,
Hey my baby, don't you know our love is true,
I've been so far from here,
Far from your loving arms,
Now I'm back again, and babe it's gonna work out fine.

As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs (Aching Men's Feet)

Can't you feel our souls ignite
Shedding ever changing colours, in the darkness of the fading night,
Like the river joins the ocean, as the germ in a seed grows
We have finally been freed to get back home.

There's an angel standing in the sun, and he's crying with a loud voice,
"This is the supper of the mighty One",
The Lord of Lords,
King of Kings,
Has returned to lead His children home,
To take them to the new Jerusalem.

Download from Amazon here.

This week however I'm going to delve into the murkiest, darkest topic of all: the topic of how writers should deal with crap reviews of their work.

The truth is that all writers, however established, however talented,  get crap reviews from time to time. However, it's also the case that really CRAP writers get crap reviews, and deservedly so.  Thus,  every writer is disheartened, demoralised, and let's face it, humiliated when the stinky reviews come along.  Writing is a lot to do with maintaining self confidence and self esteem; and the crap review can often be the pin that bursts the balloon.

The great John Scalzi (I love this man - how the HELL does he write so many blogs, AND write novels, and consult for TV, and have a family, and still have a sense of humour?) has confronted this delicate issue head on by actually publishing crap reviews of his own books on his own website.  All the two star and one star reviews he gets on Amazon - he doesn't pretend they don't exist, he just prints them.  And a couple of other writers have followed suit. It's a great way to diminish the writer's agony;  a bit like easing the pain from a stubbed toe by breaking your own little finger.   

I haven't got that much courage, but I am going to give a link to a recent review of my novel Red Claw which is really REALLY bad.  In fact, I've never had such a bad review (well, apart from the Amazon review that said Debatable Space was 'the worst book ever written' or similar.)  It's a STINKER. And here it is.  (Be warned, there's a major - in fact THE major - plot spoiler dropped into the critique at about the mid-point.)

I've  read the entire review; it's intelligent, well argued, well written, and is a devastating demolition job of a novel I don't recognise.  But I can't deny that The Blogger Who Hates My Book is smart and sincere and entirely entitled to his opinion.

Other critics have been kinder, and the major press crits have been highly favourable (though the guy from SFX clearly thinks I'm really weird.)  But the views of bloggers are hugely important in this genre - bloggers tell it like it is, and I value that.  So to restore my battered pride I'm also going to link two reviews by bloggers who DID read the book I thought I wrote. So there's this one,  and this one.  

These things are subjective - blah blah. We all know that.  But I'm beginning to think there's something interesting about the way my work seems to polarise readers in the SFF community.  My publishers, Orbit Books. are also fascinated by this - they actually think it's a good thing! (Rather to my surprise.)  And they even published a flyer for Red Claw containing a blend of my good and crap Amazon reviews for Debatable Space. This came as something as a shock for me - as a point of policy, I stopped googling myself and reading my Amazon crits about a month after DS was published - so I hadn't even seen some of these negative crits.  I'd thought that everyone loved the damned book!

Gulp.

Anyway, the point is there are things about my work that some people love, and others hate.  In Debatable Space, it was Lena's story that divided people - for some it made the book special, more than just a space opera shoot 'em up.  For others, it was a foolish digression.  Stick to the point, you idiot! seemed to be the gist. 

The one critical comment that haunts me - from a blogger called Liviu - is the suggestion that Red Claw is in some way less maverick, less bold, less iconoclastic  than Debatable Space. I hope that's not true; but it might be.  But I guess I would counter-argue that with DS I never intended to 'break the rules' just for the hell of it.  All I wanted to do is write an SF novel that shocked and enthralled the reader.  And I think the only 'rule' I broke is a dumb and stupid rule, and it's this:

Everything should be about the plot.

This is a guiding principle of much mediocre television drama; the note producers and directors give to writers all the time, because they think they're being 'focused'.  (But watch a great TV drama by McGovern or Abbott or Russell T. and it's the minor characters, the digressions, the turns of phrase, all the things that create the texture of the world that make the stories come to life!)  And in my years working as a television writer,  it used to drive me mad.  Because plot is just what happens in the story; the story is why it happens. 

So in DS, the plot involves a war between Flanagan, Lena and the Cheo; but the story is WHY these people get involved in this war, and why we should care. So the 'digressions' about Flanagan's life, and the long sections with Lena, are about the Why. That's why these bits matter; they don't advance the plot, they advance the STORY. And, more than anything, the story of the book is the story of Lena - a thousand years of fucking up, getting it wrong, being too passive, being too arrogant, falling in love with the wrong guy, finally finding the right guy - that's the story that interests me.  The fact she gets embroiled in a galactic war is almost a side-issue set against all that.

That's how it seems to me anyway.  But I think everyone who hates the book hates it because they LIKE plot.  They like plot more than anything else.  And that's fine; but it's just not the way I write books. (In Red Claw, the Story begins with Hugo Baal writing about the biosphere of the planet - the thriller stuff is the plot but the STORY is that - scientific passion for the myriad forms of life on a world run by evil bastards who don't care about alien bugs and their morphology.)

Here's another thing some people seem to hate: Irony.  I use a lot of irony.  But some folks don't care for it, and maybe don't even see when it's there.  And that's fair enough.  There are plenty of books I love which have no irony. But it's clearly  something that's deep in my soul, a warped love of not saying what I mean but letting it emerge through the cracks. 

Here's an example of my kind of irony, from Red Claw. It's a diary passage written by Hugo Baal after the death of Jim Aura - a minor (very minor) character who Hugo, as a self-obsessed geek type, has never really noticed or cared about, until Jim's horrific demise.

From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal.

June 44^th

The death of Jim Aura has affected all of us badly. 

I didn’t know him well, I have to admit. I’ve never really connected with the Noirs.  And there was something about Jim’s staring black eyes that repelled me. Though he was a fine Scientist, albeit of a practical bent.  And, apparently, so I’m told, he had a wonderful singing voice.  A lyric tenor, of professional calibre. Though he never sang for us.  In fact,  to be honest, we hardly ever spoke to him.  Or at least, I hardly ever did.  He was such a reserved and distant individual.  He never got animated, even when the Fungists were in full rant.  He always wore black, and apparently he always knew he was a Noir, though he didn’t have his eyes and the tattoos done until we reached Xabar.  In fact, I think it was only a few months before the Hooperman attack that he made the final surgical commitments.  Though I might be wrong about that, I didn’t really notice him to be honest.

And, as I say, he never talked about himself much. Or, indeed,  at all.  He kept himself to himself, even after our shared trauma at the Depot. Though perhaps by that point, he was in mourning,  for the rest of the Noirs? I suppose he was, in a sense,  the last of his kind?

Even so, we all thought he was rather spooky. Or at least, I did.  Although, looking back, I wonder if -

Well,  I suppose. Maybe - 

But no. No maybe about it!  We definitely should have made more effort to talk to him.  After all, we’re all in this together aren’t we?

Except he’s not. Not any more.

But those black eyes! So alienating.  And yet -

Anyway.  His death has shocked us.  It was an unnecessary death. A foolish death.

The impact of Jim’s body hitting the earth created a vast hole in the ground, deeper than any we have dug.  We attempted to retrieve the body but a landslide took it away from us.  We have analysed soil samples and discovered that at a depth of forty metres and more the soil here is infested with and almost possessed by a complex interlocking micro-organism.  The soil in this region is, it seems, alive.

But I have no zest for analysing this in any more detail. Jim was a bright and brilliant  spirit, so I’m now told, and had a dark wit and a wonderful sense of humour, though I never experienced it myself, as well as black eyes.  I feel his death as though it were my own, well okay, not quite, but I am certainly very moved by it. 

Things are not good.

How does that advance the plot? It doesn't!  But have you ever had that shocking experience - of realising that someone 'ordinary' who you've barely noticed is actually complex and intriguing, and has just as much of a rich inner life as you do? And you've missed the moment to find out more, to get to know this person properly?   If so, you might like the way I write here. If not, well, not.

But my honest feeling is - and I know I shouldn't say this!  -  if you're someone who  likes everything to be about the plot,   and who  doesn't like irony, then please,  steer clear. Don't read my books.

(But do BUY my books; buy half a dozen copies of each in fact; and give them as Christmas presents to your enemies.  It will, trust me, be a hugely satisfying and deeply ironical revenge...)

That just leaves the question that started this blog: Are Shit Reviews Good for a Writer's Soul?

Curiously, I think they are.  I had three comments about Red Claw  over the weekend. On Saturday morning,  I spoke on the phone to my former Bill script editor - the smartest, most creatively impressive woman I know  - and though she' s no SF fan, she told me how much she adored Red Claw and the way it's written. Then later the same day, a female friend who is a social worker and who also doesn't read much SF told me she'd just read Debatable Space and loved it - mainly because of the portrait it gives of the flawed, fallible 1000 year old Lena.

And that's nice. Writers like to be praised. If fact, we like it too  much; we spend our days writing just IN ORDER to be praised.  And although praise is nice, it doesn't do much to help the quality of the work.

But that same day I read the piece by the Blogger Who Hates My Book - and it filled me with a huge creative energy.  It helped define me as a writer; it energised me in the writing of my new novel.

Without occasional shit reviews, in other words,  writers can get flabby, lazy, and timid. 

So I truly believe that a certain amount of virtriol - ah! I can taste it in my nostrils now! - can be good for a writer's soul.

Houses of Parliament, Sunset, by Claude Monet

This week all the paintings I feature, by various artists, are of the River Thames.

I remember when I first came to London from University, and a gang of us stood at the bank of the Thames, and looked at the light display on the roof of the Hayward Gallery, and it was well...magic.  Venice has the same effect on me; so does Paris; but it's the combination of water and city that = magic.

Edinburgh is the one exception; there's  a furrow through the city where the river ought to be, but there isn't one; and it's the castle on the hilltop that makes the city magic.   

Years ago I had a conversation with an Indian man living in my street who talked of a region in India which locals believed was haunted; or, more accurately, it was as if the place itself had a soul.  And I certainly feel that often; that's why I love certain places, which create in me certain particular moods. 

My first radio play Gin and Rum was about a man obsessed with London who could actually hear and see the ghosts of those who had died in the streets of London; he had an extraordinary memory for facts, but he didn't just remember history, he felt it.

I'm not quite as bonkers as that; but I do believe cities have souls.   And London's soul is best felt along the river Thames.

Several of the paintings below (and above) are by Turner, Whistler or Monet.  These artists connect in complex ways. When Monet visited London in 1870-1 he visited Whistler in his studio, and saw some of the great works of Turner (who died in 1851) at the National Gallery. 

Like Turner (who once allegedly had himself tied to the mast of a ship at sea in order to paint the effects of wind and water) Monet took pride in braving physical dangers to paint 'en plein air'.  Ironically, though, it was the London smog which was most injurious to the health of artists; and it was the smog too which helped created the astonishing sunsets which Monet painted. Even taking into account Monet's impressionist technique, London simply doesn't look like that now.

Also featured are Canaletto, who loved London almost as much as Venice, and Fauvist Andre Derain.

A View of His Majesty's Dock Yard at Woolwich by John Clevely the Younger

Brown and Silver, Old Battersea Bridge by James McNeill Whistler

Somerset House from the Thames by Edward Dayes

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by J.M.W. Turner

The Thames Estuary by Philip Wilson Steer

London Seen Through the Arches of Westminster Bridge by Canaletto

Nocturne in Blue and Silver by James McNeill Whistler

Old Battersea Bridge by James McNeill Whistler

Houses of Parliament, Effect of Sunlight in Fog by Claude Monet (subtly different to the top one!)

The Thames and the City of London from Richmond House by Canaletto

The Burning of the House of Lord and Commons by J.M.W. Turner (more flames than the Burning of Parliament, above)

The Pool of London by Andre Derain

Yes, it's the actual paper version of the cover of Version 43.   I'm currently working on some tweaks and cuts on the maunscript, and then the book goes into proof stage.  It's a bit of a shock looking at it again - it's a while since I delivered it to Orbit - because it's a time capsule of the person I was when I wrote it.  And it's not, by any means, your usual cybernetic cop in a universe founded by renegades and outlaws kicking ass in a Beckettian nihilistic universe pulp thriller science fiction fantasy horror novel - nope, it's even stranger than that.

Last week I went to see a highly enjoyable fantasy epic - Solomon Kane, based on the stories by Conan creator Robert E. Howard. And that gives me an excuse to show the poster:

 The movie was, I noticed, co-produced by Davis Entertainment who made Predator, and it's written and directed by Michael J. Bassett, a Brit who has been able to steer a path through the studio system to create a movie that is commercial, kick ass, and wonderfully visual; but also full of heart and moral intelligence.  I met Michael some years back when I was a development executive at Scottish Television, so I dropped him a line to say how much I enjoyed his movie.  And I'm glad to say he has now spent a little time lurking on Debatable Spaces.

Also this week, I got an email from some friends of mine with THIS image:

Fabulous isn't it?  It's a kid's book but I'm a big kid at heart, so I've ordered it at Amazon.  The story appears to be what the title says - a Quest for Warrior Sheep.  Author Christopher Russell is a hugely successful TV writer, who's written for major crime series like The Bill (where we met), A Touch of Frost and Midsomer Murders, and he is now an award winning children's writer, and he's cowritten Warrior Sheep with his wife Christine.  Chris and Christine are a class act and it's lovely to see them writing a novel that is even more ridiculous than, um, the ones I write.

It's felt like a major week for me in terms of my Welsh film noir, but nothing is definite yet so I'll just keep fingers crossed for now.  And I'm continuing to explore art stories for my radio drama which records in November. 

Debatable Spaces meanwhile has been as busy as ever...Mike Cobley popped in with an SFF Song of the Week with what I think must be the most hilarious intro to date.  If you've not listened to any of these, explore - they're in the Category on the left - because I really feel it's an amazing way to a) waste time and b) really get to know what inspires talented SFF writers like Lilith Saintcrow, Nicole Peeler, Al Reynolds, Tony Ballantyne and a fair host of others. (I've scheduled Mike Carey in for next week.)  Where else would you meet these guys and learn the secrets of their souls! (Unless you resort to stalking and the use of covert surveillance equipment.)

Also, I've been writing some rather forthright opinion pieces recently - like, Why John Scalzi is Wrong, and Is James Cameron a Traitor to His Own Species? And I'll be writing a few more of these in months to come, though that'll depend on how fast the novel is progressing.   

And treats in store include (I hope!) a guest blog about graphic novels writer Warren Ellis whose books I just LOVE.  And also a guest blog about telly drama and why it should be RUDER.

It's a piece in the Huffington Post by Les Leopold. Read it here.   It's a an argument which I don't think anyone could seriously contest; compare and contrast with the pieces by Polly Toynbee and Mark Taibbi I've already referenced in this on-going feature. 

The point is, some people want capitalism to fail; but I'm not one of them. I want capitalism to return. For what we have at the moment is not capitalism at all; it's a billionaire bail-out society which is unfair, unstable,  and profits no-one apart from rich bastards.  Think about the Russian Tsar's empire in the early years of the twentieth century; that's just about how crap it is now.

Leopold ends his piece with a series of practical solutions, all of which are doomed to fail.  Because they lack theatricality. They are technical solutions  to what is essentially a moral and ethical crisis. For that reason, I prefer the RICO Act solution.  It sends a message: astute business practices and racketeering ARE different things, and must not ever be confused; hence, white-collar crime should lead inexorably to jail time.

Hey, serious stuff, for what is essentially a frivolous website about science fiction and fantasy and movies.  Next week will feature some cool images of Neo in the Matrix; that's the kind of site this is, most of the time.  Neo, of course, is a HERO, who saves his world from a terrible conspiracy that denies ordinary people the chance to live ordinary decent lives.

In real life - there are no heroes! We surrender to evil conspiracies! We allow our ordinary decent lives to be totally fucked up by short sighted selfish bastards!

Or do we?

Mike Cobley writes:

 Last century, at about the 4/5ths mark, I had just been sorrowfully yet firmly ejected from Strathclyde University (BSc Production Engineering & Beer Bar Lager), having failed to pass the 2nd year exams. Such are the twists and turns of life's twisty turny laundry chute. However, I had got involved with the entertainments department at Strathclyde Students Union, persuading 1st the internal radio station to let me have a stab at playing records and, like, being a DJ, man! before becoming an official Ents crew member (in as much as any of us reprobates were, like, official). This was 1979, so it was a pre-digital and inherently grimy world of discos and gigs and guzzling tins of lager (free to Ents staff, heh heh) and smoking Benson & Hedges (this was before my body staged a revolt about a decade later). So anyway, amongst the very many now-classic choons and toetappers that passed across the twin decks (usually a Citronic Mk2 with Garrard turntables) was - Space Station No 5, as sung by Sammy Hagar, from the live album 'Loud and Clear'.
 
The song originally appeared on Montrose's self-titled album, out in 1973. But when I first heard it, about 1980, this was of course years and years before Babylon 5 was even so much as a twinkle in JM Straczynski's eye. But listening to it again soon after B5 hit the screens it struck me as the natural, if unofficial, theme song for the series. The original album version is cool in its way, but the live version just completely tears loose, hammers along with a breathless urgency. Entirely fantastic.

Start, with the sun
And move on out
The future's in the skies above
The heavens unfold
And a new star is born
Space and time makin' love

Chorus:
Oh what a time we had
Living on the ground
I've moved to station Number 5
See you next time around,
Next time around

As far you want, as close as you need
It's all in the mind, you know
This old world hasn't really seen it's day
It's here, time to go

Chorus

Remember when it was so clear
We were young, but the memory still remains
To pick fruit from a tree
Fish from the seas
Now nothing's left here, but the stains
Well I can't cry no more
Can only be glad
There's other places we can be
If the time suits you right
I'm leaving tonight
Come fly away
With me!
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Oh, yeah
Start, with the sun
And move on out
The future's in the skies above
The heavens unfold
A new star is born
Space and time makin' love

Chorus

 Let me get one thing straight, before I commence my rant for today: Avatar is one of the best things to happen to the science fictional world in years.  It's raised the credibility of the genre in the movie theatres - after all those Harry Potters and Hobbits in Pursuit of Rings movies and other fantasy epics of recent years. It's got the world excited about aliens and space exploration. And it's at the vanguard of a whole new generation of incredibly exciting and visually extraordinary blockbusters.  To cap it all, James Cameron is a director I admire enormously.

But he is, as I say, a traitor to his own species.

And he's also made a film that in my view - despite breaking all box office records, and although it's  pretty damned good - isn't THAT good, or that special.  It's fun, it's certainly beautiful, the ending is exciting.  But I don't really 'get' what's so revolutionary about the 3D effects. Compared to Up, it's no big deal; that movie set the bar for CGI 3D movie spectacle and Avatar comes nowhere near it.

Nor do I think the film is as visually extraordinary as everyone claims. The scenery and action scenes are marvellous, but it all lacks imagination. How come the aliens are blue, but the trees are made of bark and the leaves are GREEN? It could all be, well, much more alien. 

There's nothing in this film to compare with Predator, perhaps the most visually spectacular SF film ever made. Director John McTiernan and cinematographer Donald McAlpine created a movie that is both a nail-biting kick-ass actioner, and a piece of modern art - by which I mean that every time we switch to Predator-POV the screen becomes filled with colours as vivid as a Kandinsky. 

But Predator plays a cleverer game.  It isn't just about the scenery, it's built around mythic concepts - chiefly, Arnie as the mud-coated (think woad-coated Celt) warrior going mano a mano with an alien.  The explosion scenes in that movie, too, are astonishing - visions of a Dantesque Hell on Earth.

Avatar, by contrast, has blue gazelle-like creatures running through what looks like the Amazon rainforest. Sweet - but not astonishing.

But that's just my opinion - which in view of the box office triumph of the film, shouldn't be taken too seriously (and, indeed, won't be).  There's no doubt that SOMETHING extraordinary is happening with this film to make it such a phenomenon.  And the media coverage in the press has been awesome. 

Online, too, Avatar has been covered extensively, and I've been taking a peek at some of the comments to be found out in cyberspace. There have been rave reviews, like this one in the Hollywood Reporter.     Fantasy SF Blog revealed that Cameron's volcanic temper eclipses that of our our British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (once you've clicked the link, scroll down to 'James Cameron, Benevolent Tyrant'.) John Scalzi got pretty much what he was expecting, and (unlike me!) felt no moral outrage at the 'noble savage' strand. Ann Wilkes' Cherokee blood boiled at the way the natives were treated, and she loved the story. Revolution SF drew attention to the alarming phenomenon of Avatar fans who feel like committing suicide because they can't live on the planet of the Na'vi. SF Gospel made some very smart points about the movie's provable theology, and asks - would it be okay to kill the Na'vi if they DIDN'T have a provable God?

And the definitive review came from Richard Morgan. (He said it was 'Very pretty.')

But my final take on Cameron's masterwork is, as I say: TRAITOR!

I'm referring of course to the second part of the film when (SPOILER ALERT! BUT I THINK THIS HAS ALL BEEN GIVEN AWAY IN TRAILERS) our hero dons the body of a blue-skinned alien and goes to war against the humans.

Think about it. Our main character is human! We are human. And yet we're being asked to root against our own species, in favour of the aliens?

It's not as if this is a minor spat between alien and human. It's a brutal war.  Dozens and dozens of human beings die horribly, and we are invited to cheer.  Almost as many aliens die in the carnage, and we are clearly meant to be sad as each of them perishes.

This defies all the rules of rooting. You root for you own team, not the opposition. As a Welshman, even of the non-sporting variety, I am obliged to root for Wales every time there's  Wales v. England rugby match. If I cheered on the English, I would be surgically de-Taffed.

The disloyalty to humankind comes, of course, cloaked in liberal good intentions.  The Na'vi are, you see, noble savages; they are metaphorical of the Native Americans and the Australian aboriginals and all the other Stone Age tribes who have been wretchedly treated by invaders from Europe.  And the movie manages to function simultaneously as a) a shoot-'em-up kickass action movie and b) as an ecological hymn to the glories of the nature, and the crapness of being an evil corporation that wants to destroy the rainforest and doesn't care how many natives die in the process.

Well, I'm all in favour of hating those who pillage the natural world; and I certainly don't condone the way the Native Americans or the aboriginals were treated.  So at one level, I'm certainly on Cameron's side.

But on other hand - per-lease! Couldn't the morality be a little more subtle?  The guy from the corporation virtually slavers with evil, his treatment of the Na'vi is both incompetent and buffoonish, and there's a complete absence of moral ambiguity.  Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) and Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and a couple of others are good;  all the Na'vi are good; but all the soldiers and the horrible white capitalists who run the mining corporation are all utterly and irredeemably evil.

This kind of black & white morality is forgiveable, of course, in an action movie where you don't look for rich characterisation and moral subtlety.  But in a movie that proclaims itself to be a moral force for good - well, maybe the script could have had just a LITTLE more work done on it. 

But that's not my gripe. My gripe is - what's so bad about humans? I mean - I'm human,  my friends are human:  all the people I like and  admire,  alive and dead, are human. Humans are - well, what can I say? We're not SO very bad.

But in science fiction, we get a bad press, as the ignoble history of colonialism gets writ into stories set among the stars.  And Avatar is for me part of this syndrome - of neglecting the virtues and glories of humankind. 

And the chief virtue and glory of  humankind is - we're not all jocks. We're not all heavily bicepped, macho monsters who are so obsessed with gadgets and weapons of war that we lose sight of the finer things in life - like Nature, and art, and being nice to each other.  In fact, none of the people I know are like that.  All MY friends are weedy, cowardly, bookish, kind, and, well,  nice.

But in Cameron's parallel universe, all humans are either soldiers or cruel capitalists (admittedly Signourney Weaver is a scientist and there are a couple of other scientists helping Jake Sully fight his good war - but these characters don't really have much character.)

Contrast this with the weedy science graduate geek played by Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, cursed with a wisecracking dad, and always banging on about scientific things. A broad caricature yes - but there's hope for humanity if there are a few of THESE entertainingly anal-retentive guys about.

Avatar would, in my view, been a richer and better film if there'd been more diversity among the characters, and less idealisation of the Na'vi.  They are supposed to be like the Native Americans - but they aren't, not really. The Native Americans were a Stone Age tribe with a flair for war, especially of the sneaky variety;  as I recall from my past reading, ambush was considered by many tribes to be a worthy way of attacking an opponent. And, once confronted by an invasion of white-skins, the Native Americans proved themselves to be adaptable and savage; they learned to ride horses, they learned to shoot guns, they even copied the invaders' trick of scalping their enemy.

All of which makes the Native Americans REAL, and flawed, and complex, as opposed to the holier-than-thou Na'vi, who can't kill another creature without an act of gaian communion.

Cameron over-eggs it all in other words; the Na'vi are so perfect that I hate them. They don't even LOOK like real aliens; they have the wide-eyed blank-faced look of characters in a manga comic.  For all the much vaunted brilliance of the CGI, I never forgot for a moment that I was watching blue simulations.  Indeed, in some ways I felt these aliens felt less 'real' than the animatronic aliens in Farscape.

Of course, I freely concede that in my own novels I don't shirk from making the humans the bad guys -  it makes for a better story that way.    But I think we shouldn't forget to celebrate the best of humanity - the geekiness, the wit, the camaraderie, the cleverness, and the heart-bursting loyal love of which humans are capable. 

Admittedly, Jake DOES fall in love, with the girl alien Neytiri, who IS quite pretty in an eerie 'she looks like a blue Bambi, is he really going to do it with a deer?' kind of a way.  But he's a pretty dull character in other respects; we root for him because he's the hero, not because he's all that interesting.

A sequel to Avatar is being planned, I gather; I'd love to think that it involves a spaceship full of Jewish comedians who are airlifted down to teach the Na'vi the skills they clearly lack; self deprecation, grumbling, and the cruel taunting of the afflictions of others.  Not to mention, cake!

For my part, living on the planet of the Na'vi would be like living in the English countryside: beautiful, spiritually uplifting, and BORING.  I'd rather live in New York and eat bagels and pastrami with the aforesaid Jewish comedians, and indulge in daily rituals of sarcasm and ironic hyperbole. 

That's what it is to be human.

And last week, I went to an exhibition at the Royal Academy of the works of Vincent Van Gogh,  whose brief career alternated between bursts of astonishing creativity and bleak periods in a mental asylum.  The exhibition focused around Van Gogh's life and letters - letters which he wrote to his brother Theo, often accompanied with dazzling sketches of the paintings he was working on.

It was evident from the letters that Vincent was a staggeringly obsessive man - no, 'How are you? How are the kids?' chit chat, his letters (or the ones I read) are all about his own artistic processes and challenges and ideas. All creative people tend to be self-obsessed; Vincent was clearly at the far end of that spectrum. 

There have recently been rumours that Van Gogh didn't, as the legend have it, cut his own ear off - but that he and his friend Paul Gauguin fought a duel and the ear was lopped off by Gauguin's blade; then a lie had to be told to protect Gauguin from prosecution.  

However, I prefer the time-hallowed story,  which is that Van Gogh in a fit of madness threatened his friend with a razor, then ran off to a brothel, cut off his ear, and handed it to a prostitute with the words, "Keep this object carefully."

The intensity of Van Gogh's vision is palpable; you feel that he saw too much, and looked too hard, for his own good. And his death was as tragic as his life was lonely; he tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun but failed, walked back to the local tavern, admitted what he had done - then later died of his injuries. 

Personally, I would have been happy for him to be just a bit less talented, if that could have made him happier.  I mean, I know we all love the myth of the tortured artist - but really? Doesn't it break your heart?

Anyway, here are some drawings and lesser known Van Goghs, followed by a few of the more famous ones.

NOTE: The painting of Gauguin's empty chair was (I learned at the exhibition) Vincent's way of showing the absence of the man who used to share his home, but who was forced to flee after the razor incident. In which case - what does the portrait of Vincent's empty chair symbolise? A harbinger of his own death?

Enclosed Field with a Sower in the Rain

Field with Factory

Quay with Men Unloading Sand Barges

Backyard of Old Houses in Antwerp

Avenue at D'Argenson Park at Asnieres

Coal Barges

Japonaiserie, Bridge in the Rain

Nude Woman Reclining

Paul Gauguin's Armchair

Wheatfield with Crows

Vincent's Chair with his Pipe

Self Portrait, after cutting off his ear

Being a writer is, however, quite possibly one of the the most annoying and frustrating jobs it's possible to do. With any other job, you turn up for work, and you start work - then you work!  Hard! All day! Till it's time to stop, then you stop.

With writing, however...some days it doesn't come. Nothing happens. Or it happens painfully slowly;  9/10ths Freecell to 1/10 actual creative writing. Or it comes fast and easily but it's CRAP - really bad writing starts appearing on the screen and the terrible fear kicks in that someone could hack this material, and realise HOW BAD I REALLY CAN WRITE.  And when that happens, you just have to let it go. Take a walk. Watch a movie. And slowly let the back of the brain do what it does best; solve the real problem. 

I've had that experience this week...after a frenzied start on my new book Hell Ship, I could feel the energy slipping away. I read the first few chapters over and thought, hell, these don't read like the first chapters of a novel  - there's not enough action, not enough is happening.  And then it hit me:

I was starting in the wrong place. 

I had thought I was about a third of the way through the book; now it turns out that I'm three quarters of the way through, and I have a huge huge chunk missing at the beginning.

Whew. This discovery comes as a huge relief. I thought I'd just FORGOTTEN HOW TO WRITE!

And now I can get back to work, with a new beginning, and a former beginning that's now the middle...no more floundering, no more sad walks.  I can actually do some work! 

And that in a nutshell is why writing is a frustrating and annoying job; you have no authority over your own time, or your own creativity.  You just have to sit there waiting for the back brain to wake up; because that's the bit of the brain that does all the real work.

Oh by the way - if my editor and publisher are reading this blog - I'm just kidding! I wasn't floundering at all. Or stuck. Or blocked. Or desperate. Or panicky! Not one bit!

(Phew! Think they fell for that?)

Meanwhile, in the hours when I haven't been writing, I've been working hard on my mission of turning Debatable Spaces into something more than just a place for me to blather randomly, as indeed I am now doing. I was thrilled that screenwriter Danny Stack (a maestro of the scribosphere and co-founder of the Red Planet prize) came on board to write a guest blog, about Misfits.  And I've been getting a lot of traffic from John Scalzi's site, after writing a red-hot blog attacking his opinions about Inglourious Basterds and accusing him of 'sophistry'. (Scalzi, clearly much amused, posted a referral link on his site and kindly reminded me that he is ALWAYS RIGHT.)

This prompted me to spend some time perusing the archives of Scalzi's blog - he is of course a king of bloggers, and was thus even before he started writing SF.  And I found a piece (sorry, didn't keep the link) which has been hugely valuable to me about the perils of blogging.  His gist, really, is that blogging works for HIM, but it can easily become a way for writers to avoid writing. 

And that's something I'm anxious to avoid; the novels are the point and purpose of it all, the blogging is just for fun and a way of making efriends and touching base with readers. And I guess my solution is to generate features on the blog which as well as entertaining readers (I hope!) directly feed into my own writing.

Hence, for instance, Paintings of the Day - I'm currently writing a drama about  art fraud so I'd be looking at these paintings anyway. So I figure - why not share that?

Another feature is The Battle Between Good and Evil, in which I briefly stop being such a wise-ass and start talking about what I regard the various clear and present threats to our civilisation. This is stuff that matters to me, of course; and it's important.  Of course it is! But I couldn't afford to spend so much time on these features if I didn't know it would directly affect the content of stories I am writing or will write. 

Most of all, I want Debatable Spaces to grow into something more than just an occasional casual read for internet browsers...with more guest blogs, maybe even some pieces on science, as well as continuing the features on movies, TV, politics, and the Lies That People Tell Us.

Plus, of course, news about views about SF and fantasy...

The brilliance of Taibbi's critique is that he creates a witty and clever connection between the activities of con artists and the way banks and hedge funds operate. The comparison is not a metaphor - it's an allegation.  These people are stealing money, from us! (the examples Taibii gives are all to do with Wall Street, but hey, it's exactly the same over here and in other parts of the world).

But oh gosh, sigh - what can we do?  Nothing I guess, so let's just roll over and -

HOLD ON A MINUTE.  Let's get this clear. There's a reason this feature is called the Battle Between Good and Evil; because it's a battle and those suckers are EVIL. (They may also be very nice human beings in other respects - cultured, loved by their families and kind to dogs.  But guess what: these are the guys who will one day know what it's like to have a grandchild spit in their eye, and say 'Grandad, there are no jobs anymore, and the cashpoint machines don't work, and I can't afford to go to college - and it's all YOUR fault.') 

Because there will undoubtedly be dire consequences if we continue on our present path of doing nothing. The collapse of Western civilisation is unlikely, but not impossible.  Companies going bankrupt is one thing; countries going bust is another.  And that's close to happening now, and will certainly happen  next time the dominos take a nasty tumble.

The enemy here is mild moderation.  Take this article, in the UK Guardian - it rebukes the bank Royal Bank of Scotland chief Stephen Hester for paying staff £1.3 billion  in bonuses at a time when the company has posted losses of £.6 billion; and warns him and other rich execs to 'stop complaining'. 

Never mind stop complaining - pay the damned money back! Then spend a year working as a nurse or an ambulance driver, and see what a REALLY hard job is like.

Because - as we all know - no privately owned 'real business' could  ever issue vast bonuses when the company is making a loss! It's lunacy, and lunatics should not be running such a big and important organisation.

But the mild moderation is part of the Big Con. 'We are the grown ups', that's the subtext. 'Don't make a fuss about nothing.'  And, the real killer (bear in mind that ALL these top finance guys seem to be middle aged men) is the patronising assumption that  'Daddy knows best.'

Why am I reminded of the scene in Titanic when the ship's crew insist on sending down lifeboats of first class passengers even though they are half empty, while the third class passengers are locked up in steerage? Oh I know why - BECAUSE IT'S THE SAME.  We rage at obscene immorality when we see it in movies, but we give in to it meekly when it's our actual lives. Because no one wants to be seen as a RANTING RAVING ANGRY PERSON.  But - why not, if the anger is justified?

I say all this as a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. I like capitalism! Capitalism is what gives me my iPod, my computer, restaurants at the top of the hill and bookshops with cafes.  It's a great system, for me, though I know I'm lucky.  And I'm in no hurry to live in a yurt on a hillside in North Wales, tending goats and growing vegetables.

This is the way capitalism is SUPPOSED to work: A bold person has a idea for a new business, borrows money from his or her family and the bank and puts up some of his or her own savings, and launches the business. It does well! He or she then sells a large stake in the business to a venture capital/private equity firm or floats it on the Stock Exchange or the Alternative Investment Market and thereby makes big bucks.  The big bucks are the entrepreneur's reward for having the idea, seeing it through, risking bankruptcy, living with stress - all those things.  And I doubt if anyone would put themselves through all that shit without the prospect of making a fortune at the end of it.

And okay - if you hate capitalism, you won't like even this idealised version of it; it's based on cruel meritocracy and ruthless competiton, and because it's a system which distributes wealth disproportionately, it is rendered socially acceptable only by the dream we all have of making it big through our own talents OR (everyone's plan B) winning a fortune on the lottery.

But that's not what we have any more.  Here's how it works these days: The entrepreneur sets up his or her business, has a couple of sticky years and can't get loan capital from the back to fund the ACTUALLY QUITE VIABLE BUSINESS and the company then goes belly up. The banks, meanwhile, using money they've embezzled from tax-payers, embark on complex deals which (by fraudulent means) enrich them, but contribute nothing to society.

And to cap it all, these modestly talented managers without an enterpreneurial bone in their bodies think they are Masters of the Universe. They're not! They're just middle-men.  But the middle happens to be where, um, all the money is kept. 

Anyway, we all read the papers; we all know this stuff. My question is; what can we do?

I think I have an answer.

Before I explain my idea, I should stress that I don't, not for a second, speak as an authority on financial affairs; for the facts in detail, look to Taibbi, and look to your own newspaper. No I'm just the guy who believes that if your house is on fire - you should shout Fire! and then dial 999.

Anyway: if we accept Taibbi's argument that what the investment banks and hedge funds are doing IS a form of organised crime, then the answer in my view is simple.

It's called RICO.

RICO is a word that gets mentioned a lot in The Sopranos. It's a word that scares mobsters. It's not just a word, it's a concept that was introduced to avert the very real possibility that organised crime was going to end up running all of America in the pre-1970 period known (by gangsters) as 'the Golden Age'.

RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act)  is a piece of legislation which decrees that anyone working for an organisation which is guilty of certain criminal offences can be arrested and charged, and obliged to pay financial penalties, and also sued in the civil courts.  It's used against Mafia bosses but has also been employed against other corrupt organisations. 

And it can most certainly also be used against white collar criminals. Indeed, the drafter of the bill, Professor George Robert Blakey, wrote: 'We don't want one set of rules for people whose collars are blue or whose names end in vowels, and another set for those whose collars are white and have Ivy League diplomas.'

Hey, Prof, you got that right!

Of course, it may be that Taibbi is WRONG in his analysis of the way these financial organisations are operating.  Let his analysis be tested, by smart lawyers and prosecutors; and if he's substantially wrong, fair enough, I'll shut up. But if he's right - if the way Wall Street operates amounts to con artistry, then RICO surely applies. 

And there have already been cases where RICO has been applied to very similar offences. Financier Michael Milkin was arrested under RICO statutes for insider trading.  And Scott W. Rothstein is currently accused under the RICO laws for operating a Ponzi scheme - which is what Taibbi alleges the banks were and are doing with their credit swap schemes.

Obviously, of course, we do need to get this into perspective. Much of what the banks do is fine, and indeed essential to the functioning of our complex technological consumer society.  And it's certainly not the case that all bankers are corrupt;  and much of the baffling stuff like short-selling and futures markets do in fact serve a valuable role in creating 'liquidity'; and liquidity is the oil that keeps the machine of capitalism running. 

And it's also the case that, whether we like it or not, not all the things we disapprove of are illegal.  Being a smug bastard in a pin-stripe suit is not, and nor should it be,  a crime.

But Taibbi alleges very specifically that THE KEY PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE  SHIT THAT WENT WRONG DO KNOW  WHAT THEY ARE DOING, AND MUCH OF WHA T THEY ARE DOING IS CROOKED.

So let's test that accusation.

The laws are there to be used; and the reason they haven't been used is fear. If the banks are too big to fail, they're certainly too big to be dragged through the courts. But the threat and indeed the reality of prosecution has to be there...otherwise we will end up with another financial collapse, from which we might not recover.

Anyway, that's my small contribution to the debate. But will anyone out there take up the challenge?

Well of course not. The world is far more wicked than that.  And if you read Taibbi's other piece on naked short-selling, you'll gather by the end who shakes the hand of whom and why, frankly, we might as well all give up.

But this is a rant,  so I'm going to give myself licence to pretend there IS some hope. 

So, assuming there is justice in the world, what's the merit of the RICO strategy, as opposed to utilising any of the many regulatory bodies and their many regulations to, in a subtler and more softly-softly way, rein in the bad boys? 

It's the PRINCIPLE, dammit! These people haven't stolen paper clips, they've stolen tens millions, and squandered hundreds of millions more.    And they should be treated like any other criminals - fairly, with every chance to present their defence, but with the full wrath of the law lurking in the background if they prove to be Guilty as Charged.

And it's the PRECEDENT.  The very mention of RICO will spread fear among people who ought to be afraid. It's already well established that individual fraudsters who use the Ponzi scheme can be arrested and sent to jail, sometimes for staggeringly long terms (see Bernie Madoff.)  And everyone knows that major companies involved in complex financial shennanigans can also face prosecution if they break the law - as we saw with Enron. But firms working in Wall Street and the City of London and other financial centres have been told they are above the law, immune from prosecution, untouchable.  That's the message we get, and that they get; and it's WRONG.

A single RICO prosecution would change that perception, and would, I predict, change the behaviour of financiers radically. 

And if it were clearly decreed that flagrantly illegal activities will from hereon in be classified as 'racketeering', then some sanity might start returning to the markets. 

I'm talking here about the Swoop and Squat.  Naked Short-Selling.  Asset-Stripping.  The Selling of Toxic Assets,'The Pig in the Poke - all the cons which Taibbi so brilliantly anatomises in his article.

Or there's what Taibbi calls the Dollar Store scam, whereby, at the height of the financial crisis, investment banks presented themselves to the Fed as commercial banks; received loans at zero interest; then used the money to buy Treasury bills that paid interest of three or four per cent. Goldman Sachs did this, and made huge profits. No wonder!  That kind of behaviour may not technically be 'fraud', but there's a strong chance it would be considered as 'racketeering'.  Because these guys are just taking the piss!

Remuneration committees are also a form of racketeering which Taibbi doesn't touch on in his piece, though I'm sure he has elsewhere.  The idea is that independent Committee Members make objective decisions about how much a CEO and other key Board members in a company should earn.  But the scam is that I sit on your remuneration committee, and vote you a salary of, let's say, £100M a year; then you sit on my remuneration committe and vote ME a salary of £99M a year. We're both happy! Then we go to Vegas, hire a suite, and buy ourselves a hundred hookers. What's not to like?

Except - these mega-salaries impoverish companies, and are an affront to natural justice.  It's just too much to pay, for the jobs these people do; and it's bad for the industry, and bad for the world.

The other trick the banks are currently playing is a form of Extortion Racket.  If we don't pay these vast bonuses, these smooth talking souls tell us, we'll lose all our best people and start making huge  losses which will cripple the economy.  And you wouldn't want THAT!

But if all the doctors in the country insisted on being paid £10M a year each - with the tacit threat that if they are paid less they'll stop working and let patients die in their thousands - no one would accept it.  It would be seen as naked blackmail, and I'm sure the government would start throwing people in jail, 'pour encourager les autres', as the French nicely put it.  The difference, though, is that doctors would never DO a thing like that that; they are a profession with a moral code, and integrity.  Bankers - as they openly brag - can't help themselves.

The danger of course is that by taking criminal action against one financial institution, there's a risk the whole house of cards may come tumbling down. But remember, there are some astonshingly arrogant and shortsighted guys at the top; and they are doing their damnedest to shake their own house of cards down.  And when it falls, it will fall big. 

My abiding fear is that if we DON'T take a step as bold and shocking as this, we'll end up with a devasting out-of-control crisis that will wreak havoc with the lives of millions and which will, eventually, lead to a broken system that is far worse than what we deserve.   We could, in short, end up losing the best of capitalism - the enterprise, the energy, the amazing new ideas, the investments in new ventures, the availablity of credit when we're broke or want to buy a house we can't afford, the whole lifestyle, frankly, of 21st century man and woman.  I'm no Marxist - I really want to keep my iPod!  But the Robber Middle-Men are getting so greedy, they risk jeopardising everything. 

Or, as Taibbi puts it: 'We're in a place we haven't been since the Depression.  Our economy is so completely fucked, the rich are running out of things to steal.'

Er - so let's stop them?

Why I Love Misfits by Danny Stack

** MINOR SPOILERS **

Five teenagers get struck by lightning and develop strange super powers, blah, blah, blah. On paper, Misfits, E4’s new supernatural series, shouldn’t work. We’ve seen this idea before. Or at least, it certainly feels like it. Anybody within a five feet radius of the spec script pile will tell you it’s groaning from the weight of similar sci-fi ideas. All of a sudden, thanks to Heroes (the American smash hit series) superheroes were thrust into vogue. The geeks hadn’t just inherited the Earth, they’d taken over the TV.

In the UK, the success of Dr Who, Torchwood and Merlin (BBC) and Primeval on ITV meant that hey, the audience must really want to see these kind of shows, right? ITV tried again with Demons, which didn’t exactly work out, but at least ITV2’s sitcom No Heroics was a playful send-up of the genre. Still, enough superheroes. Time to move on, yes? And so, when it came to E4’s Misfits, the heart didn’t exactly jump with excitement. ‘Heroes meets Skins’, apparently. Hmm, an easy pitch, sure, but it would be so easy for Misfits to misfire. Luckily, within minutes of the first episode, you just knew that the show was going to get everything right. An instant classic was born.

First, why it works. The show is created and written by Howard Overman (a TV regular: Merlin, Spooks, Hustle, amongst others). You can’t over-emphasise the importance of the writing for a show like this to succeed. Right from the very start of Misfits, you can tell it’s got a style and assurance all of its own. You think: ‘yeah, Heroes meets Skins… but better’.

The characters are a bunch of teenage ASBOs, enslaved to community service. There’s gobby Nathan, chav Kelly, sexy Alisha, athletic Curtis and meek Simon.

Episode 1 pep talk

When they get hit by lightning, they discover they’ve got supernatural traits but their powers are far from cool or useful. Sexy Alisha gets a disturbing power where anyone who touches her skin is consumed with violent lust for her. Or as meek Simon puts it when Alisha touches his neck: “I want to rip off your clothes and piss on your tits”. This dialogue edge continues in its unashamed and bold fashion, making you do a double take of ‘did they just say that?!’ on a regular basis. The gobby Nathan won’t stop talking but thankfully what he has to say is always cheeky and witty. “I’m pretty sure this breaches the terms of my ASBO” he says when burying their community officer. Fun, fun, fun.

Oh, did I say they had to kill their community officer? Self-defence, obviously, because he had turned into some kind of crazed zombie who was going to kill them all. You begin to realize that the ‘Heroes meets Skins’ pitch is totally off. This has no American overtones whatsoever. This is ‘Dead Set meets Skins in a bastard world of Heroes’.

Meek Simon

Kelly holding Nathan's, um, wank sock.

Why it works, the second. The direction. It seems if you want a show to have a distinctive look and feel, then you got to hire directors called Tom. In this instance, Tom Harper and Tom Green. They give Misfits a delicious cinematic vibe with their careful composition and grading. ‘Let’s give it a cinematic look’ is a phrase often heard in the early rounds of TV development, only for the execs to change their minds in the edit suite as they panic whether the audience will hear the dialogue when the action stays in a wide shot. Thankfully, we get no such interference here as Misfits establishes a visual style that just reeks of class and cool. These are two hip directors to watch out for. Tom Harper has the film Scouting Book for Boys in the bag and we haven’t seen the last of Tom Green, that’s for sure.

Why it works, the third. The actors. Robert Sheehan (Nathan), Lauren Socha (Kelly), Antonia Thomas (Alisha), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis), Iwan Rheon (Simon). They may be misfits, but they’re perfect. Then you have the brilliant Alex Reid out to find the truth about her missing boyfriend (the dead community officer) and guest star Amy Beth-Hayes who nearly steals the show in episode two. The main cast is where it’s at though. They’re characters we care about, and want to spend time with. Most importantly, we want to know what happens next.

Curtis and Alisha

Why it works, numero four. The setting. A community centre on the banks of a murky river. Possibly London, who knows, it could be anywhere, but what’s particularly genius about the choice of setting is that it keeps the action contained. This means that the production budget doesn’t spiral out of control, especially as it has to cough up some wonga for special effects. It’s also testament to the two Toms (directors) that they keep everything visually interesting. You never get bored of looking at what would be a very drab location in real life.

The drama and fun of the action zips by at a thoroughly enjoyable pace, and there’s effective character development for all concerned. The only Misfit misgiving is that the main arc of the series ends a bit sooner than you might expect, leaving the final episode to introduce something new and not altogether satisfying. Still, the final pay-off reveals Nathan’s super power and leaves things nicely open-ended to ensure that series two can pick up where they left off.

‘Nuff said. Stop reading. Get thee to your nearest DVD outlet and purchase Misfits immediately. Enjoy.

It's this! A delightful, fall-around-on-the-floor laughing song choice from Stuart Angell McGregor, screenwriter and blogger, who is a regular contributor to this site's TV and Movie and Book Zones. (Look out for his marvellous analysis of The X-Files, a wonderfully comprehensive and witty account of the classic show.)

Stuart Angell McGregor writes:

Years after Laika - the perky and bright-eyed soviet space dog -  barked his last and burned up a hero in earth's atmosphere, Gerry Anderson created Fireball XL5, a children's show in which goggle-eyed space puppet Colonel Steve Zodiac patrolled the stars in the eponymous super rocket.

XL5 was a fun, wobbly-stringed, space western with only one really exceptional element to call its own: 'Fireball', the theme that swung proudly over the show's closing credits. Fireball wasn't so much crooned, more sensually exuded from the pores of chocolate-voiced Australian Don Spencer.

XL5 began in '62, and ended a year later, the exact time that American astronauts Alan Sheppard and ol' John Glenn were freewheeling, for the first time, way up there, in machines held together with little more than pure hope and bubblegum.

And, ultimately, that's what holds Spencer's Fireball together, too - not that cool retro sound you can imagine spooling easy and smooth from the glossy speakers of some Kubrickian space station - but hope, the dreams of small men wanting to touch, wanting to be, something far bigger.

When I was a mere slip of a thing, my Dad would sing me to sleep with his own garbled and half-remembered version of this song. And though he could never quite carry the tune far enough, and forever fiddled with the tips of his cigarette yellow fingers, that glorious and hopeful chorus always managed to come out just right.

'My heart would be a fireball 
A fireball 
Every time I gaze into your 
Starry eyes'

Amazing, no?

Now, there's nothing left to do but pass the space martins, and dance.

I wish I was a spaceman,
the fastest guy alive
I'd fly you ‘round the universe.
In Fireball XL5.
Way out in space together.
Conquerors of the sky.
My heart would be a fireball.
A fireball.
Every time I gaze into your starry eyes.

We’d take a path to Jupiter and maybe very soon.
We’d cruise along the Milky Way and land upon the Moon.
To a wonderland of stardust.
We’ll zoom our way to mars.
My heart would be a fireball.
A fireball.
And you would be my Venus of the stars.

But though I’m not a spaceman
Famous and renowned
I’m just a guy that’s down to earth
With both feet on the ground
It’s all imagination
I’ll never reach the stars
My heart is still a fireball
A fireball
Every time I gaze into your starry eyes

Ripley was the trail-blazer; but Kara Thrace (call sign 'Starbuck') is, for many of us, the quintessential female SF action hero.  She's a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, maverick daughter-of-a-bitch who hates authority and always breaks the rules - but is, just, the best.  The bravest, the boldest, the best at piloting, the most-tattooed - what's not to love?

By the last season of Battlestar Galactica, the show which made Kara famous, the plot twists were so complex and so numerous that any actor who dared to ask 'Er, what's my motivation in this scene?' would receive a 400 page email in response.  Kara's character suffered more than any other from this plot-monster syndrome - her character arc was abandoned in favour of a narrative twist so immense it actually squelched all the drama.  But before then..Kara's on-off relationship with Lee Adama, her daughter-father relationship with Admiral Adama, and her open contempt for Colonel Tigh (who she punches in, I think, the pilot episode), all these are compelling and bewildering - in the way that real people ARE bewildering.  Kara is brave - but she's also a mixed up kid. 

So frak all detractors; Kara Thrace (played by actor Katee Sackhoff) is my SFF Hero of today. 

I've been longing to share this for some time - and here it see. Lauren Panepinto's cover design for my next book Version 43 (available in all good bookshops from October; or if you telephone me, I'll sell it to you a word at a time.) 

Lauren has written some lovely stuff about her approach to this cover, and the whole issue of an author's 'look'.  (In reality: scruffy, & ill coordinated - but I think she means the books).

Now I want to see the book on some actual shelves...

As always, Scalzi is judicious in his diatribe, so though he does a comprehensive job of demolishing the 'Basterds is SF' argument, he also acknowledges that if fans want to claim it as SF, they should feel free to do so. As he puts it, 'Hey, if you mess with the timeline, the geeks are going to come out of the woodwork and start chanting, "One of us! One of us!" I wouldn't suggest that scifi fans shouldn't feel as if Basterds fits into their genre. Take it! Love it! And, if it wins the Best Picture feel free to claim it as yours.'

I've written a rebuttal to Scalzi's comments in my Comment to his blog; but I'm still left feeling there are big issues here to be thrashed out.  It takes us into the murky waters of genre theory. And it involves asking some major questions: What is genre? What is SF? What is the difference between SF and fantasy?  Millions of words have been expended on answers to these questions and yet, no one seems to agree.

And at some level, that fact kind of annoys me.   Healthy disagreement is, well, healthy; but this level of disagreement reeks of mental chaos. And as someone who loves science, and the rigour and logic of scientific methodology, it irks me; because if scientists were this 'open-minded' about every topic under the sun, there would be no science.  (To put it another way: if arts graduates had invented the space rocket, it would look exceedingly pretty, but it wouldn't fly.)

So let me go through Scalzi's points one by one; and then I'm going to put my head on the chopping block and offer my own attempted answers to all those big questions. 

Scalzi argues that Basterds isn't SF because:

'1) It wasn't marketed as SF.'

'2) The science fictional aspects of the story are not necessarily essential to it.'

'3) It's kinda more like fantasy than SF anyway.'

'4) If Inglourious Basterds is science fiction, so are most historical movies.'

For those new to this debate, who haven't seen the movie, the point to bear in mind is: Tarantino's film is set in World War II, and tells a fictional but plausible story about a team of US guerrillas (the 'Basterds') operating in Hitler's Germany; but certain events that take place in the movie most emphatically DID NOT happen in real life. In other words, it's an alternate history drama; and alt-history is a recognised sub-genre of science fiction.

Okay.

Scalzi's point 1) is a good one. It's generally acknowledged that 'genre' is something that is in part created by marketing.  The  crime genre wouldn't be as vividly defined as it is if the publishers didn't market their tales of criminal activity under the banner of Crime Fiction. There are Crime bookshelves in bookshops; specialist Crime awards, etc etc.  And it's a fact that a Margaret Attwood novel with 'science fictional' elements will be treated as a literary novel; but a Philip Palmer or a John Scalzi with SF elements will be sold, marketed, and branded as 'SF'.

But that's not good enough.  Genre is more than a marketing tool; it's a vivid, real thing, a slippery but true concept that adds value to the fiction we read, and the movies we see.  Genre is like language; you can't 'explain' it, but you can learn to understand it. 

To back up that opinion, I will call upon my second favourite Professor (after the ineffable Professor Nicole Peeler - hi Nicole!) namely Professor Rick Altman, of the University of Iowa, whose book Film/Genre is a definitive and brilliant analysis of what genre is, and how it works, and how it changes depending on the way it is perceived.

In Altman's film theory jargon, 'Genres are most commonly taken to come into being when a body of texts shares a sufficient number of semantic and syntactic elements. This production-driven definition needs to be matched with a reception-driven definition recognizing that genres do not exist until they become necessary to a lateral communication process, that is until they serve a constellated community.'

 Ouch. That was ugly! Sorry to inflict the jargon on you - but bear  in mind, this is a specialist academic book and these guys feel the need to talk that way. Elsewhere in the book, however, Altman is more readable; and the reason I think THIS GUY KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT is because he actually does research.  He uses a literary version of the scientific method; he studies a great deal of data, he finds the patterns that are hidden there, and thus draws his conclusions from evidence, not out of his own arse. 

And much of the data Altman assesses is to do with actual movies produced by actual movie studios.  He's sifted through the files of  most of the major studios to find out how THEY define genres.  And the conclusions are startling.  The genre of 'musical' for instance, didn't actually exist in the early days of movies.  Instead, it was used as an adjective, modifying nouns like comedy, romance, or melodrama.  Here's an abbreviated version of a list of movies of the 20s and 30s and the genre descriptions that were attached to them in their publicity material:

Weary River - epic

The Broadway Melody - all talking, all singing, all dancing dramatic sensation.

The Vagabond Lover - romantic musical comedy

Devil May Care - romance punctured with subtle comedy.

The Tender Foot - a Merry Western Comedy full of Laughs and Ginger.

The Love Parade - light opera.

The Rogue's Song - operetta.

Roadhouse Nights - melodrama  and button-busting comedy

College Love - 100% talking, singing, college picture.

There are two points here; The first is that we wouldn't now necessarily define the genres of those films according to the way they were marketed THEN.  So Scalzi's Point 1) falls off a cliff.

Point 2) is that genre is clearly evolutionary.  The very words we use to describe genre can change over time; and as far as movies are concerned, new genres are born all the time.  Altman is particularly brilliant about analysing this; he points out that Hollywood studios love to copy their own hits, and the hits of others. So one successful movie about gladiators (a 'history drama') will spawn a dozen more movies about gladiators (creating the 'gladiator movie genre'.)  In the same way, the film Rififi is a brilliant movie about a gang of low lives staging a heist; and it's now a template for the entire 'heist movie genre'.

In the UK film industry, this 'genre born out of coypcatting' tendency is most clearly examplifed by the movie The Full Monty. It was a hugely successful movie; so for years UK producers have tried to produce other movies that are 'like' The Full Monty - ie ensemble comedies with quirky loveable British characters and rude moments based on an unlikely but true story. Now I know that doesn't sound like a genre - but it is!  My friend Geoff Deane wrote one of the most successful of the Full Monty copycat movies - Kinky Boots, an ensemble comedy with quirky loveable British characters and rude moments based on an unlikely but true story. (The inspiration for the movie was a documentary about a guy up North who owned a shoe factory and started making fetish footwear.)  I'm not decrying the movie by saying it's a copycat picture, nor I am in any way undervaluing the fabulous job Geoff did on the script. But that was always the deal - Geoff was told from the start that the producers wanted a 'Full  Monty type hit' and they got one.

Thus are genres born...

That's a long rebuttal to Scalzi's point 1).  But my underlying intent here is to suggest that you can't define genre by what it says on the poster.  Any serious film scholar has to have a beady eye for what the genre really is, according to the actual material in the movie.

Point 2) is, I'm sorry, a dubious argument. The ending of the film is great, and it depends TOTALLY on this alt-history twist. Take that away, and the story collapses,  and becomes a less good movie. So yes, it IS essential to the movie.  A similar argument applies to Ken MacLeod's splendid The Execution Channel, much of which takes place in a world that is very like our contemporary world, but which has a dazzling SF twist in the closing chapters.  If Ken had written a different ending, his publishers might have queried whether this was 'really' SF; but he didn't! He knew all along the coup de roman he was going to pull off, and he pulled it off.

Point 3) is a tricky one.  Does alt-history have to have a scientific explanation to be SF? Does The Man in the High Castle have such an explanation? Does The Yiddish Policeman's Union have such an explanation? Okay in Star Trek stories there were often tales that take place in alternate histories that depend on the Enterprise passing through a black hole, or some such.  But alternate history stories to my mind work best if they're just presented 'as if'. 

So does that make them fantasy, or SF? Strictly speaking, the answer should probably be neither: Alternate History could and maybe should be treated as a separate genre. But because it's a subgenre that evolved out of SF, it kind of fits there.  And  of  course 'science fiction' is a term that by no means covers the full range of possibilities of the genre it describes.  It drives me mad  when people say: '1984 can't be an SF novel because it has no science' (though in fact it does.)  For SF is about more than just science! It's about speculation, and extrapolation - hence the attempt by some writers to rename the entire genre as 'speculative fiction'.

But this gets to be angels dancing on pins stuff.  Alternate History IS Science Fiction, in my view, because that's the genre that spawned it. It can also be fantasy (as in Naomi Novik's fantasy series about the dragon Temeraire that fights in seabattles in Napoleonic times.)

Scalzi's Point 4) is that lots of historical movies get the history wrong; so can't they be classed as SF too? The answer; no they can't.  That's just, sorry, dumb-ass sophistry.  All drama relies on fictionalising, even the historical stuff!  And when in doubt, print the legend; that's the golden principle of storytelling.  John - it's just not the same thing!

This leaves one final question; does this actually matter? I mean, really?  I don't think it matters hugely to Scalzi, to be honest. He's just having fun, sounding off, teasing geeks  like me.  Scalzi is a guy I admire hugely; he's a fine writer, and a master polemicist, who does one of these columns every week and is a master of arguing the contrary point just to get everyone talking.  So why, let's be blunt about this, am I getting so genuinely hot under the collar?

The answer is: for me it DOES matter.  It matters because Inglourious Basterds is a fine film, and a valuable film. Yet though it's had commercial success and Oscar nominations, it was pissed upon by all the critics I read, who mocked its excessive violence (which is in fact essential to its genre!) and Tarantino's woeful ignorance of history.

But Tarantino knows his history! And he's deliberately falsifying it, as part of his artistic strategy of 'genre-mashing', and playing games with the audience.  So though I'd argue it's technically correct to class this as an 'SF movie', it's equally correct to call it a war movie, and an action movie, and a B-movie hommage.  It's all those things,  all at the same time.  That's the game Tarantino plays; he makes movies for a sophisticated audience who know genre, and love genre, and enjoy the rollercoaster ride experience of totally changing genre a reel before the end.

Genre is a label but it's not a straitjacket; it's a creative tool, that offers a direct route to the audience's imagination via their own insights and knowledge and expectations of 'this kind' of film.  Ultimately, many of Tarantino's films (excluding Jackie Brown which plays a different game) constitute a genre of their own - the postmodern, genre-hopping, genre-mashing 'Tarantino movie' genre.

And smarter critics, steeped in the traditions and tropes of speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy fiction, would have spotted all that, and not written such dumb reviews. 

Inglourious Basterds is in my view, a  fine and startling piece of work.  Like Hitchock's Psycho - which also changes genres in mid-movie - it shocks by doing the truly unexpected just when you least expect anything  so unexpected to occur....

Graham Joyce betraying his father with a superglue story.

Nicole Peeler revealing her musical taste to be wonderfully down and dirty.

My moodboard for Debatable Space, which a few readers of this blog have been glancing at recently.

John Scalzi with news of the Nebula Award nominations, which include him.

Whew. Serious stuff. If you need to lighten up - go down an item and check out Stuart's song choice.

(For last week's feature - go left across this page to Categories and click Paintings of the Week. It's there!)

The artist William Blake was also, in his lifetime, considered to be mad. He had visions of angels and other strange creatures all his life, and held heretical views about religion that shocked his contemporaries; though to my mind many of Blake's religious ideas are no madder than the non-heretical versions.

Blake features in Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell, where he is seen having one of his visions just as - well, I shan't give away the story.

William Wordsworth wrote of Blake: 'There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.'

Blake was a poet (he wrotes the verses 'And did these feet in ancient time' which are now immortalised in the anthem Jersusalem), draughtsman, painter and book illustrator. His techniques for book illustration were revolutionary at the time - blending words and images on a single plate. And many of his greatest images are illustrations of the Book of Job and other Biblical texts.

Lose yourself for a while in a madness that is richer than most sanities:

Beatrice Addressing Dante (illustration for Dante's Inferno)

Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion

Nebuchadnezzar

Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun

Plate 7 of the Book of Urizen (a deity invented by Blake)

Plate 9 of the Book of Urizen

The Ancient of Days

Check out what Scalzi says here.  If my comment gets through the moderation process (!) it should appear soon.

Yes, I know that sounds crazily over the top...! The context is that my mother has been President of this choir for twenty or so years, and all the choristers are her friends. So the concert was their way of marking the occasion, and honouring her contribution to the choir's work. And organising the event has been my 'hobby' (hollow laugh!) for the last few months.

The choir was superb; they sang in a beautiful local church, St Paul's, to an audience of 200+ people, accompanied by a succession of gifted musicians on the piano, with solo spots from a young and talented guest artiste, Catrin Sian Harris. I felt, as always, so ashamed to be unable to sing in tune outside the bathroom (and inside the bathroom, the tiles have strong views about my vocal accuracy.)

Afterwards we held a reception in a local hotel where the choir performed their 'afterglow' routine - a non-stop medley of songs.

A further highlight came when a friend of my mother's - Evelyn White, formerly a soloist with the choir - did a fantastic version of an Ivor Novello song. Evelyn worked in an office in the steel works for most of her career, but has had an amazing career as a solo singer on an amateur basis, and has WAY enough talent to have sung professionally...and I was thrilled to hear that her voice is as strong as ever. Then former Welsh rugby international John Collins -a friend of my mother and step-father, and also a close friend of my father - was invited to come up and tinkle the ivories. I was somewhat alarmed at this prospect - for I'd been speaking to John a few minutes previously, and after a day watching the rugby he was EXTREMELY pissed - but he played, with astonishing virtuosity and expression, a wonderful version of Georgia on My Mind. It was, in my view, good enough to get him a spot at Ronnie Scott's.

This is the astonishing thing about this world of Welsh culture from which I hail - the wealth of musical talent is just awesome.

Except, of course, for me!

The following day I attended a Valentine's Day concert in Oxford, where I went to University (as did Mike Carey - it's clearly a breeding ground for deranged writers.) I spent a while in my old college and walking the streets of the city, awash in memories, most of them involving, er, alcohol or books.

Now that the choir have sung, and the birthday is over, it's business as usual for me. I'm about to start writing my art crime drama for the radio, so I have a mountain of books on art to read. And I've well into my latest SF absurdity - Hell Ship. Sadly, though, writing duties mean I haven't had time to go to the Berlin Film Festival - which I much prefer to Cannes, except for the weather.

I'm now, very slowly, gearing up for Odyssey at Easter, which will be my next major social occasion. Until then - I'm going back to being a sedentary, anti-social writer for a while....

Other stuff: I read a great book in this period - Already Dead by Charlie Huston, a brilliant noir vampire novel. And I've just started Jesse Bullington's astonishing Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart. And I saw and really enjoyed the new version of The Wolfman, with Port Talbot boy Anthony Hopkins as the evil dad. (He is utterly terrifyng.)

The SFF Song of the Week slot has been enlivened by choices from Brian Ruckley (this week) and Paul Raven last week. And I've just had a new and spiffing song choice from Robert Grant, of Sci Fi London - so watch this space!

And today's SFF Song of the Week is from Brian - who writes compelling heroic epic fantasy among other things, and who sets his books in a godless universe so bleak and violent that's a surprise to find what a pleasant man he really is. Look out for his first three books - Winterbirth, Bloodheir, and Fall of Thanes.

Brian Ruckley writes:

Here’s some musical fantasy from a creator who was himself a unique, larger than life, vaguely numinous presence in the last quarter of the 20th century: Freddie Mercury. Lots of Queen’s songs have a slightly science fictional or fantastical vibe – elaborate concoctions fuelled by a shifting, vivid, sometimes surreal imagination – but The Seven Seas of Rhye is a rather different beast.

This is explicitly epic, secondary world fantasy fiction done as a brief, grandiose rock song. Rhye and its seas existed, but only in the minds of Freddie Mercury and his sister, who dreamed it up together when they were children. Others might settle for imaginary friends; they invented a whole world, and stories to inhabit it. Rhye is the setting for several early Queen songs (including the brilliantly titled Ogre Battle, which sounds like it ought to be a D&D soundtrack), but The Seven Seas of Rhye is the (modest) hit that immortalized it. And with lyrics like these:

Be gone with you, you shod and shady senators
Give out the good, leave out the bad evil cries
I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours
And with a smile I'll take you to the seven seas of Rhye

Doesn’t it sound as though there’s a hell of a book in there somewhere?

Fear me you lords and lady preachers
I descend upon your Earth from the skies
I command your very souls you unbelievers
Bring before me what is mine, the seven seas of Rhye

Can you hear me you peers and privy counsellors
I stand before you naked to the eyes
I will destroy any man who dares abuse my trust
I swear that you'll be mine, the seven seas of Rhye

Sister, I live and lie for you
Mister, do and I'll die
You are mine, I possess you, I belong to you forever

Storm the master-marathon, I'll fly through
By flash and thunder-fire I'll survive, I'll survive, I'll survive I'll survive, I'll survive
Then I'll defy the laws of nature and come out alive
Then I’ll get you

Be gone with you, you shod and shady senators
Give out the good, leave out the bad evil cries
I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours
And with a smile I'll take you to the seven seas of Rhye

But I guess you already knew that, huh?

FOR THE REST OF THIS GUEST BLOG ON THE ORBIT WEBSITE, CLICK HERE.

This is a night launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.  Amazing!

An extra treat: this is from a series called 'Alien Landscapes on Earth'. The copyright belongs to Martin Rietze, and you can see it if you click

HERE

Art brut is a concept coined by the French artist Jean Dubuffet, and is sometimes called 'naive art' or 'outsider art'. It's used about artists who are untrained, sometimes uneducated; artists who don't belong to the mainstream of art but have access to a rare creative vision.

Dubuffet collected many examples of art brut; and he was particularly interested in art created by inmates of psychiatric hospitals. 'Mad art', if I can be so politically incorrect.

And that's where Wolfi comes in.  He was physically and sexually abused as a child and spent his childhood in a variety of foster homes. As an adult, he was convicted of sexual molestation, and was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland; and spent his entire life behind bars. He was psychotic, and violent, suffered hallucinations; and he created some amazing pieces.

Wolfi reminds me eerily of the Joker in Arkham Asylum; deranged, and evil, but talented.

General View of the Island

Irren Anstalt Band Hain

As a climate change agnostic – and I suspect most of us are, especially now, and more especially after the Guardian series this week – I've been bothered by two aspects of the argument. The first is the religious overtone. Humankind has always wanted to blame its own behaviour for natural events, whether Noah's flood, plagues of frogs, or volcanos which demonstrate that the gods are angry.

Three years ago a British bishop announced that gay marriage had caused our floods. I've often wondered whether global warming is another example of this, an irrational belief designed for a rationalist world.

In hs first paragraph Hoggart is referring of course to the Climategate 'scandal' concerning the British scientists who falsified data and deleted emails to protect their dubious views on global warming.  Thus, the 'greatest scientific fraud in this history of mankind has been exposed!

Except, of course, if you read enough articles, it's clear that nothing of the kind occurred.  A group of scientists at the University of East Anglia reacted to what they thought were idiotic attempts to muck up their working day with childlike rebellious gusto; but frankly, if someone used the Freedom of Information Act to get access to MY emails I would be similiarly enraged. (No scientific papers were censored; no scientific data, so far as I know, was wilfully falsified.)  

But the damage is done; the mud sticks; and now liberal commentators like Hoggarts are 'agnostic' about climate change.

This isn't an isolated opinion; another recent press report says that many Tory MPs in the UK are also 'sceptical' about climate change. 

And if you want to go deeper into the science, here's an interesting article setting out the case for and against climate change  as an actual phenomenon.

Here's my own particular take on the subject: Simon Hoggart walks with evil.

I haven't, I should stress, ever met the man (though I once almost bumped in to him at a BBC Radio party);  but I know, from his columns, that he's a sweet loveable cove who is devoted to his family, has a delightful sense of humour,  and often talks a good deal of sense. 

So I'm not saying he IS evil.  I'm sure he's a really nice man! Nor am I crazed enough to believe that anyone who disagrees with me is wicked - far from it.  I'm wrong far more often than my right; I love my opinions because they are my own, but I would never make a claim to be infallible.

But what is evil here is the wilful telling of lies.  There are some who argue on the topic of climate change in a reasoned and scientific fashion, and whose views don't exactly and in every respect tally with the consensus/mainstream. And that's normal.   But anyone who argues that there's no such thing as global pollution is clearly talking nonsense.  And anyone who argues that global pollution has and can have no effect on the biosphere is totally straining credulity. 

And anyone who then goes on to argue that there is a global conspiracy of scientists to invent a phenomenon that does not exist is on a moral par with those that argue that 9/11 was caused by a global conspiracy of Jews.  It's just off the scale lunacy; but it's out there, as an opinion, and an undercurrent.  It's the fuel of the anti global warming campaign.  And it's an opinion that denies and repudiates the notion that science has any authority in this - and by extension in any - sphere.

This is evil. Lies are evil. Sophistry is evil. Saying something is so when you know it is not so is evil.  And pandering to the myth - by which I mean ******* falsehoold - that global warming is a lie cooked up by evil scientists is evil. Because that ludicrous opinion is clearly not a random lie; it's a lie that suits the interests of the powerful interest groups I ranted at in the Tuesday blog on the BBGAE

A global conspiracy of scientists? Get real, they're not that smart.  A global conspiracy of the rich elite whose privilege  depends on the football pitch sloping in their favour?  Yeah, well, it's happened before, it'll happen again, and it's a fair bet it's happening now.

And that's why so many scientists are jittery and angry and - at times - irrational.  Not in their work, so far as I know, but certainly in their emails.  (See below.)  Because they GET it - this isn't the usual process of scientific debate. It's a war. 

It's the war between aspiring-to-the-truth and downright lies; a battle , as I say, between Good and Evil.  And Hoggart, bless him, doesn't get it at all.

There's  a saying that it is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.  

And THAT'S what Hoggart is doing - he's doing nothing, and he should stop it forthwith.

He calls himself a 'climate change agnostic'.  But that's like saying you're an electromagnetism agnostic; it's a nonsensical thing to say!

The fact is, I don't really understand the science that underlies the scientific consensus that global warming is taking place at a dangerous level, as a consequence of human pollution. If I spent a couple of months reading up on it, I'd have a pretty good knowledge of the issues; but as a non-scientist, there would still be major gaps in my understanding.   So on this matter, as on so many other matters (hel-lo? how does my television work?) I have to take it on faith that scientists know what they're talking about.

I don't understand general relativity either - not really, not in detailed mathematical detail. I also don't entirely grasp quantum mechanics, though for a layperson, my reading in this area is fairly extensive.  But I do understand scientific method, and the nature of scientific theories. And I know that for a 'consensus' to exist, a lot of very smart scientists must be very sure of their ground. That doesn't mean global warming is a FACT, or is 100% certain. It's a theory. The theory may be superseded by a better theory. Or the Earth's biosphere may behave in ways that scientists don't expect and can't predict.  It may be that the warming of the Earth will cause cryogenically frozen aliens in the Earth's crust to wake up and conquer us - ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.  But some things are more likely than others.

If there is a scientific consensus on this matter, and there is, we have to heed it.  We can't expect to understand it - not to the degree of sophisticated understanding that world authorities in the field possess - but we have to believe that a huge number of people who know what they are talking about,  using a system of peer review that involves a constant intellectual challenging of the theories and the data, are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that global warming is happening and is a threat to all of us.  And the expertise of these experts, and the integrity of their time-hallowed scientific approach, has to be respected.

The trouble is, climate change science isn't as scarily hard as quantum physics; so there are plenty of bungling amateurs out there who think they know better.  They don't!  They are just bungling amateurs. (Former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson is one such bungler - my God, this man used to run our ECONOMY.) 

So that's why I strongly take exception to Hoggart's casually uttered remarks.  He's the ultimate arts graduate, who is used to being able to judge the merits of an argument on the basis of common sense, and by employing the guiding principle of 'If X argues one thing strongly, and Y argues the opposite equally strongly, then the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.'

But the truth is NOT somewhere in the middle.  The truth is the truth, and it has to found, and searched for; but in this debate, there are people (scientists) who wants to find the truth and other people (rightly and rudely called the climate change 'deniers' ) who claim to know The Truth regardless of the scientific consensus.  These 'deniers' are Flat Earthers, they are Creationists; they should not be humoured or indulged.  They may - like Hoggart - be nice people, but they fellow travel with Evil.

Lies are Evil; so shame on you Simon for coming up with such lie-indulging claptrap.

Remember: like all scientific theories, the 'climate change hypothesis' is falsifiable.  And it is also, because it's a theory about a system full of variables (the biosphere) possible that this theory is correct in theory, but its predictions are totally wrong.

Or it could be the world goes to hell; and is that a risk you would be willing to take? I wouldn't; only fools would ignore such a clear and present threat to the wellbeing of our planet, and of our children.

Evil. There's a lot of it about. It's like dog shit; it doesn't matter how nice you are, you can still tread in it.

So my advice is: if you DO tread in dog shit, don't believe the people who assure you - passionately and plausibly - that shit does not smell.

 'Cause it does.

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Futurismic - near-future science fiction webzine
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Dreaded Press - rock music reviews webzine
Publicist and PR officer for PS Publishing - the UK's foremost boutique genre publisher

Paul clearly has several doppelgangers to get all that done, and one of them wrote this:

Paul Raven writes:

Heavy rock and science fiction have a relationship that goes way back, long before I was even born... though, truth be told, both fields of endeavour had a habit of showing one another in the worst possible light. Or maybe that's just hindsight, my own generational lenses distorting what went before like a fun-house mirror, making serious statements into figures of fun through the heat-haze of time?

But I digress... I have a tendency to ramble, you see. Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of sprawling epic music? Sure, I like a short sharp blast of punk energy or heavy metal power as much as the next man, but given the choice I'll always pick the long tunes with the slow build – the tunes with dynamics, atmosphere, and a certain mind-expanding hugeness. Music with space, in other words, whether that space be inner or outer (or both). Few bands fit the bill quite as well as Mancunian three-piece Amplifier, whose lyrics often reflect the science fictional feel of their music.

And no song by Amplifier fits the bill better than “UFOs”. Like most of their songs, “UFOs” has no distinct narrative or story, but the lyrics and the music combined do something that very few musicians have ever managed for me – they evoke sensawunda. Remember that first addictive experience with science fiction when you were young? That first time you put down a book with the feeling that you'd had your head expanded to more ably contain the ideas and vistas it handed you? That first time you realised how small a thing you really are, in a universe so inconceivably immense? That's sensawunda, at least by my definition, and no matter how many times I listen to “UFOs” I get that same feeling of inner expansion, as the hairs on the back of my neck stand up like missiles preparing to launch, and my heart skips erratic like an irregular quasar thumping out its mysterious message from a million million million years in the past.

But enough of my chatter – let's let the band do the talking. Two things to note: firstly, “UFOs” is not a pop song, or even a 'regular' rock song in format. There is no instant hook, no verse-chorus-verse-bridge-verse-chorus-coda structure. It's a slow builder, a journey, a trip – so give it time to grow. The pay-off is worth it, I promise you.

Secondly, there's no 'proper' video – Amplifier are too small a band to have videos for their more obscure album tracks – but the beauty of their style is that you can (and should) provide your own, projecting what you hear onto the deep black screen of your own closed eyelids. So set aside eight minutes, crank the volume as loud as you can without distressing your neighbours, press play, and then sit back with your eyes closed. “We'll all be waiting for you here.”

Oh, have you heard the news from outer space?
It seems that somewhere in the ancient dunes
of silver moons, like giant spoons lie dusty tombs
of Martian men in U-boat pens...
and they will come to kill us all.

'Cause our plastic factories
and our catastrophic theories

are all we have / we live our lives from paper bags, and
I know better than you know -
I'll kill you 'cause you drive too slow!
Aggressive instincts will do us in, yeah...
just give us the chance for us to prove it ourselves.

(Don't you know that all machines sink?

Do you know they sing as they think?

Although their bodies are electric...

Don't you know that all machines think?)

So we laid back and we watched space revolve
the bodies of astronauts long cold
blinking like lonely satellites...
Where we left vapour trails through cotton skies -
come on, let's scratch the heavens one last time!
'Cause we're all sinking in the sunshine
and though you'd love to stay,
well, you said you must be on your way
to where the rainbows and UFOs
fall ten at a time
in a shower of glitter and gold...

… we'll all be waiting for you here.

Note from Phil: Paul suggested closing your eyes, but I like to listen to the track while looking at this:

Wednesday, a lovely treat: SFF SONG OF THE WEEK FROM BLOGGER & CRITIC PAUL RAVEN.

NOW: a Philip Palmer guest blog on myth on the luscious website of urban fantasy writer Nicole Peeler.

This sounds melodramatic; but it's TRUE.

I don't mean global warming, though that's part of it. I don't mean the war in Iraq, though that's a major part of it. I don't at all mean the threat from terrorism - because I honestly believe that for all the flaws of our Western society, Al Qaeda are a bunch of shallow charlatans who have no worthy cause to promote.  They're our enemies; but we're not the bad guys in that particular conflict.

But we are the bad guys so much of the time.  Or rather, the countries in which we live are implicated in such terrible, wicked, dishonest stuff,  and there's nothing we can do to stop it. 

It's all lies; that's the heart of my argument.  We're lied to, all the time.  And duped, and deceived, and defrauded. 

Now I sound like a lunatic.  A conspiracy theorist. Worst still, I sound like a Marxist.

When I was at University I knew a lot of Marxists. I had tutorials with a legendary Marxist, Terry Eagleton, a witty, funny guy who used to play the Rolling Stones in tutorials, instead of teaching us.  I liked him hugely, and I liked my fellow students in that module - Marxist to a man!  But I never bought in to that whole conspiracy theory capitalism-is-evil way of seeing the world.

Sigh. Now I do.  I'm still not a Marxist.  But look at the stuff that's happening out there!  We all know the stories, we all rage and rant as the bankers give themselves more vast bonuses, as entire countries are looted, and as profitable companies are subjected to leveraged takeovers (meaning, they're bought with debt, and so then get saddled with that debt, and hence become less profitable, and hence have to employ fewer people.)  We know about profiteering in Iraq, led by US companies like Halliburton.  We know about greedy ******** like Fred Goodwin, who feathered his own nest as his company teetered on the verge of catastrophic collapse.  

 And I was shocked to see John McCain on the TV news accusing Barrack Obama of 'Business as Usual'  as if he'd caught the President out in some major fraud.  Obama is attempting to reform health care,  improve the lives of Americans, end corporate fraud, and extricate the American nation from a ghastly expansionist war; it's the Republicans who stand for Business as Usual. But the pork-barrel politicans have learned a new trick; accuse your enemies of your own sins.  It sounds ridiculous; but it works!

This is what I mean by Good versus Evil.  We're fighting our own political systems, our own leaders; and the entire system is rigged so that people who do not create wealth, and serve no useful function, cream off all the cream. 

It shouldn't be like this.  We're supposed to live in a liberal venture capitalist democracy, in which there's a balance between state control and bold private enterprise.   I don't want to live in a Marxist country.  When Stalin collectivised agriculture in Russian in the late 1920s, early 1930s, it's estimated that between four and ten million peasants died of starvation - that shows the peril of excessive state control.

But the idea in our Western culture is meant to be that entrepreneurs who take risks - and who work long hours, under the constant threat of bankruptcy to make their business work - can become very rich indeed when things go well.  The pay-off is in proportion to the risk.  I'm happy with that; it takes risk-taking brave people to create anything new, and they should be rewarded for their courage, and cleverness. 

But now we live in the period of 'heads I win, tails the government bails me out' economics.   That's wrong - it's evil. Not as evil as Stalin, but evil nonetheless.  Health care companies in America whipped up a storm of protest against a moderate reform that would help millions of Americans enjoy better health, and more stable lives; that's evil.  Sarah Palin lied by saying that Obama wanted to establish death panels - evil. 

When I was growing up, I read history books about times of great evil and thanked my lucky stars that I was living in such a peace-loving, liberal period in history. But that's changed; or maybe it hasn't changed, maybe I was just too dumb to spot the lies back then.

How can you fight this kind of evil? The kind that depends on lies, sophistry, distortions, and acts of fraud that don't appear to be against the law? I only know one way, which is to keep snarling.

But that's not much of a solution.  The solution is to change the system; make it fairer; punish the bad guys when they break the law, or even when they break the rules. 

All my science fiction novels feature baroquely exaggerated battles between good and evil, often involving acts of genocide and brutal mass murder.  Now things in our world really aren't as bad as that.   But the stories in my books are a metaphor for our actual lives; there are bad guys, and they are winning.

So far...

John Scalzi on Why Publishing Will Not Go Away Anytime Soon.  (Brilliant, funny, coruscating.)

Nicole Peeler on why Urban Fantasy matters so much.  (A Scalzi connection here - this was a Big Idea on Scalzi's site.)

A great roundup of the Amazon scandal from Lilith Saintcrow, with her own cogent thoughts.

Plus today's blog from Lili; this is searingly honest and thought-provoking.

And, shameless as ever, here's a guest blog I wrote for the Orbit site.

Mercury, in colour

Image courtesy of NASA, and the Messenger spacecraft

Hopper painted landscapes and seascapes, but his iconic pieces are cityscapes:  interior and exterior images of the places where we dwell.

Imagine a jazz saxophone in the background, and taste that cherry pie:

Night Hawks

Chop Suey

Hotel Room

Summer Interior

House by the Railroad: This was the inspiration for the house in Psycho.

This week is the week I DID see The Road.

AARRGHH!

I'm sorry! it's a really fine film, I'm sure it is. It's had great reviews. The cast are great. It's beautifully shot. It's based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, who wrote No Country for Old Men, which I adored when the Coen Brothers made it as a movie. 

But for me, movies like The Road don't tell a story; they wallow a story.  The world is shit - wallow! Men can't look after their sons properly - wallow! Being miserable is really miserable - wallow!

My hatred of the film was so intense I didn't stay to the end. Does that mean I'm not entitled to sneer at it? Does it hell!

Sneer! Sneer! Sneer!

I lost the will to live when the pretty Mom gave up and walked away from her son, into the cold night, to die. Um,  stick around Mom, your kid needs you! But I knew she was doing that to allow the manly man with the ridiculous beard to try and fail to look after his boyish son (known as 'the boy'). Wallow!

This is film as posh literature; it's story with the juice and heart and passion and suspense and humour and sexiness  drained out of it.  Mad Max is my idea of an apocalypse movie; The Road is just a wallow.

My mood of despair was heightened by the fact I saw this film as the second in a double bill of apocalypse movies. The first was The Book of Eli, in which Denzel Washington is fantastic, but where the cameraman ran out of coloured film (it's grey grey grey!) and the crux of the story is that everyone desperately wants and will kill to possess a King James Bible. Why?  There must be other Bibles left; and if the world has ended, there are much better books to own.  Like, The Great Big Book of which Plants Not to Eat Because They'll Kill You.

AARRGH!!!!

This is not a film critique; it is a rant.  I have ranted. Enough. Calm now.

And what do you think about that business with Amazon!!!!!!

That was the buzz story of the week, and I ranted as much as the next writer. The issue is not how much e-books should sell for; the issue is that Amazon stopping selling books by writers who need the income from those books to feed their kids. Or if they don't have kids, to spend on porn or booze or wild parties, or whatever it is single people spend their money on. 

That's my second rant of this blog: Mellow, Palmer, Mellow!

As a treat, I rented the box set of the TV series Fringe, which I was assured is a brilliant piece of work about paranormal stuff. Right up my street, something to fill my days now that I'm up to date on Supernatural.

Sigh.  Am I missing something? I thought it was awful; an X-Files rip off  with some of the most ridiculously bogus exposition I've ever heard. The high concept is that a looney called Walter (rescued from a mental institution by our female FBI hero) has single-handedly almost invented many many monstrous devices, which nastier people than he have perfected. So every time he sees an amazing thing - like the man who acts as his own power grid - Walter explains how he worked on an top-secret and evil experiment to create this very thing, all those years ago. Oh, and Walter has some form of dementia, and much hilarity is gleaned from that.

All in all it's just -

Sorry, I lack the energy to even rant on this.

And yet, rants aside, this was an adorable week for me.  I wrote tons, I made new friends on that wondrous internet device, and I had the joy of hosting Lilith Saintcrow's SFF Song of the Week, which had me hooting with laughter.  I've seen family, friends, and I read a wondrous graphic novel - Switchblade Honey by that genius Warren Ellis, of whom, more will be said on this very site in the near future.  I wrote a blog for Orbit with the sweetly talented Robert Jackson Bennett, whose book Mr. Shivers is fine literature AND tells a story. And I was given the recording dates and a delivery deadline for my radio drama Art of Deception; and for writers, deadlines are like heroin.  SUCH a rush of energy. 

But in future, I will follow my instincts: life's too short to watch soul-less movies.

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to find Miss Buffy Summers on my list of SFF Heroes. The heroine of Joss Whedon's seven series epic TV show has everything you'd expect in a hero - a smart mouth, a maverick attitude, a proficiency for kicking ass, and a total disrespect for authority. But she's also a generous friend, emotionally vulnerable, and keeps falling love with unsuitable guys (check the teeth first, girl!) She's also cute and dinky which, admittedly, can't be said of more traditional heroes - like Conan. (See below.) But that all adds to her appeal; huge physical strength in a small girl body.

In the course of seven series, Buffy Summers grows up, as does Sarah Michelle Gellar; it's an amazing journey to watch, and experience.

And to get you in the mood, let's start with the theme tune for the show, played by rock band Nerf Herder.

Today's SFF Hero feature is dedicated to Lilith Saintcrow, who was blogjay on this site yesterday and chose the wonderful Banned in Argo by Leslie Fish.  (See below, or click SFF Song of the Week to the left or click here. Come on, come on, I can't make it any easier - find it!)

When writing the intro for her song choice, Lilith sent me an email telling me of her love for the soundtrack of Conan the Barbarian by the genius composer Basil Poledouris  And this reminded me how much I love Arnie's movie of the classic Robert E. Howard tales.  Never has Schwarzenegger been so muscly, so almost naked, and so utterly right for the role.  (Well, except for his Terrminator role.)  It's a smart, exciting, morally challenging movie, directed by John Milius who co-wrote it with  Oliver Stone; and it defines Conan as the quintessential fantasy hero.

If you want to hear a bit of the soundtrack and see the trailer, click on the arrow below. Some still images follow.

Also, every weekday for the next 2 weeks, my collection of SFF HEROES.  Every day a different hero, male and female, who we can rely upon to save the world/universe from dark and nasty forces.

This week we've had:

Wolverine

Ripley

Clark Kent

Conan the Barbarian

and, today, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Other goodies: Astronomy Photo of the Week,    Paintings of the Week, and, er, that's it.

And in the universe outside Debatable Spaces: I've been having a fascinating dialogue with Robert Jackson Bennett, author of the fascinating Mr. Shivers; and those sneaky devils at Orbit have intercepted our emails and put them on line.

To read the Palmer-Bennett dialogues click here for what I said, and here for Robert's response.

Lilith Saintcrow writes:

I could sing Leslie Fish songs before I even know who Leslie Fish was. In those benighted days, while the Internet was in its dialup infancy and in any case hadn't bothered to come knocking at the doors of suburbia, one of my friends who went to Renaissance faires gave me a mix tape. Not a CD, an actual magnetic tape, that had mostly Leslie Fish and some Andreas Vollenweider and some Echo's Children. There was no track list, just the tape in a beat-up plastic case scrounged from the bottom of someone's older sister's car. I played that tape over and over again, fascinated that people were writing songs to go with fandom. I had no idea what fandom was, it was just such a revelation that other people loved these fictional worlds the way I did--and, in fact, loved them enough to write songs about them. I was utterly enchanted.

I can still remember--and sing along with--every song that was on that tape.

Cut to *mumblemumble* years later, to when the Internet has become a world-class library for fandom and I've got enough cash to pay for a high-speed connection. One day, I was humming Bones--the song Fish wrote about Dr. McCoy from Star Trek--and I thought, if I can remember the lyrics, I'll bet the Internet can tell me more.

Famous last words, right?

The jolt of joy that went through me when I realized I could buy a CD with these songs I'd been carrying in my memory is probably only comparable to the unbelieving joy I felt when I realized Echo's Children were singing in Elvish, dammit! Now I can see that my friend cherrypicked a few songs from a couple Fish albums, and that I can get to know much more of Fish's body of work. It's been like Christmas.

Still, those songs from the mix tape, lo those many years ago, stick in my head as my first love in filk. Bones. The Engineer's Hymn. And perhaps one of the funniest filk party songs ever created: Banned From Argo.

Enjoy.

When we pulled into Argo Port in need of R & R
The crew set out investigating every joint and bar
We had high expectations of their hospitality
But found too late it wasn't geared for spacers such as we

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

Our captain's tastes were simple but his methods were complex
We found him with five partners each of a different world and sex
The shorepolice were on the way -- we had no second chance
We beamed him up in the nick of time in the remnants of his pants

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore.

Our engineer would yield to none in putting down the brew
He outdrank seven space marines and a demolition crew
The navigator didn't win but he outdrank almost all
And now they've got a shuttlecraft on the roof of city hall

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

Our proper cool first officer was drugged with something green
And hauled into an alley where he suffered things obscene
He sobered up in sickbay and he's none the worse for wear
Except he somehow taught the bridge computer how to swear

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

The head nurse disappeared a while in the major dope bazaar
Buying an odd green potion guaranteed to cause pon farr
She came home with no uniform and an oddly cheerful heart
And a painful way of walking with her feet a yard apart

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

Our lady of communications won a ship-wide bet
By getting into the planet's main communications net
Now every time someone calls up on an Argo telescreen
The flesh is there but the clothes they wear are nowhere to be seen

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

Our doctor loves humanity; his private life is quiet
The shorepolice arrested him for inciting whores to riot
We found him in the city jail, locked on and beamed him free
Intact except for hickeys and six kinds of VD

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

Our helmsman loves exotic plants and the plants all love him too
He took some down on leave with him and he wondered what they'd do
The planetary governor called and swore upon his life
That a gang of plants entwined his house and then seduced his wife

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

A gang of Klingons landed and nobody seemed to care
They stomped into the nearest bar to announce that they were there
Half our crew was busy therein and invited them to play
But the Klingons only looked at us and turned and ran away

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

Our crew is Starfleet's finest and our record is our pride
And when we play we tend to leave a trail a mile wide
We're sorry 'bout the wreckage and the riots and the fuss
At least we're sure that planet won't be quick forgetting us

And we're banned from Argo every one
Banned from Argo just for having a little fun
We spent a jolly shoreleave there for just three days or four
But Argo doesn't want us anymore

(Wonder why')

I've never liked Superman.  I enjoyed the Richard Donner movies, I've read some of the comics, but as a character he's never worked for me - because he's too powerful, hence a bit smug.  Kryptonite is cleary the writers'  desperate attempt to give him some vulnerability, but it doesn't wash.  Superman is a lantern-jawed jock, and I kind of like it when he loses.

In Smallville,  however, the young Clark Kent is a shy, insecure, sometimes awkward kid - and he really is vulnerable.  He's coming to terms with his powers. He still lets his dad (initially) and his mom boss him around. He's crippled by his love for the beautiful Lana, but always get tongue tied. Clark Kent I like; Clark (as played by Tom Welling) is a hero I can identify with.

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien and its sequels was the  pioneer female action hero.  She has no superpowers, but she's tough and ruthless, she can run like hell, she loves big guns, and boy, she's determined. 

It was wonderful to see Weaver return to SF in Avatar - she's the best actor in it by far. 

Once upon a time, women in SF and Fantasy stories screamed fearfully and waited for the guy with the biceps to save the day. No more; thanks to Ripley.

No matter; Wolverine is still the best there is at what he does.  Here are some pics:

Readers of this site will know that I'm an image junkie; take a look this week at the always great site A Dribble of Ink for some fab fantasy art covers, plus reviews.

io9 has a knowledgeable piece about the iPad and the dream of a convergence device; being a Luddite, I actually like the idea of speciality devices. A phone that takes emails is a boon for me; but I like having a computer to compute, and a telly to telly (?), and an iPod to play music.  So the iPad appeals,  literally, not at all. But hey, despair of me.

This site featured a Movie Zone blog about the classic movie THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

And, amazingly and fabulously, an SFF Song of the Week from Nicole Peeler that is so cool. Check it out, if you haven't already.

Plus, some very saucy Paintings of the Week last Sunday - check it out by going to the left of these words, finding Debatable Archives, and clicking Paintings of the Week. (So simple huh?)  There are also some very nice Astronomy Photos of the Week lurking there.

Oh and my new blog on the Orbit site was this.