• Screen International reports that Joe Cornish (half of the inestimable Adam & Joe) is set to make his first feature – Attack the Block – about south London hoodies facing an alien invasion. As a long-long-long-time Adam and Joe fan, I can’t wait.
• Attack the Block is a Film4 production and, god bless them, they also seem to be going ahead with Chris Morris’s take on UK teenage jihadists Four Lions. No controversy there!
• Dr Who has a new companion. Karen Gillan. For the record: foxy! In a non-sexist, not treating her like an object, strictly, y’know, just-saying sort of way (especially since I’m officially old enough to be her father…)
• Apart from the fact that it might be directed by Jonathan Blitstein and feature Alan Cummings and that it’s set in some sort of dystopian future, I know almost nothing about Escape to Donegal except that the title’s got me intrigued.
• I think Marvel Studio’s decision to make a Thor movie is going to be the biggest risk in its whole huge Avengers concept – a tougher sell even than Captain America (which could, itself, be a cringeworthy disaster). But at least they seem to be approaching it with the right attitude – talent first. Branagh was a left field choice for direction, but he’s smart and everything he’s said suggests he’s treating the material seriously, while the casting of Tom Hiddleston as Loki is potentially brilliant.
• Last Voyage of the Demeter sounds really interesting – telling the story of fate of the cargo ship that brings Dracula to Whitby. Ships, vampire, fog… could be excellent. Variety reckons Marcus Nispel – who was behind the Friday the 13th remake – might direct.

Simon Cellan Jones is a really interesting choice as a director – he doesn’t appear to have done any specifically genre stuff before but he is an established name in UK television – Cracker, Our Friends in the North, The Trial of Tony Blair – and work on Generation Kill for HBO.

Writer Liz Mickery’s recent remake of The 39 Steps got quite a bit of criticism – and a lot of it was aimed at the script – but I really liked it, and I liked The State Within (2006) – although most of her other stuff seems to be more or less bog-standard cop show stuff.

Tamzin Outhwaite, however, makes my heart chill. I can’t think of a single show I’ve ever seen her in that I didn’t immediately hate. Red Cap… Hotel Babylon… The Fixer – all cack.

Perhaps she’ll surprise us all.

Overall, though, the rehabilitation of sf on British TV seems to be continuing.

The fact that someone is going to give Joe Ahearne the money to do his own thing is overdue but still fantastic  news. As the creator of Ultraviolet (the UK series not the crappy Milla Jovovich/Kurt Wimmer movie travesty), which is, for me, television’s best ever vampire show (and yes, Buffy, I can see you jumping up and down in the corner, and yes I am pointedly ignoring you),  Joe Ahearne should have been leading the UK sf rennaissance the best part of a decade before RTD got his hands on Dr Who and made us safe for prime time again.

Instead he’s spent the best part of ten years doing stray episodes of Strange and, yes, Dr Who.

But, this, now, well… this news could be something else entirely.

“It is a new and original superhero idea which is not a send-up. All the super hero stuff that is on TV in this country – ITV’s No Heroics, My Hero – British TV is happy to do if it is a send-up, but no one has done it for real. There is a particular gimmick in mine, which I won’t give away, but it means it will be refreshed every episode.”

Oooh!

And he said that it was inspired by his love of Marvel comics.

We know that the show will feature a new character in every episode, telling their full story from start to finish – I wonder if the “gimmick” is something like Captain Universe where the “powers” skips from needy person to needy person?

The show is to be produced by the people behind Primeval – which bodes pretty well for the special effects – and the scripts apparently have been commissioned but the show is waiting the go ahead from the BBC as they try to find a free space on their Saturday tea-time slot to fit it in around Dr Who, Merlin and (gods help us) the third series of Robin Hood.

Here’s an idea I’ll give the BBC for nothing – instead of cramming all the interesting stuff on one night, why not open up a second front on the family entertainment schedule. Move the mystic stuff – Merlin, Robin Hood – to Sundays (just before you announce the winner of some talent contest or other) – and leave the exciting sci-fi on a Saturday. Unless ITV clone Harry Hill, you’re can sit back, relax as you smash the opposition out of sight on both weekend nights.

This could be cool. You can read the full story at The Stage

One highlight was when Paul Cornell played excerpts from his forthcoming Radio 4 adaptation of “The State of the Art” – with very funny “live reviewing” from Banks himself.  The adaptation sounds like it could be excellent – from what we heard, it sound’s like Cornell’s captured the essence of Banks’s story. My only concern was how much of the warbling BBC-Radiophonic-Workshop-style electronic music I’m going to be able to take. It seemed to be constantly burbling in the background.

Paul Cornell raised an interesting point. What voice do you imagine the AI ships in Banks’s books use when they speak? The adaptation uses Anthony Sher – who sounds very good – but Cornell reckoned most people imagine Stephen Fry when they read the book.  Oddly I think I’d always imagined the ships spoke with one of those slightly posher Scottish accents from around the east coast/Edinburgh – like a cross between Ian Richardson (”You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment) when calm, edging towards The Proclaimers when making an emphatic point.

All in all, it was a very good con.

Not perfect, though.

Despite having my entry shortlisted for the Orbiter short story competition (prize, inclusion in Ian Whate’s new Newcon Press anthology Subterfuge – launched last night) I didn’t win – so that Ian Watson is going on my shortlist for people who’ll be up against the wall early in the aftermath of the revolution. Congratulations to the winner, Nick Wood, I read his story and [though pains me to say it, it honestly does] it really is very good – very atmospheric.

Consolation came when, after making the announcement, Ian Whates asked if he could have my entry for his next anthology – Conflict – due for release next year.  Of course I played it cool, holding out for a bigger slice of the action – especially when he told me some of the names already lined up to appear next to mine (I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you) – but in the end I relented.

Actually the conversation might have went something like:

Ian: ” I liked your story, can I have it for Conflict?”
Me: “Seriously?”
Ian: “Yes.”
Me: “Really?”
Ian: “Yes”
Me: “Are you sure?”
Ian: “Yes!”
Me: “Shit! Yeah! Woohoo!”

So that cheered me up.

The only serious problem with the Con was the accoustics in the Fishmarket venue – my suggestion would be to have the panel sessions at future cons at the end of one of the legs of the “L” shaped venue (where the dealers tables were this time would probably be best) – then at least the sound from the other activities of the con would only be coming from one direction. As it was, with the panels sandwiched between bar and dealers, the speakers were always competing against both. At least if the panels were at one end, one of their “opponents” would be taken out of the equation.

Sadly the Park Inn Hotel was a bit tiresome. I found the staff unhelpful, the bed was fiendishly uncomfortable and my room might most politely be described as “distressed” – peeling paint, shabby wallpaper, mouldy bathroom and loud music that went on long after Reception had said it was due to finish. They’re supposed to be renovating the hotel, which would be good as it was fantastically convenient for the convention’s venue but I hope that the changes include soundproofing!

Nevertheless, despite these minor gripes (I mean, it’s not like I spent any time in the hotel) Newcon4 was a definite hit. Well don Ian Whates and everyone else involved.

Dear Sir

As the owner of Eskragh Lough for the past ten years I have been mde aware of your writing relating to my property by a number of distressed parents whose children frequently fish and use Eskragh Lough Fishery and Outdoor Pursuit Centre. Searches have shown no truth in your writing and as a result I would contend that your writing has damaged the reputation of our business. I would ask for your immediate proposals together with either substantiation or withdrawal of this defamatory article.

your sincerely

Anita Ross LLB

Wow. Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring writers out there – even the lakes and rivers of the land can now rise up and accuse you of being “defamatory”. There is a real Eskragh Lough near where I grew up, I never imagined anyone “owning” the lake, I certainly never imagined it being a business. Isn’t it wonderful how times have changed.

Anyway, Anita (presumably a relative of Donovan Ross who is listed as owning the lake) writes from an email address at “McKinty-Wright” who proclaim themselves “one of Northern Ireland’s leading law firms” – and that “LLB” after her name clearly means she’s serious about this legal stuff.

The bit that stings most is the line: “Searches have shown no truth in your writing…”

While my story “Eskragh” is obviously a work of fiction – and therefore does not contain “truth” in the literal sense (y’know, ”I made it up” – none of my friends really drowned in that lake just like I wasn’t really haunted by rooks in my youth, have never really watched a man pull wires from his head to escape a technologically enhanced reality or really been hunted by aliens who use sound as a weapon) I would have hoped that anyone who had conducted “searches” on the text might have found a deeper, emotional truth in the story. Clearly my writing has failed to touch Anita, which on a professional basis is obviously disappointing.

So I have responded:

Dear Ms Ross,

 

Thank you for your email and for reading my blog.

 

In response to your comments I’d like to make a number of points:

 

• The “article” you refer to is clearly presented as a work of fiction – hence the title “Friday Flash” – so that any reasonable reader should be aware that the events related in the story do not represent a narrative of actual events.
• It nowhere mentions the entity “Eskragh Lough Fishery and Outdoor Pursuit Centre” and plainly doesn’t defame that organisation on any reasonable reading of the story. Your argument can’t be that I defamed the body of water that constitutes the lough, can it?
• I seriously doubt that a webpage on an obscure blog (I can’t give precise figures, but I do know that the page containing the story has been viewed fewer than 400 times in the fourteen months that it has been online according to my ISP’s records – the number of actual readers is certainly much less than that) can be demonstrated to have had any significant negative impact on your business.

 

However, in the interests of goodwill and to alleviate any possible concerns of those “distress parents” (none of whom, sadly, bothered to contact me for reassurance), I’m happy to add the following text to the top of the story to warn any unwary visitor who happens to stumble upon my blog while looking for details of your company.

 

“At the request of the owners of the real Eskragh Lough Fishery and Outdoor Pursuit Centre I would like to emphasise that this is a work of fiction. The Eskragh Lough mentioned in this story is an imagined one and bears no relation to the real one near Dungannon. The imagined Eskragh isn’t even in Tyrone. The imagined Eskragh is probably somewhere in County Armagh.

 

I happily played in and around the real Eskragh for many years as a youngster and came to no harm and, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever drowned in the real Eskragh Lough. The real Eskragh Lough isn’t particularly deep but, in my experience, it is usually cold.”

 

I trust this will be satisfactory.

 

Yours,

 

Martin McGrath (BSc, MA, PhD – if we’re putting letters after our names)

I’ve spent several hours this evening wondering about this. My first reaction was to tell Anita to bugger off and grow up, but UK libel law is a sod and not something to be messed around with, even though I’m confident that the idea of defaming a lake would be laughed out of even a Northern Irish court.

I won’t remove the story as it clearly isn’t libellous or defamatory. I thought long and hard about even adding the disclaimer – mostly because I think it is patently unnecessary, partly because I think it demeans any reader who might stumble across the story and partly because I’m a bloody minded. In the end I did because I thought of a way of doing it that made me laugh.

Overall, though, thw whole thing is pretty depressing on a number of counts:

• that people out there are willing to try and chuck legal weight around on the flimsiest of pretexts without the courtesy of a polite request first
• that someone can either deliberately or through ignorance (I’m not sure which is worse) misconstrue a piece of fiction in this way
• that the UK laws on defamation are so nuts that I have to spend any time at all wondering whether I should take this seriously.

 If you’re going to comment, please be sure not to libel anyone!

Charlie Brooker (consistently the funniest newspaper columnist to put ink on paper, grouchy old so and so, creator of Screenwipe (the episode he did on how news programmes work was a better dissection of the workings of television than anything I found in a four year media degree course), an “out” geek and promoter of quality sf to the masses) is to write a horror show for Channel 4 (well, he’s calling it horror, the head of C4 is calling it a thriller) called Dead Set.

As one of only three people in the world who loved Nathan Barley (which Brooker co-wrote), I’m officially excited.

And a further example of the way genre material is penetrating UK TV production.

And actually that’s not true, the words came out really easily – not writing 15,000 words was the hard part.

Other stuff I’ve recently written is up at the BSFA’s spiffy new Matrix Online website – including a longish article comparing the relatively few ups and not inconsiderable number of downs in the cinematic histories of comic book giants Marvel and DC, and reviews of Southland Tales, Battlestar Galactica: Razor, In the Shadow of the Moon and Jumper. Sadly you’ll have to be a member of the BSFA to read all that – but if you aren’t, why the hell not?

Hopefully I’ll get some more reviews up over at Matrix soon. I just need an hour or two to sit down and write them up.

ISBN 978-0-9558662-0-3

ILLUMINATIONS is a new anthology from small press Odd Two Out Publishing showcasing original, cutting edge short fiction from eight up-and-coming young British writers.

When British author Gareth L Powell started adding short weekly pieces of flash fiction to his website back in July 2007, he didn’t expect anyone else to take much notice.

But soon there were seven other writers doing likewise – Paul Graham Raven, Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Dan Pawley, Justin Pickard, Neil Beynon, and Shaun C Green. Together, they have become known as the Friday Flash Fictioneers.

Flash fiction stories are complete short stories told in fewer than 1,000 words. Quoting from his introduction to the anthology, Gareth L Powell says:

“Adhering to this restricted format can be a valuable exercise for a writer. It’s often a lot trickier than it looks. You have to make every word count. Every thing in the story has to be doing something because there just isn’t room for extraneous waffle.”

The Friday Flash Fictioneers come from diverse walks of life – musicians, office workers, freelance journalists, students, magazine editors – and this new anthology collects together the best of their weekly output.

Edited by Paul Graham Raven, the pieces range from mainstream literature to far-out speculation; from horror to humour; from outright fantasy to straight-faced space opera.

All the stories in ILLUMINATIONS are published under a Creative Commons licence that permits them to be reproduced in the public domain as long as no profit is made in the process.

Copies of ILLUMINATIONS: The Flash Fiction Anthology will be available to order for £6.99 from Odd Two Out Publishing, or from the authors themselves.

All profits from the sale of ILLUMINATIONS will be donated to the NSPCC.

Alternatively, The Fictioneers will be running a flash fiction workshop as part of Orbital 2008, the British Science Fiction convention held at the Raddisson Hotel, Heathrow over the Easter weekend. Convention-goers are invited to come along to quiz the team and have a go at writing their own extremely short fiction.

{So this is mostly why things have been quiet around here for the last few weeks. The big secret is out! And I now have the seed of my own publishing empire. Much, much more than this in the days to come – for now, just buy a copy, ya cheapskate!}

The very thought sent a little shiver of excitement and anticipation down my spine. 

The Coens and Michael Chabon together in one project.

And the Coens back in the snow for the first time since Fargo!

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2255888,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront