Friday to Monday: near the bar

Except:

Friday 14:00 The Hovercraft of Disbelief

Friday 17:00 21st Century Classic Films

Saturday 15:00 Flash Fiction with the Friday Flash Fictioneers

Sunday 13:00 Politics in Young Adult Fiction

Sunday 16:00 The works of Arthur C Clarke

See you there…

I guess like most sf readers my age Clarke’s science fiction was one of the first things I picked up when I was a kid and (along with Asimov and Heinlein) he played a big part in defining the boundaries I put around the term “science fiction”. The first things I remember reading were the collections Expedition to Earth and Nine Billion Names of God from my local library – both of which I read in a day and then immediately reread. Both books stand as proof that Sir Arthur could wrap enough ideas to power another writers whole career into one short story.

From there I remember the novels A Fall of Moondust, City and the Stars and Earthlight but it was Rendezvous with Rama that blew my head off. I don’t think anyone has ever achieved that “sense of wonder” thing quite so comprehensively or memorably. Rama, with Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (could two books be more different in style and tone) and Gibson’s Neuromancer stand as the triumvirate of sf novel that had a really powerful effect on me as a reader. Oddly I never stumbled across Childhood’s End as a young reader and it was only about six months ago that I finally got around to reading what, I guess, many people would consider Clarke’s masterpiece.

It’s a curious book – obviously very much of its time – but it encompasses perfectly the strength of Clarke’s writing – the ability to embrace the enormous scale of the universe and our tiny place within it without ever losing a grip on the moral imperative for us to behave as if our actions mattered. Clarke walked the middle ground between the distant coldness of Olaf Stapledon and too cozy Americans like Heinlein. I enjoyed it immensely – and having just read the shortlist for the 1958 BSFA Awards – I’m amazed how much better Clarke’s work has stood the test of time than many of his contemporaries – Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel is five years younger but feels like it comes from a distant century in comparison to Childhood’s End.
Clarke’s work continues to have its influences. Obviously there are writers who are mining similar seams – authors like Baxter and Reynolds who possess the same ability to place humanity in fierce perspective against a galactic backdrop. But equally important is Sir Arthur’s humanism – a common thread in British SF woven through the works of Wells to Clarke and on to writers who probably see themselves as having reacted against the spaceships and futurism that Clarke embodied.

Over the coming days I’ve no doubt much will be made of Clarke’s futurism – most famously his “invention” of communication satellites and all that – but recently I’ve been thinking about the way Clarke seemed to have a clear grip on the idea of the “singularity” long before anyone else – has anyone summed up the idea of the singularity as efficiently as Clarke’s famous claim that any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. I was surprised how strongly the post-human theme was developed in Childhood’s End and how similar the concerns were.

Entirely by coincindence, last week I was listening to this programme on the BBC Radio 4 website. It’s a nice tribute to the man, he comes across as funny, modest and, of course, fearsomely clever, even as a very old and sick man. It also contains a fantastic exchange between Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov from 1974.

Clarke: “Ladies, gentlemen, and in the case of any robots or extraterrestrial’s present, gentlebeings, I’m not going to waste any time introducing Isaac Asimov, that would be as useless as introducing the equator – which, indeed, with the passing of time he is coming to resemble more and more closely. The rumour that there’s a certain rivalry between us should be put to rest once and for all in my recent book Report on Planet Three – for those of you not wise enough to have bought that small masterpiece the dedication reads as follows:

In accordance with the terms of the Clarke/Asimov treaty the second best
science writer dedicates this book to the second best science fiction writer.”

To which Asimov replied: “From here on in I won’t mention him at all, from here on in let us talk about science fiction which is after all what we both do. I because I am a great writer, and Arthur because he is a stubborn writer.”

As I say, I’m surprised at how sad this news has made me feel. The world is a stupider and slightly less exciting place today. My thought are with Arthur’s friends and family, especially his brother – an exceptionally nice man.

For quite a long time after I first got on the internet one of the places I hung out most often was the Time Team boards on Channel 4. This was before the “peace process” and the big changes in Northern Ireland and I used to bemoan the fact that Dungannon, my home town, had loads of fascinating history that had all been buried under British Army concrete never to be seen again.

Well, the Army have gone and last summer Time Team dug up that concrete and they broadcast the programme about it today.

And I found it very strange.

Because of the army base and the ”Troubles” I’ve never been to the top of the hill in Dungannon.

I know from living around the town that from the top of the hill you should be able to see for miles (east across Lough Neagh to Antrim  and, I’m told, as far as Louth on a sunny day – we get those about twice a decade! – they say you can see seven counties Derry, Fermanagh, Armagh, Antrim, maybe a bit of Down, Cavan and Louth? The Sperrins probably block the view to the West ). I’ve wondered what you could see ever since I was a boy.

And, today, there it was on TV.

And it looked beautiful, to me.

(Okay the scaffolding on the Church of Ireland church isn’t great – trust the Prods to ruin things! )

That’s not something you can normally say about Dungannon, which for all its many joys is a jumbled together town with the older buildings all built out of a gritty, dark stone that seems to possess the ability to suck joy from the air (especially when wet).

Part of me felt sad and part of me felt absurdly angry too. There’s no point getting angry at the fact that history, circumstance and the British Army had combined to deny me something so simple. Something that the inhabitants of most other towns in the world would have taken for granted. But there you go. Anger it was.

Mine wasn’t the first generation not to see the view from the top of the hill – I don’t suppose the whatever there names where who owned the land between Chichester chasing the O’Neills out and the arrival of the Ranfurlys - were that keen on sharing their view with the hoi-polloi. For that matter I don’t suppose the O’Neills were inviting the sweaty masses up to share their view either.

The programme said the council were looking to turn the site into a park, so maybe one day soon I’ll get up there.

http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/02/28/another-full-iron-man-trailer-launches-holy-sht/

ps I know things are quiet around here just at the moment, but bear with me BIG announcements soon, I hope.

So I’m on four panels this time:

LS40    The Hovercraft of Disbelief    Royal    Friday    14:00
The Hovercraft of Disbelief – what flaws in a work can you accept without spoiling the story, and what ruins an otherwise excellent book? With Paul Cornell, Kari, Kellie Takenaka, Tom Womack & me (moderating)

OW31  Flash fiction with the Friday Flash Fictioneers George  Saturday    15:00
The FFF guys encourage folk to come along and write a short, short story. Simple and fun – bring a pen and paper. With Gareth Jones, Gareth L Powell, Shaun Green, Paul Raven, Neil Beynon & me. The best way to look at this is that at least GLP knows what he’s talking about!

S25    Politics in Young Adult Fiction    Tetworth  Sunday    13:00
Politics in Young Adult Fiction – what are the differences when writing about politics in YA fiction? What can and can’t you assume about the knowledge of your audience? What extra challenges does it present? With China Miéville, Ruth O’Reilly, Cory Doctorow & me (moderating)!

BS9    Reader knows best?      Commonwealth    Sunday    17:00
Reader knows best? – Our panel discuss reading the SF of 1958 in contemporary times. How well does it work for the reader? What allowances do you have to make for the 50 years which have passed? How do our reactions differ from those of the time? With China Miéville, Nic Clarke, Peter Harrow & me!

I’ve never moderated a panel at a con before or even been referred to as moderate, so I’m looking forward to that, but China and Cory on my second panel? I may have to bring some sort of heavy plant machinery to ensure that the universe can get a word in edgeways…

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to come to my panels, offer moral support, cheer wildly at any mention of my name and at the end of my speaking bits (don’t scream while I’m speaking though, it just gets embarassing after a few seconds), laugh uproariously at my hardly more than one third-baked jokes and then buy me copious beers at the end of it all.

See you in sunny Heathrow!

Back to the point… I’ve suffered serious – possibly fatal - computer collapse and am currently almost entirely offline.

 I can read email at work but not reply.

Normal service may be some days or even a couple of weeks from resuming. Apologies in the interim.

Let’s see, where to start… First, to help out Mr Kaufmann in the comments, I didn’t call LCRW “pretentious” in my review in The Fix, nor, to the best of my recall, did I use the word “pretentious” anywhere in the review – as he’d see if he bothered to read the review or, for that matter, bothered to read properly the quotation pulled from my review by Mr Edelman.

I opened the article thinking about the name of the magazine and said that the title suggested “Pretensions to literary stylings” – here I use the word “pretension” in the sense of “aspiration” – with none of the negative baggage Mr Kaufmann associate with the word “pretentious”. I apologise if I’ve used a big, unfamiliar word, I hope his dictionary gets out from under the television soon.

I opened the review by considering my reaction to the name of the magazine. Honestly, I could have been a lot harsher. I find it silly rather than whimsical – this may be a matter of taste, but it seems to me to smack of sixth-form pomposity – but more crucially, the title doesn’t really reflect the content of the magazine. It has put me off buying the magazine in the past, and when presented with it for review, it put me off again.

The opening two paragraphs discuss the type of thing I feared the magazine might contain given the title and gave the reader a clear indication of the reviewer’s preferences. It seems fair that a review should set out a reviewer’s expectations and prejudices, no?

As I note in paragraph three, most of the content of this issue of LCRW didn’t live down to my concerns – the standard of story was generally very high. Although (sadly) Brian Conn’s story came closest to bearing out my worst fears, being almost unreadable because the author (and the editors) seem to be too impressed by the cleverness of the writing and not interested enough in what the story actually says.

Reading that opening section again, I agree it does sit a little awkwardly with the rest of the review – mostly, I think, because in editing down what was originally a much longer and meaner rant about the name I haven’t continued to make it clear that I’m considering the impact of the title on my expectations of what I was about to read.

Nevertheless – I am happy to stand by the basic argument that writers who seek to communicate widely are preferable to those who use language to obfuscate.

Scott Edelman then goes on to defend a group of writers he assumes need to be protected from philistines like me, which is very noble of him but a touch presumptuous. I happen to be a fan of both Le Guin and Wolfe – I’ve read only bits of Disch and Delaney but liked what I read. Sadly I’ve read nothing at all by Malzberg or Crowley, but perhaps I should take that as a recommendation to seek them out since I liked the others?

Unlike Mr Edelman, I have read Finnegan’s Wake (at least in the sense that I’ve passed my eye over every word in sequence and attempted to parse meaning out of the phrases and sentences). Joyce is a hero of mine, a writer who opened my eyes up to what was possible with the English language when I studied him for A-Level and who has lived with me ever since. Indeed I even praise Joyce in this review, nominating The Dead” as the greatest short story ever written in English as I point out that Matthew Cheney pinched the ending for his story, “The Lake.

But I think Mr Edelman’s being a little disingenuous when suggesting that Joyce didn’t write Finnegan’s Wake knowing that his style would exclude people from reading it. Joyce knew perfectly well what the reaction to the release of Wake would be. That book was the most leaked pre-release item in the world before the invention of the Internet – there were at least two “work in progress” volumes issued – and it had already cost him his friendship with people like Ezra Pound. Joyce’s construction of the book is quite deliberately designed to be shocking, complex and to make reading the book very hard work (and therefore to exclude the majority of readers who cannot or will not put the effort to master this work).

But as I say in my review, good writing is not limited just to one group of writers.

Actually the kind of writers I was referring to were the targets of George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language” (http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit) (which, while I’m handing out accolades, I consider to be the greatest essay in the English language) – not good or even great writers who choose to challenge their readers but the over ambitious or the downright incompetent who attempt to use complexity in language to hide the incoherence of the babbling inside their skulls. These are not writers using complex words to convey complex ideas, no one could fairly accuse Joyce of not trying to communicate something to his readers, even if he did choose to do it an alien tongue, but writers using complex words to hide that they’ve got not the slightest interesting or original idea in their head.

Brian Conn’s story teeters on the edge of that abyss. Any number of pretentious (now I’ve used that word!) literary magazines (usually published by university presses) will be happy to supply Mr Edelman with a deluge of better examples of the kind of thing I’m talking about. Other examples are common enough on the edges of genre publishing – there’s a higher than average number amongst slipstream writers but also almost everything written by precocious teenagers, professors of sociology, bureaucrats, and almost every piece of fiction written in a “post-modern” style that doesn’t have the name Pynchon or Coupland on the cover.

My first preference, I confess, is for writers (like Orwell or Graham Greene) who could write profound, intelligent, moving books (1984 or The Power and the Glory) using language that reaches out and embraces as many readers possible. I actually believe that such writing is far more demanding of the author than any other – indulging oneself in long words and longer paragraphs makes communicating complex ideas easier for the writer but harder for the reader (who has to possess greater intellectual capital to decode the writer’s meaning). Delivering complexity in a format that all (or almost all) readers can absorb demands much greater rigour from an author. That’s not to say I can’t appreciate those writers who choose to use language in a more expansive way, but I set them higher standards – my bullshit detectors are tuned more finely, I expect them to justify the extra work they demand of me.

Generally speaking, in all cases, Sturgeon’s Law continues to apply.

The latest issue of Matrix is blessed by my own profound insights on Death Proof/Planet Terror (the Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse double bill), 30 Days of Night, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, Black Sheep and The Invasion.

While  Vector sees me continue the proud tradition of reviewers of the work of Adam Roberts by calling him very clever and then not really liking his novel with my review of Land of the Headless. Sorry Mr Roberts…

Oh and some other people wrote some tedious stuff that no one will ever read – I mean honestly who cares what Juliet E McKenna, Edward James, Chris Roberson, Jo Walton and Guy Gavriel Kay have to say about history/alternate history in science fiction? Or that Matrix has interviews with George Mann, the guy behind new SF publisher Solaris, and Lou Anders, the guy who has been tearing up the US scene with his Pyr imprint.

Of course no one cares…. BECAUSE I DIDN’T WRITE THOSE BITS!

When oh when will the BSFA see sense and simply publish magazines that have nothing in them but my interesting articles (and rapped wrists for anyone who dares say that’s what they do already).

If you are not a member of the BSFA, you’re missing out. Go here: www.bsfa.co.uk and join. NOW!

The top five most nominated items in each area will make the final shortlist and the winner will be announced at Eastercon.

You can nominate as many works as you like.

My novel nominations for this year are going to be:

Ascent, Jed Mercurio, Jonathon Cape 2007

Brasyl, Ian McDonald, Gollancz 2007

Halting State, Charles Stross, Ace Books, 2007

Sixty Days and Counting, Kim Stanley Robinson, HarperCollins 2007

Spook Country, William Gibson, Viking, 2007

The Execution Channel, Ken MacLeodOrbit 2007

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon, Fourth Estate, 2007

My short story nominations:

“Ack-Ack Macaque” – Gareth Lyn Powell (Interzone 212)

“Bossanova” – Steve Aylett (Postscripts Summer)

“Grey Matter” – Shaun C Green (Nostalgia for Infinity)

“Hormiga Canyon” – Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling (Asimov’s, August)

“Roxie” – Robert Reed (Asimov’s, July)

“Tears for Godzilla” – Daniel Kaysen (Interzone 209)

“The Alchemist and the Merchant’s Gate” – Ted Chiang (F&SF, September)

“The Flag Game” – Marianne de Pierres (Hub 34)

“The Garden of Earthly Delights” – Jay Caselberg (Electric Velocipede 12)

“The Good Detective” – M John Harrison (Interzone 209)

“The Sledgemakers Daughter” – Alistair Reynolds (Interzone 209)

“Toys” – Dev Agarwal (Aeon 12)

Artwork

I haven’t made up my mind yet, but the covers of Interzone 208 & 211 will be there and the cover of Postscripts 12.

1958 Novel

To celebrate 50 years of the BSFA, this year’s awards have an extra category – the best novel of 1958.

There’s some pretty strong contenders, Blish’s A Case of Conscience and Aldiss’s Non-Stop will be a hard pair to beat – I’d like to see John Christopher’s The Caves of Night (which I think is under-rated) and Eric Frank Russell’s Wasp (which I loved when I was a kid when I first read it, and I like even better when I went back to it recently) make the shortlist.

Yes, it is another ludicrously long review. Once I get started…