Today I picked up a compilation called 80s Alternative, which I bought mostly because it was cheap and partly because it had a live version of The Ramones Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio? (which wasn’t the version I’d hoped) but it also had a load of songs I hadn’t heard for ages and had forgotten I liked – Spear of Destiny’s Never Take Me Alive, Stiff Little Fingers’ At The Age, The Cramp’s Garbageman and the blessed That Petrol Emotion’s Candy Loves Satellite.

There was also Bow Wow Wow’s C30, C60, C90 Go! – which would be the theme tune of the Bit-Torrent generation – if only technology hadn’t moved so far that most of the Bit-Torrent generation can’t remember (or never knew) what a C30, C60 or C90 was…

Policeman stopped me in my tracks
said “Hey you, you can’t tape that
you’re under arrest ’cause it’s illegal”
So I shoved him off and blew his whistle
I’m a pirate and I keep my loot
So I blew him out with my bazooka
C30 C60 C90 Go
off the radio I get a constant flow
hit it, pause it, record it and play
turn it, rewind, and rub it away

In a continued fit of punk nostalgia, I’m now listening to the Anarchy in the UK: 30 Years of Punk compilation that came with this week’s Sunday Times (part two next week! Just to be clear, I don’t buy the Sunday Times, Times, Sun or News of the World – old prejudices die hard and JUSTICE FOR THE 96! Ahem. We get all the papers at work and I scrounge the free stuff that isn’t totally naff).

Two things about this.

One The Sunday Times celebrating 30 years of punk? So much for permanent revolutions!

Two, when did New Rose become the best punk song ever? I didn’t even like The Damned at the time.

Alright, three things, Wreckless Erik Whole Wide World – fucking class. Accept no substitutes.

Star Wars came up in conversation today at work. I pointed out that the brown hoodie worn by the bloke I sit across made him look like a Jawa. Blank look. He’d never seen the original film, he remarked casually, though he’s seen the prequels. When I asked what kind of cruel parents he had that didn’t take him to see Star Wars he pointed out– quite gently really, but it still stung – that he hadn’t been born until 1980 and so it was hardly his parents fault…

Some days I feel so old…

On an entirely different note, today I read John Clute’s review of Michael Chabon’s ridiculously anticipated (by me, anyway) The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Rarely have I read a review I’ve understood less that made me want to read a book more: “jonbar” “storyable” “skaz-like” “circumambient”… eh? … the only other time I’ve seen the word “memorious” on a page is in the title of a short story by Borges (and I’m still not entirely sure what it means – the story or the word – I’ve checked every dictionary in this house, and it isn’t in any of them).

Clute makes me feel stupid, but still grateful. I don’t know how I feel about that.

“Eruv becomes zugswang” indeed.

Posted May 15, 2007 Comments(0)

I’ve just started reading the latest Karen Traviss book, Ally (the fifth book in her Wess’har sequence), and it’s got me thinking about a couple of things.

The first is my utter disbelief that a British writer as good as Traviss hasn’t got a publishing deal in the UK for her Wess’har books. She’s got a huge following among Star Wars fans for her Republic Commando books – I confess my heart sank the day two of those “Wookie” books dropped through my door for review in Vector, but damn it they were good, especially Hard Contact – and her Wess’har books are accessible, intelligent and entertaining. You’d think a smart UK publisher would be promoting them like crazy. Traviss may not sit particularly comfortably amongst the traditional ranks of British SF writers - by her own admission - but she’s good, she’s popular and she deserves to be “bigged up”.

Second, I’ve just realised that this is probably the first time I’ve read five books in a series like this, where one set of characters pursue the same story arc. I don’t normally read sequence novels – I rarely do trilogies and never epic sagas. I’m pretty sure that if I’d known that the first book in this series (City of Pearl) was the start of an ongoing series, I wouldn’t have picked it up.

One of the reasons, I think, that I’ve never become trapped as a “fan” of anything is that I have the attention span of a ADD-afflicted goldfish – I get bored going back over the same old stuff. I’ve never had that fannish thing of wanting a place where nothing ever really changes and adventures can be comfortable.

I like change. I like new things. I want something different.

And yet I’ve enjoyed the Wess’har books – although I confess for the first time with Ally I’ve opened the cover with the hope that this instalment will point the way towards a recognisable conclusion somewhere on the horizon. It’s not just that, like any series, I suppose, an increasing amount of time in each instalment is being spent reminding readers about what went before but more that no matter how interesting and complex the world Traviss has created, I’ve been here before. I want to go somewhere else.

That said, I do think that Traviss is doing some exceptional things with these stories, and that’s why I’ve stuck with them for so long - by my standards.

The books features soldiers and spaceships but they’re hardly traditional military sf. Traviss does a tremendous job of presenting military characters who feel real – no one here is superhuman (even the ones who’ve become indestructible) they all have their weaknesses and psychological baggage – and she has created a realistic conflict which simply isn’t going to be solved by some square-jawed space captain rushing in at Warp speed, and damn the photon torpedoes! There’s a strong sense of the military ethic but none of the gung-ho, omni-compentence that so often accompanies these type of characters in standard mil-sf. There’s also a refreshing lack of the standard stereotypes - the tough-talking veteran with the heart of gold is, thankfully, entirely absent.

The conflict at the core of the Wess’har books is also of a superior style. It feels more like the Balkans or the Middle East – intractable problems and moral dilemmas that can’t be washed away by quick fixes.

Traviss has created a universe with a group of realistically flawed characters taking actions that have realistically complex, difficult and sometimes unpredictable consequences. The aliens and the humans are interacting in fascinating ways, there are no simple good and bad guys (even the tedious and simpering Bezeri have suddenly been revealed to be, well, interesting) and Traviss has both the skill and the insight to give almost all her characters a logically consistent and coherent worldview that can, at certain points in the story, inspire our sympathy. (The only exception is her more-or-less unswerving dismissal of all human politicians as creeps and liars (or worse) – as someone who. like Traviss, has experience as a PR and journalist in politics, I think she’s being too cynical here).

Traviss clearly has her own, strong, views (check out her website for evidence) but she’s smart enough not to allow them to drown out the competing voices of her characters. The result is a set of novels and story that has evolved a fantastically rich political ecosystem that allows readers from many backgrounds to engage with the characters, the story and the debate Traviss is having.

These are good books. I can’t understand why they aren’t better regarded on this side of the Atlantic.

Posted May 3, 2007 Comments(0)

I’ve recently finished Charles Stross’s Glasshouse, which is in many ways an admirable novel and possesses all of its author’s trademark manic invention and humour. I enjoyed it.

Except…

Glasshouse, like a lot other sf books I’ve read recently (including Adam Robert’s Gradasil and Roger Levy’s Icarus to take just two examples) features one of those revolutions that science fiction authors are so fond of – clean, neat, rational and over in a flash. From Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings to Heinlein’s Revolt in 2010 to Herbert’s Dune, the sf revolution has a long tradition and shows no sign of fading away.

Here then is a crude spotter’s guide to the typical elements of an sf revolution:

The charismatic leader: One man, possessed of the truth or at least an inkling of it, will lead the revolution and will inspire others to follow them. An interesting point about Glasshouse is that the “leader” is not the protagonist of the story and doesn’t reveal themselves until quite late in the book, but nonetheless she inspires a following with zealot’s fervour. Dune is the most obvious, but even sf’s traditional stock hero – the omni-competent engineer who ends up leading the revolution just because he can no longer stomach the damned incompetence of all those corrupt politicians and their lackies – tends to possess characteristics that make him irresistible to his comrades.

The miniscule cadre: The Bolshevik model of the elite cadre of full-time activists plotting the overthrow of the state has nothing on the typical sf revolution. Sometimes, as in Glasshouse, the revolution will be conducted by just a handful of people. In Icarus and Gradasil, though we get a sense that there are forces at work outside the narrative, but really the revolution is enacted through the organisation, planning and genius of just one person.

The revealed truth: Of course every revolutionary (Christ, Marx, Pol Pot…) believes that they are bringing “the truth” to the masses – but sf revolutions frequently back their “truth” up with appeals to rationality and the scientific method. Whether it’s that what we think of as reality is a fraud and we all exist in a giant simulation or that our leaders are alien robots harvesting our brains for catfood, sf revolutionaries almost always have access to irrefutable proof of the rightness of their cause. Which is useful, as it neatly justifies any action in pursuit of their revolution and removes any messy questions about ends and means.

The rational turn: One outcome of sf revolution’s claim to ownership of the “truth” is the ability of the revolutionaries argument to be wholly convincing to all those who hear it – excluding, of course, the out-and-out bad guys. This is otherwise known as the “why didn’t I think of that” moment and is remarkably rare in the real world of politics.

The absence of debate: One result of the rational turn is the absence of debate in an sf revolution. If a national government tries to do something faintly radical, say they decide to abolish the use of poisonous dye in children’s toys, the policy wouldn’t just happen. There’d be a long and probably bitter argument. There’d be Daily Mail columnists decrying the extension of the nanny state (“if I want my baby to suck on poison then it’s jolly well my choice…”), there’d be industry lobbyists funding Astroturf grassroots campaigns (“our families have worked in’t poison dye mines for generations, what will happen t’brass bands now?”) and there’d be representatives from Think About The Children! on Radio 4 demanding not just that these poisonous dyes be removed but that, as a precautionary measure, the government should ban every hue in the spectrum and turn the world entirely monochrome because we just don’t know what damage colours do in the long term. Are they really safe? Are they? Really?

Of course, in an sf revolution, none of that happens.

The announced revolution: Given the combination of the sf revolutionary possessing the revealed truth and therefore creating a rational turn in a society marked by the absence of debate sf revolutionaries are often in the unique position of not actually having to conduct a revolution – with it’s messy street to street fighting and propensity to turn into vicious civil war – they simply have to announce it and the deed is done – usually off-screen with, very occasionally, a nod to “mopping-up” the recalcitrant.

The instantaneous change:Even in sf that obeys the laws of physics and outlaws FTL there’s always one thing that travels faster than light, revolution. Nevermind the vast amounts of time and money it takes in the real world to make things even incrementally better – in sf the mere action of announcing the revolution is often enough to have the peasants dressing better, eating better and quoting Shakespeare.

Now of course this is a crude simplification – most sf revolutions don’t have all of these features and a few have none at all. And in a way it’s understandable – most sf isn’t interested in the process of revolution or even the reality of it – the revolution is intended to be symbolic.

Nor are sf writers alone in their revolutionary fantasies.

The sf revolution in the modern era (there being few unreconstructed Marxist-Leninists left in sf or anywhere else) is mostly a product of libertarianism either in its right wing form (mostly American, often harking back to their own “revolution” and spending a lot of time talking about the calibre of specific weapons) or the (most oxymoronically named political movement in history) “anarcho-capitalists” (left-libertarianism). Both sides have neat lines in transformative, relatively painless revolutions that will sweep away corrupt old orders and neither worry too much about the fact that real revolutions are vicious, bloody and drawn out affairs.

But hey, it’s only science fiction…

Posted April 29, 2007 Comments(5)

Another thing that everyone thinks they know about Sparta is that its soldiers were particularly courageous and the nation was particularly warlike. Neither assumption is necessarily true.

One of the few things that 300 gets absolutely right is the little speech Leonidas gives to his son early in the film:

“In the end a Spartan’s true strength is the warrior next to him, give respect and honour to him and it will be returned to you… ”

There is, for a soldier fighting in a phalanx, no alternative. The shield you carry in a phalanx does not protect your body, but that of the man on your left. You, in turn, are dependent on the steadiness of the man on your right. If the line breaks the huge shield your carrying becomes a hopeless encumbrance and the eight or nine foot pole that was your spear is next to useless in close quarters, hand-to-hand combat and it certainly wouldn’t be much use as a javelin – despite what 300 shows.

So – for a Spartan soldier – acts of personal bravery were not encouraged. The Spartan mother is famous for encouraging her son to come back with his shield (victorious) or on it (dead). But why place value in the shield rather than the breastplate or helmet. Plutarch has Demaratus (Leonidas’s predecessor) explain that other armour “serves for their private safety only, but the shield is for the common defence and strength of the whole army.”

There is a story (I can’t find the source, I thought it was in Plutarch or Herodotus but I can’t find it in either at the minute – if anyone out there knows where it is, please let me know) of how a Spartan accused of cowardice by his companions sought in the next battle to prove how brave he was by breaking ranks and seeking to engage the enemy in single combat. The Spartan magistrates had ignored the charge of cowardice but punished the soldier severely for the show of courage. Breaking the line put the whole army at risk, not just the individual.

So, unlike the soldiers in 300, Spartans would not have rushed about chopping at random enemies and been praised for it. The effectiveness of a Spartan army depended on the cohesion of the phalanx and the tactical advantages that the Spartans enjoyed on the battlefield came from a lifetime of rigorous drilling that allowed them to perform feats of manoeuvre in combat that their “amateur” adversaries could not manage – the ability to hinge the battle line without breaking the line, to recover quickly when gaps did appear and to reorganise “organically” thanks to a deep command system that prepared soldiers throughout the ranks to step up into positions of authority during times of crisis.

A single Spartan soldier was no more or less brave or fierce than his opponent, his superiority came from his training.

Nor do Spartans appear particularly warlike. As 300 shows (but wrongly treats as an aberration due to corruption) they were quite willing to stay at home and miss battles rather than break their religious festivals. They’d already missed the Athenian victory at the battle of Marathon in the first Persian invasion – 490BC. But more than that, Spartan foreign policy generally seemed to favour defensive security rather than aggressive expansion.

It’s worth quickly comparing the history of Sparta’s 300-odd year hegemony in the Peloponnese (southern Greece) with the way Athenians developed their maritime empire. Apart from securing control of neighbouring Messenia, Sparta never sought the conquest and control of neighbouring states under a single banner. Rather it fought to develop a defensive alliance with individual states – those states pledged not to attack Sparta and to fight alongside her if she was attacked but otherwise they were free to do as they liked – and Sparta was tolerant of individual state’s different methods of government and made no claims for payment of tribute. At the start of the great war between Sparta and Athens Thucydides talks of the great democracies of the Peloponnese (including Elis) as existing comfortably within Sparta’s sphere of political domination.

By contrast, as Athens developed itself as a maritime power and began to exercise control over other states the polities which fell under Athenian influence were bound into an alliance and eventually an empire that demanded they follow Athens’ lead, that imposed Athenian forms of democracy and forced these states to pay money into Athenian coffers.

Sparta had 300 years of virtually unquestioned dominance, yet the Spartan system of buffers and free states persisted until their unique social system was eroded and corrupted by the depredations of the Peloponnesian War and the influx of Persian money. Sparta was traditionally slow to act – even in support of her closest allies – and careful not to risk her soldiers unduly. Far from encouraging an aggressive stance, Sparta’s social system (in which the number of full citizens was always small, the risk of revolt at home always high and the opportunities for individuals to make themselves personally wealthy almost non-existent) made Spartans far more cautious than their brasher, greedier Athenian rivals.

This is probably the last of these posts on Sparta for a while, I’ve spent far too long worrying about 300 – a film really not worth the effort – but no doubt I’ll return to the topic of Sparta eventually - I can’t help myself.

Posted April 17, 2007 Comments(0)

Another magazine I picked up today was the first issue of SciFiNow - a new SFX style science fiction magazine published by Imagine. It’s huge - a large format, 140-odd pages, glossy, nicely designed (if a bit too busy for me - it’s one of those magazines that seems to encourage attention deficit disorder) and with lots and lots of tv/film/comic related stuff.

The literary side of things does get a look in, there are a few book reviews and there’s the first part of a feature on the history of science fiction as a literary form (oddly tucked away in the fanboy section).

The features are a bit shallow, and the way the magazine has been broken up into segments feels a bit random to me, but it does look like it could, given time, develop into a serious rival for SFX.

Posted April 17, 2007 Comments(3)

So my copy of British Journal of Politics and International Relations drops through my door this morning and I shove it in my bag on the way out the door and forget about it until I get home. Off comes the plastic wrapper, and there in the back cover is a review by Christina Rowley from Briston University of, of all things, Firefly and Serenity. The article is entitled “Firefly/Serenity: Gendered Space and Gendered Bodies” and it isn’t particularly good (being a quick run through the female characters of Firefly explaining how they’re challenging gender stereotypes backed up with a very brief look at the use of violence in the show. The conclusion being that while Firefly’s gendering of its characters is atypical of media stereotyping there remain problems (Inara’s still a prostitute, no matter how high falutin’,  Kaylee’s still mooning over a doctor, even is she is a competent engineer with a sexuality of her own, etc.) - which is hardly startling.

Still, despite my reservations about the article itself, it was a pleasant surprise to see sf discussed seriously in a political journal without a single “as others see us” moment.

Posted April 17, 2007 Comments(0)

This is for Shaun and Paul:

“So,” said internationally famous author and quite religious bloke CS Lewis, draining the last drop from his pint pot. “One more from the road?”

The Inklings stirred, The Eagle and Child was warm and the fug of pipe smoke wrapped them in comforting blankets of contentment.

“Whose round is it?” Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College grumped, slamming his tankard on the oak table. “I bally well got the last one!”

“I’ll get it,” JRR said, sallying forth from the comfort of his seat by the fire and setting out on his quest. Then he paused. For long moments he stood in the centre of the pub like some giant, ancient statue being admired, over and over and over again, from many angles. Then he shook himself. “But first, I need a piss.”

Posted April 12, 2007 Comments(2)

Watching 300 last week it struck me how, like most things, pretty much everything everyone thinks they know about Sparta is wrong.

Like, for example, everyone knows the Spartans were uniquely cruel in exposing children to the elements if they were considered weak.

In the opening sequence of 300 the Spartan priests hold up a baby, judging whether it was healthy enough to be allowed to survive and the implication of the voice over are that the decision whether to expose the child and allow it to die was based entirely on his fitness for battle.

Except the Spartan tradition of exposure wasn’t unique in ancient Greece, indeed exposure seems to have been a shared phenomenon across the Greek city states of the classical era - although how commonly it was practised in any state is subject to question. It’s worth noting that less than a century after the time covered in the 300 Sparta would be led by Agesilaos, a small, physically unimpressive man who was lame from birth. Perhaps the Spartans weren’t quite as ruthless in their pursuit of physical purity as the legent would have it.

The Athenians also certainly exposed unwanted children. The difference was that, in the Athenian tradition, families chose to expose their children for personal reasons rather than the decision being taken for the good of the community as a whole. The result was that, in Athens it was almost always daughters, whatever their state of health, who were exposed (put in clay pots and left by the road in the Athenian way) because the cost of a dowry and marriage rituals could involve in the splitting up of family estates.

Now neither of these methods are ones that I’d want to advocate as a way of treating babies - but it does cast an interesting light on the Spartan tradition. If, living in a land with limited resources - as ancient Greece certainly was - a people have to make the choice about which of their children should live, how should they choose? Should the choice be made based on the needs of individual families - driven by a desire to preserve their private wealth and maintain their status? Or should a society set some rule by which it makes that decision for the good of the community as a whole?

Both options are horrible, neither are a perfect or desirable solution, but at least in this light the Spartan choice is understandable not as the inhuman thinning of a population on the basis of some pseudo-eugenics, pre-genetics breeding programme but the common response of a society to a common threat. Here, at least amongst the Spartiate class, is a fundamental equality of opportunity (the right live beyond birth) that is not based on the wealth of your individual family or their immediate economic need but on the needs of the society as a whole.

Coming next, 300 and the Ephors - the misrepresentation of Spartan democracy.

Posted April 3, 2007 Comments(0)

It’s a narcissistic business, isn’t it? Writing your thoughts down and publishing them on the worldwide web in the vain (and it must be vain) hope that others will find your ideas interesting enough to click on not just once but again and again. That they will come to hang on your every utterance. Very odd indeed. And I’ve resisted for a long time, but - sod it, I’m not going to let my modesty and natural reticence (ha!) keep me from adding to the great pile of steaming verbiage that is the blogosphere, so here I am. Blog post number one.

And it’s a curious moment of potential. There are a lot - an awful lot - of neglected blogs out there. Blogs that people start bursting with opitimism, surging with the belief that they’ve got something to say and the world simply can’t go on without the benefit their words of wisdom. And, it turns out, they don’t have that much to say afterall. And, it turns out, the world goes on without them.

Will this blog become another of those stagnated little puddles in the vast ocean of comment?

It might… or it might not.

Come back soon and find out.

Posted March 22, 2007 Comments(0)