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“Barcode Babes” at Daybreak Magazine

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:12:44 +0000

I am reliably informed by Jetse deVries (and he's the editor, if anyone should know, he should) that my story "Barcode Babes" will be appearing from April 2nd on the DayBreak Magazine site.

I'll be interested to see how people react…I'm a little nervous about this one.

Eastercon 2010 diary

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:07:28 +0000

I have no clue if anyone is even remotely interested, but if you’re at Eastercon and you have a burning desire to see me (and for some strange reason you can’t find me in the con bar – perhaps there’s been an earthquake or a zombie outbreak, although even then, I’m probably in the bar) here’s the things I’m definitely doing at this year’s Eastercon

Since I genuinely can’t remember the last time I attempted to do anything at 9am on Saturday morning that didn’t involve snoring, I’m rather lo0king forward to the panel on “living forever” – I may record it to find out what I said later. Extra bonus points for anyone who brings me toast to that one!

Niamh and Moira are coming to their first Eastercon, so I’m hoping everyone will make them welcome and I can’t wait to see what Niamh makes of fandom…

Details after the break…

Friday, noon
Room 12
“Animatronics – Artificial Intelligence?”
Moderator
Is UGOBE’s PLEO baby dinosaur a real example of artificial intelligence, or just the product of simple programming?

Friday, 4pm
Commonwealth
“Utopia – How the Concept has developed in Philosophy and SF”
Panellist
The idea of utopia – the ideal civilisation – dates back thousands of years and has become a staple of modern SF. Has anyone managed to write a truly utopian society, or is does utopia for some automatically mean dystopia for others?

Friday, 6pm
Royal C&D
Conflicts book launch – Newcon Press
Contributor Conflicts is a new anthology from Newcon Press that will include my story “Proper Little Soldier”

Saturday, 9am
Connaught
“Living Forever – good or bad?”
Panellist
Many SF writers, eg Moon, Morgan, Heinlein, Banks have speculated about rejuvenation or other possibilities for extending life for 100 years or even longer. Scientists and others discuss whether it can be done, and whether it would be ethical/desirable if it could be done.

Sunday, 1pm
41 (Winchester)
“Arthur C Clarke – Still worth Reading?”
Panellist
Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov were once the ‘Holy Trinity’ of Science Fiction. Do their books still have something to interest new readers coming to Science Fiction today?

Sunday, 6pm
Commonwealth
BSFA Awards Ceremony
Announcing the winner of the James White Award Short Story Competition

New Focus and other BSFA stuff…

admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:03:47 +0000

The latest issue of Focus – no. 55 – is at the printers (at last) and should be going in the post to members early next week. Here’s the cover:

And here’s some of the contents:

What does happen next?
So you’ve published your first book, now what? Gareth L Powell reflects

Christopher Priest’s Masterclass 6: Research
Christopher Priest discusses the value of research and the internet as a research tool

Poems from the stars
Poetry from Steve Sneyd & Edward Kenna (and me!)

Escape from the Tauran moon
Are some stories too good to be true? Dev Agarwal investigates…

Here be earthworms
Nina Allan considers what writers can learn from the things that obsess them

How to write a press release?
Gareth L Powell on an essential PR tool

Is this the real thing 7
Michaela Stanton on the Cola Factory

Also in the envelope with Focus will be the latest Vector, no. 262, which looks like this:

Obviously Vector has nothing to do with me, but this is a chunky issue with loads of good stuff in it.

In that envelope you’ll also get (barring last minute disasters) the BSFA 2009 Awards booklet…

I’m pretty sure some of my BSFA committee colleagues will never forgive me for the cheesy cover of the Awards booklet – but sometimes we all need a bit of cheese and I needed a cover quickly – and the slightly more stylish and restrained version I’d planned to use was giving me a nightmare when I tried to convert to CMYK – so giant spaceships with laser beams over North America it was. Hurrah!

And finally, coming to BSFA members in a separate mailing (and which will also be going in the post early next week, unless Martin Potts suddenly comes to his senses and flees with his family to the Andes while there’s still time) is a big, big project for the BSFA. Two Surveys is as comprehensive overview of the state of British science fiction over the last twenty years as you’re likely to find anywhere with a fantastic list of contributors saying some really fascinating things. Niall Harrison has done a fantastic job wrangling this book into shape. I laid it up and it was one of those jobs where I kept getting distracted with reading the text instead of putting the words down on the page – I hope I haven’t ruined it. Here’s the cover, which I also designed, based on an idea from Niall which I think worked out pretty bloody well.

So, if you’re not a BSFA member, none of that will be dropping through your door in the next fortnight or so. Jealous? You should be…

A GAME OF TWO SECOND HALVES

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:49:31 +0000

Over the last few months I’ve read Stephen Baxter’s Ark and Paul McAuley’s Gardens of the Sun – aside from being examples of work by British science fiction authors I really like, both books are also sequels to books I thought were excellent. Flood is, in my view, one of Baxter’s best and McAuley’s The Quiet War was one of my favourite novels of 2008). Both Ark and Gardens… conclude the stories begun in their earlier companions (I’m pretty sure there’s no scope for trilogies here) and I felt both of them were unnecessary.

I read Flood before reading that Baxter already had a sequel in the works and, to be honest, I couldn’t understand why. Flood, it seemed to me, stood neat and perfectly self-contained whole. Yes the ending was a bit ambiguous, and yes there were clearly plot threads that could still be picked at but none of the seemed essential. The characters I was interested in while reading Flood seemed, to me, to have got to the places they need to go.

One of the problems with Ark, therefore, is that Baxter has to introduce us to a whole new set of characters before the story can (literally) take off – and he does it at some length. Ark doesn’t start where Flood stopped, instead it rewinds the clock and leads us through the training, mishaps and misadventures of the crew who will eventually go into space aboard one of the books several arks. It isn’t until around half-way through the novel that we actually catch up to the events at the end of Flood and, to be honest, I was kicking my heals in frustration wanting the story to get on with it while the waters were rising again around the remnants of society. What’s strange here is that the first section of the books seems to go into minute detail about the build up to the take-off but after that the whole book seems weirdly compressed.

After take-off Baxter’s story becomes a generation-ship story as the crew struggles to hold their craft and increasingly fractured society together as they travel to a new planetary system. The problem is, for me, is that they crumble too easily, within a few years they have so completely lost their grip that they’re trying to dig their way out of the spacecraft in the belief that it’s a simulation.

Perhaps I have more faith in the ability of human beings to hold themselves together in the face of adversity but the collapse of this small community into feudalism and irrationality just seems too quick, too plot convenient and ultimately too unconvincing. It does fundamental damage to Ark both as a standalone novel and, particularly, compared to the meticulously paced Flood.

That’s not to say that the book doesn’t contain some truly breathtaking moments – the final chapters, especially the choice made by those still travelling in space – had (on this reader, anyway) a powerful emotional impact. There’s something inevitable, logical and yet utterly inhumane in their choice that almost makes up for everything that’s gone before.

With Gardens of the Sun I guessed that a sequel was inevitable when I finished reading The Quiet War – too many of the main characters were left in an unresolved limbo – but, again, I wasn’t that excited by the idea of another volume, even though I thought McAuley did a magnificent job with the first book. I was happy with the sense of indeterminacy about the future. It seemed to me that The Quiet War very neatly captures the indeterminacy of modern conflicts, the shuffling of paper armies, the struggle for control of the agenda and the definition of truth and the positioning that inevitably takes place. I didn’t even mind that the bad guys had appeared to win since it was obvious from the novel that their victory was contingent and against the historical flow.

The sequel, Gardens of the Sun lacks much of the moral fuzziness that made The Quiet War so interesting – lines have been drawn, characters have chosen their sides, the war has been won and what’s left is the mopping up.

Of course it’s more complicated than that and, in an unlikely act of political/social/military jujitsu the Outers who had been routed at the end of the first novel achieve something dangerously close to the infamous science fiction revolution to come out winners. (It isn’t quite a case of: “I, the wise one, have come to show you the truth you will now all slap your foreheads and wonders why you hadn’t thought of that before while succumbing quietly to my new world order” – but it’s pretty close. )

But it’s not really the big picture that bothers me (though I did find it unrealistic), it’s what McAuley does with the characters that bother me.

Again, as with Ark, there’s a pile of stuff here I loved. There’s fantastic world-building and, even if the novel sometimes spends too long wandering among every last far-flung piece of rock in the solar system, there are some wonderful descriptive passages of the weird places that circle our sun. And some of the individual story arcs are, I think, pretty impressive. Macy Minot does interesting things, and so does the pilot (whose name escapes me) but I’m not sure everything hangs together as convincingly as it did the first time round. Rather than characters’ stories winding more tightly together toward the key moment of crisis as the do in The Quiet War, here some of them seem to be unspooling away from each other, and that makes the whole thing feel less cohesive.

And some of the threads just don’t seem to develop fully.

Sri Hong Owen disappears in the middle of the novel – seemingly frustrated in her attempts to understand the work of the great gene-wizard Avernus. Then, at the end, she suddenly reappears as a force capable of changing the course of events in the whole solar system and as something not quite human. The transformation occurs off screen and I wondered why?

The spy begins on a quest to find his true love, wanders around, is disappointed, goes to jail, discovers he’s dying, travels to a jail on the moon, does some fighting, dies. I found this thread particularly baffling as I wasn’t at all sure how it was contributing to the larger story and it didn’t go anywhere.

But it’s Loc Ifrahim’s path that most irritated me. In the beginning he continues to try and scam his way up the greasy pole, falls in love, loses his love, appears on the path to redemption and then his character is just chucked away.

At the end of the novel McAuley reveals the strange fate of Sri Hong Owen and her ultimate – ultimately solipsistic – plan for the eternal life amongst the stars. It seems to me that Loc Ifrahim – given his history with Sri, his previous attempts to manoeuvre her and her work for his advantage and his hard-won foot on the path to some sort of redemption – would have been the perfect pair of eyes to see that final scene through. But we don’t – instead McAuley uses her gene-enhanced son (a character who barely appears until the last quarter of Gardens of the Sun) and who has little real resonance for the reader.

It seems to me to be a mistake – and, I think, a revealing one. I’m not sure, by the end of the second volume, McAuley is still interested in the characters that have been with him since The Quiet War. In fact, I’m not sure if he isn’t a little bored of them. Which might be why the last half of Gardens of the Sun sees the introduction of so many new characters and the sidelining (or killing) of most of the original characters who were carried over from the first volume. And, if McAuley doesn’t really care about them, why should we?

So two novels that I wanted to like more than I did, two second halves that aren’t quite up to the quality of their excellent predecessors, but also two books that, in parts, feature astonishingly good writing.

These sequels certainly aren’t bad enough to sour your memory of the first book, but neither are the essential reading.

FLASH FICTION: Abigail

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:59:07 +0000

So here’s the first piece of flash fiction I’ve written in a long time. It was inspired by The Campaign for Real Fear although it turned out a little bit too long and probably not really what they will be looking for. It’s called Abigail and it’s about one of the things that frightened me most when I was growing up…

ABIGAIL

Every night, at 10:30, Abigail’s father closes the front door, climbs into his rusty Toyota and drives away.

Every night, before he goes, he strokes his daughter’s hair, reminds her not to open to door to anyone else and kisses her on the forehead.

It is dangerous to go out after dark.

The daylight keeps the gunmen pressed back in the shadows, but they come out at night.

During the day Oscar and Luis sometimes pretend to be gunmen. In their games Oscar and Luis are heroes, fighting the invader, defying death and striking dramatic poses with their plastic guns.

At night Oscar and Luis hide beneath their sheets.

Abigail watches her little clock.

At 10:25 Abigail’s father comes up the stairs. He goes into the boys’ bedroom. They are asleep. She hears him moving softly, pulling the sheets they’ve kicked off themselves back up over their shoulders to keep out the night’s chill. He speaks too softly for her to hear the words.

At 10:27 Abigail’s father comes into her room. She sits up in the bed and he gives her that look he always gives her – the mixture of mock surprise that she is still awake and happiness that they will get to share a few moments together. They go through their ritual.

“Hello Miss Floppy,” he says to her doll. “Why aren’t you fast asleep? How are you going to learn new things at school tomorrow if you stay up all night.”

He takes the doll and lays her flat on the bed, pulling the sheets around her.

“Dolls don’t go to school, daddy.” Abigail giggles.

“Don’t they?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you?”

She nods.

“Then why aren’t you fast asleep?”

Abigail slips down into the bed, beneath the sheets, and closes her eyes.

“I am asleep!”

Now her father laughs. It is deep and soft and her favourite sound in the world.

He strokes the stray hairs from her forehead.

“Look after the boys,” he says. “And remember, don’t open the door to anyone but me and your mama. We’ll be back as quickly we can.”

He gives her a kiss.

Abigail pretends to sleep but she watches through part opened eyes as he leaves. She hears him go downstairs.

At 10:30 he opens the door and walks out to his rusty Toyota. The engine starts first time – her father is a good mechanic – and it rolls away towards the city. Abigail’s father goes out to collect their mother who works as a waitress in a hotel. The waitressing job pays well – the invaders tip generously – but it is too far and too dangerous for mother to walk home at night.

Abigail lies down again and waits. She will not sleep until she hears the familiar rumble of the Toyota, until its lights sweep across the house throwing swooping shadows into her room and she hears her parents’ key in the door.

At 10:48 Abigail is very tired. Her father usually comes home by 11:10.

It is midnight when Abigail wakes up.

The house is quiet.

She kneels on the bed, looks out the window.

The Toyota is not there.

She sits back down on her bed, drawing her knees up under her chin.

It is12:03 and Abigail is very awake.

She thinks about going to wake her brothers but something stops her. Some feeling that they should be allowed this last night of sleep. She looks down at her doll, still wrapped safely in the sheets and wishes she could change places.

For the first time in her life she feels alone.

Titanic and Tupac

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:43:37 +0000

Partly to help me at the end of the year (when it comes time to come up with nominations for awards) and partly just because I live under the perpetual misconception that other people are interested in what I think, I thought I’d use this blog to keep track of the good short stories I read during the year. My only hesitation is that, in doing so, it’s going to reveal what a flibbertigibbet I am when it comes to reading short fiction – skipping from publication to publication whenever things happen to cross my path (or are handy when I need spend some thinking time in a small room – ahem!)…

Try not to dwell on that image while I recommend:

“The Raft of the Titanic” by James Morrow in The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories eds Ian Whates & Ian Watson

One of the handful of new stories in this volume, The Raft of the Titanic is an allegorical tale that follows the fate of the passengers of the Titanic who, instead of leaping into the Atlantic’s freezing cold waters, build themselves a vast raft in the two hours between striking that unavoidable iceberg and the great ship breaking asunder and heading to the bottom.

Missed by the Carpathia and assumed lost, the crew and the passengers must make a new world for themselves and ultimately make a decision about the world they left behind.

The story is, of course, preposterous, but the ending is no less powerful for all that – as the chaos of the First World War encompasses even their raft.

I’m an unabashed fan of James Morrow’s work and I loved this story.

“Tupac Shakur at the End of the World” by Sandra MacDonald in Futurismic

You can be as post-modern as you like but you still don’t have a really effective story if you can’t pack in an emotional punch as well. Sandra MacDonalds’ story manages to combine both in a powerful little tale of post-apocalyptic longing. Yes there’s tonnes of film and book references and lots of nods and winks to the reader but there’s also a central character in whose fate the reader is willing to invest some energy – even if the cast of characters around her are straight out of central casting.

There’s never going to be a happy ending in a story like this but, even knowing that going in I think the final paragraph will catch in most readers’ chests. It’s powerful stuff.

The revolution is only a train stop away

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:52:22 +0000

There is a revolutionary movement growing in this country. British people are defying those in authority and forcing the powerful to change their plans. At the moment the movement is small, but it is growing and the time when those in power will be forced to strike against the agitators or surrender to anarchy is fast approaching.

It started in St Albans.

The battlefields are the trains and platforms of First Capital Connects’ shambolic empire.

For months passengers have endured terrible services. Over Christmas and through January the service became unbearable – first a work to rule by the drivers saw services cut in half (how could a company be so reliant on overtime working? How many hours were those drivers actually doing?) and then a complete inability to cope with snow (which they were still blaming for delays three weeks after the snow had stopped falling) meant that journeys that should take half an hour were taking two and three hours. For six consecutive working days in January my combined commute time (which should be a little over an hour) was more than four hours.

On one particularly wretched day I spent seven and a half hours trying to get to and from work.

Even by their own figures (which they fiddled by launching a ludicrously cut back time table for much of the period) FCC reckons that one in four of its trains ran late in January and February. This was when they were running just 3 or 4 trains an hour on what should be one of the busiest commuter lines into London.

Trying to get to and from Central London for work was a depressing, distressing and infuriating trial – made worse by the knowledge that every single person on that train was paying handsomely for the privilege of being abused by a company utterly incapable of organising its services.

Now it seems that people are starting to crack.

There’s already a petition at Number 10’s website and a I Hate First Capital Connect group on Facebook passed 1,000 members in 48 hours and now has almost 2,500 members, but its direct action that’ll bring the buggers down.

On 11 February, Debra Schiman (I didn’t know her name but she’s a fairly familiar figure to travellers going in to London from St Albans because she’s generally carrying a teddy bear and promoting her book – Travels With My Teddy Bear – to more or less anyone who’ll listen) refused to get off a train when they announced that because of congestion they were cancelling her train and turning it around.

Just one woman saying no.

But that wasn’t the end of it. On Friday a train coming North broke down in central London just before 8AM causing 45 minute delays while they tried to move it. To try and get their timetable back on track FCC cancelled a train at Cricklewood but initially 20 passengers refused to get off, even when threatened by staff that the police would be called.

Eventually large number of other passengers got back on the train.

And, after a half hour stand off, FCC were forced to back down and the train ran on.

Now I’ve always believed that the English were congenitally incapable of revolution. It’s not that that they don’t get angry enough it’s just that their anger most commonly manifests itself in the stern “tut!” and a bit of a grumble.

But taking over trains? That’s just one step away from storming a palace.

I’m telling you folks, today it’s FCC management, tomorrow the Queen herself will tremble.

Otis Gibbs “Joe Hill’s Ashes”

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:43:39 +0000

Funny how things workout sometimes. No sooner had I finished rambling on about the PSA’s political songs than I got an email from singer Otis Gibbs saying that his new album Joe Hill’s Ashes was available for download.

I’d never heard of Otis Gibbs until I saw him support Billy Bragg just over a year ago – where he did a great job – and persuaded me to pick up all his albums in the bar after the show. Grandpa Walked the Picket Line, 49^th and Melancholy, Once I Dreamed of Christmas (not exactly an anti-Christmas album, but perhaps a realistic Christmas album – one where Santa stabs Lloyd the Reindeer in a bar fight and features the classic Crap for Christmas) and One Day our Whispers are all good examples of the blue-collar American singer songwriter’s art. There’s bits of folk and bits of rock and bits of blues and a dollop of country. Reading about his life (http://otisgibbs.com/) and listening to his lyrics you can see that Woody Guthrie was a big influence on the young Gibbs – and there’s some of Guthrie in the music, but the most obvious influence is Steve Earle (though, perhaps inevitably, there are threads from the likes Dylan, Springsteen and Willie Nelson on some of the tracks on some of the albums).

Gibbs palette tends towards the small town and rural which gives his music a distinct alt-country edge and his left-wing politics are never far from the surface. Perhaps his most memorable song – certainly when you hear it live, when it can set the spine a-tingling – is “The People’s Day” from One Day Our Whispers – with its “one day our whispers will be louder than your screams” sing-a-long chorus.

From a first listen, the thing that strikes you about this new release is the stronger production. Even listening via the live streaming option, Otis’s voice sounds richer and stronger and more in your face than earlier albums and there’s a lovely folky but restrained accompaniment to many of the songs. It’s a long way from the rough and tumble recording of 49^th and Melancholy.

On a first listen, the opening track “Joe Hill’s Ashes” is a keeper and “Twelve Men Dead in Sago”and “Outdated, Frustrated and Blue” share a sweet melancholy sound and a restrained bitterness at the decline of industrial America.

Track seven, “The Town That Killed Kennedy” leaps out of the headphones – with Gibbs straying towards Tom Waits territory to pretty good effect. The album really takes off from there, “The Ballad of Johnny Crooked Tree”, the almost spiritual “I Walked Out in the River”, the boppy “Cross Country” all make an impact but its the doleful duo “My New Mind” and “Something More” that wind up the album in somber but powerful one-two that leave the strongest impression – I especially like “Something More”.

You can listen to the whole album by Wannamaker, Indiana’s finest for free or download it for $9.99 (about £6 given the current PayPal exchange rate). The CD is released on May 4 in the US and May 24 everywhere else. I recommend it. Frankly you’ve got a love a guy who finishes his biography with the line: “Recently, he has been examining ways of using bird feeding as a form of civil disobedience.”

Political songs

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:55:56 +0000

So the Political Studies Association is holding a ballot to identify the top ten political songs as part of their 60^th Anniversary celebrations. Below the break is the list of the songs they’ve put forward – I’m listing them all because you can’t get to it unless you’re a member of the PSA (members can also nominate one song of their own…)

The songs are: “chosen to represent different times and places, but also to reflect the various ways in which music is allied to politics – in expressions of protest, but also of patriotism and propaganda.”

Annie Lennox & Aretha Franklin Sisters are doing it for themselves

Anon. Bella Ciao

Barry McGuire Eve of Destruction

Billie Holiday Strange Fruit

Billy Bragg Which side are you on?

Bob Dylan The Times They Are a changing

Bob Marley Redemption Song

Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA

Carl Bean I was born this way

Cecil A. Spring-Rice I vow to thee my country

Charles A. Tindley We Shall Overcome

Charly García Nos siguen pegando abajo

Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle Le Marseillaise

Donovan Universal Soldier

Edwin Starr War

Elvis Costello Tramp The Dirt Down

Enoch Sontonga Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika

Eugène Pottier The Internationale

Fela Kuti Zombie

Gil Scott Heron The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Horst Wessel Die Fahne hoch

Jim Connell The Red Flag

John Lennon Imagine

Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi

Leornard Cohen The Partisan

Li Youyuan The East is Red

Marvin Gaye What’s Going On?

Midnight Oil Beds are Burning

Nena 99 Luftaballons

Nina Simone Mississippi Goddam

Pete Seeger Where have all the flowers gone?

Peter Gabriel Biko

Plastic Ono Band Give Peace a Chance

Public Enemy Fight the Power

Randy Newman Political Science

RATM Killing in the name

Robert Wyatt Shipbuilding

Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter

Sex Pistols God Save The Queen

The Beatles Revolution

The Clash Know Your Rights

The Cranberries Zombie

The Jam Eton Rifles

The Police Invisible Sun

The Specials AKA Free Nelson Mandela

The Strawbs Part of the Union

Tracy Chapman Talkin’ ’bout a revolution

U2 Sunday Bloody Sunday

UB40 1 in 10

Verdi Chorus of Hebrew Slaves

Victor Jara Te Recuerdo Amanda

William Blake Jerusalem

Woody Guthrie This Land is Your Land

You can see they’ve tried, but this is one middle class playlist, isn’t it? One rap track? And, I might be wrong here, but I think the most recent song on the list is Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name Of (which is only 18 years old).

Some of the choices are just total head-scratchers. Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction (really?), Charly García’s Nos siguen pegando abajo (have they listened to it) and while the Horst Wessel Song (Die Fahne hoch) might be of interest as a piece of history, as a piece of music it’s a baleful dirge as hollow and empty as the rest of NAZI art.

I know a list like this will be trying to include more than a token number of women, but if Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves is the best they can manage then it isn’t a task worth undertaking. But then what sort of weird system includes that but not Aretha Franklin’s immeasurably superior Respect?

And it gets worse before it gets better…

UB40? Midnight Oil? Nena? The Cranberries?

Please god, no!

I have a soft spot for Tracy Chapman – I saw her at the Nelson Mandela concert in Wembley where she first came to people’s attention by literally stopping the show with an acoustic performance of tenderness amongst an awful lot of bluster – but if Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution is one of the great political songs of all times, then I’m a Tory.

This is all political music for people who own a Bang and Olufsen stereo.

Some of the artists were inevitable but the song choices odd. Billy Bragg had to be there, but Which Side Are You On? might be strident but it’s not a patch on A World Turned Upside Down, Between the Wars or Waiting for the Great Leap Forward.

Born in the USA might be Bruce Springsteen’s most recognisable anthem, but as a song about the lives of the blue collar workers forgotten by Reagan’s America The River or anything on the Nebraska album knocks it into a cocked hat.

And, personally, I’d choose Who is the Leader? as Edwin Starr’s best political song over War, although that is funky song.

There are, to be fair, a number of songs I wouldn’t argue deserve their place…

Billie Holiday Strange Fruit

Bob Dylan The Times They Are a changing

(although Maggie’s Farm might be better)

Bob Marley Redemption Song

Marvin Gaye What’s Going On?

Jim Connell The Red Flag

Robert Wyatt Shipbuilding

The Specials AKA Free Nelson Mandela

William Blake Jerusalem

Woody Guthrie This Land is Your Land

…all, more or less, demand inclusion. But how can I vote on a list that doesn’t include (off the top of my iPod):

Outkast Bombs Over Baghdad

KRS 1 Sound of the Police

NWA Fuck tha Police

The Beat Stand Down Margaret

Desmond Dekker Israelites

Al Green A Change is Gonna Come

That Petrol Emotion Big Decision

James Brown Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud

Alabama 3 Mao Tse Tung Said

The Men They Couldn’t Hang The Ghost of Cable Street

Skunk Anansie Yes It’s Fucking Political

The The Mercy Beat

And then there are the specifically Irish songs…

Stiff Little Fingers Alternative Ulster

(I mean, I like Invisible Sun by The Police as much as the next man who has been forced to listen to it by someone holding an industrial nailgun to his head, but if you absolutely have to have a song about the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, this is the one)

The Wolftones James Connolly

The Chieftains The Foggy Dew

(Well there’d have to be a couple of rebel songs in there)

The Fureys The Green Fields of France

(best anti-war song ever)

The Pogues The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda

(the second best anti-war song ever)

And while I was writing that list, I thought of these…

Skinnyman Council Estate of the Mind

The Beastie Boys It Takes Time To Build

Kanye West Diamonds

(I know, he’s an asshole – this is a great song)

Everlast The Stone in My Hand

Faithless Mass Destruction

Hard-Fi Cash Machine

Dead Kennedys California Uber Alles

Dead Kennedys Holiday in Cambodia

The Who Won’t Get Fooled Again

Pete Seeger Casey Jones (The Union Scab)

Pete Seeger Guantanemera

The Chieftains & Sinead O’Connor The Foggy Dew

MC5 Motor City is Burning

The Housemartins Build

The The Heartland

All that being said, it’s a no-brainer as to what should win the greatest political song of all time. If Le Marseillaise doesn’t make you want to man a barricade in the name of some cause – even if it is sinking Greenpeace ships – then you’re probably already dead. It’s rousing, it’s brilliant when sung en masse and it’s stood the test of time.

Back again

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:19:07 +0000

So, long time no blog…

No excuses, just busy, but that’s probably going to change over the next few months so I thought I’d get back on the horse and see whether we cleared some hurdles (or something).

So, straight to business, having lost a lot of work to a computer malfunction recently I’ve been writing quite a lot.

I now have four new short stories at various stages of finished and an outline, research and four chapters of, of all things, a horror novel set in the trenches of World War One sitting on my (multi-multi-backed-up) hard drives. I’m not sure how I’ve ended up writing a horror novel – the story just jumped up at me and though I’ve had my doubts: I don’t really like horror novels, especially ones with monsters (which this one certainly does) and I’m terrified of doing that thing that genre outsiders do of repeating stuff that’s gone before. At the same time, however, it’s a story that seems to want to be told so I’m going to try to treat it seriously and finish it.

The next few weeks/months should see three short stories published, at last. Proper Little Soldier – in Conflicts a NewCon Press anthology being launched at Eastercon, Barcode Babes – in DayBreak, Jetse DeVries’s online companion to his much-anticipated Shine anthology and Eskeragh – in (I think, but I’m not certain) the next issue of Albedo One. Thinking about it, I suppose Eskeragh should be classified as a horror story as well… maybe I do have a darkside?

I’ve also been busy with BSFA stuff – the next issue of Focus is just about ready to go, I’ve been laying up a really fascinating book which members will receive soon that has been edited by Niall Harrison which surveys writers on their views about sf and f and their roles within it. And I’ve been administering the James White Award – the closing date for which is only a few days away.

Oh, and I’ve quit my job and am looking at alternative forms of gainful employment.

All ideas welcome.

And then there’s Eastercon. I’m on four or five panels of one hue or another – I’ll post details for those vaguely interested later. I hope Moira and Niamh might be able to come along to this one – which is exciting and a bit weird – they’ve never been to a Con before, who knows what they’ll make of it (actually Niamh won’t care because it’s in a hotel and she loves hotels, so she’ll be happy).

It will be nice to have them around (if we can sort out hotel accommodation – I’m waiting to hear back from the folk at Odyssey). I’m pretty hopeless at conventions at just going up and talking to strangers (or even, sometimes, people I know) – yet people never believe me when I say I’m shy, presumably because I overcompensate horribly when I finally do talk to people!

Plus, I can’t wait to see fandom through Niamh’s eyes. I think some of Eastercon could blow her mind.

That’s it for now, I’ve also been doing a lot of reading – which I’m going to get around to talking about here in the near future.

Back soon.