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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.

Dead dogs and weird children

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:15:14 +0000

Wil Wheaton’s dog died – losing a pet is horrible. I know the cynics will roll their eyes but if you’ve lived with an animal – especially a dog – it’s almost impossible not to imbue them with human characteristics. They become friends. And they’re more reliable than most humans. I can still be brought to sudden tears if the memories of my childhood dog’s (Rusty) death sneak up on me…

Wil’s post reminded me of the weirdest thing that happened over the weekend.

My parents had a dog that died about 18 months ago. Nipper was a Yorkshire terrier/Highland terrier cross and – as the mix of breeds implies – he was a hugely energetic, mentally unstable, tiny ball of fluff with an ego the size of Texas. He was old (thirteen) and hadn’t been particularly well for a long time. But he died when my parents were over here with us for my daughter’s birthday party and it was an unpleasant shock for them to come home to. Nipper had been staying with the neighbours – in whose house he probably spent almost as much time as he did with my parents – so it wasn’t as though he was being neglected or anything.

My daughter, like most children, would like a pet – I’d love to have a dog too – but circumstances don’t allow it, at least not in a way that I’d be happy enough. So Niamh kind of adopted Nipper as her pet – even though he was a grouchy old mutt who didn’t really like children and, by the time Niamh met him, was only intermittently interested of clambering out of his doggie bed to kill any small animal (or squeaky toy) that was foolish enough to come in range of his jaws or to sit around your feet until you stood on him.

Even so, Niamh can’t have actually met Nipper more than four or five times in her life (though she did “talk” to him on the phone a lot – don’t ask).

She was really upset when the dog died. And she kept mentioning him. Saying how much she missed Nipper. Fretting about what happened to him. Drawing him in her pictures. Frankly, it was a bit strange.

My parents have been over this week. Pitting Niamh and Grandparents in a mutual appreciation duel to the death. We said goodbye to them on Sunday night, came home, got Niamh ready for bed and then she burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” Her mum asked – expecting a torrent about how she was missing her granny and granddad.

“I killed Nipper!”

“What?”

Through floods of tears on a scale only a six-year-old girl (and perhaps an Old Testament god) can manage she blurted: “I wanted granny and granddad to come over to my party and that made them leave Nipper behind on his own and he died. I thought they’d leave him enough food until they came back but he died. And it’s my fault!”

Three things that strike me about this…

How can a little girl who talks non-stop about everything and anything in one long stream of consciousness have kept feelings like that a secret for 18 months?
Can “catholic guilt” be a genetic thing? She certainly hasn’t been exposed to it in her environment.
Kids are weird. And complicated. And I don’t know half as much about mine as I thought I did.

9

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:42:41 +0000

Shane Acker’s 2005 short film 9 is an exceptionally rare beast. It has beautiful visuals but it isn’t content to assume that the viewer will be content with eye-candy and so it creates a complex world and a touching story and effective characters to make you really care about what happens. And it does all this in less than eleven minutes without a line of dialogue and with excellent action sequences.

It is top quality science fiction movie-making.

The stitch-toy aesthetic of the main characters was extraordinary – and I assume whoever made Sony’s Little Big Planet was similarly impressed because if Sackboy wasn’t inspired by Acker’s visuals then god really does move in mysterious ways – but the really clever thing about 9 is the way it places this cute characters into a post-apocalyptic salvage-punk world of horrors and to tell a tight, coherent story with wonderful economy.

See for yourself on YouTube:

Anyway, to say that I loved 9 when I first saw it would be an understatement and I’ve wondered since whatever became of the clever director who’d made that film and what he’d do next. I presumed, like most talented film students he’d ended up making irritating commercials for big corporations.

So I actually did a little jig of delight when I opened this week’s Screen International to find a review of … 9… a new full length feature by Shane Acker distributed by Focus Features and produced by Time Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (amongst others).

There’s a Holywood-ish trailer (http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2476081689/) – with a little bit of a voice-over man vibe going on at the start – but that’s not enough to dampen my enthusiasm, because the look and feel of the original seems to have survived the transfer from short to full-length feature, even if the characters now have voices.

9 opens across most of the world in early September but the UK won’t see it until 30 October – which just isn’t fair. Still, I’ll be in the queue…

Not waving, drowning in Stephen Baxter’s Flood

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:34:32 +0000

Let me start that I really enjoyed Stephen Baxter’s Flood. It’s a ripping yarn, well told by an author who, it seems to me, has reached a new level with his writing. I think Flood might be in the top five of my favourite Baxter novels. It is one of his most accomplshed.

But I have a niggling problem with the book.

It’s certainly not that the fact that I’m feeling over-familiar with Baxter’s work. Even though he seems to be writing so many novels (it feels like a dozen a year, but it can’t be that many, can it?) that it’s difficult to keep up, Stephen Baxter has recently become a far more diverse and accomplished author than I ever imagined possible. Some authors who churned out so much material might be criticised for watering their work down or drowning readers with filler.

That’s certainly not true with Baxter.

Even after years as an established author, he’s still visibly improving as a novelist. Some writers arrive with a splash but never better their early work. There are plenty of writers for whom the Xeelee sequence would have been the apogee of their writerly lives. But Baxter, as he gets older, is getting more ambitious in theme and setting. He’s writing historical novels, near-future thrillers and still working on the wide-scale, cold hearted space operas – and he’s having success at everything he tries.

The more he stretches himself the better he seems to become. Baxter seems to be going through a kind of a mid-life crisis of creativity that has seen him measurably grow as a writer. He might never have the easy grace with language that some writers are blessed with (he’s not got the natural talent of China Mieville, whose The City in The City I’ve also just finished, for example) and readers shouldn’t come to Flood expecting poetic flourishes. but he’s becoming considerably more than just a competent, workmanlike stylist.

Flood sees Baxter turn his attention to an environmental disaster – the rising waters echo global warming, but actually for Baxter’s purposes that global-disaster-in-waiting isn’t anywhere near disastrous enough. From the opening pages in a rain-soaked Spain through the gradual collapse of society, Flood follows the fortunes of a group of friends as the world disintegrates. By tracking the fates of a diverse group, Baxter gets to mix a helicopter view of the growing crisis with the more personal/emotional stories of those on the ground.

If early Baxter might be said to have had a recurring problem it was with its human characters – as Baxter’s work tends to deal with the universe on unimaginably vast scales, the fate of his human characters could come to seem very small beer – which was, of course, part of Baxter’s point. However, it didn’t make for novels that were immediately accessible.

Flood certainly demonstrates how Baxter’s writing of people has improved down the years. Here is characters have distinct shapes and edges and motivations and feel like real humans caught up in disasters beyond their control. If, as the disaster unfolds, their fates and their aspirations are all washed away by the flooding it is at least clear that what has happened matters to them. Their suffering and (short-lived) triumphs are given depth and resonance.

And while, in the end (as with so much of Baxter’s work), it eventually becomes clear that their little human lives are mere specks in the face of a disaster beyond any comprehension or control, at least it is clear that this is Baxter’s intent and not just the case of a lack of authorial interest in the fate of his creations.

No none of these things were problems.

What I didn’t buy in Flood was more basic and, therefore, in some ways more annoying.

I just couldn’t work out where all the bloody water was coming from.

Vast oceans in the crust I can buy, maybe, but why are they suddenly gushing UPWARDS against gravity and air pressure and stuff?

Baxter does some arm waving and attempted prestidigitation to distract us and persuade us that the book contains an answer, but I didn’t buy it – especially given the sheer scale of Flood.

So even though I was more-or-less gripped by the story and liked the writing and totally enjoyed the book, I couldn’t (like the characters) ever get away from the fact of the ever rising waters. I was credulous while London drowned, less so when the last of the British Isles went under but by the time Denver, the Andes, Switzerland and finally Mount Everest herself went under, well, it was like an itch I couldn’t scratch – driving me nuts.

Does it matter that I don’t buy the fundamental driver of a disaster novel?

It turns out, not that much. I still had a great time with this book and as I understand a sequel, Ark, is on the way, I have no problem recommending you pick up Flood. It’s a journey worth taking.

Wordpress 2.8 & Internet Explorer

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:48:21 +0000

It appears that this blog isn’t being displayed properly in Internet Explorer. I believe this is one because of one of the (many, many, many) glitches that appear to have been introduced into Wordpress with the release of version 2.8. I’ll try and fix it, but this leads me to offer two pieces of advice.

1. If you have a Wordpress blog DON’T UPGRADE TO 2.8 – it’s an utter dog. What use, for example, is blogging software that won’t let you type in text unless you install a plug-in text editor?

2. Don’t use Internet Explorer. But hey, that’s just common sense.