Survivors 2

I just watched the previous episode of Survivors on BBC iPlayer, albeit with subtitles. (Why don’t they make all the episodes available until the end of the series? I would particularly like to see the first.)

It was interesting, and I’ll look forward to the next one. I’m not sure there would be a greater sense of anarchy, and wariness of contact because of the virus – does this no longer exist? I also presume availability of fuel has been explained.

I see it is based on a novel by Terry Nation – he of Blakes 7 and Dr Who fame, among other things. He died 11 years ago – good to see his work lives on.

Survivors

I caught the second half of Survivors on BBC1 last night and rather enjoyed it. I wish I’d seen the previous episodes now. I wonder if they’re on replay or iPlayer…

Post-apocalyptic stuff really appeals to me. Survivors has a similar feel to John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids, The Chysalids, and to some extent The Midwich Cuckoos, and also Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, along with something of Quatermass. I have a copy of The Midwich Cuckoos with a very well-creased spine, and recently read The Chrysalids (the first time since being at school, when I didn’t really get it) and also read A Canticle for Leibowitz for the first time. If you haven’t read any of these books I heartily recommend you do so.

The thing with post-apocalyptic SF is that people are denied their technology, and are stripped back to basics. Emotions, motivations and relationships become enhanced and distorted as the characters find themselves no longer carrying the huge amounts of baggage that comes along with modern life. It also highlights so many of the things we take for granted which would be denied us given such catastrophic events. The playing field would be levelled. Survival of the fittest. I also like the generally slower pace and gentleness of this sort of thing.

Writing this I realise just how much of a Wyndham fan I am. I must look up more of his work.

Paul Cornell fends off the journalists

That thoroughly nice and exceptionally talented friend of mine Paul Cornell – Dr Who and Primeval, Robin Hood TV scriptwriter, comic writer and novelist  (talk about having strings on your bow! (no Hood pun intended)) has had a particularly busy week for various reasons.

First was the recording of his radio adaptation of Iain Banks’ The State of the Art, then there was a right how’d y’do following the appearance of Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the first issue of Paul’s Marvel comic, Captain Britain and MI-13.

Visit Paul’s blog page for his take on the whole affair.

Eastercon

Next month I’ll be at Eastercon, Heathrow. While there I’ll enjoy catching up with old friends, having a gander at the books and generally noodling around. I’m also scheduled to be on two panels: one on the new Dr Who – is it all it’s cracked up to be, etc, and one on dealing with rejection as a writer!

TTFN.

Deciduous Trees again

I’m delighted to be able to say that Deciduous Trees has been accepted for publication in the BSFA’s 50th anniversary collection to be published next year.

Deciduous Trees

Last night I finished the short story I’ve been working on for the BSFA’s forthcoming 50th anniversary collection, now titled Deciduous Trees.

I knew that if I did it right it’d make my wife cry when she read it. I gave her the story when she went to bed last night, along with a tissue. “Oh. Is it sad?” she said. “Sort of.”

I gave her half an hour then went up to see how she’d found it; one tissue wasn’t enough and I had to fetch a bog roll. RESULT!

She says it’s by far the best thing I’ve ever written, and used words such as “poetry” and “overwhelming”. This is partly because it’s very a personal story which I’ve put a lot of emotion into – y’know, like a proper writer – but whatever anyone else things of it, that she likes it is good enough for me…

Fantasycon

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I went to the British Fantasycon in Nottingham a couple of weeks ago. While there I went to a few panels on publishing and so on, and heard pretty much the same doom and gloom I hear at every such panel: people aren’t buying books, the authors don’t make any money, the publishers don’t make any money, there are too many books and not enough good ones and everything in the industry is pretty much shit. Is there any good news related to publishing and being published, for Christ’s sake?

all tingly

On the writing front I’ve got just over 50,000 words of my new one, which I’m sending to my agent today for his perusal, and The Liberty Gun is published in mass market format in the UK in October. (It’s by far the best of the three, too.)

Unfortunately I’m no longer able to go to the World Fantasy Convention in the US, but will be at the British Fantasy Convention in Nottingham in September, where I’m looking forward to meeting Michael Marshall Smith. I’m hoping that if I shake his hand some of his astonishing talent might rub off on me. You can find details of a couple of books of his (and others) that I particularly recommend within the white site.

That’s it for now. Keep to the beat, pop kids.

heat

Well, Sunshine was visually quite spectacular, but for me the story tended to lurch from one quite unbelievable scenario to another. And as for the visual references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, it seems Tarantino only watched these two films before/while writing the script. There’s even a scene with the crew sitting round chomping a meal while chatting, straight out of Alien. The imagery is really that similar. Maybe this was intentional.

The film, as Ian pointed out to me as we left the cinema, is also highly reminiscent of a certain episode of Thunderbirds. Would I recommend it? I’m not sure. To me it came across as if Tarantino wanted to make an SF thriller that showed SF people how it really should be done, but failing to appreciate the clichés he was using, or the credibility required.

Other problems included corny orchestrated strings at key “emotional” moments, such as when someone dies; the fact that the first ship sent out was called Icarus 1 (uh, you wouldn’t call it “1″ unless you thought you were going to need a “2″ now, would you?), the snow-encrusted Sydney Opera House just to illustrate that it really is that cold on Earth (which also reminded me of the Statue of Liberty scene at the end of Planet of the Apes) and, for me, Big Noises: although atmospheric, there is NO NOISE IN SPACE! And in particular, while it’s feasible for spacecraft to make noises, I don’t believe sunlight makes a noise. (If I’m showing my ignorance of physics here, please feel free to let me know…)

I think I’d give the film three stars out of five. Wear your sunglasses and some sun screen and you should be OK.

eggy

Well, Easter’s been and gone, and along with it, Eastercon. This was the first Easter in 10 years I was at home.

The Eastercon in Chester would’ve been my tenth, the anniversary of my first, held at the Adelphi in Liverpool in 1997, but this time I just couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm, I’m afraid. It’s a shame, as it would’ve been a bit of a landmark one for me, but I’m feeling somewhat disenchanted with the whole SF thing at the moment and just didn’t want to go and sit around and queue for breakfast and all that stuff. I was looking at forthcoming cons the other day, too, and none of the UK ones really appeal. Perhaps this is as much to do with other factors as my relationship with SF, but I don’t know.

We’re dutifully sitting down in front of Dr Who on a Saturday evening again, but me and the missus have been very disappointed in the first two episodes of series 3. OK, so episode 1 had to introduce a new character in the form of Martha, which it did with aplomb, but was otherwise fairly empty. Episode 2 was a load of nothing, frankly. Sorry, guys, but while he kids are entertained, you need to offer more than that. (And, to be honest, David Tennant’s Doctor just doesn’t cut the mustard for me.) Primeval was much, much better.