Doctor Who - the End of Time figures

Just announced new Doctor Who action figures based on the final two part tale that saw the end of David Tennant's tenure as the Doctor, there's a set of End of Time figures coming soon, with the injured Tennant Doctor, the blonde Master, Timothy Dalton's impessive, be-robed Time Lord and - wait for it! - the first Matt Smith Doctor Who action figure, with him right after the regeneration, still in the previous incarnation's clothes.







And on the fun side there's also a new Time Squad set of Doctor Who figures coming, with the collection coming together to assemble a Master figure. Funky!

Banning

My friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid had a bit of an upset recently - organisers of the Octocon SF convention contacted him to tell him he was banned from the convention for his 'attitude'. They then take the extremely cowardly route of saying they refuse to explain further what their reasoning is and will not debate it. Now I don't know what their reasons are (since they make vague accusations but refuse to back them up properly), but to say there are reasons and then refuse to give them or to engage in civilised discussion makes me naturally lean to the suspicion that actually they don't have any proper reasons that any independent person would consider serious enough to ban someone from a convention (something I've not heard of happening before, its pretty unprecedented, especially involving a well known member of the SF community). In fact sod being polite, I'd say that whole approach smacks of petty mindedness and childishness - by all means, Octocon organisers, explain properly and I and many others may revise that opinion, but if you won't then I can only assume your being incredibly foolish.

Secondly I've known Pádraig for years; we both wrote extensively in our own spare time for The Alien Online promoting good writing; he's written articles, essays and interviews (most recently a fabulous, in-depth piece with Bryan Talbot which we ran on the Forbidden Planet blog - part 1 here, part 2 here, highly recommended) and run successful conventions. He's supported good reading and good authors and artists for years and as such has gained the respect and friendship of many in the science fiction and comics communities, fans, readers, writers and artists, from new talent to some of the best known names. So for Octocon to take this unprecedented action to someone many of us hold in high esteem (as well as considering a personal friend) without real explanation is not only going to give us a negative impression of them, its going to make quite a few of us rather angry to see him treated in this manner, to say nothing of it smacking of a rather undemocratic and unaccountable approach by evading establishing reasons or proper explanations, which is, frankly, baffling. I await them giving some proper explanation for this to prove they aren't simply being vindictive over minor criticisms. And meantime I won't be encouraging anyone to attend the convention.

Doctor Poo

Viz offers up a scatalogical take on our favourite Time Lord with Doctor Poo, traversing time and space desperately trying to find a quiet loo to take a dump, thwarted at every turn by Cybermen, Sea Devils and Daleks. I especially like the 'handicapped' symbol on Davros' personal loo. Vulgar and crude (it begins with a farting version of the classic Baker-era Doctor Who theme) but funny (via SF Crowsnest):

"I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon"

"And if the dam breaks open many years too soon

And if there is no room upon the hill

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too

I'll see you on the Dark Side Of The Moon" (Pink Floyd, Brain Damage)

I'm currently enjoying my annual smorgasbord of movies at the Edinburgh International Film Festival where among the movies from around the world is a low budget, independent British film by Duncan Jones (previously known as Zowie Bowie - yes, David's wee boy, but commendably he's deliberately not playing on that, he wants folks to come on the film's merits). Moon is a most unusual beast - it's a British low-budget, indy movie that isn't a social realism piece set in a housing estate. Not that I have any problems with those (some bloody good films come out of that field), but it often seems in the UK film industry today we either make small budgeted social realism dramas or larger budgeted (still small by US standards though) historical costume dramas for the most part. A low budget Brit indy science fiction film? Unusual. And one which uses story and intelligence in lieu of dazzling effects and big explosions? Remarkable.

I was lucky enough to bag tickets to the UK premiere of Moon at the Film Fest here - both scheduled screenings sold out very quickly (although it has been added to next Sunday's Best of the Fest, essentially a Second Chance Sunday for sold out flicks from the Festival, book now before they are gone). Right from the start I liked it. Sam Rockwell (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Frost/Nixon) takes on a pretty tough role as he is mostly the only actor in the main scenes, apart from a few small spots (mostly video 'letters'), a technician manning a mining station on the far side of the moon on a three year stretch, his only company a computer called Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey (and with a screen showing emoticons as a 'face').

As the film opens there's a bit of a Dark Star vibe to the look and feel of it; like Dark Star, or the later Nostromo in Alien, this isn't the gleaming future of mighty starships like Star Trek, this is space as workplace. Its grimy, its worn, its dirty in places. Rockwell's Sam Bell at the start is a shaggy haired, straggly beared man talking to himself and his sickly looking plants or obsessively carving out his model of his small town home as he works alone on the Moon. The end of his three year tour of duty is approaching and Sam is counting the days until he can go home to his wife and little daughter. Rockwell does an admirable job of creating a convincing portrayal of a man who has been as isolated as it is about as possible for any human to be (even the live communication link has been lost due to solar flares, he can only receive and send recorded messages via a relay, no real time communication). His twitches and habits are believable of a man in that situation and the emotional desperation as he watches a video letter from his wife with their wee girl on her lap saying "daddy is an astronaut" is incredibly touching, you can feel his desire to be with his family coming out of the screen, but Rockwell wisely plays it subtly, restrained, not over the top or hystrionic, which enhances the emotional resonance, I thought.

There are little hints that the constant isolation and lack of even real time communications are taking their psychological toll on Sam. Watching a video from his wife it looks as if there was a sudden blip - did something change there or his strained mind just imagining things? Making a cuppa he turns around to see a young, teenage girl sitting in his chair, accidentally scalding himself in shock. He looks again and of course there is no-one there, how could there be? His sleep and dreams are equally disturbed. Returning to work he takes a lunar rover out onto the Moon's surface and approaches one of the huge, automated mining machines, making its way across the surface on its tracks, spewing out chunks of regolith from the back as it moves. When an accident occurs and the rover crashes into the mining machine, Sam blacks out, only to wake up in the base's medical bay with a concerned Gerty tending to him. How exactly did he return to the base, considering there was no-one else around to rescue him from his crashed rover? Confined to the base 'for his own safety' until he is recovered Sam suspects there is more going on than he's been told and engineers a method to get outside and investigate. What he finds will shake him to the core - assuming its real and not the product of a mind collapsing under years of isolation syndrome.

And on the plot I shall say no more because to do otherwise would mean revealing potential spoilers, which I'd rather not do (I will also warn you that a BBC article on the film here, while interesting, does, in my opinion, blow a major plot point, which is damned careless, so be warned if you follow that link). On the production side, as I noted Rockwell does extremely well with a challenging role, the feeling of desperation and tension are palpable and the effects have a suitably dirty, grungy look to them. I had the impression that the exteriors were model shots - not because they were poor, I hasten to add, but they had that lovely physical feel that CGI sometimes just can't manage (especially for dirtier, grittier looks such as the mining machines), reminding me (pleasantly) of the brilliant Moon models used for the likes of Space 1999. Director Jones and several of his crew were present at the screening and confirmed that they did indeed use physical models for those effects - in fact the same effects man who created the Nostromo worked on their models, which, as I said, looked perfect in the context of the film (and added to the physicality of the film in my opinion).

(director Duncan Jones talking to the audience in the Cameo Cinema after Moon's UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Saturday, larger version on my Flickr)

When asked about the budget (around £2.5 million - yes, really) Jones said that doing an SF flick for that money wasn't too hard, but convincing the financiers that they could make this movie within that budget was much more difficult, they all assumed they would need a much bigger budget to achieve what they were planning (we should have asked for more money, quipped the producer). But through ingenuity they made it work - as their visual effects/designer guy pointed out its amazing the sets you can make with duct tape, paint and a bunch of Ikea flat pack furniture items (not that you can tell, it all looked very convincing). Jones told the packed (and very supportive) Edinburgh audience that they loved the SF genre and they wanted to veer away from effects-reliant 'tentpole' blockbusters and make 'smart SF'. I'd say they've done so. Its a hugely admirable effort (especially for his first feature), Rockwell is convincing as the central character Sam, the look and feel of the film is suitably grimy, its quite a while before we can really tell if Sam is cracking up and hallucinating it all or if something sinister really is going on and from the look of it you'd never believe it was made for such a small budget.

Its British, its Indy and its bloody good science fiction. Moon gets its general release in the UK on the 17th of July (appropriately close to the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing) and is well deserving of your attention and support. I'm guessing with that sort of budget they won't have a mighty studio marketing machine, so if you like it, spread the word and give the guys some much deserved support for creating some bloody good Brit movie SF.

Happy 4th birthday, Forbidden Planet blog

The Forbidden Planet International blog I set up a few days after starting work there turned four years old today. Its vastly jumped up the Technorati rankings since it started, had some nice things said about it by a lot of folks, we've posted a ton of reviews on all sorts of comics, graphic novels and SF&F books, news and interviews with authors and artists from those who create in their spare time at home right up to the giants of the medium like Alan Moore, and hopefully we've done something I've always enjoyed doing and that's introducing readers to books and graphic novels they might not have picked up otherwise. I've been a bookseller for years and written about books and comics (and movies for that matter) for about as long but that's still one of the best feelings, when someone tells you they picked up something new that they might not have read because the saw it mentioned and as a result they found something new that they discovered they loved. I still get a buzz from that.

The Sands of Sarasvati

I recently read my very first graphic novel from Finland after a friend pointed it out to me and put me in touch with the publishers Tammi in Helsinki. Its adapted from a prose work, a near-future work taking in geological history, ancient human history and lost civilisations and contemporary civilisation and the impact it is having on the environment and the changing environment on our civilisation; the full piece is below, it originally appeared on the Forbidden Planet Blog:

Based on the novel by Risto Isomäki,
Adapted by Petri Tolppanen, illustrated by Jussi Kaakinen,
Translated from Finnish by Lola Rogers and Owen F Witesman,
Published by Tammi

Until recently I hadn’t exactly read an abundance of comics material from Scandinavia, apart from Jason, then I find two very different works from the northern regions of Europe arrive on my desk within a few weeks of one another. The first the Galago anthology of underground Swedish comics from Top Shelf (reviewed here), the second a very different beast, The Sands of Sarasvati. Sands, from Finnish publishers Tammi, is a graphic adaptation of an award-winning science fiction novel Sarasvatin Hiekkaa by author, science journalist and environmental activist Risto Isomäki. I’ve often found there to be a fair crossover between SF&F and the comics worlds, both in terms of readership and authors; we’ve seen SF&F writers like Harlan Ellison involved with comics for many years and recently we’ve seen more SF&F writers also becoming involved in comics, from Cory Doctorow to Richard Morgan, while I’ve found in my bookselling experience that there is a fair number of SF&F readers who also like comics and vice versa. And fantasy and science fiction elements have played a part in comics for pretty much as long as there have been comics, whether its entire SF worlds in Buck Rogers or SF elements like the clever gadgetry Batman uses.

And yet for some reason comics and serious SF (as opposed to the more fantastical elements of the genre) don’t seem to collide as often as you might expect, so it was quite refreshing to me to see this meeting of near-future ecological SF with comics. Sands begins deep within the Earth’s oceans with the Lomonosov, a Russian deep sea exploration submersible off the coast of Norway investigating geological formations when it encounters the almost perfectly intact wreck of a recently lost freighter; suddenly the submersible loses buoyancy and begins to sink deeper towards the ocean bed. The landscape along the ocean bed is littered with huge rocks caused millennia ago by methane ice melting at the end of the last ice age leading to a landslide of colossal proportions. Methane, our intrepid explorers find out, is still leaking out into the water - causing the density of the surrounding water to decrease and so causing their craft to sink (and by implication sinking the freighter they have just found). It’s but a hint of what it to come.

After managing to safely return to Norway the Lomonosov is dispatched to much warmer oceans, off the coast of India, and Sergei Savelnikov, a scientist and explorer still mourning the death of his wife, goes with the ship. The mission is an intriguing one and at first seemingly unrelated to their earlier discovery of the methane leak and landslides in the chilly northern waters - a sunken city has been found. A very large city in the Gulf of Cambay, a city which may have been home to a hundred thousand souls, thousands of years ago; a completely unknown civilisation, once flourishing then suddenly destroyed so rapidly that until now even archaeological evidence of their existence simply didn’t exist. An Indian Atlantis, perhaps…

(a previously unknown city now submberged beneath the waves is exposed by our intrepid explorers)

I must admit I was slightly concerned at this point, as well as interested; I was interested because linking the discovery of an ancient civilisation to events in the present is fascinating and because I’ve always had more than a passing interest in archaeology and history. Concerned because I was a little worried we might vanish down the path of some of the best-selling nonsense popular in the 70s - Von Daniken or the endless books on the Bermuda Triangle by the likes of Charles Berlitz (or even some of their later pseudo-scientific successors who still sell in depressingly large numbers today). Not being familiar with Risto’s prose work I didn’t know which way this way going to go; fortunately, I am glad to say, it went to a rational route.

Sure there are a little too many handy coincidences in the flow of events - you have to accept those to allow the narrative to unfold but it can be a little niggling. I haven’t read the original prose work but I’d imagine that some of these useful coincidences and the speed of the events they connect are the result of having to compress a prose novel to a seventy-two page graphic novel rather than a lack of writing ability and to be honest it is only a niggling complaint - and as the only way round it would have been to dramatically increase the length of the book and so seriously slowing the pace (not to mention increasing the price) its something I can live with.

And I can live with it because it’s a highly enjoyable piece of science fiction; ancient human civilisations and geological phenomena intertwine into scientific investigations in the book’s present (our near future) into impending climate change and the likely effects this will have on the world. The action moves from the cold, dark depths of the northern oceans to the warm waters of India and from Finland to the Caribbean to the Greenland glaciers; this isn’t just globe-trotting for exotic effect however, its reinforcing the fact that large events in one part of the world’s ecosphere will have hugely dramatic events not just locally but globally; a lone Finnish inventor working on wind turbine pumps to combat a rise in sea levels connects to ancient landslides thousands of years ago to a lost world halfway round the globe.

The work is a lot more dialogue heavy than you’d normally expect for a graphic novel and again I think this is due largely to its roots, being adapted from a prose work, as well as the need for exposition on what our cast of characters are investigating, from the submerged city to the sudden disappearance of an ice lake in Greenland. And I’d have liked to see more of the characters - what was there was appealing (especially a touching romance blossoming between Sergei and his Indian colleague Amrita, both damaged emotionally, both finding love as the clock on ecological disaster and possible end of the world may be running out) and certainly more than sufficient to get me hooked enough to care about the characters and what happened to them, but it could have use a bit of expansion and perhaps some more character driven scenes rather than mostly being about the larger narrative events. But again that would have meant a much longer book; perhaps it might have been a bit better split into two volumes, but that would also have been pricier and more of a risk for a publisher new to the graphic novel market, so over all it was probably best to compress it into a single book.

(Amrita’s first view of the northern icescape)

Jussi Kaakinen’s artwork is fine and clear throughout, depicting varied locations (from glaciers in Greenland to Indian cities) with equal ease and also helping to fill in some more characterisations - lovely little touches like Amrita’s delighted expression when she travels north with Sergei and sees her very first view of a large landscape of snow and ice anchor the large, global-scale and geological timescale into smaller moments of individual humans against the huge forces of the events unfolding around them.

Some scenes, such as Sergei’s colleague and friend Susan Cheng descending into a deep, icy chasm give a sense of scale, the individual human against the vastness of the world they are trying to understand (that scene reminded me very much of Luc Besson’s beautiful film The Big Blue, where a lone diver sinks from open, clear water to deeper blue to the dark depths with only a small light to illuminate the vastness of creation around him; how large the world is and how little our vaunted knowledge of it really encompasses). In other scenes it’s almost like Tintin for adults as Jussi obviously delights in revealing sunken ruins of a huge city or filling a panel with all sort of technology from airships to snowmobiles and sudden bursts of adventure. For those who try to keep up with scientific explorations there are also some nice touches - the Arctic base Susan is based at may look like it belongs to Moonbase Alpha, but actually its pretty similar to recent advanced designs being used for Antarctic scientific bases (complete with the extendable legs for the cabins); a small touch but quite satisfying. Jussi’s style would look perfectly at home in any adult graphic BD album you might find in any decent French or Belgian bookstore (which I mean as a compliment); actually I could see this doing well in those markets.

(Susan descends into the frozen abyss where only days before an entire ice lake had covered the land)

How you react to Sands of Sarasvati will, I think depend largely on your own views on the environment. If you are part of the (increasingly small - even George Bush is slowly acknowledging the threat) group who hold it’s all a natural cycle and humanity’s creations have no measurable effect on it then you will probably dismiss it. If you are more inclined to think human activity is feeding into the natural cycle then you’re more likely to accept the events unfolding here. Risto is an environmental campaigner, but to his credit I don’t think he browbeats the reader; he’s not lecturing you on your carbon footprint and the fact that huge environmental changes are a naturally occurring part of our world’s eco-system is a major part of the narrative - he’s not saying its all down to humans burning fossil fuels.

(the global community finally swings into action as the threat of ecological disaster looms; nations from around the world working together, ingenious technology, but will it be in time?)

But he is making clear that we’re adding a dangerous variable to an incredibly complicated and dynamic system that we frankly don’t fully understand, while also riffing on the notion of history repeating itself but on a global geological scale. And given the devastation caused by the Boxing Day tsunami a couple of years ago and the lingering threat of a similar wave hitting the eastern seaboard of the US should a large part of the volcanic rock of the Canary islands drop into the sea (as it is basically expected to at some point) you do have to wonder how dangerously close some of the science fiction here might be to becoming science fact. But despite the threat to the very existence of human civilisation there’s also hope in Sands; entire civilisations have been destroyed before (just like Amrita’s sunken Indian city) and yet knowledge has been preserved and passed down, sometimes as learning, sometimes as myth, but it and humanity continues.

It’s an unusual piece of ‘hard’ SF in the comics world and one that would, I think, appeal very much to those (myself included) who enjoy reading the books of Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s a fascinating series of events, both contemporary and historical, and utterly compelling (I found it hard to stop reading even late at night). Sadly at the moment it is only available to order from Finland (in English though) via Bookplus which could be pricey. I know Tammi, a respected Finnish publisher but one fairly new to the world of graphic novels, is looking to the US and UK for interested publishing partners to make it more widely available and I really hope they are successful as it’s a cracking book - big concept SF, real world contemporary concerns, some great adventure and some scenes which give that great sense of wonder I got as a child watching Jacques Cousteau’s voyages.(thanks to my friend Cheryl - who has been involved with the Finnish burgeoning SF scene - for bringing the book to my attention and to Terhi Isomäki-Blaxall and Tero Ykspetäjä for sending me a copy)

Richard Morgan on IO9

One of my favourite authors and all round good eggs Richard Morgan, gives a fascinating interview over on SF site IO9. If you've read some of Richard's work before it won't surprise you to know that he touches on sensitive subjects like morality, race, religion and other areas of contention (Richard has a gift for being able to make comments on heavyweight subjects while still delivering high octane action), as when he refers to the reception of his attack on the rampant free market in Market Forces:

"The book was really written as a critique not so much of the systems but of the mindset of this kind of boorish American businessman asshole machismo. I didn't really think I was saying anything spectacularly unusual. I thought anybody who looked at would say, "Oh. Yeah, that's right." I ran into an awful lot of people for whom market forces are a kind of religious faith. I hate to caricature, but I do think American culture has a faith problem in the sense that there's much more of a willingness on that side of the Atlantic to take things on faith, and just accept stuff.and believe in something wholeheartedly.

In Europe people just seem to be a lot more cynical about these things, whatever it may be, if it's religion or politics or whatever. And yet it would appear there are a lot of people for whom free markets are tantamount to a kind of religious faith. And by writing the book I'd stomped on that as if I had written a viciously anti-Christian satire. That may be it, I don't know. It may be that it was a book in which it's hard to sympathize with everybody because the characters are all fairly unpleasant."

Cool Doctor Who figures

I'm seriously liking the latest Doctor Who action figures range. You have no idea how hard it is to resist the urge to buy more of them when I see them at work! I couldn't resist adding a Tom Baker figure (complete with his manic grin) from the Classic Who range to stand next to my David Tennant figure on my desk though. Yes, I know, I'm a big kid, so what? One of the best things about being grown up is being able to buy yourself some fun toys from time to time. And I know my friend's wee boys will go mad for these too, think I know what to buy for at least two of my Christmas presents this year...

Win Wyndham

Over on the FPI blog we've got a competition running just now to win five newly reprinted editions of one of the classic British SF authors' book - Penguin have given us two sets of five John Wyndham novels, Midwich Cuckoos, the Chrysalids (which we've just done recently in the Edinburgh SF Book Group I set up a few years back), Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Trouble With Lichen, all boasting very modern, new covers. The competition runs until the end of this coming Sunday (26th October) - you do have to log into the main FP site to enter, but there's no purchase necessary and it puts you in with a chance to win a set of novels by one of the important Brit writers of the 20th century by answering a pretty simple question.

Reviews from the past: American Gods

Time to dig out another old review from my archive, this time by one of my favourite authors, Neil Gaiman and his novel American Gods. I remember doing the event with Neil when this book came out and I've still got a nice signed edition he scribbled in for me afterwards. I can't remember if this appeared on the Alien Online or not, I think it might actually date to my own first review site The Library of Dreams, back around 2001 or thereabouts. I seem to remember Neil had been wanting to write it for a while but had still been busy with a lot of his comics work and so this large prose novel had to wait, but it was worth the wait.

American Gods,
by Neil Gaiman,
published by Headline



American Gods begins simply enough with a man called Shadow, counting the days until his release on parole from prison. A few short days before he is due to be released he is taken to the warden’s office to be told he is being released early on compassionate grounds. His wife has been killed in a car crash, just days before he was due home. Worse is to come when Shadow attends the funeral and finds his wife had been sleeping with his best friend and had actually caused the crash by giving him fellatio while driving. As Shadow’s new start in the world crumbles around him he is followed by a one-eyed stranger called Mr Wednesday. Wednesday offers Shadow a job, which he refuses at first, but wearily agrees to after the funeral is over. He is not told what the specifics of the job are, but he does find himself in a bar, drinking Wednesday’s mead to seal the deal and fighting a drunken leprechaun called Mad Sweeney by way of an audition.

Thereafter Shadow travels across much of the land of America. Some of it and its inhabitants are recognisable, other parts and people are more like the dream imagery of America described in film, painting and literature. Shadow senses a great storm coming and Wednesday confirms that this coming storm is what their business concerns. After performing a successful con job at a bank to raise funds for their venture they begin seeking out some very odd people, who Wednesday arranges to meet at the House on the Rock, a bizarre attraction of run-down fairground oddities and architectural curiosities.

While riding the world’s largest carousel there, Shadow experiences an alternate reality – a dream perhaps, or a glimpse of shadow worlds – where he sees many of theses people they have collected in their real light. They are gods. Old gods. Gods who were brought across the great oceans by the many waves of immigrants from the Old World. Wednesday was brought to the Americas centuries before, in the beliefs of the Vikings who ventured to this strange, new land. His wolves and two ravens appear. He is Odin, the one-eyed gallows god. And he is seeking to gather together all the old gods in America because a storm is coming.

Although many of the Old World gods made the journey to the New World with the people of their old lands, they are fading away. America is not the most fertile ground for such beliefs, it appears. As the successive immigrants have settled down and assimilated themselves into American culture, belief in the old ways and old gods has diminished, until most are simply tales to be told to children. Without belief a god dwindles, weakens and fades. Some seek to exploit this weakness of the older gods.

A new generation of gods has sprung up. American gods. Gods of the media, the television, the Internet, pop music, Wall Street. These are the gods of the New World, and they do not wish to share it with the gods of the old. Driven partly by jealousy and partly by fear – the old gods, after all, are a reminder to them that even a god’s life is finite – the new gods will wage war with the old. They try to co-opt Shadow to join their ranks, as the gods of the media bring his television to life. Lucy speaks to him from an old re-run, trying to persuade him to come over to their camp. She finishes with a wink and an offer to show him Lucy’s tits, surely one of the more unusual lines in contemporary fantasy. Shadow refuses and is attacked by strange men-in-black – the realisation of America’s security services, they even have unmarked cars and helicopters – but is rescued by his dead wife, Laura, who he may have accidentally resurrected.

Wednesday sends Shadow for safety to stay with old friends, Mr Bis and Mr Jacquel, who run a small mortuary and funeral service, with their cat who takes a fancy to Shadow. Times are hard when no one believes in you, and so Anubis makes a living now as an undertaker. After leaving them, Shadow is sent to the relative safety of a small, idyllic heartland town of Lakeside. A seemingly perfect little town, immune from all the ravages of the real world affecting the towns around it, Lakeside is like Bedford Falls, the small-town American ideal. Of course, there is a dark reason as to why Lakeside is the way it is, as Shadow finds out, a sinister reason linked to the almost annual disappearance of an adolescent from the town. Even in the idyll of rural America, nothing is just as it appears. And still the war is coming. Wednesday is manoeuvring friends and foe alike, and not necessarily all for their own benefits. Shadow will face death, the underworld, dreams of the great native Indian Thunderbirds and battles with duplicitous gods, occasionally helped by his dead wife, leading to a conclusion which is unexpected and startling.

American Gods has been a cherished project of Neil’s, that he has been working on for some time. It has been postponed more than once, but the final 500 page plus novel is more than worth the wait. Alright, you all know I am biased towards Neil’s work. Guilty as charged. But I think anyone who reads this wonderful work of fantasy will being to see just why I rave about his writing so much. American Gods is an extremely clever piece of fantasy, mixing some wonderfully original storytelling with world mythology and folklore. This is not an uncommon theme in Neil’s writing, and of course, we have seen him use Odin and Loki before in the Sandman. But the juxtaposition of these brilliantly realised mythic archetypes from the Old World with the belief systems of modern America is the charm, which breathes life into this clay. Neil’s observance of America, its beliefs and how it sees itself are both affectionate and cutting. The idea that we create new gods without realising it, such as gods of the media or Wall Street, is intriguing – we all worship something after all, a deity, liberty, money, love, possessions. It echoes Grant Morisson’s early Invisibles episode where it is revealed that John Lennon now has all the attributes of a god.

The new gods represent this idea, that our beliefs may change, but gods will always be with us, because we create them ourselves, whether we are worshipping the dollar or a pop star. They’re not called idols for nothing after all. And when a god is no longer worshipped or remembered they fade slowly away, reduced to performing con jobs like Wednesday to get by as best they can, like a once-famous actor now scratching a living from commercials. Even gods can die, and this frightens the new gods even more than sharing America with the old gods. The old gods represent their own mortality. Worse, in our hi-tech, fast-moving, short-attention span world, belief in the new gods is far more fleeting. While Odin may have commanded worship for centuries, many new gods are discarded quickly, such as the sickly Rail Baron god. Not enough belief to go around for everyone, every god for themselves.

American Gods is one of Neil’s finest works to date. If you have not read any of his work before, this is an excellent starting point, as it needs no knowledge of his other material to understand. If you are familiar with Neil’s canon then you will be rewarded by little literary nuggets. The room in the House on the Rock, full of old coin-operated shows which is reminiscent of the arcade in Mr Punch. The girl with the multi-coloured hair and the dog, who may or may not be Delirium. As ever his work is littered with multiple references to other writers. Of course his beloved James Branch Cabell, but I’m sure I spotted references to, or influences of many others, such as Sheri S Tepper and Lord Dunsanay, to say nothing of the Frank Capra homage to Bedford Falls in the shape of Lakeside, which in turn becomes a homage to David Lynch’s skewed take on the hidden side of American small town life in Blue Velvet. If you are looking for dense, multiple layering of narrative and metaphor, then Neil’s your man. This is a work of first class literature, bursting with gorgeous ideas and characters, both original and those from our collective mythologies. Like any truly good piece of writing, it will change the way you view the ‘real’ world.

Arthur C Clarke laid to rest

While I was off the air last week we lost Sir Arthur C Clarke, one of the few authors to cross out of his genre to become a cultural icon recognised by millions, including those who never picked up a science fiction book in their life. Sadly he passed away at the age of 90 just weeks before the annual Arthur C Clarke awards are due to be announced. I've been reading Arthur's books and short tales since before my voice broke; basically I have been picking up books of his for over thirty of my forty years on Planet Earth and apart from some wonderfully imaginative fiction (which still usually remained grounded in some real science) I think the quality I most loved in his work over the decades was the optimism. Here was a man born as the slaughter of the War to End All Wars was being fought and who played his part working in radar in the war that came after that, who saw the many atrocities that marked the last century and yet still his stories had this optimism, this belief not that the future would turn out alright but that we could make it better if we tried, if we really wanted to make it that way, to evolve our minds and our morality both. While darker edged fiction often satisfies me more dramatically I need that does of hope and optimism sometimes.

And like many best writers his books made me want to go and read more books; I'd read the story then need to investigate some of the actual science which was used in the tale (my favourite reading is always the book which makes me want to read more, learn more; good books are like brain cells, they work best when creating more links). Reading his collection of non fiction essays a few years back, Greetings, Carbon-based Lifeforms, was also fascinating - because of the reputation he earned worldwide Arthur met just about everyone, from hanging out with Ginsberg at the Hotel Chelsea to presidents and kings, working with Kubrick of course and even during the animosity of the Cold War he was so respected by both superpowers he was one of the few men who shook hands with both Soviet cosmonauts and NASA astronauts. Its not been the best of recent weeks for book people - we just lost Arthur, Terry Pratchett is facing the spectre of Alzheimer's, Steve Gerber left us... At least we always have the books. Sadly we're all mortal, but the printed word, that magical, alchemical fusion of human imagination, paper, ink and technology is immortal.

Arthur's final interview, recorded for IEEE Spectrum in January from his hospital bed, can be found online here. I leave you with Clarke's Laws:

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

You know, of the three I think I am most fond of the second; I like to think the impossible rarely remains impossible forever. Perhaps some of his optimism has rubbed off on my cynical mind over the years... The people of Sri Lanka, where this Somerset-born lad had made his home for decades, showed their respect for their adopted son with a national moment's silence to coincide with the funeral service. His gravestone will read "Here lies Arthur C Clarke. He never grew up and did not stop growing," in line with his own wishes. I've met a lot of brilliant science fiction writers over my career in books (including two of this year's Arthur C Clarke Awards nominees), but I never met Arthur. And yet I feel as if I have known him most of my life and I'm going to miss him, especially that wonderful human quality of hope he always seemed to summon forth.

Primeval

The penultimate episode of ITV's Primeval comes up this Saturday and its penned by the very fine novelist, screenwriter and comics scribe Paul Cornell, who was also responsible for some of the finest episodes of the new Doctor Who - "Father's Day" and "Human Nature". We were lacking time for a full-length interview but I couldn't let it go past without marking it and Paul kindly took some time out to answer a few questions for the Forbidden Planet blog, should you fancy a read before the episode airs on Saturday evening.

Who has the time?

I see a lot of different Doctor Who merchandise coming out, but I especially love this replica of the fob watch from the two-parter story Human Nature/Family of Blood from last season, written by the brilliant Paul Cornell (himself a lifelong Who fan as well as screenwriter, novelist and comics scribe). It was the one where the Doctor is seemingly posing as a teacher at an Edwardian boy's school just before WWI, but it turns out he is doing more than posing - he is human. Too escape the tracking of the Family of Blood he's altered himself both physically and mentally from Time Lord to human and the watch contains his real essence. Meantime the human Doctor has strange dreams of travelling in time and space and also finds himself falling in love with the school matron - a romance he could never have as the Time Lord. Paul also uses the story to explore the price the Doctor pays for being who he is, the toll on him emotionally to stand apart and be the one who saves the day, to be the hero in a dangerous universe. Its wonderfully emotive material and a nice take on the old Joseph Campbell exploration of the Hero; one of the best stories from the new series so far.

"Space, the final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise; her five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly go where no man has gone before..."

I've been cynical and wary about JJ Abrams' new Star Trek movie - if you haven't been following developments the Alias, MI-3 and Cloverfield creator is taking the series back to before the beginning, with the early days of the classic 60s Trek characters (Zachary Quinto - Sylar in the brilliant Heroes series - plays a young Spock). I have no problems with Abrams' storytelling abilities but I am wondering if I can possibly accept other actors in these roles, even essaying younger versions than we saw. After all I grew up on the original Trek - repeats of that and Pertwee then Baker era Doctor Who were my 1970s televisual SF fixes in those old, three-channel days - and I'm not sure I can take anyone else in those roles. Nonetheless this glimpse of the original, classic 60s style Enterprise under construction is pretty exciting to a geek like me; I especially like the way in the bigger version you can see inside the ship where the hull plates haven't been fixed yet; this looks like the original ship being 'born' and there's something romantic about the big ships, fictional or otherwise.



Trekmovie also had a link to this low quality YouTube someone uploaded of the teaser trailer being shown with the opening of Cloverfield in the US. Little to see except flares of light from welding torches as the camera pulls back to reveal the Starship Enterprise in drydock, being completed for her five year mission. The soundtrack is a mixture of speechs from the glory days of the Space Race, which again appeals strongly to my geek heart (I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up; I still do), from Kennedy's inspirational speech to Armstrong's "one small step", culminating in Leonard Nimoy (who returns to play the older Spock) uttering those immortal words, "space, the final frontier..." Despite my wariness the geek hairs on my neck stood up...

Terry Pratchett has bad news

Awful news from Terry Pratchett confirming on Paul Kidby's Discworld News that he is suffering from early on-set Alzheimer's. Terry's not just one of the biggest (and most consistently enjoyable, smart and funny) fantasy authors, he's one of those rare bestsellers who appeals way beyond the genre, making him one of the most popular writers on our wee planet. I've seen lines of fans at Terry's signings stretch round the store, out the doors, down the street and round the block; I've also seen him sit there and sign for each one of those folks and chat to each of them too, occasionally taking a moment to rest his wrist in some iced water then start signing more books. As Cory Doctorow notes in Boing Boing though, Terry is employing his humour, trying to stay positive and encouraging readers to do the same:

" I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, which lay behind this year's phantom "stroke".

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet :o)

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think - it's too soon to tell. I know it's a very human thing to say "Is there anything I can do", but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry."

How to spot a Cylon

Adam Levermore-Rich, the guy who designed the really cool Serenity Blue Sun Travel Posters (which used some neat retro styling to make adverts for tourist destinations in the universe of Joss Whedon's Firefly/Serenity - unusual and very cool) has produced what I think is the first in a new line of 'propaganda' posters from the universe of another cult science fiction show, this time the brilliant Battlestar Galactica with the How To Spot A Cylon Poster. Since there are now human-looking Cylons as well as the old toasters this guide could save your life!

New Dan Dare

This weekend I sat down with a mixture of excitement and trepidation to read the latest attempt to resurrect one of the most famous characters in British comics history (and also a lifelong favourite of both me and my dad, incidentally), Dan Dare. Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine's first issue of the new Dan Dare from Virgin Comics just came out and I had to read it. Then I had to write a bit about it and ended up doing a review for the Forbidden Planet International blog, which I am also going to reproduce below:

Dan Dare #1
Written by Garth Ennis, art by Gary Erskine

As regular readers will know I’m a huge fan of the original Dan Dare; back in 1977 it was the then-new kid on the block, 2000 AD, which introduced me to the character (along with Massimo Belardinelli’s stunning artwork). My dad, reading my progs after me, mentioned reading the original Dan Dare when he was a boy and how much better it had been (he was right, it was). Original Dan Dare? What was this Eagle comic he spoke of to my young ears? What was this radio series of the Pilot of the Future he used to listen to? I didn’t know it then, but I was slowly becoming aware of a piece of British comics history and a character that would go on to be one of my favourites of all time, Colonel Daniel McGregor Dare (and getting to share it with my dad makes it more special). I remember buying the over-sized Hawk Books reprints in the 90s for my dad and I’ve got a shelf full of the handsome Titan Classic Dan Dare volumes myself (a great range, which I always recommend).

So you can imagine I’ve been suffering a mixture of excitement for the latest attempt to resurrect Dan Dare along with a nagging worry that it will fall flat on its face. Much as I want to see Dan brought back with new adventures there are always two main problems to be faced: if you make it too similar to the original then you are being faithful to the characters but you run the risk of offering reheated leftovers with nothing new. On the other hand if you offer something new and different then fans (like me) will ask why you put Dan’s name on it since it has very little to do with him. So with these ambivalent feelings I picked up the first issue of Virgin’s Dan Dare - naturally the fine Bryan Talbot cover version which uses elements of the classic, including Dan’s helmet (Greg Horn is an artist I like but his style is totally unsuited to Dan; my advice, avoid the variant cover). And here’s the thing: I liked it.

In fact I really, really liked it. I enjoyed it; I liked Ennis’ take on him, I like the way he has set it years after Dan and Digby’s ‘glory days’ as the prime minister refers to them so we can maintain links to the original but still have something new, I like the space opera set-up of old-fashioned space battle cruisers, the promise of a threat from the past and a call to an old Hero which comes right out of Joseph Campbell. And no matter how sophisticated and postmodern we like to think our tastes have become, at the end of the day pretty much everyone of us at some point just wants a Hero; we want someone who will stand up and do the Right Thing, not for personal gain, not for political gain, not for glory, but because it is the Right Thing. The more troubled our times, the more we yearn for such a Hero and Ennis handles this especially well in my opinion.

(opening page of Garth Ennis new Dan Dare issue 1, art by Gary Erskine, published Virgin Comics)

We have the British prime minister visiting Dan in his retirement; prior to this the chaps’ old sidekick and their scientific advisor Professor Jocelyn Peabody is seen meeting a retired Digby in orbit at Space Fleet’s Gibraltar station, where we pick up a few details of the way the world has changed from the classic era and find that Britain is the leading power following a Chinese-American conflict (the panel showing modern America from orbit was simple but highly effective). We’re also clued in to the fact that the prime minister may not be the best man in the world; not actually malignant or evil, but a man who can make decisions he thinks are for the Greater Good regardless of actual morality. Something that sounds awfully familiar to anyone who follows contemporary British politics, as does references to him having been in power too long and never resigning despite often saying he plans to (gee, who could Garth be referring to?).

So by the time the meeting of the prime minister and Dan arrives we’ve already had some insights into his character and recent history (and in well-handled small bursts, no huge ‘info dump’ to bring us up to speed). And if we’re in any doubt then his interaction with Dan reinforces the earlier impressions - the prime minister admires the pictures on Dan’s wall and remarks on a particularly pretty aircraft.

(the present meets the past; the prime minister calls on a retired Dan Dare)

“A Spitfire,” replies Dan, “my grandfather flew one in the Battle of Britain.”

“I wasn’t aware there’d been a battle of…”

“Small matter of saving the country and Western civilisation along with it. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Its one of those exchanges which conveys simply but effectively contempt for much of political ‘leadership’ and the way in which our leaders are happy to associate themselves with our Great History and our Heroic Armed Forces for media-friendly appearances, yet they often have a complete ignorance of our actual history and they end up committing similar mistakes to the past because of it. They represent spin and image, all surface, while Dan, for all his quietness, represents that which they pretend to. It isn’t as biting as Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ Thatcher-era Dan Dare (reproduced recently in the splendid Yesterday’s Tomorrows) and yet it clearly tips its hat to that tale while also serving to establish the current set-up of Dan’s world in this new version.

It isn’t all just a slightly melancholic, wistful longing for the Good Old Days when things were simpler and men were Real Men though, we’re treated to big space cruisers, gloriously old-fashioned, right down to gun turrets like an old naval warship and a crew who use terms like ‘fish in the water’ when they detect incoming fire. Cue a sudden attack and we’re treated to dirty, big spaceships blasting away at each other; it is wonderfully old-fashioned, pure space opera stuff and gods but its great! Older Digby, Jocelyn and Dan re-introduced, small but sufficient glimpses of the way the world has changed since Dan’s original day with the promise of more to come, a threat hinted at - could it be the Mekon, back again? - then sudden, awful confirmation with a spectacular space battle (Gary’s art is clear and unfussy throughout, quite suitable to Dan I thought) and Dan’s call back to action and that’s just the first issue. Will I be picking up the second issue now? Oh, hell, yes!

(it isn’t just juxtaposing old values against the modern, we also get some cracking, old-fashioned space battles)

You can enjoy the allusions to our contemporary world, the parallels and comments on politics and national leaders, the seeming lack of a moral compass in modern society, the rose-tinted view of the Good Old Days and references to the original Frank Hampson work (who I am glad to see name-checked inside) and the Morrison-Hughes Dare, or you can laugh at the back page advert for Virgin Galactic. But mostly you can also just simply allow yourself to indulge in a really enjoyable read and look forward to the promise of good, old-fashioned, square-jawed British heroics, and god knows with all that’s going on in our troubled world it feels good to have that kind of real Hero again, even if he is fictional. it’s a form of heroism the prime minister clearly doesn’t get, even as he appeals to it, but the readers get it and they love Dan for it:

“There’s one thing that puzzles me, Mister Dare.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, not to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but you obviously want no part of what Britain is today or you wouldn’t be living all the way out here, would you? So I simply don’t understand why you’re still willing to fight for it…”

“No, prime minister, I don’t imagine you do.”

There’s the proper Dan Dare in a nutshell and that’s what I want; I’m looking forward to Ennis and Erskine building on this first issue.

"of my friend I can only say this... of all the souls I have encountered on my travels, his was the most... human..."

Star Trek fans will recognise the above line delivered in a moment of Serious and Emotional Acting by that great thespian of our age, William Shatner, at Spock's funeral service at the end of Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. Well, guess what? Now you too can enjoy eternal rest in a coffin - oh, I do beg the pardon of funerary folks, I meant casket - designed after Spock's burial tube (formerly a photon torpedo casing). Eternal Image - 'brand name funerary products that celebrate the passions of life' offer this or if you are a Trek fan who plans to be cremated rather than interred when you go beyond the Final Frontier you can have an urn shaped after the design on the flag of the United Federation of Planets. I wonder if you can have a tombstone shape like a Starfleet emblem to go with it?



I don't know whether to laugh or shake my head in disbelief... What next? A theme park for the deceased where your dearly departed are sealed into their caskets or urns then placed onto a variety of their favourite rides for all eternity? And if some rich loony does decide to do that I want royalties on it! (link via Boing Boing)

Happy birthday to the Book Group

I just realised today that this month's meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will mark the fourth birthday. My former colleague Alex and I thought it up back in the summer of 2003 and decided a good start date would be after the busy circus of the Festival left town, so we opted for September. And for our initial discussion it seemed fitting to pick a debut novel, so we opted for one of the best debuts novels of recent SF by one of our favourite writers, Glasgow-based Richard Morgan, the Philip K Dick award-winning Altered Carbon (which also introduced Richard's character Takeshi Kovacs and also made headlines when it was the subject of a large film rights deal via Joel Silver. I remember the Guardian running an article on that and unable to reach Richard who was on holiday at the time they nicely pilfered quotes from our interview on the Alien Online without asking or crediting the site).

The book group has gone on over those four years, surviving the debacle of the Bloggergate nonsense between me and my former employers at the Bookstore Who Shall Not Be Named (where it had driven sales of backlist titles and boosted the company's profile, but no more - that's their loss) and trying to find a new regular venue after that. We've got a good core of different folks who come regularly and we've had more folks join us since then. We take turn about getting to choose books for the month which means we get a good, diverse range of material.

We've taken in graphic novels like the Sandman, classic SF from Alfred Bester and HG Wells, contemporary political SF like Ken MacLeod, horror from James Herbert, fantasy like the Lies of Locke Lamora and also more mainstream material with touches of SF like David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas or Michel Faber's Under the Skin (which the literati can read, safe in the knowledge that they aren't really part of that 'SF nonsense', they're literature). Ursula le Guin has rubbed shoulders with Margaret Atwood, Charles Burns, Aldous Huxley, James Lovegrove, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeff VanderMeer, Sheri S Tepper, Neal Stephenson and Robert Louis Stevenson among many others. Because each of us gets to take a turn picking a book we get exposed to more diverse material and so more to discuss, more to think about, more to enjoy. One of the few pleasures better than reading a good book is being able to share it with others and talk about it. And if that also means enjoying some trips to the pub too, so much the better (since there is a very welcome social aspect to the group too).

We started with an author who now lives in Glasgow and this fourth anniversary month sees us discussing a recent novel from an Edinburgh-based scribe, Charlie Stross as we discuss his novel Glasshouse. In a lovely bit of coincidence Glasshouse won the Prometheus award (given by the Libertarian SF group) last week just after it was picked for our September meeting, so congrats to Charlie. We normally meet on the last Tuesday of the month in Henderson's on Hanover Street and anyone is welcome to come along - meeting details usually go up on the Book Group blog.