Catmachine

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Some of this may cover similar ground to parts of blog entries I've written here in the past but none of them quite combine the topics in this order so I thought it was worth tweaking this short piece (originally written as an update for Unbound) and making it available here. Oddly, considering the subject of my debut novel Comeback, I never thought I would end up writing Fantasy novels, Urban or otherwise. When I was younger and first expressed ambition in the direction of writing professionally, I was convinced I'd write Science Fiction. This was partly because that was what I'd mainly been reading in adulthood up until that point. And yet the majority of the genre writing I enjoyed as a child was fantasy. I can't quite remember what the first novel I read was but do remember reading C S Lewis's Narnia and Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books quite early on. Other favourites included Richard Carpenter's two Catweazle novels, Paul Gallico's Jennie and - to a...

There are plenty of things from the world of arts and entertainment that have contributed to the deep programming of my brain, forming an integral part of the mental DNA of what makes me me and without which I would probably be a different person. I've already written blogs about some of them - Toyah for instance, or Doctor Who . But there are many more. The works of Douglas Adams for instance. And - as I recently realised - a lot of the comedy of Robert Newman from the 1990s. It's all getting a bit tricky now... And then browsing through Netflix I realised there was another TV show that had subtly and quietly wormed its way into my subconscious. It was comedy naturally. But it was also science fiction. Of course I am talking about Red Dwarf . People who don't watch it probably have an idea of it as a bit laddish or puerile - toilet humour in space. There may be a grain of truth in that but it is mainly so much more... I clearly remember when it started. Seeing...

What with all the furore surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who back in November 2013 you might have thought that the programme had celebrated enough anniversaries for now. After all - fifty one and a bit years on from the first episode? Nothing that special. But today, 25 January 2015, sees the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of what is probably my favourite run of sixteen episodes (four stories in the old money) from the show. There are of course stories and episodes that I like more than that, but this particular period - from 25 January to 10 May 1975 - was the most consistently enjoyable time for me watching. There is a danger that in writing this I will go over old ground but checking back on the Dimensionally Transcendental Confession blogs covering the relevant period it appears that I restrained myself from going into too much detail. It was almost as if I knew I was going to write this blog five years hence. My enjoyment of these particular four mon...

I recently wrote a blog entry which described the effect fantasy novels - and I used the term very loosely, intentionally including SF - had on me. In particular I talked about the way I considered it essential that the Other World visited in the story was real and that, even if the protagonists returned to their own world at the end, the Other World still existed and was emphatically not Just A Dream. Revisiting some stories and thinking about others I've also come to recognise another equally powerful ingredient contained in fantasies I enjoy. These tales of other worlds are far more powerful if they also contain scenes set in this one. Fantasies set in the real world have an extra frisson of excitement about them. If set in a real location then it is always possible for you to go and visit the location after reading, a fantastic experience which makes the book almost real . I have yet to visit Watership Down (and if I ever found myself in the vicinity I think I have t...

Recently Channel Four screened an interesting drama - a bizarre eight part story from France called The Returned (Les Revenants) . Like many TV viewers in the UK over the past few years I've found the subtitled European drama on offer quite gripping and what with the supernatural elements of the show that were obvious from the trailers, I made sure I watched the whole series. It was as good as I hoped. For me the fact that it was made in a different country and therefore in a different language probably added to its otherworldliness, but nevertheless it certainly didn't need any help in that direction, being both alarming and disturbing in equal measure.  I had never seen anything quite like it before although - like many contemporary shows - it could be said to have some of the DNA of Twin Peaks in its genetic makeup. The show thrived on mystery, often the viewers being left to work things out for themselves. Personally I have always found drama that does this far more in...

Aside from all the science fiction I consumed, when I was a child my favourite books were those in which children visited other worlds - not via spaceships, but by using magic. Although to be honest I didn't see that much difference between the two methods of travel in my mind and as far as I was concerned Narnia may well have simply been in a parallel dimension. I particularly enjoyed the alchemical feel of The Magician's Nephew - there was something pseudo scientific about the whole method of travel between worlds, with the logic of the green and the yellow rings and the Wood Between the Worlds with its portals into other universes. Furthermore when Digory and Polly discovered Charn my SF heart leapt at the description of its sun as a red giant with small blue dwarf companion star; likewise at Digory catching a glimpse of Jupiter "quite close - close enough to see its moons" whilst travelling back to London from the Wood Between the Worlds. As far as I was c...

Exoplanets - planets circling other stars - are being discovered by the dozen these days. Back in the dark times of the eighties and earlier some scientists doubted whether any other stars were accompanied by planets at all. Now you begin to wonder whether there's even such thing as a planetless star. Since the discovery of the first one in 1988 the number of confirmed exoplanets now approaches 1,000 and given advances in observational technology can only grow at an ever increasing rate. As such the news of another discovery is hardly a matter for excitement any more. Except the latest one. They've found a planet in Alpha Centauri . Alpha Centauri! A system whose official stellar classification echoes down the annals of SF literature, film and TV like the name of an old friend. Everyone's heard of Alpha Centauri. It's not that remarkable a system in itself - just a bog standard double star each of which is approximately the same size and magnitude as our own sun,...

The world seems to have a schizophrenic attitude towards science fiction, fantasy and horror these days. It could be argued there has never been a better time to make genre films and TV.  Back in the bad old days you could probably count all the examples of science fictional TV and film on the fingers of a very small collection of hands and even after Star Wars arrived you could still, for a while, keep up with all the imitations that seemed to spring up overnight. But in recent years it has become impossible. There is simply too much of the stuff for one person to keep track without spending all their waking hours watching DVD box sets. And yet a love of genre books is, as it has been for a long time now, considered far less of a good thing.  Admit to this and one still runs the risk of being considered a "nerd" or "geek" with all the negative associations that entails. Even those who don't make such rash generalisations still wonder whether it isn't perh...

A lot of the time when I was a kid, what I read was dictated by what I could find in the small SF section of Muswell Hill library or the books that I could find in the bargain bins. Once I'd outgrown Narnia, I found most books aimed specifically at children rather boring (with a few notable exceptions - Joan Aiken amongst them) and had been put off the so-called classics by having The Mill on the Floss rammed down my throat as an official text upon which I would later be tested. It took me forever to finish I can't remember a thing about it now. As has been chronicled elsewhere , this exploration of the SF genre meant that I was exposed to a lot of adult themes early - whilst grown-ups may have imagined me to be reading juvenile tales of invasions by robots from Mars I was in fact exploring unexpected worlds of cannibalism, sex with aliens and other taboos. Some of the disturbing ideas from these far out stories have stuck with me ever since. On other occasions perusal o...

Friday November 12th, 2021 To the Managing Director of Mattoy Educational Dear Sir I am writing to complain about the Mattoy “My First DNA Sequencer Kit” I purchased for my daughter Blaze’s fifteenth birthday in October. From the widespread publicity and advertisements, I had been given to understand that the kit would “ turn my kid on to the intricacies of genetics with simple experiments such as extracting DNA from root vegetables and revealing DNA fingerprints on doorknobs, thus giving her a head start in one of today’s most exciting and challenging growth industries ”. However, upon opening the kit we discovered that not only did the electrophoresis chamber lack a power cord, but that the manual was missing. Temporarily transplanting the cord from her PlayStation Seven, Blaze was naturally eager to begin experimentation, even without a manual, and so downloaded what at the time I believed to be appropriate material in order to make a start whilst we waited for the replacement ...

I remember the first "officially" grown up book I was given. Unlikely to find its way onto school syllabuses even now, it was the collection First Love, Last Rights by Ian McEwan . I must have been about 15 at the time, so yes, these disturbing tales of masturbation, mental illness, incest, death and pregnant rats did make quite a bit of an impression. Some of the words and phrases therein have stayed with me throughout the years as good writing tends to do. So it was my first "proper" book, having up until that point only indulged in the allegedly juvenile genre of Science Fiction (or SF as it is known to its fans - not " SciFi "). Must have come as a bit of a shock to me, eh? All those serious, adult themes - sexual references especially? Not really. McEwan's short stories were quite tame compared to some of what I'd already read. As an avid devourer of SF anthologies and collections as well as novels I'd come across some right wei...