Cyberabad

Betjemania

2008-04-18T16:42:52Z

Mis J Hunter Dunne Miss J Hunter Dunne... has left us.

And, thanks to shatterstripes I now has
T-shirt of Ultimate Awesomeness! Again, I feel your envy.

And, you know when you go back over the opeming of your book and something doesn't quite gel? I've realised that Adnan needs to be well, a little more DCI Gene Hunt

journeys to Cyberabad

2008-04-16T20:38:53Z

The latest (though the second written) of the Cyberabad Tales, The Dust Assassin is out NOW!!! in Jonathan Strahan's utterly covetable The Starry Rift. A YA tale, allegedly (how I would have hated to have been reduced to an ugly marketing acronym at that age), it of course has sex, violence, revenge and gender bending. Made me what I am. It's a hell of a writerly line-up and I feel a bit shoe-starey to have been included.

Just completed the copyedits on the most recent of the Cyberabad stories An Eligible Boy for Lou Anders' Fast Forward 2 , which is Jane Austenesque social comedy.

And while I'm in Cyberabaddy humour, More4 screened the marvellous Living Goddess doc about the Sajani Kumari in Bhaktapur. She was a wonderfully mundane divinity, and the access for the doc makers was astonishing. I thought the shifting political situation was done a little kack-handedly and it felt like something that cropped up halfway through filming that they pulled together in the edit. But begob, it made me want to go back to Nepal, expecially now in Interesting Times.

Well, I've decided that by hook or crook I'm going to Denvention. Membership paid.

Approaching the Gulf of Bothnia

2008-04-04T11:13:23Z

I should have flagged this up some time ago, but at the end of the month we're off the Aland Islands in the Gulf of Bothnia (a name I remember from years of playing Diplomacy) as GoH at Acon2 which looks a pile of fun in a very interesting place. That's my excuse for not being at the Clarkes. Any con that involves four different forms of transport to get there appeals to my inner Clarkson. Looking forward to it a lot: I must try and get another bottle of salmiakki, which is damn fine stuff.

Things seen: Stephan Martiniere's cover for Cyberabad Days (painting here.) It's evolved slightly since and it even hotter.

Things seen two: draft 2 of the script for River of Gods: The Movie.

And these guys at the top are My Noo Favourite Band.

Brasyl online

2008-04-02T16:20:15Z

If you're a Denvention member, you can read Hugo nominee Brasyl online courtesy of the admirable Mr Scalzi and my publishers on both sides of the pond. (Other books are also available).

Thanks John, yer a good'un.

A Walk Across the Rooftops.

2008-04-02T16:06:58Z

I has tickets for the Blue Nile in Glasgow in July. I feel your envy.

In which I am Officially Aged.

2008-03-28T17:20:24Z

Well, well back from our flying visit to Orbital, and the strange delights of the Radisson Edwardian ( I once had to negotiate it as civilian when slimmeroftheyea and I were going to India, so we were used to its quirky geometry). Not so much non-Euclidian as seemingly designed by an origami-obsessed architect. The saddles, alas, are gone from the Obscenely Expensive Bar (watch me go through one hundred quid in a single liquid afternoon) but the seats were low enough to be in a Turkish cayhane.

Still overjoyed with the BSFA, thank y'all --this one had no watchparts and thus did not Cause A Ruckus at handbaggage X-Ray. Thank you all.
Met some but nowhere near enough people --golly, there were a lot of conventioneers, weren't there? Good to see a few Mecon faces, though. You know who you are. Dinner with Team Gollancz was an exercise in planteration --in that there was more fabby food than even tables of writers and editors could reasonably consume. All under the aural assault of Four Screens of Kylie. (why? You're there to eat and talk, not watch feckin' Kylie). Good to meet Joe Abercrombie --good luck with the John W Campbell, man.

And now, thanks to Robert Sawyer, I learn the dismal truth that I am the oldest of the Hugo novel nominees. Can I begin to explain how dispiriting this is? You kind of like to imagine you've got the funk, can still manage it a bit... when did middle-agedness creep up on me? Where did twenty years go?

Then again, the early broad beans are big and bursting out at McDonald Acres, and the first spinach is peeking green and fresh from the soil.

Well, everyone else is so why shouldn't I?

2008-03-21T10:37:51Z

The Hugo nominations are out, and I'm delighted to be up there on the Best Novel list. Exciting stuff indeed. Congratulations to all the other nominees, and especially to those who sent me nudge-nudge little 'noticed anything...unusual... in your inbox recently?' emails over the past couple of weeks. You know who you are.

Other gear: it's been a couple of days of Clarkeness: on Thursday I did a brief piece on Arts Extra on Radio ~~Pravance~~ Ulster about A.C.C., and yesterday on phone piece for The New York Times, which should in theory be out on Sunday. It's made me reflect on Clarke's generosity of vision, and mourn our gradual introversion as a culture. It's no longer full of stars: it's full of shops. Planet Facebook: universal contact gives only the illusion of communication. Says he shouting his little blog into the gales of tattle.

But hey ho! Orbital tomorrow!

the last

2008-03-18T22:42:02Z

Arthur C. Clarke has left us

London Orbital

2008-03-13T16:37:45Z

Well, I weakened. We'll be over at Orbital for Saturday and Sunday, a literally flying visit.

On other business: Torchwood: it really is cobblers, isn't it? Not even two-thirds the way through series 2 and it's already getting strangled by its own story arc.

Turkey watch part 94

2008-02-26T16:41:47Z

Interesting link in the BBC to major reinterpretation of the hadith by academics in Ankara. Probably too much to argue it as an Islamic Reformation, but it does seem to sit easily with Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. Much of their research on the oigins of hadith passages sounds exciting, but, as it says in the Beeb article, I suspect it has a lot to do with resisting conservative, and specifically Saudi, influences, particularly as Turkey is flexing its muscles as the big regional economic player.

frothing of Holywood

2008-02-26T11:31:24Z

watched Channel 4's Dispatches about airports because that sort of thing appeals to my inner anorak. (hell, I'm a regular reader of airlinequality. I mst have counted a least thirty instancs of people saying 'in terms of'. I loathe 'in terms of'. It's the laziest, most thoughtless quasi-business cliche and all it shows is that you don't know how to open a sentence properly, or what objects and events can be divided into terms (a schoolteacher said 'in terms of hot weather' which had me shouting at the screen). I declare jihad against this odious, indolent language-worm. Join me. We shall be happy.

Delivered a Cyberabad story to Lou Anders for Fast Forward 2: An Eligible Boy. Only took me a year to write because I got the main characters wrong. That's the benefit of perspective. Now, a Brasyl story for Pete Crowther, then the final Cyberabad novella, in the meantime proceeding with The Dervish House and attempting to make telly programmes.

A little late, but congratulations to flisters on the Nebula Final Ballot. Well done and good luck.

The Shoeshine of Istanbul, and other scams.

2008-02-08T16:58:09Z

Got back last Monday from our weekend in Istanbul, which in early Februry is beautiful, empty, filled with light but fully functional. All the tourist stuff of course, as slimmeroftheyea's Mum was with us. No queues for anything. The main visitors to the Topkapi Palace on a Friday afternoon were Istanbulites taking a stroll around the grounds. As a consequence, you could go everywhere and anywhere, and the light coming up the Golden Horn was glorious. By ferry to Asia for 60p (the pound had noticeably faded against the YTL since we were there in August --that's economic boom for you.) The news was full of headscarf dread: I think they've got this one about right. There's still a ban on the full Wahabi gear, which I think is rational --Saudi's not that popular in Turkey anway. Women wear the headscarf for many other reasons than political Islam. In fact, political Islam is the least reason. Arif Shafak makes a good point that what we in the West called 'Turkey's Islamic Government' is no different from European 'Christian Democrats'. Oh, the fear that runs down our lily spines at the word 'Islamic party...'

Our attempts to get into the Blue Mosque were twice foiled by Friday prayers and the next day by a funeral: it wasn't until Saturday morning that we made it in, but it's still a radiant spiritual space.

On the arse-side of things, we did get hit with the (now) well-known Shoeshine of Istanbul Scam. Paid him fuck-off money. My shoulder still ache from the steel fingers of the tellak at the Cagaloglu Hamam, which, though 18th Century, felt spectacularly Ottoman. I tottered around in wooden hamam clogs, which felt vertiginously high over the butt-polished marble. The pictures of East 17 (circa 1995) on the slab in baseball hats giving it rapper hands were delightful.

I finally got an Istanbul football mug for mu mugs of the world collection from the Fenerbahce shop on Istiklal Cadessi. And ate pudding made from shredded chicken breast (very good it was too), and drank salep, a 'warming winter drink made from orchid roots' it sa here. Creamy and mildly vanilla-y, not at all what the description would lead you to expect.

As well as the latest Mercan Dede and updating my collection of Sezen Aksu, whom I like very much indeed, I picked up an absolute gem: Just Feel by Dolapdere Big Gang (their music but I think I've seen the video elsewhere. Their trick is Western music ,a la Turque, but it's their exellent musicianship and spooky sense of really, truly believing it that raises it above pastiche. Highlight is a rip-snorting bellydance version of Sex Bomb

Direct flight from Dublin on Turkish Airlines was good if long at 4 and a bit hours, though the food from the Dublin end was Dubliny and I rather missed the lamb and aubergine. The wine was Cappadocian, and we got Stardust on IFE. It was okay if you like that sort of thing.

So I'm falling back in love with the book again --it's slow but it definitely feels like I'm trying things I never dared before.

We know Major Tom's a junkie

2008-02-08T11:11:58Z

Premature thoughts on last night series opener for Ashes to Ashes. Well, the title doesn't work for a start. Sounds like 'Angela's Ashes' style miserabilism. Now of course there will be tricks up the sleeve, but on first glance it seemed all a bit more of the same thing. I'm not sure Woman/Eighties/London as opposed to Man/Seventies/Manchester is enough to make feel fresh a format that was getting a little tired by the middle of series two of Life on Mars. It all seemed ....rushed out? Philip Glenister of course has the best role in years and is a key part in what I suspect is the Mid-Noughties cultural shift away from Gay'n'Girlie to Wild Boys (see also the unfeasable success of Russell Brand) but DCI Gene Hunt seemed a man out of time even in 1981.

Of course the exemplar is Bodie and Doyle bollocks in The Professionals but the touches of drop-frame semi-slo-mo as DCI Gene Hunt walked out of his office and the hilarious speedboat sene was just pure Miami Vce. But did the camera love him a little too much.

However, the set pieces were a lot of fun, the joke that Gene Hunt had only his name and a game of Pong on the computer was nice. The 'Fire up the Quattro' line is making me chuckle even now.

But the Pierrot?

improving books.

2008-01-21T15:42:22Z

Finally, as in yesterday, finished Arif Shafak's The Flea Place, as grumbled about by me a good few posts back. Nice but it didn't amount to very much --one of those books where you get the feeling that the author hadn't a clue where it was going to end when she started it. 'Oh, I just write, you know...'

Now re-reading William Least Heat-Moon's River Horse. Saddos and geography wonks like me can follow the trip on Google Earth.

Happy holidays and ev'ry'thang

2007-12-31T17:47:28Z

God, I hate New Year. Am I the only one? I've always loathed the mandatory communal jollity that is supposed to accompany an arbitary date ticking over. Then again, I loathe group activities in general (just about survived the dayjob Christmas bash by insisting on a room in the hotel (Galgorm Manor, v nice and made full use of the spa and outdoor jacuzzi, which was rather good on a frosty, moon-filled night) rather than the laddish communality of the chalet.

Christmas, nonetheless, was good. Great day down at my sister's down the arse end of the Ards peninsula: probably all the better for my being substantially under-prepared, so it was really seasonal. Good company and I bought everyone silly games this year, which we indulged mightily.

Christmas telly: loved loved loved Ballet Shoes. Dr Who, hm... But then again, I like it but I'm not a fan. That Russel T needs to watch himself. Someone else should script edit him. Caught the Extras christmas special --no, Ricky Gervais, putting your hands up on a million pound BBC budget and crying 'Mea Maxima culpa' does not absolve yourself of all you luvvie wank this year and the last. Find something else other than yourself to write about. I suspect all the laughs came from Steve Merchant --the George Michael cruising scene was very funny. Gordon Ramsay's cameo was pointless and embarassing.

Fighting the good fight with an new Freeview box (thank you Tesco's vouchers!). There's an aerial in the attic with a cable, and a socket in the living room but I suspect nothing in between. I'm paying Beardie Branson a fortune (the bill almost doubled when the Virgin 'brand' took over NTL) for channels I don't watch, so I really really want this sweet little twenty quid black box to work.

Research is hell: booked a weekend break for us (and Enid's Mum too!} in Istanbul end of January. Ludicously cheap flying direct on Turkish Airline from Dublin. Hoping for some Orhan Pamuk-ish snow. Reading Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace because it shares the same central conceit as my book --diverse lives in apartments in the same building. Enjoyed The Bastard of Istanbul but, eh, I'm not loving this. Some dialogue, something happening in the present rather than backstory would be good. But hey! Istanbul in winter! So so looking forward to it.

Dayjob note to self: isn't it about time someone (ahem) did a new --but as good as the original-- version of The Box of Delights? Maybe as a single, rather than series?

cyberabad days

2007-12-10T23:09:44Z

In Glasgow on a TRC trip (next time, any LJers fancy a pint or two?). Abusing the free wifi at the hotel: just to announce (ta dah) that contracts have been returned for a collection of River of Gods stories tentatively titled Cyberabad Days, and a split-new novella Vishnu at the Cat Circus. Back enda next year. Keep y'all out of mischief until The Dervish House.

Golden Compass thoughts

2007-12-10T11:49:52Z

To the Storm cinema (yes indeedy) to the VIP theatre (forty reclining leather armchairs with INFINITE REFILS OF POPCORN! which is a chiz seeing as no one can eat more than one of them salty bastards) to see The Golden Compass
Hmm. I like it a lot, though there were serious failings, but I think these were due to the inherent unfilmability of the books. Books and movies tell two very different types of stories (TV tells a third) but more on this later. I think it would have seemed very disjointed were you not at least familiar with the books --you could see where a much bigger film had been hacked to bits in the cutting room, and there were a number of post-edit continuity gaffes.

There were some deft little touches however --the line right at the start about a '99 tokay' was genius, showing us that this was the present --2007-- in an alternate universe. And the sense of the Multiverse --the biggest idea in fiction-- was nicely conjured. For me, alternate worlds and parallel universes succeed by that sense of alienating familiarity: it's recognisable, but dislocating in its strangeness. The failure to do this was what made Sliders such ineffable shit. (However, my own trick in Brasyl was to emphasise how tiny the differences were between the Brazils, rather than huge clunking gulfs like 'and in this alternate world, Brasil was colonised by Vikings.) The alternate Oxford, with its surfeit of dreaming spires, worked, as did the flight into London, even if the city seemed strangenly underpopulated.
I thought some of the design a little disjointed, veering between Oliver! and Cecil Beaton (more of the latter would have been truly startling --but how nice to see Lyra defeat da bad guys in a pair of Ugg boots.)

Some reviwers have complained about the lack of a single hissable villain. Oh come on. Institutional villainy is always much more realistic and harder to overthrow, though Simon McBurney radiated pure oleaginous menace through a simple comb-over. And Christopher Lee was wasted (though I suspect he may yet appear in the end-game, if the rest ever get filmed). The main problem, I think, is that cinema is a simple medium. There are limits on its ability to convey ideas as ideas, and His Dark Materials is idea-heavy.

Central to the story was getting over the idea of the daemon as the external soul. Some reviewers have complained about the narration at the start which sets it up bit I think it worked ok. The protrayal of the daemons was at once a strength and a weakness. Some of the CG was woeful --Pantaleimon in cat form was a cringe-worthy Garfield clone and the monkey never really convinced. Kathy Bates crackled, however, as Hester, but it was never consistently established whether everyone could hear everyone else's daemon. What startled was that when a human was killed, the daemon evaporated in a cloud of golden dust, and that made every single death in the big fight at the end much more poignant. It also made for a hell of post-production job.

This brings me on to the originality of Pullman's world. This is very far from tired Medieval fantasy bollocks and all the better for it. Trollocks bollocks. Like all other fantasy, it is deeply rooted in myth and legend, but the source is fresh and un-muddied by too many feet drinking from it. I liked that (in the books, the film wisely made no attempt to steer that way) Lyra's worlds are a fantastical take on the paradigm of a 20th century quantum universe, rather than a medieval one. It takes some time to get into this world, and movies are not good at elaborate scene-setting. That there was constantly something intellectually new and stimulating to take in on screen (as oposed to someone chasing or shooting someone else) kept the pace going.

Campest moment of the year was probably two RSC thesps hamming it up as the panserbjorn in a bit of Ian on Ian action--here the CG worked brilliantly. I did feel that the Gyptians could have been better set up --rather than them running merrily through the Isis meadows, why not have them on the barges, as in the book?

Much as I love Kate Bush, the song sucked. Badly. Mockney accents... no. Just no. Nicole Kidman... well, just being Nicole Kidman is scary and evil enough. Jack Shepard did a good line in intellectual anxiety. More Daniel Craig please--and he was badly thrown away in the third act.

But hey! I can forgive almost anything for Sam Elliot as an absolutely cracking Lee Scoresby.

it's a wrap.

2007-11-17T09:55:54Z

Well, that's the Sesame Tree studio segments shot. The series closer was a musical extravaganza. I operated one of the secondary puppets (Jim-Joe, it'll all make sense I assure you.) Of course it's shit all the fun is ended, but it's going to be a terrific show. Now going down with the man-flu that laid low Director Dez and producer Candy. Still somehow finding time to proceed with The Dervish House.

Turkey. Still processing. Wonderful and alien, yet familiar. Istanbul is one of the great end-point destinations and you can even fly direct from Dublin for a stggering small sum. Contemplating a return trip in February. Ballooning over Cappadocia (as seen on Michael Palin). The water really is turquoise and you swim over sunken Lycian tombs. saw the most sfnal thing I've seen in ages, which is the town of Demre. St Nicholas was born here (and saved two poor women from a life of prostituion by placing alms in their hung-up stockiong, and so it goes). It has a statuie of the classic Norman Rockwell Santa in the centre of the town, which look a bit odd in bright autumn sunlight next to the mosque. But what rocked me was that it's Trantor-lite. This is the heart of the tomato and aubergine gowing region and Every. Square. Foot. is covered in greenhouses and polytunnels. Only the very occasional olive grove and house protudes from the unbroken curves of plastic and glass. The only exposed ground are roads. It's got a beach, so Russian fly down over the Blck Sea in their droves, stay in weird hotels looking out over the shining landscape, walk down to the sea between the glass and plastic walls, get drunk on the beach and then walk back up to the hotel again through the roofed-in landscape. That is so going in.
It's only now the pressure is off that the whole thing is decompressing.
Too many cities of antiquity to contemplate, but the one which, for me, had the greatest sense that the old gods were hovering close, their feet just above the ground, was Aphrodisias. It didn't have the magnificence of Ephesus (and certainly not the crowds, there were fifty people in Aphrodisias, plus a lot of the mandatory Turkish cats), nor the vertiginous thrill of the acropolis of Pergamon, but there was a tremendous stadium where the Pythian games were staged, and Aphrodite felt very near.

Totally unrelated, my Hugo arrived, after sitting in Holywood Post Ofice for two weeks after Parcelforce delivered it to the wrong PO (not the one two minuites walks down the road on Abbey Ring) and my paying a 12 quid Saturday delivery charge, never mind the alleged customs duty which came to 57 notes (of course it's not elligible for it, but you have to pay it first then claim it back. Wait until they see the interest I'll charge Customs and Revenue for an unauthorised loan from me to them.) But Ultraman is up on his shelf looking very skiffy.

Our muppets

2007-10-30T17:14:59Z

Here's the gang. Back from Turkey (balloning over Cappadocia anyone?) and straight into studio. Whio wants a life more ordinary?

gearing up to awayness

2007-09-28T10:37:11Z

Just up to here with muppety madness (we have a retired Kermit puppet in the office, how cool is that?) after casting, and I've just realised that we're off to Turkey next damn week! Cannot wait!

'I shall never play the Dane.'

2007-09-12T12:23:17Z

I read in Ten Grauniad that Christopher Eccleston isn't the only actor to play both Doctor Who and the Prince of Denmark. It has just been announced that resident timelord David Tennant will appear as Hamlet opposite Patrick Stewart's Claudius in a new RSC production.

and no points for identifying my subject quote?

vote airly an' vote aften

2007-09-10T09:27:43Z

I haven't disturbed you with any Ulster-Scots bollocks for a while but this should cheer up your Monday. Voter Registration Form for Ulster Scots

Teh bookness

2007-09-07T15:57:27Z

Sixty six unintended quid in Waterstones later and a rake of points on my new loyalty card: my haul encompasses

Peter Ackroyd's Thames: Sacred River
Vishnu's Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion
Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart (Hopefully better thanthe execrable The Black Swan, a rubbish combination of Department of the Bleeding Obvious and intellectual arrogance (of that Heinleinesque style of 'I am a very very clever man and you cannot even hope to approach my cleverness and anyone who disagrees with me is so clearly wrong-headed that discussion is not even possible'mode or argument: my immediate thought was if these 'Black Swans' (and his analogy is not even precise or valuable) are so bloody catastrophic, why is the world not radically more different from the way it is? )
Penguin excerpt from 'The Golden Meadow'.
All research reading, apart from the Ackroyd, whom I read for joy --mind you, his Albion - the Origins of the English Imagination was thin, and cobblers also, IMHO.

Further, I draw your attention to this dandy trade paperback edition of River of Gods fresh out (ish) from Pyr.

A surprisingly maximal day

2007-09-01T16:09:32Z

September 1 seemed a pretty good official start date for The Dervish House. Change of season. Lingering ghosts of old school years (that we never quite escape, it seems, an alternate mental calendar). Reached critical mass. Buggered around long enough. So open up a file and begin. Got my two pages done. Want to do more. Won't. Good. next book kicked off. No going back now.

Then I discover that The Djinn's Wife has won the Hugo for Best Novelette at Nippon 200. I'm a bit leapy--up-and-downy still, and soon to be very-champagney, but thanks to all you well wishers who posted on da blog or emailed. Chuffed is the word is the word is the word. And congratulations to all the other winners, fellow livejournalistas and flisters. You know who you are.

rejoice rejoice!

2007-08-13T13:53:17Z

you may need to mine a bit here, but Saxondale returns!