Interzone 228

There's an interview with Gene Wolfe along with a review of The Sorcerer's House among other books, plus the usual round-up of films, DVDs and TV programmes - or to be precise, a TV programme, the focus being on the remake of The Prisoner. I'm still not sure what to make of it myself, but it was an interesting experience. I'm inclined to sympathise with the reviewer, who found it a bit of a mess, but it was an intriguing mess so I'd probably watch a second series.

Just five stories this time:

Untied States of America by Mario Milosevic, illustrated by David Senecal. The United States have become physically separated from each other and now drift individually around the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, occasionally spotting each other in passing. A watcher on the coast of Washington keeps a daily look-out, and is surprised to see a small boat approaching the shore, rowed by a man escaping from another state.

Iron Monk by Melissa Yuan-Innes, illustrated by Jim Burns. The near future: an assorted group of strangers is despatched on a mission to meet aliens who have arrived in the outer Solar System. Damage to their ship's radiation shield threatens their survival.

A Passion for Art by David D. Levine, illustrated by Mark Pexton. Artworks in a museum are being damaged, with figures in them disappearing. A security consultant sets out to trap the vandal, but finds a lot more than he bargained for.

Plague Birds by Jason Sandford, illustrated by Darren Winter. A remote-future population is scattered thinly over a rural landscape, living in self-contained villages. Their main threat is the arrival of a Plague Bird; a woman with strange and lethal powers to punish any wrong-doers who have not been properly dealt with by their communities.

Over Water by John Ingold, illustrated by Richard Wagner. The inhabitants of an island in a scattered archipelago are pestered by occasional raids from their savage neighbours, until they decide to resist.

An interesting and varied batch of stories with some original ideas. Two of them (Plague Birds and Over Water) have deceptive fantasy elements but turn out to be more like science fiction. Plague Birds is perhaps the story with the most potential for development, and indeed the author plans more tales about the principal character. However, my prize for the most bizarre and memorable concept goes to Untied States of America.

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To return to the subject of TV programmes, I was a bit disappointed that there was no coverage of the final series of Ashes to Ashes, which ended a few weeks ago. It turned out that everyone was dead, and had been existing in a kind of waiting area while their characters developed sufficiently to pass on to the afterlife, joyously represented by a really good, convivial pub (well, can you think of anything better?). I found the final episode rather touching, even elegaic, and it (more or less) wrapped up the disparate threads more effectively than anything else I could imagine.

The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks has established himself as one of the most highly regarded SF authors of the current generation. Unusually, he switches between genre and mainstream fiction (the latter under the name Iain Banks - without the M) and is equally successful at both. His SF books focus on a far distant future when mankind has spread across the galaxy. Most of them are set in the "Culture", a time of enormous wealth for all, managed by immensely powerful artificial intelligences.

The Algebraist is not a part of the Culture series, but it is still set in a galaxy-spanning future. Humanity and various alien races co-exist, using huge artificial wormholes to connect star systems. There has been a long history of inter-human conflict in which AIs have been banned. The action is set in one distant system which has been cut off from the rest of civilisation by the destruction of its wormhole in such a conflict, and can only be reconnected after a sub-light-speed fleet has spent centuries travelling from the nearest high-technology system. To add to their problems, the system is vulnerable to attack by dissident human cultures who are planning an invasion. A Jovian-type gas giant within the system is a home to the Dwellers, a galaxy-wide race which have been around for some ten billion years and who can individually live for up to two billion. They have no great interest in other races but permit occasional visits by human scholars.

One of these scholars is Fassin Taak, the hero of the novel. He is summarily recruited into the military/religious order which rules the system and sent to the gas giant to investigate an ancient rumour that the Dwellers know of other wormholes which could end their isolation. The action focuses mainly on Taak's adventures among the Dwellers, switching occasionally to other characters in the system, in the rescue fleet and in a dissident invasion fleet which are both racing towards the system.

Like all of Banks' books, The Algebraist is not really a page-turner. The pace is slow and deliberate and at over 500 pages of a rather small font, the book requires some dedication to read. I must confess that it took me quite a while to get into, but I stuck with it and eventually became so engrossed that I read the last third in one sitting.

The main point of interest in the story is the Dweller race, which lives in the atmosphere of gas giants. They are famously disorganised, appear to have no government, and normally use a relatively low level of technology. Banks makes them intriguing but perhaps too human-like in their attitudes and conversation; despite their vast age, strange habitat and decidedly non-human physical form I didn't find them as alien as I would have expected.

I found this book to be well worth reading, but while I admire Banks' works (with the exception of Feersum Endjinn, which I abandoned in irritation at the extensive use of an invented dialect) they never quite hit the bullseye with me. I'll still keep reading them, though.

Film: Superman Returns

Superman Returns was one of my Christmas collection of recorded movies. It was, I suppose, a competent enough production but it left me pondering the whole question of realism and credibility in such present-day fantasies.

With any fantasy, the reader has to be capable of suspending disbelief in order to enjoy the story since at least one key aspect of it (e.g. a superhuman ability) is usually scientifically impossible. However, for it to be acceptable (to me, at any rate) it is important that the plot woven around this aspect should be internally consistent and reasonably logical.

To give some examples from my recent reviews: Batman Begins, while highly improbable, is not actually impossible. There are no magical powers, just a well-trained man using moderately advanced technology. With such limitations, tackling crime in his home city seems a reasonable target. There is a different approach in Gould's Jumper (the book not the film) in that the hero's ability to teleport is indeed impossible (as least as far as present-day science can conceive) but apart from that, what happens as a result is intensely realistic and credible. The X-Men films push the boundaries a bit further, since there are various different super abilities distributed among the characters. However, the plots built on this make acceptable sense.

So where does Superman fit into this? Not just one super ability, but a whole batch of them in one man; in fact, there's not a lot he can't do. He is so all-powerful that he would achieve an easy victory every time, so the debilitating effect of Kryptonite had to be added to provide any trace of dramatic tension. However, if you are able to take a really big swallow and suspend your disbelief about this, you then get to what Superman does with these abilities. Think about it for a moment; what would you do?

Well, recent earthquakes provide some obvious opportunities; rescuing people trapped in fallen buildings, rushing them to hospital, carrying in vast quantities of supplies and other necessities. Part of the world suffering a drought? Dump an iceberg into the nearest lake-bed. Famine in a war zone? Get the food through regardless of attempts to stop this. Worried about nuclear war or terrorism? Scrap North Korea's nuclear facility and haul Osama bin Laden out of whatever hole he's in. Then you come to the fun bits: want to encourage space exploration? Lots could be done; for example: deposit research satellites around the Solar System; launch probes at extremely high velocities towards all the most likely nearby stars; lift complete, self-contained, permanent habitats onto the Moon and Mars (although I'd insist that humanity develops and maintains the ability to transfer people and supplies between planets, otherwise they'd just rely on me and the whole endeavour would collapse when I wasn't there any more).

These kinds of plot elements could provide some interesting material. For instance, Superman was supposed to have been sent to Earth to benefit mankind, not just the USA, which (incredible as it may seem in the comic-strip world) may not always be in the right. If you're removing nuclear weapons, where do you stop, and why? Who would be in charge of your Mars (or wherever) base? How could you get the nations to work together? Lots of moral and political issues to tackle here.

So what does Superman do: any of this? Err no, actually, he just fights a criminal nutcase while rescuing people from small-scale disasters and dealing with routine crime. In other words, the film is entirely unbelievable in all respects from start to finish. This is fantasy for kiddies who, one would hope, would grow out of stuff like this before they're ten. It makes Batman Begins and the X-Men films look like epics of Shakespearean quality and grandeur. The film-makers try to distract attention from this by focusing on the romantic relationship between Superman and his former girlfriend, but to try to make a decent film about Superman is, to borrow a memorable phrase, like putting lipstick on a pig; it simply isn't worth the bother.

The Ruby Dice, by Catherine Asaro

I previously reviewed Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire space-opera series in July 2007 (see the review list in the panel on the left) so I won't repeat the background to the stories here. Suffice to say that The Ruby Dice is the twelfth novel in the series, with a thirteenth (Diamond Star) already published and due out in paperback shortly.

The Ruby Dice focuses on two individuals: Kelric, the Rhon psion Skolian Imperator, and Jaibriol III, the Eubian Emperor. As leaders of the two great and fundamentally opposed interstellar empires, they personify the constant struggle between the slave-owning Eubians and the Skolians. All is not as it seems, however; unknown to the Eubians, Jaibriol is the son not just of the previous Emperor but also of the former Skolian Imperator, and he is a powerful psion - a fact which would lead to his instant deposition and death or slavery if it became known. Kelric also has a major secret; that in a previous period of his life (recounted in The Last Hawk, the seventh book of the series) he had been held as a prisoner on the restricted planet Coba, where he had not only learned to play the culture-dominating dice game of Quis to its highest level, he had also fathered two children.

The plot of The Ruby Dice starts a decade after both Kelric and Jaibriol had inherited their respective titles. Both men are separately determined to try to agree a peace treaty despite powerful internal opposition, and the viewpoint alternates between them as they scheme and take major risks to achieve this. The story makes a rather slow start, as it contains numerous infodumps to apprise new or forgetful readers of the background to the series and the events so far. Personally, I would much rather have this contained within a prologue which could be skipped if not needed, allowing the story to plunge straight into the plot. As it happens there is a prologue, but this has a different function, recounting some events a year before the plot starts. Once underway, however, Asaro's story-telling skills drew me in as usual.

For me, the scenes set in the Eubian court are far more fascinating than the Skolian episodes. Jaibriol is under intense pressure, not just from the normal deadly intrigues but also in trying to maintain the mental defences which prevent the Eubians from realising that he is one of the despised Rhon psions. A marvellous major character is his wife Tarquine, vastly older than himself and a ruthless and brilliant manipulator of the court on his behalf. The author has a lot of fun with the oblique and coded use of court language, direct speech being considered acceptable only among lovers - or to slaves. For instance, the comment "Paris is a decadent city, I have no desire to tour France again" actually means "the incomplete Treaty of Paris with the Skolians was a bad idea and not worth pursuing". Similarly, "Corbal values the dawn. He would never let its radiance dim" means "Corbal will stand by his slave mistress (named Sunrise) and would never abandon her".

I mentioned in my previous review that the later novels were beginning to show signs of the fatigue which almost always afflicts such a long series of novels set in the same universe. Certainly the pace has slowed somewhat as the author selects different facets of her creation to examine in more detail. However, the variety which her approach permits is ably used to maintain interest and prevent the setting becoming stale. The Skolian Empire series is a major achievement, and each new book remains on my "must buy" list.

TV series: FlashForward, Ashes to Ashes, and The Prisoner

Three series currently showing on UK TV have varied SFF elements, and make for some interesting contrasts.

FlashForward is a US series, based on a 1999 novel of the same name by Canadian author Robert J Sawyer. It is set on a present-day Earth in which (almost) everyone blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds, during which they appeared to see visions of what would happen to them six months into the future. I haven't read the book and was unable to watch the first series (the channel it was shown on not then being available in my area) but came in on the two-part "special" and the start of series two. Sadly I didn't get much further since, although I was aware of the basic premise, the second series is packed so full of references to events and people in the first series that I found watching it an exercise in frustration. I gather from other commentators, however, that the series suffers from being far too drawn out (with 22 hour-long episodes in the first series alone) which means that the concept becomes seriously diluted.

This raises an interesting question concerning the optimum length of such series and whether or not it is important to try to keep the pacing and structure of the novel. Generally speaking, feature films don't have enough time to do justice to most novels, since they try to pack a story which typically takes over five hours to read (assuming 350+ pages) into a couple of hours. Long series like FlashForward go to the opposite extreme, stretching the plot to several times its original length. One consequence is that the focus may shift from the science-fictional premise to the activities and interrelationships of the characters. This might be acceptable if the characters are strong and their relationships develop in an interesting way, but that doesn't seem to be the case with FlashForward, judging both by my own brief exposure to it and the comments of others.

Ashes to Ashes is now in its third and last series. I reviewed the first two on this blog on 25 June 2009, so I won't go into the background again. This time the mood is darker, with the threatening figure of Jim Keats, a police officer tasked with reviewing Gene Hunt's (Philip Glenister) department, on a mission to discredit Hunt. Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes), thrown back from the present to 1983, becomes obsessed with the death of Sam Tyler, the former throwback in Life on Mars, and discovers evidence that Hunt was involved. However, the focus for much of the series has been on 1983 policing, with little evidence of the desperation to return to her young daughter Drake showed in the first two series; the only mysterious element being her repeated visions of a wounded policeman. Flashes of brilliant comedy are still there, however, one being the incorporation of a real-life incident, the vandalism of the garden developed for the children's TV show Blue Peter. This is "revealed" as being the consequence of a messy arrest by Gene Hunt and his team, who afterwards are shown glumly watching the actual 1983 TV programme which described the vandalism by persons unknown! Viewers are promised that the series will end by explaining what has been happening and wrapping up all the loose ends. It will be fascinating to see how they do this, but also a sad day - however, all good things must come to an end.

The Prisoner was a late-1960s British TV series concerning a former secret agent (played by Patrick McGoohan, who also devised the story and wrote several episodes) who wakes up in a mysterious village (the actual picture-postcard folly village of Portmerion in North Wales) from which he is prevented from leaving while those in charge try to find out why he resigned. The residents all have numbers rather than names and live a surreal existence which, along with the bizarre attempts to break the hero's resistance, provide a substantial fantasy element to what is ostensibly a spy thriller. (In this respect it is not dissimilar to another famous but lighter and more comedic series from the same period, The Avengers, in its definitive third series starring Diana Rigg). I saw the The Prisoner when it first appeared and saw it all again when it was broadcast a few years ago; it deservedly has cult status now.

A new version of The Prisoner is now showing. This is a joint US/UK production featuring an American hero (played by John Caviezel) and is set in a model village among the deserts of southern Africa. So far it looks promising, with a similar basic premise but enough differences to make it interesting, and lots of confusing blurring between the hero's past and present lives. One to keep watching, for now at least.

2009 BSFA Short Fiction award

The British Science Fiction Association presents annual awards to the best in four categories (Novel, Short Fiction, Artwork and Non-Fiction) as determined by the votes of the members. The six stories in the Short Fiction category were included in a booklet sent out to members. By the time I worked my way to it through my ever-growing pile of reading material I was (as usual) too late to vote, but this is my take on them anyway. Two of them had previously been published in Interzone magazine so have already been mentioned in this blog, but I'll paste my comments in here to save you searching for them:

Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast by Eugie Foster (first published in Interzone 220): a fantasy in which everyone wears a mask in public – a mask which determines their personalities and the events they are involved in. It is illegal to be seen in public without one, so every morning people have to choose which identity to adopt from their varied collections of masks. But there are some who reject the idea and try to develop their own independent personalities.

Johnny and Emmy-Lou Get Married by Kim Lakin-Smith (first published in Interzone 222): 1950s-style romance across the boundaries of futuristic US gangs, the Rocketeers and the Flies.

The Push by Dave Hutchinson (first published in The Push, Newcon Press): a long short story about planetary colonisation. One of the original founders of a colony on a distant planet returns several centuries later (although only a few years for him as the result of the temporal effects of the FTL space travel technology) to discover that a previously non-sentient native race had suddenly acquired intelligence - and that meant trouble.

Vishnu at the Cat Circus (extract) by Ian McDonald (first published in Cyberabad Days, Gollancz): set in a future fragmented India, the ancient genetically-enhanced owner of a circus of performing cats tells the story of his early life.

The Beloved Time of their Lives by Ian Watson & Roberto Quaglia (first published in The Beloved Of My Beloved, Newcon Press): Two lovers keep meeting, the man growing steadily older as he works his way back though time to keep meeting his ever-younger lover.

The Assistant by Ian Whates (first published in The Solaris Book of Science Fiction, Volume 3): the cleaning squad enters the office building for their night job, but it involves a lot more than just physical cleaning; there are cyber attacks and infiltration by mini robots to deal with too.

I couldn't really evaluate Ian MacDonald's extract as it is abruptly cut short before it gets anywhere, and makes no sense by itself with a complete disconnect between the protagonist's early and late lives. For inventive and original fantasy I would choose Eugie Foster's story, but being a sucker for traditional SF my personal favourite was Dave Hutchinson's tale; it could have been written at any time in the past few decades but is none the worse for that.

PS Having written the above, I checked the BSFA site and found that the Watson/Quaglia story had won the award. I found that one a bit irritating because of the way in which the meetings were curtailed because the couple kept making the same mistake.

Films: The Time Machine, and Timeline

Two films with a central theme in common - time travel.

I re-read H G Wells' novel The Time Machine only last year (see review list on the left) and vaguely recall watching the 1960 film version, so when the 2002 film appeared on TV I naturally had to watch it. My first reaction was one of puzzlement; not only was the setting changed from London to New York (par for the course for Hollywood, which seems to find it hard to imagine that anything of interest could ever happen outside the USA) but the first quarter of an hour or so is entirely new, concerning a doomed love affair. It transpires that this is what drives the central character (a physics professor) to develop a time machine, and after some more diversions the story duly arrives 800,000 years in the future, into the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks. Sadly, the devolution of humanity is glossed over, the Eloi shown as normally intelligent rather than stupid, with the cause of humanity's lost civilisation being put down to a man-made physical disaster (the break-up of the Moon) rather than natural evolutionary forces. Also the evocative final section of the book, in which the time traveller visits a dying Earth from which humanity has disappeared, is omitted, to be replaced by a tacked-on and totally nonsensical destroy-the-bad-guys-and-live-happily-ever-after ending. A dumbed-down sketch of a classic novel; Hollywood doing its worst.

I had never heard of Michael Crichton's 1999 novel Timeline and didn't realise that the 2003 film I had just watched was based on this until the credits rolled. So I can't comment on how faithful (or otherwise) the film was to the book. This is probably just as well, otherwise I might have found far more fault with it. As it was, I enjoyed the tale of the team of modern archaeologists using a time-travel machine to visit medieval France at a crucial point in history, in order to rescue one of their colleagues. Much scheming and fighting result as the archaeologists desperately try to return to the present day. Far from serious, but enjoyably entertaining.

If there's one lesson to learn from these two films, it's this: if at all possible, try to see the film before you read the book. You are then more likely to enjoy the film.

Slan, and Slan Hunter, by A.E. van Vogt & Kevin J Anderson

It is a very long time since I read Slan, one of the classic novels of the "golden age" of the 1940s which had a huge impact at the time, so when I learned that a sequel had been written I decided to read both.

Slan is a far-future story set on Earth (with scenes on Mars towards the end) in which enhanced humans called slans, featuring extended lifespans, inhuman strength, speed and intelligence, plus the ability to read minds with the aid of fine "tendrils" in their hair, are being persecuted close to extinction by the rest of humanity. The hero of the story is Jommy Cross, a young slan whose mother is killed in the first scene of the tale. Captured by an old woman who uses him as a thief, he grows up and discovers the secrets of advanced science left to him by his father, which enable him to construct formidable technological devices. He also discovers that there is a secret race of tendrilless slans who cannot read minds but whose abilities have allowed them to monopolise air travel - and to clandestinely develop space travel as well. His long search to discover other true slans and to understand why humans and the tendrilless slans hate them so much fills the rest of the novel.

The story is very much of its time and is dated in style as well as scientific understanding - Mars is portrayed as having a breathable atmosphere, for example. The ending is also rather rushed, consisting of a long infodump in which Jommy is told the answers to many of the questions which have troubled him. Despite these flaws the relentless pace and unrestrained imagination drag the reader along, as usual with a van Vogt tale.

In the 1980s the author began to write a sequel, but only got as far as the story outline and a hundred or so pages before he stopped. Kevin J Anderson was eventually given the job of completing the tale and the result, Slan Hunter, was published in 2007. This picks up when Slan left off, concluding the tale of Jommy's search to discover the truth about the slans of both varieties, with all loose ends neatly tied up. I was amused to notice a couple of retrospective explanations for peculiarities in the original. Mars has a breathable atmosphere, we are told, because a thousand years earlier humanity had bombarded the planet with ice comets, algae and bacteria in a massive terraforming exercise, resulting in the return of surface water, a thick atmosphere and warmer temperatures. Also, the remarkable similarity of human culture and technology to 1940s USA is explained by the devastating effect of the slan wars, so that "even now our society has returned only to the equivalent of the United States of America back in the 1940s…some of the cultural similarities to that period are quite striking." Indeed they are!

The new book remains very faithful in style to the original. This also applies to the ending, including as it does some sudden and unexpected revelations. I have to say that this is not necessarily a good thing, unless you think that van Vogt's style can't be improved on. I found that I am much more inclined to be tolerant of technical and stylistic shortcomings in a 1940s book than I am in a 21st century one. This is very unfair of me since Anderson evidently worked hard to match the original, but from my perspective he can't really win: his deliberate pastiche of 1940s style doesn't particularly appeal to me, but a more modern approach would probably have infuriated van Vogt's more devoted fans. So it goes…

Politics, climate change and fiction

It's been a bad year for politicians, climate change and my novel-writing efforts (yes, there is an admittedly rather tenuous link between all of these).

Here in the Land of Uk, our politicians have been neatly hoist with their own petard in that the Freedom of Information (FoI) act which they passed a few years ago has been used to expose all kinds of shenanigans with their expenses. A few of the more extreme cases are now subject to criminal proceedings, but the lesser offenders fell foul of a kind of cultural groupthink; they fell in with a prevailing official culture which allowed all kinds of secret abuses of the system on the grounds that their basic pay was being artificially restricted for political reasons. When the news broke, howls of rage and derision were heard throughout the land. The fall-out is due to land soon with the forthcoming General Election which will see the biggest clear-out of politicians since 1945 - plus a popular wish for a "none of the above!" option to be provided on the voting form.

Politicians also failed to shine in a different way at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Here they could really have done with some groupthink to get their act together and come up with some constructive results, but they failed. Part of the problem is that most politicians are more concerned with being re-elected than anything else, which makes them very sensitive to public opinion, which means they are strongly inclined to follow public opinion rather than lead it - even when that opinion is badly informed. The inevitable conclusion is that democracy, for all of its other merits, is a very poor system for persuading people that they really do need to face up to something which they would really rather not - especially if the problem is very complex and isn't due to hit home for decades (i.e. many elections away). Ironically one country which is unconcerned about elections - China - had its own reasons for not wanting to know about any potential restrictions on economic growth.

Most of the reason for the Copenhagen failure was probably the feeling that recovering from the economic recession took priority, but it wasn't helped by the publicity about the now notorious emails within the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. These revealed another kind of groupthink among the researchers, who felt themselves beleaguered by the constant attempts to discredit their work, including the bombardment of demands for information under that same FoI act which did for the MPs. They seem to have adopted a bunker mentality, trying to block and frustrate the activities of their critics. As is now obvious, this was a very bad idea. So was the inclusion by the IPCC of an unsupported remark concerning the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers in what was supposed to be a peer-reviewed and thoroughly checked report.

All of this has no doubt contributed to the sharp increase in the number of those in the UK who do not believe that climate change is a problem, although I suspect that a much bigger reason was the severe winter we've just endured. I had to laugh at the cartoon which showed a traffic jam of cars partly buried in snow with, coming from all of them, a version of that well-known question-and-response chant familiar from demonstrations and protest marches:

"What do we want?"
"Global warming!"
"When do we want it?"
"NOW!!!"

The fact that the Meteorological Office had predicted a milder than usual winter, coupled with their springtime prediction of a "barbeque summer" which turned out to be thoroughly wet and cold, only added to the public feeling that the so-called experts had no idea what they were talking about.

The problem basically comes back to the fact that climate change is a complex subject with long-term consequences. Unfortunately, amendments to our behaviour to deal with this are also long-term in their effect, and therefore need to be put in place well in advance. In order to try to wake the public up to the potential severity of the situation, there is no doubt that many people involved with climate change research have been guilty of over-simplifying and over-dramatising the issues. Sadly they have thereby supplied free ammunition to those who do not want to believe that there is a problem, or if there is one that it is anything to do with human activities, or that if it is to do with human activities, that there is anything that we can realistically do about it.

As an interested bystander , I offer my own small contribution to correcting these perception problems by going back to basics. The first essential is to clarify the distinctions between global warming, climate change and weather; something which a lot of people are evidently still confused about.

Global warming describes the gradual increase in average planetary temperatures over the past century or so. It's important to stress the "average" bit: on a year-by-year temperature graph, the line zig-zags up and down, making it difficult to see what is happening. So statisticians calculate a rolling average over several years; this smooths out the annual variations and shows the underlying trend. And what this trend shows is that the planet is indubitably warming up: see THIS. Various explanations have been put forward for this and (as is usually the case) the truth is likely to be a complex blend of interacting reasons: but the informed opinion of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that the substantial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from human industrial activities (which is also well evidenced) bears a very large share of the blame.

Climate change affects us much more directly than global warming: it concerns what happens to regional temperature, wind and rainfall patterns as a result of the overall warming trend. This has been the subject of many of the more alarming predictions about the consequences for humanity. However, it is a very complex and difficult area to predict, so any statements about the consequences need to be expressed as probabilities rather than certainties - and even the probabilities need to be regarded with caution as they will certainly change as we learn more over time. Having said that, there are already considerable differences from one part of the world to another. For instance, the Arctic is warming up faster than anywhere else, probably because the much reduced summer ice cover is allowing the ocean to absorb more of the suns rays and thereby warm up, instead of the rays being reflected back to space by the ice cover. At the other extreme, the Antarctic is hardly warming at all. Perhaps even more significant than temperature changes are the consequences for wind and ocean current patterns and how they will affect rainfall. All we can say at the moment is that there will be a wide range of climate changes in different parts of the world, and that while some may be beneficial to specific areas, the overall consequences are likely to be negative. Why is this? Simply because our current patterns of population distribution and agriculture are based on and adapted to the existing regional climates, so if these change for the worse (e.g. less rainfall in an agricultural area) the effects are likely to be serious. These comments only apply to moderate levels of climate change. If the global average temperature increases by several degrees, then the resulting climate changes are likely to be catastrophic almost everywhere.

Finally, Weather. This of course describes the temperatures, winds and rainfalls which we experience hour by hour, day by day, month by month. The graphs for these zig-zag around wildly, giving us considerable short-term variations (hence the wet summer and cold winter). These can be very inconvenient but are not of any long-term significance. It is only if the weather changes consistently and over a long period of time that this becomes important - and then it becomes climate change.

From my perspective, the whole question of climate change is one of risk assessment: how likely is it to happen, and if it does happen, how bad might the consequences be? Finally, what would be the costs of taking remedial action? As you will have gathered, there are no certainties in any of this, nor are any simple answers possible. However, the best judgment which I can make from studying the published evidence and the professional opinions of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists is that global warming is very likely to continue unless we take some strenous actions to prevent it; that this will drive ever-increasing climate change; and that the long-term consequences for our civilisation are likely to be serious.

So what should or could we be doing about all of this? I have gone into this in some detail HERE. The main point is that adapting our activities to reduce global warming as far as possible is not all bad news, because it brings opportunities as well as costs: as old industries wind down, new ones will spring up. This is already happening in many areas of life (to give a simple example: as production of low-efficiency light bulbs declines, that of high-efficiency ones accelerates), and these changes will continue anyway.

So what on earth has all this to do with my novel-writing problems? Well, a year or two ago I had an idea for a new novel. I was intrigued by the kind of existence people would have living in arcologies - basically huge buildings containing homes, shops, workplaces, leisure facilities, even food-producing areas - but considered that these are only likely to become economically worthwhile if temperatures fall considerably while energy costs rise, because of the huge energy savings they would permit. At that time there was considerable concern that the melting Arctic ice might stop the flow of the warm current from the Caribbean which keeps NW Europe much warmer than it otherwise would be, so this region could experience a fairly short-term but severe cooling effect, until global warming gradually restored the situation. Great! I had the background I needed and could get on with devising a suitably science-fictional murder-mystery set in my arcology. I had it all planned out - right down to the dramatic final twist - and was happily ploughing through it when disaster struck. I discovered that the original concerns had been caused by oceanic measurements which indicated that the current had already slowed by 30% over a few decades; but more recent research had showed that this was merely a short-term variation, and that particular threat was no longer regarded as very likely. Collapse of one SF author, torpedoed below the water line. Oh well, I suppose that novel was just an early casualty of climate change!

Films - Eagle Eye, and District 13: Ultimatum

Two very different near-future thrillers with SF elements.

Eagle Eye is a 2008 mystery thriller set in the USA. It concerns a young man and a young mother who are coerced into assisting a mysterious and apparently all-powerful organisation which is able to monitor them by tapping into nearby CCTV, communicate with them by ringing any phone in their vicinity plus altering electronic message boards and video displays they pass, and can also assist their progress (or threaten them) by switching traffic lights and taking over remote-controlled machinery.

The pair are soon on the run from the authorities while desperately following a string of instructions with no obvious purpose, until the threads gradually come together to reveal a deadly threat to the US government. It is the nature of this threat which puts the film into the SF bracket (although it may also be described as a "techno-thriller"). Lightweight entertainment, but not bad.

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I enjoyed the original District 13 - a 2004 French film set in Paris. The social problems caused by an undesirable banlieue, or district, had been "solved" by walling it off, creating a lawless environment within it. An action-man supercop joined forces with an athletic resident to resolve the threat of a nuclear bomb being exploded in the District. Much entertaining action followed, focusing on the parkour (free-running) exploits of the heroes racing around the rooftops.

The sequel, District 13: Ultimatum, features the same pair of heroes trying to stop a dastardly plan to demolish much of the District so that a major construction company can make a vast fortune redeveloping it for the middle classes. We first see the supercop passing as a (female) prostitute in order to infiltrate a drug-dealing nightclub. At the same time, a secret arm of the government security forces is setting up an incident designed to provoke riots within the District, giving its corrupt leaders, bribed by the construction company, the excuse to clear the area ready for demolition. Only the heroes can stop this from happening, but one of them is soon in prison and the other is on the run.

The action is just as entertaining as before, the combat scenes just as improbable. The violence is tongue-in-cheek; there is hardly any visible blood and very few deaths despite the constant mayhem. What lifts this above the usual is its mischievous sense of humour, providing lots of laugh-out-loud moments. I particularly enjoyed the attempt to escape from a building by car, which resulted in it being driven up into, around and down out of, the first floor (don't ask) before being driven off. And the name of the corrupt construction company? Harriburton!

Apart from the humour there is a very French sense of nonchalant style about these films. Very much not Hollywood, and very enjoyable in a light-hearted way. The film is subtitled which may put off some viewers, but I found that once the action got underway I barely noticed.

Interzone 227

The featured author in the March/April issue of Interzone is Connie Willis. There's an interview with Paul F. Cockburn in which she talks about her work in general and her latest duology set in the London Blitz, Blackout and All Clear (really one novel split into two volumes). There's also a review of Blackout. The author is best known for short stories, although I can't recall having read any by her (my short-story reading being largely confined to Interzone and British Fantasy Society publications). I have read a couple of her novels, however; To Say Nothing of the Dog and Passage, both of which I reviewed on this blog (see review list on the left). Two things struck me about her novel writing: it is very good, but it goes on at inordinate length. As the reviewer of the 500-page Blackout puts it, she has a "relaxed pacing". Still, I expect I might well tackle these two sometime, despite the vast allocation of time I'd need to set aside for them.

The rest of the review section is notable for discussing the film Avatar at some length, providing a lot of background information concerning the making of the film.

Finally, the usual half-dozen short stories:

The History of Poly-V by Jon Ingold, illustrated by Robert Dunn.
A small team of research scientists discovers a drug which enables memories to be retrieved precisely and in great detail, as if they were being experienced afresh. It's a great commercial success, but further development work begins to reveal that memories are not what they used to be.

Dance of the Kawkawroons by Mercurio D. Rivera, illustrated by Jim Burns.
A couple of fortune hunters manage to bypass the quarantine patrols around a planet populated by some exotic intelligent flying creatures living among the ruins of an ancient alien civilisation. They steal some eggs which have characteristics which are incredibly valuable to humanity; but who is exploiting whom?

Chimbwi by Jim Hawkins, illustrated by Ben Baldwin.
Western civilisation is collapsing into chaos, but in Africa scientific breakthroughs have provided limitless free power. A British physicist makes the hazardous journey to start a new life there, and discovers that to be accepted he needs to demonstrate a lot more than just scientific knowledge.

Flying in the Face of God by Nina Allan, illustrated by Robert Dunn.
An astronaut makes her goodbyes as she is irrevocably changed by a treatment to make long space journeys possible.

Johnny's New Job by Chris Beckett.
The ultimate expression of the blame culture visitied upon social workers who make the wrong judgments.

The Glare and the Glow by Steve Rasnic Tem, illustrated by Dave Senecal.
Strange new light bulbs reveal far more than is comfortable.

I was particularly impressed by the first three stories which, while very different in style and content, are good enough to be published anywhere.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Now a quarter of a century old, Neuromancer is widely regarded as a classic of modern SF (if that isn't a tautology). It won just about every award going for its portrayal of a future in which skilled people could be "jacked in" to the information technology network, able to experience it as a virtual landscape and navigate around its programmes and data storage nodes, evading defensive systems and stealing data. Old hat now, but not at the time.

I read it when it first came out, and frankly had forgotten everything about it - even reading it again rang no bells at all. I find these inconsistencies from time to time; sometimes I can clearly remember stories even if they're not much good, at other times even a good tale slips through the gaps in my memory.

Anyway, what did I think of it this time? I was deeply impressed; I found it much better than I had expected. This is not mainly due to the virtual world concepts but simply because the tale of Case, a former cyberspace expert recruited to a dangerous mission, is a rattling good thriller, told with a blend of pace and style which would be equally successful in other genres. The language is often terrific:

"Gravity came down on him like a great soft hand with bones of ancient stone."
And:

"Case's consciousness divided like beads of mercury, arcing above an endless beach the color of the dark silver clouds. His vision was spherical, as if a single retina lined the inner surface of a globe that contained all things…"

If I have any criticism it is that the plot is so densely packed, the writing so laconic, that you really have to stay on your mental toes to keep up with everything that's going on. This is not a book to fill an idle moment, you need to settle down and concentrate. In fact, I was tempted to read it again immediately, in order to savour it in a more leisurely fashion and pick up on the nuances that I suspect slipped by me the first time. Why it made so little impression on me on first reading I don't know; but this one is now added to my pantheon of the SF greats. If you've never read it, treat yourself.
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Joy of joys, the third (and sadly final) series of Ashes to Ashes commences on UK TV next week. For those unfamiliar with this, check out my blog post of 25 June last year where I write about this series and its predecessor, Life on Mars. I'm looking forward to a lot more of those bizarre one-liners from Gene Hunt, like "…as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot".

The Matrix films revisited

I seem to be watching more films than reading books lately, probably because I recorded a lot of the Christmas TV schedules so I've been playing catch-up ever since.

As a result, I saw the Matrix trilogy again recently, for the first time since they were newly released (was The Matrix really over ten years ago?). I was impressed with the first of the series when I saw it originally and it has worn well, rich in SF ideas and with a complexity which makes the story in the visually wonderful Avatar seem as simple as a child's cartoon strip. I think that The Matrix is not far behind Blade Runner in the elite group of the best SF films ever made, and it's a lot more inventive.

Sadly the two sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, released four years later following the huge success of the original, were a major disappointment. The impression I get is that the Wachowski brothers poured all of their ideas into The Matrix and were stumped for what to do next. Reloaded has just one really good, original SF scene (and the only one which significantly carries the plot forward); the climactic meeting between Neo and the Architect of the Matrix, the inventor of the virtual existence in which most of humanity is unwittingly trapped. Neo learns that he is the sixth version of himself to face the Architect and that his repeated appearance was due to an inherent flaw in the programming. All the time this meeting is taking place, the wall of TV screens is showing the varied reactions of his predecessors at their meetings with the Architect. As for the rest of the film, the brothers evidently decided to please the teenagers and fill it with combat and car chase scenes. While technically good, these go on and on interminably, well past the point of tedium, until you are praying for the bad guys to kill off the good guys just to put an end to it all. The only relief from this comes from the occasional pretentious speech, which is scarcely an improvement. Amazingly, Reloaded was more successful at the box office than The Matrix. There's no accounting for taste…

Revolutions is better, largely because the plot actually progresses to a conclusion rather than just marking time. Events begin to make some sort of sense - I particularly liked the notion that the evil Mr Smith programme was the inevitable balancing force to Neo's existence - and the ending was satisfactory. The various fight sequences were still tediously long, though, and Trinity's death scene was ludicrously unrealistic and protracted.

The decision to split the sequel to The Matrix into two separate films was presumably motivated purely by money (hey, we've got all this footage, instead of doing a decent editing job let's use all of it and make the fans pay twice over!). This is emphasised by the fact that there is no proper separation between the two; Reloaded ends in the middle of events and Revolutions picks up immediately without any kind of lead-in or introduction, so they need to be seen in quick succession or the viewer will lose track of what's going on. The problem is that there is barely enough worthwhile material to make one decent film out of the pair of them. So come on, brothers, now you've made your pile let's have a proper "directors' cut" which will do exactly that, combining the best one-third of Reloaded and two-thirds of Revolutions to make the single film which always should have been released. Call it The Matrix Revisited if you like! This could make a worthy sequel to The Matrix - even if it still wouldn't be as good.

One point of detail caught my attention in the first film, concerning the traitor who was tired of the grim reality of life and wanted to be returned to the Matrix, provided that he was assigned a wealthy and famous identity. What intrigued me is that he wanted the memories of his nine years of life outside the Matrix removed so that he would have no idea that his virtual life wasn't real. The thought crossed my mind that if that happened, he wouldn't be the same person; it would be as if he had been killed and a stranger had taken over. So how would he - the essential "he" - have benefited from that?

This reminded me of a similar issue I have mentioned before concerning Star Trek's transporter system, in which individuals are scanned and their complete data transmitted elsewhere to be instantly recreated. In this process, their existing bodies are destroyed. No-one would be able to tell the difference between the original and the copy as they are identical in every detail, but in one important respect they are not the same: the original is killed and a copy is made. The copy has all the memories of the original, and believes he is the original, but he isn't. This problem is more clearly laid out in The Prestige by Christopher Priest (I haven't read it yet, but I have seen the highly rated film). In this case a copy is made by the Tesla machine but the original remains in existence. So, the key question is this: if you entered the Tesla machine and a copy of you appeared in front of you, would you be happy to be killed, knowing that your exact copy would survive? Personally, I wouldn't - which means that I would never want to use a Star Trek type of transporter, because that is in effect what happens.

The same issue of identity is involved in the idea of uploading your mind to a computer so that you can live a virtual and theoretically immortal existence. But it wouldn't really be you living the virtual life, but a copy of yourself - as would be obvious if your corporeal mind remained in existence. Oh well, we won't have any practical cause to worry about such issues for a long time to come…

The Asteroid Menace

The subject of the threat to our civilisation from asteroid impact is an old one in SF, having inspired various novels (of which Arthur Clarke's The Hammer of God, reviewed here 12 Sep 2008, is probably the most informative, albeit now a bit old) and a couple of modern Hollywood films (Deep Impact and Armageddon, both released in 1998). Only the other week, a careful analysis of all of the data relating to the great dinosaur die-off 65 million years ago confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the major blow was struck by the asteroid, ten kilometres in diameter, which created the 180 kilometre wide, 900 metre deep, Chicxulub crater in Central America, with catastrophic consequences for the planetary environment.

Such a huge impact happens about once every 100 million years on average, and at present there is nothing that humanity could do to prevent it from happening again - or even to deal with a much smaller incoming asteroid which could still cause a major regional disaster. A collision with a 200 metre wide body takes place about once every 10,000 years. Several asteroids have been identified which will pass close enough to the Earth to create a small risk of collision, the most worrying being Apophis, with is 270 metres wide and has a one in 45,000 chance of hitting us in 2036. So it's worth devoting some thought to how we might protect ourselves in the future.

Current thinking on these issues was discussed in a couple of New Scientist articles by David Shiga last year: How to save the world from an asteroid impact (28/3/09) and No need to worry about asteroid tsunami disaster (18/4/09).

The author summarises three possible means of preventing or reducing the scale of the destruction: blasting it apart with nuclear weapons (which may mean that many smaller chunks hit the Earth with lesser but still serious consequences); forcing it off course by hitting it with another heavy object travelling at speed (technically difficult and risky); or nudging it more gently out of the way without breaking it apart, by detonating a nuclear device at a distance or pushing it with high-powered lasers.

Work has taken place at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to evaluate the possibility of pushing an asteroid aside with a nuclear blast. This is complicated by the fact that most small asteroids are believed to be loose agglomerations of material rather than solid objects. They were able to demonstrate that it would be possible to change the velocity of a one kilometre wide asteroid sufficiently to miss the Earth by detonating a 100 kt bomb some 250 metres behind it - provided that this was done thirty years before the impact. An alternative being considered is to detonate a much smaller (less than 1 kilotonne) weapon just below the surface. These seem to be the best techniques available to us for the time being, provided that we have enough notice: the shorter the warning time, the more difficult it becomes.

If we have only a short warning time we would need to revert to Plan A and attempt to fragment the asteroid with a massive nuclear device detonated under the surface. If done three years before impact, only a very small fraction of the resulting debris cloud would hit the Earth - but this may not work if the asteroid is one solid chunk of rock.

A more technically difficult but potentially less risky proposal is to use lasers. These would be mounted in spacecraft, several of which would be sent out to rendezvous with the asteroid. They would focus their beams on one point on the surface, creating a plume of vapourised rock which over a period of months or years would act as a side-thruster, nudging the asteroid onto a safer course.

But suppose all these attempt fail, what happens if a large asteroid strikes? Given that the Earth's surface is 70% water, there's a good chance that it would land in the sea and cause a massive tsunami, but there is some dispute as to exactly how big this might be. If a 200 metre wide body struck the deep ocean it would displace billions of tons of water, creating waves hundreds of metres high. However, unlike the earthquake-induced tsunamis with which we have become familiar, these huge, steep waves are likely to collapse and rapidly reduce in height with distance, declining to perhaps 10 metres at a distance of 1,000 km. Given the way in which oceanic waves pile up and increase in height as they approach the land that still sounds very serious, but the shorter wavelength of impact waves (less than two minutes rather than eight minutes for a typical tsunami) means that they would be unlikely to penetrate so far inland. Such an impact, while still devastating to land areas nearby, may therefore have a more limited effect than earlier studies suggested.

This may be slightly reassuring, but having seen the consequences of much smaller waves from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004, it's still worth putting significant scientific effort and funding into methods to avert such a disaster.

Library of the Dead by Glenn Cooper

This almost certainly will not be found in the SFF section of the bookshop, but Library of the Dead is one of that curious genre of modern thrillers which have strong fantasy elements. I should warn you in advance that this review contains spoilers, as it’s otherwise difficult to discuss.

Several different story threads are followed. Most of the tale takes place in present-day USA but there are also several chapters set much earlier in England; in 1947 and in the 13th and 8th centuries. As you might expect, all these threads are woven together in the end.

The present-day thread starts out as a conventional detective story. FBI agent Will Piper, formerly an expert on serial killers but now approaching a drink-sodden retirement, is called upon to make one last effort to catch the “Doomsday Killer”; someone is sending postcards to people showing just a coffin and the date of their deaths, which duly come to pass. The problem is that nothing except the postcards seems to connect the victims, some of whose deaths appear to be natural.

A mystery element is introduced early on when an unnamed cargo, dug up by archaeologists in Britain in 1947 but considered too problematic to retain, is transferred to the USA. Piper’s present-day efforts to identify the killer are then alternated with scenes from the 8th Century in which the nature of the secret is soon revealed; a strange child is born who cannot speak but has only one obsessive activity - writing down people's names and their locations, plus their dates of birth and death. Not in the past, but in the future.

One of the present-day characters, a former classmate of Piper, works at a secret government establishment which is gradually revealed as being devoted to analysing the mass of data discovered by the archaeologists. The pace accelerates as Piper tries to solve the problem while being pursued by ruthless government agents determined to prevent the secret from being revealed.

This isn’t a bad read, its 400 pages slipping by easily enough. There is certain lack of tension caused by the fact that the historical scenes soon make it pretty obvious to the reader what the “Doomsday killings” are all about, while Piper remains in ignorance until close to the end. However, there is an unexpected and dramatic twist in the final chapter, set in the 13th century, which casts everything in an entirely new light.

This odd kind of mixture of realistic present-day thriller mixed with supernatural elements (frequently involving archaeology and ancient secrets) appears to be increasingly popular, although logically one might expect that the separate elements would appeal to entirely different audiences. Ironically, it means that there is a large number of readers who wouldn’t dream of reading a mainstream fantasy novel but who are, nonetheless, reading fantasy!

Screen time: Batman Begins and The Last Dragon

I've never been a fan of comic book superheroes but I'd heard good things of the Batman Begins film so I thought it was worth a spin. What I'd heard was right; the film attempts to establish a logical reason for the creation of the Batman identity and the source of his advanced technology (including the Batmobile). These efforts to make a basically daft idea credible move it (somwhat) towards the SF rather than the pure fantasy camp. Fortunately there is no mention of Robin and his somewhat questionable relationship with the hero.

Much time is spent on establishing Bruce Wayne's personality as he develops from a young boy to a troubled adult, leading to his training with a ninja-style organisation and his decision to use the output of the advanced projects department of the family firm to help him to wage war on the organised crime which is running Gotham City. Cue lots of dramatic flying around, fighting, and car chases. Still, it's a lot better than most such movies and I realised why when I saw in the credits that it was directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Prestige). 'Nuff said.
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The Last Dragon I want to talk about isn't the 1985 Hollywood martial arts movie but the 2004 feature-length production re-shown on UK TV at the beginning of this year (known in the USA as Dragon's World: A Fantasy Made Real or Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real). It purports to be a drama documentary and is set in the near future (the obvious sign of this being portable equipment able to replicate the most advanced scanning and analytical techniques available today, and to do so almost instantly). The main character is a scientist who has an obsession with dragons which has ruined his reputation: he believes that there must be a core of truth behind the world-wide stories of giant, fire-breathing flying creatures. So when the frozen corpse of a large unknown animal is discovered in an ice cave high in the Romanian mountains he goes to investigate.

The rest of the programme is split between the a dramatised version of the scientist's detailed investigation of the corpse and excerpts from a mock-documentary describing the evolution of dragons. I liked the problem-solving approach to the investigation, in which much trouble is taken to find logical reasons for the dragon's unique features. For instance, special gut bacteria produce a hydrogen-methane mix which is stored in large internal bladders. These make the dragon light enough to fly despite its relatively small wings, and also provide the fuel for the flame-throwing; this is ignited by using platinum (obtained by grinding up ore) as a catalyst, as the expelled gases reach the oxygen in the air. Obviously, the dragons are limited in the amount of fire-breathing they can do at any one time because it affects their ability to fly. This may all be nonsense, but it sounds good!

The documentary element is modelled on a typical wildlife programme with a sober, authoritative narrative about the life of dragons and is illustrated with lots of good CGI. It is reminscient of the popular TV programmes which have been produced on dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. We learn that dragons co-existed with dinosaurs and although the land-based ones died out when they did, a marine version survived and later re-emerged onto the land, evolving into various forms in different parts of the world. We see the non-flying Chinese forest dragon as well as the European mountain flying dragon. Towards the end, attention focuses on the fate of the dragon which has been discovered in Romania, which died in a battle with soldiers at the end of the 15th century - perhaps the last one to live. But there is a hint at the end of the programme that there are discoveries still to be made…

The programme is played with an entirely straight face throughout. It is very well done and hugely enjoyable if you are at all intrigued by the dragon myths. One to look out for.

Jumper and Reflex by Steven Gould; books and film

I first read Jumper in the early 1990s, shortly after publication. I enjoyed it a lot, along with several other books by the same author in the same time period (I reviewed Wildside here on 25 July 2008). Gould's writing style is clear and accessible, appealing to young and old adults alike, and his concentration on the development of his young characters is impressive and convincing despite the fantastic nature of the situations he places them in.

When the film of Jumper came out, I noted that it was heavily criticised by fans of the book (so what's new?) but I only recently got around to watching it. Fortunately, I had forgotten all but the basic premise of the book, so I wasn't making direct comparisons. I thought the film of the boy who discovers he can teleport himself by an effort of will was a mildly entertaining piece of film-making but I was left dissatisfied, as if I'd had a meal consisting solely of side-orders. It all seemed rather pointless with an indeterminate ending and I was left thinking "well, OK, but so what?"

This did, however, prompt me to re-read the book along with its recent sequel, Reflex. Reading Jumper after the film was a revelation; I was gripped yet again by the story of David Rice, the young adult struggling to cope with his suddenly-acquired paranormal ability while simultaneously trying to create a life for himself and deal with relationships, good and bad. What struck me most was the amount of thought Gould put into the story, the way in which he got inside the heads of his characters and worked out what really would be the problems and how they might respond to them. This perceptive intelligence adds hugely to the appeal of the book as it draws in the reader; it is almost impossible not to think "what would I do in a similar position?" This also revealed to me the influence this must have had on my own novel, Scales, which follows a similar trajectory until mid-way, when I provide an inevitably rather wild explanation for what had happened which takes the plot in a different direction.

I was also struck by the considerable changes in the plot of the film, most especially that David's teleportation ability was not unique but was shared by many others; and furthermore that there was a secret organisation, the Paladins, which had for generations been dedicated to tracking down and killing the teleporters, whom they regarded as unnatural. This seriously detracts from the principal fascination of the book - the credibility of the story (apart, obviously, from the teleportation itself). It turns the tale into yet another popcorn conspiracy fantasy. To sum up, the book is a diamond, the film is paste.

Fortunately, Reflex is the sequel to the book and not the film, despite what the cover of my Tor paperback edition claims (those who go straight to this book after only seeing the film will be sorely puzzled - what happened to the Paladins and the other teleporters?). It is always difficult to write an initially unplanned sequel to a popular book which is not a disappointment, because the novelty of the basic premise has worn off. Gould succeeds with this one, though, writing a tight and gripping story which significantly develops his original idea. It is difficult to review without some spoilers, so if you like everything to be a surprise, stop reading NOW!

Reflex is set ten years after the events in Jumper. David and Millie are married, living in their desert cliff home and working elsewhere; David is rich due to working for the NSA on a freelance basis, using his unique ability for various clandestine operations. Then disaster strikes; David is kidnapped, leaving Millie stranded in their home. She discovers (the hard way) that she has also acquired the ability to teleport, and the story then follows two tracks; with David, as he struggles to overcome the restraints placed upon him, and with Millie, as she fights to discover what has happened to him.

As is only appropriate given the increased age of the protagonists, Reflex has a more adult and somewhat darker feel than Jumper. The long incarceration of David lasts for most of the story, during which he is systematically tortured and sexually tempted in order to break his will and condition him to obedience; for some, this may be a bit too realistically portrayed for comfort. However, the story is very well-written and exciting, and is highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed Jumper (the book, that is, not the film…). As a bonus, the book's ending dangles enough future possibilities for another book in the series. Bring it on!

The Book of Kells by R.A. MacAvoy

The Book of Kells is a "portal story"; one which involves some sort of gate providing access to another world. If the other world turns out to be a different planet, then the portal mechanism is usually wrapped up in pseudo-scientific blarney and the stories are classified as science fiction. The same might also be true of portals opening into parallel universes, or those which enable travel through time. However, if the author doesn't bother with such explanations but instead presents the portal as magical, the story is regarded as fantasy.

This is the case with The Book of Kells, in which a way is opened from present-day Ireland to 1,000 years in the past by an artist tracing the complex pattern on an ancient monument while listening to appropriate music. The irony is that this story is otherwise far more grounded in fact than most science fiction. Were it not for one brief episode concerning the apparent appearance of a goddess (or possibly a saint, depending on your perspective) and a miraculous healing which followed, the story set in ancient Ireland could well be classified as historical fiction. Ms MacAvoy is clearly an enthusiastic student of Celtic history, as indicated by the list of dedications to academics and other experts, and it shows: tenth century Ireland is portrayed in all its earthy realism. The tensions, scheming and outright warfare between the Irish and the Norsemen (somewhat uneasily settled in Dublin) with their differing cultures, attitudes and practices, are richly evoked. In fact, the frank descriptions of nudity and sex may be considered too rich for children (by their parents, if not by the children…).

What of the plot? Having accidentally opened the portal, the artist and his sometime girlfriend pass through and spend nearly all of the rest of the story in ancient Ireland, trying to adapt and survive while being pursued by vengeful Vikings. That's about it, really, apart from the ending which, while not unexpected, has a satisfying twist to it. However, the enjoyment of this book isn't down to the plot so much as the richness of the portrayal of ancient Ireland plus the quality of the writing, which is unusually intelligent and perceptive. The characters are distinct, credible, well-developed and sympathetically portrayed, and a recurrent stream of humour bubbles through the tale. Although it has moments of grimness, it's the kind of story you finish with a smile on your face, wishing for more.

The Book of Kells was first published in 1985, and I read it shortly afterwards. I remember enjoying it a lot at the time, and I did again. I have another, equally good pair of books by the same author: the highly original Tea With Black Dragon and its sequel, Twisting the Rope, which are on my re-reading list. I notice from her Wiki entry that she has also written two trilogies, the Damiano and Lens of the World series, plus a few other stand-alone works, but I haven't read these. I must try to get hold of them sometime; this is an author of rare and engaging quality.

Interzone 226

The usual engrossing mix of SFF news, book, film and TV reviews and short stories in the Jan-Feb 2010 issue of the British magazine, which this time has a cover by Warwick Fraser-Coombe. As usual, I'll focus on the stories:

Into the Depths of Illuminated Seas by Jason Sandford, illustrated by Ben Baldwin: a young woman in a coastal village finds the names of local sailors running across her body - the names burn when they are dying.

Hibakusha by Tyler Keevil, illustrated by Mark Pexton: a man makes a dangerous pilgrimage to where his lover died in the ruins of a London hit by a dirty atomic bomb.

In the Harsh Glow of its Incandescent Beauty by Mercurio D. Rivera, illustrated by Jim Burns: against a strange background in which humanity's access to space is aided by aliens who believe we are just wonderful, an abandoned husband chases across the solar system after his drugged wife and her abductor.

Human Error by Jay Lake, illustrated by Daniel Bristow-Bailey: mining the asteroids - and the consequences of finding something decidedly unnatural.

Again and Again and Again, by Rachel Swirsky: generational rebellion comes full circle.

Aquestria by Stephen Gaskell, illustrated by Jim Burns: a human-colonised world is decaying and dying; what does this have to do with a strange, tortured man?

A varied mix as usual, although none especially stood out for me this time.

This issue contained the Readers' Poll for the best stories and artworks published in Interzone in 2009 (issues 220-225). It wasn't too difficult to select the artist who produced the best cover, since all of them were by Adam Tredowski. This was a treat, since I really enjoy his style of art; bizarre conjunctions of alien landscapes and vast unidentifiable machinery painted with an almost photographic realism. Visual SF at its best. If really pushed, I think I'd choose the cover of issue 224 to hang on my wall.

The short stories are tougher, largely because they have such varied styles that they are difficult to compare. However, looking back at what I said about them in this blog, I'd pick out four as particularly intriguing me:

Will McIntosh: A Clown Escapes from Circus Town (#221)
"a bizarre tale of a world in which clowns and other circus characters are the sole occupants of a town. One escapes to find similar towns scattered around the countryside, each inhabited by a different occupation. What's the explanation, and why do the inhabitants keep disappearing? A story which is amusing but also rather sad; just like circus clowns."

Sean McMullen: Mother of Champions (#222)
"cheetahs are not at all what we think – they have evolved to perfection!"

Jason Sanford: Sublimation Angels (#224)- a novella.
"...set in a distant, star-travelling future when humanity is largely managed by its AIs. The Aurals, incorporeal but powerful beings of light and energy, have been discovered but have refused to communicate except to a small group of explorers sent to occupy a remote planet in which the atmosphere has been frozen into solid form. Over the generations, the explorers revert to a primitive existence, always short of air (which has to be sublimated from its frozen state) and of warmth. The story focuses on the lives of some of these explorers and their relationship with the Aurals.

I was strongly reminded of Fritz Leiber's short story A Pail of Air which Sanford acknowledges in his dedication. This is set on a frozen Earth which has become detached from the Sun and despatched into interstellar space. The survivors, living underground, are forced to don spacesuits and venture onto the surface to scoop up buckets of frozen air to take back inside. Sublimation Angels is a well-written and involving tale, although I suspect that Leiber's much simpler but visceral and gritty story of survival will stay with me for longer."

Shannon Page & Jay Lake: Bone Island (#225)
"a remote present-day island, where different kinds of magic still hold sway in parallel with our normal world, sees two fearsome women battling over possession of a young man with a gift - and a responsibility."

Winter Song by Colin Harvey

This one plopped through my letterbox a few weeks ago, as an unexpected freebie from the British Science Fiction Association. I must admit that I hadn't heard of this author before, but he has had several other books published with some favourable review extracts, so I decided to give it a look.

The setting is the distant future with humanity spread across many star systems by means of faster-than-light ships, but divided into two warring factions: those who believe in terraforming marginal planets to make them suitable for standard humans, and those who believe in genetically adapting humanity to survive on unmodified planets. Karl Allman is an enhanced human who crash-lands on a remote and forgotten planet, and discovers that it was settled by standard humans who were Icelandic traditionalists, attracted by its cold and bleak environment. A start had been made on terraforming the atmosphere to stabilise it at an endurable level but this had been abandoned centuries before, leaving the settlers only just able to survive in the equatorial lowlands, scattered in small farming groups. Ever since, they had been cut off from civilisation and were slipping back into a medieval way of life as their technology gradually failed and their environment deteriorated.

Allman has a difficult time understanding and coexisting with the settlers, who have a strongly feudal culture centred around the head man of each settlement. He isn't helped by having to share his brain with a knowledgeable but uncooperative artificial intelligence dubbed Loki, downloaded by his ship as a parting gift. On hearing a legend of an artificial beacon in a remote and uninhabited part of the planet, he sets out on a journey to reach it in the hope that it might enable him to place an interstellar call for help.

The first three-quarters of the story is unremittingly grim as Allman first struggles to resolve his inner conflict while working with the settlers and then tracks across a bleak wilderness, at risk from wild animals and trolls and pursued by a posse led by an angry head man. Although the SF background is always there, this part of the story has more of the flavour of a fantasy. The pace and mood change when he arrives at the beacon and discovers what it is, and the tale then becomes a tense SF drama with a spectacular, if open-ended, conclusion.

The story is well-enough written, and the complex relationships between Allman, Loki and the settlers sufficiently intriguing, to carry me through a grimness which could otherwise have become tiresome. Worth the read.

British Fantasy Society publications

Three BFS publications full of short stories dropped through my letter box the other week: New Horizons #4, Dark Horizons #55 and the 2009 Yearbook. These will take some time to get through, so I’ll only deal with the first two in this post.

New Horizons is published twice a year and focuses on new authors. Issue #4 contains eight stories plus an interview with publisher Steve Upham, enthusiastic founder of Screaming Dreams:

Into the Bright by J.M.Harris: a bizarre world in which the Mollop live in a sea of oil while their mature flying form, the Slickbacks, fight off the attempts of the Beacons to siphon their sea away.

The Un-Explorers by Matt Finucane: spaced-out men sharing a house find a new reality when looking through the eyes of a golem they have made.

Frankenrabbits by John Tait: genetic manipulation produces a human/rabbit cross. Matters get out of hand when they are awarded human rights. Well, you know what rabbits do best…

Two Nights in New Orleans by Philip Harris: a girl find herself switching between alternate worlds at the behest of a man - or is he a vampire?

Life After Death by Mark Butler: the minutiae of the humdrum life of a middle-aged woman destroyed by grief for her dead son, which - maybe - turns into a ghost story.

In the Moment by Elana Gomel (runner-up in the 2009 BFS Short Story competition): a girl lives in a huge, torus-shaped building which comprises the entire world for its human inhabitants; above is too bright, below (where the suicides jump) is too dark to know. The girl explores both extremes before finding the key to the way out.

The Birthday Gift by Eva Eliav: a strange auction in which chunks of time are sold; how would you like to spend ten years with the mindset of a famous movie star, or a child?

The Last Chapter by Tom Knights: a man finishes the last chapter of an epic fantasy novel in which the mighty-muscled hero slays the demon monster and rescues the beautiful princess. The rest of the story consists of alternating sections in which the man's married life, from which passion and romance have leached, parallels that of the fictional princess as she discovers the reality of life married to a brawny hero.

A varied selection, all of which have their good points. I can see why Elana Gomel's story was so highly rated, but the one which I liked the most was the final one, by Tom Knights. A rather touching look at the contrast between fantasy and reality.

Dark Horizons is the BFS journal, also published twice a year, and has a wider range of contents, including this time three articles and three poetry contributions as well as a dozen amazingly varied stories. The articles are on two early writers of fantasy, C. Hall Thompson and Clifford Ball (by Mike Barrett); the prolific Charles L. Grant (by Paul Campbell); and an appreciation of the Dumarest novels of E. C. Tubb (by Craig Herbertson).

I won’t comment in detail on all of the stories, but they included such elements as an intelligent sunflower (The Sunflower at Dusk by Naoko Awa); cow-like burrowing animals which swallow humans whole and keep them alive in a special stomach (In the Tunnels of the Agogs by Ralph Robert Moore); a couple of contrasting ghost stories, both seen from the ghost’s viewpoint (Despoina’s Sorrow by Alex Davies, and Sarkless Kitty by Alison J. Littlewood); a romance with a beautiful angel ejected from Heaven (The Beating Heart by Jim Steel); a scheming vampire (The Circle by Ian Hunter); helpful skeletons from a graveyard (The Skeleton in the Cupboard by Astrid Klemz); viruses which are large enough to be visible and are protected by law (Bugs by Shaun Jeffrey); battles with evil beings in the land of faerie (Escape from the Shadow Moon by Mike Phillips); and a bizarre tale of greenery running riot in the garden of a disturbed woman (Vivienne’s Garden by Douglas Thompson, whose novel Ultrameta was recently reviewed on this blog).

A special mention for Dead Gods by Richard Ford, a richly described medieval battle with (or perhaps without) supernatural elements, and my favourite from this collection, Sailors of the Skies, by Mike Chinn. In this retro fantasy adventure, two pilots in 1930s USA investigate the mysterious disappearance of several aircraft and encounter something from another world.

The global human population - what's happening to it and how can we cope?

I have referred to this subject on this blog before, in posts about climate change and immortality, but the sources keep popping up so I think it's time for a round-up of current thinking. One I made a note of was a BBC news report in March 2009 here: Global Crisis to Strike by 2030 . You can read it for yourselves, but this gives the flavour:

Growing world population will cause a "perfect storm" of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned... Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told a conference in London.

Much more detail was included in How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth, a BBC TV Horizon programme in December 2009 fronted by none other than the famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough, which examined the impact of the population growth on the planet's environment. To summarise the key points:

Growth is inevitable

The world's population is currently increasing by 80 million a year, and is projected to increase from 6.8 to 9 billion by the middle of this century. This is pretty well guaranteed to happen (barring a colossal disaster wiping out a substantial portion of the world's population) even if average family size drops sharply, because of the way in which the population structure is skewed towards the young: it is generated by a decrease in the death rate rather than an increase in the birth rate. There are already more than 1 billion teenagers in the world (an appalling thought, think of all that collective angst…pity it can't be harnessed as a power source) and most of them will inevitably produce their own children. So any attempts to control population will have to start from that 9 billion baseline - a 25% increase over the next four decades. Forecasts from that point make different assumptions about future family size and vary from the optimistic (eventually stabilising at around 8 billion by the mid-22nd century) to the pessimistic (10+ billion). Even the most optimistic projections therefore envisage a long-term total some 1.2 billion more than at present. That’s about as much as the entire population of China or India.

The USA is likely to increase in population from 300 to 400 million by 2050, the UK from 60 to 70 million. These figures are bad enough, but the growth rate in the developing world is slated to be much higher, with sub-Saharan Africa (already the world's biggest disaster area and also facing the worst effects of climate change) doubling in population.

The three key resources which will be put under most pressure by this increase in population are fresh water, food and oil.


The Water Problem

It's important to note that the total quantity of water on this planet is constant - there's no way of getting any more. Just 2.5% of the world's water is fresh, of which only 1% is available for use (the rest being in ice caps). Half of the available fresh water is already used and over 1 billion people are currently living in areas affected by water stress (i.e. water is being used up at a faster rate than the sources are being replenished). This number is projected to increase to more than 50% of the global population within 20 years. Some areas are already running out: to give one example, Mexico City has a population of 20 million of which more than 1 million are affected by daily water shortages. This number is growing all of the time as the reservoirs are running dry.

Even so, domestic use is not the major problem. Agriculture is one of the major users of water, and the numbers involved are astonishing. For instance, growing enough coffee beans to produce one cup of coffee uses up 120 litres of fresh water; growing enough cotton to make one shirt uses 3,000 litres.

Desalination of sea water is one way of obtaining more fresh water, but carries its own problems. It is very energy-intensive (and therefore expensive) and even in sunny regions where solar power can be used, it still results in the production of huge quantities of salts which have to be disposed of somehow without damaging the environment (which rules out pumping it back into the sea).

Probably the most promising measures are small-scale local ones intended to trap and store more water rather than let it run off to the sea, but these will only work in certain areas and will only postpone the problem unless something can be done to contain and preferably reverse population growth.

Food

Next, agriculture. Needless to say, the quantity of land is pretty much constant too, except round the margins (where it may be reducing in the future as sea level rises). Virtually all productive land - amounting to 35-40% of the planet's land surface - is already being used. Furthermore, most of it is already being used intensively. During the 20th century, industrial countries tripled their food production by using better crops and industrial farming methods, with extensive use of machinery, fertiliser and pesticides. From the 1960s the developing world began to follow suit in the "Green Revolution", resulting in increases in yield of up to five times. However, yields are now levelling off globally.

Higher-yielding genetically-engineered crops are available, but they tend to use even more water - which takes us back to the previous section. Given the likely effects of climate change (one of which is drier continental interiors) the focus of genetic modifications may have to shift towards drought-resistant varieties, but they are unlikely to be as productive. Some of the richer nations (e.g. China) are trying to protect their future food supplies by buying farmland from poorer countries, particularly in Africa - even in countries like Ethiopia which already has a food shortage - and reserving its production for themselves. This is clearly likely to lead to tensions - to put it mildly - as existing food supplies come under increasing pressure from the growing population. The increasing taste for meat as countries develop exacerbates the problems, as growing crops for human rather than animal consumption is several times as productive in food value per hectare.

Peak Oil?

The third resource problem is oil. The demand for this is projected to increase by 40% over the next 20 years due to a combination of increasing population and increasing industrialisation in the developing world. Oil is not just used for transport and industry, it is also vital in maintaining levels of food production because of its use in fertiliser and in the mechanisation of farming, which takes us back to the previous section.

There is much debate among petroleum geologists about the issue of "peak oil"; the point at which production starts to decline as the more productive fields are worked out. Some say we are more or less there already, others that there are still lots more oil reserves than official figures suggest. Whichever group is correct, it seems inevitable that oil will become more costly as a result of the projected increase in demand combined with the newer fields being more difficult to exploit.

Add them together…

These three key resources - fresh water, agricultural production and oil - are clearly interrelated. This leads to the concept of "carrying capacity"; the maximum population which a given environment can support. This does of course depend on the standard of living which is assumed. The standard method of measuring the productive biocapacity of the Earth is in "global hectares"; on average, each person uses about 2 of these hectares. There are big regional variations, however: in Africa the average use is 1.37, in India 0.89, China is right on the average at 2.0, each UK citizen uses 5.3 and each US citizen 9.42. The Earth's carrying capacity could therefore range from 15 billion if everyone lived at Indian levels of consumption, down to 1.5 billion if everyone enjoyed US standards.

If anything, these figures are optimistic because the current rates of consumption are already unsustainable in the long term; we need 1.5x the Earth's resources to sustain our current way of life. Which according to these calculations means that the maximum sustainable global population ranges from 1 billion at a high average standard of living to 10 billion at little more than subsistence level.

What can be done?

Attenborough listed three ways in which we could reduce the pressure on our resources:

1. Reduce our consumption
2. Change our technology
3. Reduce our population growth

The first is probably inevitable anyway as the increasing demands on resources have the effect of pushing up their cost. The second is already underway in many fields but is unlikely to achieve enough by itself. The third has been forcibly tried by China and India.

China instituted a "one child" policy in 1979. It has been highly unpopular but it has been estimated that without it their population would have been 400 million higher than at present. India attempted a vigorous sterilisation programme (including all criminals) but this was abandoned as a result of public resistance. It has long been noted that birth rates tend to fall naturally as the standard of living increases and death rates fall (but there is always a gap between the fall in death rates and in birth rates, during which the population soars to a higher base level).

The key element in the fall of birth rates is women: in countries where women have the same educational opportunities as men, have access to contraception and are fully emancipated with the same legal rights as men, the birth rate falls dramatically. A remarkable example is the Indian state of Kerala where education for girls as well as boys is compulsory. As a result, women choose to delay marriage until an average of 28 years old and have on average only 1.5 children, less than half the Indian average.

Finally a New Scientist article, Feeding the Nine Billion (21 November 2009), focused on the specific issue of the expected food shortage and examined four different ways to boost food production in the third world:

1. Holding on to water, by such measures as storage tanks (particularly useful in areas which suffer from seasonal floods and droughts) or agricultural practices such as mulching or building terraces.

2. Stop ploughing, as this damages soil and releases greenhouse gases. Instead, just scratch furrows in which to plant seeds, and keep pests at bay by crop rotation, herbicides or genetically-modified plants.

3. Go back to basics by ensuring that the agricultural system works more efficiently; there are crop varieties available which would bring substantial benefits but they are not distributed to where they are needed, also a significant percentage of crops grown are wasted because of inefficient transport or market arrangements.

4. Boost yields by genetically engineering crops, which could lead to a 25% increase in production.

In conclusion, we are now (a few isolated hermits possibly excepted) all too familiar with the problem of the effect of human activities in changing the world's climate. Just to add to this gloomy picture, a growing population will exacerbate a further, long-range problem which will hit the world even if CO2 production were successfully controlled and entirely sustainable power sources used. People's activities and their equipment produce heat. As society becomes more technologically developed, the quantity of heat produced per person rises. Eventually, this will begin to have a significant impact on global temperatures even if the current drivers of climate change are removed. The estimated effect is an increase in temperature of three degrees Celsius in 300 years. The only way to prevent it is to get all of our power from renewable energy sources, since these absorb solar energy (directly or indirectly) and therefore do not add to the heating of our environment.

In the past, each new generation in the developed world owed a debt to the previous ones for their successful efforts in gradually increasing living standards. Just consider how these changed from 1800 through 1900 to 2000; a particularly commendable achievement in the 20th century given it was racked by two devastating world wars and came close to a civilisation-annihilating third. Sadly, new generations reaching maturity from the middle of this century (if not earlier) are likely to be far less grateful for the legacy of their forebears (that’s us…). Human ingenuity will be stretched as never before in meeting the challenges they will be facing. Plenty of scope for good, fact-based SF stories here - or will readers prefer to shrink from painful reality into yet more fantasy?