In the words of the good Doctor....

What?
What!?
WHAT??!

We want Sally Sparrow!

CSFF Blog Tour Bonus: Fantastic Four Tour

The Fantastic Four is not a team of comic-book superheroes. They were not created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. They are writers of Christian fantasy fiction, soon to embark upon a mission across 12 cities in the Eastern USA, where they hopefully won't be exposed to any cosmic rays.

They are:

• Mr. Fantastic (Wayne Thomas Batson), the leader of the group by virtue of having been a teacher in a parallel world, and author of the best-selling young adult fantasy series The Door Within.
• The Invisible Woman (Sharon Hinck), probably not Mr Fantastic's wife, and probably not even invisible. I am reliably informed that she is a wife, home school mother of four and writes Women's Fiction Alternate Reality Fantasy. I'm guessing that at least qualifies her as a woman.
• The Human Torch (Bryan Davis), author of the Oracles of Fire and Dragons in our Midst series of young adult fantasy novels.
• And finally, everybody's favourite, ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing, Christopher Hopper. Known for his great courage, strength and endurance; his skin is monstrous, craggy, orange, and looks as if made of rocks. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, he manages to be an international speaker, recording artist, youth pastor and author of The White Lion Chronicles. And if he ever finds out where I live, it will be clobberin' time.

For slightly more reliable author biogs, and more information about the tour, visit www.fantasyfictiontour.com.

If you surfed in here looking for Rise of the Silver Surfer, you want www.fantasticfourmovie.com.

Doctor Who - Season 29

It hardly seems like 13 weeks since I was saying how slightly disappointing the season opener was, but I was expecting the series to get better. And to say 'it got better' would be a huge understatement.

Since I know there are going to be those visiting who won't have seen the latest Doctor Who yet, I will try to whet your appetite without spoiling it.

But first let's just say it wasn't all good. As I said, the opener, 'Smith and Jones', was a bit silly; the Dalek episodes completely lost the plot, and even the largely excellent finale went a bit wierd at one point.

The second half of the series, however, was as good as Doctor Who has ever been. The episode '42' turned out not to be about the ultimate answer, but rather a play on '24'. An interesting twist on the format, rather than the best Who ever.

Following that the double-header from 1913, considered by many pundits one of the series' all time high points. 'Blink' was, well, blinkin' scary. And after that, the three-part story arc leading to the climax.

Actually, the story arc is woven right through the series, quite subtly to begin with, until the (otherwise fairly unremarkable) episode 'Utopia' brings them all together and kickstarts the finale.

The final episode even brings in big spiritual themes of forgiveness, and the power of prayer, albeit briefly. If you've seen it, and fancy getting a lesson on evangelism from it, check this out. (Unfortunately it will spoil the ending if you haven't seen it.)

Captain Jack comes back too, to share a few unexpected lines with the new Doc and his new companion, and we get to find out how he got the immortal gig before joining Torchwood.

And John 'DI Tyler' Simm (did I ever mention I've met him?) was an inspired piece of casting.

All in all, Season 29 (or series three, if you prefer) contained some of the best individual Who episodes yet, the most coherent (if subtle) story arc so far, some nice nods back to the Baker years (for those that remember), and a brilliant climax with plenty of neat twists and little surprises.

Christmas special should be interesting, too!

Friday Review - The Day After Tomorrow

It seems that the freak weather we've had in these parts (and in Europe) is set to continue, so I'm using that as a gratuitous (and possibly inappropriate) reason to revisit this movie.

The Day After Tomorrow is a fairly typical disaster movie, taking global warming and turning it on its head, to create a sudden super cooling effect on huge swathes of the northern hemisphere. Yes, I know, but there is an explanation given which sounds plausible enough if you try not to think about it. I guess any film that opens by plagiarising a Road Runner cartoon can't really be taken that seriously.

From there on, it really is just a typical disaster movie: the kids (led by Donnie Darko) trapped in New York, while Donnie's father treks through miles of snow to rescue them, accompanied by a couple of hardened adventurers, one of whom sacrifices himself for the sake of the mission. There's a shedload of effects, from hail-boulders to frozen helicopters crashing out of the sky. And, of course, there's all that snow - enough, apparently, to make the Statue of Liberty go all Planet of the Apes. And, of course, an incredibly cheesy finale in which the President of the USA humbly thanks the Third World nations for welcoming (presumably at gunpoint) all the refugees from the frozen Northern hemisphere.

For all that though, it's quite an enjoyable waste of a couple of hours, more so if you like effects heavy disaster movies, and despite its best efforts, it probably won't make you think too seriously about climate change (at least, not in the way five feet of river flowing through your house will).

Whether the conditions here at the moment are related to the real, actual effects of climate change, or just plain old freak weather, is not quite clear at the moment. What seems to be clear, though, is that it's not over yet.

Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction. Just, not quite as spectacular.

Writing, Bible study and discussion questions

There's been a bit of discussion over at Becky Miller's place lately about discussion questions for novels (I know, that's two 'discussions' in one sentence - bad writer!). I suspect that if I were to pay them any attention they would make me wonder if I had missed a page (or, perhaps, whether the author had missed a page). But then, I tend to read novels for entertainment above all; any thought I may give to a given 'theme' as a result is pretty much a bonus and won't necessarily have any bearing on the author's intentions.

The reason I mention this is that lately I have noticed that, when reading the Bible, I can sometimes relate aspects of it to the actions of my own characters, either the events recorded in Countless as the Stars, parts of their back story known only to me, or anticipated events for potential sequels. And I find that looking at it through the eyes of these characters, and trying to relate the Bible to my own imagined Creed, sheds some new light on things.

It is of course possible that this only works for me, because I know these characters' past and future lives, I know how the Creed relates to the Bible, and I know my intentions in creating all of this. Also, because I based my story so closely on Biblical events, I put a lot of Bible study in during the writing process, some of which it seems I retained.

I still live in the hope that some of what I have written may help others, casual sci-fi readers maybe, to make some sense of the Bible - specifically, the Old Testament. With that in mind, I may write a few short pieces for the website - why various events have been included, how and why they differ from the Bible accounts, what I learned while writing it... I should probably also explain that all the sex and drugs was included with the intention of exploring the consequences later (that way they don't look quite so gratuitous...)

I hadn't really thought about discussion questions until I read Becky's piece on the subject. I suppose it is possible that some readers might benefit from that approach, but it's not really my style. Besides, I don't want my readers thinking I missed the point.

The CSFF Blog Tour continues...

Well, it seems like there's been a bit of a battle of the sexes going on in CSFF world this week. The girls mostly love The Restorer, while some of the guys are, well, less enthusiastic.

Why should that be? It can't just be the female lead. It certainly hasn't bother me in previous tours (notably Firebird), and hey, who doesn't love Buffy? Second thoughts, don't answer that. Maybe it's that she's a whiny soccer-mom - although, I'd probably relate to that myself, the number of times I feel like the hard done by housewife of the family and want to escape to some fantasy world... but that's another story. I'd probably be really whiny in Susan Mitchell's place: 'No, I can't be your Restorer. I don't even like fantasy novels...'

Hopefully, all this male/female divide means is that Sharon Hinck has gone for mom-lit* market and successfully grabbed it. And, for the sake of CSFF writers of all flavours, I hope she does attract a few readers back to the spec-fic section.

Also trying to lure readers towards the spec-fic shelves:

Trish Anderson Brandon Barr Jim Black Justin Boyer Grace Bridges Amy Browning Jackie Castle Valerie Comer Karri Compton Frank Creed Lisa Cromwell CSFF Blog Tour Gene Curtis D. G. D. Davidson Chris Deanne Jeff Draper April Erwin Beth Goddard Marcus Goodyear Andrea Graham Russell Griffith Jill Hart Katie Hart Sherrie Hibbs Heather R. Hunt Becca Johnson Jason Joyner Kait Karen Dawn King Tina Kulesa Lost Genre Guild Rachel Marks Rebecca LuElla Miller Eve Nielsen John W. Otte John Ottinger Rachelle Cheryl Russel Hanna Sandvig Chawna Schroeder Mirtika Schultz Speculative Faith Jason Waguespac Daniel I. Weaver

*just to annoy Mir! :p

Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy - June Blog Tour

This month's CSFF blog tour extravaganza is all about Sharon Hinck’s The Restorer, first book in the Sword of Lyric sequence, a sort of Christian mom-lit sword and sourcery epic adventure tale. I guess I'm not exactly the target demographic then? Well, in the hope that her publishers will one day realise that what the world wants is a Christian dad-lit space opera and give me a call... (Is dad-lit even a thing? Or am I creating genres again? Or maybe the new blog title I was thinking about?)

Anyway, you know what I like about Sharon Hinck? She's got the CSFF blog tourists listed on a sidebar on her blog in reverse alphabetical order. So I'm about third in the list, instead of waaaaaay down the bottom. I don't know why I didn't think of that, really.

Oh, wait, yes I do. It's because the tour's master list is alphabetical, and it's too much like hard work to fiddle with it myself. So here it is in conventional order (though I suggest you start somewhere in the J's, because they get neglected whichever way up you look at it!)

Trish Anderson Brandon Barr Jim Black Justin Boyer Grace Bridges Amy Browning Jackie Castle Valerie Comer Karri Compton Frank Creed Lisa Cromwell CSFF Blog Tour Gene Curtis D. G. D. Davidson Chris Deanne Jeff Draper April Erwin Beth Goddard Marcus Goodyear Andrea Graham Russell Griffith Jill Hart Katie Hart Sherrie Hibbs Heather R. Hunt Becca Johnson Jason Joyner Kait Karen Dawn King Tina Kulesa Lost Genre Guild Rachel Marks Rebecca LuElla Miller Eve Nielsen John W. Otte John Ottinger Rachelle Cheryl Russel Hanna Sandvig Chawna Schroeder Mirtika Schultz Speculative Faith Jason Waguespac Daniel I. Weaver

Regrouping

Change is afoot behind the scenes of my vast online empire.

Currently the empire consists of this blog, my largely ignored musings blog, the rambling fanficblog of Miner Willy, and of course my website, which has remained in a state of almost-done-ness since all the hip dislocation stuff distracted me from completing the job.

So, I will be rationalising, mainly by shutting down the musing department and merging its output with the sci-fi related musings you get here, and possibly Willy's Weblog.

Which means, as a bonus goodie for the regulars here (all three of you), you will get the benefit of my musings on life, the universe and everything, as well as my theological expositions based on the works of Douglas Adams.

Which probably means I need a new blog address, title and/or strapline. Oh dear.

Project Seven musings

So I've been thinking a bit about my current writing project. My protag's life story is starting to come together quite nicely, but I'm still not sure how it will ultimately be presented. Not being a big reader of books without some speculative element, I'm probably not well placed to start writing one. So the question remains: how to include a speculative element so that I can write the story in my preferred genre?

Some vague possibilities have occurred:

The futuristic sci-fi version

In Star Trek: Nemesis, Picard meets a younger, more evil Picard, a clone created some time in the past. Watching this recently made me wonder - what if you found you had been cloned, there was another you wandering around? What if the clone had the same character flaws and weaknesses as you, but instead of choosing to resist whatever temptation this led to, chose the easy route and embraced his dark side? What happens when the two meet?

It doesn't have to be a clone, of course; the evil twin could be from a parallel universe, or the result of a time-travel experiment gone wrong. Or a 'transporter malfunction' as happened to Kirk in Star Trek. Or some mystic force such as might be found in the Buffyverse.

We could also copnsider the possibility that it isn't a physical twin, but some kind of Jekyll & Hyde complex.

The Urban Fantasy version

One potential telling of this tale always had a hint of Angel to it. I may have struck upon an idea that adds a twist to that; although, I suspect it's probably been done before, though possibly less often than the evil twin story.

If you could wish your problems away, would you? Maybe one mistake, one bad decision, that you could have excised from your life, along with all the baggage that followed it. An addiction, or a period of illness, completely removed from your personal timeline. Sounds tempting, on the surface. But in losing the bad stuff, you lose the good that inevitably comes from it: all that you learn, the ways you become a stronger person. The people you could help when they find themselves in the same situation.

That is the central dilemma in this telling of the story. Our protag meets some kind of entity with the ability to remove the darkness of his past. Presumably this entity would, effectively, have lived through the darkest chapters of our hero's life, and be left with the emotional baggage that followed.

In taking on the ills of the world, this entity becomes a sort of Christ-figure, albeit probably a very dark one. I think he has potential for exploration - is he really a Christ-figure, or is he just removing the negative so that the positive results also disappear?

Or have I just stumbled across my next project?

The Last Temptation of Who

There seems to have been rather a lot of internet chatter about the cancellation of Doctor Who over the last few days. Pure speculation of course, and ironically turning up in the middle of probably the best two-parter of the series so far.

Spoilers follow, so if you don't want to know the score, come back on Wednesday.

At the opening of Human Nature, The Doctor is, unusually, on the run. On the run from some petty intergalactic crooks, after the life-force of a Time Lord in order gain eternal life and wreak havoc on a far larger scale. As they are, the Family of Blood have a limited time remaining, so the Doctor hides in England, in 1913, by becoming human.

And therein lies the genius of the piece. We get to see a different side to the Doctor (and David Tennant being more Hugh Grant than Tom Baker), and to Martha, who, as a young woman who is 'not exactly white', is forced to act as a servant, while actually being the one in control.

Oh yes, there are scary monsters (and one very disturbing public schoolboy), ray guns and explosions, but there is also the equally scary fact that 1914 looms just the other side of Christmas.

But against all this, and despite the fact that Martha and everyone around him need the Doctor back, having given up his life as a Time Lord, he likes being plain old John Smith and is unwilling to lay down that life. But if he settles for being an ordinary man, living a normal human lifespan, and living it happily married with a family around him, millions will ultimately die at the hands of his enemies. I imagine that is the sort of dilemma Jesus may have faced, just before stepping out of his ordinary existence and beginning his real work.

Ultimately, John Smith, like Jesus, sees what is right, and becomes more than human. And, in becoming the Doctor, he also takes responsibility for punishing his foes. The Family get the eternal life they craved - to spend alone, and suffering.

Towel Day '07

I pondered a few ways to mark this occasion in my little corner of the blogosphere. I could watch and review the Hitch-hikers movie, but it still won't be that good a review, so I'll try something more positive. I could review the TV series, only I haven't watched that for a while. I could lament the fact that I ditched my old VHS copies of the TV series when I got it on DVD, before I realised that not all the VHS content was on the new version. Ah, little animated Babel Fish, you will be missed. A bit.

I should really review the CDs of the last 3 radio series, because they were actually good, but that would entail sitting through them again. Which would take longer than remains of Towel Day in this time zone.

Instead I'm going to cop out royally and post a slightly edited review I wrote when the Quandary Phase aired a couple of years ago.

Even though I was introduced to Hitchhikers through the TV series, the first time I heard the original radio series (on a mid-90s repeat airing) I knew I was experiencing something special. This was, after all, the medium Hitchhikers was created for, and it shows. The Secondary Phase, with a plot wildly different from any other Hitchhiker variant, remains my favourite part of the canon, perhaps because it remains the least well-known.

There are those who think the current crop of radio shows don't compare to the original late 70s episodes; the Tertiary Phase suffered mainly from poor source material - Life, the Universe and Everything, itself recycled from a rejected Doctor Who story, is the weakest of the five novels for my money. But So Long and Thanks for all the Fish was a love story, a change of pace from the all out action of it's predecessor. Hearing some of the same characters with different voices (Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Slartibartfast, and of course the Book) took a bit of getting used to, but the main characters sounded just the way I remembered them.

Overall Dirk Maggs made an excellent job with the new adaptations, modernising the source material much more successfully than the movie (mankind's early 80s fascination with digital watches being replaced with a 2005 fascination with cellphones, for instance), and it still sounds like Douglas could have written it.

The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintesential Phases are a far better reflection of the true genius of Adams' original than the movie, and for my money should be this generation's tribute to him.

Long live Douglas Adams.

CSFF Blog Tour: Speculative fiction

Given the option, I would have just brought up a list of all the science fiction at The Sword Review, and pointed out a few stories that appealed to me. That way, though, I would have missed the fact that, as well as Fantasy and Science fiction, there is a third sub-genre at TSR: the slightly woolly-sounding 'Speculative' fiction.

Instead, I opted for the 'pick a back issue at random and see what it gives me' approach. Not that it was that random; Issue 14 just seemed to be nicely in the middle of the run. Not much science fiction in that ish, mind; although that should make it a bit easier for even a slacker like me to read it and post a brief comment on the stories. There was, though, that other word: Speculative, attached to a story called The Short Bus. Which I read first, intrigued by the Speculative tag.

And true enough, it's not really fantasy. It's certainly not science fiction. It is... well, it's a slice of life - the life of a schoolboy with Downs Syndrome - straight out of the Twilight Zone.

There are two sci-fi stories in Issue 14: Of Protectors by C Michale, and The Ponce de Leon Project by George Duncan. Judged purely on the opening few paras provided by TSR before opening the whole story, I thought Of Protectors seemed a bit serious for my current mood, and read the George Duncan story, which started off with a car called Agnes kidnapping the protag and taking him to some automatic punching machines. Well, that ticks enough boxes for me.

In The Ponce de Leon Project, Clint Devlin, along with Agnes, is looking for a missing person, and leads us through an action filled tale that ends up finding the latest quest for eternal life, and the quite disturbing experiments that are being carried out to find it. An engaging and thought-provoking story, bundling cloning and genetic engineering with plenty of guns and gadgets. Maybe not the most original combination, but the Christian faith is a thread that runs through the story, adding a refreshing twist to the many Hollywood variations on the theme.

Oh dear, I think I may need to visit TSR regularly to make sure I don't miss anything else like that...

Incidentally, before you all jump in and try to educate me, I have since figured out how to bring up all the science fiction!

Don't forget to visit some of the other blogs on the tour, listed in yesterdays post.

CSFF Blog Tour: Intro

Well, since something vaguely resembling normality has returned here, I will make the effort and join in with me blog tour buddies again. This month we will be sampling the goodies on offer at The Sword Review, a webzine which aims 'to provide quality fiction, poertry[sic], valuable reviews, and meaningful exposition, all in a means that respects traditional values and Christian principles'. Obviously, their fiction focus is primarily on fantasy and science fiction.

So I'm off now to root around for some quality sci-fi, and maybe some meaningful exposition. I will report back tomorrow with what I find.

And, this being a tour and all, please drop by some of my fellow tourists over the next three days and see what they thought...

Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Amy Browning
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Frank Creed
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Chris Deanne
April Erwin
Kameron M. Franklin
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Russell Griffith
Jill Hart
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Holly
Heather R. Hunt
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Kait
Karen
Dawn King
Tina Kulesa
Lost Genre Guild
Kevin Lucia and The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium
Terri Main
Rachel Marks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Chawna Schroeder
Mirtika Schultz
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Daniel I. Weaver

Is it me, or does that list get longer every month?

Normal service will resume shortly...

...in the meantime, here's a few things I've missed, just in case you have too.

Jesus loves Sci-fi. Well, we knew that, but it's always good to find someone else who knows it.

And from there I followed the linky goodness to The Gospel According to Buffy. Well, who could resist that, eh?

And for those with time to listen to podcasts, The Sci Phi Show has a little series on Science and Religion that may be of interest. I haven't got round to listening myself. (I've been pre-occupied, remember?)

Oh yes, and the Lost Genre Guild have meandered off in a podcastwardly direction too. (I haven't listened to that either!)

Um, anyway, we now return you to your regular scheduled blogging.

Family stuff break

Her Babyship has to visit the hospital tomorrow, on account of a dislocated hip and resultant wonky legs.

So I'm too distracted to post any of the various things I have swimming around in my head.

I'll be back when it's all over.

Friday Review - Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

Perelandra is a triple fried egg chilli chutney sandwich of a book. All the ingredients are wrong. The title: wrong. The science: wrong. The blatant Christian allegory: all wrong. But put them together and somehow it works. It becomes right.

Now, Out of the Silent Planet - that's a title to conjure with. Good story too, as it turns out - I reviewed it a while back. But Perelandra? A bit nondescript in comparison, IMHO. Although, admittedly better than Voyage to Venus, as which it was briefly published.

The science - now we've actually managed to get to Venus - is even more wrong than it was in Silent Planet. But, since no-one knew that 60 years ago, we'll let that go. Lewis has the planet permanently shrouded in cloud, and since that much is accurate, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for the duration of the story.

A story which is (although the author points out that none of the human characters are allegorical) a thinly veiled allegory for the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, with the result that there is less depth to the story than there was to Silent Planet.

None of which, thankfully, prevents it being a good story - if only a good re-telling of the Eden story.

Here, the voice of evil is not represented by anything as innocent as a snake. Oh no, it's Professor Weston - the bad guy from the first volume of the trilogy, gone badder. At times he is just a human with some very bad thoughts, but for most of the story he is seen as the subject of a demonic possession. Indeed, the existence of 'demons' and their interest in the outcome of the story is present in the introductory chapters, in which Lewis, as narrator, goes to meet Ransom.

It is Ransom's task to provide a counter argument to Weston's attempts to subvert the paradise of Venus. In his attempts to do so, we not only encounter the varied landscapes of Perelandra, but also witness some fairly bloody scraps between the two men.

The whole adventure is almost like Narnia with all the nasty bits left in: the evil Weston is utterly evil, but not in the exaggerated way some fantasy can portray evil; he retains just enough humanity to make him all the more disturbing. Likewise Ransom, the good guy, is flawed, doubting his own ability to fulfil his mission, and so the initially simple premise is developed into something much more.

On the downside, at times the story is hijacked by the main characters philosophising - which is OK for fans of C.S. Lewis, because he does it so well, but kind of messes up the action if you're not interested in the reason behind the action (in which case you probably picked up the wrong book to start with anyway).

Ultimately, good wins out, as it is obliged to do, and this version of the Eden story ends without the fall of Perelandrian man. So apparently, one man can make a difference.

Yoda on Mars: epilogue

I've just got a new scanner to play with, so here's a little epilogue to my Life on Mars related posts...

I was lucky enough to be the first person to show this pic to John Simm. It was obviously inoffensive enough for him to sign - the rest of the cast had gone for a pint. :(

And a few bonus Christian sf related links:
In the open space on The Chronicles of Riddick
The Lost Genre Guild on Kathy Tyers' Shivering World
and NewsBiscuit on the Second Coming (don't click if easily offended!)

Who is This God Person Anyway? (Fit the Fifth - Biscuits)

Readers familiar with the Hitchhiker trilogy will probably remember the story of Arthur Dent's biscuits. It's a story he tells Fenchurch, about an encounter with a stranger and a packet of Rich Tea at a railway station. You can find it in Chapter 20 of So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, but to summarise:

Arthur was waiting for a train, sitting at the table with the Guardian on one side, a coffee on the other, and a packet of Rich Tea in the middle of the table. Sitting opposite him was a perfectly ordinary businessman. He didn't look as if he was about to do anything weird.
But he leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and... ate it. Arthur ignores this in his usual English manner, right up to the point of trying very hard not to notice that the packet was already mysteriously open when he came to take a biscuit himself.
The two of them went through a packet of eight biscuits, each taking one in turn, until only an empty packet was left between them and the stranger left to catch his train. And when Arthur's train was announced, he finished his coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and, of course, sees his own packet of Rich Tea, unopened.

Douglas Adams always claimed that this was based on something that actually happened to him, although that claim may well be apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.

Wherever the story started, it seems to have developed a life of its own. Being overfamiliar with Douglas Adams' version of the story, I had to have an ironic chuckle when I heard evangelist J John give his version of the story - the crux of which is that God owns all the Rich Teas. We may think he's mean, expecting us to share our Rich Teas with the church, with this or that charity, or with Joe next door who is running a bit short on snacks this month, but if the time comes that we really need more Rich Teas, he will provide them. Like the stranger in the station, we are called to share, and not necessarily receive any thanks.

It's not quite as good as seeing it in person, but there's a transcript of a J John sermon including his take on the biscuit story here. (The biscuit part is about two thirds of the way down, and has a man eating doughnuts in the airport.)

More Deep Thoughts from the Hitchhiker trilogy next week.

miscellaneous bloggery 8

The latest in an occasional series in which I can't be bothered to come up with anything original to write about.

Regular visitors here will probably already have read about why the sci-fi catholic dislikes christian sf, and from there found out why Keith Strohm hates it.

Speaking personally, there's a place for 'evangelical' sf in my life. Although, having jumped on, and promptly fallen off, the Left Behind bandwagon of badly written evangelical sf, I'm duty bound to say that. :)

I guess any hopes I may have had that CBA fiction (to use the US term) might catch on in the UK following LB have yet to be fulfilled in any significant way. Even UK based writers of Christian fiction seem to be publishing in the US (the Nemesis, for a genre example, and Penny Culliford, just to prove that I know books do exist outside of the sff shelves, at least in theory).

I am increasingly of the opinion that maybe the place for Christian sf in my life is just for me to write it, as a means of making sense of my life in general and this Christianity lark, and doesn't need to be shared with the rest of the world for God to appreciate that I'm using the medium to communicate with Him. Besides, I've got a blog and a website. I can still inflict it on the wider world. ;)

Anyway, back to the bloggery. I came across this the other day too: The Christianity in Star Wars. I've always seen the Force as more a kind of eastern mystical kind of thing personally, though I suppose the arguments may be interesting. (Says me, in the midst of searching for Christianity in the works of Douglas Adams!)

And then, of course, there was this. The lovely Elliot has me tagged...

Name up to three characters (from books)...

1). You wish were real so you could meet them.
Rincewind, from out of the Discworld series (a rare exception to my 'not doing fantasy'!)
Obviously, The Doctor. Either the fourth or the current one. He's in books too!
Buffy Summers. Stretching the books concept again, but if you don't let her in, she'll come round with Mr Pointy.

2). You would like to be.
Ford Prefect. I have to pick somebody from Hitch-hikers, and he always seems to be having so much fun. Great name, too.
Dirk Gently. The idea of being a private detective has some kind of romantic appeal, and he just takes it to a whole 'nother place...
Thursday Next. Not only does she live in Swindon, but she has simply the best job in the known universe.

3). Who scare you.
This was kind of a tricky one, as I haven't read any especially 'scary' books lately. But:
Professor Weston in C S Lewis's Perelandra was very disturbing at points.
And I do like a bit of Stephen King - I could pluck any number of his 'better' bad guys but I'll settle for Mordred Deschain from the Dark Tower series (although his father, Roland, was scarier in his own way) and Annie Wilkes from Misery. One good reason to continue writing mediocre evangelical novels that nobody wants to read!

Just as a kind of self-indulgent experiment, and because my fellow CSFF blog-tourers have been mass-tagged already, I tag Alf, who claims to follow my blogging, and Matthew, who does occasionally drop by. And anyone from Swindon who wants to play.

CSFF April Blog Tour, part two.

Here's a few random stops on the CSFF highway, for those who haven't been following the whole tour:

Some reviews of the series on the least read blog and the view from stonewater;

Interviews of Karen Hancock with Shannon and Chris D;

Giveaways courtesy of the Mir, Beth Goddard, Tina Kulesa and the author.

Or you could just click randomly on the list of blog-tourists in the previous post and see what you get.

Oh, and, just because my inner twelve-year-old can't resist adding this sentence: Rebecca Grabill talks about breasts. Something she may yet live to regret.

And once you've done that, pop over to amazon and buy Return of the Guardian-King. Unless you don't get fantasy, of course. In which case, maybe try Arena instead.

Back in time

Back in time may or may not have been where Sam Tyler was. I know people visit here who haven't seen Series 2 yet, so I won't spoil the ending. I'm not even sure what I make of it myself at the moment - not really sure I liked it much. I don't much like the idea of a spin-off though - it's kind of like the Matrix sequels: once the premise had been explored, and you had come to your own conclusions about the nature of reality, however entertaining the rest of the story was, it never had the same edge.

Back in time was where the Doctor went to get his mojo back. Yep, The Shakespeare Code was proper old skool Doctor, mucking about in the past with a flagrant disregard the causal nature of the universe. Or something. Forward in time was where he went in the last episode, which was even better, and deserves a post of its own. Later.

Back in time is what I am - back in time for...

This month it's all about Karen Hancock, and her rather splendid new fantasy novel, Return of the Guardian-King. I wonder if he was back in time?

Now, I have come to the conclusion that I don't get fantasy. I tried to read Lord Foul's Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book 1) recently, and I was enjoying it while he was stomping round moaning about leprosy, but as soon as he got hit by a car and ended up in fantasy land, I lost the plot. He should've gone to 1973, as far as I'm concerned.

All of which digression is to explain why I won't be reviewing the book myself. I'll leave that to my fellow bloggers, at least some of whom I'm sure get fantasy....

Nissa Annakindt
Wayne Thomas Batson
Jim Black
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Frank Creed
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Chris Deanne
Janey DeMeo
April Erwin
Kameron M. Franklin
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Christopher Hopper
Heather R. Hunt
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Karen
Tina Kulesa
Lost Genre Guild
Kevin Lucia and The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium
Rachel Marks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Shannon McNear
Caleb Newell
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
Robin Parrish
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Chawna Schroeder
Mirtika Schultz
James Somers
Tsaba House Authors
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Daniel I. Weaver
Dawn King
Rebecca Grabill
Jill Hart
and, of course, Karen Hancock

Chocolate break!

Yes, it's Easter, I'm off work for a week and I'll probably be doing something really exciting and not writing nonsesne here. I might even go out. Or I might stay in and watch sf movies for a week.

What I probably will do is a bit of writing - Project Seven has so far refused to settle into any of the sci-fi/fantasy settings I wanted for it, so I'm going to have a stab at just writing my protag's story instead (what I had originally planned as a dark past revealed in flashback) and see where that goes. It will probably end up with him being abducted by aliens or something anyway, knowing my imagination.

And if I do get to the PC, I should get the remaining pages up and running on my website.

Plus Yoda has his first car show of the season, the last ever Life on Mars is on telly (no spoilers, I promise!) and in between all that, there's chocolate to eat...

It's bigger on the inside...

Your average 900-year-old renegade Time Lord probably hears that a lot on his travels. Those of us who have been vicariously travelling with him have heard it a few times too, so it's good to see that obligatory line served up with a healthy dollop of humour, as it was when Martha Jones first ventured into the ubiquitous blue box.

Yes, the hype started a few weeks ago, and the third series of the All-New Doctor Who Show finally landed, sans Billie, on Saturday. It wasn't the best ever episode (not a bad thing, I'm happy to wait a week or two for the show to get into it's new dynamic and deliver some top notch episodes), in fact, it was probably one of the more far-fetched moments in the Whoniverse, but Martha, having witnessed the destruction of Big Ben, survived the Christmas Invasion and lost her cousin to the Cybermen last year, takes all the bizarreness in her stride.

I couldn't help noticing though...

Separated at birth?

A Judoon from out of Doctor Who (2007 version)

Rocksteady from out of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (1987 version)

Actually there was more than a hint of Vogon in the Judoon, among other Hitchhiker-esque bits like the transplanting of a whole building from one planet to another, and the whole thing being put down to mass halucinations after the event. I commented a while back that the Tenth Doctor is in fact Arthur Dent, and as if any further proof were needed, there's even an episode this series called: 42.

Are we sure Douglas Adams didn't just regenerate?

Miscellaneous Poddery

I'm still a bit new to the whole podcast lark, but since I recently figured out I could plug my MP3 player into my car stereo, I've started catching up with a few on those long business trips.

A sci-fi favourite is Starship Sofa, which I might eventually catch up with. Of interest to readers of this blog might be the show on Religion in Science Fiction. They don't cover much that won't be familiar to, say, regulars at Elliot's blog, but they cover it in a more irreverant style, and with different accents. Oh, and they managed to namecheck a certain blog, so it only seems fair to return the favour anyhow.

Another one that might be of interest is The Sci Phi Show. The main subject here is a philosophical discussion of science fiction, but host Jason Rennie is a Christian, so the occasional religious topic does poke its head above the parapet.

Both of these have forums attached, which I have as yet utterly failed to participate in, but if you have time for that sort of thing, tell them I sent you anyway. ;)

And on the fiction side of science fiction, I have dabbled in Escape Pod a bit, and also Podiobooks has a few titles that sound like they may be of interest to this blog, though I have yet to sample any. I'm expecting to drive to Devon next month (about a 440-mile round trip) - some reviews may well follow thereafter.

Yoda on Mars (reprise)

I had convinced myself that the fleeting scene in which Yoda appeared on Life on Mars would be cut. I didn't want to be too disappointed if that did happen.

And when Sam Tyler suddenly appeared in Lancashire General Hospital without actually driving up to the entrance, I thought that had in fact happened.

But then, forty minutes and several brilliant one-liners later...


Yes, that was Yoda's big TV debut. You may only have seen the back third of him, but he was right there, in the foreground, like an annoying kid on a live news item.

Anyway, to celebrate, I thought I'd upload a few more pics from the hospital. You know, just to prove that actually was my car on the beeb's top drama series ;)

Me? Sneak around inside a film set? You've got the wrong man there. Guv.

Genuine 1970s filing cabintets. Probably.

The exterior of Lancashire General Hospital.

And the scene from where I was watching.

More pictures, news from the shoot, and an explanation for any confused Star Wars fans who wandered in looking for a 900-year-old Jedi Master here.

Who is This God Person Anyway? (Fit the Fourth - Sorry I'm late...)

I'm still a bit caught up in all the excitement of getting my new and improved website, well, improved, so I still haven't prepared that detailed sermon on the theology of HHG. Sorry. Still, just to prove I haven't forgotten about the whole exercise, here's a little nugget of truth, refined from a chunk of Adams-esque humour:

... one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change ...

Well, it does kind of reflect Jesus' message, or at least part of it. Obviously it was this that inspired two of the greatest philosophers of our age, Ted 'Theodore' Logan and Bill S. Preston, Esq.

Of course, we know the DNA just liked to play around with religious ideas, like having the 'minor deities from the Halls of Asgard' booking a table at Milliways, where the Great Prophet Zarquon also makes his final triumphant Second Coming, only to disappear along with the rest of the Universe. (Presumably this was a side-effect of arriving by supernatural means, rather than the more 'scientific' front door of time travel.)

At this point I would like to embark upon a detailed discussion of the merits of the Zarquonist religion, however, due to his rather poor punctuality little is really known about the Great Prophet or his teachings. In fact, all we know is that his followers expect him to return at some point in the Galactic grand scheme of things, but in the meantime his name makes for good swearing.

Zarquon's singing fish, is that Douglas Adams poking fun at Christianity, perchance?

This week, I 'ave been mostly watchin....

The last episode of Primeval, which was, in fact, something of a return to the show's potential. It's unfortunate that it had a mid-season slump (which, with only 6 episodes made, took out half the series), and the dodo episode wandered off down a sub-plot that really should have been resolved, or at least not subsequently forgotten about.

But a lion-eating monster from the future sort of makes up for all that, and leaves me with some hope that season 2 might be a bit less along the lines of 'A prehistoric creature appears somewhere in the Home Counties. Cutter and the crew go and investigate. Someone gets hurt. Connor fails to get off with her out of S Club. Mrs Cutter appears mysteriously and does something annoying. Her out of S Club wanders around in her pants for a bit. The Home Office people blither about and get in the way. The prehistoric monster goes away again.'

You have to wonder where some of the ideas have come from though. I mean Helen Cutter has been mucking about in the Paleozoic for eight years without anyone noticing, then the Home Office get involved and within six weeks there's a paradox so big it threatens to destroy the galaxy*. Where did they come up with that?

Life on Mars, which reached a new height of surreal genius with the Camberwick Green business. I can't help wondering how many takes it needed for John Simm to get that line out with a straight face: "I can just about handle you, driving like a pissed up crackhead and treating women like beanbags. But I'm going to say this once, and once only, Gene. Stay out of Camberwick Green!" Genius.

And finally: Doctor Who trailers. It must be time to start jumping up and down like an over-excited 10-year-old again....


*Possibly. That would, of course, be the cliffhanger that keeps us tuning in for season two.

March CSFF Blog Tour: Randy Ingermanson

You might not believe this, but I have just written the best blog tour post of the month. Seriously. It was intelligent, insightful, and laced with that British humour which is my contribution to the event.

It was peppered with hyperlinks following many hours carefully researching every page of Randy's website, from which I also chose some interesting facts about the man himself (for instance, did you know he isn't dead, but expects to be at some time in the future?).

I mentioned how his work is banned from these shores for the heinous crime of 'being quite good' (the only CSFF which can legally be sold in the UK has to bear the mark of Jenkins LaHaye). Thankfully, our Randy's a generous sort of bloke, which means I have been able to read the first three chapters of several of his books, but all of none. I think Oxygen and The Fifth Man are on my list of 'things to import' when my reading list gets a bit shorter.

Then I commented on the Snowflake Method, which it seems I have been using in my writing without actually realising it had a name.

I may also have mentioned, in passing, that Randy Ingermanson has a new book out, Double Vision, which is also apparently quite good.

It was, without a doubt, one of my better blog posts.

Sadly, before it was commited to cyberspace, it disappeared in the Blogmuda Triangle. And because trying to recreate it all seems too soul-destroying a task to start right now, I'm afraid you're left with this pale imitation. Let's hope these bloggers had more luck:

Nissa Annakindt
Jim Black
Grace Bridges
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Frank Creed
CSFF Blog Tour
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Tessa Edwards
April Erwin
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Leathel Grody
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Christopher Hopper
Jason Joyner
Karen
Tina Kulesa
Lost Genre Guild
Kevin Lucia and The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Caleb Newell
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
Robin Parrish
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika Schultz
James Somers
Tsaba House Authors
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Daniel I. Weaver

Heroes of Spam

One of the side-effects of switching web servers is the loss of what it transpires was a half-decent spam filter. Now my e-mail address is back out in cyberspace without suitable protection, I'm having to filter incoming mail by hand for the time being. Which is a bit tedious, but does have its advantages.

For instance, just this morning I received an invitation to acquire shares in Patientline from Dickensian sweat-shop mogul Eroll Crim. And then there's the snippets of old Victor Hugo poems kindly passed on by my old friends Guido Noll and Sharita Yocom.

All of which is beside the point, since I don't know what v1@gra is, but if anybody out there wants some I'll put you onto Samson Sinclair, who apparently can sort you out.

Anyway, you've probably figured how this ramble comes back to the subject of Christian Science Fiction (a gentleman who has yet to send me any spam, incidentally). One of the things I dislike about creating fiction is the making up of names, which I'm sure most writers will agree is pretty crucial, especially when it comes to your protagonist and other major characters.

So I'm using this temporary influx of spam as extra inspiration for the characters in Project Seven. Troy Myers, maybe? Donnell Lacey? (Not a very English name though.) I quite like Anderson McMullen though (Andy to his friends). And the girls: Keri Kroese, Roslyn Wettstein, Lauren Broussard and Ophelia Hobbs (odd combination, that one).

Of course if any of the aforementioned names belong to real people: somebody's hijacked your e-mail.

Sci-fi: Good, Bad or Ugly?

At some point in its history, the term 'sci-fi' picked up a somewhat negative undertone. Probably it made people think of dodgy b-movies where you could still see the strings.

And I have largely avoided using the term in relation to my writing because it appears to me that sci-fi nowadays is acceptable when it comes to TV and movies (thank you, SciFi Channel) but sf is generally used in connection with the written word. Maybe that is to encompass the broader genre of speculative fiction, or maybe it's just because well-read science fiction geeks want to separate themselves from casual Doctor Who fans.

Personally, I don't do fantasy as a rule, so I just sat on the fence and used 'science fiction' most of the time.

Which brings a whole new set of problems when you're talking about Christian science fiction: do you mean Christian science fiction, or Christian Science fiction? I would hope that a brief look at the contents of this blog would be enough to tell which I'm interested in, but it's a comment I've heard a few times, and it's true it might scare off a passing visitor. I skipped the issue in my website previously by calling it Biblical science fiction, which is arguably more accurate for stories based on the Old Testament, but is not really a widely used term.

The point of all this rambling is to say that I'm no longer concerned with being literary about my sf writings. Redeveloping my website seemed a good excuse to reconsider my stance, and I have decided: I'd far rather be considered a bit of an amateur when it comes to being a science fiction fan and author than have people think I'm anything other than the Bible-believing Methodist-Pentecostal Christian I'm trying to be.

Sci-fi is no longer a rude word.

Website updates

This week's excuse for sparse blogging is that I've been beavering away behind the scenes at my website.

I haven't opened it up to the public yet, but most of the content from the original website has been transferred and is being edited into a more catchy blurby type thing for Countless as the Stars. I have decided (a bit reluctantly) to ditch the few bits from my journalistic career which were posted, partly because they are a bit old now, but mainly to concentrate on things more related to my book and Christian science fiction in general.

First decision though: which design? Currently you will see this welcome page:


and the remaining pages look something like this:
As an alternative, I've played around with this front page, which I like because the spacecraft looks more like something from my novel than a NASA stock photo:

but the text pages look a little dark, at least until such time as some artistically talented individual volunteers to provide some pictures of people or scenes from the book.

So if anyone thinks they can liven this up with a space battle or something, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be sticking with the orange peel for now.

Project Seven

What is Project Seven?

A vast multi-national attempt to finally prove the existence (or not) of God?
Some wierd science experiment which has the unlikely side-effect of making angels and demons visible to the human eye?
Or just a vaguely good but currently aimless title for a CSF story?

Well, actually, I'm referring to the seventh item on my WIPlist. Which, oddly, was a non-sf project. However, because I am utterly hopeless at writing 'real world' stories (I may be hopeless at sf stories too, but I get a kick out of it anyway) some elements of it have gone into The Sequel. However, I don't think sf is really the genre this story needs.

So, I hear you asking, what actually is Project Seven?

Well, it's more fantasy (which I keep saying I'm not going to blog about here) than sf, but more like The Prisoner than The Hobbit. It's based in a world I dreamt up a while ago, which somebody subsequently stole from my head and made into a TV show. There's angels. There's demons. There's flashbacks - the protag has a dark past and is seeking redemption. Sounds a bit Angel-esque, I know, but there's no vampires. It's differently dark - the dark side comes from the real world. Originally there was a plane crash on a mysterious island, but I think I may have to (ahem) lose that. I might even find room for some Brit humour.

Project Seven is what I want to work on right now. There's some work needed to tweak the setting - I was thinking post-apocalypse urban fantasy, but I don't want to lean too much towards Angel. Tongue-in-cheek post-rapture world, perhaps? Or maybe Project Seven is a Quantum Leap-style time travel project, allowing my hero to go back in time and make amends for his own screw-ups...

A short post

I was planning to post the next part of Who is This God Person Anyway today, but it threatened to turn into something of substance and depth, so I figured it deserved a bit more thought rather than being unleashed on the world as a half finished stream of thoughts, as is my usual blogging technique :) Hopefully it will be worth the wait!

In other news, my website is temporarily offline; I've switched hosts so I can put a proper shop page in and a whole bunch of other stuff that I couldn't before. I always liked the idea of providing DVD-style extra features - as done brilliantly by Jasper Fforde - and if I can cobble together enough material I might do something along those lines too. With any luck, pages of some sort will start appearing over the next week or so, although the full revamp I've been promising it for ages will take a while.

Oh, and for those eagerly anticipating the arrival of Primeval overseas: don't hold your breath. We've had three episodes and I'm getting more apathetic towards it already. Not a good sign after a promising start. When's the next season of Doctor Who due...?

CSFF Blog Tour: Where The Map Has Still Ended

In case it had escaped your notice, I am a bit of a writer. I know that because my name is on the booklist at WhereTheMapEnds, which you should of course look at as a detailed guide to Christian Spec Fic, but is not the main point of this post.

As a writer, I have spent many a happy hour fiddling with the various world building, character creating and story generating gizmos collected on the site. Actually, these are probably more useful to a bored non-writer wasting a few online minutes at work, than to a writer like myself, prone to procrastination, a cure for which is about the only thing absent from Jeff's Tools for Writers section.

If you haven't already, go and have a play. On your way, you might like to take in the following stops on the tour:

Grace Bridges reviews on of Jeff's own works;

Gene Curtis comments on Marcher Lord Press;

Jeff seems to have done interviews left, right and centre;

Nicole and Wayne Thomas Batson got missed from the full list yesterday which is still there if you want more blogs to read!

CSFF Blog Tour: Where the Map Ends

So this month we find ourselves WhereTheMapEnds. I thought we'd been here already on the tour, but, I guess not, huh?

This being day two of the tour, you will of course have all been to the site already.

What do you mean you've been too busy reading blogs? Tsk. Look, go there now. Clicky clicky. But don't forget to come back.... Oh, too late, they've gone. Oh well, at least with all that extra traffic, Jeff will be inspired to get those long awaited forums going. Won't you? I mean, look at the queue to get on there: ;)
Nissa Annakindt
Jim Black
Grace Bridges
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Chris Deanne
Janey DeMeo
Tessa Edwards
April Erwin
Kameron M. Franklin
Linda Gilmore
Beth Goddard
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Leathel Grody
Katie Hart
Sherrie Hibbs
Sharon Hinck
Christopher Hopper
Jason Joyner
Kait
Karen
K. D. Kragen
Tina Kulesa
Kevin Lucia and The Bookshelf Reviews 2.0 - The Compendium
Rachel Marks
Shannon McNear
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
John W. Otte
John Ottinger
Robin Parrish
Rachelle
Cheryl Russel
Hanna Sandvig
Mirtika Schultz
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Daniel I. Weaver
Timothy Wise

Who is This God Person Anyway? (Fit the Third - Exodus)

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM."

- Exodus 3:13-15

"My name is not important."

- Slatibartfast

And so we are introduced to the architects of the Earth, first in the Bible, and then in Hitch-hikers. And, apart from that, and being suitably mysterious about their names, they have one or two other things in common. Slartibartfast, in the TV series, is every child's image of God: a kindly old gent with long white hair and matching beard. And both, having created the world, then go on to save it.

But first the creation bit, and I think Slarti inadvertently solves one of modern Christianity’s ongoing debates:

“[New Earth is] only half completed I’m afraid – we haven’t even finished
burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the
Tertiary and Quaternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and…”

I like the image of God’s creation as a vast building project (Magrathea’s factory floor was a highlight of the so-so movie version for me too) and, well, why not? It’s gotta make as much sense as the more widely accepted theories.

Millions of years later, Slartibartfast returns to Earth and, in the absence of a scarf-wearing, jelly baby-toting saviour, single-handedly (well, Trillian and Arthur help a bit) saves the Universe from the evils of cricket. Sorry, Krikkit.

So there you have it: a creator turned saviour whose name, at least in its original form, we dare not speak.

Finally, to bring us back to the ever-so-tenuous Exodus link (you think that’s tenuous, wait till next week…) here’s Bop Ad, from Life, the Universe and Everything:

[Slartibartfast] was marching out on to the pitch with a terrible purpose in his gait, his hair, beard and robes swept behind him, looking very much as Moses would have looked if Sinai had been a well-cut lawn instead of, as it is more usually represented, a fiery smoking mountain.

Feeling Strangely Bloggy

Yes, it's been a while, but I'm in a bloggy mood today. Maybe someone missed me and started channelling their mental energies at me. Well, whatever, I'm back again now - some minor connection hitches with my shiny new Vista-powered lappie now fixed. (So far, incidentally, I have not gone 'Wow' a single time while using it.)

Oh, and in the process of shifting files onto said new laptop, I mislaid my favourites list, which included a bunch of really interesting stuff I had to blog about. No, really, it did!

So instead I shall mention the highly unlikely event that happened over the weekend: ITV1 showed something good. Obviously startled by the success of Doctor Who, ITV have brought us a new Saturday teatime sf series, Primeval, the basic premise of which is that there are anomalies in time/space through which people can travel, and in the first episode, dinosaurs can stroll into the Forest of Dean. Not sure how many weeks we can watch dinosaurs turn up in unexpected places, but there is a lost-in-the-past-spouse story arc to keep us busy too. The writers have tried to inject a little humour into the proceedings too - witness the boy fighting off a Gorgonopsid with a toy light saber. I look forward to seeing where the series goes from here, anyway. Oh, and there's one of the girls from S Club 7, who drives a Mini Cooper, which is a bonus.

Speaking of Minis on telly, the new series of Life on Mars also just started, so Yoda's small screen debut is just a few weeks away for UK viewers. Unless they cut his scene. Erk.

I think that went quite well. Maybe I shall feel bloggy more often now.