We are moving!

I've been hinting at it for a while, but the time is here to officially retire this site and move my blog into an all-singing, all-dancing website which will also, eventually, house my e-book store.

There are some minor tweaks to the design of the site to be ironed out before I unveil it, but once that is done, all that effort will encourage me to post more often and keep things fresh.

Regular blogging will commence there during April, complete with a habit-forming bi-weekly schedule:

Monday reviews – books, movies, the latest Doctor Who episode, etc.  

Wednesday – because I’m all about the accountability, laugh and point at my shocking wordcount for the previous two weeks. Plus website updates as I continue to add more content.  

Friday – Re-Dwarf, the great Red Dwarf rewatch. Inspired by the fun I had watching and commenting on Red Dwarf X last year, I’m going to start from The End and pick out all the deep theological lessons the boys from the Dwarf can teach us.  

Tuesday Tunes – reviews of the music I write to, and of course the occasional Top Ten!

Thursday – Anything else that may have got my attention in the last couple of weeks that vaguely relates to the core subject matter of Christianity and speculative fiction. Failing that, photos of old cars.

That’s what you have to look forward to, look out for an official opening notice here in the next few days, and come along for the ride!

Soft porn sells more Lego

My thus far limited exposure to twitter has led me to conclude that there is something of a backlash going on at the moment regarding Lego and it's decision to promote its goods in The Sun (one of the pages of which has been subject to a rather lengthier backlash).

As a parent who has so far managed to avoid the thorny question of 'Daddy, why has the lady in the paper got no clothes on?', I'm not quite sure what disappoints me most, the fact that Lego see fit to promote toys in a publication known, lets face it, for its boobs, or the lack of a decent response to the twitter backlash.

Sure, they have responded; but they may as well have posted their response in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet marked 'Beware of the Leopard'. And even supposing you can find it, it pretty much says 'thanks for tweeting us, but we don't give a crap':

In order to catch the attention of children who may not be as well associated with boobs, one of the media we have chosen to address parents is The Sun as it’s one of the most popular sources of soft porn, with a daily readership of more than 6 million of which only 47% actually have boobs.

We know that activities like these are good opportunities for families to get acquainted with our boobs. Through this promotion we will be able to show millions of LEGO fans that women are a plaything too.

We listen very carefully to the opinions and input that people share. We will continue to do so as we develop our communication in the future. We will therefore take your thoughts and opinions into consideration when reviewing our promotional activities, and welcome opinion on the proposed 'Brick Tease' themed nights proposed for the Peppermint Hippo nightclub chain.

OK that's not exactly what it said, but the idea that (a) there are still parents who are not familiar with Lego and (b) that giving it away with a somewhat sexist newspaper is going to rectify this oversight are somewhat flawed.

Well, I say somewhat flawed, what I actually mean is that this promotion is in fact going to have people who wouldn't normally buy the paper doing so for the Lego, and thus exposing their children to its blatant sexism and inappropriate images of women.

Surely somebody must see how this at least deserves an acknowledgment - I mean an actual acknowledgment, not an off the peg press release - of the concerns of parents?

Anybody?

OK, I'm done with the soap-box for now. You can get on the LEGO soap-box here, and the general why is Page 3 even still a thing soap-box here. Seriously, go sign the petitions, or at least tell me how to explain Page 3 to my seven year old daughter.

Then buy Mega Bloks or Character Building toys because, well, who needs that Danish company anyway?

First World Problems

As step one in my vast reorganisation of my web empire, I have now shut down my website, at least temporarily; I was never really happy with it, and had enough trouble blogging regularly without worrying about keeping another website fresh...

It was only after I had shut down the website that I started to realise just how many internet profiles and suchlike were linked to email addresses from the same domain.... So I've spent a couple of nights going through all the various things I've signed up to over the years - some still useful, some never used - and figuring out how to change the email addresses. This is usually a tedious process which involves trying to remember or locate the password for that particular website (as the normally helpful 'Forgotten password?' button invariably sends a new password to a non-functioning email address), trying to find where in the myriad settings you actually change the email address, and having changed it, waiting for the confirmation email to arrive so you can click a link and hopefully Bob's@youruncle.com.

And then, after all this tedium and needless hassle, I pay a visit to the Writing Excuses podcast, and see that their latest writing prompt is 'Do a retelling of a Bible story in a science fiction space setting'. Wait, what? You mean, sort of like an Old Testament... Space Opera? Wow, that sounds like a neat excuse to post a comment with a sneaky link back to my... oh. Right.

*sigh* It really sucks to be me this week.

Completely unrealistic goals for 2013

It would appear that we are now ploughing inexorably forward into a new year.

It would also appear that at the beginning of a new year it is semi-traditional to take stock of what has gone before and set completely unrealistic goals for the next twelve months.

It would further appear that I have not, as yet, done this sort of thing, but as I have a couple of things I would like to achieve, it seems like a good idea to record them for posterity (and to see how badly I've done come the end of 2013).

So, here are a couple of things I want to get working on this year:

• Reinvent my online presence. This blog is overdue some housekeeping, and stevetrower.co.uk has been so woefully neglected that I'm embarrassed to hyperlink it. And then there's things like twitter that I've looked at but not actually used yet. My plan is to reinvent my homepage and move my blogging onto it in the hope of keeping both a little fresher than they have been of late. Look out for this in the next few months.
• Editing. I have several NaNoWriMo projects that I think are worthy of more work, either to shorten or lengthen them, and I would like to get at least one of them into a usable form before NaNo 2013.
• Publishing. Specifically, getting Countless as the Stars out in the world of e-books, and maybe following it with the sequel at some stage. My immediate goal is to edit the first section of Countless and make it available as a free taster e-book, probably from the aforementioned new website.
• Writing! Obviously I will want to get some new and worthwhile blog content written once the new look is all up and running, but also I want to keep the momentum from NaNoWriMo going. Not at the same breakneck pace, obviously, but maybe a short story competition every month and ongoing work on a couple of novel-length works.

All are welcome along for the ride, please feel free to keep me honest on all of these things, suggest how I should abuse the social internet for my own nefarious purposes, tell me to stop procrastinating with site-building software and write that next book...

I'll be back, er... within a week. Maybe.

Phursday Photos at the Paralympics

I can hardly believe I got up at 5am to go and watch sport once, never mind twice, but it seems I must have done, because there is photographic evidence.

Having said that, before last weekend if you had asked me what the minimum requirement for competetive cycling was, I'd have said two legs - either natural or prosthetic.

Turns out I was wrong. Didn't get any photos of the German team sprint - too busy watching as 3 guys with 10 limbs between them broke the Paralympic record - but they were a definite highlight of the day.

Even so, no apologies for the obvious team bias in the photo selection...

Phursday Photos at the Olympics

I'm not normally the sort of person to be interested in sport of any flavour, but the Olympics dropping on your doorstep is kind of a once in a lifetime occasion, so we kinda had to go...

Unfortunately the organisers'  plan to allocate tickets to people who didn't actually want them means the closest I could get was to camp out at the side of the road for the cycling road race... but at least I got a good snap of Team GB's cyclists to show for it, as well as getting to soak up some of the Olympic atmosphere...

 

        

  

 

Tuesday Tunes: LZ7 & Matt Redman - 27 Million

Yes, I know what day it is, but I got a gold star for blogging in the face of adversity last week, so you can't reasonably expect timely posting this week as well.

Anyway, this week rather than trawling the Tube for some footage of Back to the Planet (next week - possibly even on Tuesday) I'm going to share a little video, which I hope speaks for itself, and then ask you to go and download the song.

There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today - that's more than at any time in history. If you want to belong to a more civilised society where this kind of thing does not happen, download the song from your preferred digital media stockist and help raise awareness of the size of the problem, and money for the A21 Campaign to help fight it.

I'll even make it easy for you - here are some links: iTunes (UK) Amazon Play.com 7 Digital iTunes (US)

If not, I want to know what more constructive use you found for that 99p.

Badly thought out Despair of the Week

I wasn't going to make a habit of this, but I saw this video on geekologie.com and, honestly, it was too good (ie bad) to ignore. It's straight out of the '90s, when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Vanilla Ice (apparently) were at the peak of their powers, and is a prime example of Christians sticking their beards into what other people's children should or should not be watching on TV and getting for Christmas.

They do make one good point in the course of the video, but I'm not convinced the Mickey Mouse comic with the ouija board in was contemporary with the rest of the stuff.

I suspect it's been cut to make them look even more stupid than they would otherwise -

What's the problem with this guy [Vanilla Ice]?
MC Hammer is certainly not a role model we as Christians should emulate, though he claims to be a Christian.

Actually, the thought of these guys doing the Hammer dance, I think he may have a point after all. Although I'm still curious as to what the problem with Vanilla Ice actually was.

Anyway, my point, besides ruthlessly mocking these muppets, is that this kind of thing actually happens in real life - Christians decrying things they have only a passing knowledge of, like the Harry Potter phenomenon (which must have made these guys' heads explode) that many condemned on the basis of what Mavis said about it after church last week.

I have no problem with people having a genuine problem with the way some stuff is marketed these days - the fact that you can pick up Playboy branded stationary on the High Street, blatantly aimed at the average schoolgirl, is a bit of a worry - but you might at least try watching these things before telling us all why they're evil.

What I have a problem with is people like these, who (a) make Christians out to be a bunch of opinionated killjoys; (b) seem to think children can't tell the difference between an animated pizza-eating reptile and real life; and (c) are probably so wrapped up in seeing the devil behind every successful TV franchise that they've completely missed the real problems in the world.

Next week: I attempt to stop ranting and get this blog back on topic - tune in to see if I succeed!

Daily Mail Despair of the Week

Apparently, Peppa Pig is a bad influence on children. According to the Daily Mail:

One father spoke of his despair at how his four-year-old son had taken to splashing in what he gleefully called ‘muddy puddles’ on his way to school - copying Peppa's favourite pastime.

I wish I lived in a world where that was the biggest problem facing society. Kids are being forced to grow up too quickly anyway these days, without causing despair or having their favourite TV characters banned for, um, being children!

Let's get a few things straight to start with:

1. Peppa always puts her wellies on before jumping up and down in those muddy puddles (don't get me started on the fact that she's a pig)
2. Puddle jumping is often enjoyed as a fun activity for the whole family. Heaven forbid.
3. Out in the fresh air, no less. 
4. George may ask for chocolate cake for breakfast, but to my knowledge he never gets it. 
5. One episode even gives a handy tutorial in making salad more appealing to kids by forming it into the shape of a dinosaur. 
6. I've given this far too much thought haven't I? 
7. Peppa is a pig. 

Maybe I have given this too much thought, but seriously? A kid jumps in a puddle or asks for chocolate instead of broccoli and all you can do is lash out at a cartoon pig?

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying we should let our kids have chocolate cake for breakfast, but experience tells me that if we don't let our children have small amounts of chocolate cake under close supervision, they will end up binge-eating it down the park with those unruly kids from the next street. 

And it never stops with chocolate cake. Oh no, it will soon progress to Mississippi Mud Pie and Black Forest Gateaux, and before you know it they'll be hopped up on a cocktail of banoffee pie and treacle sponge, indulging in wild, cake-fuelled orgies of unashamed muddy puddle-jumping.

Surely we, as parents, have a duty to educate our children, to show them that things like cake - and cartoons - can be highly enjoyable, in the right context. 

I mean come on, everyone loves jumping up and down in muddy puddles! 

Enjoy Peppa Pig responsibly 

For the facts about excessive cake consumption visit www.cakeaware.co.uk 

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article... meh.

Long Walk 2011

It is a tradition over at the Daily Audio Bible to take July 7th off, go somewhere beautiful, and spend the day with God. My intention had been to do a slight variation on the theme, and go for a long drive, take the Mini off into the countryside for the day. (The reason for this stems from Wild at Heart, something John Eldredge says about men getting closest to God when they feel most 'alive'; for him it's all manner of outdoorsy stuff, for me, it's a back-lane Mini blast.)

Unfortunately things were not as easy as all that: first there was a hospital appointment on July 7th (for my daughter) which would have taken half the day out. Still, no matter; July 8th was booked off work and the Long Drive was on. Except the aforementioned daughter was taken ill this morning. Not only that, but the rain did not look conducive to a back-lane Mini blast.

Still, as it turned out I was not required to make the trip to see the doctor, and was able to slip off for a somewhat shorter than planned walk, getting myself lost in the rolling hills of, um, Staffordshire.

I had no real idea what I was doing; I mean, the theory was simple enough - go somewhere quiet and listen to God. Easier said than done, obviously. But did I come away with anything? Well, maybe, although I'm not sure what it means, if anything.

I found myself surrounded by ferns, and as I looked at the repeatedly dividing pattern of the leaves, it occured to me that the closer you look at a fern leaf, the more detail you go into, the more accurately you can measure its outline, and the longer its outline will be.

Sass that hoopy frond

Taken to its extreme, you end up with the fractal theory argument that Britain's coastline is infinite. Plainly nonsense in practical terms, but an interesting point, that the closer you look, the more anything - a fern, a country, a person - approaches infinity. At some level, the Infinite is present right at the heart of everything.

Pre-NaNo to-do list

Aaaargh, only a few days to go and so much still to do!

1. Get the day job up to date. Actually I'm in pretty good shape with this, although November is looking busy at the moment. :(
2. Get ahead with the NVQ. Tomorrow afternoon is set aside for this one.
3. Get the house clean enough to last a month. I'm going to have to class that one as 'desirable', I think.
4. Draft some bloggy goodness. There must be at least one CSFF blog tour during NaNo, right? Other than that I guess it will be random NaNo ponderings.
5. Help the in-laws move house. Or at least help them clear out some stuff. Including a cooker. To our house. Hmmmm.
6. Oh yes, and I suppose I should have some idea what on Earth I'm going to write come Monday.
7. And if I was more technically-minded I would fix the 'o' key on this laptop...

Wake me up when it's Octomber

I might be being just a little bit paranoid, but I have a slight suspicion that this email I received today may not be 100% genuine...

On the plus side, if you can read this, it means I've sorted out the technical difficulties I've been having with blogger and will be returning to pester your rss aggregator again soon :)

Grrrr

Honestly, I was going to write a half-sensible post about Venom and Song yesterday, but I've been having trouble with blogger for some reason :(

All being well I'll have something interesting to say (and the technology with which to say it) tomorrow. It may or may not have anything to do with Spiderman, Doctor Who or the Berinfell Prophecies.

CSFF Blog Tour: Venom & Song

This week, along with the Christian Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog Tour, I will be highlighting one of the more bizarre double acts in speculative fiction of recent years, Venom and Song.

The story of how Spiderman's arch-nemesis and that mysterious woman out of Doctor Who were put together is something of a Cinderella meets X-Factor story, Venom having been discovered on a talent show by music mogul Christopher Hopper, while River Song was (allegedly) romantically involved with Hopper's partner in crime-fighting, Wayne Thomas Batman.

It was during a tortuously long corporate meeting discussing how a DC hero and a Marvel bad guy could possibly live together in the same universe, never mind harmony, that River Song entered with the sandwiches and spontaneously broke into a beautiful rendition of Superman's Big Sister, shortly to be joined by Venom for a duet of I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me).

The rest, as they say, is history; Batman and Hopper have officially given up the crime-fighting lark while Venom and Song record their debut album Berinfell, which will be out for Christmas with an accompanying single, Christmas With the Spider King.

Probably.

Also on the tour this week:
Angela Brandon Barr Keanan Brand Amy Browning Beckie Burnham Morgan L. Busse Melissa Carswell Jeff Chapman Valerie Comer Amy Cruson CSFF Blog Tour D. G. D. Davidson April Erwin Tori Greene Ryan Heart Bruce Hennigan Timothy Hicks Becky Jesse Cris Jesse Jason Joyner Julie Carol Keen Krystine Kercher Dawn King Leighton Rebecca LuElla Miller John W. Otte Donita K. Paul Chawna Schroeder Tammy Shelnut James Somers Kathleen Smith Rachel Starr Thomson Robert Treskillard Steve Trower Fred Warren Jason Waguespac Dona Watson Phyllis Wheeler Jill Williamson

While we're here, let me remind you that the CSFFBT special offer price for Countless as the Stars will be available for just a few more days. Buy now for Christmas!

Slight return

Yes, it's been a while.

And at the moment I'm trying to figure out whether I have the time, inclination and subject matter to start posting here properly.

But, before I do, this is just a quick postlet to make sure everyone knows the NaNoWriMo spectacular at stevetrower.co.uk must end this weekend. No, you can't buy a sofa on interest free credit, but you can get a copy of Countless as the Stars for £4.50 including UK p&p, or read the unedited NaNoWriMo original draft of the sequel, Children of the Stars. Seriously, if you think Left Behind was bad, you should read Children of the Stars. It makes those guys look like professionals.

So please feel welcome to stop by there, something new will (possibly) go up there during March if you happen to be late; and in the meantime, if you happen to have enjoyed this blog back in its glory days (?) go ahead and leave a comment on what you would like to see more of. By which I mean any of at all.

It's Mini Week!

On August 26th, 1959, two brand new cars were officially launched into a completely unsuspecting public: the Austin Seven, and the Morris Mini-Minor. These cars soon became affectionately known as the Mini - and the rest, as they say...

So this week, because I'm just a little bit partial to the world's favourite small car, I'm going to forget all about spaceships and time travel, and have some self-indulgent Mini wibble instead.

Christianity and science fiction will be back on the menu next week, but do feel free to drop by for a Mini-flavoured version of whatever normally happens here...

Decade

Right now, I'm probably somewhere on the M40, in the rain, on the way to celebrate 10 years of marriage with a weekend in London.

I don't know why I'm telling you that (except for the fact that Mrs UKSteve deserves a big well done for sticking it out), but it also means that it's been about that long since I got my first professional writing gig. That seemed to deserve a mention, especially in light of my last non-writing related post. On the plus side, it would appear that I put slightly more effort into my marriage than I did my career in journalism...

If I can dig out the original ms, I may post it up soon; it will still have topical relevance, albeit not for anyone tuning in to read about Christianity and sci-fi.

Until then though, I should be driving...

Unrealistic goals

So it's half way through the year, and it seems like a blog post would easily be filled by reflecting on how woefully I have performed in the unrealistic goals I set myself at the beginning of the year.

Let's take a deep breath and see what progress has been made then:

• Daily devotional time: I started out well actually, and kept pretty much up to date with the Daily Audio Bible until my mp3 player broke. I didn't really get into the flow again before we went away last week, so I'm starting this one again today.
• Cell group: I actually managed this one, with a lot of nudging from Mrs UKSteve.
• Professional development: haven't started yet, but put my name down to study for an NVQ as soon as my employer finds the money.
• Writing: er, well, er... ok, I started well here too, but the wheels fell off Project Seven as I was writing it, and I haven't really got back into it in any meaningful way for a while. I think I will have to reinvent it, possibly dust off that Christian version of Lost and use some of the good bits from that too.... I suppose it must be technically possible to get a 90k draft done in three months - it's only 1,000 words a day...

Gotta go - I should be writing!

I've gone off the idea of progress.

Specifically, I've gone off the idea of MP3 players. More specifically, I've gone off my Aigo A215 MP3 player, which died yesterday. Well actually, it didn't really die. It still shows signs of life, but it's definitely flapping about like a carp out of water. Until I try to upload anything onto it, because neither my XP nor Vista PCs recognise it.

Still, life goes on; there are still podcasts to be listened to, and lengthy drives on which to listen to them, so a replacement must be drafted in, bearing in mind the lessons to be learnt from this little experience. Those lessons being:
You gets what you pays for. 'Cheap and nasty' is not a cliche without good reason.
Professor Google has much to offer when buying stuff. Googling Aigo A215 will instantly bring up a long enough discussion among people who have found this piece of kit to be a bit rubbish to put me off getting one.
So, Messrs Aigo and Sons, welcome to my blacklist.


On a tangentially related note, one of the last things the aforementioned device allowed me to listen to was one of this year's Hugo nominees on Escape Pod. Readers of this blog might well get a kick out of Article of Faith by Mike Resnick.

Short sf readers/listeners will probably have come across Mr Resnick, the most awarded short sf writer in the world, apparently. I don't believe he professes any religious faith, but he has written some great stories about religion, or featuring religious themes, and we should probably look at some of his work in more detail here in future.

Meanwhile, Article of Faith is in part about robot religion, and in part about tolerance in general. And if your MP3 player has also gone to Silicon heaven, you can also read the story on Mike Resnick's website.

Excuses for not blogging #37: My face is the wrong shape

I’m not terrified of dentists or anything, but it must be universally recognised that there are more pleasant ways to spend an hour. It all starts off innocently enough, with the happy receptionist and the cute dental nurses showing their perfect smiles and clamouring to be your best friend, but as soon as you’re pinned in that chair and the almighty needle looms in front of your face, it’s pretty clear that anything resembling friendliness or even mere civility is left outside with the collectible issues of Take a Break.

The fact that the anaesthetic only kicked in about an hour after I needed it, and once it had worn off my mouth took a while to settle into its revised shape, left me somewhat discombobulated for a few days last week.

Thankfully I only needed the replacement of an errant filling which resigned its post just before Easter, and things have settled down now. I haven’t spat any metal filings for a few days or anything. Even so, I can’t help thinking: it’s a good job the dental nurses are cute.