Tuesday Tunes: Radio 1's Live Lounge Volume 3

It’s January, so it must be time for Tuesday Tunes to do the annual* Live Lounge CD review. Obviously everyone else did it in about November when it came out, but I was kinda busy that month.

Anyone who cares should already know the formula: 40 tracks of exclusive live performances (the clue is in the title), consisting in roughly equal parts of one-off cover versions and recent hits.

This is the third CD of Live Lounge sets from Jo Whiley's Radio 1 show, and I'd like to say the standard keeps getting higher, but unfortunately I think the reverse is true. Although that could be because I've not had the chance to listen to Jo Whiley much lately, so a lot of the acts on the latest compilation may as well be strange new life forms.

That said, it is still worth... well, whatever it's going for on amazon right now, and the mix of artists is as ecelctic as ever. In the 'songs you know' category, we have Duffy (Mercy), Adele (Chasing Pavements), Scouting for Girls (Elvis Ain’t Dead), The Streets (Blinded by the Lights), and Athlete's Wires, quite possibly the best song ever.

The cover versions are always more interesting, and this time round, among others, you can hear:

Dizzee Rascal’s reworking of The Ting Tings' That’s Not My Name;
REM doing Munich;
The Script doing Eninem's Lose Yourself;
Kate Nash doing an Arctic Monkeys cover, which rocks mainly because its Kate Nash;

Goldfrapp’s laid back version of It’s Not Over Yet;
and Bat for Lashes (no, me neither) throwing some 80s into the mix with a cover of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams.

*Volume 2 was reviewed in April 2008. Volume 1 wasn't reviewed.

CSFF Blog Tour: Post Script

I intended to post yesterday, on the final day of the tour proper, but got a bit caught up in filing my tax return online, a pointless task which involves me paying a chunk of extra tax which will returned to me at some later stage when the powers that be realise they've already taken account of it in my PAYE coding. By the time I had rooted out all the necessary paperwork and logged onto the website about 3 three times I was fresh out of time for blogging. Ho hum.

So here, a day late, but here nonetheless, is something possibly meaningful.

On the 'about the author' page of D Barkley Briggs' website, the story is told of how The Legends of Karac Tor came about, as a tale his four sons could relate to as they dealt with the loss of their mother. The Legends of Karac Tor tells the tale of four brothers who, 'while struggling to adjust to life without mom, become enmeshed in the crisis of another world. Along the way they must find their courage, face their pain, and never quit searching for home.'

The thing that struck me when I read that was how the author used his talent to help his kids, and by extension, others in the same situation - thus bringing something good out of a bad situation.

I've been following the Daily Audio Bible podcast almost on time this year, and this week we've been following the story of Joseph, he of the posh jacket, and the extreme example of God working all things together for good. And this all kind of comes together for me because, although you may not get it from this blog, I've been to some pretty dark places in life over the last 3 or 4 years, and my latest WIP, Project Seven is a kind of therapeutic attempt to work that out, and if at the same time I can help someone else out of the same situation - or stop someone getting into it - then that will have made it all... maybe not worthwhile, but it will make sense of it.

I think I've forgotten where I was going with this now, except that The Book of Names is an excellent example of how we as writers - even writers of speculative fiction - can make a difference.

Tuesday Tunes vs CSFF Blog Tour: The Songs of Names

This isn't going to be as much fun without the mixtape, but, well, if you feel that way inclined you could hunt these down and make your own Top Ten Songs of Names:

10. Abba - The Name of the Game
What better way to kick off that with a slice of 70s cheese pop?

9. Terence Trent D'Arby - Sign Your Name
And what better way to follow that with some 80s cheese pop?

8. Destiny's Child - Say My Name
And 90s cheese pop? Anybody sensing a theme?

7. De La Soul - Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)
OK, bear with me here, because this is verging on the tenuous: Ring Ring Ring borrows quite heavily from 80s popsters Curiosity Killed the Cat's Name and Number, and somehow manages to make it cool.

6. The Kinks - You Don't Know My Name
Written by Dave Davies, who is a guitar genius but doesn't write songs as well has his bro. Sorry, Dave.

5. Eminem - My Name Is
What? Who? Slim Shady! Warning: Contains swears

4. Rage Against The Machine - Killing in the Name
While we're in 'Parental Advisory' territory, here's a teen anthem to rival that Nirvana song, largely on account of all that screaming (and swearing) 'I won't do what you tell me!'

3. Petra - What's in a NameAnd in true mixtape style, we segue easily from sweary shout-rock to (slightly cheesy) Christian Rock.

2. The Beautiful South - Song For Whoever
You remember the one.... Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue... etc.

1. The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
Probably not an indie rock response to Song for Whoever... They call me 'Stacey'/They call me 'her'/They call me 'Jane'/That's not my name...

Yeah, it's not really up to the standard of the vampire top ten a couple of tours ago, but it's the best list I could cobble together on the tube this morning. I'll try harder next time.

In the meantime, come back tomorrow and join me in the quest for a relevant and potentially interesting tour contribution on this blog. It will be a long and difficult journey, fraught with danger and mythical beings.

Bother, should have done a mythical beings top ten...

CSFF Blog Tour: The Book of Names by D Barkley Briggs

This week, the blog tour features The Book of Names by Biggs Darklighter, who I always thought was Red Three, but according to his website, he's some kind of author.

Which seems pretty obvious, since I just said the tour is about his new book. Am I rambling? Ok.

But seriously, The Book of Names is the first volume of the Legends of Karac Tor, and is so called because it's about names getting stolen. No, it doesn't make any sense to me either, but I haven't read it, as usual.

His website's pretty neat though (although, I'm not sure about the section about the Dark Side... have you turned, Biggs?), there's a section of links about myth & lore in our world, which is the kind of weird stuff that I find really interesting.

So, for meaningful comment on this month's featureed book, your quest leads into the Hidden Lands of these mythical beings:
Sally Apokedak
Brandon Barr
Keanan Brand
Rachel Briard
Valerie Comer
Frank Creed
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Isbell
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Magma
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Alice M. Roelke
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Phyllis Wheeler
Timothy Wise

Be seeing you...

A couple of days ago I had it in mind to post something about the imminent remake of The Prisoner, the original series of which I have been slowly making my way through on DVD since visiting the village a couple of summers ago.

I had in mind to wonder whether it would be the same without Portmeirion and Mini Mokes, or whether its themes of freedom and individuality are all the more relevant in today's society.

But that all seems a little pointless given yesterday's news, that Patrick McGoohan, creator and star of the 1967 series, died on January 13th after a short illness.

He did so much more, but The Prisoner - whether you think it is profound or a load of utter nonsense - is what McGoohan will be remembered for. I don't know whether McGoohan got fed up of being remembered as Number Six; I wouldn't blame him if he did, but Number Six is a man of principles, unafraid to go against the flow and stand up for his rights, and the rights of any individual, whatever the cost to himself.

A pretty good legacy, if you ask me.

The belated New Year post....

Well, I guess it's about time to call an end to the extended holiday hiatus and dust off the old blog, eh?

It is traditional at (or more ususally about two weeks before) this time to set completely unrealistic goals for the year ahead. So, I might as well join in, eh? Well, I have a couple:

• Sort out a daily devotional time. Not always easy when my work takes me out on the road, but along with that I plan to stay up to date with the Daily Audio Bible, which always comes out in my car with me.
• Find a cell group. I kind of lost regular connection with fellow Christians shortly after Her Babyship arrived, and for various reasons have finally decided this is a good time to pick that up again.
• Advance my professional development. An issue which has been slightly forced by the loss of more qualified people where I work, and certain professional organisations noticing how quiet I have been on the CPD front. Ooops!
• Write! I don't know whether this is really my last priority, but having discovered how much I can get written if I put my mind to it (and use WriteOrDie) during NaNo, there is really no excuse. I think the time is right for Project Seven; all I have to do is get my head down and write the bloomin' thing. Specific target for Project Seven: a 90k first draft by the end of September. That gives me a nice 10k per month target, and then leaves October to prepare for NaNo '09...

No bloggy promises this year, although I will make an effort not to miss another CSFF Blog Tour (apologies to the Lost Genre Guild, which sounds like the sort of thing I would sign up for except Project Seven isn't speculative).

Project Seven wordcount so far, incidentally, is 2530. Hmmm....

I wasn't going to do this...

...but I feel obliged to start the year with a Doctor Who post. Because what's a blog for if not for inflicted one's ill-informed opinions on the world?

And my ill-informed opinion at the moment is... well, it could go either way. My heart did drop somewhat when I saw the 11th Doc, and I kind of mentally went 'What? What?! WHAAT?!'

But the new team, and Russel T Davros, seemed quite upbeat about him, and Steven Moffatt has been responsible for some of the better Who so far, so... I'm willing to give him a go. I guess being a young whippersnapper he might have plenty of Dalek fighting years in him. As long as it doesn't become a total kids show.

I guess you know you're getting old when the Doctors start looking younger...

Closing down for Christmas

I know, it's been pretty dead in here all this month, but I'm about to head off for all that family responsibility stuff that Christmas brings with it.

So I'll be back and bloggier than ever* in the New Year.

Until then have a peaceful Christmas and a great New Year. :)




*levels of blogginess can go down as well as up

Tuesday Tunes: The X Factor

OK, so here's my advice for anyone who sort of likes the X-Factor song (Hallelujah) which is just bound to steamroller its way to the Christmas Number One (yawn).

Go and download the version by Jeff Buckley. You could download the original by Leonard Cohen if you fancy a really depressing Christmas, but the Buckley version is widely touted as the best. Hey, it's Christmas - you could always do both. I'm off to get the Buckley version, and do my bit to get a decent Christmas Number One and stick to Cowell.

Well, it would be fun, wouldn't it? Not that I (or probably anyone else) have cared much for that once prized title since, well, whenever the last non-Pop Idol Factor one was. 1873, I think.

Sci-fi Song of the Week

Now I want no excuses here. You may have heard the latest addition to the mixtape; it has been on a couple of my favourite podcasts in the past. If not, if you are even remotely interested in a jolly, Christmassy, sci-fi related, fun song, you must listen to Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton, and you must do so now. The mixtape is still over there on the left. Go listen!

EDIT: Mixwit is shutting down at the end of the year, so this is your last chance to visit the Sci-fi songs mixtape, and all the CSFF Blog Tour mixtapes so far. Blub! Find them all here.

NaNoWri... oh whatever, it doesn't matter now!

Yup, 50,000 passed by at around 11.30pm on Friday. I have written 50,000 words in four weeks. At times I didn't think I would make it, but here I am, with a (very) rough draft of my second Old Testament Space Opera.

Sadly I may not be able to blog for a while; I have to dig the kitchen out from under the dishes and various furry things I don't think have names.

But I guess I have to keep the momentum going, so I'll be back in my writing chair after a couple of well earned days off.

NaNoWriDayTwentySeven

47,893!

I can taste victory from here!

That extra chapter has just taken off in a big way. I am too tired and achy to continue now, but nothing short of the Rapture is going to stop me finishing before bed tomorrow. I am a man on a mission!

NaNoWriDayTwentySix

It should be getting easier now: the finish line is in sight, less than 5000 words away, but rather than sprinting for it, I find myself wading through treacle. The problem is that the story is basically finished. In fact, I was writing the plot so sketchily and so quickly to start with, that it ended at about 14k; I managed to add a twist and get the next act under way, but ran out of steam again about 30k later. The last few days I have just been padding some scenes out, occasionally cheating a little, desperately clutching for an extra word wherever there is one to be found.

There is an epilogue, summarising a sub-plot which suggested itself too late in the process to go back and add in without completely reinventing the timeline and rewriting from the ground up. I could easily make the word count that way, but time no longer allows for it.
There is another scene I would like to have put in earlier, so I might add that either in sequence (although it will make no sense), or as an epi-epilogue, so that I can use it properly when I rewrite.

Yep, that’s right: when I rewrite. Before mid-October I had no real intention of writing this story at all, but now it’s done, I can see the potential in it. It needs a lot of work to beat it into any kind of shape, but right now I think it might be worth doing - later.

Much later.

Obituary: Aidan Qqayle, a leader and a Follower

Aidan Qqayle, preacher and United Colonies leader, has died this week aged 68 Standard Years.

A dedicated Follower of the Creed and much respected man of God, he fought the establishment of the Eight Nations Space Agency until he was called by God to join Litah - the Link Between Tellus and Heaven - and subsequently inherited leadership of the United Colonies from his father, Galford Lomas.

Qqayle was on a tour of the Lomas system, telling United Colonies citizens his testimony and the story of the establishment of the Colonies from his unique perspective.

After a speaking engagement a small group of trouble makers took issue with part of Qqayle's message, and he became embroiled in a riot, in which he sustained serious injuries from which he was unable to recover.

It is a testament to the power of Qqayle's story that a revival of the Creed appears to have started in the City since his departure.

Qqayle was a man of great humility, and those closest to him say that the last thing he would want is to be remembered as a martyr for his faith. Rather, Qqayle saw himself as a deeply flawed individual, who by the grace of God had been allowed to lead the United Colonies and been given the honour of encouraging the widespread adoption of the Creed across the Colonies.

Aidan Qqayle is survived by his wife, Doctor Savana Qqayle, and two sons, Rufus Bornane and Galford Qqayle. Aidan will be buried alongside his father at the original landing site on Lomas Prime.

The story of Aidan Qqayle's involvement in Litah and the United Colonies is told in Countless as the Stars.

NaNoWriDayTwentyOne

It is going surprisingly well at the moment :) especially given the ludicrously slow start it had. The start wasn't quite as slow as my progress report suggests, but it wasn't working to start with so I didn't worry too much about updating my word count... There was a spell of about a week where I was full of cold and the last thing I wanted to do after a day's work was write, especially with the word count targets looming depressingly overhead.

But I have had a few days off work this week, which was always a standby in case of behindness.

I have, as well as the thousand words of nonsense I posted here yesterday, enabled a number of cheat modes in order to catch up, mind, such as:
- tagging every single piece of dialogue, he said pointlessly
- including lengthy IM conversations, complete with screen names
- removing all contractions. Even in IM conversations
- an email complete with to, from, bcc, etc.
- which was subsequently read out to another character
- an in depth summary of Countless as the Stars, to which this is a sequel
- so far at least two passages have been repeated from a different perspective
- a couple more passages pasted from Bible Gateway and had the names changed
- taking some comfort in the fact that the NaNo word count consistently comes to more than MS Word. Which usually comes to more than Write or Die. Shhh!

The story has taken a few odd turns, thrown in to keep the words coming, and is shot through with plot-holes you could lose Wales in, but actually I think it might be worth salvaging at some point. I could probably trim all the superfluous words and pointless scenes and get a reasonable novella out of it if I tried.

I am currently at 37.5k - ahead of the 1667 per day target! - but trying to get to 41k today. I am back at work next week, but if I know I only have to make 1000 words per day I think I might actually survive...

NaNoWriDayTwenty

I wasn't going to post any excerpts from my NaNo (working title Children of the Stars), but this bit turned out to be really good. The overuse of dialogue tags and absence of contractions is a bit distracting, but perfectly fair under the rules of NaNoWriMo. So, it's Chapter Eleven, and Aidan and Savana Qqayle (our heroes from Countless as the Stars, reprising their roles) are contemplating their adventures so far...

'It has been quite a trip, hasn't it?' Savana said, sitting in the small but comfortable guest quarters in the Lomas Two settlement.
'You can say that again,' Aidan said emphatically. 'I think the only thing that might have made it more interesting would have been if my wormhole trip had ended up taking me further afield than it did.'
'Not too far afield, I hope,' Savana said. 'Not back to Tellus, I mean.'
'No,' Aidan agreed. 'Nor as far in the other direction.'
'What were you thinking then?' Savana asked.
'Oh, maybe if it had left me out by the outer rocky planets. Then I could have explored some really new territory,' Aidan said. 'That would have been really interesting.'
'You should do that,' Savana said. 'Take Gally with you though. You two could do with a male bonding trip.'
'Oh, oh,' Aidan said excitedly. 'What if we ended up at Lomas Five or Six, and found the missing StarCities out there.'
'Why would they still be out there? Wouldn't they be able to tell the rest of us were nearby?' Savana asked.
Aidan shrugged. 'Maybe they are trying to get here,' he suggested. 'Or maybe they are deserted. Maybe everyone died by now.'
'Everyone on a StarCity cannot die,' Savana objected. 'They are designed specifically so that cannot happen.'
'Maybe they contracted a virulent disease form a dirty telephone,' Aidan suggested. 'Or had a bloody civil war. Or encountered a stray wormhole...'
'All fairly unlikely,' Savana said.
'Yes,' Aidan agreed, 'but it would have been an interesting trip.'
'Granted,' Savana agreed. 'It would have taken a long time though, wouldn't it?'
'Well, yes,' Aidan agreed, 'but on the other hand, there is no way we should have been able to see as much of the system as we have done in so little time.'
'Hmm,' Savana said. 'So what you are saying is that you should have taken Gally off on your little wormhole trip, harnessed the power of sub-space travel-'
'Sub what now?' Aidan interrupted.
'That is what we will call it,' Savana said. 'The place where the wormholes go will be called sub-space.'
'Isn't that a bit Star Trek?' Aidan asked.
'Well, yes,' Savana admitted, 'but that also makes it a well known and readily identifiable mechanism.'
'Right,' Aidan said, bemused.
'So anyway,' Savana went on. 'You two discover this, then go off and explore the outer planets-'
'And discover a ghost city,' Aidan interjected.
'If you insist,' Savana said. 'And then we go off on our jolly across the system.'
'Exactly,' Aidan agreed.
'Actually, that would make more sense,' Savana said.
'In what way?' he asked.
'Well, Gally and I came out on this big quest,' she explained. 'To try and cure the infertility on Lomas Prime.'
'Yes,' Aidan said. 'What happened with that?'
'Well, nothing,' Savana said. 'Which is my point. Maybe the big quest should have been to find you.'
'But that would be impossible,' Aidan said.
'Not if Gally had been researching wormhole phenomena all his life,' Savana said.
'Yes,' Aidan agreed. 'That could be what he was doing at the beginning of the story, when the lights went out.'
'Aidan, stop talking as if you're a character in a NaNo novel,' Savana said.
'Ok, sorry,' Aidan said.
'Did we ever hear what happened there?' Savana said. 'About the power cut?'
'We did not,' Aidan said with a smile. 'But the readers did.'
Savana threw a cushion at him. 'Nobody reads NaNo novels,' she said.
'Well, if they did,' Aidan said, risking her wrath again, 'they might have seen that Gally was blamed for the power outages by his boss, and he volunteered to come with me in order to get away from her and the settlement that she turned against him.'
'That could be awkward when we get to return,' Savana said.
'Extra point of conflict,' Aidan said, knowingly. 'Just what a NaNo novel needs!'
'Er, quite,' Savana said, bemused.
'Well go on then,' Aida prompted. 'What would you have put in if our lives were a NaNo novel?'
'I think Gally needs a girlfriend,' she said.
'I think he needs two,' Aidan said. 'Conflict, remember?' he added in response to Savana's glare.
'Whatever happens to the Straker twins?' Savana asked. 'Weren't they supposed to appear in this boo- er, part of our lives?'
'Good question,' Aidan said. 'Still, there, er, would probably be a good twenty thousand words to go at this point, so they could still turn up.'
'Twenty thousand, you reckon?' Savana said. 'Well, what do you think will happen to us next then?'
'Well, I imagine that we will press Gally into a relationship with that Sharita girl,' Aidan said.
'Oh, she is nice,' Savana said.
'But she will turn out to be barren,' Aidan said, 'so Gally will hook up with one or more of his virtual girlfriends as well, you know, to-'
'Broaden the gene pool,' Savana interrupted. 'I bet that rule was thought up by a man.'
'That is not very fair,' Aidan protested.
'Says the man with a son by another woman,' Savana grumbled.
'That was your idea,' he reminded her.
'That is another story,' Savana said.
'Yes,' Aidan agreed. 'Countless as the Stars by Steve Trower. Available from stevetrower.co.uk.'
'What are you talking about?' Savana said.
'Sorry, that was not me,' Aidan insisted. 'It was the author, putting a piece of blatant self promotion into my mouth.'
'Should self promotion not be hyphenated?' Savana said.
'In all probability, self promotion should in fact be written with the use of a hyphen,' Aidan said.
'A simple yes would have done,' Savana said.
'In retrospect, I would anticipate that a simple affirmative would have provided the information after which you were inquiring,' Aidan said. 'However, it is my belief that the author is desperately trying to drag this segment out to a nice round one thousand words, and merely wished to ensure the best possible use of the phrase self promotion in the context of the written page.'
'Sorry what?' Savana said.
'I said,' Aidan replied, 'in retrospect, I wou-'
'Now you are just taking the mickey,' Savana interrupted.
'Fair point,' Aidan agreed. 'Is there anything else you would have liked to have done during the course of this nov- er, portion of our lives?'
'How long have we got?' Savana asked.
'About ten words,' Aidan said.
'Well then, no,' Savana said.

NaNoWriDayNineteen

I have just passed the half way mark...

I should have been there earlier, but I struggled yesterday, suddenly ran out of plot and didn't have any idea where things were going. So today I sent my protag to the other side of the planet, abandoned him there and subjected him to the most horrible tortures known to, well, me.

That was probably a bit unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, but it has kept me writing and got me interested in the story again. Whether any of that makes it into the final cut (assuming I ever edit this rubbish) is doubtful, but that's not important right now.

What is important is that I need to keep going, or I will never make it. This tea break is now officially over.

Tuesday Tunes vs CSFF Blog Tour: Shade

I should, of course, still be NaNo-ing, so I'll keep the intro short (unless I can figure out a way to incorporate it in my word count).

This week the CSFF Blog Tour is featuring Christian vampire novel Shade by John Olson, which of course means that Tuesday Tunes is featuring the Top Ten Vampire Songs, personally selected by an elite team of undead pop music fans.

10. Annie Lennox - Love Song for a Vampire
This is horrible, but I couldn't of many songs with vampire in the title. In by default, really.

9. The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into the Sun
This is the first track on the album Rules for Indie Rock Vampires. Isn't it? Well, it should be.

8. The Kinks - Little Miss Queen of Darkness
Nothing to do with vampires, but a nice little Kinks tune from the 60s.

7. Kristin Hersh - Teeth
This is from Kristin's first solo album after leaving the Throwing Muses. It has a swear word in it, and lots of other words that don't really make any sense. You have been warned.

6. Moby - Live Forever
I mayve mentioned before that every top ten should have seven minutes of electronica. So here it is.

5. Arctic Monkeys - Perhaps Vampires is a Bit Strong But...
...I bet they look good on the dancefloor.

4. Living in a Box - Living in a Box
You're just jealous you didn't think of it.

3. Sultans of Ping FC - Teenage Vampire
I blogged the Sultans a while back. I couldn't get Teenage Vampire on mixwit, but everyone needs to hear Where's Me Jumper? so I put that on instead. So sue me.

2. Snow Patrol - How to be Dead
This should probably be the subtitle to Rules for Indie Rock Vampires, shouldn't it.

1. Evanescense - My Immortal
An obvious choice, not only because it's the best song on the list, but also because the pop-goth style of Evanescance is perfect for all things vampiric. And Amy Lee is my favourite rock chick, but that's another story.

Sci-fi song of the week

Is it possible to find a sci-fi related vampire song? Taking the view that vampires belong in realms of fantasy rather than science fiction? Well of course it is. To which end I give you...

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme by Nerf Herder, now playing on the sci-fi songs mixtape.

Oh, and when you've enjoyed all the music, pop round the blog tour, would you? The route is on the last post. Just tell people I said hi - I'd stop by myself, but I should be writing.

CSFF Blog Tour: Shade by John B Olson

We interrupt this NaNoBlogFest for an important announcement...

The CSFF Blog Tour this month is featuring Shade by John Olson, co-author of the Christian sci-fi Oxygen series with Randall Ingermanson.

Now that I've got a sci-fi mention out of my system, Shade is part spiritual warfare of the loosely Peretti style, and part vampire infested urban fantasy. Apparently. Obviously I haven't read it, but from some of the reviews posted on amazon and on the author's website it looks like something I might try and get hold of.

Which, I should point out here, is something this blog tour has been very good for. Living, as I do, in the backwaters (England), I might not have heard about the Christian sf stylings of Robin Parrish, or Austin Boyd, or Kathy Tyers, outside of the tour. But I digress.

Suffice to say that, if Christian speculative fiction is your bag, follow this tour! And follow it this way over the next few days:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Valerie Comer
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Joleen Howell
Jason Isbell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Magma
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

NaNoWriDaySeventeen

It's all gone horribly Pete Tong.

Now, I'm all for characters developing of their own accord during the writing process. It makes the whole experience that bit more interesting if the writer loses a bit of control. But when writing an Old Testament Space Opera, however loosely you base it on the original text, there are certain things you don't want happening, certain aspects of the source material you want to keep.

For instance, when basing a plot thread on the sibling rivalry of Jacob & Esau, you don't want the two characters suddenly turning out to be the wrong brothers. That just makes a total mess of the whole of history...

However, if I can keep my wordcount goal for today, I might keep going anyway and sort it out later.

NaNoDayFifteen

Well, there's been a lot of slow days, and some non-existent days, for one reason or another, but today I think I had got myself back in the game. I have some good writing time in the week ahead, and I have readjusted my targets so I can make good use of it.

And today, thanks in no small part to the Kamikaze mode on Write or Die, my word count is almost back in the realms of respectability. I may also have copied and pasted a few paras from BibleGateway, because I am writing an Old Testament Space Opera, after all.

It is, of course, nothing like I had planned, extremely predictable, and basically a bit rubbish, but I've got past caring. I have worked out that I can write a fairly decent 7-800 words in an evening after Her Babyship leaves me alone. If I can keep that up after NaNo, I should have a first draft of Project Seven knocked up by spring!

NaNoTiTle

I have a working title:

Countless as the Superfluous Adverbs

Well, you gotta keep the wordcount up, haven't you?

NaNoWriDayFive

It's TERRIBLE!! I am writing the most depressing pile of drivel EVER! And I'm not even doing it quickly! Who ever thought this was a good idea?

OK, none of that matters. In November, more than any other time, I have permission to write crap. In fact, it's practically expected, and that's why I didn't want to take on Project Seven. I am literally sketching out an expanded outline at the moment, nothing more. But I have at least got my characters into space now, ready to explore their first new planet.

My main problem is time. With the day job, a demanding 3-year-old, and the house to keep in order, I am only managing about an hour of decent writing time per writing day. Out of which I am getting about 750 words. (Out of which about 50 are worth keeping, I suspect.)

But if I can come out of this month with a habit of writing 750 words of fiction most days - or at least just spending that hour on it - I will have achieved something.

NaNoWriProbOne

OK, so I'm way behind schedule, thanks to not getting anything done for two days, but that's not really the problem. The problem I have at the moment is that, nearly 3000 words into my space opera, nobody has so much as looked at a spaceship yet.

NaNoWriDayOne

Well, so far so good; it's a somewhat rambling start, but I kind of knew where I wanted it to go so I managed to bang my quota out for the day. I don't expect to do so for the next couple of days - pesky real life - but hopefully I'll be able to develop my plan a bit more and stay on top in the long run.

And hopefully the widget over there will update too.

What? What?! WHAT?!!

OK, so it wasn't that big a surprise really. Still a bit sad though, 'cos David Tennant totally rocks the TARDIS. Her Babyship will be distraught, mind. She will be four by the time she sees it, so she may be able to understand the concept of regeneration. Although she'll probably just end up expecting her budgie to turn into a hamster when it drops off its perch.

Anyway, the matter in hand: the eleventh Doctor. There probably isn't an actor alive who hasn't been suggested for the role somewhere on the interweb, but why not join in, eh?

It's hard to pick someone who hasn't been in it recently: Anthony Giles Head or that bloke out of Hustle might be fun. Or for that matter, James Marsters does a decent cockney voice, and he was only in Torchwood, which doesn't count. Actually I don't think being in a previous ep should preclude anyone, although I think recasting a previous Master as the Doctor probably stretches that a bit. Which is a shame, because John Simm (did I mention I met him once?) would otherwise be perfect. (Although, imagine him looking in the mirror the first time after regenerating.... 'What? What!? WHAAAAT!!!!?' and then meeting Martha Jones again....)

Or, or: Philip Glenister! 'You great... soft... sissy... girlie... nancy... French... Man United supporting CYBERPOOF!!'

For laughs: Bill Bailey. For deadpan laughs: Jack Dee.

Now I'm not sure if it's possible for a Time Lord to become a Time Lady. I don't know enough about Time Lord physiology, never mind the social and relational difficulties that might ensue (although, with Russel T Davies also going, there is a possibility that any female Doctor may not still fancy Rose Tyler). But if there was a female Doc, it would simply have to be Billie. Dr 10's still unrequited love (insert technobabble here) makes him subconsciously turn himself into the dead spit of Rose.

No, I'm still into the Bill Bailey idea.

Tuesday Tunes v CSFF Blog Tour: Beyond the Reflection's Edge

Well, it would hardly be a blog tour without a Top Ten, so here we go: the Top Ten mirror-based songs:

10. Diana Ross & the Supremes - Reflections
I probably would have gone for the Four Tops' version in preference, but this was on mixwit.

9. Velvet Underground - I'll be Your Mirror
Taken from the album with the banana on the sleeve.

8. Human League - Mirror Man
Ah, the New Romantics....

7. Michael Jackson - Man in the Mirror
Now I don't normally watch The X Factor once all the weirdos have been laughed out of the auditions, but I did like this song the other night. So that's my British telly reference for the tour covered...

6. UB40 - Looking Down at My Reflection
And here are my white Brummies doing reggae.

5. The Kinks - Mirror of Love
Not vintage Ray, from the Rock Opera Preservation.

4. Hawkwind - Mirror of Illusion
There's always a spot for Hawkwind in my Top Tens.

3. Enigma - The Screen Behind the Mirror
They never quite matched the boogying monk madness of their debut CD, but I like 'em.

2. Duran Duran - The Reflex
Ok, so I got a bit stuck.

1. Petra - Magic Mirror
Not only the perfect song for the book, but by my favourite Christian rock band! Hooray! Sadly, not available for the mixtape. Booo!

So here is this week's mixtape for your listening pleasure while you wait for your copy of Beyond the Reflection's Edge...

CSFF Blog Tour - Beyond the Reflections Edge

Once again the CSFF blog tour snuck up on me like a thief in the night... but thankfully it left my laptop so I can make a passing comment on Bryan Davis's Beyond the Reflection's Edge, a sort of teen urban fantasy adventure novel with a bit of a Sliders feel and an inter-dimensional mirror motif.

At this point I could write a witty little introduction to the book, but Steve Rice already did that.

I could review it, but there are already good reviews here and here. Plus, I haven't read it, which I am led to believe is a prerequisite for a fair and unbiased review.

I could have interviewed the author, but Shane Deal did that already. I suppose I could have interviewed Shane, but that would just be silly.

I could direct you to the least read blog on the web, where there are some interesting character analysiseses, but I wouldn't like to cause a blogger to change his title. So if you read it, you didn't here it from me, ok?

Or, I could direct you to the rest of the tour, where more bloggers will be posting their thoughts on the book. Like this:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Justin Boyer
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Jackie Castle
Valerie Comer
Courtney
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Shane Deal
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Marcus Goodyear
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Timothy Hicks
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Kait
Mike Lynch
Magma
Terri Main
Margaret
Rachel Marks
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Greg Slade
James Somers
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespac
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

My official NaNo project

Sorry, posting has been a little erratic of late hasn't it? Well I'm afraid that's not going to improve any time soon, as I have officially signed up for National Novel Writing Month, as evidenced by the appearance of the wordcount widget on the sidebar. And I have decided on my project.

I ruled Project Seven out, I want to figure out the extra character first, and because it's the story I really want to write, I want to give it proper time and attention.

I do have some (though I say it myself) brilliantly funny ideas, but the reason my writing floundered somewhat when I was younger is that I was trying to be Douglas Adams, and just couldn't be consistently funny for a sufficient wordcount, so comic is off the menu too. I'm keeping the ideas, because some of them are good; some lend themselves obviously to sketches, others I may keep for short stories, or have a comic novel ticking along for when I get bored of the seriousness of Project Seven.

So I will be digging out the notes on the sequel to Countless as the Stars, and working on that during November. My current problem with that is that I don't have a title, but hopefully one will present itself during the writing process.

Tuesday Tunes Meme

Spotted this at Velcro City Tourist Board last week, and thought it looked like fun.

The rules are simple:

• Choose a singer/band/group
• Answer the questions using ONLY titles of songs by that singer/band/group

I’m going to be psychadelic weirdos Porcupine Tree...

1. Are you male or female? Hymn
2. Describe yourself: A Smart Kid; Prodigal
3. What do people feel when they’re around you? Normal
4. How would you describe your previous relationship? Futile; Shesmovedon
5. Describe your current relationship: This Is No Rehearsal
6. Where would you want to be now? The Nostalgia Factory
7. How do you feel about love? The Start of Something Beautiful
8. What’s your life like? Stranger by the Minute
9. What would you ask for if you had only one wish? Towel
10. Say something wise: The Creator Has a Mastertape
11. What do you want to do/be in the future? Arriving Somewhere But Not Here
12. Describe your home life: The Sound of No-one Listening
13. What would your last words be? Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before it is Recycled
14. Describe your car: Rainy Taxi
15. Describe your style: Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape

That was a reasonably entertaining waste of a few minutes, and also good practice if I do opt for the comic NaNo; one of my semi-formed characters talks entirely in song titles (or possibly lyrics, I'm not entirely clear how it works yet...). I wanted to call her Julie Finkle, but annoyingly the song is called The Ballad of Julie Finkle. Still, there must be plenty of alternatives.

Traditionally I'm supposed to tag people at this point, but I'm not sure who visits any more, so I'll just leave an open invitation to anyone who passes by. If you try it, pop back and let me know, ok?

Sci-fi Song of the Week

Might as well stick with the Porcupines, eh? I couldn't find my first choice, Jupiter Island, so instead added to the mixtape this week is Last Chance to Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled. Which, like a lot of Porcupine Tree songs, wouldn't sound too out of place in a comic fantasy plot...

NaNoWriMo

It's October, and that can only mean two things:

1. Her Babyship will turn 3 any minute now (Eeek!)
2. NaNoWriMo is almost upon us... (eeeeek!)

Her Babyship has been (fairly or otherwise) blamed for my previous NaNo expeditions getting derailed, but nonetheless I am contemplating entering the fray again this year...

The main reason for this is that the often mentioned, never described Project Seven has been slowly developing in my mind over the last 12 months, and with the exception of an extra character I want to include but haven't quite worked out how, is all done bar the writing.

This is the story I really want to write at the moment, but the flipside of that is that I'm not sure rushing out a 50k first draft is what I want for it.

I've been looking at my various unstarted ideas and works-in-progress for something I care slightly less about to get me in the novel-writing flow again instead, and the main thing that jumps out at me as having sufficient prep to see out the month is the sequel to Countless as the Stars, which I told myself I wouldn't write until Countless had built up the cult following to make it worthwhile.

The third option remains the comic fantasy route, which appeals because I won't feel obliged to make any sense, and it will be fun enough for me to want to keep going. Pretty persuasive arguments actually, now I come to write them down.

Anyway, which of my writerly buds out there are facing the challenge next month?

CSFF Blog Tour: More Marcher Lords

The other day I mentioned that nothing in the launch catalogue from Marcher Lord Press made me want to rush an order in. So, in the spirit of constructive criticism, I thought I should lend a few ideas about what I would rush to buy. Such as:

1. A sort of cyberpunk allegory (if cyberpunk isn't too 1990s for the Christian market) - like a Christian novel version of Tron or The Matrix.
2. An epic time travel story, reaching from the 21st Century to Christ's life on Earth, and rescuing Him from crucifixion...
3. A futuristic Jekyll and Hyde, where our hero meets his Doppelganger - a man with the same character flaws and weaknesses, but instead of choosing to resist the temptations they led to, chose the easy route and embraced his dark side. What happens when the two meet?
4. An urban fantasy in which our protagonist encounters a man with the ability to remove the darkness of his past. Presumably this man 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, is he a kind of Christ-figure, or is he just removing the negative so that the positive results also disappear? For in deleting that one mistake, that one bad decision, our hero loses all the good that cam from it: all that he learnt, the ways he became a stronger person, the people he helped when they found themselves in the same situation.
5. A near future dystopian Earth, where the cult of celebrity and an increasingly hedonistic populace bestows power and influence on porn stars, and a lonely Christian voice rails against an increasingly powerful adult industry.
6. A classic science fiction tale, based on the raw and gritty stuff in the Old Testament, putting them in a sci-fi setting so the essential truths can be more easily grasped by a sci-fi reader. Sort of an Old Testament Space Opera, if you will...

By a staggering coincidence, I have stories along the lines of the above in various states of (in)completion, so if Jeff (or anyone else) has any thoughts about which I should finish first, well, you know where the comment button is. ;)

CSFF Blog Tour: The Marcher Lords Press on

This week your favourite Blog Tour and mine will be rolling round to Jeff Gerke's place, Marcher Lord Press. In 13th Century England there was no more noble calling than to be a Marcher Lord, defending England's borders against the Welsh.

Of course, things have moved on a bit since then, and nowadays Marcher Lords are out on the borderlands of fiction, setting up an outpost for Christian speculative fiction. Or, as Jeff Gerke puts it, 'weird' Christian fiction. Now that, as you might imagine, is an idea I can relate to.

And if you like the sound of that too, wander over to the site, where you can sign up for updates and the chance to win special launch day prizes. (Don't forget to tell them I sent you!)

There's also two bonus download books that you can get for nowt if you order something on October 1st. Hooray!

CSFF Blog Tour: Marcher Lord Press

This week your favourite Blog Tour and mine will be rolling round to Jeff Gerke's place, Marcher Lord Press. We've visited him before, way back when, to see his other place, Where The Map Ends. But now, all the excitement is at MLP which is about to launch its first books on October 1st.

So what can we expect on this great and hopefully enlightening day?

Well, there's Hero, Second Class, which at a (admittedly brief) glance at the first chapter, would appear to be a comic fantasy of sorts. Not normally my thing, with the notable exception of good Pratchett. Maybe I'll come back to the sample chapter later.

Then there's Summa Elvetica, about a sort of Catholic Church-esque establishment in a classical elf and troll infested fantasy world. Those sort of worlds make my head hurt.

Fighting sci-fi's corner is The Personifid Invasion, sequel to The Personifid Project, which I didn't like as much as I wanted to.

Oh dear. I'd have to say I'm a little bit disappointed there then. But - let's look on the bright side here - just because there's nothing I would rush straight out and order on the launch list, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop watching MLP. I like the spread of sub-genres on the launch list (which is obviously the idea!) and it gives me cause to think that there will probably be something for me coming soon.

Weird Christian fiction. We love it. And so to these bloggers:

Brandon Barr Justin Boyer Keanan Brand Kathy Brasby Jackie Castle Valerie Comer Karri Compton Courtney CSFF Blog Tour Stacey Dale D. G. D. Davidson Janey DeMeo Jeff Draper April Erwin Karina Fabian Kameron M. Franklin Andrea Graham Todd Michael Greene Katie Hart Timothy Hicks Joleen Howell Jason Joyner Kait Tina Kulesa Mike Lynch Terri Main Margaret Shannon McNear Rebecca LuElla Miller Nissa John W. Otte Steve Rice Ashley Rutherford Hanna Sandvig Mirtika or Mir's Here Greg Slade James Somers Steve Trower Speculative Faith Jason Waguespac Laura Williams Timothy Wise

Tuesday Tunes: Reasons to Be Cheerful

Because this is a family show, I am obliged to start Tuseday Tunes this week with a Parental Advisory for naughty words. If that sort of thing offends you, you probably shouldn’t read this post, and on no account should you listen to Reasons to Be Cheerful: the Best of Ian Dury.

With that done, this week I would like to recommend Reasons to be Cheerful, double CD of highlights from the career of urban poet Ian Dury. I dare say there’s nothing here that diehard fans won’t already have at least once, but I’m not a diehard fan. I was merely aware of some glaring ommisions in my music collection – primarily Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick and (of course) Reasons To Be Cheerful – and this collection was a handy and inexpensive way to fill those gaps and acquaint myself with the rest of Mr Dury’s work.

So apart from those big hits I mentioned, essential tracks include What a Waste, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Clever Trevor, and the theme song from the 80s TV show of Adrian Mole. And for your money you also get a few tracks from Dury’s early career with Kilburn & the High Roads, plus a couple recorded as the Music Students and a whole lot more.

Including the track There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards, which sprung to mind as I wrote my previous post as it contains the lines:

Einstein can't be classed as witless;
He claimed atoms were the littlest.
When you did a bit of splitting-em-ness
Frighten everybody shitless.

There ain't half been some clever bastards.
Probably got help from their mum (who had help from her mum).

If you can live with the swear words (and there's one track on the album I always skip because of them), for five of your Earth Pounds this is well worth investing in if you don't already have the well known Dury songs on your iPod.

There ain’t half been some clever bastards. Ian Dury was undoubtedly one of them.

Sci-fi Song of the Week

Yes, there is a sci-fi related Ian Dury song; and no, it doesn't have any rude bits in it. It hasn't made it onto the mixtape yet, but hopefully I'll sort that out soon. In the meantime, track down, if you can, Superman's Big Sister by Ian Dury & The Blockheads.

Phursday Photos: Doon Bay at evening

So, is everyone still here then?

Well, based on the evidence currently available, it would appear that booting up the Large Hadron Collider (I wonder how long it took to come up with that name?) has so far failed to bring about the end of the universe, or even planet Earth. That must have been an almighty anti-climax to all the doomsday merchants. (Although, if anybody has experienced any space-time anomalies, or been eaten by a micro-black hole, please do leave a comment.)

In the near future the Big Bang machine will try to recreate the moment after the creation of the universe, and hence discover exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here. Presumably that means they will create a whole new universe (or something even more bizarrely inexplicable) somewhere under the Alps.

Part of that, apparently, involves finding the hypothetical Higgs bosun, the particle responsible for supervising other particles of the universe’s deck crew. If we’re really lucky, they won’t find it, and having proven the non-existence of God-particles will have to recalibrate the whole of particle physics.

If we’re really really lucky, in between discovering the nature of dark matter, and opening the gate to parallel universes, they will also discover all manner of higher dimensions, such as those in which angels and demons operate. Imagine having to rewrite the whole of physics to take into account the fact that you just proved the existence of God.

So, potentially lots of exciting ground for us sci-fi writers to tread there, provided, of course the men in white coats don’t make too many startling discoveries too soon…

Tuesday Tunes: Queenadreena

I lost touch with the new music scene quite a while ago. It didn't phone, didn't answer my e-mails...

And so I remained largely oblivious to the existence of QueenAdreena until quite recently.

Which is a shame, because from the speaker-ruining opening chords of Love Your Money, up until KatieJane Garside left and they became a bit pants, I was completely hooked on Daisy Chainsaw.

So as soon as I discovered that KJ had hooked up with Chainsaw axeman Crispin Gray again and formed QueenAdreena, I had to check them out. And their debut album from way back in 2000, Taxidermy, did not disappoint. In fact, once I get it in my head that I need to listen to some demented goth punk, it tends to stay on my CD player for days. It's that good.

Most of the tracks are more melodic than Daisy Chainsaw - almost as if KatieJane learnt to sing in the intervening years ;) - but still the vocals goes from innocent and girly to mad shouty harridan from one track to the next. There seems to be a lot more variety to the material, too; Eleventeen kind of blended into one big loud noise (yeah, and me, a fan!) at times, but on Taxidermy, all the songs are different.

So, stand out tracks? Well, most of the CD is pretty darn good, but opener Cold Fish (if only for the line 'splish, splish, splish'. Genius!); Yesterday's Hymn at the mellow end of the spectrum; and Friday's Child for a good old fashioned punk rock thrash.

The reason I mention this all now, is that KatieJane just released a much more mellow sounding album under the name of Ruby Throat, which, if I can track down a copy any time, I might review later.

In the meantime, if you haven't heard Love Your Money, go and listen to it. Truly a classic of our time; even QueenAdreena don't make 'em like that any more.

Sci-fi Song of the Week

A slightly random choice this week: Metal Mickey by Suede. Apart from the title, it has nothing at all to do with science fiction, but was, allegedly, written about KatieJane. Never let it be said that I would let such a tenuous link go unnoticed.

Election Day

So since the blog wandered accidentally into dystopian territories, I’ve been kind of pondering how I would write Election Day as a Christian dystopia. Where would I let my little five point recipe from a couple of posts back take me?

Well, I could go with the Christian fundamentalists, corrupted by power, as we saw in Broken Angel on the blog tour. But I think I would rather go the other way: religion repressed, the State becoming an all-powerful, self-serving ultra-secular organisation. Technology, consumerism or any number of worldly 'gods' could easily take the place of God, depending on the upheaval that led to the shift in power and the decline of religion.

The religiously-inclined (assuming, for the sake of a story, that some small numbers still exist) would quickly find themselves an under-class, abused, imprisoned, or hiding out in secret churches. (You see, even now, it’s hard to conceive these things without thinking ‘holocaust’.)

I think we would all agree that outlawing sex in an Orwellian way would render any story too far beyond belief for any useful purpose. I think the approach of Southland Tales – the cult of celebrity bestowing power and influence on a former porn star – is a more realistic extrapolation from 2008, so I would probably explore that more. I like the idea of a lonely voice railing against an increasingly powerful porn industry.

Yes, I think I may have just added something to my WIPlist...

Creating the perfect dystopia (part 2)

1. Create Utopia.
2. Put people in charge.

Phursday Photos: Scottish scenes

So I spent last week in the Scottish lowlands, where I discovered the relative nature of terms such as 'wet', and 'sunny'. I also learnt that you can't play I-spy with a two year old, even an intelligent one on the verge of three. There are only so many guesses you can make when posed: 'I spy with my little eye, something geninning with... lamp-post!'

And, thanks to the marvels of digital photography, I took rather a lot of photos, only a select few of which I will bore the internet with in the near future...

Dramatic skies over Loch Ken

A full rainbow from Sweetheart Abbey

Windswept coast at Sandyhills

Dead tree near Threave Castle

Creating the perfect dystopia

By most definitions, dystopian fiction has been around about as long as science fiction; certainly there are elements of dystopia in HG Wells’ world of Morlocks and Eloi. The grandaddy of dystopia will probably always be recognised as Nineteen Eighty-Four, but several common dystopian themes – genetic engineering, indoctrination, the loss of individuality, and the World State – appeared in Brave New World some years earlier.

Dystopia come in two basic flavours: corrupted pseudo-utopia; and downright nasty-and-proud-of-it totalitarian regime. Both types, and their many variations, typically share a number of traits.

1. The police state - World State, The Party, or whatever you want to call it. A more recent alternative (Snow Crash) is to have global corporations rather than governments in control.
2. A class system gone mad. The powerful get ever more powerful and corrupt, everyone else gets an increasingly raw deal. Genetic engineering often plays some role in this.
3. Sex. Sex is either banned (Nineteen Eighty-Four) or removed from the act of procreation and encouraged as recreation from childhood (Brave New World). The theory is that strong emotional bonds distract from loyalty to the State.
4. Religion – or specifically, lack thereof, because it also diminishes loyalty to the Party.
5. Global upheaval. Somewhere in the back story of your dystopia there lurks some war, revolution or ecological or other disaster which somehow facilitated the shift in power.

The thing about dystopian fiction is that it seems increasingly close to reality. Some time in the late 20th century the western world became Orwellian enough to necessitate the word ‘Orwellian’. Big Brother – even before being hijacked by Endemol – became a universally recognised term for the ‘surveillance society’ we now live in.

A case in point: I mentioned in passing last week that I have an unstarted story idea – more of a setting I suppose – based on the idea of an election in a totalitarian state. The idea had been on my notepad for some years before events in Zimbabwe this year rendered the whole idea factual.

Well that's a few thoughts on dystopia then. Next time I'll try and wrangle with fitting Christianity into a dystopian story.

Tuesday Tunes v CSFF Blog Tour: Broken Angel

I know you've all been looking forward to this, wondering whether I'm going to go with a Top Ten Angel songs (Eurythmics are number one, There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)), or the Top Ten Broken records (Broken Wings by Mister Mister).

Well, no more bets, the results are in, and here they come... the Top Ten Dystopia-related tunes:
10. Arcadia - Election Day
The lyrics read like they were translated from the Mandarin on the cheap, so they may or may not be related to a dystopia. Election Day is, however, the title of my unstarted dystopian work in progress.
9. The Police - Every Breath You Take
These lyrics definitely aren't dystopia-related, but there is something decidedly Big Brother about The Police watching every move you make.
8. Blur - The Universal
The video riffs on A Clockwork Orange, and the song tells of satellites in every home...
7. Radiohead - Karma Police
Taken from the dystopia themed album OK Computer, this sounds like a spiritual fiction variant on the Thought Police.
6. Iron Maiden - Brave New World
Named after some book, apparently.
5. Gary Numan & Tubeway Army - Down in the Park
From the album Replicas, a sort of soundtrack to a dystopian novel Numan never wrote, this is a particularly dark little number.
4. David Bowie - 1984
Late glam-era Bowie, the album Diamond Dogs included anumber of songs from an aborted glam-rock musical adaption of 1984.
3. Nine Inch Nails - Survivalism
From yet another dystopian concept album, Year Zero.
2. Eurythmics - Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
This, however, is from the actual movie soundtrack of the 1984 movie, er, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
1. Zafer & Evans - In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)
Sixties one hit wonders tell a depressing tale of the future.

Here's the mixtape, give it a listen, and then order up Broken Angel while you're in a suitably dystopian mood.

Sci-fi Song of the Week

Well, really I could have picked any one of those dystopia tunes, but, well, here's one more for luck. Since we already had one Radiohead track in te Top Ten, I had to leave out 2+2=5, which again takes its title from the ultimate dystopia, 1984.

CSFF Blog Tour: Broken Angel.

This week I am literally on tour, so this post is brought to you by the wonders of modern technology all the way from last week. I could have just made my excuses and skipped this one, but the subject intrigued me. (And no, obviously that doesn't mean I've read it. Maybe if I had been paying attention earlier on I would have done though.) So I won't be able to respond to any comments (which are of course welcome) or read other posts on the tour for a week or so, but hopefully I'll catch up later.

Anyway, the subject which so intrigued me is that of a Christian dystopia, which by any reasonable definition should be an oxymoron. Publishers Weekly describes Broken Angel by Sigmund Brouwer like this:

In this addictively readable futuristic Christian dystopia, Brouwer takes readers inside a state run by literalistic, controlling fundamentalists. There, reading is a serious crime; citizens are drugged into submission; and those who break rules are either sent to slave labor factories or stoned to death. Occasionally, a few brave souls try to escape to 'Outside.'

Which, at first reading, sounds a bit Logan's Run and a bit Farenheit 451, but I guess the police state being based on a severely distorted form of fundamentalist Christianity, and suppressing the real Truth, might give it a distinct twist, especially written from a Christian viewpoint.

As it follows on from the last couple of films I reviewed here as well as fitting in with this tour, I plan to wax lyrical on the subject of dystopia later in the week. Unless I didn't get around to it last week, in which case I'll do it later. I hope you'll come back and read what I have to say about it anyway.

As I wrote this, there was no official list of participants, so once you've visited the author's site, coolreading.com, and ordered Broken Angel from amazon, why not drop by the CSFF Blog Tour page and see who else is touring this month?

Friday Review - A Scanner Darkly

Philip K Dick was a man who knew his dystopias - Blade Runner being possibly the definitive movie dystopia.

A Scanner Darkly is nothing like Blade Runner. For one thing the rotoscoped animation gives the film a uniquely twisted look, which allows for surreal moments befitting the subject matter; for another, it’s a far more personal dystopia, one where America has lost the war on drugs and the obligatory police state is dedicated to tracking down those behind Substance D. More importantly, Scanner is apparently more faithful to the novel than some film adaptations, as befits what was, a semi-autobiographical story. (I can’t comment directly on this myself, because it is an unwritten rule that I cannot watch a PKD adaptation if I’ve read the book, and vice versa.)

Although it starts out sounding like just another stoner movie - the comedic antics of three strung out housemates, one of whom is completely failing to have sex with his girlfriend – it soon develops into a serious look at the effects of addiction, notably on Bob Arctor, an undercover agent who got hooked on Substance D while trying to infitrate the supply chain, and his understandably paranoid flatmates.

Paranoia is followed by schizophrenia and ultimately extreme withdrawal - and then the plot starts getting really twisty.

This is definitely one to watch, although it’s been around a while, so if you haven’t already, you really should. Unless, that is, you really don’t like films with a smattering of sex and a lot of naughty words. And all the drugs, of course. Or if you don’t like films with humour, sadness, philosophy, great visuals, and commentary on the issues facing the world today.

Podcastle: Cup and Table

Regular readers may recall that I don’t get fantasy. Nonetheless, I do keep half an eye on the feed for Podcastle, just in case a story comes along that straddles the genre borders or otherwise grabs my attention.

Cup and Table by Tim Pratt was one such story. It caught my attention primarily for being a Holy Grail story, and turned out to be just such a genre-straddling stories – it has a dash of time travel, and with the addition of some spandex it could have been a superhero story – but at heart it’s the sort of urban fantasy that Joss Whedon made me a fan of all those years ago.

I liked the world, I liked the anti-heroes of the Table, and I think I liked what it said about God. But what sticks in my mind, apart from the ending, is the character of Carlsbad. Here is an entity made up of the collective evil of mankind. I’ve no idea how original that concept is in fantasy literature, and I don’t really care. It appeals to me. It appeals to me as an obvious parallel to so many things in the real world, like the porn industry, an entity whose existence depends on the collective lust of mankind. Same goes for drugs, weapons… ours is a world stalked by Carlsbad and many others like him. I guess that’s another idea to add to the story stew constantly bubbling away in my head…

Anyway: Cup and Table. If you’re prepared to accept that it’s a story entirely about bad guys, and has a bit of swearing in it, it’s definitely worth a listen. And, Tim, if you're reading, I could definitely stand to hear more from this world. ;)

Sci-fi Song of the Week

I will come back soon and start posting properly, but just to prove I haven't died, I've added a little song to the mixtape to celebrate the imminent release of The Clone Wars.

There isn't a level on which this song fails to work for me:
Kinks fan - check
Star Wars fan - check
Weird sense of humour - check
Special affinity for Yoda - check and mate.

So if you can check two or more of the above (and let's face it, if you can't you're in the wrong place), I'm sure you'll enjoy Yoda by Weird Al Yankovic.

Incidentally, the Kinks song from which the tune is borrowed, Lola, gave me the name for my last Mini.

Podcasserole

I think I've finished tinkering with my sidebar for the moment, the latest addition being a second blog roll, one for the podcasts I regularly listen to. A podcast roll. Or a podcasserole, if you like.

There's a mix of sci-fi, writing and the Bible in there - it's like a podcasty microcosm of this blog, or at least, what I originally intended this blog to look like. Ho hum.

I recommend all of them, if you have the time. If you haven't got the time, just do Escape Pod and the DAB.