April; Science Festival

Dugong Feeding

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

It feels like the calm before the storm in some ways.
Anyway, on Tuesday I went to a talk on topology that Madeleine’s work was putting on as part of the Science Festival. Interesting stuff and a look at how it’s future in helping in computer modeling of various kinds… And a light meal at Spoon afterwards. In a previous incarnation, it’s where J.K. wrote some of the early Harry Potter.
On Sunday it was on with the Science Festival so we got out early and had brunch at the new branch of Porto & Fi on the Mound. Very nice, and once their outdoor chairs and table arrive, it’ll be a great place to sit outside – off the pavement, at the wide bit at the foot of Lady Stair’s Close, with a magnificent view north.

Then we visited the Bang Goes the Theory Science Show roadshow beside the Galleries and had fun there – me in a space helmet and M with a snake! Fortunately there wasn’t a snake in the space helmet!
Next up was a tour of the outdoor photography exhibition in St. Andrew’s Square. This year it was of undersea images of all sorts of critters, from shrimp to orca, with a couple of unexpected dugongs! Yay! Usually you only see pics of manatees, so it was neat seeing their sirenean cousins… The square was mobbed, so we retreated to Princes Street Gardens for icecream. Not often I go there because it’s quieter!

M had a meeting to go to, so I went and climbed Blackford Hill and continued reading Kings of Infinity by Eric Brown lying in the sun at the top.
Then duty called and it was time to go round to one of M’s aunts to meet up with her brother & family up from the south for a few days… nice drinks on the balcony, though!

And on Friday we’re off to hear what one of the founder members of Cabaret Voltaire is up to these days. It’s at Inspace, so it’s bound to be twiddly electronics and uncomfortable seating!

Son of the Tree – Jack Vance

Son of the Tree – Jack Vance

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

I’ve just blasted through Son of the Tree, a fairly early Jack Vance novel.
I quite enjoyed it – it’s only 120 pages long, or so, and originally appeared in the early 1950s in a pulp magazine – although it’s not really that good. Druids on a distant planet worship a giant tree. They think neighbouring planets would appreciate the opportunity to do likewise!
Into the mix comes our Earthan protagonist, looking for the man who stole his girl from him back on Earth. He becomes aircar chauffeur to a highly-ranked Druid and embroiled in a plot which isn’t unravelled until right at the end, in confrontation and disaster! But he gets the girl! Well, no, not that one, a different one…
It’s one of only a couple of Vance’s books that Underwood Miller didn’t publish in hardback; looking at the cover, I wish they had! Covers like this may explain why he never became as famous as he perhaps should have!

Some Books by & about J. G. Ballard

Some Books by & about J. G. Ballard

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

So J. G. Ballard has died.
Not unexpected, but still very sad.
The first novel I remember reading of his was The Drought, or maybe The Wind From Nowhere (which should be in the picture, but must have been misplaced on my bookshelves). Strange post-disaster chronicles, concentrating as much on people’s obsessions and how they felt, than about responding to their changed circumstances in appropriate (for mainstream sf) ways…
I was also reading other ‘new wave’ authors who were following in his footsteps, looking into crystaline pools in metal salt marches like M. John Harrison or brooding on the futility of trying re-ignite humanities dreams like Mark S. Geston. Michael Moorcock and his doomed heroes… the strange introspective novels of Barry Malzberg…
Ballard was there before them all, creating strange new landscapes – dare I mention empty swimming pools! – and broken characters who acted out their hopes an dreams.
Some great novels and short stories, also some lesser work in his later years which seemed unable to break new territory, although it remained very readable, as he set stories against the harsh light of the French Riviera or the repetitive landscapes of modern suburbia.
From the early 80s on, he wrote quite widely about his early wartime life (his article in Foundation 24 was, I think, the first major autobiographical piece, later expanded into Empire of the Sun) and his life in the 50s & 60s in The Kindness of Women (with the accompanying press stories of inaccuracies and divergences from the facts).
Despite this, he revisited many of the same events again in his autobiography Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton, his most recent and, I believe, final book, written after his terminal illness had been diagnosed…

He’ll be missed.

[ this replaces a very similar post made yesterday, because I wanted to change the picture and it wouldn't work otherwise... ]

Fame at last!

Fame at last!

Originally uploaded by miketransreal

A while back Jennifer Rardin e-mailed me to thank me for mentioning her latest book on the Transreal lists of books received; she also mentioned that she was aiming to set one of her books in Scotland…
I offered to assist with general knowledge and background info, thinking nothing would come of it

Time passes, and then the first request for help arrives… wouild a b&b maybe 20 minutes drive from Inverness have cable or satelite? Hmmm…
Which direction from Inverness, please, before I can answer!
And so it goes, slang, road surfaces, law, types of trees… no idea yet how much was useful beyond general background for her imagining the scenes, but I hope some of it was!

The Graveyard Shifts (and out come the freaks!)

On Tuesday 29th, it was Neil Gaiman evening! He was appearing, courtesy of The Children’s Bookshop at Holy Corner, at the Churchill Theatre to promote his new release, The Graveyard Book. The theatre was a sell-out, with a mixed audience of both his older fans and many parents & children, who were fans of his books for younger readers…

He read chapter 5 in it’s entirety, claiming to be wanting a change from chapter 1… The book features a young boy living in a cemetary, with each chapter set two years on as he grows up. In C5 he’s 10 and gets caught up in old customs, culminating in a Dense Macabre (or mac-a-bree as it’s often pronounced in the book).
After the reading he answered written questions that people had apparently submitted beforehand (Who knows? Maybe they’re the same at all the events) and then prepared for the mass signing onslaught. We left before that got underway – it looked extremely disorganised when we left, but no doubt some sort of order was imposed… Not sure how much thought had been given to switching from a seated audience, to a frenzied mob wanting to be first in a queue, any queue!
Good fun!

Last night was another Halloween event – Writer’s Bloc held their annual horror event at the Beehive Inn in the Grassmarket – they had a private room with a bar, with another raised area through some connecting archways. It felt a bit awkward initially, as the main room wasn’t really big enough, but it all worked out ok and certainly felt more fun than the Three Sisters ever did…
Several long works were interspersed by beer breaks and short ‘B’ movie trailers they had written, often loaded with puns… Aileron Smart solved a series of dastardly scone-related murders and the reprobates of Boleskin Academy made a welcome 3rd appearance following their pantomime antics a few years ago. And Sidney the Duck gained revenge on a nasty little boy!

Definitely good fun, although the venue still isn’t quite right…

edit to add: if anybody’s wondering, the title’s an oblique reference to a Was (not Was) track, The Woodwork Squeaks, And Out Come The Freaks.

A Rainy Night in Glasgow…

The weather may well have been worse in Edinburgh, actually, but never mind…

American Music Club were playing in a venue we hadn’t been to before – Stereo in Renfield Street Lane. Upstairs was a busy bar, serving what looked like good organic food (which we didn’t have time to sample) and downstairs was a fairly basic, large basement, fitted with a bar at one end and a small stage at the other. We caught the end of the 2nd of two short support slots; a not bad singer/guitarist.

After a very short turnaround, AMC came on – a revised line up from a few months ago when we saw them in Oran Mor; two of that gig’s support group (Bee and Flower) were playing bass and guitar, the new drummer was still there, and Vudi and Mark Eitzel.

Drumkit, after the gig

It was a fairly short set – about an hour – and Mark didn’t seem that happy some of the time. A supporting pillar in the middle of the stage got in his way a few times early on but, apart from a brief equipment failure (one of ther guitars needed a new battery fitted) it was pretty good stuff, with a cracking version of Home followed by a great version of Windows on the World to close. The encore finished with the two guitarists messing with feedback, etc. for several minutes after the song finished and the rest had left the stage – great slabs of noise!

Afterwards we met a couple of guys who had seen them about as often as I have, including the famous ‘gig in a tent’ on top of Calton Hill during the Festival years ago… Then a train back to Haymarket, a taxi home, and so to bed.

On the train I managed to read quite a bit of a paperback of Joe Haldeman‘s The Accidental Time Machine (which I had started in hardback last year) and found that it reminded me a lot of some of Keith Laumer‘s work! I suspect that’s not necessarily a comparison Haldeman would appreciate! I’m over 1/2 way through, so I’ll probably finish it… Parts of it also reminded me of one of Brian Stableford‘s early-ish books, The Walking Shadow and also Ian Watson‘s story, The Very Slow Time Machine.

To Lay Bare the Brains of Earth

Alien mind-parasites!

I’ve just re-read this short novel for the first time in ages. It’s normally placed quite low in the ratings of Vance’s work but I still like it!

I still think it could have made a great ‘B’ movie, or an Outer  Limits/Twilight Zone episode; aliens, mind-control, weird hand-waving physics – it’s even got treasure (sort of)!
In fact, they could still make it today! What’s Will Smith up to these days!?

Humanoid aliens abduct an Earth scientist and take him to their war-ravaged planet to enlist his help in eradicating an evil menace.
But are they evil? Or even a menace? Probably, but everybody’s thoughts and emotions are being tampered with and the truth is a bit more obscure that the aliens would have it. Much anguish and brain-storming occurs but it’s no surprise that the plucky humans come through!

While it does involve the human mind and it’s latent powers, it’s certainly not Vance’s first foray into the territory – his very first story had the hero venturing into a virtual landscape of the villain’s making, and Parapsyche, The Phantom Milkman and Telek all explore some of the same themes… Probably others, too, that I’m forgetting.
Actually, speaking of Telek, I’d say Brains of Earth certainly comes higher up any ‘best of’ list…

And retitling it ‘Nopalgarth’ wasn’t necessary, IMO; the original title was part of a great line from the book!

Fiction Factory

No, I’m not going to dig out my vinyl copy of Throw the Warped Wheel Out!

I got hold of a book called The Fiction Factory which is a collection of collaborative stories by Jack Dann with authors such as Gardner Dozois, Michael Swanwick & Bary Malzberg. I’m a big fan of Swanwick, like Dann a lot for his early novels, and also own 2 or 3 collections of short stories by Dozois…

They were all written a while ago but some of them are crackers! Annoyingly, though, I already own Slow Dancing Through Time, which is a similar title featuring stories co-written by Gardner Dozois. Also great stuff!

The trouble is, about half the Dann book consists of stories co-written with Dozois, and thus already in his book! Bah!
Anyway, everyone involved (excepting Jack Haldeman, who’s died in the interim) wrote fascinating introductions, etc. for all the stories and the remaining stories I hadn’t read before were very good, if not for the squeamish in some cases (Zebrowski). Thought the tone of the ending of Cities (Dann & Swanwick) let it down a little, and Barry Malzberg (indeed, all of them to some degree) was still writing stories that were New Wave at heart…

Excellent collection; just wish I didn’t already have so much of it!

Aegypt – a tale long in the telling!

I recently started reading Aegypt by John Crowley from the beginning again and yesterday I overtook my bookmark from my first attempt. I’m now on page 147, having stalled on p145 for almost 21 years!

It’s recently been re-set and re-issued as The Solitudes and may I say that the new edition’s typeface and layout  looks much easier on the eye and would undoubtedly make the reading go easier and quicker than the Bantam h/c I have… (All 4 volumes should soon be available this way)

I’m not sure if I’ll continue beyond volume one immediately I finish this one; there are other aging bookmarks to be rescued first!

Another Lecture! About Maths!!

Well, not really a lecture, more a casual talk. An event called Cafe Scientifique  takes place most months  in a bar at the Filmhouse (arthouse) cinema and last night’s was presented by a mathy friend of mine called Hannu. Ha was talking about the history and perception of dimensions, from points and planes to multi-dimensional string theory ones. A fair bit of it was related to the book Flatland – a film version of which I’m partly sponsoring when it’s shown at the cinema in a couple of weeks…

It was pretty interesting, pitched at a general audience, so I didn’t feel lost at all, with some good questions afterwards. And a couple of slightly weird ones! If I had been surer of some half-remembered stuff about recent developments, I might have asked one or two as well… kind of wish I had, as it would have given Hannu the chance to refute what I had heard and also talk about some original research he’s doing in the same area…

Quite interesting, but the beer was awfully expensive!

There’s a film we want to see being shown on Sunday, so we’ll be back spending £3.05 a pint for that, I expect!