Lefhanded Steampunk Milk Zombies...or something. Anyway A BLOG (post)!

So, I think it's fair to say that I'm a bit behind on blogging... Apologies for that, for anyone who actually reads what I write here, but busy-ness appears to be my...well, business, at the moment.

I'm definitely aiming to pick up some more activity on here towards the end of the year, but otherwise, will try to do some more posts, albeit sporadically.

The reading has been going well. Today, I hit 46 books, right on schedule (this being week 46). It seems crazy that this means I only need to get through 7 more before the end of the year. I'm obviously shooting for more, but it looks like I'll meet my target. I just wanted to briefly call attention to a couple of the things I've read recently.

Today, I finished Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest. This is a self-proclaimed zombie steampunk novel, set in a slightly alternative history Seattle, where the civil war rages on. For all that it plays on several big genre trends - zombies and steampunk - it doesn't overplay them. It's a fun read (or rather, for me, a decent audiobook, with Wil Wheaton narrating half of it), with a cool setting and interesting enough characters. I don't think it's anything groundbreaking, but it's a entertaining and solidly written. Priest has written some other books in the same steampunk universe, which I'd be interested to check out at some point.

Another one I finished fairly recently is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. This is phenomenal. I've never read any of her stuff before, and, though the basic premise, as laid out in her introduction, was interesting, it didn't hook me in straight away. Or rather, I thought it didn't, but I think that's partly because it underplays itself and its own brilliance.

It's a view of a world without gender, through the eyes of an 'alien' (read: sex binary). The natives are essentially human, except that, most of the month, they are neither male nor female until they enter a period of fertility, which later passes. This, along with aspects of the environment in which they live, has produced some interesting social trajectories. Obviously, the novel explores issues of gender, but its even more fundamental than that in its anthropological scope. This is a book I see myself come back to again and again, and I really recommend checking it out.

Lastly, something I was going to do a full blog post on, but that definitely deserves a mention. I went to see Neil Gaiman (him again!) reading his new children's book Fortunately, the Milk... I say 'read', but really, it was a performance, with 'special guests including Mitch Benn and Lenny Henry (as a dinosaur! the book has dinosaurs!). Chris Riddell, illustrator extraordinaire, did live-drawing to match. It was unique event (sidenote: can an event be non-unique, really?) about a pretty magical children's book (then again, there weren't that many children in the audience). You can read it in under an hour (unless you're ACTING IT OUT WITH GUITARS), so why wouldn't you read it?

Oh, and Amanda Palmer showed up and the end with a ukelele.

Oh, and lastly for real this time - I posted two bits of writing to the blog in the last few weeks. You can read Winter's Tale (intrigue! parallel worlds! a Japanese folk monster!) here, and Wordmarket (a much shorter, more random thing) here. You can always find either via the 'writing' tab at the top (including downloadable formats for Winter's Tale, if white text on black background isn't your thing). Read, share, tell me they're dumb (and why!), whatever you like!

CUT TO PHOTOS *flaps cape and disappears*

Two Neils and a Chris, who is making one of the Neils.

Wumpires.

Lenny Henry-saur.

"Play your ukelele!"

We're so happy we're blurring!

The Sanest Man In The Asylum

Today, I met Alan Moore at his signing in Waterstone's store on Piccadilly - conveniently located just round the corner from work. I happened to notice the event by chance yesterday, and thought I'd just drop by since it was so convenient. He was only be signing Avatar titles - so no Watchmen, sadly.

Unfortunately, didn't get any of me with Alan

The event was to promote his new paperback, Fashion Beast, actually a collection of the ten issues of his comic book collaboration with Malcom McLaren. I had a flick through and started reading Fashion Beast while waiting in the queue, but still have very little idea what to expect from it, or even, really, what it's actually about. It apparently came about from a failed film idea he had sometime in the 1980s.

What was more of a draw for me was to get his to sign Neonomicon, his modern comic in the style of HP Lovecraft. Moore took deliberate care not only to include the under- and over-tones of Lovecraft's racism, but also to bake in the 'unspeakable acts' of sex about which Lovecraft was so squeamishly elliptical. I've read Neonomicon a couple of times in the past, but only owned it in digital form, so I bought a copy for the signing (and was delighted to find that it also contained The Courtyard, the precursor to Neonomicon).

For someone who is held to be (in my mind also) such a 'captain crazypants', Alan Moore comes across as surprisingly...normal and down to earth. I'm not sure what I really expected from a two minute interaction, at any rate, but that was my impression. He was wearing a very fetching purple suit with wooden cane to match.

On Neonomicon: this is a comic (Moore apparently prefers this term over 'graphic novel', but his books are nothing if not graphic) which I highly recommend, but definitely isn't for everyone. It's a great story with some fantastic artwork, and a great chunk of modern Lovecraft. It's also visceral, brutal and has the potential to disturb. Did I mention it was pretty graphic? Oh, okay, just wanted to be sure (it comes with some pretty hefty trigger warnings). 

It was only while I was flipping through Alan's bibliography earlier today that I remembered just how many amazing things he'd written, V For Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Killing Joke, and, of course, Watchmen. So, of course, I asked him to sign my laptop.

He joins the fine company of Neil Gaiman. I hope that there will be others, but, though the frequency of acquisition so far attests otherwise, there aren't many people I'd actually want on there!

As for Fashion Beast...well, I'll report back in time.

The Cathedral at the End of the Lane

Last night, I got to meet Neil Gaiman again, almost two years to the day since I did the first time around (not that I'm obsessive enough to have realised that. No, sir!). He was doing a talk and reading from his new novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which I talked about a few weeks ago.

I don't want to spend much more time enthusing about Gaiman and his work - I've done plenty of that on this blog already this year, but he gave a great talk. It was pretty short, and mostly repeated things I'd heard and read in recent interviews, but he also answered a few dozen questions from the audience, which was unique and insightful.

Beautiful surroundings for it

'This is my first cathedral.'

Some highlights included him dropping hints about some upcoming stuff - a short story set in the Neverwhere world (How The Marquis Got His Coat Back); 'expect some non-fiction books from me in the next five years' - thoughts on children's literature (let them come to the books that they enjoy; don't give your small child Stephen King's Carrie to read just because she enjoys Goosebumps), and what Alan Moore hides in his beard - 'the wisdom of the world'.

Neil also did a reading from his new children's book 'Fortunately, the Milk...' (or 'Fortunately, the Milk' if you live in the US), which actually sounds amazing. I'm still yet to read any of his children's fiction, but the section he read was hilarious (both in content and delivery). He's doing a full reading of the book in London in October, along with the illustrator Chris Riddell and 'special guests'.

After the talk, Neil did a signing session for the 1000+ people who were there. This took...a while. All told, I think he was signing until 2am. We were due for a signing slot at 10pm, but didn't get to the front of the queue until past 11.30. This was (probably) his last ever signing tour, so it was worth it. He was signing as many copies of Ocean as you brought along, as well as one item precious to you. I considered getting my Kindle signed (which looked really good - see below), but in the end, got my laptop lid signed, since that's something I see every day.

I reversed gravity so you could see the signature better

Neil was making a real effort to get some kind of connection with most people coming through - with me, he started a (very brief) conversation about MacBooks, and what he was using. A small thing, but something which makes the encounter that bit more memorable. It's a real feat that he can keep up that volume of signing while still making that level of effort.

Thanks for everything, Neil.

A Million Parallel Earths

I feel like I've got my momentum back. It's a good feeling - I would attribute much of this to giving myself freer choice of books, and to happening to have picked a few awesome ones recently.

Today, I'm mostly focussing on one of these - The Long Earth, written collaboratively by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.

Sir Terry casts aside his hat

I picked this up almost on a whim, with the generously-loaded Waterstones card which was a birthday gift from the team at work (thanks, guys!). I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to pick up, but this caught my eye on a display stand, and looked like good flight reading. 

I had assumed that this was a new book, having not heard of it previously, but it transpires that it was being promoted just ahead of the launch of the second book in the sequence. 

It's very a sci-fi novel, making it feel like a bit of a departure for Pratchett. At a recent talk at the Institute of Engineering and Technology, he revealed that the concept was something he came up with even before Discworld, but her set it aside and only rediscovered it recently. He decided that it had been a great idea, but that he would need someone with a working knowledge of the 'quantum bollocks' (actual quote) to execute it - hence the collaboration with Baxter.

The premise is actually very simple, but opens up so many questions and interesting scenarios to explore that the series, I'm sure, could feasibly be spun on and on and still remain interesting. Pratchett and Baxter indicated that they've got solid material to explore for about five books, and are not sure about going beyond that at this point.

Right from the start, we are introduced to the 'Long Earth', on what becomes known as 'Step Day', the population of earth discovers an unknown number of parallel earths, trivially easy to reach from this one (dubbed 'Datum Earth'), through a process called 'stepping'. Each is effectively a copy of this world, with some small changes - most notably, that each world is untouched by the presence of humanity.

This makes each world a rich haven in its own right, a sort of natural paradise, rich with life and animals. There turn out to be some simple but crucial limitations around stepping which make the inevitable exploration and expansion more interesting - people aren't just able to port their entire houses across.

This turns the book into an exploration of frontiers and survivalism for humanity, and raises plenty of interesting questions - suddenly, scarcity is not the issue it once was. What does that mean for how people develop and fan out across the long earth. It is a great representation of what sci if can be - a sort of thought experiment with a relatively simple concept (though one with interesting characters and story to hang it together).

The main plot of the book follows a few characters aiming exploring the Long Earth and answer some of the many questions that it raises. This gave it, for me, a very 'Jules Verne', adventure novel feel - venturing out in the unknown. This is part of the reason I'm trying to discuss it rather elliptically here (with mixed success, I'm sure), to avoid answering too many questions, and leaving that for you to discover, if you choose to explore the book yourself.

From the title of the sequel 'The Long War', I'm expecting to find something rather different. I'm very much looking forward to breaking into that - though I'm reluctant to pick it up in hardback, so it will be one for audiobook or ebook formats.

If you've enjoy science fiction or adventure stories, or Pratchett or Baxter's previous works (though this feels nothing like Discworld), I'd recommend that you give this one a try.