Concrete evidence of an emerging talent...

TheStone Man – Luke Smitherd 

THIS is a strange one but a very good read. It fits as science fiction but has a strong fantasy tone. The eponymous perambulating crisis is a Golem-like monstrosity which turns up in Coventry (yeah, why not?) on a mission that destroys anything in its way.

Indestructible and uncaring, it strides off through the Midlands with significant loss of life to harvest body parts from an already alerted and terrified human being. And then it does it all again, although by this time it has an entourage of despairing humans.

Our hero – loosely – is Andy, a freelance hack who sees the arrival and dreams of glory without much thought for anyone else. Smitherd explains his slightly bizarre attitudes by having him confess to an undiagnosed Asperger's condition. That provides a neat twist to his character development.

He trails the alien/beast/Golem, develops an ability to track it, gets recruited by a scarey but winsome Brigadier Straub (latterly feminised more completely with the name Laura), frighteningly fettled by the secret service and finally recruits his own opposite – Paul, a man with a conscience and similar Stan Man tracking abilities.

This conflict and the fact that Smitherd decided specifically on casting the senior officer as a woman of exceptional rank provides a highly enjoyable range of situations.

The story is strong on character study, perhaps less so on plot but that is part of its charm. Smitherd avoids any pat answers to the why or where of the Stone Man and leaves us only with the feeling that this lump of pedestrianised clay is actually beyond our ken in every sense. Its monstrous but bizarre construction – literally walking concrete but with technological advantages – ensures plenty of drama.In fact if this is not eventually a movie then there is no justice. Though whether Hollywood could avoid making it a B-movie style The Blob is uncertain.

It would have been easy for Smitherd to decide it was from planet Zog, or the the star HumptyDumpty or even some transfer from a multiverse we wish we never knew about. Instead he concentrates on the nightmare lives into which his various characters and especially the main duo are plunged.

He has worked hard on his military and secret service crediblity and it is pretty convincing. I would love him to edit out all of the 'gottens' and some at least of the fucks. His dislike (or realitsm?) about hacks is palpable and probably fair enough in this century.

He even admits to re-writing his ending to provide a more convincing result which I forbear to spoil.

Smitherd is a self-publisher which says a lot about the general lack of imagination and wit in the world of publishing. He must be grateful (if probably conflicted) to Amazon. I am into another of his works and am already feeling hooked. Except for all those gottens....

RapW Dec, 2015

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And he thought he'd had his chips...

One side benefit of our winters away is I get to read more and with the advent of the Kindle it is easier. Not better,not more enjoyable, just easier.

I also get to indulge my long enjoyment of science fiction (do be quiet,please) and nowadays to read some of the new material. Thus I have just completed The Martian by Andy Weir, his impressive first published novel.

It is an astonishing story really - all about one man stranded on an alien planet with no realistic hope of survival, let alone rescue. Mark Watney is one of a team of six making the third landing on Mars. A massive dust storm tips their ascent vehicle too far for recovery just as Watney is swept off his EVA suited feet and thumped in the chest by part of a landing gear. He vanishes and despite risking the entire crew in a fruitless attempt to find him, Commander Lewis finally gets five safely off-planet and up to their orbiting craft.

She waited so long they saw zero blood and heart signals from Watney's suit. But unknown to them his blood had re-sealed his suit and he lived. And awoke as the only man alive on Mars and as a result of storm damage with no hope of talking to Earth ever again.

So far so terrifying. But Watney is made of stern stuff and although a botanist by training is a fixer by inclination. We are treated to a tour de force of improvisation as he creates a small scale market garden in which to grow potatoes. He has six times one person's rations and can last months on protein and vitamin pills. The issue is carbs - so the pots. Lucky they provided a few fresh ones for experiments then. Water is plentiful and recycled, air is ditto but a problem which he fixed - one of his better wheezes. And he has a habitation unit designed for six all to himself.

Crises occur but he identifies a hope - an old Pathfinder probe lies in the sands 1200 kilometres away. He decides to liberate it using his Mars Rover (he has two) Another triumph of ingenuity follows as he revives its radio and talk at last to NASA.

Weir writes this like a play so this is definitely Act 3. The miracle of his survival galvanises a rescue plan and not one but two hastily assembled supply probes are launched and lost. Then they decide his returning crew mates on Hermes can slingshot around Earth and with a Mars fly-by pick him up - if he can drive 3,200 kilometres across Mars to the Landing and Ascent unit sent for the next exploration team due to travel in 18 months time.

His old chums on Hermes agree to the necessary 18 months extension of their already two year voyage and carry out the manoeuvre. Watney demonstrates more amazing ingenuity and manages the long and frankly terrifying journey to the next landing site.

Nothing goes smoothly and I will not spoil the ending. But it is good. And no wonder they made a film of all this. Weir writes it like a screenplay since he has so much science to explain and engineering to describe. he does it well and it is compulsive reading. But...

Here's the thing. He dos not address in any meaningful way Watney's greatest enemy - his own psychology. Could anyone actually cope with being so utterly alone and stranded? If yes I think he and we needed to know the strategy for that act of stoic ingenuity.

And then there is that storm which started all this. To be honest there was a moment reading this when that recurring thought threatened to derail credibility. But, just in time, Weir drummed up another storm but unlike the first it fails to deliver anything like the hammer blow that it threatened. And by means that stretch credibility I fear.

Now I am a bit techie and long-time space travel buff but the science and chemistry is beyond me. Most of the stuff is believeable, even when it is astonishing. Watney could just about manage most of the science and engineering fixes entailed, especially when he finally gets some NASA back-up. And when he uses his meagre supply of pots for his long trek there is no mention of any protein. Hmmm.

Weir successfully paints Mars as the alien and hostile environment it certainly is but it is infamous for sandstorms visible from Earth. That air may be thin but the dust is dust. Watney does do a lot of solar panel cleaning. But all his kit was designed for a way shorter duration.

Taking the psychological risks and the hostility of the planet I can buy three months, even six. I can even buy a few hundred kliks cross planet. But 15 months and two trips - one of 2,400 kliks and the next of 3,200. Ah well, it was still a good read. Do try it.

SIDEBAR: Reading this story I was convinced I had read something similar in the past. I am pleased to say I was right. In 1956 a novel, No Man Friday, was written by Rex Gordon (Stanley Bennett Hough). It featured a cheapo Brit rocket which killed all but one of its crew (on an EVA at the time natch) but made it to Mars where the survivor bends his science skills to survive on the hostile planet. It ends very differently in that age of Little Green Men by the Brit Astronaut meeting up with troglodytian inhabitants of Mars, etc etc. But given that stranded stories probably start with Jonah in the whale who was alone in an alien environment (think God as NASA and chuckle!) the triumph for Weir is weaving a convincing story out of high tech ingenuity!

NEXT: The Stone Man

These TV drama are a crime - or should be!

Constant disappointment with crime drama on TV of late has led me to wonder what has gone wrong and I think I figured it out. Its all too long.

Not sure when it happened but some time in the last decade or two the writers of crime drama got delusions of grandeur it seems. A series of hour long whodunnits (aka Morse, Midsomer mayhem, Rebus et al) was not enough any more. So we got Prime Suspect and it was not half bad. But then along came the likes of Broadcrunch and many, many more.

Now what the writers seem to miss is that their plots are not essentially much different to those solved by John Thaw, Ken Stott and others. And they did it in an hour or, at worst, a two-parter. In the end a murder is a murder. OK a serial killer can be strung out longer but the best of those have long been done and dusted – the Ripper, old and new, for starters.

And police procedurals can be fascinating in their attention to detail – hence NCIS and CSI and Silent Witness et al. But they are all mercifully brief. I say mercifully because the devil for a plot is actually in the detail.

The longer we linger on the longuers of victims and perpetrators the more time there is for us the viewer to spot the holes in the writer's narrative. And we do. Most of the time each individual error, break in logic or chronology or whatever amounts to little. But accumulated over the weeks the issue builds.

And finally, these days, nothing has a decent ending – or if it does (like From Darkness recently) it lurches wildly into melodrama and seals its own fate anyway. Credibility dies, in this case in a blaze of inevitability. The alternative is the Broadchurch let down – repeated of course in the dismal Broadchurch 2 – Bloodyunlikely-on-sea AGAIN!

Worse too is the tendency to go back for another view but different. So the brilliant Life on Mars is not allowed to rest after its third (was it) run but re-appears dusted off (not) as River – a Scandinavian recruit to the genre as a daffy, over the hill cop creating a fantastic version of his murdered partner with whom he has an on-screen obsession. It is saved from farce by the genius of Nicola Walker who manages to play the part as he see her and NOT as she actually was – so she is OTT but without any ham; a wonder to watch.

And especially since in currently also running The Unforgotten she is seen as a more down-to-earth copper equally obsessed but this time with getting to the bottom of a grimly credible set of crimes.

But even so these are not a series of one-hour crimebusters but are occupying hours of our time, week by week. And now we await the endings. Will River sink beneath the waves of its own mawkish sentimentality? Will anything be unforgotten minutes after the end of The Unforgotten? Will we care?

Does it matter? Well it does to me – I love crime dramas and police procedurals. I just wish they'd get back to making some.

What price this government eh?

So Cameron shows his caring side does he? Forgive me while I subside in hysterical laughter. And worse he talks like a man with a mandate from the people. Lets get this straight, what he won at the election was just enough seats to form a government without help.
What he did not win was any kind of majority. Indeed, more people - many more - voted for anything BUT the Tories than for his bunch. 
What we do know is that over on the other side remarkably similar allegedly centrist sub-Tory polices failed to win the required electoral majority and have since failed to win any kind of support. Instead, tens of thousands of voters have flocked to support a left-wing leader for the 'New' Labour party. That of course is not the Blair New but something very different. And these people put their money where their mouth is and JOINED the Labour Party in number which exceed the paltry membership of the Conservative and Unionist Charade.
So what now? Well the first things is both sad and good. We have fixed term parliaments (not actually a good thing given our electoral system) but it does mean that there is time for the Labour Party to re-new itself with a new focus on fairness across society. And the time to elect and settle in a very new kind of leader. 
Corbyn, for me, has a brilliant opportunity to re-shape the currently miserable excuse for a Labour Party that was bequeathed to us by the charlatan Blair. I am left by nature although maybe more a mixed economy man than Jeremy. Even so I see more hope for the people of Britain in his vision than in anything Cameron/Osborne can brew up.
We can hope that a new, Fairer Society party based on socialist principles within a modern European framework can be forged. I hope that in the process the deadwood of Blair's acolytes in the house can be cleared away or re-educated. For sure they need to get real, given the changed world they are inhabiting.
In due course can we hope for a new leadership team. more attuned with what we need to stem the tide of neo-Con that threatens ordinary lives? I think so. And from that cane we see that the new Corbyn-world will throw up a new, young leader to fight the next election and suit the next decade? Surely we can.
So, this has to be the last throw for the older brigade - me and Jezza then!  Even if the younger element that the Tories ushered in with the current crop of Etonian scum may not look very enticing the fact is that we need the 30/40-somethings of today to become the statespeople of tomorrow.
And so too, don't listen to the media - corrupt to a body and I should know! They will forever use their power without responsibility to bend the world to the vibes of their even more corrupt masters. Corbyn and his like threaten their very existence - never forget that the media types of today are NOT in any way the media types of the 60s and 70s. Murdoch and his men have seen to that. Hacked off? They should be.

Bizarre idiocy of the VSA (who they?)

Sometime it is hard not to become abusive at the idiocy of Government departments. The utterly bizarre decision of the Valuation Office Agency (yes indeed; who they?) to treat ATMs as separate businesses (EDP Aug 29) and thus hit them with an entirely spurious business rate charge defies description.
These devices are attached to the business (even inside) and do not do anything but provide bank customers with access to their money. They add no value to anything and have effectively saved the banks (who did their best to bankrupt us remember) the need to have local offices, local employees and provide any sort of service to their customers.
Should there be any charge accruing from the existence of ATMS it should better be levied on the bank to offset the vast cost to us all of saving them from their own stupidity.
We should all write to our MPs immediately before our local shops have been wiped out by this Government's austerity philosophy,. which is the prime cause of this be assured.

MORE HERE

Is there life in Labour?

Struggling what to write today. Labour's continuing failure to realise they have five years in which to establish a new social contract based on fair play or the new Planet 'Earth', found a mere 1,400 light years away and 1.5 billion years older than our own dear ball of mud and water.
Settled on the latter as more realistic than the former. 
So (sorry other pedants) , this possibly amazing discovery emphasises only too well the problems of seeking other life in the universe. Isaac Asimov wrote a book that included the facts (Only a Trillion, sadly out of print). Those of the right age will know that apart from being a great sci fi writer Asimov was a mathematician of some renown. So here is the conundrum...
Dealing solely with this new planet let us suppose it did develop life that behaved like us (i.e. allegedly intelligent). And that it took about the same length of time as on earth to reach a technological standing. This would have happened about 1.5 billion years ago... enough said.
Now let's suppose it took a lot, lot longer and the resultant creatures survived long enough to be interested in other worlds (like us). And that sometime in the last 1,500 years they discovered radio transmission. The resulting signals, if strong enough, might be arriving any time soon. Sadly, assuming we spot them and de-code them our response will take 1,500 years to get back. Bit like BT then.  This will make conversation difficult.
But Asimov realised another problem with the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. It is not just distance that is against us - time is a bit of a bugger too.
It has taken us about a million years to get to the point where we can either destroy ourselves or avoid catastrophe. That is a matter of one 4,500,000th part of the life of our planet and less then one 15,000,000th part of the alleged life of the universe - so far. Let us be generous and assume we can hang in for another million before evolution or catastrophe overwhelms us (that asteroid with our name on it is out there right now). For us to find even the beginnings of life that we can recognise it will need to be around during our tenure of this bit of the universe. Likely? Not terribly.
Indeed, on a par with the Labour party getting back in the saddle and winning the hearts and minds of the British electorate...

References:
Asimov - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
The book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_a_Trillion
Earth 2.0 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33641648
SETI - http://www.space.com/29990-stephen-hawking-intelligent-alien-life-initiative.html
Labour's chances - among many - http://labourlist.org/2015/06/is-andy-burnham-most-likely-to-boost-labours-election-chances/

What's wrong with Labour....

Andy Burnham's decision to weasel out of standing up against the Tory attack on working people by abstaining (the refuge of the scoundrel) is of a one with the problem Labour is NOT facing up to. If they want to get elected they first need to be a credible opposition; only then will they get the support they need.
And yes, it will be painful for a while - after all, it is their fault socialist principles have become a dirty word in this benighted country. Concentrate on opposing and on fighting against this MINORITY government. Then we disappointed, disaffected Labour supporters may return to the fold.

Will silver surfers' happy roaming life be consigned to history soon?

THIS camping business is becoming ever more interesting. We are surrounded by people like us - and hardly any of them would have been here 20 or so years ago. Yet we all have something in common.
We are all retired.
What has happened is interesting and socially significant. It is also a transient event that may one day foster an entire ouvre of writing. Maybe I am early in; maybe not.
Here it is - out of the main holiday season the warmer parts of Europe are awash with retired people enjoying the privilege that their pensions buy them. And they are pensions that will never come again after the crash of 2008 and the reaction to it.
But we are not wealthy people with vast pension pots - we are very, very largely people who worked in public service, earning less than they may have in private business but rewarded with vastly superior pensions. Not freely, despite the 'gold-plated' slur of the Daily Flail and co. In fact I can give my own example.
I worked in British Gas as a PR Manager and was moderately well-paid at then £26,000 pa - but I had friends in private industry who reckoned I was a mug as they earned 35k and more. But we had better conditions and although we paid more for our pension so did our employer. And that is what makes it possible for so many similar people from across Europe to travel the southern areas in their retirement.
But note - my 12 years in British Gas, earning less but gaining more in pension, provides the largest part by far of my pension package. The rest is frankly a poor return for what I paid in across 30 years. But I did earn more in the private sector - I just wasted it like most people.
There is more to it, however. The tenting and caravanning of the latter half of the 20th century has given way to the motor homing of the 21st. Its not as cut and dried as that but close to it. And the motor home is an expensive bit of kit -  three times the price of a caravan of similar age. But, as in my case originally, it is afforded by the cash sum paid either on retirement or redundancy. I am back in a caravan now but that's a different story.
We are surrounded by people in expensive motor homes - some older, some new but most between 30 and 50k GBP. And they spend months at a time down here in the southern half of Europe. We do it, in our caravan. This year we chose spring in France but usually it is winter in southern Spain.
And an entire business has sprung up around this phenomena. A Dutch company (huge numbers of Dutch bring their motor homes south every winter) set up a campsite network. Called ACSI, it offers a deal between the member campsites and its membership of users. They get a guaranteed exposure to thousands of potential users; we get cut-price camping out of season. They get bookings when they wouldn't; we get sites that are regularly inspected.

But that is only part of it - France in particular but also Spain and Portugal have spotted the potential for off-season business. All over are Motor Home sites - designed specifically for short stop motor homers and very basic. Water and power is about it. But that suits the travelling motor homer fine - they will choose an ACSI site for longer stops. These sites are close to town and city centres or major tourist attractions.
But we shall be a dying breed I suggest. The new world does not provide pensions like that. Employment is no longer even vaguely that secure. Companies do not provide anything like the support that we got. And when redundancy or early retirement comes today there is unlikely to be much of a cash pot to fund a posh motor home.
So if I am right the next few years will be a good time to sell off any shares you have in the motor home, caravan or camping business. For it is entirely possible that these busy camp sites will be weed covered deserts within a decade or two.
Sad really since it demonstrates just how devalued labour is in our modern wonderland.

In the land of Nostradamus I foresee times of great woe and much undoing....

Hard to believe it but you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time. Dodgy Dave gets back into the headmaster's office. We shall all be his fags in a trice.
Here in the land of Nostadamus it seems only reasonable that I should put on my Magi's cap and do a spot of divining, however depressed I may be feeling.
I see great woes ahead:

• Earnings will fall in  real terms.
• Pensioners will struggle as real inflation climbs.
• The pound will soar to start with, leading to a Trade Gap crisis.
• Give it a year or two and we shall have riots in a variety of places.
• The NHS will cease to be universally free at the point of need within three years.
• The tax dodgers will be ignored, even encouraged.
• A pogrom against welfare claimants will begin.
• Immigration will be heavily curbed and deportation increased.
• Regressive taxes will rise.
• House prices will soar along with rents.
• A new age of Rachmanism will be ushered in (if you cannot remember look it up).
• Virtually no new affordable houses will be built but mansions will be plentiful.
• University fees will rise.
• Grammar schools will come back but all secondary schools will charge tuition fees.
• Personal debt will soar and the City will get ever richer.
• The national debt will decline by transferring it to the private sector, feeding a further boom in profits.
• Fracking in Surrey will cause land slips and a mass fall in the value of property.
• The British Army will be privatised. The RAF scrapped and the Royal Navy absorbed into a new Coastal Survey Unit. Trident will be handed over to the US officially.
• A new banking crisis will occur in 2019 and the banks will be bailed out again instead of small investors.
• An EU referendum will be inconclusive and Dodgy Dave will attempt to quit the EU, leading to a massive run on the pound and the introduction of currency controls (once again!). The Channel Tunnel will be closed due to under-use.
• Scotland will take the UDI route and  remain in the EU; mass migration into Scotland from the north of England will begin.
• Wales and Northern Ireland will seek independence and there will be hostilities.
• The Labour party will flap about for a new leader for years until Nicola Sturgeon moves to England and wins a by-election; she will be elected leader of the Labour Party.
• No one will remember UKIP or the Lib Dems by 2019.
• There will be an assassination during 2019 followed by a snap election after a vote of no-confidence.
• England, the Independent Monarchy of, will become a tax haven ruled from Liberia by a group of Etonians, headed by... yeah, well who else!