Doctor Who - American Adventures

These collections of  themed Doctor Who short stories have been a lovely idea; books such as Tales of Trenzalore and The Legends of Ashildr have explored the fertile territory where the TV show left gaps. The latest collection (so far as I can make out, all written by Justin Richards) is slightly different; a collection simply linked by being set in the USA.

It’s a connection which often feels tacked on, with the collection often feeling like a series of generic Doctor Who stories which happen to take place in the same country (and in one case, not actually in that country). The periods in history feel like backdrops rather than thoughtfully chosen and the speech patterns of the characters we do get don’t distinguish them from European or Asian people. These are dashed off postcards rather than an interesting exploration of a British icon travellign through American history. At a push Taking the Plunge is the only one which really benefits from the setting; a fun idea which mixes theme parks and capitalism for what could be read as a subversive critique. The remainder of these adventures could have been set anywhere;  Off the Trail isn’t even set in the US and Spectator Sport’s connection feels like a contrived link to let the author use an idea he’s had sitting around. It’s a mild shame as there’s plenty of locations and events which, with a little more thought, could’ve made evocative and thrilling backdrops for stories.

This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the stories weren’t generic too –mainly invasions with a couple of pieces of generic skulduggery;  all foiled in under 30 pages. The Doctor’s rarely unduly troubled by any of the adversaries he comes up against with the worst trouble he has being someone having to pass him his sonic screwdriver in a moment of crisis.  This means that all the stories feel a little pointless – without any real jeopardy the Doctor’s never tested and consequently they all pass by efficiently but without leaving a trace – to use an appropriately American metaphor it’s fast food Doctor Who: all perfectly entertaining while you’re reading them but very little that’s memorable afterwards.Received an ebook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Descent of Man

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to nominate Grayson Perry for king and queen, as Caitlin Moran does, but I’d certainly nominate him for court jester. Court jesters are traditionally the ones who can get away with saying the unsayable in the presence of the powerful and that’s just what Perry does here.

Essentially this is Perry considering the traditionally masculine role in society with an artist’s eye; whilst the conclusions he reaches at the end may not be startling it’s how he reaches them that’s fascinating. What makes it so is Perry’s background; whilst his transvestitism and attachment to his teddy bear are well known his nearly joining the army and attachment to macho culture icons was less so. It makes for a fascinating mix; he’s able to discern the significance and iconic nature of clothing (though I suspect he goes a touch too far in the popularity of wearing jeans) and identify how the traditional masculine role has been eroded by social and technological progress. That’s best illustrated in the brief passage about the Durham Miners’ Gala, which he astutely observes as a kind of funeral of a way of life.  While it’s astute he also identifies it as a social problem; where’s the outlet for rugged masculinity and its rutting stags nature? That’s a question he considers but can’t quite find an answer to; the ritualised combat of sport only goes so far.

Ultimately Perry’s conclusion is a fascinating one; the need for a feminism for men which doesn’t descend to the fatuous mentality of ‘men’s rights’. Men, he concludes, would be stronger for being flexible, vulnerable and uncertain rather than taking refuges in lists, processes and the need to be right. ‘Men’s Rights’ is hankering for a nostalgic past of heroes, of right and wrong being easy choices.  Progress, he concludes, would be men embracing more traditionally feminist values just as feminism had absorbed and transmuted traditionally masculine ones. In a time which has often felt like a convulsion of traditional men striking back at social progress they don’t like Perry’s theories are convincing on the personal and social levels. Perhaps this book’s a step along the way to dealing with the issues modern masculinity can’t or won’t face and, in identifying them, dealing with them.

(Received an ebook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).

Hillsborough

So I finally plucked up the courage to watch the BBC documentary about Hillsborough. It wasn’t a matter of being unprepared for what to expect; quite the contrary. I’ve read a lot of accounts of the day, the details unearthed by the Hillsborough Independent Panel and the outstanding investigative work of the likes of Phil Scraton and David Conn. The details of what happened remain harrowing beyond words; the descriptions of people crushed to death whilst watching a football match. They remain horrifying beyond the power of words to describe. The first hour of the documentary concentrates implacably on this; the confluence of circumstances which led to the deaths of 96 people. At each step in the process you can see where things happening slightly differently would have meant the terror of the day wouldn’t have happened at all; that it wasn’t inevitable. It’s a horror only real life could produce; miles ahead of the effect any filmmaker might achieve. Because it actually happened. Because a long chain of institutional incompetence and indifference led to the point where people died.

It takes as its starting point a police prank; a prank on a junior  for which the officer normally in charge of big matches in Sheffield carries the can and is exiled from Sheffield to Barnsley. Instead, for a big match an inexperienced officer who has no experience of policing big matches is brought in – disastrously, as officers on duty that day recount, he’s overconfident of his own abilities. The ground itself doesn’t carry a safety certificate; it had expired three years before the game and never been renewed. Spurs fans at the 1981 semi-final had experienced a similar crush but no notice was taken; nothing happened so things could carry on. That’s one area the documentary soft pedals; the Football Association’s responsibility. It selected the ground and gave Liverpool, the club with the larger number of fans, the end with the poorest access. It didn’t even bother to check the existence of non-existence of the safety certificate (as apparently no-one in the organisation understood the concept).  Liverpool’s chief executive Peter Robinson made protests against the choice of ground but, as four years earlier at Heysel, his concerns were ignored by authorities. If anything the conditions in the ground had been made worse for fans; the Leppings Lane terrace was not divided into three pens. That the word ‘pens’ is used tells you all you need to know about how football fans were regarded; as basically subhuman cattle, fit only to be fenced in. It’s a mercy that the suggestion of Chelsea’s reactionary chairman Ken Bates, that the fences separating fans from pitch should be electrified, was never taken up – what the casualties might have been if that had been the case is too horrifying to contemplate.

The thing that should be stressed at this point is a point made by the journalist Tony Evans (who was in the stands that day). That this was essentially a normal matchday; fans may have had one or two drinks before the game but there had been no serious traffic delays, nothing to cause a late rush of fans to arrive at the stadium. Yet thanks to the inadequate infrastructure of the ground a crush was beginning to develop outside the ground; an officer on the scene advised of the crush in no uncertain terms and that action needed to be taken. Sadly, with the inexperience of the officer in charge the most disastrous action that could be made was taken and a gate to the central pen of the Leppings Lane terrace was opened. At this point it should be stressed that the terraces were divided into three pens and the ones at either end were relatively underpopulated.  Under pressure an inexperienced officer made a very human mistake. And because of that mistake a crush developed on the centre pen of the terrace as fans rushed to get out of the crush outside the ground to try and catch a match which had already started.

I remember playing football on the street that day, running in at three o’clock so we could be updated on the first half and hear the second half in full (the radio rights only covered second half commentary of most games in those days). Instead we heard the game had been stopped after six minutes and Peter Jones, one of the great radio sports commentators, became a disaster reporter for the afternoon. It was horribly unclear at first; fans apparently spilling onto the pitch but as the afternoon continued the horror slowly unfolded. Pictures of the day now show that central pen; a seething mass of humanity full beyond bursting and with people still trying to enter behind.  It’s fairly calm and normal surrounding it; in the stand above and in the pens to either side. But the middle seethes like a bee hive that’s been attacked, a mass of humanity that looks impossibly tightly packed. John Motson even remarks on it in off-air comments; there’s no unruly mob rush, just a slow build of pressure. And what happened then remains impossibly horrific as Peter Beardsley hits the bar, the crowd naturally surges… people are packed so tight they can’t breather. Police officers recount how they can’t untangle the masses of limbs when they have to deal with the dead. All this time the initial mistake of opening the gate towards the central pen is compounded by inaction, by a lack of direction to open the gates that would allow exit. By total misunderstanding of what’s happening meaning that much of the police were directed to wait on the halfway line to stop a potential charge from the Forest fans. Some police help but it’s the other fans who help; the ones sitting above dragging people out, passing others over the fences, improvising stretchers… the human desire is to help. And the police at that end, when they realise what’s happening, also help desperately, attempting to save lives and get people out. Common humanity prevails, even if the official response remains inadequate with ambulances unable to reach the ground. It’s then a tale of coping with chaos and of relatives trying to discover what’s happened to loved ones. The documentary managed to clearly portray the chaos and horror of the day.

The conjuror’s trick lies in getting you to look where he wants. You know ‘look into my eyes; don’t look around the eyes…’ Their art, fundamentally, is misdirection and getting you to mistrust your own sensory evidence. It’s also the art of the PR man and advertiser, to get you to believe what they want you to, whatever you can see. The Hillsborough cover-up beings excusably; with the officer in charge on the day wanting to cover his own backside. It’s not pleasant, but it’s a human reaction. The fatal opening of the gate became an issue where it was forced by fans, not by police order. In a sane world this lie would soon have been uncovered and exposed by any remotely competent investigation. Instead it became a point to begin an institutional cover-up that wasn’t fully exposed for nearly three decades, blame dodging by the organisations which failed in any conception of a duty of care to the fans; the South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Wednesday FC and the FA. The police, with the connivance of the local MP, began by blaming ‘tanked-up yobs’ for arriving late and causing the congestion which led to the crush. They compounded this with details of bodies being robbed and the police being assaulted and urinated on when they were bravely attempting to help. Liverpool fans, like any other set, are no angels, as is acknowledged, but viewing any footage of the day provides no evidence of such behaviour whatsoever. Quite the opposite; tragedy begat natural nobility rather than venal or aggressive instincts.  It was fed via the local press association to national papers and widely reported. Most had the sense to frame them as unproven accusations; the editor of The Sun infamously declared them ‘The Truth’. As facts. That’s why the line from anyone asking why The Sun bore the brunt of Merseyside fury when everyone else reported the accusations is worthless; because only The Sun reported them as facts, a decision purely down to the editor. Again, Tony Evans points out that the first question a journalist should ask when considering whether these were truthful accusations is whether you’d do such a thing yourself; it’s almost impossible to imagine that any sane person would. It speaks volumes of the government of the day and the type of figure within it that one of them declared it to be the fault of tanked-up yobs; an accusation he’s never seen fit to retract despite it being challenged officially several times and always found groundless.

It was Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry that first found it baseless. A subsequent coroner’s enquiry found the whole affair to be an accident; but this was another part of the cover-up with the coroner unscientifically declaring a cut off of 3.15 when considering time of death and causes of death.  It was another aspect of establishment cover-up; a backroom deal that the South Yorkshire press officer tried to declare the end of the matter.  An accident, of course, would mean that it was something that couldn’t ever have been foreseen or prevented without great foresight. Again, this was a great evasion of blame on the police’s part, but one apparently backed up by evidence from officers on the day. The reality was quite different. When Phil Scraton gained access to the statements from officers he found they’d been significantly altered to remove any criticism of police conduct on the day. One officer in the documentary recounted that the police officers of the time carried a little blue book; something sacred in which you recorded what had happened on the day, however minute. And yet… when they were being debriefed afterward they were told not to worry about this (creditably, one experienced officer when told this said to his colleagues to ignore that and record everything down to when they’d last used the toilet). This wasn’t unprecedented; the government was well aware that it needed the police support to survive pushing through unpopular actions and policies and as such had ensured the police became well-paid and backed-up in any investigations. South Yorkshire Police had form; after the notorious incident at Orgreave during the miner’s strike of the mid-1980s the government had backed them up and fed stories of rioting miners rather than investigating stories of police brutality. All this, naturally, led to a total lack of accountability which should be vital to any law-keeping institution.  But there was no accountability. The deaths were declared an accident, the reputation of Liverpool fans were tarnished; the vile element of opposition fans provoking them with chants of ‘always the victims, it’s never your fault’ when Hillsborough was piled on top of the earlier Heysel tragedy (and in the interests of balance, certain elements of Liverpool fandom weren’t shy of replying with equally distasteful chants relating to deaths for other clubs). That it was all so easily believed; that the late 1990s would see it declared as useless to reopen a file on the case with no new evidence compounded a sense that the establishment had closed ranks and shifted the blame to what they seemed to view as a subhuman mass of fans.

Subhuman isn’t too strong a word there; English clubs were banned from European football for hooliganism; many city centres were damaged by fights between fans in the 1980s. The Prime Minister didn’t understand competitive sport or spectators; therefore she was all too ready to believe the worst of their behaviour (as were many members of her Cabinet).  I’ve mentioned the Chelsea chairman’s proposal for electrified fences; measures taken only in terms of extreme security or fencing in cattle. Equally when questioned on the matter the FA admitted that no-one truly understood ground safety; no-one had even undertaken basic checks on the ground before it had a semi-final allocated. No-one listened to Peter Robinson’s warnings based on the semi-final of the previous year and the Spurs-Wolves game of earlier in the decade. No-one at Sheffield Wednesday cared enough about fans to ensure their ground was safe; if there was one positive thing to come out of that day it was the Taylor reports recommendations on improving ground safety. All this has one thing at the heart of it; a snobbish lack of concern for those with less money or whose pleasures are considered less highbrow. Hillsborough wasn’t inevitable; not until extremely close to the tragedy happening. But with those prevailing attitudes something like it was inevitable.  Tony Evans point that it wasn’t a particularly exceptional day, that very little happened to cause the tragedy that didn’t normally happen on any matchday, is the key point. With those attitudes it was inevitable that something like Hillsborough would happen sooner or later. It may not have happened at Hillsborough; it may not have been Liverpool fans but sooner or later the total lack of concern for fans, for paying customers, meant that there would be crushes and that sooner or later mistakes would be made that meant people would be seriously injured or die. It was really a matter of time before some kind of tragedy occurred.

This, of course, is not thinking that would permeate establishment minds. As with most humans we’re locked in our own worldviews and don’t question them, instead fitting facts and events to them rather than letting inconvenient facts amend our perceptions. If the insistence of a terrible accident was made for long enough all this would eventually subside. And it nearly did; a private prosecution against the officer in charge of the day failed as it provided only a hung jury; funds raised by organisations supporting the families of the bereaved in the quest to find out what had happened to their loved ones seemed wasted on that failed case. But at a memorial service at Liverpool’s home ground of Anfield Cabinet Minister Andy Burnham was confronted with a wall of anger as he spoke and expressed official sympathy; creditably he took that on board and insisted on the case being reopened. Eventually that led to a two year long case which ended up utterly exonerating the fans and finding that official institutions had failed them dismally. Every death at Hillsborough was ruled an unlawful killing. The police and Sheffield Wednesday were at fault. The FA, which had issued a non-specific apology a few years earlier, kept very quiet. Sheffield Wednesday had failed in their neglect of their ground. It took more than twenty-seven years for the dead to be exonerated and for actual facts to be established; facts the police had even tried to deny in the courtroom. The Kop singing You’ll Never Walk Alone at a match is a grand and joyous thing but it was as nothing compared to the joy of the families being able to sing it on the steps of a nondescript modern courtroom after the verdicts were announced. Because the details that haunt you aren’t just the descriptions of the carnage on the Leppings Lane terraces; nor the police officer (and ex-paratrooper) involved in rescue efforts on the day suffering a nervous breakdown whilst on duty in his car. It’s the hair; grey, white or gone. It’s the lines time has etched onto their faces; grief and struggle against institutions which let them down. It’s the steel in the eyes; that anger and grief has been forced to fester there whilst the names of their family were dragged through the mud. That it took twenty-seven years to undo a lie originally spread in minutes. That justice took so long to serve some of those who got away with it lived out comfortable lives and died with their sins unaccounted.  Twenty-seven years; not far short of ten thousand days. After watching the testimonies of the officers and fans you suddenly realise the importance of proper accountability and that there was no accountability whatsoever should make anyone deeply afraid. Because if there is no accountability in a situation so obvious, where evidence was clear… when can you trust any institution? How many people in power are actually fitted to it? When can you ever trust an institution again? The financial crash and subsequent actions of financial institutions certainly suggest the answer remains: ‘you can’t’. Hillsborough didn’t only cost 96 lives, it cost decades of other people’s lives (and contributed to many early deaths of those involved in the search for justice). And in the long term it cost a community their faith in society. It’s never a bad thing to learn to question how power is wielded but in the long run that lasting distrust is the establishment’s price for the short term saving of a few reputations.

So yes, I’ve had my heart broken and been rendered furious once more by it. It’s an astonishingly powerful film; almost as powerful as Jimmy McGovern’s 1996 dramatisation of events. If you’re remotely squeamish of strong emotions or descriptions then it may be unbearable but for those with a strong enough constitution it’s vital. Not just if you’re a football fan, or remember the game, but as an expose of a tragedy and how easy it was for the responsibility to be pinned on the innocent. Ultimately it tells you that in times of crisis you should put your faith in the quality of fellow human beings rather than in any uniform they wear or any power they hold. And that if you fight long enough and hard enough, eventually any lie can be undone.  There’s no triumph in the verdicts; it’s simply the treatment of a festering wound that can finally be allowed to begin to heal. The tricks of the magicians have been explained and exposed; the charlatans are undone and all that’s left is the accounting. Maybe, just maybe, the institutions of society can be made to work as they should eventually. And 96 victims can rest in peace.

Infinity On High (The Lost Time Accidents)

I’m a sucker for novels which treat genres as a game and run rampant, laughing at the idea of easy classification. This is such a novel, a confident melding of science-fiction, an intergenerational family saga, physics, mystery, satire, history and even a classical form of tragedy. We’re dropped in at the deep end, meeting our narrator Waldemar Tolliver who’s engaged in writing a history of himself and his family in an unusual setting in terms of both space and time. The enigma of just what constitutes lost time accidents begins with Waldemar’s great grandfather and a note he leaves just prior to a fatal car accident. This note is the novel’s MacGuffin, inspiring the members of the family to a kind of century long collective madness and one which sets them up in direct opposition to a physicist known to them by the disparaging nickname of ‘the Patent Clerk’. The novel unfolds their opposition to Einstein’s theories at leisure, being careful for much of its length to leave it to the reader to decide whether it genuinely works in context of the novel’s world or whether it’s a delusion related by an unreliable narrator.

It’s this strange theory which allows the author to get at the issue at the novel’s heart; how we’re the physical and psychological product of our ancestors and the recipients of their hopes, fears and neuroses and what that means for us. The ultimate fate of our narrator indicates that, even if we might physically step outside that, we’re largely stuck with the weight their inheritance bestows upon us, unable to escape our family. Family ends up being destiny, determining our way. It’s something of a downbeat thought but one the novel powerfully realises, particularly with the last few lines which, if you’re paying attention, complete the tragedy and the theme of tragic circularity. It might be trying to make a grand statement that’s been made by other contemporary novelists but it wears that gravity of Trying To Say Something Profound lightly; wrapping it up with a comedy, tragedy and a host of interesting and entertaining characters. The events these characters go through are always unlikely but the fascinating kernel most of them have keeps things grounded – the weird aunts, the cult leader, the Nazi great-uncle and the unwilling L Ron Hubbard of a dad are all believable, convincingly motivated human beings who contrive to struggle fruitlessly in the web of their family’s mania. They’re rarely likeable as we can clearly see their faults (often through Waldemar’s eyes and even his narrative exposes his flaws) but Wray’s exceptional at understanding the way people are broken which makes them interesting and portraying that. Thought-provoking, absurdist, challenging and ladled with great lines understand that the impact of a good punchline derives in part from how the joke is told.

(STANDARD DISCLAIMER – The copy I read was an advance eBook provided gratis by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review).

....and it was a gas

New York of the 1970s was one of those scenes; a thriving, vital hotbed of freaks, dropouts and weirdos getting artistic whilst the Big Apple rotted around them. It started roughly with the kinky subversion of Warhol and the Velvet Underground and would end up manifesting itself in a myriad of forms; Patti Smith’s punk poetry, the geek funk of Talking Heads, the rampant sleaze of the New York Dolls and the heads down ramalama racket of The Ramones. Even the musical forms which ended up being culturally dominant (disco and hip hop) began as the songs of the marginal. Blondie’s Parallel Lines is a document of that scene; a record of how it grew, evolved, splintered and eventually how it was refracted in one of the finest and most stylish pop albums of all time.

Very little of the book focuses on the album itself; perhaps only in terms of what Mike Chapman brought to producing the album and how remarkably the album was broken by the fourth single; a song buried halfway through side two. In modern times it’s insane to think that a song which still sounds like it should be an instant pop smash was almost sneaked out apologetically. It’s a wise move on McLeod’s part; he’s correctly divined that whilst Parallel Lines is a magnificent pop album what really makes it interesting is how it messes with what pop should be; you can enjoy Harry’s femme fatale persona as performance act or simply as an iconic pop star; you can enjoy the ridiculously infectious songs or enjoy the subversively provocative lyrics; you can enjoy the album or marvel at the sources it’s drawing on. It’s a melting pot of New York influences; punk, power pop, disco and they’d even stir in hip hop later on. In many ways they were as magpie as Bowie but playing with a 50s trash aesthetic rather than sci-fi and mysticism (they’re minor strands in Blondie’s music). Further parallels with Bowie come in Harry’s awareness of the power of image; the band’s at its strongest when Harry has control of the visual imagery. Harry and Bowie share an instinctive understanding of the importance of image and presentation in pop; something they were ahead of the game in as they broke through in the pre-MTV era. What’s really treasurable is how the book reminds us that it’s an underdog story; how no-one thought Blondie would make it let alone be the most commercially successful band of the scene.

The whole thing’s laced with the interviews from important people in the story; the band members themselves and those around the scene at the time. It doesn’t shy away from less glamorous aspects of the band’s story (the money troubles, the state of the area they lived in, the sex and drugs, Chris Stein’s illness) but it’s all covered compassionately and with proper context.  And that’s the triumph of the book; to put the band and album in context of the scene it came from; in its importance in the band’s history and the little tricks they were pulling beneath Chapman’s immaculate pop sheen. A sharp enjoyable tribute which fills in the details lost in the dazzle when the spotlight hit the glitterball.

(STANDARD DISCLAIMER – The copy I read was an advance eBook provided gratis by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review).

Dance Songs '97

I love Sleater-Kinney; they’re one of the last bands for my generation that you could fall in love with, who could mean the world to you and who would who loved the fans as much as the fans loved them. They always seemed aware of the fan reaction and the political statement of being three women playing fast, often angry music. They seemed to want to be the feminist equivalent both the Sex Pistols and the writers of Sniffin’ Glue.  It’s a beautiful ambition. I love that the album Babovic has chosen for the 33 1/3 series is Dig Me Out; whereas Call the Doctor and All Hands on the Bad One feel more obvious choices Dig Me Out is where the ‘classic’ line-up coalesces and things began to take off for them commercially. It’s a portrait of a band on the cusp of their big artistic and commercial break; almost invariably it’s the most interesting point of any band’s career. Even Coldplay’s.

As with the best books in the series this is barely about the album itself; although the circumstances of recording are discussed as they’re important to the record’s mood Babovic wisely realises that the technicalities aren’t important and often the album itself isn’t either. It’s simply the cultural artefact that triggers everything; the eye of the storm. As with the last 33 1/3 I read (Blondie’s Parallel Lines) this is about putting the album into context; its roots, its reception and the consequences for the band and music in general. I’d perhaps have liked a little more on Riot Grrl (although I appreciate there’s not a great deal of room to discuss it a little more beyond depth beyond Bikini Kill would’ve been nice) but Babovic drills down to just why the movement made little impact outside its heartland of Washington state and the UK but Sleater-Kinney did. It’s perhaps a simple conclusion but it might have been interesting to see it linked to Nirvana and Cobain’s inability to marry his purist ethic to grand scale success.   Not comparing female rock stars to male stars is very much the point but equally the comparison could simply be made band against band. Riot Grrl wasn’t equipped to handle mass success but Sleater-Kinney’s willingness to meet mainstream press and the music business whilst maintaining their principles means they were. You can’t spread a message, no matter how worthy, with an insular attitude. My favourite part of the book remained the details of the interactions of fans and band; the late 1990s and early 2000s feel like the last hurrah of fanzine culture and it’s fantastic to see it detailed here. Hey Soundguy sounds like the DIY punk zines of the late 1970s; a love of music (not necessarily technique) combined with a willingness to expose the workings of the system.  It’s about artists genuinely interested in having a conversation with their audience rather than preaching at them; that’s my favourite kind of band and a reminder of just why I love what they mean as much as any individual song or album.

If there’s a minor fault it’s perhaps that Babovic lapses into dry academic tone occasionally but it’s not at the expense of clearly dealing with the issues surrounding the band; it’s clearly as much about using the language of rock criticism to communicate as the band were using musical language to get their point across. That very much feels like the right way to write a book about the band; it covers what makes the band important in a relatively small wordcount.

And now I’m off to play Dig Me Out loud and take myself back most of two decades. Driving you back to the album is always the best sign of a good book.

(STANDARD DISCLAIMER – The copy I read was an advance eBook provided gratis by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review).

Author meets Book

...and it's love at first sight.

Volcano Day!

Well, book release day anyway.

Along with the three other excellent titles in the series Rose is now available as an ebook from the Obverse website, along with the other three launch titles. I'd recommend waiting for the very sexy print editions but if you want to save a few pennies/are impatient/don't want to fork out for postage run, don't walk, Obverse's way and throw your pounds and pennies at them. Throw them enough and they'll do a funny little dance too.

Plus! Details released of the first two books in the monthly schedule: Simon Bucher-Jones's study of Image of the Fendahl and Jonathan Dennis's take on Ghost Light.  The summaries for both of these should have you slavering in antici...





...pation and wanting to throw more moolah Obverse's way.

Don't let me keep you; please go and make some authors, the editor and the publisher happy little elves.  Thataway!

Examining The Black Archive

The first Black Archive reviews are in and pretty damn fine they are too.  Sci-fi Bulletin has reviewed each of the first four titles:

Rose

The Massacre

The Ambassadors of Death

Dark Water/ Death In Heaven

And gentleman and scholar Nick Campbell has a further look at The Ambassadors of Death here.

Obviously, after reviews like that you'll be wanting to pick up a full set so here's the handy dandy link to snaffle all four of the launch titles.

Exercises in Twitter Futility, Part 3,286 in an infinite series

Presented as a cautionary tale to the curious to warn about the futility of wasting your life:  I had one of those moments this week; the sort of moment the Total Perspective Vortex from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is supposed to bestow. The moment you realise we’re just a bunch of squabbling apes on a rock spinning around a big ball of fire in the middle of a big void. Being mildly bored I was browsing through Twitter when a friend retweeted Louise Mensch’s comment about being pro-Brexit pointing out that she lived and worked in America.

(Incidentally, what poverty of linguistic imagination cooked up ‘Brexit’? A play on a smashed up compound word that barely worked when applied to Greece but at least you could see how it got there)

Rule One of Twitter. Don’t Tweet bored.  Drunk is fine, drunk tweeting can be hilarious but tweeting out of boredom is the road to hell.  I’d forgotten that Mensch is practically a right-wing parody account; no idea what she’s like in real life but she’s rabid comedy gold on Twitter. Living in Northern Ireland and having certain EU statutes underpinning the Good Friday agreement I’ve got something of a vested interest in the EU referendum; I was curious as to why someone who lived and worked outside the EU by choice was so agitated about it. So I asked her about it, like so:

https://twitter.com/The_Arn/status/700670828468305920

Yeah, I know. You can see where it’s going.

First response no problem. She explains in service of making her point.

https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/700671221092872192

No problem with that at all. Then she starts being sarky:

https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/700671394653216770

Good one. I wasn't aware of that, I thought it was all one way traffic with hordes of emigrants looking to escape the dreaded tyranny of the EU.  The next one tickled me the most though:

https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/700671636446445568

'Little EUnglander'. I've not read one of her novels but it's possibly the worst attempt at wordplay in recorded history.  Which is pretty good for two words.  Let's run through the genius of it. 

1. 'Little'. The EU is not little; certainly not in comparison to the UK. I'm still trying to work out how being pro-Europe is being small-minded in comparison to wanting to retreat to being a reasonably sized island nation at a point where the important world forces are global rather than national. What's small-minded about seeing yourself as part of a larger community than just your immediate neighbours?
2. 'EUnglander.'  Come on. It doesn't work on any level as a pun; it doesn't scan nor can it be crowbarred to form an amusing play on Englander or EU... erm, citizen. 
3. No way Mensch could have known it but I'm not English. Neither by birth nor residency. 

It's also stretching it a bit to say that a lot of people live and work in many countries.  It's a touch arrogant to assume that; many professions don't involve working abroad.

All this of course didn't answer my question; which was very kindly put succinctly by another user: 

https://twitter.com/jamesmperrett/status/700672337490944000

And when I realised I wasn't going to get any answer, maybe a little more invective at best, I walked off; frankly that's as wise as it gets. Would that I'd realsied that half an hour earlier.  And I realised that I was getting a bit too invested in the EU debate when there'd be four bloody months of it and, quite honestly, I wasn't going to get anything to tell me why changing the status quo would be a wise idea.

And now I've wasted half an hour of my life talking about a minor conversation with a minor political celebrity on Twitter. I'm beginning to understand how easy life is for journalists these days; bored chat on Twitter, 500 words in half an hour, job done and down to the pub. Good life it you can get it...

The Black Archive Blog: Why Rose?

With the launch of the first four Black Archive titles imminent a blog about my entry on Rose; to explain why I chose it and the thinking behind my approach.  None of the actual analysis though, you'll have to give the frankly sexy and beautiful Obverse Books your cash to get that...  

Originally I was thinking in terms of my favourite stories; a fair number of them being those that congregate around the top of the polls along with more idiosyncratic choices (I pretty much considered every McCoy era story aside from Time and the Rani).  I soon realised that it was the wrong angle to approach such a choice from; it’s not your affection for a story but how much you have to say about it that counts. In that sense a lot of the most interesting stories aren’t the most successfully realised but ones where ambition has clearly exceeded grasp.  So I scrapped my original train of thought and cast around for ideas.

The final choice of Rose was partly a question of timing and partly a question of what the story meant to me personally.  The first solicitations for The Black Archive series took place in early 2015 and the early part of the year naturally saw a lot of material about the tenth anniversary of the new series with Rose being a particular focus. Most articles swerved between nostalgic and adulatory but few really analysed just *why* Rose had been so successful.   It’s the start of the mythologizing of the RTD era; it’s distant enough for the details to blur and it to become part of the show’s history. Rightly so too, in Doctor Who production terms ten years is forever; there are vast differences between An Unearthly Child and The Time Warrior or The Horns of Nimon and Survival. We’ve had four season of RTD and five of Steven Moffat plus numerous specials since that first episode. Much of the analysis had a narrow focus too; on the episode itself rather than the wider context of the TV landscape or why creative decisions made by Russell T Davies and those involved in the production of the show ended up being spectacularly validated.  I was looking  to put what was achieved with Rose into the context of the show’s own history and the popular culture of 2005.

On the personal front the episode meant everything to me as a fan too.  It catapulted the show back to the heart of British popular culture to the point of it being a default reference when talking about SF; to add to the excitement the production of the show was based five minutes from where I was living at the time. I passed the studio every day on my way to and from work and even saw Eccleston and Piper rehearsing outdoors in late summer.  For a long-term Who fan the combined thrill of proximity and success was something it was difficult to put into words.  The pinch yourself wonder of having Who back; not only having it back but having it back on Saturday night and achieving ridiculous ratings.  I wanted to capture that thrill in the book; the essence of success that we’re all quite blasé about in the wake of the show’s subsequent success.  I said earlier that much of what’s interesting about Doctor Who are the heroic failures but Rose is an exception; in terms of what it sets out to achieve it’s unarguably the most successful episode in the show’s history.* Not only in terms of the initial impact in its own country but it’s the most frequently bought drama of the past 40 years for BBC Worldwide. More successful on that front than Eastenders, Howard’s Way, House of Cards, Dennis Potter’s most acclaimed works, State of Play, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Call the Midwife, Happy Valley, This Life, Casualty, Our Friends In the North… It appealed on a national and international basis.  What was fascinating about it was why it had such universal appeal; why the revival of a 42 year old series struck such a chord.

With that overarching theme of the rebirth of the series in mind I sent Phil a proposal for the structure of the book; what seemed the most fascinating aspects of the rebirth.    He agreed them with minor modifications and some excellent suggestions for further investigation.  In keeping with the tone of the new series I was aiming to blend my analysis with a relatively light tone; reflecting the story it examined.  

Fast forward to December and just before Christmas and after some excellent feedback from beta readers (thanks, in particular to Geoff Wessel for a couple of excellent points), a some thoughtful notes from the editor which added clarity to certain areas, depth to others and generally tightened the manuscript it was ready to be sent to the publisher.  Fast forward another couple of months and you’ll see an author bouncing happily up and down after having seen the gorgeous cover artwork from Blair Bidmead and Cody Schell and having read through the beautifully put together ebook.

At the time of writing the first four volumes in the Black Archive series are at the printers and on target for their early March release date.  It’s been a privilege to be part of the launch of a series I’d be delighted to read even if I wasn’t involved; quite aside from my own title I've read an early draft of Dark Water/Death in Heaven (a breathtakingly fine set of essays) and I can’t wait to read The Massacre and The Ambassadors of Death both for the stories chosen and the authors.  Similarly the remainder of the year promises a strong selection of writers and stories which I’ll be pre-ordering. You can give Obverse your money for the first four titles here,

Now all that’s left is the always nervous wait to see what everyone makes of it.  Time to see if fingernails can be gnawed down to the bone then…

* Not necessarily in terms of the actual episode but in successfully relaunching Doctor Who.  There's a decade's worth of TV, spin-offs and foreign sales on my side here.

Hating to Love

Don't tell anyone, but I might well know something about a few of the essays in this very fine forthcoming volume...

The Black Archive Is Almost Open...

Well here's a thing.  A rather beautiful thing at that...

In case you're one of those souls whose eyesight is going due to decades spent staring at TVs or monitors it's the rather fabulous cover for the first of the Black Archive series the first four of which are released next month but available for pre-order from the modestly magnificent Obverse Books either on its own or as part of a bundle of the first four in the series.. Obviously I'd be obsequiously grateful to anyone good enough to but the book but I thoroughly recommend buying all four. 

The cover's a collaborative effort from the insanely talented pairing of Blair Bidmead and Cody Schell and you can see this and the three other spectacular covers on the Black Archive Facebook page or here. I'd say I'm absolutely delighted with it but that might be considered a ridiculous degree of understatement.  It's currently the wallpaper on my phone and I'm starting to consider texts and notifications which stop me admiring it in a near-hypnotic trance rude. 

I'll blog about this in more detail closer to the release but in the meantime keep an eye out for further announcements on the above Facebook link and feel free to get very excited at how damn fine this series is going to be.