Iain J Coleman

Hierarchy of The Wire

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:41:30 GMT

Found on the RPGNet forums, this excellent account of the unique appeal of The Wire:

I think my favorite thing about the Wire is that you usually only hate a character until you meet their boss.

Season 1: "God, Rawls is a dick. I mean, McNulty is a dick, but Rawls is a DICK, youknowwhatImean?"

Season 2: "Wow, Ervin Burrel almost makes Rawls look like a boy scout. I mean, Rawls is still a dick, but when you see what he has to deal with..."

Season 3: "Nice sweater, Rawls. Jesus Christ, Mayor Royce is a dickhead. I can't believe I'm actually starting to feel bad for Burrel..."

Season 4: "Wow, I had no idea that the political scene was that fubared. I suddenly feel a twinge of sympathy for Mayor Royce: he may be a dickhead, but he has to answer to six hundred thousand dickhead voters."

Season 5: "I now despise everyone and everything."

Season 1 has just been dispatched to me by Amazon, just in case i_smell_shite is finding Wish Me Luck a bit too cheerful.

Astonishing

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:24:56 GMT

It turns out this is not a parody.

OH JOHN RINGO NO

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:05:45 GMT

hradzka reads John Ringo so you don't have to.

Gary Gygax 1938-2008

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:58:20 GMT

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and father of the roleplaying game, has died following a period of ill health.

If we judge a person by the joy they bring to others, then Gygax was one of the great men of our time.

TV reviews

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:59:01 GMT

Tonight's telly:

The best thing we watched on telly tonight was Tenko, but since that's a week-old recording of a decades-old series, it doesn't really count as "tonight's telly", does it?

No, tonight was the second episode of Ashes to Ashes. It was, I'm glad to say, a great improvement on episode one. Compared to Life on Mars, it's a load of shallow tosh - but compared to last week's episode, it's fun and entertaining. Alex's conviction that her colleagues are just imaginary constructs still threatens to kneecap the drama, but apart from that I found tonight's episode much more enjoyable than last week's.

Then the was The Big Bang Theory, a new American sitcom about a bunch of socially inept physicists. how could I not watch this?

It turned out to be a simultaneous experience of joy and frustration. Joy, because the script was wonderful. Seriously, it really rang true for me as a physicist. It's not just that the jargon was right, though that was impressive enough. It was that the mindset of physicists was brilliantly captured by the writer. These were my people.

Or at least, they should have been. Two problems kept the show from greatness. The first, and worst, was the acting. The whole script was realised with that terribly mannered, arch, US sitcom style of acting that just screams "Laugh! Laugh at me! Look, I'm doing a funny voice, with outlandish mannerisms to boot! Laugh, damn you all, laugh!" It would have been so much realer, and so much funnier, with more naturalistic performances. US sitcoms can manage this - see the US version of The Office - but I spent most of the time imagining how easy it would be to shift this script to the UK just by changing a handful of words, and how much better it would be with proper British screen acting. The second issue was the laugh track. These are generally hateful at the best of times, but this one was so exuberant, and featured so many random shouts and call-outs, that I imagined it might itself build into a lecture on Aristotle's theory of humour.

It's sad because with a few stylistic tweaks this could be a great show.

Doctor Who Mega-Meme

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:39:35 GMT

That Doctor Who Mega-Meme, brought to you by the words "tedious" and "fuck":

1. When did you start watching and why?

In my earliest childhood, because it was the most exciting and scary thing on telly.

2. What was your first serial/episode?

The earliest memory I have in my entire life is the bit in The Invasion of Time when the Sontaran leader removes his helmet REVEALING THE HIDEOUS MONSTER HEAD WITHIN! It gave me a nightmare that I still remember. Imagine the anticlimax when I saw it again on video.

3. Which serials/episodes have you seen?

There are some Hartnells, Troughtons and Pertwees that I have yet to see (or hear), and due to some cosmic conspiracy I have never managed to see Planet of Evil. Apart from that, I've seen them all.

3a. Favourite?

Oh, God.

The Reign of Terror, The Massacre, The Myth Makers, Power of the Daleks, The Mind Robber, The Enemy of the World, Inferno, Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, City of Death, Warriors' Gate, Kinda, The Caves of Androzani, Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light, The Curse of Fenric, Dalek, The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, Love and Monsters, Gridlock, Blink, Utopia / The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords.

What, pick just one? OK, The Massacre.

No, City of Death.

No, The Caves of Androzani. Yes, definitely Androzani.

I think.

4. Are your friends/family interested in the show?

My wife is a major Colin Baker and Troughton fangirl, and we watch the show together. My mum and my brothers are casual viewers of the new series, though I don't know if they've seen much of it lately.

5. Which Doctor is your favourite?

I have to pick three: Hartnell, Tom Baker and Eccleston. Plenty of other excellent actors have played the role, but these are the three who really seem to be eccentric and mysterious aliens.

6. Which Doctor is your least favourite?

Pertwee. Smug git.

7. Which TV companion is your favourite?

Tricky, but there can be only one Sarah Jane Smith. An honourable mention, though, to the much underrated Steven Taylor: I think he's the only companion who has to carry an entire story (The Massacre) pretty much single-handed, and Peter Purves pulls it off extremely well.

8. Which TV companion is your least favourite?

Ooh, now that is a tough one. Vicki's a bit annoying, isn't she? The wooden spoon has to go to Victoria, though. What a drip.

9. Do you listen to the Big Finish audios?

I've heard a handful.

9a. If so, which is your favourite?

Deadline, with Derek Jacobi as the dying TV Writer reminiscing about that show called "Doctor Who" that he never managed to get off the ground.

9b. Also: which Big Finish companion is your favourite?

Evelyn, I suppose. Not that she doesn't deserve it, but she wins by default as I haven't heard any of the others.

10. Have you listened to any non-Big Finish audios?

Only the BBC Audio releases of the wiped stories.

10a. If so, which is your favourite?

The Massacre (see above).

11. Have you read any of the novels or short stories?

Loads. I only got into the Virgin novels after they'd been going for quite a while, but I read quite a lot of them, and I bought the BBC 8th Doctor novels religiously for a while until I realised I could be reading much better books instead.

11a. Have you written any of the novels or short stories?

No.

11b. Which is your favourite?

From the Virgin range, Just War by Lance Parkin and Human Nature by Paul Cornell are my all-time favourites (with the latter being much better than its recent TV adaptation). In the BBC range, Lawrence Miles towers above the rest of the authors, with Interference standing out for being fantastic, and for pissing off all the tedious grognards of fandom.

Although, if I'm allowed to stretch some definitions just a little bit, Lawrence Miles' post-Who Virgin novel Dead Romance is arguably the best Doctor Who novel ever written, despite not including the words "Doctor", "Time Lord" or "Tardis".

12. Have you read any of the comics?

I used to read the DWM strip back in the day. The Steve Parkhouse strips for the Fifth and Sixth Doctors were frequently much better than the televised show, with Voyager being the Sixth Doctor's finest hour.

12a. You guessed it--which is your favourite?

Ooh, now. I'm torn between Voyager and The Tides of Time for the best epic strip, so I think I'll have to go for the less flashy, more character-based The Moderator.

13. Do you watch any of the spinoffs (e.g. Torchwood, Sarah Jane Adventures)?

Both!

13a. Which is your favourite?

In their first seasons, The Sarah Jane Adventures was both better-written and more adult than Torchwood, so a clear winner. With the upswing in Torchwood's quality this season, though, it's much harder to pick a favourite.

14. Is there any particular episode/book/audio/comic you desperately want to watch/listen to/read?

The ones that have been wiped.

15. Do you write fanfic for Doctor Who?

No. Well, I did write something very short about eight years ago.

15a. If so, post a snippet of a work-in-progress (or several)!

Damned if I can find it.

16. Do you create Doctor Who icons?

Not habitually, but I have done a couple in my time.

16a. Let's see a sample!

You can see my favourite at the top of this post.

17. Recommend a fanfic/icon/fanvid/fancomic/fancreation!

Does the new Doctor Who series count?

18. Have you been to any Doctor Who conventions?

No.

19. Have you ever dressed up as a Doctor Who character?

Not intentionally.

20. Do you own any Doctor Who merchandise?

Oh yes.

21. Are you a fan of Russell T. Davies?

Absolutely, though for all his great work on Who I still think The Second Coming is his finest hour.

21a. Steven Moffat?

Exquisite. Simply exquisite.

(Jekyll was wank, though.)

21b. Paul Cornell?

He is capable of brilliance, and often delivers it. Unfortunately, this can be marred, sometimes fatally, by fanwank, schmaltz, religiosity and self-satisfied Decentism.

22. What say you to Season 6b?

After much reading, I have come to the conclusion that I don't care enough to have an opinion.

23. The UNIT dating controversy?

If you ditch the conceit (never stated on-screen) that the stories are set a few years into the future relative to the production date, and blatantly ignore Sarah's "I'm from 1980" in Pyramids of Mars, UNIT dating fits together quite nicely.

24. The Blinovitch Limitation Effect?

Also known as the Device of Plot.

25. Multi-Doctor episodes?

Thy're all shit, aren't they? Look, if neither a great nuts-and-bolts man like Terrance Dicks nor a master storyteller like Robert Holmes can write a multi-Doctor story that doesn't turn out to be a pile of poo, maybe it's best to just forget the whole idea.

26. What's your favourite Doctor Who technobabble?

"It goes ding! when there's stuff."

27. Have you watched other TV shows exclusively because of the presence of Doctor Who actors?

Not in general. The only exceptions that spring to mind are The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Tom Baker (shit), and The Cult of The Brothers, featuring Colin Baker (an interesting little documentary, but one that left me with absolutely no desire to watch the show that it was about).

28. Have you met any of the actors?

No. Actually, yes, I met Michael Sheard at a convention one time. (Hasn't everyone?)

28a. Traveled to any filming locations?

Do Paris and London count? Oh, and I've been to Culloden, which is more than Doctor Who managed.

29. What do you think of "The Curse of Fatal Death"?

Canon.

It was terrific fun, and the rapid succession of Doctors at the end threw up some real surprises. Hugh Grant was astonishingly good in his brief stint (and it wasn't just me who thought so: RTD offered him the role before it went to Eccleston), while Joanna Lumley in the space of about a minute blew away years of tedious scholasticism on the unfeasibility of a female Doctor.

30. Do you have any fannish opinions that you think are fairly unpopular?

JNT's "stunt casting" policy was pretty good, on the whole.

The only real failure (and I'm discounting Bonnie Langford from this discussion) was Leee John in Enlightenment. Hale and Pace give perfectly good performances in Survival, as long as you let them just be actors playing roles rather than "Comedy Duo Hale and Pace!", Ken Dodd may be just doing his usual schtick in Delta and the Bannermen, but it fits the character and the story, and I really really like Beryl Reid in Earthshock. Any other sci-fi show would want to be all serious and cast a female actor who exudes strength and competence. How many bosses have you had like that, of either sex? There's no reason why a slightly eccentric old woman shouldn't end up in charge of a cargo spacecraft in the future, but only Doctor Who would actually depict it.

Plenty of other famous faces from light entertainment give fine performances in the JNT era: it's traditional to mention Nicholas Parsons at this point, but Nerys Hughes in Kinda was stunt casting at the time too. Frankly, the success rate of this policy is no worse than the standard casting procedure. Even the most dependable casting can go awry - watch episode four of Paradise Towers while reading Richard Briers' CV if you want to see what I mean - and at least JNT managed to grab the programme some much-needed publicity at a time when the BBC management had lost interest.

31. What's your favourite pairing?

I really find this question utterly fucking tedious. Not that there haven't been some lovely couples in the series - Ian and Barbara, the Second Doctor and Jamie, the Third Doctor and Jo Grant, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith - but this recent import into Doctor Who fandom of judging the programme primarily on the validation or otherwise that it provides for some purported relationship just makes my want to pull my teeth out. Fuck this question, and fuck people who think it matters.

32. What pairing(s) won't you touch with a really long pole?

What the fuck? A good story is a good story, and a bad story is a bad story, no matter who might be intimately entangled with who. Fuck's sake.

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:45:20 GMT

Happy ~~Valentine's Day~~ Birthday to mraltariel!

Ashes to Ashes

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:29:29 GMT

Spoilers for Ashes to Ashes episode 1:

So, the heavily-trailed successor to the mighty Life on Mars is here at last. But is it The Empire Strikes Back or Highlander II?

It's certainly got a different vibe.The time-stranded cop is female, of course, and more on that in a bit, and of course it feels different for me because I remember 1981. There's a much more fundamental difference, though, which is that this time the modern police officer knows all about Gene Hunt et al, and has no doubt at all that the whole experience is nothing but a figment of her own imagination. This is one of the things that lets down the drama. If our viewpoint character doesn't care about the events and people around her, why should we? Most importantly, Life on Mars was founded on the moral struggle between Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt: but if Alex Drake doesn't believe the people around her are real, why should she care if they get beaten up, tortured or shot? And speaking of the Gene Genie, the other big problem is that Ashes to Ashes has bought into Hunt's self-image wholly uncritically. His pig-headed machismo made dramatic sense in opposition to Tyler's modern restraint: without that opposition, the id-monster is free to roam wild in a show that gleefully indulges his every excess.

There is good stuff here: the period details are nicely evocative, and Glenister, Andrews and Lancaster do a very good job of portraying older versions of their previous characters. Sadly, the new lead actor isn't in the same league. Watching Keeley Hawes' shrill and mannered performance, you realise just how crucial John Simms' introspective intensity was to the success of Life on Mars. Presumably the production team thought that a female lead would add a new dimension to the central relationship, but there's much less sexual tension here than there was between Hunt and Tyler. Instead, there's just some ritualistic sexism that even Gene Hunt seems bored with.

But one of the really basic problems with this show is that it doesn't have a clear idea of its source material. Life on Mars was part tribute to, part parody of The Sweeney, a core concept that anchored the entire series. Ashes to Ashes wants to do the same with 80s cop shows - but there are two problems. The first is that all the good cop shows in the 80s were American. Where Life on Mars just needed to screech a brown Cortina through a brickworks to invoke its roots, Ashes to Ashes really needs dazzling sunshine glinting off bright blue sea if its speedboat full of gun-toting cops is to have the same effect. Puttering up an overcast Thames just doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. The second problem is that the source material here has such a range of tones, and Ashes to Ashes can't make up its mind which to go for. A hail of submachinegun fire in which no one is hurt can work as an affectionate send-up of The A Team, but only if the rest of the production supports it. When it's variously trying to be Miami Vice or The Equalizer, poor old Marshall Lancaster just looks like a twat as he dances amidst the bullets.

And finally, where the first episode of Life on Mars was structured around two brilliant, iconic scenes - Tyler's first confrontation with Hunt, and the pair of them leaping over the table at the climax - tonight's episode had no such moments.

I'm hopeful that these are just teething troubles, the creaks and groans of trying to restart the idea in a new setting. Perhaps, with the work of justifying the central premise done, the show will settle down to a solidly entertaining level, even if it never reaches the heights of its parent. Then again, perhaps I'm just being over-optimistic. We'll see.

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:58:28 GMT

Happy birthday, altariel!

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:49:47 GMT

Happy birthday sugoll! Hope you're feeling better.

Feast of Steven

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:44:26 GMT

I'm watching The Daleks Master Plan at the moment. I'll do a proper review when I've finished it, but I've just watched episode seven, "The Feast of Steven", and even in its fragmentary, reconstructed form it may well be the best episode of Doctor Who ever made. It brilliantly evokes 20th century Earth, seen through the eyes of travellers from the far future as a baffling, threatening and alien environment. It plays audacious and hilarious games with the form, putting the Tardis in the middle of a contemporary police drama, and action heroes Steven and Sara into silent movie melodrama. Hartnell is on fine form, patronising coppers and wishing all of us at home a merry Christmas, Marsh plays the fish out of water very well, and Purves is splendid impersonating a northern bobby. And if you want to know why Hartnell is still the best, just watch the scene where he has to tell the policeman who he is. None of this "Time Lord from Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous, coordinates 1001100 by 02 from galactic zero centre" business. No, he is " A citizen of the Universe, and a gentleman to boot!" And that's all you need to know.

The Hartnell Files

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:51:57 GMT

I've been watching some old Hartnell Doctor Who stories that I'd never seen before. They turned out to be, quite literally, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Reign of Terror. Hartnell's personal favourite episode, and it's not hard to see why. It's an edgy historical drama that gives the star plenty of performance opportunities, and he makes the most of them. The story itself is pretty brutal: the kinds of characters who you expect will take us all the way through the story are unceremoniously gunned down within five minutes of their appearance, the cruel dictator is shot in the jaw and dragged off to be killed without any indication that this will change the world for the better, and the only way anyone makes a cunning prison break is with the connivance of the authorities. Indeed, the story is all about being trapped, whether it's the Doctor trapped in a burning building (and Hartnell's palpable terror and vulnerability will never be displayed by his successors), the other regulars trapped in a web of political manoeuverings, or the Parisians trapped in a political structure whose remorseless logic over-rides the agency of any human being, even its apparent ruler. No one will ever call this one a romp.

The Keys of Marinus. The thing you have to understand about Terry Nation is that he is a gestalt entity composed of two very different writers. Good Terry writes bleak yet passionate stories about the dark side of humanity and the fate of our species: Blake's 7: "The Way Back", "Terminal"; Survivors; Doctor Who: "The Daleks", "Genesis of the Daleks". The there's Bad Terry, who churns out the most deplorable collections of sci-fi cliches, strung together in sequences rather than plots, with no idea too obvious, no development too ridiculous, no action too illogical. From Doctor Who alone there's "Planet of the Daleks", "The Android Invasion", and... "The Keys of Marinus". It really does fail on every level except the only two that matter to Bad Terry: filling 6x22 minutes of airtime, and cashing his cheque at the end of the week. It's a quest story made up of subplots set in widely diverse environments, and the big problem with it is that it's a quest story made up of subplots set in widely diverse environments. Long serials like "The Reign of Terror" or Good Terry's "The Daleks" could afford to spend time and money creating convincing, substantial settings, with the cost paid off by reusing them over the course of six or seven episodes. By demanding a completely new setting every episode or two, Bad Terry makes this impossible. No wonder the world of Marinus looks like a collection of hastily-dressed sound stages. And it's not just the sets that suffer. The self-contained sub-stories never get space to breathe, being crammed together like veal calves on their way the the Channel. There's no sense of narrative drive, precious little mystery or suspense, and the main antagonist is of little interest except to seriously hardcore rubber fetishists. It's a shame, really. A couple of the chapters - when our heroes apparently have their every wish fulfilled, only to find it's all an illusion, and when Ian is framed for murder and the Doctor turns detective - could have made for decent stories in their own right if they'd been properly developed, and episode two almost feels as if Good Terry has made a comeback. It doesn't last.Doctor Who has never been shoddier.

The Web Planet. No one could accuse this story of lacking ambition. The writer, director, designer and choreographer are all trying so, so hard to create a fully-realised, utterly alien world - unlike our own, yet rich and believable in its own terms. Tragically, the result is a couple of guys waddling about in flippers with ant costumes on their heads, flailing blindly at some other folk in fuzzily striped romper suits, while an old man in a silver wig tries not to get knocked over. The Optera larvae are possibly the worst-realised creatures in the history of sci-fi drama, with their hopping motion incomprehensible in view of their perfectly functional and visible human legs. The moment when one of them saves the others from an acid leak by sticking her head into the hole was probably meant to be a thoughtful and moving depiction of alien values. It's funnier than the death of Little Nell. The really sad thing, though, is that the story comes so close to greatness. The planet Vortis is depicted with a geographic extent that is rare in a genre in which alien planets typically consist of the inside of someone's office, or a single outdoors set, even if the visuals never match the sense of scale in the script. The soundscape is genuinely alien. Considerable effort has gone into designing inhuman forms of body language for the Menoptera, but since they are all too obviously people in ill-fitting suits the unnaturallness of the movement just ends up looking silly. (But there's still an important difference between this and the frozen knights in "The Keys of Marinus": the latter looked silly because no one cared enough about the production to make sure they did anything very specific, so they just end up milling about in a Pythonesque fashion. The Menoptera look silly because the choreographer has tried hard to do something innovative, and failed. The latter is much to be preferred.) With the story's credibility collapsing before our very eyes, the only hope is that the regular actors can somehow hold it together. And, remarkably, they do. Hartnell's commanding and controlled performance almost makes you believe in all the rubbish that's happening around him, while Jaqueline Hill maintains the reality of Barbara's charater whether she's fussing about the spring cleaning or leading the Menoptera in combat, and Maureen O'Brien is full of on-screen energy as Vicki. Only William Russell seems tired of it all, and given that he expends most of his energies in a sub-plot that ends up being totally irrelevant, who can blame him? Ultimately, "The Web Planet" fails not through any lack of conviction, but because the ambition is not matched by the execution. It's frustrating to see something so ridiculous and consider how close it comes to greatness, but, as Nigel Tufnell said, there's a fine line between being clever and being stupid.

On watching episode two of The Web Planet...

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 00:36:02 GMT

Q: How drunk do you have to be to not find the fight between the Zarbi and the Menoptera utterly risible?

A: Drunker than I am at the moment.

On the upside, Hartnell gives a seriously ballsy performance when he confronts the Zarbi - which, under the circumstances, more than merits his being raised from the grave by forbidden magicks, dressed in a smartly tailored dinner suit, and presented with a posthumous BAFTA for Credible Acting in the Face of Very Silly Costumes.

An overdue revolution in publishing

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:58:26 GMT

Good news. I mean, what are hardbacks for, anyway?

Interests Meme

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:16:00 GMT

A cool interests meme from mckitterick:

Comment on this post asking for me to meme you, and I will choose seven interests from your profile. Then you make a post where you explain what those seven interests mean to you, why you are interested in them, and so on. Then post these instructions along with your answers so that others can play along.

Blake's 7

I have vague memories of the last series of B7 from when I was a kid. Mainly Servalan, people running around in sandpits shooting at each other, and me wondering why, if it was called "Blake's 7", there was no one called Blake in it. Then Blake turned up, and I thought "Hooray!" My joy was short-lived.

That was it until I was a postgrad at Glasgow University. At one of many drunken parties in the flat I shared, one of our friends put on the then newly-released VHS video of "Star One". I was instantly hooked. Avon slamming Blake's fanaticism, Blake's monomaniacal drive to justify his past failures with a desperate gamble, the twists and turns as the stakes get higher, and that wonderful exchange at the end, where our heroes prepare to face down an entire alien invasion fleet:
VILA: Avon, this is stupid!
AVON: When did that ever stop us?

I was hooked, but I didn't go out and buy all the tapes straight away. Instead, I found the B7 fan sites on this new "World Wide Web" thingy, read all the episode transcripts, and decided this was something I had to get more of. So not only did I eventually collect all four series, I joined the very lively B7 mailing list at lysator.se.

This had a significant effect on my life. It was my first entry to fandom: it got me participating in many conventions, and encouraged me to think about, and write about, a wider range of topics than I'd ever done before. More importantly, it introduced me to some of my dearest friends, including the Best Man at my forthcoming wedding.

e-science

I work for two organisations - the National e-Science Centre and the e-Science Institute - both of which are conveniently located in the same building in Edinburgh and share many of the same staff. So what is e-Science? It's the creation and exploitation of distributed computing infrastructure to enable sophisticated forms of scientific collaboration. It's also strictly only ever written with a lower case "e", necessitating various exercises in grammatical gymnastics to avoid starting a sentence with "e-Science".

glorantha

An astonishingly rich and detailed fantasy world. Glorantha is most closely associated with the roleplaying game Runequest, which was set in that world, but in fact Glorantha preceded the game and has been used as the setting for other roleplaying games, board wargames, and even novels. While many people have contributed to the fictional world, the principal creator is Greg Stafford. He began creating Glorantha as an exercise in mythology in the late 60s, and his characteristic blend of deep mythological structures and bizarre whimsy remains central to the Gloranthan style.

marillion

There was a progressive rock revival in Britain in the early 80s. As a movement it's pretty much forgotten, mainly because only one good band every came out of it, and one band does not a movement make. That band was Marillion, and they only seem to have a slightly less wanky name than their contemporaries Twelfth Night and Pendragon because they wisely dropped the Sil- from the start of their name at a very early stage.

Two things distinguished Marillion in the early days. One was their guitarist, Steve Rothery: an unassuming gentleman, but probably the most under-rated guitarist in rock history. The other was their imposing lead singer and lyricist, Fish (Derek Dick to his mum). Their early songs are musically very much the sum of their influences, from Genesis to Camel to Van Der Graaf Generator (of whom, more later), but Rothery's guitar work lifts it above the merely derivative, and Fish's lyrics, rooted in direct experience and made vivid by notes of sordid realism, are richer and more affecting than even his idol Peter Hammill had ever achieved.

Their high point, in my view, was their fourth album, Clutching at Straws. It's a dark and frankly autobiographical study of an alcoholic whose world is increasingly fractured and ambiguous, and who is becoming increasingly alienated from friends, family and society. It's bloody good. It was also the last Marillion album to feature Fish. He went on to a solo career, which I have followed with enthusiasm, while the remainder Marillion went off with a new singer into new musical territory that I was less interested in.

science fiction

As a kid, I loved Doctor Who. Still do. I used to get all the Target novelisations of the stories, and read them over and over again. Eventually a colleague of my dad's - I forget who - gave me a load of proper SF books that I guess he had finished with. It was pretty much a grab-bag of novels, short story collections and even anthologies of essays. Lots of Asimov and Clarke, plus some Sturgeon and various others. Clarke was my favourite: Report on Planet 3, Tales of Ten Worlds, Earthlight, A Fall of Moondust... At about the same time I also got - for Chistmas, I think - a hardback collection of SF novels including The Day of the Triffids, I Robot, and The Demolished Man. All great stuff - I loved the later Robot stories - but Bester just blew my tiny little mind. And, just to coincide with all of this, Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds was a big hit. I got the album - loved it, still do - read the novel with the tie-in cover, and at the same time the H.G. Wells story was being serialised in the back pages of Doctor Who Weekly.

So I became an SF fan. Unavoidable, under the circumstances. Fantasy followed, when I saw the Bakshi cartoon of Lord of the Rings on video, read the Fellowship at my friend Mark's house, then devoured the entire trilogy in a weekend when a distant cousin lent me his dog-eared copy. This continued throughout my teens, with novels, movies and roleplaying games.

I sort of drifted away from SF as a living literary form for a while. I often say that what put me off SF was doing a PhD in astrophysics, and it's only half a joke. So much SF just seemed to be presenting a dilute version of the sense of wonder that I could access in its pure form through science, and the hard, or hard-ish, SF that I had relished in my youth now seemed flat and uninspiring. I retained some enthusiasm for, broadly speaking, New Wave SF - Dick, Ballard, Moorcock - but I would hardly have called myself an SF fan.

I started getting back into it when I read Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal. It was new, fresh and exciting, and reawakened the taste for serious speculation expressed through a vibrant story. I'm enthusiastic about contemporary SF/Fantasy again, with authors like Stross, Kay and Stephenson bringing some of that mind-expanding spirit I first experienced with Asimov and Clarke, even if I am now a more critical reader.

I recently re-read the Foundation trilogy. It really is bollocks until the Mule turns up, isn't it? From then on, it's a pretty good story.

science writing

Well, it's my job. I'm the Science Writer at the National e-Science Centre / e-Science Institute (see above). The job mainly entails finding out about what science is going on using distributed computing, by attending workshops, conferences and what have you, and writing articles about it so as to inform the wider scientific community about what everyone is up to. It's very enjoyable. I left scientific research in part because I was sick of thinking about the same narrow problem every day for years: now I get to experience exciting research in every field from particle physics to performing arts, and then write articles about them that draw on my own education and interests to put this work into a wider intellectual context.

van der graaf generator

The forgotten masters of progressive rock, Van Der Graaf Generator produced some the most exciting and audacious rock music you could ever hear. They also created a fair bit of wank, to be honest, but that's a professional hazard of the genre. The essential Van Der Graaf Generator album is H to He, Who Am The Only One. The title is inspired by stellar nucleosynthesis, but that needn't detain us right now. Musically, the band is at its best in this album, with punchy, well-structured tracks that avoid the floppy self-indulgence of some of their other work. But it is singer and lyricist Peter Hammill who really shines here. He creates images of visceral horror in "The Emperor and his War Room", and flips effortlessly mid-phrase from hard rocking to choral transcendence in "Pioneers Over C". Give me ambition and audacity over conventional perfection any day.

Hens and stags

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:08:52 GMT

i_smell_shite and I had our combined hen and stag do yesterday. It was a lot of fun, and I am now recuperating. Lots of lovely people were there, including glitterboy1 and kalypso_v who had come all the way from England, and katlinel and sugoll, who had come all the way from just up the road. Some pictures are available on our Flickr site.

We had a Scottish dinner on Friday night (haggis, neeps and tatties) and a Danish meal yesterday evening (pork, sugar potatoes and red cabbage). But the main event was during the day. I took the men in the wedding party to 21st Century Kilts where we sorted out our kilt hire for the wedding. All except glitterboy1, that is. He has made the admirable decision to invest in a personally tailored kilt suit, and was measured up in some detail by Howie himself. Sadly, this meant he didn't actually try on a kilt: LJ will have to wait a couple more months for photos.

We then joined the ladies for a rather spiffing meal at Tiger Lily. We had a private dining area booked: with the silver chain curtain and the mirrored lampshades it looked like a set from Austin Powers. After some delicious nosh an a chocolate fondue, the party split again: the bride's people went back to our flat to indulge in girlie goings on of which I know little, while the groom's entourage engaged in wide-ranging cultural and philosophical discussion in a succession of New Town hostelries. We were aided in this endeavour by my old friend Peter, who came in from Glasgow to join us in this, most vital section of the day. My even older friend, Mark, presented me with a handsome hip flask, to assist in future ruminations.

Today has gone by at a slow and gentle pace.

Flame warre!

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:04:59 GMT

Myn herte ys redy to burste out of myn chest, so gret is the angre and the bittre sorwe that ys in my soule...

Three cheers for Penguin

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:32:44 GMT

Hooray for Penguin Classics! They're sending me a free book to review!

This is all thanks to altariel's prompt intelligence about their new promotional scheme. If you're one of the first 1400 to sign up, they send you a random book from their range on condition that you blog a review of it within six weeks of receipt. I got in in time, and got a slightly cryptic email:

Congratulations! You are one of the lucky readers to receive a free Penguin Classic and be first to review it on BlogaPenguinClassic.co.uk. We will send you the book shortly, and don't forget you have agreed to review it within six weeks of receipt!

Your book is: Selected Poems And Letters

But whose selected poems and letters? Going to the long list of Penguin Classics editions, there are loads and loads of "Selected Poems", "Selected Poems and Fragments" and so on, but only one "Selected Poems and Letters" - by Arthur Rimbaud. Presumably that's the one. If so, it's quite exciting - I've never read any Rimbaud, and now I have a good excuse to give him a go.

My second hooray for Penguin is thanks to their "Penguin Popular Classics" range. Cheap, no-frills paperback editions of classic novels, with distinctive lime-green covers. Perfect if you're stuck for something to read - cheaper than a magazine, and considerably more satisfying. I picked up Moby Dick recently for two quid. Why did nobody tell me how much fun that book is? People bang on about it being terribly long and worthy, but I'm about half way through now and it's an absolute blast. It has the essence of a science fiction story - indeed, space opera is basically an attempt to recapture the feeling of this kind of story now that the age of sail has passed - and the eclectic textual mashups and remixes that Melville delights in make it feel more modern than anything on the Booker shortlist.[1]

I probably wouldn't have bought a full-price introduction-and-notes edition of Moby Dick, and I'd have missed ou on a great tale. I'd also most likely never have got round to reading Rimbaud, let alone blogging about the experience. Penguin are doing a bang-up job of promoting classic literature, at a time when it could easily be swamped by the torrent of new books that come and go every year.

Oh, and a third and final cheer for the Penguin folks: they've finally published posh, corrected and annotated editions of H.P Lovecraft. His journey from pulp obscurity to a recognised place in modern literature would seem to be complete. It took a bit longer for him than for Philip K Dick, but then nobody ever made a Lovecraft movie half as good as Blade Runner.

[1] I haven't actually read anything on this year's Booker shortlist: I'm just playing the odds here.

You mean there's a six o'clock in the morning as well?

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:12:28 GMT

Are you a morning person, or an evening person?

I scored a 10: definitely evening. No surprise there.

Doctor Who Meme

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:30:07 GMT

"When you read this message paste a quote from Doctor Who (classic or new series) in your journal"

"What a wonderful butler, he's so violent!"

***

"I don't know whether it's Marxism in action or a West End musical."

***

"Now they're all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. Yes. And there's Barbara and Chatterton... Chesterton! They were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can't... I can't..."

Time Lords In Phone Sex Romp - Exclusive!

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:11:28 GMT

I've been thinking about communicator's analysis of that phone scene in last Saturday's Doctor Who. I half-agree with her... but I think there's something more interesting going on as well.

Of course, it's massively slashy. Simm purrs seductively down the phone all the way through, and the "Saxon IS Your Man" posters in the background aren't exactly the most subtle of visual clues. But it's not a straightforward mutual attraction. (If that's what you want, try this version.) The Master's half of the conversation is indeed sexually charged, bound up with fantasies of power and dominance. Specifically, he finds the enormity of the Doctor's destructive act at the end of the Time War fascinating and arousing.

The thing is, the Doctor is completely oblivious to this. As far as he's concerned, he and the Master have to come to an accommodation because they are the last of their race, and because this hated enemy is all that he has to banish the intense loneliness he's felt since he regenerated into Christopher Eccleston. Running away with the Master is, to him, a way of working out their differences while keeping him from doing any more harm. That the Master (or, indeed, anyone watching) can easily interpret it another way isn't something that he notices, or cares about.

That's absolutely in character for this Doctor. He's spent the whole season failing to notice that Martha fancies him like mad, and in this very episode it's been established that Jack also feels that the Doctor has no idea he fancies him either. The one time he did acknowledge - and act on - such an attraction was when he was John Smith: then he was restored to himself, and immediately the barrier went up again. (Tennant's performance in his final scene with Jessica Hynde is wonderful, if heartbreaking, in depicting the awful chasm that has suddenly opened up between them.) Even in the last season, he treated Rose like a little sister, not a lover, and only realised Madame de Pompadeur wanted to stick her tongue down his throat when she, well, stuck her tongue down his throat. Even I can take a hint like that.

The Ninth Doctor was very different. He is jealous of Rose's attraction to both Adam and Captain Jack, flirts outrageously with Jabe, and appreciates that Rose is not the only member of the Tardis crew who Jack would like to get closer to. He also clearly fancies Lynda with a Y - indeed, the direction in the shooting script is "He looks at her properly. Maybe even fancying her a bit!" Far from being oblivious, he complains to Rose that she just assumes he doesn't... dance.

All that changes with the regeneration. The Ninth Doctor might not have reciprocated the Master's attraction, but he would have recognised it and used the fact one way or another. The Tenth? Far too busy with his own agendas - one internal and personal, the other external and heroic - to even be aware of the sub that is rapidly becoming text.

Personally, after this extended dose of pretty men being intense at one another, I'm looking forward to next week, when it looks like MArtha Jones will save the day with her Magic Action Arse.

"I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:54:07 GMT

Here's one for anyone interested in gender issues: A Nature commentary on sexual discrimination in science, written by female-to-male transgendered biologist who went through the transition in mid-career. His experience of the scientific world was very different to hers. The article has provoked lengthy discussion on the Nature Newsblog.

Personally, I think it's time for a proper scientific assessment of gender differences in science. All we have to do is remove all the factors that hold female scientists back, from inadequate childcare provision to lack of mentoring to patronising career advice in school, all the way down the list. Then, when this state of equal opportunities has had time to bed in - say, a hundred years or so - we can count the numbers of male and female scientists in various fields and write a paper on any differences we observe.

Schlock Mercenary

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:34:22 GMT

I've just discovered the satirical space-opera webcomic Schlock Mercenary. It's been going for more about seven years: so far I've worked my way through as far as April 2002. It appeals to me greatly, old Traveller grognard that I am, and I'm mentioning it here because I think some of you will like it as well (yes, I'm looking at you temeres).

Name That Blog

Sun, 13 May 2007 19:48:44 GMT

Right, I need some help here folks.

I'm setting up a new blog. It will focus on issues around how science and technology shape society and politics, and vice versa. The first post is likely to be about privacy in the era of the social web, and the implications for liberal democracy. I may also blog about nuclear rockets quite soon.

The problem? What to call it. I need a suitable title, and a subtitle/strapline. Something that would make someone interested in this kind of thing think "Hmm, that sounds like an interesting blog about exactly the kinds of things I'm interested in". I'm afraid I'm completely at a loss. It's not that I haven't had any ideas: it's just that they've all been crap.

So: can anyone out there think of a good name for this new blog of mine? Or at least an entertaining one?

Sat, 12 May 2007 08:28:17 GMT

Happy birthday, glitterboy1!