Category Archives: Books

Books, Media & Marketing

Piersless

Just finished reading The Insider, [[Piers Morgan]]’s memoirs, after having it recommended by loads of people at work as an entertaining read (thanks to Dan A for lending me the book in the end…). It’s also been difficult to concentrate on any of my other ‘to-read’ books else in the recent heatwave.

I hate to say it, but it was extraordinarily entertaining.

Of course, Morgan comes out of it looking good — he claims to be trying to paint an honest picture and therefore his mistakes are highlighted in the book… but many of his observations, as he relates them, make him out to be ridiculously prescient. I suspect hindsight had something to do with those.

But the anecdotes about and around the newsroom were fascinating; the degree of influence and power The Mirror wielded under his stewardship is downright impressive. As is the ridiculous namedropping he performs on every page of the book — to the extent that there is a ‘cast of characters’ at the back — people, you would assume on picking up the book, that Morgan knew or interacted with in the time he is recounting in these memoirs (1994-2004). The fact that this cast includes ‘Adolf Hitler’ suggests to me that the publishers perhaps did not feel Mr Morgan had quite enough celebrity friends after all…

Whichever way you draw it, there’s some impressive achievements in there, and some good stories. A book worth reading.

Books, Personal

Parents

Every now and then they remind you that they’re the parents and you’re the children. Today that happened with my Mum unexpectedly quoting Dickens at me, and my completely failing to get the reference.

Life is like a box of chocolates…

Books, Technology

The three laws

Simon B points at an article that reports on new safety guidelines for ‘next generation robots.’ Because he’s on LJ, and I don’t have a LJ login or OpenID (!! – how lazy am I?) I thought I’d comment here…

Simon points out that the three guidelines sound quite similar to Asimov’s three laws of robotics:

The guidelines will require manufacturers to install enough sensors to minimize the risk of the robots running into people and use soft and light materials so they do not cause harm if they do so, the officials said.

They will also be required to install emergency shut-off buttons, they said.

….

There are also efforts under way to create global guidelines. The ministry plans to have its measures reflect the global standards, the officials said.

Asimov’s, for your reference, are:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Source: Wikipedia.

First of all, how cool is it that the real world is catching up with science fiction (well, a teensy bit)? And secondly: I’m glad the through inaction subclause hasn’t made it into the safety guidelines. Imagine if we had robots wandering around trying to lower our cholesterol intake or preventing us from drinking alcohol in case we were to ‘come to harm’ inadvertently… Always a flaw in Asimov’s laws, I think :P.

Still, it would be concerning if they came up with the zeroth law independently, as Simon comments… ;)

Books, Guestblog, Personal

Brideshead Vs Gatsby

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Hello, Sheila here. This is my first blog post. At 14 I created a rather tragic website with the aid of my technologically advanced brother which featured pages titled ‘My friends’ and ‘My holidays’. I’m hoping to move away from the delightfully egocentric world-vision of youth, into the wonderfully self-centred observations of my early-twenties.

Firstly I hope everyone’s having a happy start to the summer time.

Was at a Brideshead themed party the night before last. Actually Brideshead Vs The Great Gatsby, so you could pick your nation. It was such a gorgeous day, and as the sun didn’t seem to set till about 8, we stood on the lawn drinking pimms for hours, surrounded by velvet smoking-jacketed men, young boys carrying old bears, beplumed girls wearing pleated dresses. The only hint of reality operating was given by heels slipping into soft ground.

Yesterday, got back to London. Budge and I headed up to the park and fell asleep in the sun. Actually I fell asleep, he read 100 pages of his small shiny-covered fat fantasy book. I took Ali Smith’s The Accidental with me. It’s taking me ages to read it. Stuck in someone else’s stream of consciousness is something which seems to take me a little while to get used to.

Another hot day today, hope everyone’s having a lovely day, maybe drinking bloody marys with ben harper singing in the background and culture in their laps.

Books

Priestess of the Mediocre

So, just finished reading Trudi Canavan’s new novel, Priestess of the White. It falls under the category for me of ‘research’ – attempting to make sure that as my thoughts on my novel develop, that I copy as little as possible, and innovate as much as possible. Of course, it’s also (and ok, yes, primarily) an excuse for me to get hold of as many of the fantasy and sci-fi novels I love as I can…

Trudi’s become reasonably famous here in the UK due to a relatively high profile marketing campaign for her ‘Black Magician’ trilogy; highly stylised black and white posters are all over the Underground. Having enjoyed that, I expected to move gracefully on to the new series, the ‘Age of the Wilds’ as its called. Sadly this was not to be…

I don’t know whether its because I read the excellent ‘Night’s Dawn Trilogy’ in between, but the writing just struck me as, well, not quite developed yet. Which is odd, as its her fourth novel… Maybe my standards have just temporarily risen.

That said, once I got into it, the book proved reasonably compelling. Always interesting to see sociological debates translated into a different universe. And Trudi, whilst probably not touching too seriously on the metaphysical nature of anything interesting, does touch on the psychological nature of faith. And – which is great from my perspective – the dangers inherent in a giving a religious institution power. Never really expected to be reading (even a tacit) argument for the separation of church and state in a fantasy novel.

Perhaps this truly is a book written for (young) teenagers; which might potentially explain the copiuous amounts of sex and the simplistic style. I guess its the disparity of content from the style that made me feel something was wrong… still, will see what happens. The plot sustained itself enough for me to read the next book… we’ll see if I’m compelled to the conclusion (it is as yet unpublished).

Books

Post-trilogy blues

I have finally finished all 3,600 pages of the Night’s Dawn Trilogy I mentioned a little while ago. It’s one of the reasons that blog posts have been so thin on the ground…

I want to be *so* superlative about it, but there was something unsatisfactory about the ending. Maybe it’s just that I wasn’t crazy about Mr Hamilton’s attempt to meld spirituality with ‘cosmology’ – or maybe its the fact that the ultimate resolution of the novels feels rushed, feels literally Deus Ex Machina, as Robert McKee would no doubt have commented.

On the whole though, I do have that sinking feeling when you’ve said goodbye to a universe that I properly fell in love with. I’m not one of those who can re-read fiction (with the exception of some of the punnier Isaac Asimov short stories, and graphic novels, of course) – so this is goodbye, for me, to the Confederation, the Adamists and the Edenists, to Captain Calvert, and to everyone’s favourite insane possessed bitek habitat – Valisk.

For those who haven’t read the series, I promise I haven’t gone mad…

Books, Culture, Music

Heggles

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I bought John Hegley’s Family Favourites CD the other day, having seen him perform a few years ago (at a show my brother was reading at). Some might call that a delayed reaction, I call it… measured.

Great as it is, I am somewhat disappointed. Primarily because the great music-comedy-poem-thingy that is Luton Bungalow sounds very different on the recording to how I remember it – at the gig I was at, he sang:

“In my Luton Bungalow…. low… low… low… Luton Bungalow!”

On my CD he simply sings:

“In my Luton Bungalow.”

Which is clearly a poor substitute, although I’ll admit this story loses something in the telling. But its a fantastic disc, and he’s a fantastic man: I’d recommend it to anyone.

Books, Weird

Space opera + Hamer Horror = Hamer Space?

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Since reading Peter Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga a few months ago, I’ve been itching to get into his bestselling Night’s Dawn Trilogy, which I finally did this month. I’ve just finished the first whopping 1,200 page volume, The Reality Dysfunction.

It has great similarities to his more recent series – a grand, swooping, dynastic space-opera with hundreds of worlds, a complex political superstructure and economy, a fantastic cast of characters, and some very creative science and technology.

Where its different? Well, it tackles religion. And also the walking dead. The walking dead, needless to say, is where it gets really weird. I’ve never seen the word ‘sequestration’ used so many times, even in that density of pages – of course, its possible I’ve simply never seen the word used at all. How does it decline: I sequester, you sequester, he/she/it sequesterers…

The book is actually quite suspenseful at times (if not actually frightening), and I am looking forward to the next one. The sheer level of intricate detail he goes to is astonishing – everything resolves, eventually. I just need to get through the remaining 2,000 pages of the series to see what happens…

Books, Film, Media & Marketing, Personal, Television

Busy like a monkey on amphetamines

Gosh its been a busy week or two. One of the busiest weeks at work since I started – and have had busy weeks before, I promise – parents imminent arrival, plotting a summer break, looking after Mousecapades for Gem and getting over the remnants of last week’s flu – a two day weekend is just completely inadequate!!

But beginning to feel in the driving seat again, which is good – and will mean I do a little more blogging and Linklogging too – so apologies for temporary radio silence.

Interesting things that I’ve done/seen thoug: reading the Jonathan Stroud books, seeing Good night and good luck, both of which are awesome. Have also watched a lot of Transformers Cybertron, which is a world improved on the recent Japanese dubs, ‘Robots in Disguise’ and ‘Armada’, and has some of those appealing story arcs that keep you hooked…

Anyway, more to come. Good night, and good luck!

Books

Experimental fiction

I’m now on my last Raymond E Feist book, having read my way through his entire back catalogue (with the exception of Faerie Tale). Will eventually blog thoughts on the series/characters etc, but having just pushed my way through his experimental joint ventures (the “Legends of the Riftwar” series) was impressed that he’d not ruined the universe through his collaborations.

From what I’ve read, he gave his co-authors a lot of independence in writing the stories – and its worked to good effect, importing different styles, different characters, different types of story into Feist’s lovable world of Midkemia. Gotta say, everything that’s bad about fantasy continues to be bad – stilted dialogue, excessive verbosity, etc – but enjoyed the stories more than I expected.

So everyone who’s waiting for the next book in the Darkwar series to be published, go back and dip in. The Krondor novels are surprisingly entertaining, and the Legends series have something to offer as well, if they’re not a patch on Riftwar, Empire, Serpentwar and Conclave of Shadows…

Hmm, wonder if I could persuade Mr Feist to let me dip a toe into his Worlds…