5 reviews and a feature

As part of my ongoing quest to put much of my archived work online, and to make up for not posting much this past week, today for you I have:

Hunter’s Run (book) – Great SF adventure collaboration between George RR Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham.

Dark Alchemy (book)  – Magic anthology about wizards by fantasy’s brightest and best.

300 (film) – Zac Snyder’s take on Frank Miller’s take on the Battle of Thermopylae

Perfect Creature (film) – Interesting if confused New Zealand steampunk, alt-reality, vampire movie (I did say it was confused).

Blade: House of Cthon (TV) – The pilot of the TV show of the movie of the comic.

Time Trap: Quatermass (TV) – All-round information on that other great British SF character, Bernard Quatermass, who was like a more grown-up Doctor Who.

If you haven’t already, check out the other reviews I have here, there are quite a lot of them now, and still only a fraction of what’s to come.

A quick update

So I said that I’d publish something new every weekday, I lasted a fortnight, and then fell away. Sue me! (No actually don’t. I have no money, and you will ruin me).

In truth I’m waiting on the pieces on a few projects to slot into place, because then I should have a number of excellent announcements to shout about. I’ve been waiting thinking “Oh, that’ll make a far more interesting post than what I had in mind,” and of course they have not been quite ready, and time has slipped on. I’m also stretched right now, as I’m editing a magazine for SFX and writing a novel for [CENSORED]. Normal service will resume soon.

In the meantime, there have been a number of nice reviews of Champion of Mars, at Fantasy Bytes, The Founding Fields, and Starburst, also a good one of Omega Point at Kate of Mind.

Actually, I’d like to say thanks to everyone who has reviewed my books, good and bad scores both. The biggest single problem with being a new writer is that no one knows who the hell you are. I’ve been thinking about getting your name “out there” and finding your audience, and the problems and opportunities modern tech gives us in fulfilling that aim. I may well blog on it soon. For now, thanks very much to everyone who takes time to post their opinions after reading the books. Each one helps me reach new readers.

There’ll be another one of my irregular Monday short stories on (surprise!) Monday, next week; a fantasy. Let me know what you think. I’ll try to get a bunch of reviews and that up here too soon. Honest.

Now back to twiddling my thumbs, waiting to tell you the exciting stuff I know… I mean, writing furiously to get this book for [CENSORED] finished.

Laters.

One-two Flash Gordon review

I reviewed this awful mess twice, firstly when it began, secondly when it was canned. The first review is from Death Ray 06, and I wasn’t keen. The one at the bottom is from Death Ray 13. By then it had really hit home what a pack of shite it was. Bollocks.

ONE STAR

Directors: Pat Williams, Paul Shapiro, Mick MacKay, T. J. Scott

Writers: Peter Hume, Melody Fox, James Thorpe, Gillian Horvath, Sheryl J. Anderson

Starring: Eric Johnson, Gina Holden, Karen Cliche, Jody Racicot, John Ralston, Jonathan Walker

Review #1

Calamitous reinvention of Alex Raymond’s classic space hero.

There’s a peril to being an intellectual property that survives the march of time; the terrible peril of collective ownership. This is especially pronounced if the property is but of middling power, doubly so if there is no keen-willed corporation to codify in iron what that property actually is. Sherlock Holmes for example, has enough muscle as a modern archetype to survive most indignities unscathed, while the legal department of Disney ensures no one screws with Mickey Mouse.

But those lesser entertainments of yesteryear with neither mythical status or corporate mascot-hood? They become the sport of hacks.

Poor old Flash is one such, all he has on his side is a sort of fuzzy, warm public remembrance. Resultantly he’s been reinvented so many times even he’s not sure who he is – 1930s comic book hero, 1980s camp movie icon or 1990s hoverboarding teen?

Now the Sci-Fi channel have got their claws into him, and the results are not pretty, fearlessly managing to bypass both the visual opulence and exuberant pulp energy that typify the best outings of the titular hero.

Let’s allow a little apologia for Sci-Fi. They invest a fair bit in original drama. But fantasy TV is among the most expensive of all, and they’ve only go so much money – This is the stunted twin to the same channel’s Battlestar Galactica. Flash Gordon bears the full brunt of this financial shortfall like a stoic taking a beating.

There’s no majesty in Flash, no Lionmen, no Sharkmen – just plain old, men. There are no glorious sets, no over-the-top costumes, no be-ribbed pistols. Instead endless conversations in rainy Vancouver, a henchman on casters and a Mongo that looks like an abandoned factory adorned with some cheap curtains.

There’s no energy to it. Flash travels to Mongo via a portal, allowing trips back and forth to Earth. This is nice for him, as it means he can attend a wedding in episode two, but bad for us, as we lose the vital drama, and, what one might legitimately say is the whole damn point of Flash Gordon, of his TE Lawrence style freedom-fighting while stranded on an alien world.

A really quite dreadful script, full of filler material, clumsy exposition and awful cliche (“This one’s for you dad”), calls for lots of the running around in the Canadian woods that modern low-budget SF seems to require by law (Though rarely do they start, as this show does, with their hero actually jogging through the woods). The cast, comprised entirely of cast-off co-stars, aren’t bad, especially Flash (Eric Johnson) and Dale (Gina Holden), but it’d take a bunch of thesps with a lot more chops than “not bad” to make this dross sparkle. They seem bored, bored, bored, with Ming (John Ralston) behaving like a depressed banker trapped in a loveless marriage, while Karen Cliche as Baylin bases her performance mostly on scowling.

As exotic as a drizzly McDonalds car park, as limp as a burger bun discarded in the same, this one’s so bad it’s simply just bad. On the basis of these first few episodes, avoid.

Did you know…?

Flash Gordon was invented in 1934 by cartoonist Alex Raymond as a rival to Buck Rogers. The original Flash flew to Mongo on a rocket ship after being kidnapped, along with Dale Arden, by Dr. Hans Zarkoff. The three were stuck on Mongo for many years, but they eventually overthrew evil Emperor Ming and returning to Earth to join the World Space Council. The theatre of their adventuring then expanded to take in more of the cosmos.

Review #2

A sorry mess of wasted opportunities, thrown over for a handful of rubbish jokes.

When Flash Gordon fell burning from the phosphor heaven of the TV screen, it became just another pile of bones on the plains of cancellation. It’ll be soon forgotten, unmourned, despite the huge fan-fuelled furore that greeted its inauguration. Yep, Flash got flamed so much on the net that he was practically barbecued in the first few minutes of his reappearance. The newspapers stamped on the ashes shortly afterward.

There is much to loathe about this series, but there were also glimmerings of potential, glimmerings that will now stay forever unrealised. There are three things at fault for this. Yes, three. Here they are in descending order of seriousness.

The first, and major, cause of Flash‘s demise were the rifts, the spangly holes in the universe that allowed Flash and his chums to go to Mongo. Not a bad idea, really, gets round the whole old-fashioned rocketship, and ties in with certain physics. A great way to travel, but they were allowed to come back. Again, and then again. They cut down on this, but by then the damage was done. I’ve said it before: Flash Gordon is about a group of people who are marooned on an exotic alien world, and fight against the tyranny they find there. This is not a show about that, it is a show where our leads can nip back for misjudged comedy weddings.

Which leads us on to number two, comedy. Sass is the slow death of SF. Witless one-liners make Flash a bouffant manchild, reduce Zarkoff to a bumbling clown, and turn Dale into a blathering encumbrance, Only the Mongo men have any testicles to speak of. It’s frat party SF, with fatherly Ming scolding the Earthlings for being wankers. If only they had listened. In SF land, nobody ever grows up nowadays. It’s like Mongo was gatecrashed by escapees from the happy bus. We’re not saying we want a return to the old serials, with overdone hams barking at each other like seals recorded on wax cylinders, but why does all SF have to be, ahem, “funny”?

Number three, exoticism. Here the show at least tried. I watched seven episodes of Flash Gordon in quick succession, and began to think that if all the Earth sequences were edited out, it might have been only half bad. The Mongo scenes, though low budget and rife with cliche, were the strongest bit of the show. Whaddya know, it’s also the heart of the Flash Gordon concept. If they nailed this, they’d have won. Imagine if Flash behaved like a hero, outraged by injustice, if a genius Zarkoff had matched wits with the excellent Rankol (one of the show’s few highlights). The duel of Barrin and Flash – we should have had more of that. But no, thought the showrunners, let’s nip back to Canada for more familial bonding and hollow quipping.

So now we won’t have any more of anything. Serves them right.

Sunshine review

A review of the DVD release of Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine, from Death Ray 05, published in 2007. My opinion of the film has mellowed since I reviewed it initially, and I think were I to regrade it, I’d give it four stars. But the science is still silly, even though they had ubiquitous astronomy hipster Brian Cox on science consultancy duties.

FILM: THREE AND A HALF STARS EXTRAS: THREE STARS

2007 • 108 mins • 15

Director: Danny Boyle

Writer: Alex Garland

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh

A multi-national crew race to almost certain death in an effort to re-ignite the dying sun and save mankind in this UK SF effort.

It’s a clever choice from the team behind 28 Days Later to make a film that has global cooling at its heart when we’re all running around worrying about the exact opposite, and this is one of the conceits that make Sunshine a bit brighter than your average SF blockbuster. It’s a shame then that it never quite dazzles. The good bits are as shiny as 2001: A Space Odyssey, the bad bits a nasty cross between the dark side of Solaris and Event Horizon.

For a start, a lot of the film’s science is nonsensical. For example, how can a man be vaporised by sunlight millions of miles out from the star, yet a bomb made only of metal survive unscathed in a plummet through the sun’s (very, very hot) corona? The sun is also far too small throughout (in reality it’s so big that more than 98% of all matter in the Solar System is to be found within it). There are also too many incidents of unprofessionalism on the parts of the crew for the film to convince. In real life, astronauts check and triple check everything. You’d think this would be even more the case on a last-ditch mission to save mankind, but not aboard the Icarus II. And while it is conceivable that even the best of the best spacemen might go a bit nuts when under so much pressure, the Pinbacker subplot is exceedingly silly.

Still, Sunshine manages to be both atmospheric and exciting. The interplay between light and darkness in the film is beautiful, evoking a sense of wonder that is brilliantly enhanced by the haunting score. The set pieces are masterfully executed, and the finale has you inching forward on the sofa, daft though it is.

Sunshine has design and mood down perfectly, but it is nowhere near as clever as it wants to be. Perhaps that’s asking a lot, but it does set itself up as a thinking man’s film. If you want light-drenched awe, watch The Fountain instead.

Extras: The release DVD has numerous goodies, including a director’s commentary, Brian Cox commentary, an alternative ending, deleted scenes, web production diaries and a short film. But none were included on our review copy, and this may not be the final list.

Did you know?

Though it is never stated in the film, in Sunshine the sun is dying not of old age (it’s due to run out of fuel in about five billion years) but because it has been infected with an exotic particle that is disrupting its normal behaviour.

 

Wicked witches

This is an interview with the author Gregory Maguire who wrote the novel Wicked, which was turned into a wildly successful musical of the same name. From Death Ray 05, published in 2007.

Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is an American writer with a passionate interest in children’s literature, being co-founder of a charity dedicated to furthering reading among the young.

He is primarily known for penning revisionist fantasies, often based upon well-known fairy tales. However, his most famous works take their inspiration from a more recent source. Maguire has taken L Frank Baum’s famed series of novels, borrowed his world and put his own stamp firmly upon it, often adding his own characters into crucial points of the stories, or looking at Baum’s own characters from alternative points of view. The first book, Wicked, centres on Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and portrays her as a passionate rebel rather than as a hook-nosed harridan with a nasty allergy to water. It has been adapted into a musical that has enjoyed great success both Stateside and in London town.

Guy Haley: You are very passionate about literature for children. Why do you think that is important that children read?

Gregory Maguire:  I heard a report this week that said at the age of 10, only 43% of American kids read for pleasure. At the age of 15, that has dropped to 19%. When I hear statistics like these, I fear for the loss of certain skills that imaginative reading enhances; apprehension of subtlety, ambiguity, tolerance for differences, willingness to suspend judgment until the last page (or even beyond). I think reading for children, even more than reading for adults, is central to the survival of a literate citizenry. That is why I still write for children, even though my income is much richer and stronger when I publish for adults.

GM: Tell us a bit about your organisation, the CLNE.

GH:I helped found an educational charity called “Children’s Literature New England” 21 years ago. For two decades we met (four times in the UK) and considered topics of literary interest as they are dealt with in books for children: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”; “Swords and ploughshares”; and “The Fairytale belongs to the poor.” Writers and artists such as Philip Pullman, Quentin Blake, Maurice Sendak, Ursula K Le Guin, Philippa Pearce,  Jill Paton Walsh, Penelope Lively, Peter Dickinson, Susan Cooper, Russell Hoban, John Rowe Townsend, Alan Garner, and many others collaborated with us to consider these literary themes as expressed in books for the young. This is built on the notion that children’s literature is no less an art form than novels for older readers.

GH: Why do you choose to use the “toolbox of the fantastical” to tell your tales? Do you think that fantasy is more effective at bringing messages to children (and adults) than stories with a contemporary setting?

GM: I am afraid that as a Luddite, someone who doesn’t have an iPod, a cellphone, a play station, or a digital camera, I cannot convincingly portray our increasingly technological contemporary world with any verisimilitude. So writing stories that take place in the past or in a fantastical setting makes me much more comfortable.

That said, I also think that the kind of relaxation that once must go through in order to tolerate a “magic” story might just make one more tolerant of larger themes, too, and I care deeply about the themes of my stories – more than about the plots, characters, settings, or the mechanics of magic.

GH: Some of your greatest successes have been with stories set in Oz. Why have you chosen to use L Frank Baum’s world?

GM:  Oz – unlike Middle-earth or Wonderland – is an imperfectly realized magic land. I admire much of what L Frank Baum did, but it is what he failed to do, or did less well, that allows me license to parachute into his magic kingdom and see if I can make any more sense of its history or politics than he did. Basically, I took a land of fabulous incongruity and I tried to superimpose an orderly civilisation upon it, with its own history, religions, cultural conflicts, etc – to be an anthropologist of Oz.

GH: Do you ever feel awkward, playing in the sandbox of such a renowned man?

GM: He is conveniently dead, so I am seldom embarrassed at dinner parties.

GH: You also use fairytale a lot, especially in revisionist fantasies for adults. This seems quite popular in film and literature at the moment. Why do you think that is?

GM: As we become something of a post-literate society – or perhaps I should say that as our shared literacy becomes more audiovisual and less textual – the fairy tales, like the parables, remain conveniently portable and functional vessels of story that, because we get them young – and frequently – may in fact be the final shared narrative that most people in the west can agree that they share in common.

GH: How do you feel about the success of the musical Wicked? Are musicals as valid an art form as literature in your mind?

GM: I love the musical Wicked and am buying tickets today to see it for the 26th time. It is a different art form than the novel and as such made some changes to the plot, which do not bother me. The basic theme of the story is the same as in the novel I wrote – which is that we should beware demonising our enemies, or seeing the world in absolute moral tones of black and white.

GH: You say that you enjoy English novels. Why is that?

GM: I believe the English write more delicious prose, by and large. I also grew up in a time when English writers for children were very easy to find in the libraries in the US I loved CS Lewis at the age of 10, also the books about Mary Poppins, Paddington Bear, and Tom’s Midnight Garden.

There are exceptions. Among my favorite US writers living and working today are Jess Walters, Ron Hansen, and Daniel Handler.

GH:Who are your major influences?

GM: As to the Wicked cycle, I would say TH White’s The Once and Future King, Grahame Greene as to a spooky tone and sinister atmosphere, and perhaps Ursula Le Guin as to someone who took and takes fantasy writing with utmost seriousness.

Did you know?

Gregory Maguire is married to painter Andy Newman.

Top 5 British TV SF Catastrophes

Written originally for SFX‘s Best of British Special Edition, which I also edited, in 2011.

www.sfx.co.uk

The True Nature of the Catastrophe

Cosy catastrophes? Not on your nelly! Here are some terrible ends to UK civilisation, all from off of that telly.

You might have heard the term “cosy catastrophe”; coined by Brian Aldiss in his book Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, it refers to that very peculiarly British form of apocalyptic SF where civilisation is laid low by some terrible event, leaving only a few plucky survivors to pick up the pieces and build anew. Somewhat mocking, but Aldiss does have a point. There’s more of a hint of the jolly Robinsonade in British science fiction, where some plucky chap, and they’re nearly always chaps, keeps his sense of right as society degenerates into barbarism all about him, usually leaving us at the climax of their story to head off into rising sun to relaunch civilisation in comfort afforded by the decimation of the population. His chin up, motley family substitutes manfully protected, he has it somewhat easy.

That’s fairly cosy. But that’s only part of the story. British science fiction has postulated some brutal ends to our society. In even the The Day of the Triffids, which Aldiss singled out as particularly cuddly, violence and horror abounds, and the protagonists of these tales really do have to have the toughest of moral fibres.

For all the romance of it – the idea of being able to start afresh in a less crowded Britain – it’d be hell, and telly does not let us off lightly. Apocalyptic fiction is often at the more realistic end of SF, properly speculative. Think on this, some of it could just happen, and most of us just would not cope.

Here we’re going to take a look into the alternate worlds imagined by British SF where things really didn’t work out quite as well as they did here (crikey, it’s arguable things aren’t going brilliantly on Earth Prime). Buckle up, there’s some scary stuff ahead.

Survivors

Vector of Collapse: DISEASE

Broadcast: 1975-1977 and 2008-2009

Was it any good?: The original was a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall pipe-dream paradise without ghastly proles, the new one decidedly average.

Cosy factor: Four (of five) sofas.

Likelihood: Four (of five) mushroom clouds.

Every other year there seems to be some major panic about a flu pandemic, primed to carry us all off to our (mass) graves. Survivors, in both its incarnations, posits exactly that.

Originated by Doctor Who writer and Blake’s 7 creator Terry Nation, Survivors has a genetically engineered virus accidentally released to kill 95% of the world’s population. Initially following the adventures of Abby Grant (Carolyn Seymour) as she searches for her lost son Peter, the show had a different feel to each of its three series. The first is very much a depiction of the aftermath of “The Death”, the second depicts the survivors trying to establish a community, the third takes us on a journey across a Britain made up of many different, small societies linking up and reinitiating trade and steam-powered railway travel. Derided for being middle-class and overly concerned with self-sufficiency tips at the expense of drama, Survivors is nevertheless fondly thought of.

Nation himself only stayed on for the first year, leaving after he fell out with the series producer. He wrote a book based on this initial run, with a radically different ending: Abby finds Peter, only to be shot by her own son as he does not recognise her.

A remake was launched in 2008, although for legal reasons it was billed as being based on Nation’s book, and was written by Adrian Hodges. To better reflect Britain’s changed ethnic make-up, two muslim characters were introduced, and Tom Price was reimagined as a convict on the run. The show managed good character dynamics, but was ultimately undone by a convoluted plot involving a secret society of scientists hiding out somewhere, who may have been responsible for the plague.

In some regards the cosiest of all catastrophes, Survivors still engenders unease – its mass, disease-prompted die off is worryingly plausible.

Class War

Is the original Survivors a middle-class Good Life fantasy? You decide…

Points for:

Most of the characters are posh.

Many scenes take place in large kitchens with agas in them.

In the second episode, Anne says “and then father had to send the servants away.”

Tom Price is the only “commoner”, and he’s a shifty Welsh tramp.

Arthur Wormley the show’s big bad, is a trade unionist.

The first episode has Peter Bowles in it.

They all seem quite happy pottering about in the garden, making their own beer.

Points against:

Um…

The Day of The Triffids

Vector of collapse: CELESTIAL PHENOMENON/GIANT CARNIVOROUS PLANTS

Broadcast: 1981 and 2009

Was it any good?: 1981 version very, 2009 version not so much.

Cosy factor: Three (of five) sofas

Likelihood: Two (of five) Mushroom clouds

Pity poor Bill Masen, he’s been hospitalised by giant tulips plenty of times now, chalking up two TV series and a film, with another cinematic outing in development. He’s the hero of John Wyndham’s classic, a triffid farmer spared the blindness that afflicts most of the population after they observe strange lights in the sky. Masen’s laid up with his eyes bandaged after an accident in a lab involving triffid venom, and awakens to a world suddenly thrown into chaos. Masen struggles against man and triffid – giant, ambulatory plants of unknown origin which are farmed for their oil – before finding refuge on the Isle of Wight where he mulls man’s inhumanity to man.

The Day of the Triffids was not Wyndham’s first book, but it was the first under the Wyndham name, and remains his most famous.

Both TV adaptations were made by the BBC, the first in 1981 starring John Duttine as Masen. In the main the plot of the book was followed closely, unlike the 1962 film, and is still highly regarded.

Not so the 2009 remake, which departed considerably from the book’s storyline. Masen (played by Dougray Scott) gets bolt-on emotional baggage in the shape of an estranged dad and a mother killed 30 years ago by a triffid in Zaire, an event replayed in clumsy flashback, a move typical of our touchy-feely times, as if the end of civilisation isn’t enough to generate empathy in a modern audience. Masen, who’s a scientist in this version, has the opportunity to halt the killer plants by retrieving information from a triffid farm. He still ends up on the Isle of Wight, though.

Did you know?

John Wyndam Parkes Lucas Benyon Harris was the triffid creator’s full name, and proved handy for generating pseudonyms.

Triffic Triffids

In all many versions of the story, the Triffids have different origins. In the book it is intimated that they are the product of Soviet experimentation. They walk on three stumps, have a whiplike sting, a flower head and clackers that knock on a large bole at their base (speculated to be for communication). The 1981 BBC show followed this closely, with plants made in the main from fibreglass, operated by a man crouched in the base.

In the 1962 film they are from outer space, seeded on the Earth by comets, their sting is a projectile propelled by gas, and they are vulnerable to seawater. In the 2009 adaptation they’re from Zaire, rendered in glorious CGI with strangling, prehensile roots rather than foot stumps and a cluster of agave-like leaves. The 2009 triffids also weep oil, rather than being processed for it.

Terrifying Telly

The Day of The Triffids is not the only Wyndham book to have received the TV treatment. Creepy, unnerving and on after school, Chocky is a different kind of story altogether. Matthew is a boy whose father becomes concerned about his invisible friend, Chocky, especially when he undergoes a period of rapid mental development. And rightly so, for Chocky is actually an alien communicating telepathically with the boy. This contact puts Matthew under a great deal of pressure, worse, Chocky is of ambiguous intentions, and their link is of interest to the government…

Chocky (written in 1968) was adapted by Anthony Reed for Thames TV in 1984. An ’80s staple, the show generated two sequels – Chocky’s Children and Chocky’s Challenge. It was seriously spooky stuff. The opening titles began with a bloodcurdling scream, the show’s star, Andrew Ellams, turned in an excellent performance as the haunted Matthew, while the series’ themes of madness, isolation and fear were intensified by Chocky’s eerie, disembodied voice (Glynis Brooks).

The Tripods

Broadcast: 1984-1985

Vector of collapse: ALIENS

Was it any good?: Good effects (for the time) didn’t stop it dragging.

Cosy factor: Two (of five) sofas.

Likelihood: One (of five) mushroom clouds.

Samuel Youd is the great purveyor of global catastrophe, although you probably know him better as John Christopher. Youd is a prolific man, having written more than fifty novels from 1949 on. The Tripods trilogy is, doubtlessly, his most famous.

In the future, mankind has reverted to an agricultural existence. There are no cities. Technology is unused. Why? Aliens have taken over our brains! Exerting a form of mind control via “caps”, implanted at the age of 14, the Masters rule the Earth, awing the yokelised locals with their tripedal terror machines.

Only young Will (played by John Shackley) doesn’t want to be capped, and sets off to uncover the truth behind the tripods, discovering that the aliens are not content with ruling from their cities, but wish to xenoform our world for themselves…

The Tripods TV series was broadcast in 1984 (seven episodes) and 1985 (eleven episodes). Only the first two books were made; plans for an adaptation of the third volume were underway, but never realised. In many regards the series was faithful to the book, but was at times interminable, with the appearances of tripods few and far between as our three stars (Ceri Seel and Jim Baker joining Shackley) trudged across France. However, the sequences set within the fabled city of the Masters were pretty cool by any standard, its effects impressive for the time and the show brave in its use of non-humanoid aliens.

Killer Chris

Youd had a fine line in cataclysms. Here are some more.

A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965)

Tectonic activity redraws the map, with seafloors upheaved, and lands drowned. Survivors struggle to find loved ones and fail.

The Death of Grass (1956)

All grasses die, as that includes most of our food crops, we’re stuffed. Tragic fratricide ensues. Filmed under its alternative title, No Blade of Grass, in 1970.

The Prince in Waiting (1970)

Volcanic activity has reduced the world to medievalism, where birth defects abound. Our hero, a deposed prince, overcomes innate knobbishness to effect a new technological dawn.

The World in Winter (1962)

Solar-induced global cooling sends Brits packing to Africa, where they’re treated as second-class citizens. Protagonist doesn’t like it, and escapes to come home.

The Empty World (1977)

An ageing disease kills most people off, leaving kids to fend for themselves. Much horribleness happens, but a bright future beckons. Televised in Germany.

The Last Train

Vector of collapse: METEOR STRIKE

Screened: 1999

Was it any good?: A curate’s egg of a show; dodgy science did it no favours.

Cosy factor: One (of five) sofas

Likelihood: Three (of five) mushroom clouds

Penned by Mathew Graham, the co-creator of Life on Mars, The Last Train is an oddity, an SF series from a time when SF on British television was approached with something approaching nervous apprehension. “It’s not science fiction,” said the series producer to SFX on a set visit “it’s post-apocalyptic fiction”.

Naturally, it’s about as science fiction as you can get. The inhabitants of a train travelling to Sheffield are frozen in time when a canister of cryogenic gubbins clatters from lead character Harriet Ambrose’s (Nicola Walker) bag as the train conveniently enters a tunnel. Convenient, as the Earth is pummelled by a meteor strike that very instant.

The characters, a motley band including a thief, a cop, a pregnant girl and an unbalanced businessman, emerge into a changed world. They have one hope, a place called The Ark, built by the government in anticipation of the catastrophe, and to which Harriet is connected.

The show was a little silly. The cryo-fluid was implausible, as was crim Mick Sizer’s (Trevor Etienne) van starting up after 50 years in a shed, while the production’s attempts portray topographic and climatic upheaval were mainly restricted to hoiking an increasingly sorry collection of tropical plants from location to location. In any case, a meteor strike of sufficient size to cause that much devastation would have made a much bigger mess. Still, a brutal (two of our heroes are locked out of The Ark and crucified) if safe (they get rescued) finale for the show and a cracking first episode lift its quality.

Did you know?

The series working title was Cruel Earth, which is much, much better, really.

Ringing The Changes

Magical mayhem, thanks to Merlin

The Last Train might have taken scientific liberties, but that’s as nothing compare to the outrageous apocalypse employed in The Changes.

Based on the series of books by Peter Dickinson, this 1975 show depicted a Britain suddenly gripped by anti-machine hysteria, where technology is smashed to pieces and becomes taboo. Nicky is a girl whose adventures lead her to discover the cause of all this grief – Merlin the magician!

Sounds daft as, but it’s a successful idea (although more so in the books than the drama). Better, perhaps, to embrace out and out fantasy than embrace dodge-tastic science, a la The Last Train…

Threads

Vector of collapse: ATOMIC WAR

Screened: 1984

Was it any good?: Terrifyingly so; a harrowing depiction of nuclear war.

Cosy factor: One (of Five) sofas

Likelihood: Five (of Five) sofas

The 1980s might seem all glam and greed and Ashes to Ashes now, but our current nostalgic phase for the decade misses one important point: We were all shit-scared of nuclear apocalypse. Threads, made in 1984, helpfully made us all that little bit more frightened. And they showed it in school. Thanks for that.

Speculative fiction in its truest sense (to this day, no one is entirely sure what the aftermath of a nuclear war would be like) Threads has it all – milk bottles melting in firestorms, animals writhing in agony, frantic surgeons performing amputations with wood saws, mass panic, machine gun-armed traffic wardens, nuclear winter, deformed babies, and the collapse of language itself. It is really not much fun, but absolutely fascinating.

The film presents this cheery scenario from the point of view of we ordinary joes, and follows the fates of two families ­ the Becketts and Kemps, whose children are due to be married following an unplanned pregnancy. Until they all die.

The main character, Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher), dies blind and prematurely aged after scratching about in a field. Her mentally compromised daughter survives, has ungentle sex, and later produces a stillborn horror in a grim boarding house with one lightbulb.

Threads was not so much a prophylactic piece of SF as a snatch of the zeitgeist. People in power knew that nuclear war would be beyond terrible, and it never happened. And yet, it’s more likely than an alien invasion, isn’t it?

Did you know?

Threads was the third attempt by the BBC to make a nuclear war docudrama. The first was stalled by Winston Churchill, the second, The War Game (1965) remained unscreened for twenty years, being deemed too disturbing.

Monday Story: She Said

This is one of my earliest surviving short stories. I have always wanted to be a writer, but I can pinpoint two phases that set me on the path to being one – when I became serious about it in 2000, and when I became really serious about it in 2005.

This story dates from that second, super-serious time, when I decided that as well as trying to write novels, I should also write short stories alongside them. I thought they’d prove a valuable training ground, which is pretty much what everyone says, and they’re right, mostly because you can actually finish a short story in something less than a lifetime, and if it sucks, it’s not too disheartening. “She Said” is an early effort and fairly clunky because of it, so I hope you’ll forgive it its inadequacies.

The story itself was inspired by the Outer Hebrides, particularly the Isle of Lewis where I spent several booze-soaked holidays in the 2000s , fishing and pissing about in boats.

You can buy more of my short fiction at the Robot Trading Company.

She Said

“Let’s go,” he had said one day. “We have to, now. Please. You know we’ll be safe there.”

She had dreaded the moment, knowing what it meant. He’d always wanted to go away from their jobs, their friends, their families; away from civilisation, away from all she knew and loved. He’d bought the cottage years ago. He’d always dreamed of living there, but had never done it, because of her. But now it was his turn. He had an excuse, a real reason to go, and she had no choice but to follow; she was scared.

They sold everything, and left. Far, far north they went, as far away as it was possible to get before the land ran out for good and the cold ocean went on forever. Twelve hours by car, three by boat, another hour again by car. To the isles that fan out from the mainland, far from the sun, far from the warmth; far from everything. Their house was miles from town, high above a sea loch whose steep sides sheered through heather and grey stone to plunge nearly vertically into the cold and ravenous sea.

He was happy there. He loved the solitude, the quiet. He loved the mist rising from the water in the morning, he loved fishing for his own food from his own boat. He enjoyed not working in an office, loved the feel of the open air on his face, no matter what the weather. He enjoyed wresting enough hay from the ground to feed their herd of animals over the first long winter. He loved the never-ending days of summer, the clear skies at night, the changing face of the sea.

She hated the bleakness of the land, the nudity of the earth, the surly, mealy-mouthed locals who were watching their way of life be usurped through the amber tint of a whisky bottle. She hated their prying, their hypocrisy, their lassitude. She hated the frequent rain, the constant wind, the way the temperature rarely broke into double figures. She hated what it did to her body. She hated the silence, the biting insects, the endless nights of winter. She hated the ugly clothes she had to wear and the way they were never dry. She missed the noise. She missed her freedom.

“This is the way to live,” he’d say, his smile broad and satisfied as they ate. She’d rarely respond for fear he’d see the lie. She never had the appetite for the fish before her. Soon she stopped replying altogether, he was blind to her suffering.

But still she stayed. She never went back to the city. She knew he was right. The crackling picture on the television brought the news of slow defeat. The broadcasts were optimistic, but he could see the patterns, and so could she, she didn’t need him to point them out anymore. Things were coming undone.

Two years passed, years that brought summers of baking heat and winters of endless rain to the south, though the lives of her friends went on as normal despite the little hardships which multiplied, unchecked, like cockroaches. It was not to last.

In the spring of the third year, in Africa, the bird sickness finally took hold, thwarting the measures that had contained it for a decade. Quickly, it blossomed from a seed to a deadly harvest, laying low millions already ravaged by AIDS and TB. And the disease changed, the bodies of the dying incubators for a hundred subtle new strains. One was unstoppable. The healthy began to die. All who were infected died. A state of emergency was declared. Troops panicked, thousands were killed. The UN descended upon the continent. For a time the sickness was contained once more, but not by vaccination or screening. Ruthlessness became the norm. Villages filled up with the dead, towns became ghost-towns, cities became villages.

Travel was circumscribed. Trade faltered, the world economy wavered. Fuel became unaffordable. War broke out in the middle-east, a surgical strike that became inflamed to engulf a region. Half a continent was under arms. America’s empire grew unwillingly, blood being traded like for like with oil.

The weather worsened. Famine exacerbated the sickness. The sea was rising, coastal communities were torn and scattered by storms whose uncommon ferocity became commonplace. New Orleans was inundated, never to rise again. Hong Kong was swamped, Shanghai began to sink. The monsoons failed in India.

Life became harder on the islands, they began to grow much of their own food, where it would grow; they had no money to buy the goods in the shops. The winds grew stronger, the seasons more erratic. Still he came in from the fields and sea so happy, proven, secure. He began to work together with others, some new like them, fleeing before the crisis; many others who were returning. The withered stumps of ancient family trees flowered again as families from the mainland crammed into the long, grey houses of neglected relatives. She had friends now, of a kind, but she could not engage with their flinty pragmatism, their grim joy.

The economy of the world reeled. Martial law was declared in China, flocks of birds were gassed, whole cities razed at the first sign of the sickness, the gun became the only arbiter of any argument, and all arguments concerned infection. In Russia, impoverished citizens fell by the score. Europe braced itself, Asia suffered. Africa died.

A wave of millennial madness washed the island; on Sundays, the churches were full.

It had come at last, the ’flu, crossing the English Channel eighteen months after she had followed him to the islands; just as the scientists had predicted it eventually would, just as the politicians had said it wouldn’t. It spread from the east, breaking in waves of death over the few barriers the governments of Europe could muster. New and potent vaccinations were hastily concocted, only to fail within weeks as the virus changed again and again. Sometimes it was quicker than at others, sometimes slower, but almost always fatal. Society began to break down. A third of the world’s people had perished. Isolation was the only real defence.

The trips to the supermarket in town stopped altogether, there was little point, its shelves were empty. If they went anywhere, they went by boat under sail and oar. The electricity supply became intermittent, to finally cease a few weeks after the television went off air. Elsewhere, anarchy reigned.

“We’re stockpiling refrigerators at the school, we’ll use that as a food distribution centre, there’s enough energy for that,” he explained happily. “In a few years we’ll be able to rig up more wind turbines. We’ll just have to make do with oil lamps until then.” It was his latest project, power. He was active in the islands’ ruling council.

All their food now had to be torn from the infertile earth or the fickle waves of the sea. Sometimes they went hungry, but not often. The ancient ways of the islanders had almost gone, but not quite. Old techniques were recalled, old ways re-mastered. It was a hard life, but they were alive. Only the ugly scenes at the docksides and on the waves as refugees were turned away marred their triumphs. Sometimes they were not turned away, though they did not set foot on the shore.

But it worked, that and the culling of birds. The sickness did not come.

“I was right, love. I was right, and we are safe,” he said to her, holding her tight in the cold night. “When this is over, we can make a new world, love, a purer world. A better one.”

He slept soundly, his warm arms clasped tightly about her. She lay there, eyes open, unblinking, listening to the wind howl in from the sea to screech unimpeded over the hard stone and sodden peat of the island. The ancient zinc roof rattled. Sleep did not come, it never did.

She awoke early after a few hours of snatched, grey rest. It was late summer, she knew, though she herself had stopped counting the days long ago, for the room was full of light, the island’s harsh light that pressed down mercilessly through the flat sky for twenty hours of every day. She looked at her husband’s face: bearded now, craggy, all softness burnt from it by the wind and sun. The city worker he had once been was long gone. His cracked hands curled a little, and he smiled as he slept. He looked like a stranger to her. A dull pain passed through her heart.

She rose quietly and went outside. The sun was coming up, low in the east, breaking over the cloddish mountains of the island’s interior. Below pink clouds the sun’s rays coloured the newly ordered fields a subtle copper, and the long, pale grasses of the moors danced like light reflected off gold. The sun struck off the loch, turning the surface of the water into a sheet of hammered silver. Sometimes, like this, she almost found it beautiful.

She squinted against the sun. Upon the mirrored water was a dark shape; a boat. It was coming in to land. Slowly, she picked her way down the steep hillside and then onto the road, walking along crumbling tarmac towards the loch’s small and awkward harbour.

By the time she arrived, the boat was hard to the concrete jetty, built years before for long-gone fish farms. It towered incongruously over the stone piers beside it, their construction identical, only their various states of disrepair hinting that some were centuries older than the others.

The boat was large, almost a ship. How the crew had got the fuel to bring it here she could only guess. Hollow-eyed men cast desperate glances about as they tied up. They knew that they would be driven off if seen. They shook with exhaustion as they spoke to her. They had come from The Netherlands, they said, their voices thick with foreign sounds and unspoken fear. Much of the country wasn’t there anymore. A week-long gale had battered the coast, a storm surge had flooded old lakes and inland seas; a second had followed within months. There were not enough healthy people to rebuild the dykes, all were dead, or fled, to perish elsewhere.

She looked at their faces, pale with stress, dark with stubble. They were too weak and haggard to be a threat, though they would be judged one. They pleaded with her, begging. They could make a life here, contribute. They had skills the islands could use. This one here, an engineer, another, him, a fisherman. Just feed them, if only a little, and they would be strong and productive.

She should raise the alarm, she replied. She should have them chased away, they were afflicted with more than tiredness. She could see that, others would see that. One of the Dutchmen began to cough violently, barking almost, his mouth biting at the air for breath. A concerned man held him up; it could have been his brother, they all could have been his brothers. Dirt and desperation had made them all the same.

It fell silent, but for the lapping of the water and the wind in the heather. A small wave broke over the foundation stones of a new pier. It was difficult work, it had been washed away once by a ferocious squall, but the men were confident it would be done by the winter. They laughed about it.

A cloud passed over the sun. Cold shivered up her spine, it was threatening rain again. She would have to work quickly today; and the next. The work was never done. She looked at her hands, they were filthy, her nails cracked. They had been elegant once.

Somewhere out in the loch, a seal splashed.

She thought of the man she’d seen hanged a week ago, for stealing a sack of oats.

It was almost beautiful there.

“Come in,” she said. “Come in.”

Dan Abnett Interview

I did this interview with Dan in 2010, prior to the release of the Warhammer 40,000 animated movie Ultramarines, for SFX 201.

DAN ABNETT

He’s the man with the golden pen – a 3000-words-a-minute model that can lay waste to whole star systems…

Dan Abnett is one of the UK’s most prolific SF authors, producing up to 300,000 words a year (his estimate, probably conservative). Beginning his career at Marvel UK in the 1980s, Abnett became a mainstay of 2000 AD in the 90s. For years comics of all kinds provided his bread and butter – he was SFX’s regular comics reviewer, too – before he began penning novels for Games Workshop’s Black Library. Work on Torchwood, Doctor Who and Primeval followed. With his first non tie-in novel Triumff out last year from Angry Robot and his first movie, Ultramarines, in production, the fickle gods of SF have amply rewarded Abnett’s industriousness.

Ultramarines is Games Workshop’s first foray into motion pictures. It’s set in their dystopian 41^st Millennium where mankind’s Imperium stands on the brink of destruction, and features their signature Space Marines – genetically modified warriors. The company has licensed out its intellectual property in the past, but it’s long been wary of dipping its toe into the murky pool of Hollywood, fearing a loss of control (think Stallone, Dredd, no helmet…). Not so here, with London-based Codex Pictures making the feature and Abnett providing the script, we’ll be getting a proper Warhammer 40,000 film.

“Retaining the essential atmosphere was the key thing,” says Abnett. “My focus was a story that was absolutely true to the spirit of 40k. I needed it to fit inside the production constraints, ‘Listen, Dan, this may be an animated film, but you simply can’t ask for eighty million Space Marines to come galloping out of the Eye of Terror on choppers’, they said, and I was determined not to dilute the very bleak but heroic feel of the universe. Most of all, I wanted it to be a story that suited a film, rather than something designed to fit a novel or a comic. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s fantastic. The action, the amazing voice cast (John Hurt, Terrence Stamp, Sean Pertwee, Johnny Harris etc). And, my god, it’s got mood and atmosphere. It’s been a very interesting, educational job. The producers have been very good to work with, and I’ve learned a lot. I want to do more work for film, and I have two or three immediate opportunities to do so.”

Although GW provides much employment for Abnett, he continues to work for others. He’s still writing strips for 2000 AD, and together with Andy Lanning he signed a deal with Marvel two years ago to work on their cosmic characters. These are but two of his regular gigs.

The secrets of Abnett’s success are several. Although he tells us his specialisation was entirely accidental, he has an affinity for his “SF war” niche, so much so that real veterans sometimes assume he’s served in combat. Chiefly he’s done so well because he doesn’t hold anything back when he’s writing for other people’s worlds.

“What is generally termed ‘tie-in’ fiction gets a really bad press,” he says. “It’s not ‘proper’ books. It’s reheated crap churned out to cash in on a property.  Bollocks to that. There is a vast audience that wants to read good stories connected to their favourite show or film or whatever. If you think tie-in books are ‘cheap’ then you’re saying that the audience is cheap too, so shame on you. If they’re prepared to shell out for a book and invest the time reading it, someone had bloody well better have written it properly. I am constantly amused by the notion that I have two ‘grades’ of writing in me, my everyday style I use to lob out tie-in potboilers, and my Sunday best, proper quality style I only get out on special occasions to write ‘real books’ with. Yes, that’s exactly how it works. If you sit down and consciously think to yourself ‘I can knock this out using my economy rate writing,’ then step away from the keyboard. The book’s going to be shit, and you’ve got no business ripping readers off.”

Having said all that, for such an imaginative man, you would have expected an original novel from him earlier than last year.

“I write whatever comes next,” he says, “and for a long time, it was hard to find a gap in the schedule for Triumff. But it was immensely rewarding. I’m finishing my second Angry Robot novel now. It’s called Embedded, a combat SF thriller, but in a rather different vein to the war stories I write for BL.”

Another novel, on top of everything else?

“I work a lot because I love what I do,” he says. “I’m not suggesting it’s never hard work – everyone has bad days at the office. But I’m doing what I really want to be doing. But I have had to slow down. In September 09, I was suddenly pole-axed by seizures,” he says. “Turned out, after two anxious months waiting for a diagnosis, to be ‘just’ late onset epilepsy. Considering what it could have been, that was a relief. I had to gently get back on the horse, re-invent my working day, reduce the stress, work around the anti-epilepsy meds etc. This is going to sound strange, but it was an oddly satisfying experience, very liberating. I had been working ridiculously hard for too long. I got time to take stock. No more late-nighters for me. Lots of relaxed, clean living. I go to bed, get a good night’s sleep, rise early, get started. I’m sitting here at 6.30am. I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on such a great time of day for so long.”

BIODATA

Occupation: Freelance author

Born: 12th October 1965

From: Maidstone, Kent

Greatest hits: Sinister Dexter and Kingdom (2000AD), Gaunt’s Ghosts and Eisenhorn (novel series, Black Library), Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, Star Trek: Early Voyages (Marvel Comics), Legion of Superheroes  and The Authority (DC/Wildstorm).

Random fact: His great-great-something-something grand mother was Lady Emma Hamilton.

Champion of Mars, out today!

The frankly stunning cover to Champion of Mars was painted by Dominick Saponaro. Visit his website for more examples of his work.

My new book, Champion of Mars, is out in the UK today. I’m excited about this one, as the story the book grew from has always been close to my heart. An epic tale spanning hundreds of centuries, Champion of Mars takes in the near future, the far future, and the times in between.

Here’s what famed SF author Stephen Baxter had to say in his review for SFX:

Kim Stanley Robinson meets Edgar Rice Burroughs. That’s how Guy Haley’s jam-packed sugar-rush of a novel reads, as you dive into its two alternating Martian timelines: one a gritty near-future Mars, reminiscent of Robinson’s mighty Red Mars trilogy, where pioneers seek out native life and struggle with the noble goal of terraforming, and the other a very-far-future Mars so advanced it’s come out the other side and turned into a bronze-age-ish hero society not unlike Burroughs’ Barsoom. The champion of the title is called Yoechakanon, and with his spirit-lover Kaibeli he is trying to save the remnants of mankind from a strange pan-dimensional invasion. But it gradually becomes clear that in fact the champion’s far future is intimately connected to the near future, both through an interweaving of very imaginative era-by-era interpolating episodes, and through mysterious deeper linkages, such as the presence on the young Mars of an enigmatic artificial woman called Cybele …

The whole thing is a marvellous planetary romance which crams in what feels like every Martian trope sf writers have ever dreamed up – and maybe that’s timely, in the year of the Barsoom movie John Carter. In places it strains at the seams, the final wrapping-up is a little rushed, and sometimes Haley’s prose is a touch pulpish, though it’s a tone that actually fits the subject matter very well. But all in all this is a novel with an ambition on the scale of Olympus Mons itself, and it delivers. Recommended.

There are other reviews here and here. You can also read interviews with me about the book (and my other work) at SFX, the Solaris Editor’s Blog, and on I Will Read Books.

And, here’s an extract! This is “The Last War of Tsu Keng”, one of the bridging chapters that, through the course of the book, bring the stories of the far future and the near future closer and closer together.

The Last War of Tsu Keng

Year 15,105 of the Hegemony of Man

 

The ships sang for joy as their pilots approached, eager to be free of their hangar.

The cavernous eyrie of the Royal Dock vibrated with energy, men and sheathed spirits running to and fro, support automata refuelling the machines and loading them with projectiles. The scramble alarm chimed its carillon, a calm exhortation to battle. Light dazzled, caught on a million facets of crystal and metals. The Royal Dock was a wonderful display of the decorative arts; that, and power.

Tsu Keng’s principle eyes were poor at such close quarters. He saw the furthest ships clearly: slender, killing darts a kilometre distant. They would appear distorted to a human’s perception, for Tsu Keng’s field of vision extended all around him; everything nearer to him was a smear of colour and movement.

But he could feel his pilot, the ripple of his approach cutting through the Second World as he walked toward the ship. He walked Tsu Keng’s gangway and presented himself at the ship’s main port. Krashtar Vo came into sharp focus as he came close to Tsu Keng’s near-sight eyes around the door. Behind him floated the spirit form of his companion, Kybele, ethereal against the tumult of preparations for war.

Tsu Keng saw the pilot in both worlds: as he was now, a Martian bred for the rigours of combat space flight – squat, heavy featured, dense bones, thick muscle, internal organs protected by fluid sacs and strengthened by encysted smart gels – and as he was in the Library, a flickering mass of faces, of histories, one laid over the other, a line of personalities stretching back to the dawn of this era. Permissions and activation whispers swarmed from Krashtar Vo, to interface with the ship’s own Second World self. Tsu Keng’s soul was different, monolithic. Not for him the psyche-clouds of the human Martians, or the choirs of the spirits, whose co-operative subminds made up a greater whole. Tsu Keng’s material and psychic self were indivisible. He was made for one purpose, and desirous only to serve that purpose.

Tsu Keng lived to fly, nothing but to fly.

His systems thrummed in anticipation of it.

“Greetings, Tsu Keng.”

“Greetings, Krashtar Vo. Welcome aboard, my pilot.”

Tsu Keng’s door skin developed a seam and rippled apart, and Krashtar Vo stepped inside. The gangway and door deliquesced, and Tsu Keng drew their lead-grey substance back into his larger mass. His door eyes rolled backward, their eyelids closed, and these too retracted into his body. The portal became smooth skin. His epidermal layer shivered, and a pattern of scales rippled, diamond plates lifting sharp edges up and then lying flat as Tsu Keng activated his armour. The atomic structure of his hide interlocked and became rigid, pressurising the liquid and ablative layers below it.

Krashtar Vo’s feet made only a padding sound as he waddled through the ship. He was heavily adapted for his role, and could lead a comfortable life neither upon the surface of Mars nor within a microgravity environment. It was said some of the pilots enjoyed the deep habitats within the atmospheres of the gas giants, but they seldom stayed there long; the call of deep space was too great. A sacrifice, this modification, some of the humans held.

What do they know? Krashtar spoke mind to mind. He had been a pilot only a few years, but already his bond with Tsu Keng was such that they could achieve interface without the aid of machine or spirit. No price is too great for this.

Tsu Keng thought this true. He had no conception that it could be otherwise.

Krashtar Vo gained the command bridge; he slipped into his couch and lay back. Tsu Keng wrapped himself about the pilot. Krashtar Vo’s body was hardened to the perils of slip space, and so required no stasis field, but Tsu Keng held him tight nevertheless.

There was a sensation like a kiss, and their minds ran one into the other. Tsu Keng felt a caress, and the man’s companion departed. They were lovers, it was said, Krashtar Vo and Kybele, and had been through many lifetimes. Unusual, a man and his companion to be actively engaged in an affair of the heart, or so Tsu Keng had been told. This also, Tsu Keng did not truly understand, not even when he and Krashtar Vo were one.

A call echoed through the canyon; one note, long and low, the song of the squadron alpha leader. The other ships responded, and the hangar became a sounding chamber for a harmonious outpouring of emotion.

We are ready, the ships and their pilots thought as one. We will fly.

The cradle arms holding the alpha ship folded back, and the ship dropped from the racks, plummeting to the floor. Gravity engines came alive, and it sped toward the dock mouth and out into sunlight.

Follow, it thought. The beta ships dropped – one, two, three. Then all the ships rained down, like oak leaves in autumn. They twisted around one another, a cacophony of hooting song sounding in both worlds, the electomagnetic spectrum crowded with their delight.

Tsu Keng and his squadron mates jockeyed for position, not breaking formation, not quite. Below them on the floor of the Royal Dock, men and machines moved painfully slowly, as slow as unphased Stone Kin. Tsu Keng and his kin laughed at them, fighting the desire to engage their slip drives there and then.

Not here, not now, said Krashtar Vo. Not safe.

The ships tumbled out of the hangar mouth into the Marrin, great bats leaving their roost. Sunlight turned their grey skins silver, and when they passed through the broad beams of the mirror suns, the scales of their armour sparkled iridescence.

Onward, upward! To war! To war! the alpha sang. Five hundred combat ships obeyed, falling into formation. Their shadows raced up and over the canyon bluffs, drawing excited gestures from onlookers below. In the Second World, companion spirits mobbed the souls of the ships and their pilots, wishing them well, good hunting, come home. Air roared against Tsu Keng’s skin, his sharp prow forcing it aside.

Oh, to be a ship of war! they sang. Oh, to be in flight!

Sky turned from caramel to blue to purple to black, the ship’s song became thin and then vanished into vacuum, heard only now in the Second World.

Stars shone unhindered upon the raiment of infinity. They were not alone. The heavens blazed with shiplight, bright dots moving swiftly, vessels the size of countries diminished by distance to needle-tips. Thousands upon thousands of them filled the sky in long trains, rising from Earth, Venus, and Mars, from the habitats, from the belt, from the moons of the giants, heading away from the Solar system, heading out for the stars and for safety.

The greater part of mankind was in flight.

Out from the warships, past the crescent of Mars, a great light burned, one that appeared foul and wrong to the eyes of the ships, a second sun in place of Jupiter.

The Stone Sun, brighter now than the tear in the sky it would close. The hyper-dimensional object Jupiter was becoming would constrain the Stone Kin within the gravity well of Sul, seal the tear in reality and keep the Stone Kin from infecting the wider universe. Sulian ships swarmed about the transmogrified gas giant, the fruit of Man’s last great labour, working without pause to ignite this second, uncanny star and save mankind.

It was here the Martian ships flew. This is where the Stone Kin concentrated their efforts. The craft of the kin descended to the lower dimensions and assailed the construction fleet daily, for they, like Man, wished to be free. This was but the latest of a thousand skirmishes.

To the fight, my brothers! called the alpha ship. To the battle!

Tsu Keng’s wings unfurled, as did those of his brothers and sisters. Their unity of purpose and mind saw them all drop up from this world, their wings folding them into complex eleven-dimensional geometries where the wills of the pilots could more effectively move them.

You are not here. Krashtar Vo’s inner voice, indistinguishable from Tsu Keng’s own, told him of his place in the universe, convinced him utterly that he belonged somewhere else. You are here.

Concentration was difficult. Things assailed them as they passed the Veil of Worlds into slip space, the infections of the Stone Kin spreading even there.

Screams scarred the higher reality of the Veil as ships succumbed to raking claws and incomprehensible technologies.

A short slip. Tsu Keng knew that he was elsewhere. That was the natural order of it. How could it be otherwise?

The Martian squadron materialised deep in the Jovian subsystem and into the heart of battle. Tsu Keng’s wingmate flew straight into a cloud of debris at near-luminal speed, tumbling into a million pieces. Tsu Keng’s combat wing split, the four remaining ships spiralling in evasive manoeuvres as thousands of anti-collision hardbeams vaporised the debris.

Krashtar Vo looked upon the battle through Tsu Keng’s eyes, his mind comprehending their situation as Tsu Keng bent his own mind to the task of survival. Their battlefield spanned anything up to eight spatial dimensions, only the highest and the second temporal axes safe, unsullied by violence. Combat was conducted at speeds approaching the four-dimensional maximum for objects of their mass. At such velocities, relative position at a distance was impossible to judge, so they fought at close quarters.

A dozen Terran ships fought a desperate fight with four Stone Kin vessels. The Terran ships were near-identical to those of Mars, the same in all but song. Their armour was scarred and their movements panicked. The Stone Kin craft – if they were craft, none had ever been captured, and no crew ever seen – warped and flexed. Their presence was an intrusion into three dimensional space, and their forms were not fixed. It was as if they rotated in their own space, presenting first this aspect of themselves to the lower dimensions, then that, where they could be understood only as disparate parts. The spirits and humans of ordinary spacetime perceived them no more clearly than blind men describing an elephant. Beams of exotic particles erupted unpredictably from their surfaces. Their effusion and potency defied analysis. Eleutheremics could not predict them. They might impact upon a ship with less effect than a ray of moonlight, or they could cut it in two.

The alpha ship severed the fleet’s higher linkages, lest the Stone Kin infiltrate the ship’s cortices. Training, experience, and force of will would determine the outcome of the day.

The Stone Kin shattered two more of the Terran ships to glittering clouds, and bright fire roiled and died in the vacuum. The remaining Terran craft fell back, joining with the Martian fleet. The ships greeted each other with long songs, broadcast on inter-ship ranges, but they were muted. The Terran ships were exhausted and afraid.

Today they could all die. They were poorly matched against the Stone Kin, no matter how many Sulian craft crowded the sky. The Stone Kin’s power was ineffable.

Survival did not matter, not to Tsu Keng. He and his fellow ships found the Terrans’ fear contemptible. To fly, that was all. To fight, that was what was demanded. He had no fear, he would fly, he would fight. Death was immaterial.

The Martian fleet surged forward. They ducked and arced like dolphins as their engines pushed at the fabric of space.

The Stone Kin revolved their incomprehensible bodies to face this new threat. Beams jagged out from them, all targeted unerringly on the alpha craft. Beams of infinite colouring intersected on the space where the alpha swam. Too late, its pilot attempted to exert her will and force the ship elsewhere. Its wings were part unfurled as it was cut into a hundred pieces, fragments of it spinning out and impacting on those following it.

Some of the younger vessels, those with inexperienced pilots, hesitated and swerved, songs vibrating with panic. The rest hurled themselves on, diving through the lattice of beams the warping Stone Kin projected. More ships died in ecstasy, annihilated as they flew.

The Martians had lost thirty ships already.

Krashtar Vo and Tsu Keng moved themself into an attack pattern. They part-deployed their slip wings. Their remaining wingmates spiralled down after them, copying their leader’s action.

Pilot’s and ship’s shared skin prickled as slipshields came online. Krashtar Vo enforced his interpretation of events upon Tsu Keng and the craft jinked madly, moving from location to location without crossing the space in between.

Tsu Keng deployed his cannons and opened fire. Krashtar Vo extended his mind, unique organs in his brain pre-observing an infinity of outcomes. Their joined mind was capable of processing vast amounts of information at once. Self-imposed ignorance was the lever to the imposition of will.

Vo’s mind, pushed to great heights by that of Tsu Keng, observed all possible quantum outcomes exactly simultaneously, not sequentially, preventing any one state of truth being determined before the desired outcome was chosen and enacted.

Not all men could become pilots, just as not all spirits could be ships. The act of forcing one’s will onto an eleven dimensional space required a stupendous act of double-thinking, for they had to be both ignorant and aware they were doing it. Awareness that all possible outcomes existed contaminated the observance of said outcomes, reducing the number of outcomes to one, and crippling the possibility of success. Through denial, they thus preserved the undetermined state of things before the time was ripe for determination to come into effect. At the same time, they saw what they saw; the inevitability. What happened was always the only answer. The pilots of Mars were unshakeable in their conviction that they were right.

They were bred to defy fate.

All truths, however, are subjective.

Together, Tsu Keng and Krashtar Vo observed exactly where the Stone Kin would be, and fired. But the Stone Kin operated outside of time, observing their fire at precisely the same moment, their will undermining the certainty principles of the aggressor.

Even if it was inevitable it would be hit, if the target could force its own interpretation of events onto the firer, then it would miraculously avoid the shot. Always. If the ship could force its own observed interpretations on a target’s, then the opposite would occur – it would always be hit. The target would either always be hit, or always be missed, but never both, as decided by the eleutheremic arguments constructed by the duelling craft, and how well they tricked their opposite number into adopting their point of view.

Combat was a matter not of flight, then, but of sheer will.

For a few brief moments, two observable realities vied with each other for dominance. Only one held true at any one time, but both could be true at different times, and the ships, the Stone Kin and the cannon’s ordnance flickered into and out of existence, describing multiple fractured courses and positions, the universe blurring into a myriad possibilities, time spread like a rainbow. The fabric of reality groaned under the strain.

Probability was wracked by a monstrous contest of wills. Packets of energy exploded or failed ever to have existed about the weaving, poly-possible craft. The ship was, then wasn’t, then was again, its potential ruination hanging on the threads of contested interpretation.

Seventeen thousandths of a second and it was over. Tsu Keng’s fire raked over the body of the Stone Kin. Volleys from his wing mates crisscrossed the thing. For one moment its pulsations stilled and its form solidified into something ugly and squamous.

It imploded, and ceased to be.

The Martian fleet flickered through the space the alien craft had occupied, rolling and singing as they moved from one potentiality to the next. Emboldened, they assailed the remaining three Stone Kin. Many died.

The sky wept tears of light as ships left mankind’s birthplace in their millions, fleeing the tear in the sky. The harsh light of the transformed Jupiter glared at them all as they fled. The Stone Sun was one fight closer to being kindled, the Stone Kin one step closer to being trapped. Earth, Mars, Venus – the ancestral homes of Man – would be entombed with them, but the plague of the Stone Kin would go no further.

Tsu Keng did not care. Tsu Keng flew.

Finally, if you’d like to read the first two chapters, you can do so right here.

Champion of Mars is available at all good bookshops, and off that internet thing.

Brian Froud: The Goblin King

This interview with Brian Froud comes from 2007, when it was published in Death Ray 06.

This particular piece appeared in our “New Gods” profile slot. Unfortunately, the 2009 release date he gives at the end of the article for The Power of the Dark Crystal has come and gone, but I live in hope we’ll see it some day. You can read my review of the original The Dark Crystal here.

I interviewed a number of artists for Death Ray, and will be posting the articles here in due course. Hopefully, should I get permission from the artists, accompanied by some of their glorious illustrations.

Froud was a really nice chap to talk to (my rule of thumb is that artists and writers are great to speak with, actors less so), and yes, he really does see fairies…

The Goblin King

A quarter of a century ago, Muppet Master Jim Henson tracked down Brian Froud to provide art direction on The Dark Crystal. We talk to the master of faerie painting about this film, his artworks and his encounters with the other…

Brian Froud paints fairies. His pictures, influenced by the pre-Raphaelite movement, Arthur Rackham and Swedish artist John Bauer, are a mass of detail, of otherworldly faces peeking into the human world.

“I left college as a jobbing illustrator,” he says, “and did all sorts of things for about five years – magazines, book covers, and I got fed up with it. I used to have battles with art directors, until I discovered that any project that I art directed myself I would win awards for. As soon as I created my own things it just worked.”

Froud had always yearned to live in the countryside, so he upped sticks and headed to Devon. The folkloric book Faeries, produced in conjunction with artist Alan Lee (who lives in the same village) came out in 1977. He’s not looked back since.

“When I moved to the country, my response to nature was to paint fantastical creatures, fairies and trolls. It just haunts me, I’m fascinated. I can’t help it. I’ve a book coming out in America called Brian Froud’s World of Faerie. It’s thirty years of my work. It’s a journey through time – my earliest stuff up to the very latest. But it’s also a journey deeper into fairyland, as my art has become more about the spiritual aspects of fairies.”

This journey has taken to Froud to the edge of Faerie itself… The artist says he now sees the little folk. His good-natured tone becomes a little more self-conscious.

“It was just after finishing Good Fairies, Bad Fairies, I was on tour signing and I spontaneously started to see fairies.”

And these positive experiences generally?

“Erm, yes,” he says tentatively. A chuckle breaks his reticence. “Until the white van arrives!” He explains, “As an artist there are various techniques you use to get across an idea, but it has to contain an element of truth. And it’s fascinating to me that when I’m doodling in sketchbooks, I’m looking at these faces, getting them so I can say. ‘Yep, there’s something true there,’ rather than something I’ve made up.”

Ah, so he communicates with the fairies through his art…

“No, no. I am seeing them. Everyone says they want to see a fairy, and they want to see it with their eyes, you know, but you see it with an inner eye. They are psychic experiences. It doesn’t happen all the time, and I can’t make it happen, and it’s always a bit surprising… It’s hard – I paint fairies that feel right, but to paint fairies that look right is difficult. The experience involves so many other things.”

Wherever his art springs from, his appreciation of nature, his own imagination or through a communion with the world of Faerie, Froud’s pictures do have a glamour about them, and carry a lot of emotion for his fans.

“This could be self-delusion,” he says “but my sense of the ‘rightness’ of the pictures comes across from the response I get from people. It’s often about family, their mothers have given their books to them, and they’re going to give their books to their children, or that the books have helped them through terrible experiences, even abuse. The books have given them a safe world to flee into. I’m very humbled and proud that they’ve had such an effect on people.”

Froud’s also known as a conceptual designer on Hensons’ fantasy classics The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and The Storyteller, and for him these experiences remain a high point of his career. Jim Henson saw a picture of Froud’s on a book cover, and thought the artist would be perfect to help him bring to life an idea for a world he’d had. Froud jumped at the chance, and not only because he is a huge fan of the Muppets.

“I’d always wondered what it would be like if my art moved. I figured that traditional animation would not work, because my art doesn’t have depth to it, and so I’d actually thought, well maybe puppets is the way to add that depth.”

Ironically, after hiding himself away in the country, he was to spend much of the next five years in New York and London. But it had many benefits, not least that he met his wife Wendy, a puppeteer, at Hensons.

“Being in the Muppet workshop was like being in heaven. Colours, glue and fur and stuff! Jim and Frank [Oz] would come in and talk about the world, about the sort of creatures that might populate it.”

Froud oversaw every aspect of the design, drawing and sculpting on The Dark Crystal. Initially beginning with a small team, as the crew grew to 360 people, the lone artist had to learn to collaborate, the most satisfying part of the experience.

“It took five years of my life in the end. And I think that’s what makes The Dark Crystal unusual, we did literally build the whole world from the ground upwards. A whole world that had history, it had a religion, it had different animals. Jim was financing it himself until really quite late in the day. That gives it its freedom of expression. Nowadays everything is driven by accountants, I don’t think you’d ever get that freedom again. We made this film for ourselves, it caused confusion when people saw it – they wanted to know who it was for. But we though we didn’t really know, I think it affects everybody.”

This lack of a clear target audience and the release of ET meant that The Dark Crystal was a modest financial success. Froud and Henson’s next  foray into fantasy, Labyrinth (1986), bombed. But both have gathered a large cult following, and Froud expresses amazement at the diversity of different editions he signs at events. Over the years a sequel to The Dark Crystal has been mooted, but it’s only recently that Froud was approached to design creatures for a second film in the series. He was initially less than taken with the idea.

“My first thought was ‘Why’? I’m always up for going on forwards, not going backwards. If we’re going to go back to this world, there’s got to be a reason. Talking to David Odell, who scripted the first, we came up with a reason. When we left this world it was paradise. Now we’re returning, something’s gone wrong; why? For me that’s the intriguing nub of the story. At the moment that’s in the script, but who knows what will happen! Anyway, I’ve done some designs for various creatures, Gelflings and things like that.”

Currently the film is going under the name of The Power of the Dark Crystal. Hensons literature reveals that a much older Jen and Kira, the heroes of the original, are rulers of the Castle of the Crystal. A fiery girl named Thurma from the centre of the planet (early development of The Dark Crystal featured underground civilisations, according to Froud) requests a shard of the crystal to revitalise the inner sun. The Gelflings refuse, so Thurma steals one, leading to the re-emergence of both Mystics and Skeksis.

“They’re still getting the final funding in place,” says Froud. “I spoke to Cheryl Henson at Comic-Con the other week. And she’s confident we’re talking about a 2009 release.”