Ken MacLeod's Blog

European stem cell research consortium OptiStem yesterday launched Hope Beyond Hype, a short educational comic that tells the story of stem cells from discovery to therapy. The comic, now available online and as attractive hard-copy

'starts with the true life story of two badly burned boys being treated with stem cell generated skin grafts in 1983. We then follow the successes and setbacks of a group of researchers working together to use stem cells to cure blindness, whilst being introduced to knotty issues that are part of the process, including stem cell regulation and the controversial ethical issues surrounding the subject. Whilst some of the story lines sound like science fiction they are in fact all true, despite the fact the script was written by the well-known Scottish Science Fiction writer, Ken Macleod. Comic book artist Edward Ross illustrated the script with his clear, friendly and attractive artwork, whilst stem cell researchers from OptiStem provided the real-life examples of their research and experiences.'

The comic was produced by a team led by Cathy Southworth, Optistem and EuroSyStem's Public Engagement, Outreach and Communications Manager, who works at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine. She came up with the idea, recruited the team, showed us around the marvellous building in which the Centre is housed, introduced us to her colleagues, and arranged the immense privilege of an hour for us all with stem cell pioneer Professor Michele De Luca.



Cathy and I consulted graphic-novel guru David Bishop at Napier, who explained how comics scripts are written and suggested books to read. I went off and read them, then wrote the script. Comics artist Edward Ross and his colleague, Glasgow University PhD student Jamie Hall, did the design and artwork. Meanwhile Edward and Jamie were just finishing a rather longer comic on malaria, and Edward and his wife were expecting a happy event (now happily eventuated, as you can see from the pram handle in the picture below), but they took it all in their stride. The script (and some panels - none of us will forget the blastocyst picture) went through several iterations, as we and some of Cathy's colleagues tore successive drafts to shreds.

For all that, we finished on time and in budget, and it was a proud moment when we all got the finished article in our hands.

It's now a fortnight since I went to America for a panel at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, and high time I wrote about it. PEN American Center looked after me very well, and paid for my flights, accommodation and transport.

Early on Friday afternoon I was met at Newark NJ airport by a driver from Diva
Limo, who whisked me to the hotel, the Jolly Madison Towers on 38th and Madison
(near Grand Central). The hotel was splendid and the room was good - nothing
fancy, but plenty of room and everything ship-shape. So I had a shower and then
walked down 3rd Avenue to the main Festival hotel, the Standard in Cooper
Square. I was wearing my black boots (as they're the nearest I have to smart
shoes) and I got a blister that hurt for the rest of my stay - by Monday it was
quite painful, though it started to go as soon as I got home and changed back into
trainers.

Anyway, I enjoyed the walk, which took about forty minutes. The Standard is just across from the old Cooper Union building and next door to the new one, which looks like an aluminium Culture Ship.



Just off the reception at the Standard is a quiet parlour called the Library, with books around the walls and lots of sofas and soft chairs. This room was being used as the PEN hospitality suite. It opens onto a plaza with tables and more seats. I introduced myself to a young lady sitting with a laptop beside by a stack of Festival programmes. Her name was Emma Connolly and she welcomed me on behalf of PEN. I drank some water and ate a pastry from the table and I was just replying to an email from Julian Sanchez when he walked in. He's 33 and thin and talks as enthusiastically as Charlie Stross. He was wearing jeans, a striped jacket, and shirt with a bow tie: the very image of a Cato Institute free-market libertarian.

Talking and smoking as I hirpled beside him, Julian took me out for a drink via a lecture he wanted to hear at a nearby university, where a conference was going on on Anonymity and Identity in the Digital Age. This turned out to be actually relevant to both the panel topic and my thinking about my next book: there was an intriguing discussion of how anonymous can data really be - if, say, patients' medical records are used for epidemiological (etc) purposes, the more relevant facts a given record includes the less effectively it's anonymized. Julian put the point in a self-acknowledged geeky way: '"Sarah Connor"', he said, 'is not a unique identifier - but that doesn't help Sarah Connor.'

What really struck me from the discussion was how confident everyone was that legislators were open to rational persuasion, and that between good programming practice (with a bit of revision I could design the SQL or Excel query myself) and well-formulated regulation that particular problem could be solved.

We had drinks in a dim but posh tavern and I impressed Julian with my e-cig if not my now jet-lagged conversation. Then we went back to the hotel and into its fine bar (which is opposite the main doors, glass-walled and accessible from the street) to join Julian's girl-friend Kashmir (who is a reporter for Forbes and is nice) and some of their friends. Julian, Kashmir and I had dinner in a Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant in the East Village for something ridiculous like $20 each including tip. By this time it was about ten and I left them at the hotel and walked back to mine. I hit the sack and got a good night's sleep, followed by a good continental breakfast. I went for a stroll around the vicinity, which turned out to be the Fashion District (mostly closed for Saturday), then back to the hotel in time to be picked up by another Diva Limo car at noon.

The line-up for the panel, in the new Cooper Union, was: Larry Siems introducing, Julian chairing, Catherine Crump from the ACLU, me, and Russian writer Ludmilla Ulitskaya and Romanian writer Gabriella Adameșteanu (who turned up with three or four friendly people from the Romanian Cultural Institute).

Ludmilla and Gabriella had interpreters on stage, which made made the discussion a bit less free-flowing than usual (and bit odd for me because of the whispering at either side). But it seemed to go well, and everyone I spoke to afterwards said that it had. It was covered in the New York Times, though Julian felt (and I agree) that the report cast an unfounded aspersion on him.

Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden were there and took me, Julian, and Kashmir out for a late lunch at a Ukrainian diner. At one point Julian was talking about an alarmist article he'd read about the countermeasures teenagers take against electronic tracking by their parents, and Patrick remarked: 'We're raising kids to behave like characters in spy novels!'

Patrick invited me to drop by Tor any time between 12 and 3 on Monday. After Patrick and Teresa headed home, I left Julian and Kashmir on the way to the hotel and set off for St Mark's Bookshop, which I was sure was in St Mark's Place. It wasn't, but I had an interesting walk finding out. The bookshop itself was just as I remembered it from my previous visit back in the late 90s, full of academic left (cultural studies etc) and general books in so many bookcases that it's hard not to brush against a sharp corner. (This happened to my son Michael that time, making a tiny scratch on the casing of a new sports watch he'd saved for for months and had just bought at Nike. I still have a pang about that.)

In a back corner are two revolving racks of left-wing journals. One contains the respectable left (In These Times, Dollars and Sense, ISJ) and the other the far left and ultra-left: Spartacist, Maoist, and three left-communist journals which are as mutually hostile and politically indistinguishable as they were when I first encountered them in Compendium in Camden in 1976 and whose format, layout and fonts, as well as their contents, are exactly the same as they were then. I gave all these a cursory browse and a determined miss and bought a copy of Strunk's The Elements of Style, for about $4.

Looking for something to do before the party at 10, I found a poetry event in the ground floor of the Standard, and very good it was too, with a lively young black MC and several poets. One was pregnant - 'She's eating for two, and she's reading for two!' the MC said. There was a real feeling of a buzz of new poetry and experiment. Also, free wine, cocktails and cookies.

I made the most of left-over wine and cookies while hanging around the plaza until the party. It was in the 21st-floor penthouse, which had a huge suite (including a bedroom) and an all-round balcony, which had as you can imagine (you'll have to, because my camera was recharging) the most amazing views of Manhattan at night.

'This is Ayn Rand's New York!' I said to Emma Connolly, the nice young woman who'd greeted me. 'All it needs is a naked man on a cliff,' she replied, impressing me with her knowledge of The Fountainhead.

Later I got into a conversation with Leily Kleinbard, who as well as working for PEN works with Larry Seims and others on Reckoning With Torture, a project to develop a film that they hope will go viral. I agreed whole-heartedly with the aim, but in articulating my own fury and frustration on the issue I'm afraid I bent her ear a bit (though she assured me later I hadn't).

Around midnight I saw that Oana Radu, one of the women I'd spoken with earlier from the Romanian cultural centre, had her coat on and went over to say goodnight. It turned out her hotel was near mine so we shared a taxi which dropped her off.

The following morning I strolled down Madison Avenue to Washington Square and then into Greenwich Village, took a phone call from the editor of a computer magazine that's publishing a short story I've just written, and then walked over to Cooper Union to listen to a panel on Occupy with the editors of the Occupy! Gazette.



After this I mooched about for a bit, had an over-priced but welcome bagel, walked around a few blocks of the East village, and just before five joined the block-long queue for Salman Rushdie's Arthur Miller Lecture. This was in the main auditorium of the old Cooper Union, a most impressive hall which was packed with mostly young people. Rushdie's talk, as you can see from the video, was brief, witty and interesting, and followed by a Q & A session with Gary Shteyngart, the American son of Russian dissidents.

I bought a $20 Metro pass (spending exactly $10 too much, as I thought at this time that I'd have to make my own way to the airport) and took the line up to Grand Central, went back to the hotel and showered and changed. Back down for 8.30.

The party was in the top of the Clock Tower of the old Cooper Union: one bare room, with an opening to a balcony, and the workings of the clock itself on show inside. The party started slowly but soon got busy. Early on I joined others outside to see the moon rising, huge and orange, just one night after full.

It felt strange being in the same room as Salman Rushdie, and I hung around the edge of a semi-circle around him on the balcony while he held forth on the short film 'Powers of Ten', which he said showed the non-existence of God. I chatted to a few people, including Beth Weinstein, who'd arranged everything for me and who I met for the first time there. She told me that a car would pick me up for the airport.

I took the subway back after the party finished at 11.

Monday morning I got breakfast, showered, packed, checked out and left my luggage and took the subway to the nearest station to the Flatiron. When I turned up at noon Patrick asked me to come back in an hour. I wandered on, around a small branch of Barnes & Noble, and back. Patrick took me and Steve Gould out to lunch, which was good, then recommended I should check out Union Square, which he said was the real heart of New York. I walked down and found a busy organic market and an Occupy stall and a generally lively scene.



Subway back to hotel, car to airport, home! - and jet-lag for a fortnight.

The US edition of The Night Sessions is getting some thoughtful reviews online: from A Progressive on the Prairie, The King of Elfland's Second Cousin, Shiny Book Review, and Lex Communis. That last explores the book's religious angle from the interestingly different perspective of 'an unrepentant neo-Conservative, Catholic' viewpoint, and is strikingly generous. The author has been good enough to post his review on Amazon, so if you want to give it a thumbs-up, you know what to do.

Last Wednesday's day-long workshop Putting the Science in Fiction was a big success, drawing about a hundred participants of whom many were new faces to jaded old hands like me. It was so cool it even had a hashtag, #SciFicManc. A press release got picked up by The Guardian, where, in a further demonstration of the event's cool cutting-edginess, it got the predictably depressing and idiotic stream of comments that no worthwhile idea or initiative should fail to attract.

At lunch-time I found a handful of people from the disciplines of media studies and science studies in a huddle, aghast at the naivety of the ideas the rest of us had about science and fiction. As mere practitioners of one or the other (or both) we were treating each in their different ways as quite unproblematic representations of reality, and the problem as matching them up. I saw their point, but it was somewhat blunted by an earlier coffee-break conversation I'd had with a science studies guy who assured me that all scientific knowledge was confirmed by social processes, not by further experiment (or words to that effect). When I protested that a lot of scientific discoveries had become established fact, literally solidly proven by (e.g.) the very floor we stood on, he assured me that that sort of thing (what goes into making trains, planes, and automobiles, etc) was 'engineering knowledge' and not science at all. Nevertheless I tossed a plea for some attention to critical media and science studies into the afternoon's discussion, where it sank without a ripple.

My own preferred model (sketched out in late-night conversations with Iain Banks, long ago) for how scientists and SF writers should interact with movies and television is the approval-stamp from the American Humane Society that you see in the credits. A little line saying 'No elementary scientific truth or serious science-fictional speculation was harmed, distorted, or mangled beyond all recognition in the making of this motion picture' would not be much, but it would be a start.

The National Library of Scotland has an exhibition, running until the end of June, of science fiction in Scotland. The exhibition is compact but comprehensive, with proportionate weight given to SF work in genre and mainstream modes, to comics, TV and films, and with unabashed exhibits of garish covers and artwork alongside fragile manuscripts and antiquarian rarities. SF is treated with the kind of respect and attention to detail that you might expect from someone who has a real love and knowledge of the genre - which turns out to be the case, as curator John Birch (above) explains.

In related videos you can see (so far) me, Charlie Stross and Gary Gibson give our various takes on being SF writers. Eventually these videos and others will be on the NLS site, but for now, enjoy on YouTube and, if you happen to be in Edinburgh in the next couple of months, drop in on the exhibition.

I'm delighted and honoured to have been invited to be on a panel on 'Life in the Panopticon' on Saturday May 5th at the Cooper Union in NYC, as part of the upcoming PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature.

Tiny surveillance drones that hover and stare. An Internet where every keystroke is recorded. The automated government inspection of hundreds of millions of e-mails for suspicious characteristics. The technological advancements spurred by the computing revolution have improved our lives, but have also diminished our privacy and enhanced the government’s power to monitor us. Writers and directors who have grappled with technology’s mixed blessings join civil liberties advocates to discuss ways of preserving our freedom in an era in which we all dwell in Bentham’s Panopticon—a prison that allows our wardens to observe us at all times without being seen themselves.

A belated thank-you and appreciation for Alt.Fiction, where I was a Guest of Honour last weekend. This annual festival of fantastic literature is a bit like an SF/F convention, but sponsored and run by one of the capillaries of local/regional government that channel Arts Council funding. One can imagine lots of ways in which this could go wrong, all of which Alt.Fiction triumphantly doesn't. It's an enjoyable, well-organised and worthwhile event. I met old friends and acquaintances and made new ones - some faces were familiar from SF conventions, but most weren't, and I got a strong impression of new writers and readers sprouting like these green things that sprout at this time of year.

One person I met was Ian Sales, who sold me a copy of an anthology he's edited, Rocket Science, and his own stand-alone novella Adrift on the Sea of Rains (which he talks about here. I read the latter on the train back and it's very good indeed, as are the stories I've read so far in the anthology, including 'Going, Boldly' by the Edinburgh SF gang's very own Helen Jackson.

Big thanks to the organisers, especially Catherine Rogers and Adele Wearing, who looks back on the weekend here and links to others' impressions of the festival here.

Intrusion continues to get good reviews, from newspapers at interestingly different quarters of the political compass.

Here's the Daily Mail:

Dramatising a novel of ideas is the opposite of easy but Ken MacLeod manages it at an apparent stroll. He also conjures up a scarily plausible and cleverly detailed vision of mid-21st-century life - the weather (damp and really cold), computers (with wraparound specs and virtual keyboards), health Nazism (the illicit backyard cafes, where people eat bacon butties and smoke), and the looming brave new world offered by bio-engineering. Excellent.

Well to the Mail's left, a review of this and other books in the weekly Socialist Worker says:

Left wing science fiction author Ken MacLeod brings us a dark vision of a dystopian future in a novel that some have likened to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This tale of totalitarianism revolves around “the fix”—a pill that change your genetic make-up to fit into a world of forced conformity.

It’s a world where New Labour-style “freedom” is forced down your throat, while you live a life surrounded by CCTV and surveillance drones.

Expect MacLeod’s characteristic imagination, wit and venom in the latest novel from the author of The Execution Channel and The Night Sessions.

David Langford, in a round-up of recent SF/F in that fine old Tory daily The Telegraph, writes:

Big Nanny State is watching you. In Ken MacLeod’s near-future Intrusion (Orbit, £18.99), surveillance drones blanket London, all the databases are linked, and routine police torture is followed by trauma counselling. When the pregnant heroine refuses the pill that should correct her unborn child’s genes, she finds such crimethink is no longer tolerated… Thoughtful, plausible and scary.

In a similar round-up for the only English-language socialist daily paper, my comrade and friend Mat Coward writes in the Morning Star:

In Intrusion (Orbit, £18,99) modern SF's leading Cassandra Ken MacLeod turns his fire on nannyism, that moralistic false turn which has contributed so much in the last 20 years to isolating the left from its natural supporters.

In a near-future Britain where women can't buy alcohol without proving they're not pregnant and second-hand books are no longer sold in case they carry traces of fourth-hand tobacco smoke, a Londoner named Hope, expecting her second child, decides that she won't take The Fix, a single pill designed to eradicate genetic "defects" in foetuses.

Under a benevolent, neo-democratic regime, The Fix is, of course, voluntary - until you try to refuse it.

MacLeod certainly delights in raising questions which creatively discomfort his fellow socialists.

But he shuns the cynicism and defeatism which mars most satirical writing - not to mention the defiant unreadability of many of his famous contemporaries.

At (very) different times in my chequered political past, I've sold Socialist Worker and the Morning Star, and I still read both regularly (and buy them when I get the chance) but I'm not entirely sure that I still count as a 'fellow socialist' - as I explained when I was interviewed a couple of years ago by the then up-and-coming and now world-famous radical journalist Laurie Penny for, yes, the Morning Star. I am sure, however, that these two left-wing newspapers have caught something about the book that's been missed by likewise generous reviewers who see it as a 'socialist dystopia'.

I have a number of public events coming up, starting tomorrow!

Friday 13 April, 5.30 pm: Human 2.0, a panel on transhumanism/posthumanism with bioethicist Andy Miah, SF writer Justina Robson and sociologist Professor Steve Fuller at the National Museum of Scotland, as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

What does it means to be human, past, present and future? As we re-engineer the human body, and even the human genome – through technology, drugs and genetic manipulations – how do we define and value our humanity? What are the social, political and cultural challenges inherent in our enhanced future? As part of our Future Human mini festival, sociologist and author Professor Steve Fuller, and sci-fi writers Ken MacLeod and Justina Robson, join ethicist Andy Miah to mull over these compelling questions. Are we facing a re(evolution) of the species?

The following morning, I expect to bounce out of bed, shower, get dressed, pack, grab some toast and rush to the station to travel to Leicester, to arrive mid-afternoon for:

Saturday 14 to Sunday 15 April: I'm one of the Guests of Honour heading up a guest list that most SF/F cons would kill for at the lively and highly commendable annual 'fantastic weekend for readers and writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror', now in its sixth year, Alt.Fiction, Phoenix Digital Arts Centre, Leicester.

And that's not all! Later this month, I have another two events one night apart:

Genetic Fictions: Genes and Genre, Tue 24 Apr 2012, 18.30 - 20.00, at the Conference Centre, British Library, London, Price: £7.50 / £5 concessions.

Join leading Social Scientists from the ESRC Genomics Network, including Dr Joan Haran (Cesagen, Cardiff University) author of the forthcoming book 'Genetic Fictions: Genes, Gender and Genre', along with award-winning playwright Peter Arnott and Science Fiction author Ken MacLeod as they consider how genes and genetics are represented in literature and theatre. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion. The evening will be chaired by Jude England, Head of Social Sciences at the British Library. [Further details here.]

Another day, another sci/lit event:

Wednesday 25th April 9:30am to 5pm in Zochonis TH A (B5), University of Manchester: a day-long workshop 'Putting the Science in Fiction' Interfaculty Symposium on Science and Entertainment.

Many people look suspiciously at science in fictional media and may ask themselves: Why don't the creators of fiction ever talk to real scientists? In fact, those who write novels, craft television scripts, create movies, and produce stage plays do speak with scientists on a regular basis. This workshop explores how science provides challenges and opportunities for the creators of fiction. By bringing together leading entertainment professionals, novelists, arts scholars, and scientists the workshop will forge new relationships between the scientific community and the arts/entertainment community. One goal of the workshop is to begin discussions about creating a "Science and Entertainment" collaboration programme in the UK equivalent to the Science and Entertainment Exchange run by the National Academy of Sciences in the US.

This event is free but spaces are limited - you can see how to book a place by clicking on the link.

I'm delighted and honoured to learn that The Restoration Game is among the six finalists for the Prometheus Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society.

I'm also, I have to admit, surprised. The Prometheus Award is for SF/F novels that 'stress the importance of liberty as the foundation for civilization, peace, prosperity, progress and justice.' While I whole-heartedly agree with that premise, it was far from uppermost in my mind when I wrote the book. But I quite see how it could be read that way, and I'm glad that it has been.

The Restoration Game contains more incidents based on real events than any other of my books. The Ural Caucasian Mineral Company's annual report was based on one from the real-life Ural Caspian Oil Corporation that I found in a dusty brown envelope. This and other incidents are described here.