The Guardian's Blog, page 101
October 10, 2014
Science fiction's utopias are built out of wilful ignorance
Project Hieroglyph challenges SF writers to move away from dystopian stories, but while the optimism is refreshing, real-world questions go unanswered
Science fiction, for most of the 20th century, celebrated the idea that a competent man could build better machines to help make a better world. In recent years that prediction seems to have come true. Stories that once sounded like sci-fi are now a regular part of everyday life. Popular scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku proclaim how science will shape human destiny and our daily lives, while non-fiction bestseller The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee presents a convincing argument that sci-fi ideas like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and robot workers are now very real.
There are few critics left who would argue against the idea that science fiction has played an integral part in the emergence of this new machine age, in the process transforming itself from pulp fiction into one of the most influential cultural forms of the 21st century. But the influence that sci-fi wields has grown darker since its golden age. The once optimistic vision of competent men tinkering with the universe has been replaced with science gone awry killer viruses, robot uprisings and technocratic dystopias revelling in the worst of our possible futures.
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Weird and wonderful bookshops worldwide in pictures
From a Canadian bookshop opened by Alice Munro in the 1960s to one in the island of Santorini started by drunk Oxford students, some of the worlds most exotic booksellers feature in The Bookshop Book, published as part of a UK-wide Books are My Bag campaign to support the bookselling industry in the run-up to Christmas. Its author Jen Campbell introduces some of the finest.
Do you know of other great bookshops worth visiting? Share your knowledge and photos here and we will publish the best
October 8, 2014
Who should win the Nobel prize in literature?
Riddle me this: Harry Potter and literatures most fiendish head-scratchers
A clever Twitter user has solved JK Rowlings anagram and Rowling says she wont be setting another. So pit your wits instead against this selection of the finest literary riddles, from Tolkien to Borges
Call off the anagramists: JK Rowling has announced that one Emily Strong, tweeting as @emybemy2, has solved her Twitter anagram: Cry, foe! Run amok! Fa awry! My wand wont tolerate this nonsense. No, it wasnt Newt Scamander only went to New York to find a Pulkmahjkk, or I brung bick Harry. U gladd. Me go wurcke now. No speak. Nor was it meant to warn us that Rowlings fur work canoe may fray. Using old-fashioned pen and paper, @emybemy2s nerdiness paid off eventually and she came up with the right answer: Newt Scamander only meant to stay in New York for a few hours.
You are hereby christened The One True Hermione of Twitter. I am deeply impressed, that really wasnt easy! tweeted Rowling to her winner, adding to her millions of followers: Thank you, thank you, for being the kind of people who get excited about an anagram #myspiritualhome.
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Books best bakes: cakes in fiction from Dickens to George RR Martin
Baking in fiction has been used to symbolise everything from death to sex to female identity. As Great British Bake Off ends, we look at the tastiest cakes in literature
Miss Havishams bride cake (1860)
She has left the wedding feast untouched since she was jilted, so in Great Expectations Pip finds the cake has become a shapeless, cobwebbed mess, like a black fungus with speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies using it as a home. The way Dickens dwells on the grotesque details of decay implies that it depicts more than just Havisham herself, conceivably encompassing a Victorian Britain paralysed and made rotten by its sexual taboos.
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October 7, 2014
Robert Wilton: How Archduke Franz Ferdinand almost lost me the plot
Historical fiction readers are even more obsessive about detail than sci-fi fans, so writing my latest novel, The Spider of Sarajevo, was like navigating a minefield
So, the writings coming along nicely. My intrepid English adventuress Flora Hathaway has reached the hunting lodge in eastern Germany, purloined the document case of the aide-de-camp of the Chief of the German General Staff, and secreted herself in her bedroom to skim through the vital papers. This is happening at least a week before the end of May 1914, to give time for the theft to be discovered, for Hathaway to be attacked during a hunt the next day, for her British military contact to retrieve the secrets, travel on to Constantinople, and make it back to Vienna in time for a mini-climax when all of the British agents are lured into a trap, this all still leaving us in good time to get to Sarajevo for 28 June 1914 and the sparking of the first world war. Much the most interesting of the secrets has come out of the Kaisers meeting with the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, a meeting which we know from the historical record occurred in the Archdukes residence at Konopischt on... [checks notes] 26 May.
Which is too bloody late. The narrative cant work as planned: the necessary chain of events is now impossible. My brilliantly constructed plot has just thundered into a damn great historical fact, plonked there inert and immobile, and has staggered back rubbing its head.
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October 6, 2014
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
Welcome to this weeks blog. Heres a roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Chris James shared a happy find:
Through a remarkable quirk of serendipity, I was led this week to a gem of a book called A Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble (really, I thought, anyone with a name like Arthur Grimble must have an interesting story to tell!) It starts in 1914 as Grimble, working for the Colonial Office, takes up his first station as a cadet in the Gilbert Islands, a chain of atolls in the middle of the Pacific. Im about halfway through, and this fellow has had me laughing till I cried with a great combination of painful self-effacement and British dry wit.
A quick look at Wikipedia points out that chapters had been excised or moved around as part of the translation and for a book written to create a sense of unease, I started to feel a little conned; anyone can mess around with a books layout and thus make it make less sense. But then I found that I was still going over it in my mind days later and regardless of translation changes, I really enjoyed it and found it quite fascinating, which is always the sign of a good read.
Im as enthusiastic about this book as this book is restrained. Its a quietly wily novel with an actively passive main character. Helle Helle would not approve of all those adverbs and adjectives. Her prose is as spare as it is strong. Like Dorte, the Copenhagen student moving inertly from youth to adulthood, its sneakily surprising. Small sentences trip you up here and there, making you rethink events (insofar as there are events) that have gone before. Dortes Aunt Dorte also got me rethinking; Im still not sure if shes a meta-character.
Im neither explaining nor conveying this book well, if at all. Its gone back to the library, so I cant try to substantiate my recommendation by quotation. Id like to link to a proper review but it doesnt seem to have been reviewed in the UK press. A pity. Its an interesting, dry, focused novel that deserves to be focused upon.
In lazy, subjective algorithmic terms: youll probably like This Should Be Written in the Present Tense if you like Amélie Nothomb, Marie Darrieussecq, Kjersti Skomsvold, Gerbrand Bakker, Per Petterson, Diego Marani. (All European, Ive just noticed. Not, I suspect, a coincidence.)
Inspired to read again by recent discussions on how it was first published.
Sent via GuardianWitness
By drfarfetch
3 October 2014, 21:48
Boy, Jane likes to leave it late doesnt she! Persuasion was my second Jane Austen and again I thoroughly enjoyed it. The way she explores the male/female relationship and family life is spot on. I loved the strong female character and I think maybe this is some of the appeal to me of Jane Austen.
This book had less plot than Northanger Abbey and I probably liked it slightly less for this. It was a bit more subtle. I know I am doing her a great disservice, but whilst reading it I did sometimes remind myself of my Grandmother reading her Mills and Boon. But obviously written much more beautifully.
Following on from the whole debate over whether the character of Crispin Hershey in The Bone Clocks is actually based on Martin Amis or not*, it got me thinking about what an obviously made-up name it is. Then I thought about some other fictional characters who are authors (Wilfrid Barclay in William Goldings The Paper Men, Thaddeus Beaumont in Stephen Kings The Dark Half which Ive just started reading, and even the very uninspired Bill Grey in Don DeLillos Mao II) and how these are also quite unconvincing.
Can anybody think of any fictional writers with convincing names, or failing that any more rubbish-sounding ones like those above? Nobody seemed interested on the Mitchell-Amis article comments so thought Id try my luck here instead...
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Not the Booker prize: put your mouse where your mouth is vote!
The six-strong shortlist has been chosen and dissected now we need to pick a winner. Have your say in the comments below to help decide the public vote, and meet the judging panel of the worlds most democratic/contentious literary award
Full coverage of the Not the Booker prize
Its voting time on the Not the Booker prize. Or almost. First, a quick recap of events so far and a refresher on the rules. Following an enjoyable and only slightly confusing round of voting, we ended up with six novels on our shortlist. These were, in alphabetical order:
1) Louis Armand Cairo
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Poem of the week: The Natural and Social Science by Michael Donaghy
This elegant poem by the late Irish-American writer showcases his talent for free-range anecdote, smart satire and humour
Michael Donaghys Collected Poems, reissued by Picador, reminds us that the writer was more than one kind of poet. His poetry is often noted for its formal craftsmanship, but Donaghy could also be considered a verse-raconteur, a master of the apparently casual, free-range anecdote. This weeks poem, The Natural and Social Sciences, has a conversational brevity and slant reminiscent of early Paul Muldoon. Its an elegant example of Donaghys work in the oral tradition that is also painfully funny.
In separate but thematically connected anecdotes, the speaker visits three Irish locations. Straidkilly, Tubbercurry and Gweedore are in counties Antrim, Sligo and Donegal, respectively real places, with real names. To the outsider, the place names might sound parodic or cod Irish like Dylan Thomass Llareggub, the fictional Welsh fishing village of Under Milk Wood. One suspects that Donaghy, a tactful satirist, was challenging his readers ability to distinguish reality from stereotype.
Continue reading...
Poem of the week: The Natural and Social Sciences by Michael Donaghy
This elegant poem by the late Irish-American writer showcases his talent for free-range anecdote, smart satire and humour
Michael Donaghys Collected Poems, reissued by Picador, reminds us that the writer was more than one kind of poet. His poetry is often noted for its formal craftsmanship, but Donaghy could also be considered a verse-raconteur, a master of the apparently casual, free-range anecdote. This weeks poem, The Natural and Social Sciences, has a conversational brevity and slant reminiscent of early Paul Muldoon. Its an elegant example of Donaghys work in the oral tradition that is also painfully funny.
In separate but thematically connected anecdotes, the speaker visits three Irish locations. Straidkilly, Tubbercurry and Gweedore are in counties Antrim, Sligo and Donegal, respectively real places, with real names. To the outsider, the place names might sound parodic or cod Irish like Dylan Thomass Llareggub, the fictional Welsh fishing village of Under Milk Wood. One suspects that Donaghy, a tactful satirist, was challenging his readers ability to distinguish reality from stereotype.
Continue reading...
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