Robert Bagnall's Blog, page 13
July 17, 2020
Reboot your pony
Delighted to say that The Overcast, who podcast 'The Trouble with Vacations' back in 2017, have picked up 'The Button at the Base of his Spine'. Date of podcast tbc, but when it comes out, you can read along here or, indeed, here...
Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.
Enjoy
Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.
Enjoy
July 2, 2020
The thin end of the Orwellian wedge
We live in the information age. If that's news to anyone reading this, then they may also want to make a note that there's a bug going around at the moment. It's kind of significant.
We are so overwhelmed by information, that sometimes we don't notice the weird shaped holes in the data, the stuff that should be there but isn't. And isn't for reasons that aren't immediately apparent. It's the thin end of the Orwellian wedge.
I stumbled over (into?) just such a hole a couple of weeks ago, when I spent an hour or so on Netflix surfing the lists. Tiring of the echo chamber nature of Netflix's recommendation algorithms that don't understand a desire to sample something that's the polar opposite of what your eyes have been consuming recently, I went looking for a comprehensive A to Z list of what's on offer.
And, do you know what? It doesn't exist.
I expected it to be long and slightly tedious to spot diamonds in the rough. I expected it to be little more than title and year of release, whether it's a film, number of episodes if it's not. Maybe a hint at genre, but possibly not as Netflix's genres get as granular as 'Spanish language films with left-handed protagonist who smokes' (I just made that up, but who knows?).
But I expected it to exist.
So, I did what any right-minded person would do: I went to customer services to have an argument. Not a five-minute argument, the full half-hour.
Netflix Sofia: Hey! This is Sofia:, thank you for contacting Netflix. Do you already have an account with us?You: NoNetflix Sofia: I am afraid that then it is not possible to see all the content we offer, if you want you can ask me for specific titles and I can check here if we have them available in UKNetflix Sofia: Or, if you have a friend or a family member that has an account with us you can always check there all the available titlesYou: My wife has an account, so I know how Netflix recommends content and how I can search for it. What I want is an A to Z list.Netflix Sofia: Okay, if she has an account then you can look for all the content. We do not have lists like that I am sorry. The only way to look for the content we have is through the accountYou: Okay, but is there a complete A to Z list there? Could you confirm how to get to it because all I can find is supposedly helpful categorised lists, without even seeing a complete list of categories. Do you have a single comprehensive list anywhere? ThanksNetflix Sofia: No, we do not have a complete list with all the titles we offer from A to Z, I really see your point but we do not have a list with all the movies and shows we offer so the only way to look for titles is typing them or going through the genre sectionYou: Could you explain the thinking behind that? I’ve never been to a restaurant that’s asked me to guess what they might have on the menu. Why not just show me a list of everything?Netflix Sofia: I am a customer service agent so I do not know what is the thought behind it, But I believe that for a lot of people it is handy to get the suggestions of the titles they stream on the screen, so the genre that they do not enjoy or the type of titles that they do not like won't appear for them as a suggestion. Netflix Sofia: I am going to write a feedback for you so the appropriate team can take into consideration your opinionYou: I appreciate that you’re not able to explain policy. Could you give me an email of a senior person who may be able to explain this baffling approach?You: I’m not sure what ‘writing a feedback’ means, but it sounds a lot like ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’. What I would like is an email I can contact to ask why customers are refused sight of the whole menu. Thanks.Netflix Sofia: I am sorry but we do not have an email where to contact or speak with a manager, what we offer is our Help center. All that I can do for you is send your feedback to the appropriate teamNetflix Sofia: I understand what you mean but these are the tools we have, a manager won't be capable to offer you a A-Z list either because we do not have thoseYou: I appreciate that. I’d like a CEO or similar email so that he or she can explain why Netflix refuses to show customers the whole menu.Netflix Sofia: I do know how the recommendation system works, I am going to send it to you so you can check it as well with me Click HereNetflix Sofia: We do not have that information I am sorry, I encourage you to check our Help CenterYou: Could you give me a CEO or similar email. ThanksYou: What’s the most senior email address you can give me so that I can take a policy question to the right place and let you get on with helping customers? ThanksNetflix Sofia: I do not have the email of the CEO, the tools we have here to handle recommendations and feedback is writing a reportNetflix Sofia: I do not possess that information, I only have emails if I have to address privacy issues with accounts, that is the only email I haveNetflix Sofia: If I had them I would have given them to you, believe meYou: Do you have a complaints email? I’ll go through thatNetflix Sofia: No we do not have them, but I can write a report about your issue, it is the only way it can arrive to the appropriate team so they can be aware of the customer needsYou: So how do I make a complaint in writing? Only through you? If I wanted to complain about you (which I don’t) are you saying I would have to complain through you? They seem to have given you a crazy system to work within.Netflix Sofia: Yes, it would be through me as well, so you make the writing and I copy it here in a form and I have to send it to the appropriate team so they can be aware of the customer concernsNetflix Sofia: yes I do believe it will be easier to offer more options but unfortunately this is the only one we have at the momentYou: Okay. I can see Netflix have provided you with a corporate stonewall here. Stay safe and thanks for the help the system allowed you to give me.Netflix Sofia: You too! thank you for your time and patience, have a great day ahead
Is it me, or is that a bit weird? Just as I put it to Sofia, what restaurant won't tell you what it offers, but asks you to make suggestions before offering, 'we can do that, but with courgette instead'? There's a reason for this, and it's not customer convenience. Various ideas began to coalesce in my minds, mainly around Netflix's desire to increase revenue and decrease outgoings, whilst maintaining a perfectly plausible front of giving the customer whatever they desire.
Rather than write out my rather cynical thinking here, here's the email I sent to Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings:
Mr Hastings,I wonder if you would be able to help me or, at the very least, direct my email to somebody better able to answer my query.I recently had a pleasant online chat with one of your customer services representatives called Sofia. I wanted to know how to access a complete list of Netflix films and shows. Whilst personalised recommendations are all well and good, sometimes you just want to see a list of everything that’s available. These were the facts that I managed to establish:· Netflix does not publish a complete A to Z list of content· Sofia did not know why Netflix is unable or unwilling to do so· She was not able to provide me with any email address for me to find out why this is Netflix policy· She was unable to provide me with any email to make a complaint to (not that I wanted to; I just wanted to find out how to put something in writing with more gravity than a simple live chat, and I thought you’d have a complaints handling procedure outside live chat as a bare minimum)· If I wanted to complain about Sofia (which I didn’t and don’t, I hasten to add), I would have to make it through live chat… with Sofia.(I’d also like to put on record that the option for me to be emailed a transcript of the conversation mysteriously disappeared when I selected ‘no’ to the question of whether the live chat had answered my question. As a customer, I’d like you to fix this bug, although I appreciate you may not be so keen.)*I find the refusal (surely not inability?) to publish a complete list of content perplexing. I’ve never been to a restaurant where I’ve only been allowed to see selections of the menu dependent on what I like or have eaten before. The reasons I’ve thought of are:· You think it’s too much information for us to cope with (I don’t think you’re than patronising)· You think we won’t make it very far into the list and will all be streaming things from the start of the alphabet (surely no technical issues here? plus, I’m not asking you to replace your useful personalised lists, which most people will stick with)· There are things on Netflix you don’t want us to find.The sceptic in me has settled on the last of these; I assume for monetary reasons, attracting us with the sheer weight of content, but steering us towards Netflix-produced content and away from independently produced material which, I assume, you may typically pay for on a per-view basis. However, I would be fascinated to find out the real reason (happy for you to throw in the official reason, too) as to why I am unable to access a complete A to Z list of Netflix content. (Or did Sofia get it wrong and it is there?).I look forward to your reply,Regards,Robert Bagnall
(* - in case you're wondering, being naturally paranoid, I took screenshots before the Netflix machine blanked the option of sending me a nice neat transcript)
If and when Reed (are there really people called 'Reed'? who knew!) gets back to me, I'll let you know. I suspect that may never happen...
###
Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.
Enjoy
We are so overwhelmed by information, that sometimes we don't notice the weird shaped holes in the data, the stuff that should be there but isn't. And isn't for reasons that aren't immediately apparent. It's the thin end of the Orwellian wedge.
I stumbled over (into?) just such a hole a couple of weeks ago, when I spent an hour or so on Netflix surfing the lists. Tiring of the echo chamber nature of Netflix's recommendation algorithms that don't understand a desire to sample something that's the polar opposite of what your eyes have been consuming recently, I went looking for a comprehensive A to Z list of what's on offer.
And, do you know what? It doesn't exist.
I expected it to be long and slightly tedious to spot diamonds in the rough. I expected it to be little more than title and year of release, whether it's a film, number of episodes if it's not. Maybe a hint at genre, but possibly not as Netflix's genres get as granular as 'Spanish language films with left-handed protagonist who smokes' (I just made that up, but who knows?).
But I expected it to exist.
So, I did what any right-minded person would do: I went to customer services to have an argument. Not a five-minute argument, the full half-hour.
Netflix Sofia: Hey! This is Sofia:, thank you for contacting Netflix. Do you already have an account with us?You: NoNetflix Sofia: I am afraid that then it is not possible to see all the content we offer, if you want you can ask me for specific titles and I can check here if we have them available in UKNetflix Sofia: Or, if you have a friend or a family member that has an account with us you can always check there all the available titlesYou: My wife has an account, so I know how Netflix recommends content and how I can search for it. What I want is an A to Z list.Netflix Sofia: Okay, if she has an account then you can look for all the content. We do not have lists like that I am sorry. The only way to look for the content we have is through the accountYou: Okay, but is there a complete A to Z list there? Could you confirm how to get to it because all I can find is supposedly helpful categorised lists, without even seeing a complete list of categories. Do you have a single comprehensive list anywhere? ThanksNetflix Sofia: No, we do not have a complete list with all the titles we offer from A to Z, I really see your point but we do not have a list with all the movies and shows we offer so the only way to look for titles is typing them or going through the genre sectionYou: Could you explain the thinking behind that? I’ve never been to a restaurant that’s asked me to guess what they might have on the menu. Why not just show me a list of everything?Netflix Sofia: I am a customer service agent so I do not know what is the thought behind it, But I believe that for a lot of people it is handy to get the suggestions of the titles they stream on the screen, so the genre that they do not enjoy or the type of titles that they do not like won't appear for them as a suggestion. Netflix Sofia: I am going to write a feedback for you so the appropriate team can take into consideration your opinionYou: I appreciate that you’re not able to explain policy. Could you give me an email of a senior person who may be able to explain this baffling approach?You: I’m not sure what ‘writing a feedback’ means, but it sounds a lot like ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’. What I would like is an email I can contact to ask why customers are refused sight of the whole menu. Thanks.Netflix Sofia: I am sorry but we do not have an email where to contact or speak with a manager, what we offer is our Help center. All that I can do for you is send your feedback to the appropriate teamNetflix Sofia: I understand what you mean but these are the tools we have, a manager won't be capable to offer you a A-Z list either because we do not have thoseYou: I appreciate that. I’d like a CEO or similar email so that he or she can explain why Netflix refuses to show customers the whole menu.Netflix Sofia: I do know how the recommendation system works, I am going to send it to you so you can check it as well with me Click HereNetflix Sofia: We do not have that information I am sorry, I encourage you to check our Help CenterYou: Could you give me a CEO or similar email. ThanksYou: What’s the most senior email address you can give me so that I can take a policy question to the right place and let you get on with helping customers? ThanksNetflix Sofia: I do not have the email of the CEO, the tools we have here to handle recommendations and feedback is writing a reportNetflix Sofia: I do not possess that information, I only have emails if I have to address privacy issues with accounts, that is the only email I haveNetflix Sofia: If I had them I would have given them to you, believe meYou: Do you have a complaints email? I’ll go through thatNetflix Sofia: No we do not have them, but I can write a report about your issue, it is the only way it can arrive to the appropriate team so they can be aware of the customer needsYou: So how do I make a complaint in writing? Only through you? If I wanted to complain about you (which I don’t) are you saying I would have to complain through you? They seem to have given you a crazy system to work within.Netflix Sofia: Yes, it would be through me as well, so you make the writing and I copy it here in a form and I have to send it to the appropriate team so they can be aware of the customer concernsNetflix Sofia: yes I do believe it will be easier to offer more options but unfortunately this is the only one we have at the momentYou: Okay. I can see Netflix have provided you with a corporate stonewall here. Stay safe and thanks for the help the system allowed you to give me.Netflix Sofia: You too! thank you for your time and patience, have a great day ahead
Is it me, or is that a bit weird? Just as I put it to Sofia, what restaurant won't tell you what it offers, but asks you to make suggestions before offering, 'we can do that, but with courgette instead'? There's a reason for this, and it's not customer convenience. Various ideas began to coalesce in my minds, mainly around Netflix's desire to increase revenue and decrease outgoings, whilst maintaining a perfectly plausible front of giving the customer whatever they desire.
Rather than write out my rather cynical thinking here, here's the email I sent to Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings:
Mr Hastings,I wonder if you would be able to help me or, at the very least, direct my email to somebody better able to answer my query.I recently had a pleasant online chat with one of your customer services representatives called Sofia. I wanted to know how to access a complete list of Netflix films and shows. Whilst personalised recommendations are all well and good, sometimes you just want to see a list of everything that’s available. These were the facts that I managed to establish:· Netflix does not publish a complete A to Z list of content· Sofia did not know why Netflix is unable or unwilling to do so· She was not able to provide me with any email address for me to find out why this is Netflix policy· She was unable to provide me with any email to make a complaint to (not that I wanted to; I just wanted to find out how to put something in writing with more gravity than a simple live chat, and I thought you’d have a complaints handling procedure outside live chat as a bare minimum)· If I wanted to complain about Sofia (which I didn’t and don’t, I hasten to add), I would have to make it through live chat… with Sofia.(I’d also like to put on record that the option for me to be emailed a transcript of the conversation mysteriously disappeared when I selected ‘no’ to the question of whether the live chat had answered my question. As a customer, I’d like you to fix this bug, although I appreciate you may not be so keen.)*I find the refusal (surely not inability?) to publish a complete list of content perplexing. I’ve never been to a restaurant where I’ve only been allowed to see selections of the menu dependent on what I like or have eaten before. The reasons I’ve thought of are:· You think it’s too much information for us to cope with (I don’t think you’re than patronising)· You think we won’t make it very far into the list and will all be streaming things from the start of the alphabet (surely no technical issues here? plus, I’m not asking you to replace your useful personalised lists, which most people will stick with)· There are things on Netflix you don’t want us to find.The sceptic in me has settled on the last of these; I assume for monetary reasons, attracting us with the sheer weight of content, but steering us towards Netflix-produced content and away from independently produced material which, I assume, you may typically pay for on a per-view basis. However, I would be fascinated to find out the real reason (happy for you to throw in the official reason, too) as to why I am unable to access a complete A to Z list of Netflix content. (Or did Sofia get it wrong and it is there?).I look forward to your reply,Regards,Robert Bagnall
(* - in case you're wondering, being naturally paranoid, I took screenshots before the Netflix machine blanked the option of sending me a nice neat transcript)
If and when Reed (are there really people called 'Reed'? who knew!) gets back to me, I'll let you know. I suspect that may never happen...
###
Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.
Enjoy
June 13, 2020
Working through things - like vermin through a woodchipper
Recent times have seen a lot of us working through things. The future of humanity, what really matters to us individually, how we can make the world a better place. Me, I’ve been working my way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, chronologically in story-terms, rather than release date.
The MCU falls, for me, at the overly silly, Mary Sue-heavy end of science fiction, but I’m more than happy to concede that the movies are great fun with some standout ideas and moments. Hell, I'd probably put any of them on before Tarkovsky's Solaris.
With the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy. Which I really can't stand, with a passion.
I watched volume 1 circa 2017, and felt an intense antipathy from the off. I could have watched volume 2 on a plane shortly after, but elected for Get Out and Logan, so have only just caught up with it. I think I made a couple of wise decisions, both at the time and in retrospect.
This is a personal view; I’m well aware of there being a lot of love for these movies, so the issue is me, not you. Please don't write that I'm wrong. I'm not wrong - but I'm not right, either. It isn't a right or wrong thing. It just is.
But, I thought it would be useful for my own therapy to try to work through (see what I did there?) my issues with these films, see if I can find an objective basis for the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
That I had my tongue over both terminals of a nine volt battery, cinematically-speaking, was apparent in the first five minutes of volume 1. So you'd think I shouldn't need to look much further than that. It's the first paragraph and a bit on IMDB's synopsis:
The MCU falls, for me, at the overly silly, Mary Sue-heavy end of science fiction, but I’m more than happy to concede that the movies are great fun with some standout ideas and moments. Hell, I'd probably put any of them on before Tarkovsky's Solaris.
With the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy. Which I really can't stand, with a passion.
I watched volume 1 circa 2017, and felt an intense antipathy from the off. I could have watched volume 2 on a plane shortly after, but elected for Get Out and Logan, so have only just caught up with it. I think I made a couple of wise decisions, both at the time and in retrospect.
This is a personal view; I’m well aware of there being a lot of love for these movies, so the issue is me, not you. Please don't write that I'm wrong. I'm not wrong - but I'm not right, either. It isn't a right or wrong thing. It just is.
But, I thought it would be useful for my own therapy to try to work through (see what I did there?) my issues with these films, see if I can find an objective basis for the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
That I had my tongue over both terminals of a nine volt battery, cinematically-speaking, was apparent in the first five minutes of volume 1. So you'd think I shouldn't need to look much further than that. It's the first paragraph and a bit on IMDB's synopsis:
On planet Earth in 1988, young Peter Quill (Twenty-six years later on the planet Morag, an adult Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-lord (Where to start? I have no issue with opening on a bit of character-informing backstory. But the kid needs a slap. Self-absorbed little scroat, more interested in his Walkman than anything going on around him. First impressions count - disproportionately so - and I've taken an instant dislike to him.
Yes, you could say that he's too cut up to face the reality of his mother dying, but the cognitive bias is too strong. Oliver refusing to support his girlfriend in similar circumstances in Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' is, arguably, even less forgivable, but it's not the first thing you find out about him, so you judge him with some context. Here, self-absorption is the context, and it's all I have to go on. Sorry.
Twenty-six years later he still has the Walkman and the tape (remember when the quality of blank tape you bought mattered, I mean, really mattered, whether it was the red label Maxell or the black and gold one? That’s up there with white dog shit as a source of nostalgia) - and it still works. Perfectly. Really? It hasn't stretched or broken? It looks mint, although we surmise that it's been his trusty companion through thick and thin.
I'm not sure there's a technical term for it (there must be - probably something German) but you can shovel the most implausible hokum into the faces of an audience, but give them something real world that can't be so, and you've lost them in a heartbeat. Show an alien invasion force travelling faster than light to get here - that's okay. Show them taking the Northern Line to get to Heathrow and you'll have them throwing things at the screen.
And then there's the music and the dancing. The music just screams naff. Music for people who don't like music. Putting the hoover around in the 1970s music. The bits of Radio 2 that weren't Barbara Dickson or Leo Sayer in the 1970s music. And the dancing... Words fail me. It's like the film just wants to hammer home that Peter Quill is an arrested adolescent. And I do not feel like spending some hours in the company of an arrested adolescent, not to mention vermin, a talking tree and a big feller... actually, I'll leave the big feller out of it. He looks like he'll not take well to my views. Oh, and the various meanings of "I'm Groot" is actually quite funny...
Maybe, if I was really rooting for Star-lord (really? with a straight face? no, I'm laughing at you, not with you), then I wouldn't care that I singularly don't care about the story. You've found an orb. So what? Why's it so important to you? What is it? Why do you have to risk your life to get it? A macguffin only works if you care about it because characters you care about care about it. I don't care about the orb (hence don't really care when it turns out to be much more than your common-or-garden, orb-on-the-Clapham-omnibus orb), and you've singularly failed to make me care about Star-lord. Hence I find myself watching two hours of explosions and action with absolutely no skin in the game whatsoever. It's just stuff happening. I think I had more sympathy with the people who wanted to kill him: I could see their point.
Undeserved misfortune is a classic way to ground a story. Had Star-lord had the orb planted on him, forced him into doing something with it, I'd sympathise. If there had been an act 1 explaining why he had to get it (not realising what 'it' actually is), I might be rooting for him. Either way is a route out of this mess. But if a guy tries to climb over the fence to dance with the tigers in the zoo, you'll probably be laughing as they tear his face off. That's not too much of a stretch, analogy-wise. Honest.
Maybe I could have warmed to these two films if Star-lord (can I stop calling him that now? it's just silly) had grown up. But I think there's one line that perfectly encapsulates his lack of character growth and that arrested adolescent is the apogee of his development across these two films: "You shouldn't have killed me Mom and squished my Walkman." Pathos or pathetic? The jury's not out; they came straight back and then went home.
###
Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.
Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.
Enjoy
June 5, 2020
Three out of four ain't bad
It's only in it's fourth incarnation, but my name's in three of 'em.
Out next month, but available to pre-order now.
Out next month, but available to pre-order now.
June 1, 2020
May 16, 2020
Homeland
Contains spoilers
I thought I'd scatter a few thoughts about the wrapping up of Homeland.
No, it's not science fiction. However, the uses and abuses of technology has played a role in the storylines, not least in season 8, and I wanted to say a few things on that particular issue that I haven't seen said on the interweb (although I haven't looked that hard). Plus, I have some issues with story, and story is as central to science fiction as any other genre. And I partly want to blog this because I've seen nothing but (qualified) praise for season 8 and, well... I'm a bit more emperor's new clothes about the whole thing.
For those of you who neither know nor care, but are still reading (why? why??) a helicopter, with the presidents of both America and Afghanistan on board, crashes in Taliban bandit country. All are killed. The hawkish US vice-president, now sworn in as president, accepts the assumption that it has been shot down and escalates military tensions, which his predecessor was working to wind down. However, the aircraft's black box flight recorder - which becomes the macguffin - could prove it an accident if it hadn't fallen into the hands of the Russians who won't play nicely. America is at the point of going to war on the basis of false facts. All very 'weapons of mass destruction'.
For me, season 8 ties its own shoelaces together and face-plants at the point Carrie gets her hands on the flight recorder. And not just for all the reasons already out there on the web - she could have just emailed it! how did she have the right cable?! how come broadband in rural Pakistan is better than in the UK!!! - but for the simple reason that, once she’s played it through her laptop, wouldn’t there be some saved file deep in a cache on her hard drive? How many files have I thought I've lost only for there to be some digital shadow left behind?
Maybe Yevgeny took Carrie's laptop? Not sure, can't remember. But I sure as hell remember that the next scene is Carrie walking through the Pakistani town with her bag. Afterwards, she doesn't refer to her laptop once. Not to say she’s lost it, not to ask if the audio file is accessible, not to check if Yevgeny accessed it. If a Russian spy had an American spy's laptop - particularly one that's just made a $1m online payment - they sure as hell wouldn't give it back. But Carrie doesn't bleat about, or report it. Why? Because she's a fictional character written by writers who briefly forgot what that character would do there and then, because it didn't help the story (cf her love of jazz). She either still has it and has questions to ask, or has lost it and lets people know.
Me, if I was script-doctoring this, would drop in a line, a question and answer, to explain why there's no automatically saved back-up, why the laptop is of no interest to the Russians. Maybe she suggests it herself and is knocked back. Or, let her, say, pick it up in the shop where she acquires the flight recorder (okay, doesn't solve the online payment bit, but you only get so much analysis for free).
This is where I feel a special privilege being a science fiction writer. We get to make all of this shit up. Yes, internal consistency is a major consideration, but we can forget about external consistency, i.e. making events fit with the logic and constraints of the real world. (And my sympathies to writers of historical fiction, who have to achieve both internal consistency, and external consistency with a world that's no longer there.) So, if I don't want my data device to save its doings, I just say so; there’s nobody to say, ah, but it would, or even wouldn’t it normally...
I may, of course, be wrong about the cached back-up, in which case I play my next card. And on this card is drawn a picture of a small child banging a jigsaw piece in with a balled fist, shouting it fits! it fits!!
You see, Homeland tries to have its macguffin-flavoured cake and eat it. Typically, the characters would be chasing the flight recorder not knowing what it proves (and they do, initially). But, unusually, all of us - characters and audience - are let in on the secret. And, at that point, they play a three card monte on us. It's done with panache by perpetrators of the highest class, so don't feel a mug for being conned.
Firstly, we have the ridiculous situation where Carrie gets to listen to the recording but not retain the device. To be honest, I can live with this - if Homeland were realistic, it would be hours of people searching emails for key words, listening to taped phone calls, steaming open envelopes. Drama needs, er, moments of drama. But then the drama plays out as a search for confirmation of what they already know, that's never as dramatic as searching for something that still has to reveal itself. It's like a horror movie that shows the monster up front.
But, more importantly, remember what we've learnt about stakes, class? They know what the Russians know, they know what could be revealled. In the world of intelligence, isn't that all ever so slightly lame? I'm really unconvinced the stakes here were what everybody said they were. Would the CIA’s best intelligence asset get burnt for confirmation of what they already know? Only if finding out what was on that recording would save the world would you sacrifice Anna Pomerantseva.
Saul believes Carrie, and only works on the (bizarre) basis that her testimony wouldn’t be believed by others. Really? The way it should have played from there is for Carrie not to be believed or trusted by anybody, Saul included, and to have to go over to the dark side as the very, very last resort. Or for the president to be told, but to say I'm going to nuke Pakistan unless I have the actual thing on my desk, and then everybody has to work against presidential orders.
From this point on I stopped buying how the characters acted and reacted. The story construction seemed designed to get to a particular point: Carrie being asked to kill Saul. It fits! It fits!! I can imagine the writers’ room now. Wouldn’t it be good if... But how do we get there? Well, you can’t get there from here, at least not with your dignity intact.
Contrived, but a fun ride. There are worse things to have on your headstone.
The show ends with us meant to believe that Carrie is Saul’s new asset in Moscow. Like hell. More chance of her sending misinformation. But I want to end these thoughts on an up note. This is, actually, a stroke of genius by the makers, the entertainment version of Stockholm Syndrome. We’ve been held captive by Claire Danes’ performance for so long that we’ve forgotten how nasty she really is. We believe her - believe in her - because it’s human to do so.
A question I’m sometimes asked as a writer is how to make a compelling protagonist. I always say give them agency - give them an objective, even if it’s evil, and we can’t help but be fascinated whether they get there. But Homeland has made me think there’s something else in the mix: proximity. Stay with a character for 96 episodes and you can’t help but root for her. Even if she reveals herself in the final analysis to be a repellent human being, you still want to, have to, believe.
I thought I'd scatter a few thoughts about the wrapping up of Homeland.
No, it's not science fiction. However, the uses and abuses of technology has played a role in the storylines, not least in season 8, and I wanted to say a few things on that particular issue that I haven't seen said on the interweb (although I haven't looked that hard). Plus, I have some issues with story, and story is as central to science fiction as any other genre. And I partly want to blog this because I've seen nothing but (qualified) praise for season 8 and, well... I'm a bit more emperor's new clothes about the whole thing.
For those of you who neither know nor care, but are still reading (why? why??) a helicopter, with the presidents of both America and Afghanistan on board, crashes in Taliban bandit country. All are killed. The hawkish US vice-president, now sworn in as president, accepts the assumption that it has been shot down and escalates military tensions, which his predecessor was working to wind down. However, the aircraft's black box flight recorder - which becomes the macguffin - could prove it an accident if it hadn't fallen into the hands of the Russians who won't play nicely. America is at the point of going to war on the basis of false facts. All very 'weapons of mass destruction'.
For me, season 8 ties its own shoelaces together and face-plants at the point Carrie gets her hands on the flight recorder. And not just for all the reasons already out there on the web - she could have just emailed it! how did she have the right cable?! how come broadband in rural Pakistan is better than in the UK!!! - but for the simple reason that, once she’s played it through her laptop, wouldn’t there be some saved file deep in a cache on her hard drive? How many files have I thought I've lost only for there to be some digital shadow left behind?
Maybe Yevgeny took Carrie's laptop? Not sure, can't remember. But I sure as hell remember that the next scene is Carrie walking through the Pakistani town with her bag. Afterwards, she doesn't refer to her laptop once. Not to say she’s lost it, not to ask if the audio file is accessible, not to check if Yevgeny accessed it. If a Russian spy had an American spy's laptop - particularly one that's just made a $1m online payment - they sure as hell wouldn't give it back. But Carrie doesn't bleat about, or report it. Why? Because she's a fictional character written by writers who briefly forgot what that character would do there and then, because it didn't help the story (cf her love of jazz). She either still has it and has questions to ask, or has lost it and lets people know.
Me, if I was script-doctoring this, would drop in a line, a question and answer, to explain why there's no automatically saved back-up, why the laptop is of no interest to the Russians. Maybe she suggests it herself and is knocked back. Or, let her, say, pick it up in the shop where she acquires the flight recorder (okay, doesn't solve the online payment bit, but you only get so much analysis for free).
This is where I feel a special privilege being a science fiction writer. We get to make all of this shit up. Yes, internal consistency is a major consideration, but we can forget about external consistency, i.e. making events fit with the logic and constraints of the real world. (And my sympathies to writers of historical fiction, who have to achieve both internal consistency, and external consistency with a world that's no longer there.) So, if I don't want my data device to save its doings, I just say so; there’s nobody to say, ah, but it would, or even wouldn’t it normally...
I may, of course, be wrong about the cached back-up, in which case I play my next card. And on this card is drawn a picture of a small child banging a jigsaw piece in with a balled fist, shouting it fits! it fits!!
You see, Homeland tries to have its macguffin-flavoured cake and eat it. Typically, the characters would be chasing the flight recorder not knowing what it proves (and they do, initially). But, unusually, all of us - characters and audience - are let in on the secret. And, at that point, they play a three card monte on us. It's done with panache by perpetrators of the highest class, so don't feel a mug for being conned.
Firstly, we have the ridiculous situation where Carrie gets to listen to the recording but not retain the device. To be honest, I can live with this - if Homeland were realistic, it would be hours of people searching emails for key words, listening to taped phone calls, steaming open envelopes. Drama needs, er, moments of drama. But then the drama plays out as a search for confirmation of what they already know, that's never as dramatic as searching for something that still has to reveal itself. It's like a horror movie that shows the monster up front.
But, more importantly, remember what we've learnt about stakes, class? They know what the Russians know, they know what could be revealled. In the world of intelligence, isn't that all ever so slightly lame? I'm really unconvinced the stakes here were what everybody said they were. Would the CIA’s best intelligence asset get burnt for confirmation of what they already know? Only if finding out what was on that recording would save the world would you sacrifice Anna Pomerantseva.
Saul believes Carrie, and only works on the (bizarre) basis that her testimony wouldn’t be believed by others. Really? The way it should have played from there is for Carrie not to be believed or trusted by anybody, Saul included, and to have to go over to the dark side as the very, very last resort. Or for the president to be told, but to say I'm going to nuke Pakistan unless I have the actual thing on my desk, and then everybody has to work against presidential orders.
From this point on I stopped buying how the characters acted and reacted. The story construction seemed designed to get to a particular point: Carrie being asked to kill Saul. It fits! It fits!! I can imagine the writers’ room now. Wouldn’t it be good if... But how do we get there? Well, you can’t get there from here, at least not with your dignity intact.
Contrived, but a fun ride. There are worse things to have on your headstone.
The show ends with us meant to believe that Carrie is Saul’s new asset in Moscow. Like hell. More chance of her sending misinformation. But I want to end these thoughts on an up note. This is, actually, a stroke of genius by the makers, the entertainment version of Stockholm Syndrome. We’ve been held captive by Claire Danes’ performance for so long that we’ve forgotten how nasty she really is. We believe her - believe in her - because it’s human to do so.
A question I’m sometimes asked as a writer is how to make a compelling protagonist. I always say give them agency - give them an objective, even if it’s evil, and we can’t help but be fascinated whether they get there. But Homeland has made me think there’s something else in the mix: proximity. Stay with a character for 96 episodes and you can’t help but root for her. Even if she reveals herself in the final analysis to be a repellent human being, you still want to, have to, believe.
May 1, 2020
One billion people! (say it in a Dr Evil voice, please)
I read an interesting headline the other day.
Not the article. That would make me dangerously well-informed, and we know that's not how the Internet works.
It said that a billion people may catch Covid-19. That's round about one-eighth of the population of this little blue marble. That's a lot. But my first thought was why stop there?
I mean, surely the more newsworthy story would be, 'Seven Billion Won't Catch Coronavirus'. It's proving to be a pernicious little sod. If it gets a billion, that sounds like an unstoppable momentum to me. The rest of us won't be so much as a waffer thin mint to it as it gorges its way through us. Like chickenpox, but with significantly superior firepower. T-Rexpox, perhaps?
My understanding of the process is that, barring a vaccine, which isn't a given, you either contain it so it dies out, or the number of people who have had it and have built up resistance grows, meaning that remaining carriers get progressively worse at finding viral virgins to infect. Quarantine or herd immunity.
The former strikes me as an impossible ask given how many cats are out of bags. As for the latter... as an interconnected, global species the herd is a lot bigger than a billion. I think you're talking pretty much the whole farm, all eight and nine noughts of us. Okay, so as herd immunity builds up it becomes easier to contain an outbreak within a population that has built up resistance, but even so... a billion appears light to me.
There's lots of talk of finding a new normal after this is all over. My fear is that new normal will be an old normal reborn. That death is very much an everyday part of life. And we'll look back on the last century or so as being a weird Elysian time, to life expectancy and health what the Renaissance was to art.
It's only in the last few generations (and particularly in the white, middle-class, Western world, to boot) that we have expected freedom from death. I don't mean being so naive that we think we're immortal, but at least viewing the years from toddlerhood to retirement as being, for most practical purposes, free of natural death. As if we have a right to life in a very literal sense, that the odds of dying without some human agency in the process can be disregarded on a day-to-day basis.
In my family, I think pretty much every generation before mine has lost children at birth. Wind the clock back further and cholera, diphtheria, influenza and the rest of them were standard issue disrupters. Don't make plans, it may never happen. Our teleological thinking lulls us into a belief that progress has been about taking a fixed list of problems and crossing them off, one by one. With smallpox gone and HIV managed, it's as if we can kick our shoes off and relax at the beach with a cold one. You don't have to look far on the Internet to find people asking whether they can sue doctors, not for negligence or malpractice, but because things simply didn't turn out as they wanted. That's the sort of bizarre mindset we've ended up with.
And then along comes SARS-CoV-19, and we're reminded that, in Humanity versus Nature, it isn't just one side that can develop new weapons. Our blitzkrieg on all things natural has gone pretty well up to now. We thought we had it subjugated. We're Adolf on the French coast gazing at the white cliffs of Dover in the haze. But plucky little Nature has found a way to fight back, for the freedom of the many (species) against the one.
And, yes, I did just paint Mankind as the bad guys.
Not the article. That would make me dangerously well-informed, and we know that's not how the Internet works.
It said that a billion people may catch Covid-19. That's round about one-eighth of the population of this little blue marble. That's a lot. But my first thought was why stop there?
I mean, surely the more newsworthy story would be, 'Seven Billion Won't Catch Coronavirus'. It's proving to be a pernicious little sod. If it gets a billion, that sounds like an unstoppable momentum to me. The rest of us won't be so much as a waffer thin mint to it as it gorges its way through us. Like chickenpox, but with significantly superior firepower. T-Rexpox, perhaps?
My understanding of the process is that, barring a vaccine, which isn't a given, you either contain it so it dies out, or the number of people who have had it and have built up resistance grows, meaning that remaining carriers get progressively worse at finding viral virgins to infect. Quarantine or herd immunity.
The former strikes me as an impossible ask given how many cats are out of bags. As for the latter... as an interconnected, global species the herd is a lot bigger than a billion. I think you're talking pretty much the whole farm, all eight and nine noughts of us. Okay, so as herd immunity builds up it becomes easier to contain an outbreak within a population that has built up resistance, but even so... a billion appears light to me.
There's lots of talk of finding a new normal after this is all over. My fear is that new normal will be an old normal reborn. That death is very much an everyday part of life. And we'll look back on the last century or so as being a weird Elysian time, to life expectancy and health what the Renaissance was to art.
It's only in the last few generations (and particularly in the white, middle-class, Western world, to boot) that we have expected freedom from death. I don't mean being so naive that we think we're immortal, but at least viewing the years from toddlerhood to retirement as being, for most practical purposes, free of natural death. As if we have a right to life in a very literal sense, that the odds of dying without some human agency in the process can be disregarded on a day-to-day basis.
In my family, I think pretty much every generation before mine has lost children at birth. Wind the clock back further and cholera, diphtheria, influenza and the rest of them were standard issue disrupters. Don't make plans, it may never happen. Our teleological thinking lulls us into a belief that progress has been about taking a fixed list of problems and crossing them off, one by one. With smallpox gone and HIV managed, it's as if we can kick our shoes off and relax at the beach with a cold one. You don't have to look far on the Internet to find people asking whether they can sue doctors, not for negligence or malpractice, but because things simply didn't turn out as they wanted. That's the sort of bizarre mindset we've ended up with.
And then along comes SARS-CoV-19, and we're reminded that, in Humanity versus Nature, it isn't just one side that can develop new weapons. Our blitzkrieg on all things natural has gone pretty well up to now. We thought we had it subjugated. We're Adolf on the French coast gazing at the white cliffs of Dover in the haze. But plucky little Nature has found a way to fight back, for the freedom of the many (species) against the one.
And, yes, I did just paint Mankind as the bad guys.
April 15, 2020
Move along, something to see here
In trawling the websites of various potential short story markets, I stumbled across this posting from Mad Scientist Journal, a publication I’ve previously submitted to, albeit without success. I suggest you go take a look. It makes for sobering reading.
I don’t recall a publication of any size being so upfront about the financial realities. Credit to Jerry Zimmerman and Dawn Vogel for their transparency. I post an annual review of my submission batting average each January, but say little about the few farthings that I earn. It’s not just a British perspective that discussion of moolah is crass and gauche; it’s because writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money, to quote Jules Renard.
But publishers are businesses, and they’re meant to make money. Aren’t they?
Well, maybe everyone who goes into publishing goes into it thinking they’ll turn a profit. But I suspect that not everyone is that naive, that many are in it for the love of fiction and want to provide a conduit for stories they love to a wider audience. If Jerry and Dawn’s hearts sink at the numbers, it’s probably because they want to get the tales that move them in front of more eyeballs than they’re currently managing, rather than because the cash register isn’t ringing as often as it might.
If Jerry and Dawn weren’t so open about their accounts, you may suspect from this piece of fiction, that it’s us authors who are bleeding publishers dry. I wish. I’d love to see the data behind this analysis. Either the population in the sample didn’t include the vast majority of hobbyists, part-timers and wannabes, or the salaries of writers include wages from sources other than writing. I strongly suspect the former; there are way more writers than people who have a job called ‘writer’. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter is muddying the waters too. And, anyway, nobody has a job called ‘Short Story Writer’.
I have a personal rule not to pay to make a submission, nor to submit to a non-paying market. This is not because I can’t afford to pay or give a story away (I can) or because I’m a cheapskate (that’s just coincidence), but because I believe in the adage that people don’t value what they don’t pay for. But seeing Mad Scientist Journal’s numbers - which look like they’ve driven Jerry and Dawn from the market, hopefully not indefinitely - makes me think that if some grass roots publishers weren’t showing more largesse than me, then many more of the markets I pitch to wouldn’t be there.
I don’t recall a publication of any size being so upfront about the financial realities. Credit to Jerry Zimmerman and Dawn Vogel for their transparency. I post an annual review of my submission batting average each January, but say little about the few farthings that I earn. It’s not just a British perspective that discussion of moolah is crass and gauche; it’s because writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money, to quote Jules Renard.
But publishers are businesses, and they’re meant to make money. Aren’t they?
Well, maybe everyone who goes into publishing goes into it thinking they’ll turn a profit. But I suspect that not everyone is that naive, that many are in it for the love of fiction and want to provide a conduit for stories they love to a wider audience. If Jerry and Dawn’s hearts sink at the numbers, it’s probably because they want to get the tales that move them in front of more eyeballs than they’re currently managing, rather than because the cash register isn’t ringing as often as it might.
If Jerry and Dawn weren’t so open about their accounts, you may suspect from this piece of fiction, that it’s us authors who are bleeding publishers dry. I wish. I’d love to see the data behind this analysis. Either the population in the sample didn’t include the vast majority of hobbyists, part-timers and wannabes, or the salaries of writers include wages from sources other than writing. I strongly suspect the former; there are way more writers than people who have a job called ‘writer’. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter is muddying the waters too. And, anyway, nobody has a job called ‘Short Story Writer’.
I have a personal rule not to pay to make a submission, nor to submit to a non-paying market. This is not because I can’t afford to pay or give a story away (I can) or because I’m a cheapskate (that’s just coincidence), but because I believe in the adage that people don’t value what they don’t pay for. But seeing Mad Scientist Journal’s numbers - which look like they’ve driven Jerry and Dawn from the market, hopefully not indefinitely - makes me think that if some grass roots publishers weren’t showing more largesse than me, then many more of the markets I pitch to wouldn’t be there.
April 2, 2020
Some good news, some bad news, and some old news
The good news is that Abyss and Apex have published my story 'May Nothing but Happiness Come Through Your Door'. It's a story of how the world ends up a better place after a pandemic (of sorts) is started by a terrorist (of sorts). Sort of prescient - although don't read too much into it as it was sold back in 2018 and has been queuing patiently ever since. So British.
The bad news isn't for you or me. It's for Keaton, the private detective at the heart of my story 'The Hypnotist', now available at Hybrid Fiction. Diligence over the details leads to an outcome that even a fortune teller would be hard pressed to foresee.
Please buy it, not for my sake (although these stories are two of my favourites), but to support a new writing market in what may well turn out to be straitened times for the industry.
And, as if to doubly disprove the near impossibility of writing positive science fiction, those lovely people at Third Flatiron have taken a story of mine, 'The Thirteenth Floor', for Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses. More on that when it hits the digital shelves.
And the old news? Well, my novel, 2084, is still available...
Follow these links to buy 2084 from Amazon.com, .co.uk, .in or direct from Double Dragon
The bad news isn't for you or me. It's for Keaton, the private detective at the heart of my story 'The Hypnotist', now available at Hybrid Fiction. Diligence over the details leads to an outcome that even a fortune teller would be hard pressed to foresee.
Please buy it, not for my sake (although these stories are two of my favourites), but to support a new writing market in what may well turn out to be straitened times for the industry.
And, as if to doubly disprove the near impossibility of writing positive science fiction, those lovely people at Third Flatiron have taken a story of mine, 'The Thirteenth Floor', for Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses. More on that when it hits the digital shelves.
And the old news? Well, my novel, 2084, is still available...
Follow these links to buy 2084 from Amazon.com, .co.uk, .in or direct from Double Dragon
March 21, 2020
Wishing you all an uneventful apocalypse
At some point over the last couple of weeks I’ve stopped merely writing science fiction stories and started living in one. The Lord Chamberlain has shut the bawdy houses and we’re all meant to keep at least six feet apart, like magnets of the same polarity, if we want to avoid ending up six feet under.
Here in the UK, like many nations, there has been a swift ratcheting up of preventative measures. At the start of last week my 16-year old was revising for exams; he’s now had a muted celebration for the end of the academic year. My 14-year old left school on Tuesday lunchtime for the orthodontist, fully expecting to show off a mouthful of teeth devoid of braces the next day. She never went back, and nobody knows when she will.
We’re told to hope for 20,000 deaths but fear at least ten times that. My mind keeps flipping back to the fact that the infection rate is somewhere around 0.005%; in my area of Torbay last time I looked deaths and infections can still be counted on two hands. But is that because of the measures we’re taking, or evidence that those measures are disproportionate? I can’t help thinking that there appears to be some political one-upmanship internationally, no leader wishing to be seen to advocate anything more lax than the nation next door. Even if that mitigation is belt, braces and then some.
Seasonal flu takes an average of around 17,000 a year in England. That’s an average, of course; last year’s toll was more like 1700, so mere reversion to the mean suggests 20,000 this year could be expected anyway. And those figures quoted above include some who would have died anyway. You can’t die twice. If Coronavirus is twice as scary as seasonal flu, then do twice as much as you did to ward off that (what’s that I hear? nothing, you say? never heard it mentioned in the news?). Quarantine the sickly and isolate the vulnerable, sure, but can’t life go on for the rest of us? No? Really? I can’t help thinking that we’re acting like an immortal species that has discovered the possibility of death for the first time...
But rules are rules, and we’re watching more tellybox than usual. On the subject of which, I was slightly shaken by the claim made in Kevin McCloud’s Rough Guide to the Future (doesn’t pre-Covid 19 TV seem so... quaint) that we’re heading for 10 billion people on the planet within my lifetime. That, to me, is scarier than the coronavirus. The more rationally callous part of my brain can’t help thinking that the best thing for the human race in the long term is a bloody good prune. Indeed, HM the Q has urged us to come together for the common good, which I interpret as meaning wiping out the last of the generation that remembers the war. I may have misunderstood. I’d rather it were by lowering the birth rate rather than upping departures, but China’s bio-weapon development overspill (sorry, sorry... I meant Mother Nature) may have other, more efficient and effective ideas.
As for the future, who knows? The optimist in me says the so-called Spanish Flu was followed by the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties rather than a new Dark Age. The pessimist says than mankind may no longer be the planet’s apex predator. Whichever it is, I wish you well over the coming weeks and months.
Here in the UK, like many nations, there has been a swift ratcheting up of preventative measures. At the start of last week my 16-year old was revising for exams; he’s now had a muted celebration for the end of the academic year. My 14-year old left school on Tuesday lunchtime for the orthodontist, fully expecting to show off a mouthful of teeth devoid of braces the next day. She never went back, and nobody knows when she will.
We’re told to hope for 20,000 deaths but fear at least ten times that. My mind keeps flipping back to the fact that the infection rate is somewhere around 0.005%; in my area of Torbay last time I looked deaths and infections can still be counted on two hands. But is that because of the measures we’re taking, or evidence that those measures are disproportionate? I can’t help thinking that there appears to be some political one-upmanship internationally, no leader wishing to be seen to advocate anything more lax than the nation next door. Even if that mitigation is belt, braces and then some.
Seasonal flu takes an average of around 17,000 a year in England. That’s an average, of course; last year’s toll was more like 1700, so mere reversion to the mean suggests 20,000 this year could be expected anyway. And those figures quoted above include some who would have died anyway. You can’t die twice. If Coronavirus is twice as scary as seasonal flu, then do twice as much as you did to ward off that (what’s that I hear? nothing, you say? never heard it mentioned in the news?). Quarantine the sickly and isolate the vulnerable, sure, but can’t life go on for the rest of us? No? Really? I can’t help thinking that we’re acting like an immortal species that has discovered the possibility of death for the first time...
But rules are rules, and we’re watching more tellybox than usual. On the subject of which, I was slightly shaken by the claim made in Kevin McCloud’s Rough Guide to the Future (doesn’t pre-Covid 19 TV seem so... quaint) that we’re heading for 10 billion people on the planet within my lifetime. That, to me, is scarier than the coronavirus. The more rationally callous part of my brain can’t help thinking that the best thing for the human race in the long term is a bloody good prune. Indeed, HM the Q has urged us to come together for the common good, which I interpret as meaning wiping out the last of the generation that remembers the war. I may have misunderstood. I’d rather it were by lowering the birth rate rather than upping departures, but China’s bio-weapon development overspill (sorry, sorry... I meant Mother Nature) may have other, more efficient and effective ideas.
As for the future, who knows? The optimist in me says the so-called Spanish Flu was followed by the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties rather than a new Dark Age. The pessimist says than mankind may no longer be the planet’s apex predator. Whichever it is, I wish you well over the coming weeks and months.
