Robert Bagnall's Blog, page 6

New Kids on the Block

Apparently, a cosmorama is an exhibition of perspective pictures, typically of famous landmarks or cityscapes, a sort of static Imax cinema screen image from when cinema was just misspelled Ancient Greek.  Who knew?

But Cosmorama is also a new online magazine that's been putting short speculative fiction for free on their website since late last month, and my story, Some of us are Going on a Bear Hunt, of how Kamala, a call centre operator, outsmarted the bigots, has been selected to join them.  Look out for it.

I wish them well.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

The winner or the game?

You know that feeling when you realise other people, who look and act much like you, are utterly different on a fundamental level, and you never even suspected?  I’ve just had one of those moments.

It came, in part, after reading this gambit on a post by Michael J Moore on the SFWA’s ever-excellent ‘The Art of Writing’ blog: “You write speculative fiction for the same reason you’ve read or watched it your entire life. There’s something inside of you that craves tales of relatable characters overcoming adversity.”

MJ, if I can call him that, just throws it out there as a given, as so obvious we can all sign up to the sentiment and have fun developing the argument from there.  But for me the words rang false.  There’s an insecurity, a sense of needing affirmation, seeking it out vicariously through stories, in his claim that I don’t recognise, at least not in myself.  But who’s the odd one out here - MJ or me?

Putting aside that the claim doesn’t say anything special about speculative fiction - all fiction should be about main characters overcoming hurdles - I write (but, to be honest, barely read) speculative fiction because of the ideas, the what-ifs, the how the world may switch if you altered a line on the list of ingredients.  Dick’s ‘Beyond Lies the Wub’ is a perfect example.  The relatable character overcoming adversity bit is just a vehicle for more fundamental philosophising.  Which is rarely there.  Hence my general reluctance to read things which are more-often-than-not overwhelmingly ho-hum, making me turn instead to things like non-fiction which prompt the disquieting speculating which drives my writing.

The other prompt for this posting comes after watching the comedy Fast and Furious 9 (it is a comedy? yes? there are police vans with ‘Interpol’ on them).  In this, two characters - don’t ask me who; there’s a  (nominative determinism?) involved, and neither were him, that’s about all I remember; I slept through bits - speculate on why they’re still alive after so much jeopardy and danger.  They fluff they opportunity to conclude they must be recurring characters in a movie franchise - the braver, meta-, Deadpool-alike choice - and simply decide they’re invincible.  So arrogant, so brash, so… American.

Maybe that's the difference?

Here in Europe, we watch America in much the same way as we rubberneck accidents on the motorway: with a sense of grim, morbid fascination, knowing we shouldn’t be looking and that it slows our own journeys, but also that we didn’t ask for it to happen, so if fate and fortune throw a blackly, bleakly comic carnival sideshow our way, what are we meant to do?  I’m all for putting up screens so you can’t see the gory details.  Would work for traffic accidents too.

Most of those involved in speculative fiction are American: that’s who publishes most stories, that’s where I mainly submit - and, without going back and checking, where I have most success.  But I refuse to write like an American, except in a basic sense - 'realize', 'hood', 'trunk', and so forth, but I have learnt that a demi-john is a 'carboy' (who knew?).

Looking back at editors’ feedback, I can’t help but sense occasions where culture clash has come across as po-faced literalism, preventing someone ‘getting it’. Remember that story, the one the (American, SFWA professional-rate) publication hated with the feedback:

"I'm sorry, I found this story unsavory and unpleasant with a disturbing ending.  I think at certain points it was attempting to be clever or rough-edged but was just distasteful.  Written with undeniable skill, it is nonetheless full of nasty, evil people.  While it is a good set-up, unfortunately they win, going against the sort of story we prefer, where evil doesn't win.".

even though one of the characters was written with in mind to play (in your head, obviously.)  Well, it's coming out later in the year through the well-regarded British outfit PS Publishing. Looks like they got the joke - and the fact that the end was meant to be disturbing: if evil never won, it's meaningless when good does so.

As George Bernard Shaw said, we’re two countries separated by a common language.  To Americans it’s all about the winner, to Europeans - the British, at least, or maybe just me? - it’s about the game.  In speculative fiction, just as in the rest of life.  Yes, it's a gross generalisation, but one that captures a truth, I think.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

I Was Just Doing What You Asked

 Today's Wyld Flash from Wyldblood Press, by little ol' me.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Chairman of the bored

I don't choose what to watch or read with a view to posting on this blog, but given I've set myself finding something to say twice a month, sometimes you sit down and think oh good, I'll definitely have something to say about this...

Which brings me on to Everything Everywhere All at Once.

That's winner of seven Oscars Everything Everywhere All at Once. The best written, best directed, indisputably best film of 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once. You know, the one with three of the best four performances of 2022. Yes, that Everything Everywhere All at Once.

And... And... To be honest, I'm struggling.  Struggling to make sense of it, but not in a peeling back the layers of metatextual meaning sort of way, more in a poking its amorphous mass and wondering is-that-it sort of way.

Don't get me wrong: it's very well acted, and fits together amazingly, and the effects are what we've come to expect as the second quarter of the twenty-first century comes into view on the horizon: seamless and mesmerizing. But it has minimal story, and the continual balletic fight scenes were done way better in The Raid. Plus who the baddie turns out to be felt tonally clunky and made the whole thing cartoonish, so much so I could imagine this being a Jim Carey vehicle thirty years ago. In fact, is it a comedy with insufficient laughs?

Or is it the diverse casting that has everyone wetting their pants over this? Is that still a thing worth commenting on? We've had Oscar-winning Parasite and a Black president. Don't we all know that you don't have to be white or male or straight to be talented? Hasn't this all drifted into the world of 'so what'?

Which is what I've filed this under. Sorry.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Ring of Fire

...stop sniggering at the back - my story isn't about the morning after the phall before - and go and order one, using the code NR2023 to get 15% off.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

No, not a bear...

...perhaps something much worse.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Why not seeing something coming is not necessarily a good thing

Contains spoilers.

Okay, so I'm about four months behind the curve - but isn't speculative fiction about the future meant to comment on the present, so why can't my blog post in the present comment on speculative fiction about the future from the past? - but I have a couple of things to say about the ending of the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

I did read the books, oh, the best part of twenty years ago.  To be honest, so little of the latter half of the narrative has stuck with me, other than the faintly farcical image of animals on wheels, that I had no idea what was coming.  And little more of what just happened when it did.  Apparently, it was a fairly faithful telling.  I may go back and re-read them to see if I can make sense of them now.

The series tied many storylines up around Christmas and apparently left many fans distraught.  I think I fall more in the mildly irritated camp.  Not that the two young lovers weren't allowed to get together, but the manner of the insurmountable barriers in their way.

My issue revolves around foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is not merely one of the basic tools of the writer, setting things up to be explained later in an emotionally or intellectually satisfying or elegant way, but also a kind of writers' law of thermodynamics.  Every action leads to an equal and opposite... you get the idea.

There's a bit of the former in my gripe, that not every storyline arced.  I would love to have seen what happened to James Cosmo, Anne-Marie Duff and the other Gyptians.  But maybe it's right that their lives and those of the leads intersected for a moment, and then went their separate ways.  That's life.  There's no breach of a fundamental law there.

But there is in introducing a new rule of the game just before the final whistle.  That we learnt in the final reel only one window between worlds could remain open was fine - we had seen the chaos and carnage caused by dust moving between worlds.  That's foreshadowing.  But the rule that nobody could remain safely in the world into which they were not born, hence Will and Lyra must separate forever... absolutely no ground work was laid for this, no sense of looking back at previously inexplicable symptoms or behaviour that could now be understood.  Just a witch's pronouncement and a lame, 'oh alright then'.  Which makes it nothing more than a thinking person's deus ex machina.  Sorry.  Not good enough.

Of course, given this was scripted by Jack Thorne who has a strong and deserved reputation for knowing what he's doing, it's entirely possible I missed all the clues and I've just made an arse of myself by writing this blog post.  But, looking back on the narrative, in this case, I think not.

I sympathise with those wanting Will and Lyra to have ended up together.  I think they are asking for some kind of cosmic benevolence.  I'm looking for something a tad more fundamental: cosmic order.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Nice

Well, this is nice, isn't it?  Always good to have your name on the cover, and a damn nice cover it is too.  Why not buy a copy so you can verify it's just as nice inside...  I will warn you, though: 'nice' is probably not the first word that springs to mind to describe The King of China's Mirror, my noir-horror time-traveling, alt history contribution.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

I've got mine - have you got yours?

Issue 158 of Aurealis, that is.  It's got my "Shakespearean subversion of the idea of the evil corporation" (their words, not mine), Thus With a Kiss I Die' and plenty more...

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

In chaos and riots, the screech of machines...

Almost three years ago, I wrote "At some point over the last couple of weeks I’ve stopped merely writing science fiction stories and started living in one."

Well, it's happened again, but this time we've been living in the opening salvoes of a sci-fi movie.  Uncle Sam was shooting down UFOs.  Literally, as in underline 'Unidentified', highlight it in pastel blue, then biro asterisks either side.

A craggy four-star general was sent out to tell the world, quite reasonably, that he wasn't ruling anything out about their origins thus allowing the possibility of a close encounter of the second kind.  This messaging fubar then had to be countered by a White House Press Secretary with five (movie) star good looks, who told us there had definitely been no casting calls for aliens.

And then?  Well, it's all gone very quiet.  Surely they've found the wreckage?

You know how this would go from here if it were Hollywood?  Everybody would be gripped to their screens, waiting for the next revelation.  They'd be putting their automatic weapons down in Ukraine, slack jawed.  An unshaven Italian would forget to shout at a female family member.  An Englishman would stir his tea... and never stop.  But, in reality, no...  Don't know about other parts of the world, but even with no confirmation of what they actually were, we went back to focussing on the usual smorgasbord of death and political cockwomblery.

The issue comes down to a lack of sonder.  Sonder: n. the realization that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.  As writers, we have a tendency to forget that everybody is a hero in their own story; in space opera, your cast of thousands do not simply exist to propel the protagonist's narrative forward.  They've all got their own to keep spinning.

There's a quote relating to the opening of World War II I've been trying to find - I have an idea it was George Orwell, but it was probably something far more quotidian, a voiceover on a documentary or a throwaway movie line - along the lines of "the country was on the brink of war, but people still read their newspapers from the back."  Black Country genii Pop Will Eat Itself once sang, "I have seen the future, and this is how it begins: in chaos and riots and the screech of machines".  How wrong they got it... the end will begin by us looking in the wrong direction.

Of course, as we all know deep down, the first act is being rounded off as I type, by the surviving alien occupant of the downed craft walking into a Denny's in one of those rectangular states where nobody's ever seen the ocean, to befriend a credulous child who does his best to hide his new BFF from the black suit and sunglass-wearing authorities...

Watch the skies.  You have been warned.

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Click on the images or search on Amazon. You're here, so surely you know how to do that?

2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.