Tim Newton Anderson's Blog, page 4

Talking about my heroes

I was honoured to take part in the wonderful podcast on the Avram Davidson Universe which goes live on April 1.

Each month curator Seth Davis (Avram’s Godson) talks with an enthusiast about one of Avram’s stories. Mine was Bumberboom which I first encountered in one of Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords anthologies in the 70s.

The story was originally part of a novel which was lost, and rather than try and rewrite it, Avram turned parts into Bumberboom and its companion story Basilisk. Both are in Seth’s great collection to honour Avram’s 100th birthday – AD 100.

If you haven’t encountered the genius that was Avram Davidson, do so now. Don’t wait for the podcast, go out and buy the Avram Davidson Treasury, or Limekiller, or the Adventures of Dr Eszterhazy. You will thank me for it.

Avram was a polyglot who read everything and incorporated a lot of it into his stories. Sometimes this made them challenging, like the later two Virgil Magus books, but it mostly provided riches beyond the common fare of fantasy, science fiction, and mystery. His prose was a long way from Hemingwayesque, but for me that is one of the joys. The story is approached elliptically and a word or sentence that seem purely for decoration can be vital to the unravelling of the tale.

Bumberboom is set in a post apocalyptic world after The Great Gene Shift – a Planet of the Apes moment reveals it is in an America which the aforementioned cataclysm has splintered into Balkanised provinces with mutated races Avram identifies with the Elves and Dwarves of legend. The picaresque lead character is searching for some ‘medicine’ to restore the fortunes of his own home, although it becomes clear the fortunes he wants to restore are principally his own. He sees an opportunity when he comes across the titled Bumberboom – a giant cannon pulled endlessly across the continent by an inbred tribe who have no idea what it is but know everyone is scared of it.

If it sounds a bit like Jack Vance, it is because it is. However it is also all Avram. Personally, I would always start my reading of Davidson with Eszterhazy, but Bumberboom is well worth seeking out. We owe a debt to Seth for bringing it – and Avram’s other work – back into print as well as unearthing lost stories from the boxes of material he inherited as Avram’s executor.

There is also a brief interview with me going live on Friday at https://mxpublishing.com/blogs/news/sherlockian-interview-tim-anderson linked to my inclusion in the forthcoming latest set of New Sherlock Holmes stories from MX Publishing. I have been honoured to have half a dozen stories included in this series which were great fun to write. As the profit from the venture supports Conan Doyle’s old house which is now a school for children with additional needs, I hope all Holmes fans support it.

Jarry Head

I have mentioned any time before that I am an enormous fan of Alfred Jarry. As well as being a member of the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics I have written a number of stories featuring Jarry as a character.

I am by no means the first to do so. Andre Gide included him as a character in The Counterfeiters and Philip Jose Farmer wrote two stories including him in his Riverworld saga. He is also in one of the stories in Tales of the Shadowmen (sort of).

For those of you who don’t know Jarry was a late 19th century writer and playwrite most famous for Ubu Roi – credited with creating the theatre of the absurd. He was also an amazing personality who would fire off his bull nose pistol in the street and once at a rival poet.

I have written a few stories featuring Jarry as a psychic detective -one of which was included in Black Scat Review. My take on Jarry started in my as yet unpublished novel The Revolutionary Tapestry set in an alternative 1896.

Jarry does not feature directly in my story The Bull Nose Pistol, but his gun does. The story will appear in Alone on the Borderland which will be published this spring by Bellanger Books.  

As part of the LIP I participated in their Time Machine project inspired by one of Jarry’s article – How to Build a Time Machine. That sparked another story – Man of Steel, Feet of Clay – where Jarry is visited by time travellers from the mid 20th century who constructed a machine according to his principles and used it to try and stop the Holocaust. As is usual in such tales it doesn’t quite work out as they plan.

I am hoping some of my other stories featuring my hero will be published later this year, so watch this space.

Dervishes and Devilment

Three of the books I got for Christmas were by my fellow member of the London Institute of ‘Pataphysics Robert Irwin. Two novels and a memoir.

Robert is an expert on Arab history and culture and his Memoirs of a Dervish recounts his encounters with Sufism in the 60s when he was at university at Oxford. It is extremely honest and enlightening. Some reviewers have complained it is not a guide to Sufism, but it isn’t intended to be. Although he converted to Islam and saw some remarkable things which have informed his fiction – including the amazing The Arabian Nightmare – it is Robert looking back at his 20 something self with affection but a touch of surprise at who he was then and the journey he started in a decade that for most of us was not as swinging as legend would have us believe.

His youth certainly informs his two latest novels – The Runes Have Been Cast and Tom’s version. Like the author the protagonist of the first book attends Oxford and then teaches at St Andrews Universities. Both books feature largely the same cast and the shadow of the sinister academic Raven hangs over both. Both also feature a protagonist who is drawn into the more exciting stories of others. I was reminded of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall – another Oxford novel – where the protagonist has his life turned upside down by encounters with others.

In both books the characters are also haunted by ‘story’. What they read or write shapes who they become (literally in the case of the expert on Robert Louis Stevenson who has his leg amputated because of his admiration for Long John Silver) and Raven seeks to turn the lives of his pupils into stories with a clear narrative arc.

One reviewer of The Runes Have Been cast complained Irwin undermines the building tension of the first book in the last chapter. I think that is the point – lives are not like fiction and any attempt to force a shape on them – by ourselves or others – is an academic conceit.

Irwin is always worth reading and you will not regret reading any of these books.

Birthday Treats

I thought I would do a post of what books and CD’s I got for my birthday.

They are:

Two new albums by the amazing Viv Stanshall compiled from boxes full of cassettes and other recordings – Rawlinson’s End and Dog Howl in Tune

A CD by someone possibly more eccentric than Stanshall (but a close call), The Spacey Bruce Lacey

Two albums by two of my favourite artists – Space Force by Todd Runtgren and Rain Dogs by Tom Waits

A memoir and a novel by one of my fellow pataphysicians  – The Runes Have Been Cast and Memoirs of a Dervish by the amazing Robert Irwin

Two bits of enthused writing – The House of the Spirits by Alberto Savinio (brother to De Chirico) and Are You All Crazy by surrealist Rene Crevel

The latest novel by one of my all time favourites, My Brother’s Keeper by Tim Powers

An anthology featuring the wonderful Rhys Hughes – Reports from the Deep End in tribute to JG Ballard

Three anthologies by writers I’ve not experienced yet – In These Hallowed Halls and Twice Cursed edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane and Best American Science Fiction 2023 by R F Kuang

And finally to shift gear Under the Eye of Power by Colin Dickey which looks at the impact of conspiracy theories on American politics from the founding fathers onwards.

Forward into the Pastiche

I have four stories coming out at the end of the month – all pastiches.

Three are in the latest volumes of The MX Anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories – volumes XL, XLI and XLII. All concern “lost” cases – those mentioned by Watson but for one reason or another not chronicled. By sheer luck I have one in each volume, as they are arranged in the order they take place.

David Marcum has done an amazing job in assembling these volumes – all profits going to the special needs school which now occupies Conan Doyle’s home. It is already the largest series of Holmes pastiche ever and David ensures that all are canonical.

My three concern an unlikely assassin in Paris, a philanthropist who is anything but, and the Grosvenor Square Moving Van. I have another one accepted for the next set and .have a few more ideas I am saving for future ones.

The other story is included in the very last Tales of the Shadowmen. The Surrealist group  become embroiled with the machinations of the heroes and villains whose exploits they enjoy on film. Jean-Marc Lofficier is also red hot on ensuring the characters are true to their pulp origins and that stories do not break continuity. It has been my honour to have been included in three volumes now, and my only regret is that there will be no further volumes of this splendid series. The good news for fans is that this will be a bumper edition to go out in style.

Links to the books are below:

De- bugging

I have a new piece out now from Black Scat in their magazine Bed Bug (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bed-Bug-Magazine-Arts-Various or via Black Scat’s web site).

It is my attempt at Oulipo writing as it only includes the letters from the words Bed Bug and the insect’s Latin names. Not the easiest task, although not as impressive as @Rhys Hughes piece in the same issue which only uses letters from its common name.

I have been lucky enough to have had a number of pieces published by Black Scat who are one of my favourite publishers. As always I am in illustrious company and have been supported by the editor Norman Conquest. Many thanks to Norman and the team.

Manque see, manque do

I’ve always been a bit of an academic manque since I did my degree. I really enjoyed when my work allowed me to use some of the skills I had developed in economics and sociology including a number of scenarios I developed on how the use of IT could change the way citizens live their daily lives.

Now, as a writer, I find myself thinking about the way we read and create and how the explosion of different media have affected that over the past 100 years orso.

I read Marshall McLuhan’s work on media in the 70s, and while his approach still stands up, I disagree with some of his conclusions and division of media into ‘hot’ and ‘cool’. from memory, his basic argument was that the more media engaged the senses the hotter it was. For some reason he placed print media in the hot category and TV in the cool, despite the fact that TV engages as many senses as movies, and print only engages one (unless it’s a scratch and sniff book).

For me it is important to think about how much media engage the emotions as well as the senses, which is about content as much as the medium itself. All media content seems to have developed into greater and greater reliance on ‘jump’ information to engage the emotions – partly as a result of scrolling on the phone or laptop and the need to grab attention before you move past, and partly because more immersive experiences call for a similar degree of engagement in all media.

Neuroscience shows us that different media stimulate different parts of the brain. Music is particularly complex as different components of music are addressed by different parts. There has also been research on the impact of social media in stimulating dopamine which can become addictive. A significant part of the brain’s function is in restricting sensory input – the way a smell fades into the background if you are continually exposed to it after the initial strong reaction, for example. Things to which we are exposed to for long periods are downgraded in our attention while new sensory input moves to the forefront.

While critics and others will dismiss superhero films as geek fodder, they do have lessons for other popular media in the speed of different visceral emotions engaged. Jules and I recently watched a documentary series on Norfolk and Suffolk and it seemed to have been broadcast through a time slip in the 1960s as it didn’t have an on screen presenter to be the audience’s stand in talking to the people it featured. While the success of other documentaries depend to a large extent on how much you relate to the host (will you please stop singing at the end of every programme Jane McDonald) seeing how others experience somewhere draws us into the experience. The more they react, the more we do.

I often try and use the same approach in writing – the protagonist should be trying to understand what is happening along with the reader, and you need to describe the emotional reastion as well as the sensory input they are receiving. It’s one of the reasons you need Watson to narrate a Sherlock Holmes story as Holmes simply knows too much for you to see the story unfold at the right pace. People who are comfortable in an environment have no need to explain it unless you frame the story as one being written for a different audience so the narrator knows they cannot take too much for granted.

Eh, Vian!

I’ve just had confirmed that a story of mine is to be included in a tribute anthology to Boris Vian – one of my favourite writers. The book is forthcoming from Raphus Press – a great small press producing beautiful limited editions. Needless to say this is a great honour for me and I’m grateful to Rhys Hughes for alerting me to the opportunity.

Unlike my Sherlock Holmes stories, this is not a pastiche. Imitating Vian’s style is impossible. Instead I wanted to write something which had the feel of Vian’s world of the Left Bank in 1950’s Paris with cafes full of intellectuals and cellars full of Jazz. The lead character is somewhat based on Vian and, as with the master, I included his friend Jean Paul Sartre under a psuedonym (Jean Paul Georges, also known as Ringo).

I discovered Via at the age of about 16/17 with Froth on the Daydream. I then managed to find Heartsnatcher and some of his plays and in the last 20 years most of his work has been translated into English, including some of his Vernon Sullivan books. If you haven’t encountered this amazing author, now is a good time.

Building Jerusalem

I’ve just finished reading The Infinite City by Niall Kishtainy – a study of the various imaginings and attempts at building a utopia in London since Thomas More’s book.

Other attempts are mentioned – and there were a number in America, and other parts of the UK – but the book concentrates on London for a very good reason. It is the city with the greatest historical contrast between poverty and wealth amongst its citizens, and between slums and splendour in its homes.

It kicks off with More’s Utopia as the origin of the name if not the concept. That probably dates back to Plato at least. Kishtainy rightly points out that More’s book was a debate about the idea of a perfect society rather than a blueprint but identifies some of the key concepts later and more practical visionaries would use. These include a focus on the social contract rather than the legal one, and the idea of property as a communal rather than private thing.

I had heard of some of the groups and individuals who tried to create ideal communities including the Diggers and the architects of Britain’s Garden Cities. However many names were new to me including details of groups who were active in my own lifetime like Reclaim the Streets. I knew about their anti road protests but not about the artistic commune they set up in Claremont Road. As with almost all of the groups and individuals in this book, the establishment demonised them to protect their own self interest.

All of the non municipal attempts to create a more human living environment have vanished apart from the odd plaque or statue, and most people walking past these will have no idea of what they represent. Most of the homes built originally for the poor are now owned by the rich or the middle class and most of the council properties have now been bought under Right to Buy.

I have personal memories of an attempt at creating human level housing to replace slums in the Byker Wall in Newcastle upon Tyne. The Swedish architect not only talked to the people who would move in to create areas that would preserve the community spirit they had in the old terraces, but lived among them while the Wall was built. The Wall itself runs alongside the road shielding the chain of little neighbourhoods from traffic noise so each small group of homes have their own shared space in peace and quiet. It contrasts with the poorly built tower blocks and endless council estates which most local authorities threw up to re-house those moved out of even worse housing.

Despite the failure of most of the attempts at building Utopia in the book what it does show is the rebirth of the ideals in each new generation and the fire in the spirit that continues to make the attempt.

Broken Powers

I have a piece in the latest edition of Black Cat’s Typo periodical. It is based on an idea I had when I was a student many years ago and deeply involved in folk music.

The article – The Combinatronics of the Broken Token Ballad – attempts to do for folk music what Raymond Queneau did for the sonnet with his Cent Mille
Milliards de Poèmes or A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems. In one of his first projects for OULIPO Queneau wrote 10 sonnets of 10 lines with the same rhymes and put them in a book with the pages cut up so you could combine lines from different poems. This gave the total potential poems as a hundred thousand billion.

I previously attempted a similar but smaller feat by creating five limericks with the same rhymes which could be combined into 625 combinations. The broken token version combines a potential 20 ballads of 20 lines each into a similarly large number (I didn’t write the ballads because life is too short).

For those not familiar with broken token ballads, a young couple separate when one goes to war and break a coin or other love token which they can combine when the war is over. The fact war was hell in the past is evidenced by the suggestion it is the only way they would recognise each other. It is just one of the separated lovers folk songs including versions where the left behind lover joins up in disguise to pursue their partner. Traditionally the person to go to war is the man and the woman cross dresses to join them. These were the days before sexual equality and gay relationships were mentioned in songs, although sex between men or women and transformed seals or other supernatural creatures were quite common.

All of Black Scat’s publications are worth seeking out so go to their website.