M.V. Clark's Blog, page 3
February 15, 2018
Sick notes
My ear was recently grabbed by a radio show on how diseases get their names.
The show was the BBC's Word of Mouth presented by Michael Rosen and Laura Wright. The guests were Laura Spinney, author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World and Professor Peter Piot, co-discover of Ebola.
Listening, I learned that diseases used to be named after places, often misleadingly. Take 1918’s global pandemic of Spanish flu, for example. It got its name because during World War I neutral Spain was the only country where the government was honest about the existence of the disease.
The episode also covered new rules drawn up by WHO in 2015 to ensure that disease names are informative, without attaching stigma to particular places or social groups. For example a bacteria that affects the lungs of pregnant women might be called Streptococcal Maternal Respiratory Disease, or SMRD. It would not be called Bromley Breastfeeder's Lung.
However, these rules are regularly flouted – recent newspaper stories about Japanese and Aussie flu show old habits run deep. Ultimately, if a name catches on it is very hard for the authorities to change it.
My novel, The Splits, tells the story of a communicable disease that ramps up to the maximum the anxiety we feel about infection.
In the book, the official name for the disease is Scott-Lapidot Disease (SLD), after two scientists who 'discover' it. I didn’t know it when I made this up, but this is now considered to be in very bad taste - it's the microbiology equivalent of 19th century explorers naming countries after themselves. In the episode, Professor Piot stressed that the discovery of a disease actually involves collaboration on a massive scale.
SLD also, I now realise, isn't informative. It doesn’t tell anybody anything about what causes the disease, who it affects, or how.
If I were going to use WHO's new rules, SLD might be called Severe Contagious Complex Amyloidotic Dissociation, or SCCAD. I’m not sure that has much of a ring to it. If I was going break those rules I might call it Suckers and Psychos Zombie Plague.
Perhaps I’ll play around with these new naming conventions in the next Splits novel. Or perhaps I’ll stick with the visceral, descriptive common name that springs from the lips of some shocked eye-witnesses in the book – the Splits.
It could have had any number of similar names. I actually quite liked 'the Cold' but that's already taken! 'The Pressure' or 'the Hate' might have worked. But the Splits captured both the physical and psychological manifestation of the disease, so that was what I went with.
If you read the book, you’ll see 'the Splits' say more about the disease than SLD, SCCAD - or even Suckers and Psychos Zombie Plague - ever could.
February 14, 2018
Dead Romantic - Warm Bodies vs Twilight : Title Fright 9, Valentine's Day Special
Whether you're in love or not, don't come here for relationship advice!
Title right #9: Dead Romantic
Whether you're in love or not, don't come here for relationship advice!
February 8, 2018
Guts Reaction: It
***Spoiler free ***
I wasn’t looking forward to the 2017 film version of It.
I’ve read the sprawling Stephen King novel many times, and always felt it was just too complex to be boiled down into a movie. I’ve never been a fan of the 1990s miniseries (mainly, it is true, because I couldn’t get my hands on it).
I didn’t see how there could be anything good about an even shorter screen adaptation, especially one directed by Andy Muschietti, who made the deeply disappointing Mama (2013).
It’s lovely to be wrong. Pretty much everything about the film is perfect. There’s not a single bad performance – the child actors are all brilliant. The cinematography is stunning, capturing that sweltering summer King wrote about so vividly. And Pennywise. Oh boy, Pennywise.
At the heart of It is Pennywise, the most malicious clown in literary history. When I read the novel as a teenager, a strange ecstasy used to come over me during the Pennywise interludes. He was a kind of fear-poem that sneaked around every logical barrier and … I don’t know… scared me and yet gave me something I needed.
It was Pennywise I was least looking forward to in the film adaptation. Because how could anyone capture that strange celebratory malevolence? Like I said, I haven’t seen the miniseries, but Tim Curry never looked particularly convincing to me.
Bill Skarsgard, however, is a revelation. He’s helped out a little with special effects – in particular, they play around with his size so that he’s just slightly too large. But on the whole it’s all Bill, pulling faces and throwing shapes and delivering his lines with a terrifying mad energy that actually does the book justice. Each time he appears, the film comes to joyous, terrifying life, just like the book used to do.
To my surprise, the next day Pennywise stayed with me. I felt as if he was following me around the streets. It was a good feeling.
February 6, 2018
Political Devils - Trump v The Omen Trilogy : Title Fright 8
Who's doing the best job of carrying out Satan's plan? The Damien or The Donald?
Political Devils: Trump v The Omen Trilogy - Title Fright 8
Who's doing the best job of carrying out Satan's plan? The Damien or The Donald?
February 4, 2018
January 26, 2018
Title Fright 6 (66?): Demon child - Result and Opinions
It's just one big The Exorcist love-in.
Title Fright 6 (66?) Result: The Omen vs The Exorcist
It's just one big The Exorcist love-in.
