Brian Clegg's Blog, page 37

Review: Murder at the Old Vicarage

I'm still on my hunt for the ideal Christmas read for the murder mystery lover...

Intriguingly, the presentation of this novel is both accurate and misleading at the same time - it's a quantum superposition of crime. On the one hand, the murder takes place in a vicarage (tick) at Christmas (tick) with lots of snow (tick). And there's no doubt that the title is a homage to Agatha Christie - in fact, the last line of the book is 'Murder at the Vicarage, he thought as he got into the car. He must read it again some time.' However, the setting apart, this is a modern murder mystery with mostly modern characters (I'll mention a couple of exceptions) and a thoroughly up-to-date Britain.

Jill McGown skilfully pulls together a plot in which every one of the possible suspects really could have done it - I've not read her books before, but I'll certainly be back for more. Her detectives, as is common these days, have domestic issues, not helped by them having previously had a relationship, but one is now married to someone else.

The characters are largely well drawn. Those two exceptions who come from the stock characters cupboard are an old lady who appears a little out of it, but is really a very sharp observer (who does that remind us of? Okay, I'm sure it's intentional) and the vicar, who harks back to the 70s when all vicars in fiction had to have lost their faith.

I didn't see the ending coming and found the book an engaging read. If I have one criticism of the plotting: almost everyone seemed at some point to be lying to cover up for another person who they thought had done it, but who hadn't. They never seem to bother to talk to each other and check.

The modern setting means this book doesn't quite score as well as it could for a traditional Christmas murder mystery... but it is well written and keeps the reader guessing, so it has turned out to be one of my favourites for this year.

Murder at the Old Vicarage is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com

... and if you too are still hunting, my murder mystery novel  A Timely Confession  is also a Christmas-set mystery.

The Mistletoe Murder - review

Still on my search for the perfect Christmas murder mystery, my next port of call is with one of the top names in the business, P. D. James.

You know when you get a book with just four short stories in at (admittedly relatively meaty ones) that it was intended as a gift book - but in the case of this collection of four Christmas-set P. D. James stories it is certainly a worthy addition to any list of seasonal favourites.

There is no doubt that James very deliberately sets out to push the boundaries, and though some of the stories have very traditional, Agatha Christie style country house and snow settings, there is a darker feel here. In two of the stories, she adopts the same approach that Jane Austen used in Northanger Abbey of stepping outside the fictional viewpoint to make knowing remarks on the format to the reader. So, for example, in The Twelve Clues of Christmas, she remarks that Adam Dalgleish felt he was 'involved in one of those Christmas short stories to provide a seasonal frisson for the readers of an upmarket weekly magazine' - this being a story James wrote... for an upmarket weekly magazine.

Despite this playfulness, these are stories with plenty of interest and effectiveness as mysteries. Two feature a young Adam Dalgleish, allowing us to get snapshots of the earlier career of her great detective. The plots are generally as satisfying as is possible in a short story and the twists and turns suitably unexpected. Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, these are long enough short stories to get enough in, without wasting too much effort on character building and scene setting.

My only real criticism is that I would have liked the book to be at least twice as long - but it certainly fits well as a useful addition to the Christmas reading pile.

The Mistletoe Murder is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com

... and if you're still hunting, my murder mystery novel A Timely Confession is also a Christmas-set mystery.

Murder on Christmas Eve - review

After my disastrous adventure of reading Murder in the Snow , I'm glad to report that I had a much better time with Murder on Christmas Eve.

This is a collection of Christmas murder mystery short stories. Generally speaking, murder mysteries don't do so well in short story form as, say, science fiction. It usually takes rather more page count to be a success in this genre, but this collection, from big names in the field, manages to do the job well. It's notable that the Father Brown story is probably the one that works as a pure murder mystery and is significantly longer than most of the others.

However, just because many of the others are quite short doesn't mean that they fail as stories, just that they tend to focus on a relatively small element of the 'how could that have happened?' nature and make it work very well indeed. The styles range from the modern touches of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid to a classic little Campion tale from Margery Allingham - but they're all (with one possible exception) well written, a delight to read and firmly set in the Christmas period.

If you're looking for some light Christmas bedtime reading with a criminal bent, this could be the one for you.

Murder on Christmas Eve is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com

Light Saber Love Affair

Image from Wikipedia Over the years many scientists and technologists have admitted that they were inspired to work in their field by Star Trek, but few, if any, would say the same about Star Wars. And yet the same individuals have an almost universal affection for the first trilogy of Star Wars movies. This is because, where Star Trek was solid science fiction, primarily influencing the head, Star Wars won the heart as an epic fantasy that comfortably wore the robe of 1930s pulp sci-fi. And nowhere is that more obvious than with the light saber.

Take a look at the technology of Star Trek and you’ll find a whole gallimaufry of items that have already made it to reality, or that are setting future directions. Our smartphones and tablets have left the TV show’s equivalents far behind. Even Siri is a better conversationalist than the Enterprise computer. And while we might not have warp drives or transporters, NASA is giving serious thought to ways of getting around the light speed limit, while quantum teleportation brings the transporter to life on an atomic scale. But the one really original technological development in Star Wars, the light saber, is the stuff of dreams, not of reality.

We want to use the technology from Star Trek. But can you imagine the reaction of the military if they were told that scientists had perfected a light saber and it was going to be issued as a sidearm? It would be difficult to be sure if they would laugh or cry. As a weapon, the light saber sucks. There’s a good reason why soldiers stopped using swords. They’re not much use against firearms that work from a distance. And though Star Wars creator George Lucas fudged the issue, showing Jedi masterfully stopping incoming blasts with flicks of their sabers, we all know that it just wouldn’t work. In reality, while they were busy stopping a blast to the head (which they couldn't actually do with projectile or energy weapons because of reaction time), another one would have taken them out from the rear.

Why, then, are light sabers so wonderful if we wouldn’t use them as weapons? Because we want to play with them. They are the ultimate toys. Take away the unpleasant effects of slicing through flesh and who wouldn’t want to take part in a light saber battle, clashing insubstantial glowing blade against blade to a sound track of that glorious ripping buzz? There’s a reason that there’s a toy light saber on my desk, rather than a Star Trek phaser. It’s more fun.

Image from Wikipedia This doesn’t stop people who don’t understand science and science fiction getting it all wrong. In 2013, we saw headlines like “Scientists Finally Invent Real, Working Lightsabers” from Fox News. No, scientists didn’t. Not even close. The discovery referred to was fascinating – a mechanism for making two photons of light temporarily link together. But it was no light saber, and it never will be.

Part of the light saber’s charm is the way that it effortlessly breaks the laws of physics. It’s magic not math that makes the light saber work. So we shouldn’t look to Star Wars for technological marvels. But we should hope for movies that encourage us once more to dream of wielding the ultimate incandescent blade.

Murder in the Snow - Review

At Christmas I like to read a good murder mystery, particularly if it has a Christmas theme - I'd not come across Gladys Mitchell before, but I was encouraged by a quote from a Guardian review, likening it to Miss Marple. And the Cotswold setting was attractive, as it's just up the road from where I live.

I think I can sum up this book in one word: dire.

I can't find a single redeeming feature. Christmas hardly comes into it. The sole Cotswold aspect is mentions of Cirencester and Cheltenham plus a few Mummersetshire accents for the common folk (who are, of course, mostly half-witted). The writing is abysmal. I lost count of the number of times we were told the main character Mrs Bradley 'cackled' or 'leered' - I'm not sure the author knew what these words meant. Certainly they don't make her seem appealing. None of the characters ever becomes more than a cardboard cutout. The plot is poorly thought through, and for page after page everyone is convinced about who did it (there are very few suspects), but struggles to do anything about it. And then it turns out they did do it. The whole experience seemed far longer than it was.

Never again.

I'm not going to tell you how to buy this book - it's not even 'good' bad. It's just not worth reading.

The Joy of Festival

One of the best bits about being an author is the chance to turn up at book festivals (and as a science author, I get a double bite of the cake with science festivals).

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to two very different festivals, each with a very special feel. I've done a couple of the big numbers (Cheltenham and Edinburgh), but for me, small and mid-size festivals like these are far more charming.

The first was Taunton Literary Festival, run in a very friendly, relaxed fashion from Brendon Books, an impressive indie bookshop that mixes new and used books on the shelves with refreshing abandon. As the event was actually in the bookshop, I was expecting a tiny audience, but somehow organiser Lionel Ward managed to cram in a good 60 seats, all of which were filled by an appreciative audience. I've done my  Reality Frame  talk a few times, but never quite so intimately with my audience. I particularly enjoyed a moment when I was waiting to start, sitting on children's book table near the front. A lady on the end of the nearest row of seats asked me 'Have you come across this book?' enabling me to reply 'Erm, yes, I wrote it.'

Science in my granny's sitting room at FolkestoneBy comparison, the Folkestone Book Festival was a significantly bigger production in the towns' delightful Quarterhouse theatre. We were booked in for two nights at the nicely renovated old Burlington Hotel, giving a chance to explore a town that had always been just somewhere we passed near on the way to the Tunnel.

On Friday I had two sessions with year five and six children (aged 9-11) - each with around 200 children packed into the theatre. They were impressively well behaved, seemed to enjoy the activities in the talk and could be relied on to come up with a whole host of questions after, from deeply serious ones about black holes to 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?'

Interview at FolkestoneSaturday saw me switch to an adult audience for a talk based on my latest book  Big Data . With over 120 in the audience, it was still a good number, and the mix of talking and a few demonstrations seemed to go down well - again featuring a good range of questions at the end. It was the first time I'd done this talk, and was interesting to see how amazing the quality of iPhone video is - I played my clip of trying to get Alexa to play Schoenberg, which looked impressively professional on a cinema-sized screen.

I'd certainly recommend Folkestone if you've never been there - there's a whole lot of art going on from the organisation also behind the Quarterhouse and the literary festival. The only festival I've attended before that did as much for its authors as Folkestone was the Isle of Man Festival - I don't know if it's something about being by the seaside, but both treated authors as someone special to pamper, rather than an irritating necessity as some of the larger festival seem to feel.

A really excellent week...

It's not what you say, it's the way that you say it

I had my attention drawn on Facebook to a sad story on the i newspaper's website of a couple who are facing deportation because they misunderstood the over-complex rules for their visa. It is surely essential that a good immigration system has simple and easy to follow rules - this needs sorting. I feel sorry for anyone at the mercy of byzantine immigration rules.

However, what also struck me was how carefully phrased the wording of the article was to support a particular viewpoint.

Here's the bit in question:

With the article's wording, what they did was the apparently harmless 'let the jobs lapse.' But let me rephrase that.

The bosses kept on staff for the shortest period necessary to get the visa, then the staff were fired. Two people lost their jobs. 

Does that sound as nice and fluffy as 'let the jobs lapse'?
It's amazing how the phrasing of the two versions - both arguably factually accurate - can make a lot of difference to the picture that's painted.

A grown-up Brexit debate

I see a lot about Brexit from friends on social media, of whom the great majority are pro-EU. But much of what's written (on both sides) simply reflects the rhetoric of the debate, rather than proper reasoning. I thought it might be useful to put two, grown-up opposing viewpoints together.
I think that Brexit could be beneficial for the UK in the long run, and I’m going to present two arguments for that. I’ve also asked an old friend, Paul Birch, to present the opposite view. In both cases, I want to focus primarily on business and politics.
From a business viewpoint, I would suggest that the UK has a better chance to succeed than the EU because the UK is medium-sized. (Don’t believe the ‘Little England’ propaganda – we are still the fifth largest economy in the world.) From my experience in business, I’d say that mid-sized is the best place to be. Too small and you aren’t taken seriously. Too large and you become slow, bureaucratic and unwieldy. Doing deals where 27 different member states (plus whoever else joins in the future) representing totally different economies are each trying to do the best for their constituency is not a recipe for long-term success and good decision-making. Big committees rarely make good decisions.
From a political viewpoint, I think a lot (probably the majority) of people in the UK do not understand the aims of the EU. It is not to be a trading partnership – it is to form the United States of Europe. This has been made clear both by big player European country leaders and the EU hierarchy. There is no doubt that to remain in the EU will mean gradually giving up more and more individuality as a country. The plan is that all members adopt the Euro, move to a single central bank and increasingly lose control of defence, budgets etc. I find it amusing that a lot of Europhiles are big supporters of the NHS. Again, there is no doubt that long term, all EU members will be expected to be part of the same European-wide health insurance scheme.
Let’s be clear. I’m not saying that the transition will be easy. It could well be a decade before we get back to better-than-normal. But I find it difficult to understand why the UK would not thrive better long-term outside the EU.
And the alternative viewpoint …I agree with a lot that Brian has said but would put, “if” in front of the initial propositions. If Europe moves towards being a single federated entity then it could be less likely to succeed in the longer term. Having said that, I would argue against the idea that big economies are poorer than medium sized ones. The US economy is about the same size as Europe and manages to support California, a thriving economy that is the 6th largest in the world. Why could Europe not support a thriving fifth largest? The main issue that I have is the assumption that the intentions of past European bureaucrats will shape an inevitable direction for the EU. It has been demonstrated that until the economies of the EU are more homogeneous the single currency cannot work. The bureaucrats and politicians at the heart of Europe now fully understand that the single currency could not be made to work whilst national economies are so diverse. The plan for all members to adopt the Euro and move to a single central bank is rarely spoken of these days other than as a very long-term wish for those who have not yet let go of the United States of Europe ideal. As John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run we are all dead”. I believe that the homogeneity of economies that those plans would require might happen one day but not in our lifetimes.
It is becoming increasingly clear that, even those negotiating our exit from the EU, are realising that large parts of our economy rely on our European links. There is an increasing move towards attempting to negotiate an arrangement where we have the benefits of access to the single market with none of the conditions of membership. This has never been possible for any of the non-EU countries who currently have access. It will not be possible for us. If we negotiate a position where we have access to the single market then we will also have to accept the legislation that makes that market possible and have to accept the free movement of people. This looks to be the worst of all possible worlds. We will not be in a position to influence the direction of Europe and we will genuinely be in a place where we have no sovereignty over the laws that control manufacturing, employment, commerce and our borders. If, on the other hand, we are unable to negotiate a position where we have access to the single market, our economy is likely to suffer for many more than the ten years Brian has suggested.

In business, a plan that shows finances getting worse initially and then better later is often called a hockey-stick plan; the dip, followed by a later increase, could be charted in the shape of a hockey-stick. Plans based on this approach need strong evidence before they can be supported because they involve significant up-front pain in order to get the promised jam tomorrow. My plea would be, “Show me the evidence and I might believe you”. There is currently strong evidence to show that there will be up-front pain. There is no strong evidence for the later increase. There is plenty of wishful thinking by those who support separation from Europe. Any sensible business would reject such a plan. Any sensible nation would reject such a plan.

The joy of snooze

Every mail program has its pros and cons, but I find one function particularly valuable - the ability to snooze.

I try to keep an empty email inbox - this is it at the moment:













... so when I process my mail I typically bin it, respond to it immediately or file it. But quite often I want to put something aside and deal with it at a future time. And that's where the snooze option comes in so handy. In the software I use (Airmail 3).

Given this kind of email:









with a quick swipe or a right click + select I can choose to snooze, with a whole range of options on what to do with it:


















... it disappears, the comes back into the inbox after the selected delay. It really has transformed the way I manage email.

In defence of Bladerunner 2049's sexism

We seem to be in Philip K. Dick heaven at the moment, with the Electric Dreams short-story derived series currently on Channel 4, a third season of the excellent The Man in the High Castle on the way on Amazon and, of course, Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to what's generally considered one of the most impressive SF movies ever, (incredibly loosely) based on Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I went to see Blade Runner 2049 at the weekend, in all the glory of IMAX - and, as everyone says, it is visually stunning. But, sad to say, there's also no doubt that it is sexist - women are almost always portrayed in relation to men, and though there are some interesting female characters, it's notable that we only see, for example, advertising for female virtual companions.

Despite this, it's a film that has interesting things to say about AIs and androids. And most of all, I think there is one significant defence of the sexism.

The original movie was released in 1982 - 35 years ago. It was set in 2019, the year after next. Now, quite clearly, 2019 will not be like the world of Blade Runner. So what to do when making a sequel to it? Clearly, the decision was made to take the world of Blade Runner as an alternative universe. This is flagged up by, for example, showing us prominent logos of brands which were big in 1982, but either don't exist anymore (Pan Am, for example) or are not the force they once then (Atari). This isn't our (hopefully) more enlightened world. This is the sexist world of the original Blade Runner, carried forward in time.

So, personally, while concerns about its approach to women need voicing, it's perhaps not as bad as it appears.

If you've not seen anything to do with it, take a look at the trailer: