Steven J. Pemberton's Blog, page 14
March 4, 2017
Tunnel: The Archaeology of Crossrail
Crossrail is a new railway line running east-west through the centre of London. Much of it is underground, so there were many opportunities for archaeology while it was being built. A new exhibition at Museum of London Docklands explores what was found there.
Most of the tunnels are 30 to 40 metres below ground, to avoid disturbing earlier tunnels and the foundations of buildings. This is much deeper than any remains of human settlement, and so archaeologists only worked at the places where the builders had to dig down from the surface - mainly where a station was being built or extended. Even so, they had plenty to occupy them. Finds date from the Stone Age to the 19th century.
There are a surprising number of skeletons (or perhaps not so surprising, when you consider that people have been dying in London for over 2000 years). One location in Walbrook yielded a few dozen skeletons from the early centuries AD that had all been beheaded. The site of a massacre? A burial ground for criminals? A secret Roman cult? We may never know.
A less macabre exhibit that caught my eye is a selection of Roman hipposandals - a metal cover that slides over a horse's hoof. Nobody seems to be entirely sure when the modern horseshoe was invented. (Perhaps, in the absence of modern communication technology, it was invented independently several times.)
The exhibition also covers the building of Crossrail, though this is limited to some timelapse videos. It might've been nice to have some artefacts or models, though the title of the exhibition should've set my expectations.
I'd recommend this exhibition to anyone who's interested in archaeology or the history of London. Allow an hour to an hour and a half to go around. Admission is free, and it runs until 3 September 2017.
Most of the tunnels are 30 to 40 metres below ground, to avoid disturbing earlier tunnels and the foundations of buildings. This is much deeper than any remains of human settlement, and so archaeologists only worked at the places where the builders had to dig down from the surface - mainly where a station was being built or extended. Even so, they had plenty to occupy them. Finds date from the Stone Age to the 19th century.
There are a surprising number of skeletons (or perhaps not so surprising, when you consider that people have been dying in London for over 2000 years). One location in Walbrook yielded a few dozen skeletons from the early centuries AD that had all been beheaded. The site of a massacre? A burial ground for criminals? A secret Roman cult? We may never know.
A less macabre exhibit that caught my eye is a selection of Roman hipposandals - a metal cover that slides over a horse's hoof. Nobody seems to be entirely sure when the modern horseshoe was invented. (Perhaps, in the absence of modern communication technology, it was invented independently several times.)
The exhibition also covers the building of Crossrail, though this is limited to some timelapse videos. It might've been nice to have some artefacts or models, though the title of the exhibition should've set my expectations.
I'd recommend this exhibition to anyone who's interested in archaeology or the history of London. Allow an hour to an hour and a half to go around. Admission is free, and it runs until 3 September 2017.
February 28, 2017
February's Writing Progress
After having talked about it for over a year, I finally started editing the audiobook of Death & Magic. I'm up to chapter 20, which is about 40% of the way through the text. So far I have about four and a half hours of edited audio, meaning the finished book should be around eleven to eleven and a half hours.
Reading and listening to the book so closely has made me notice a lot of niggly little plot holes and continuity errors. Most of them crept in during editing, when I moved or deleted a scene and didn't fix all the references that depend on it. (For instance, when the village elders in Darund-Kerak are showing Nurfadel's house to Adramal, I say they're using candles, even though it's the middle of the day. That scene originally occurred at night, after another scene in the village that I deleted.)
Our local writers' group did a couple more book signings. We also provided an evening's entertainment for the Friends of the town museum. I wrote a short story for the occasion (set in a museum, fittingly). This was one of the side projects that I mentioned in my 2016 retrospective. If you'd like to read the story, you can - all you have to do is subscribe to my mailing list. Go to http://eepurl.com/_5EDX and follow the prompts. The confirmation email will give you a link to the story on my website.
Reading and listening to the book so closely has made me notice a lot of niggly little plot holes and continuity errors. Most of them crept in during editing, when I moved or deleted a scene and didn't fix all the references that depend on it. (For instance, when the village elders in Darund-Kerak are showing Nurfadel's house to Adramal, I say they're using candles, even though it's the middle of the day. That scene originally occurred at night, after another scene in the village that I deleted.)
Our local writers' group did a couple more book signings. We also provided an evening's entertainment for the Friends of the town museum. I wrote a short story for the occasion (set in a museum, fittingly). This was one of the side projects that I mentioned in my 2016 retrospective. If you'd like to read the story, you can - all you have to do is subscribe to my mailing list. Go to http://eepurl.com/_5EDX and follow the prompts. The confirmation email will give you a link to the story on my website.
February 22, 2017
A free science fiction short story
Over Christmas 2016 I wrote a science fiction short story, called History Lesson. I decided to offer it as a freebie to my mailing list subscribers as a thank-you for, well, subscribing. New subscribers can read it too - just go to http://eepurl.com/_5EDX and follow the prompts. It's separate from any of my previously published stories, and so is spoiler-free. (For now, anyway. I might write another story that follows on from it, but I'm not making any promises at this stage.)
Here's a taster -
The Curator stepped through the private door from his office to the vestibule and faced the waiting visitors. Twenty or so—typical for a Wednesday afternoon. Mostly off-worlders, a few locals.
“Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the Temple of the Mosaic. I am the Curator of the museum here. If you’re thinking I look very real for such a backward planet, that’s because I am real, not a recording or a proxy. So please don’t try to walk through me.
“Now, the Temple is the oldest man-made structure on Heimdall, and the oldest on any planet apart from Earth itself. The first settlers built it not long after they arrived, four thousand Earth standard years ago. It’s been extended, sacked, looted and rebuilt several times, which makes interpretation difficult. In the middle of the nave is a recording of the best available reconstruction of how the Temple developed.
“The Temple and the city around it were occupied continuously for some twelve hundred years, and were then abandoned, to be swallowed by the encroaching jungle. A few centuries after that, Heimdall’s civilisation essentially collapsed. There are several theories as to why, but the most credible is an overenthusiastic orbital bombardment during a war that led to a decade-long global winter. Our nearest neighbour, Defran’s World, had its own problems at the time, and didn’t investigate until a few hundred years later. They found the survivors living in pre-spaceflight, and in many places, pre-industrial, conditions. They had mostly forgotten about the existence of other worlds, and welcomed the rescuers as gods. To this day, there are people who believe Heimdall is the only inhabited planet.”
One person at the back of the crowd caught his eye. He was unnaturally tall—at least, the Curator assumed this person was male. He was completely covered in dull blue metal, halfway between a hardshell spacesuit and powered armour. The helmet had no faceplate, and the Curator supposed it had an array of microlenses that allowed the wearer to see. If he was from a low-gravity world, that would explain the height and the use of an exoskeleton, but why was he encased in it?
The visitors near the front moved uncertainly towards the entrance to the nave, and the Curator realised he had allowed himself to become distracted from his speech. He raised a hand. “Most of you are no doubt here to see the Apocalypse Mosaic. You’re welcome to record it using whatever passive sensors you like, but please, nothing active. It’s very old and very fragile. The museum will close today at eighteen hundred hours local time.” He glanced at his watch, a quaint thing even for Heimdall. “That’s fourteen twenty-one Earth standard. I’ll be here until then to answer any questions you might have.” He pushed the button that opened the door into the nave. “Please enjoy the rest of your visit.”
If you'd like to read the rest of the story, please subscribe to my mailing list, by going to http://eepurl.com/_5EDX and following the prompts. Thanks!
Here's a taster -
The Curator stepped through the private door from his office to the vestibule and faced the waiting visitors. Twenty or so—typical for a Wednesday afternoon. Mostly off-worlders, a few locals.
“Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the Temple of the Mosaic. I am the Curator of the museum here. If you’re thinking I look very real for such a backward planet, that’s because I am real, not a recording or a proxy. So please don’t try to walk through me.
“Now, the Temple is the oldest man-made structure on Heimdall, and the oldest on any planet apart from Earth itself. The first settlers built it not long after they arrived, four thousand Earth standard years ago. It’s been extended, sacked, looted and rebuilt several times, which makes interpretation difficult. In the middle of the nave is a recording of the best available reconstruction of how the Temple developed.
“The Temple and the city around it were occupied continuously for some twelve hundred years, and were then abandoned, to be swallowed by the encroaching jungle. A few centuries after that, Heimdall’s civilisation essentially collapsed. There are several theories as to why, but the most credible is an overenthusiastic orbital bombardment during a war that led to a decade-long global winter. Our nearest neighbour, Defran’s World, had its own problems at the time, and didn’t investigate until a few hundred years later. They found the survivors living in pre-spaceflight, and in many places, pre-industrial, conditions. They had mostly forgotten about the existence of other worlds, and welcomed the rescuers as gods. To this day, there are people who believe Heimdall is the only inhabited planet.”
One person at the back of the crowd caught his eye. He was unnaturally tall—at least, the Curator assumed this person was male. He was completely covered in dull blue metal, halfway between a hardshell spacesuit and powered armour. The helmet had no faceplate, and the Curator supposed it had an array of microlenses that allowed the wearer to see. If he was from a low-gravity world, that would explain the height and the use of an exoskeleton, but why was he encased in it?
The visitors near the front moved uncertainly towards the entrance to the nave, and the Curator realised he had allowed himself to become distracted from his speech. He raised a hand. “Most of you are no doubt here to see the Apocalypse Mosaic. You’re welcome to record it using whatever passive sensors you like, but please, nothing active. It’s very old and very fragile. The museum will close today at eighteen hundred hours local time.” He glanced at his watch, a quaint thing even for Heimdall. “That’s fourteen twenty-one Earth standard. I’ll be here until then to answer any questions you might have.” He pushed the button that opened the door into the nave. “Please enjoy the rest of your visit.”
If you'd like to read the rest of the story, please subscribe to my mailing list, by going to http://eepurl.com/_5EDX and following the prompts. Thanks!
February 1, 2017
January's Writing Progress
Last night, I finished the first draft of the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. Yay! It came in at 115,000 words, meaning that I wrote about 19,000 words of it in January, which was pretty good. I'll take a couple of days off to relax, and then I'll finally start editing the audiobook of Death & Magic. I don't know how long that will take, as it depends how quickly I get tired of listening to my own voice.
Our writers' group went to another open mic night at the Hare and Hounds pub in St Albans. We also participated in an event that showcased the work of community and charity groups in the town.
Our writers' group went to another open mic night at the Hare and Hounds pub in St Albans. We also participated in an event that showcased the work of community and charity groups in the town.
January 1, 2017
Goals for 2017
This is what I'd like to accomplish this year, in terms of reading and writing -
Publish the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. I'd hoped to do this in 2016, but the story rather ran away with me.
Publish the audiobook of Death & Magic.
Publish another audiobook. I haven't decided yet which one this will be.
Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir.
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. There are currently 56 unread books on my Kindle. I also have a few shelves of unread paperbacks that I ought to attack, with a view to getting rid of the ones that aren't worth re-reading.
Come back in twelve months to see if I did any better this year than last!
Publish the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. I'd hoped to do this in 2016, but the story rather ran away with me.
Publish the audiobook of Death & Magic.
Publish another audiobook. I haven't decided yet which one this will be.
Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir.
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. There are currently 56 unread books on my Kindle. I also have a few shelves of unread paperbacks that I ought to attack, with a view to getting rid of the ones that aren't worth re-reading.
Come back in twelve months to see if I did any better this year than last!
December 30, 2016
2016 Retrospective
On 1st January, this was what I said I wanted to do in 2016...
Finish Stone & Silence and have it on sale by April. (Done)
Write the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider and have it on sale by the end of the year. (Not done. At the start of the year, I thought it would be another novella, but it's now nearly as long as one of my novels, and it's not finished yet. Next year...)
Finish the audiobook of Death & Magic and have it on sale by April. (Not done. I finished recording it but haven't started editing it.)
Record another audiobook and have it on sale by the end of the year. (Not done.)
Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir. (Not done.)
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. At the start of the year, I had 74 unread books on my Kindle. I now have 56.
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books. (Not done at all. I did upload a couple of book-related videos, though.)
The goals I didn't meet were mainly because I blew the schedule on the Dragonrider sequel. (You'd think I'd know more about planning books by now...) Once I've finished the first draft of the sequel (probably in the next month or two), I'll start editing the Death & Magic audiobook.
As usual, I accomplished a few things that weren't on my list at the start of the year -
I joined a local writers' group and attended several in-person events with them, where I sold some print copies of some of my books.
I published an omnibus edition of The Barefoot Healer series with background material and a bonus short story.
I wrote an article for an online writers' conference on Wattpad. You can read all the articles here or jump straight to mine here.
I wrote a couple of other stories that I'm not quite ready to tell you about yet, because I'm not sure how I'm going to initially release them. (Ooh, you tease.)
For the last eight years or so (since I started writing Death & Magic) I've kept detailed records of how many words I've written. Over Christmas, I put these into a spreadsheet to work out monthly and yearly totals, and discovered that I wrote 150,000 words in 2016, meaning that it's been my most productive year to date, by quite a good margin. (It doesn't sound so impressive when you consider that it averages just over 400 words a day...)
Come back in a couple of days to see what I want to do in 2017!
Finish Stone & Silence and have it on sale by April. (Done)
Write the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider and have it on sale by the end of the year. (Not done. At the start of the year, I thought it would be another novella, but it's now nearly as long as one of my novels, and it's not finished yet. Next year...)
Finish the audiobook of Death & Magic and have it on sale by April. (Not done. I finished recording it but haven't started editing it.)
Record another audiobook and have it on sale by the end of the year. (Not done.)
Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir. (Not done.)
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. At the start of the year, I had 74 unread books on my Kindle. I now have 56.
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books. (Not done at all. I did upload a couple of book-related videos, though.)
The goals I didn't meet were mainly because I blew the schedule on the Dragonrider sequel. (You'd think I'd know more about planning books by now...) Once I've finished the first draft of the sequel (probably in the next month or two), I'll start editing the Death & Magic audiobook.
As usual, I accomplished a few things that weren't on my list at the start of the year -
I joined a local writers' group and attended several in-person events with them, where I sold some print copies of some of my books.
I published an omnibus edition of The Barefoot Healer series with background material and a bonus short story.
I wrote an article for an online writers' conference on Wattpad. You can read all the articles here or jump straight to mine here.
I wrote a couple of other stories that I'm not quite ready to tell you about yet, because I'm not sure how I'm going to initially release them. (Ooh, you tease.)
For the last eight years or so (since I started writing Death & Magic) I've kept detailed records of how many words I've written. Over Christmas, I put these into a spreadsheet to work out monthly and yearly totals, and discovered that I wrote 150,000 words in 2016, meaning that it's been my most productive year to date, by quite a good margin. (It doesn't sound so impressive when you consider that it averages just over 400 words a day...)
Come back in a couple of days to see what I want to do in 2017!
Mathematics: The Winton Gallery at the Science Museum
A couple of weeks ago, I paid a visit to the Science Museum to take a look at their new mathematics gallery. They'd had a maths gallery for as long as I could remember, but it had been rather neglected in recent years, and seemed haphazard in its organisation and choice of exhibits. The new one occupies the same space as the old one but has been completely revamped.
The unifying theme is how mathematics has shaped our world over the last 400 years. Around the beginning of that period, two major tools were discovered (or invented, depending on your philosophy) that have dominated mathematics ever since - calculus and statistics. Most of the exhibits are about practical applications of one or both of those.
For instance, there is a large section on how statistics have been used to investigate mortality - early actuarial tables, along with reports on Florence Nightingale's campaign to improve military hospitals. The latter are notable for innovations in graphical presentation of data. Nightingale was one of the first people to use pie charts, to show how many soldiers had died of various causes in each month of a year before and after her hygiene improvements.
Speaking of presentation of data, another exhibit concentrates on spreadsheet programs for personal computers. The video display next to it features a cringe-inducing TV advert for Lotus 1-2-3, where an entire office is so thrilled with the notion of being able to use just one program to put a report together that they spontaneously burst into a song and dance routine. (To be fair, people did that a lot in the 1980s.)
Several exhibits concern the use of mechanical calculators and electronic computers to solve mathematical problems that would have been impractical or impossible to solve by hand. There are the inevitable abacuses and cash registers, alongside a machine for predicting tides and a differential analyser built out of Meccano. You might have thought the slack tolerances and light weight of Meccano parts would make such a machine imprecise, but they (more than one was built) were apparently considered good enough for most engineering problems.
The exhibits are thoughtfully laid out and displayed, with the right amount of information for most visitors, and interactive screens nearby for anyone who wants to know more. The exhibition does a good job of explaining why mathematics is important and useful, as well as interesting in its own right. It's one of the museum's permanent galleries, so admission is free. Allow an hour to an hour and a half to go around.
The unifying theme is how mathematics has shaped our world over the last 400 years. Around the beginning of that period, two major tools were discovered (or invented, depending on your philosophy) that have dominated mathematics ever since - calculus and statistics. Most of the exhibits are about practical applications of one or both of those.
For instance, there is a large section on how statistics have been used to investigate mortality - early actuarial tables, along with reports on Florence Nightingale's campaign to improve military hospitals. The latter are notable for innovations in graphical presentation of data. Nightingale was one of the first people to use pie charts, to show how many soldiers had died of various causes in each month of a year before and after her hygiene improvements.
Speaking of presentation of data, another exhibit concentrates on spreadsheet programs for personal computers. The video display next to it features a cringe-inducing TV advert for Lotus 1-2-3, where an entire office is so thrilled with the notion of being able to use just one program to put a report together that they spontaneously burst into a song and dance routine. (To be fair, people did that a lot in the 1980s.)
Several exhibits concern the use of mechanical calculators and electronic computers to solve mathematical problems that would have been impractical or impossible to solve by hand. There are the inevitable abacuses and cash registers, alongside a machine for predicting tides and a differential analyser built out of Meccano. You might have thought the slack tolerances and light weight of Meccano parts would make such a machine imprecise, but they (more than one was built) were apparently considered good enough for most engineering problems.
The exhibits are thoughtfully laid out and displayed, with the right amount of information for most visitors, and interactive screens nearby for anyone who wants to know more. The exhibition does a good job of explaining why mathematics is important and useful, as well as interesting in its own right. It's one of the museum's permanent galleries, so admission is free. Allow an hour to an hour and a half to go around.
December 1, 2016
November's Writing Progress
The good news is that November was one of my most productive months in quite a long time - nearly 25,000 words written. The bad news (if you're waiting for the sequel to
The Accidental Dragonrider
) is that almost all of it was on a side project that might not see the light of day for a while. Still, the first draft of it is almost finished, so I'll soon be back to writing about dragons.
Our local writers' group went to another open mic night earlier in the month. This was The Dial Up, a regular event that happens in various venues around Watford. The night we went, it was in Watford Central Library, fittingly enough, which had just reopened after refurbishment. Our writing went down well - after my performance, the MC said you could've heard a pin drop :-)
Our local writers' group went to another open mic night earlier in the month. This was The Dial Up, a regular event that happens in various venues around Watford. The night we went, it was in Watford Central Library, fittingly enough, which had just reopened after refurbishment. Our writing went down well - after my performance, the MC said you could've heard a pin drop :-)
November 20, 2016
Museum of London Docklands
As the name suggests, Museum of London Docklands is an offshoot of the main Museum of London, which is housed in a converted warehouse in the West India Quay. It aims to tell the story of this part of London, which is also largely the story of Britain's relationship with the rest of the world through trade. Until the 1960s and the invention of the shipping container, most goods entering or leaving Britain passed through London, and most of those passed through Docklands.
Unlike some other museums that encourage you to explore at will (possibly because they have many stories to tell), this one has a definite order that it wants you to see things in. There's a lot more than I expected from looking at the map beforehand - Breda and I went for the afternoon and actually ran out of time before we'd seen everything we wanted to see.
Something that seems obvious in hindsight, but which I'd never considered when writing about warehouses (my stories feature a surprising number of them) - the West India Quay had two rows of warehouses, one for imports and one for exports. The museum is in one of the import warehouses, which perhaps explains why it doesn't seem to say much about exports.
Another thing that surprised me (and it shouldn't, really, with all the research I've had to do about how people used to live and work) was how labour-intensive the process of operating a warehouse was. There was a whole team of men who did nothing all day except weigh goods and keep records of the results, to make sure the correct import duties were paid and the other men weren't pilfering.
Speaking of labour, the museum has a large section about the Atlantic slave trade and London's role in it. This didn't entirely work for me, as it wavers between wanting to show slavery in all its barbarism and petty cruelty, and not wanting to offend modern sensibilities. For instance, the captions insist on referring to "enslaved persons" rather than "slaves," on the grounds that calling someone a slave denies that they're human or fully human. I'd like to think that most people nowadays are enlightened enough to know that slavery is a bad thing, regardless of what you call it.
In spite of its narrow focus, the museum offers a lot of variety, and I think many people will find something of interest here. I'll be going back to see the rest of it, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
Unlike some other museums that encourage you to explore at will (possibly because they have many stories to tell), this one has a definite order that it wants you to see things in. There's a lot more than I expected from looking at the map beforehand - Breda and I went for the afternoon and actually ran out of time before we'd seen everything we wanted to see.
Something that seems obvious in hindsight, but which I'd never considered when writing about warehouses (my stories feature a surprising number of them) - the West India Quay had two rows of warehouses, one for imports and one for exports. The museum is in one of the import warehouses, which perhaps explains why it doesn't seem to say much about exports.
Another thing that surprised me (and it shouldn't, really, with all the research I've had to do about how people used to live and work) was how labour-intensive the process of operating a warehouse was. There was a whole team of men who did nothing all day except weigh goods and keep records of the results, to make sure the correct import duties were paid and the other men weren't pilfering.
Speaking of labour, the museum has a large section about the Atlantic slave trade and London's role in it. This didn't entirely work for me, as it wavers between wanting to show slavery in all its barbarism and petty cruelty, and not wanting to offend modern sensibilities. For instance, the captions insist on referring to "enslaved persons" rather than "slaves," on the grounds that calling someone a slave denies that they're human or fully human. I'd like to think that most people nowadays are enlightened enough to know that slavery is a bad thing, regardless of what you call it.
In spite of its narrow focus, the museum offers a lot of variety, and I think many people will find something of interest here. I'll be going back to see the rest of it, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
October 31, 2016
October's writing progress
The first thing to say is that I survived the open mic night I mentioned last month, and I even sold a couple of books. My main grumble was that the lighting wasn't great, which made me nervous that I'd lose my place whenever I looked up to try to make eye contact with the audience. (It didn't matter for most of the other performers, as they were mostly singer-songwriters, who of course are expected to know their material by heart.)
Since then, I've appeared at a few other local events, all organised by the writers' group that I may or may not have mentioned joining in the spring. They've been fun, and it's been interesting to see how other authors approach the task of engaging with the public and potential readers.
Progress on the Dragonrider sequel has been very good this month - 19,000 words, meaning the first draft now stands at 87,000 words. The only slight concern is that when my critique group read chapter 33 recently, one of them said, "I think this is where your story really starts." I knew I had some trimming to do, but damn...
Since then, I've appeared at a few other local events, all organised by the writers' group that I may or may not have mentioned joining in the spring. They've been fun, and it's been interesting to see how other authors approach the task of engaging with the public and potential readers.
Progress on the Dragonrider sequel has been very good this month - 19,000 words, meaning the first draft now stands at 87,000 words. The only slight concern is that when my critique group read chapter 33 recently, one of them said, "I think this is where your story really starts." I knew I had some trimming to do, but damn...
