Steven J. Pemberton's Blog, page 16
April 2, 2016
Stone & Silence Cover Reveal
Here's what it says in the title - the cover image for Stone & Silence. One pair of hands is mine; the other is my sister's. I'll leave you to guess which is which...
I'm afraid there are no behind the scenes photos for this one. I could tell you how we were cold and wet, and our knees were aching from kneeling for so long, and how my Dad ended up halfway up a stepladder trying to get our hands in properly while excluding anything that looked obviously modern (like our clothes and the brick wall of the garage)... but the truth is I simply forgot to take any extras.
The book itself will be on sale later this month. Watch this space for details.
I'm afraid there are no behind the scenes photos for this one. I could tell you how we were cold and wet, and our knees were aching from kneeling for so long, and how my Dad ended up halfway up a stepladder trying to get our hands in properly while excluding anything that looked obviously modern (like our clothes and the brick wall of the garage)... but the truth is I simply forgot to take any extras.
The book itself will be on sale later this month. Watch this space for details.
March 31, 2016
Sneak Preview of Stone & Silence
This is the first chapter of Stone & Silence, the fourth and final volume of my Barefoot Healer series. The book's due for release in April. Sign up for my newsletter if you'd like to know when it goes on sale.
Spoiler Alert: This chapter gives away some important points of the ending to Death & Magic.
Captain Tagahra of the Kyer Altamar City Watch sat in his office, working his way through the foot-high stack of slates that represented the observations and actions of his Watchmen over the previous day. They told of the usual two or three fights broken up — a stray child reunited with his grateful parents — a complaint about excessive smoke from a smithy — a costermonger to be escorted to a hearing to answer charges of selling short weight.
On the bright side, he hadn’t come across any reports of more unexplained disappearances. But neither had anyone come forward with any information about the ones that had already happened. He made a note to have the patrol check the smithy again in a fortnight, and another to ask Commander Yebran to recommend that the City Assembly authorise a general inspection of all traders’ scales and measures.
There was a hesitant knock at the door. When the door didn’t open after a couple of heartbeats, he called, “Who is it?”
“Peri… Watchman Perinar, Sir.”
“Come in.”
The door opened to reveal the Watch’s newest recruit, a satchel hanging from his shoulder, looking as though he might bolt at any moment. His hand went to his forehead, as though to brush his fringe out of his eyes, and then he seemed to remember his hair had been cut to regulation length, and dropped his hand to his side.
“Don’t fidget, Watchman,” Tagahra said.
“Sorry, Sir.” Perinar shoved his hands behind his back.
“And don’t speak unless it’s necessary. I assume you’ve heard my orders unless it’s obvious you haven’t. Now, report.”
“I, uh, came to see you about the disappearances from the Inland Docks. I’ve read the Watchmen’s reports and the witness statements —”
Tagahra cut him off with, “That was what I told you to do. When I give a man an order, I assume he carries it out.” He gestured for Perinar to sit in the visitor’s chair.
Perinar swallowed nervously as he sat. “The victims all disappeared from dwellings in the streets immediately behind the warehouses, at night or early in the morning.”
Tagahra waved a weary hand. “Watchman Perinar, I am your Captain, not one of your teachers.”
“Yes, Sir,” Perinar said, clearly not understanding.
“Which means you don’t need to tell me things I can read for myself in my men’s reports.”
Perinar glanced at the two stacks of slates on Tagahra’s desk. “Do you read all the reports, Sir?”
Tagahra smirked. “It’s safe to assume I do.”
Perinar cleared his throat. “Well, Sir, five of the six people arrived in the city quite recently — within the last year.”
“So if someone is abducting them, he might be targeting people who wouldn’t be missed for some time after they’ve gone.”
Perinar smiled, perhaps pleased to have finally said something that hadn’t earned him a rebuke.
“I might have thought they’d simply had enough of city life and decided to go home,” Tagahra said, “except that we’ve had so many in such a short time, and no one saw them leave.”
“The dwellings of two victims showed signs of a struggle,” said Perinar, “but none of the doors or windows had been forced. That would suggest the victims knew the abductor, but I obtained lists of their, ah, known associates, is that the term? None of the names matched.”
Tagahra leaned back, gazing at a spot on the wall just above Perinar’s head. “What about the known associates of the other victims?”
“No names in common there either, Sir.”
“Really?” Tagahra straightened. “Six people living that close together, there’d surely be someone that more than one of them is friendly with.”
“The lists were, ah, rather short, Sir.”
Tagahra nodded. Given that the victims had come to the city to work and hadn’t been here long, it stood to reason they wouldn’t know many people. “A wizard could’ve opened the locks without needing a key.”
Perinar shifted awkwardly in his seat.
Tagahra paused, suddenly aware of the possibility of needless offence. “I’m not pointing my finger at any particular wizard, but it is something you learn how to do, isn’t it?”
Perinar glanced at his hands in his lap, as though wondering whether to confess something, then raised his head and stared straight at Tagahra. “It’s not something I was ever taught, Sir, though I was only in my third year when the school closed. I don’t believe Master Degoran would have included such a thing in the later classes.”
Tagahra leaned back again. “I saw Sergeant Adramal do it. Twice.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know what they teach at Thuren.” He paused. “Where is Adramal these days, Sir?”
Tagahra had thought Perinar would never work up the courage to ask him that. The two young wizards had been smitten with one another at Kyturil, though the fires had cooled when they’d been apart, and they’d broken things off shortly before Adramal had joined the Watch. Tagahra wondered what she’d ever seen in him, but perhaps women from the western wilderness had lower standards than the ladies of Kyer Altamar. Perinar had gone home, but had evidently had second thoughts, as he’d returned to the city a few fortnights later, not long after Adramal had fled to Salmar.
Tagahra considered answering Perinar’s question with, You’re not authorised to know that, but that would only make him more determined to find out. He settled for, “I don’t know,” which, he realised, wasn’t really a lie. Yebran had told him she’d gone to Salmar, but hadn’t said whereabouts in Salmar.
“So,” said Tagahra. “A wizard might’ve used a spell to open the doors of the victims’ homes. He might also have used a silence spell to cover any sounds of a struggle.”
“That wouldn’t explain why no one saw any of the victims disappearing, Sir.”
“It was night,” said Tagahra. “Everyone else was asleep.”
“Not everyone, Sir. The first disappearance was just before dawn on Nerupar’s Day. Four people who were on their way to work at the docks passed by the building in Regent’s Row where the victim lived, over the course of perhaps half an hour. None of them saw him leave.”
“Maybe he went out the back.”
“That building doesn’t have a back exit, Sir,” said Perinar.
“How do we know the time of his disappearance, anyway? He could’ve spent the night somewhere else.”
“At about the same time as those four were passing the building, Watchman Kerekh and Watchman Ethkarn met two men in Tharl Street, heading towards the Western Market. One of them appeared to be very drunk, and the other was supporting him. The drunk man’s description matched our missing man.”
Tharl Street and Regent’s Row were only about a hundred yards apart, so the drunk could well be the victim.
“Odd for someone to be that drunk so early in the morning,” said Tagahra. The taverns closed halfway through fourth watch, and the long autumn nights should give plenty of time to sleep it off. “Why do you say he appeared to be drunk?”
“His movements were consistent with drunkenness, Sir, but neither Watchman smelt any drink on him, and his face was white, not red. The other man said he was taking him home.”
“Did they find out which tavern he’d been in?” said Tagahra. “The landlord shouldn’t have let him get into that state.”
“They didn’t ask, Sir, as they weren’t certain that he was drunk.”
“Any idea who the sober man was?”
“They didn’t recognise him, Sir. I checked the description against files, but didn’t find any likely matches. They said he spoke with an unfamiliar accent.”
“It’d be worth circulating his description to the rest of the Watch,” said Tagahra. “And ask Kerekh and Ethkarn to come and see me at their earliest convenience. I have an idea what that accent might sound like.”
“What might that be, Sir?”
“I want to see if it’s anything like the way Sergeant Galbreth talks.”
Thanks for reading. Sign up for my newsletter if you'd like to be informed when the full book goes on sale.
Spoiler Alert: This chapter gives away some important points of the ending to Death & Magic.
Captain Tagahra of the Kyer Altamar City Watch sat in his office, working his way through the foot-high stack of slates that represented the observations and actions of his Watchmen over the previous day. They told of the usual two or three fights broken up — a stray child reunited with his grateful parents — a complaint about excessive smoke from a smithy — a costermonger to be escorted to a hearing to answer charges of selling short weight.
On the bright side, he hadn’t come across any reports of more unexplained disappearances. But neither had anyone come forward with any information about the ones that had already happened. He made a note to have the patrol check the smithy again in a fortnight, and another to ask Commander Yebran to recommend that the City Assembly authorise a general inspection of all traders’ scales and measures.
There was a hesitant knock at the door. When the door didn’t open after a couple of heartbeats, he called, “Who is it?”
“Peri… Watchman Perinar, Sir.”
“Come in.”
The door opened to reveal the Watch’s newest recruit, a satchel hanging from his shoulder, looking as though he might bolt at any moment. His hand went to his forehead, as though to brush his fringe out of his eyes, and then he seemed to remember his hair had been cut to regulation length, and dropped his hand to his side.
“Don’t fidget, Watchman,” Tagahra said.
“Sorry, Sir.” Perinar shoved his hands behind his back.
“And don’t speak unless it’s necessary. I assume you’ve heard my orders unless it’s obvious you haven’t. Now, report.”
“I, uh, came to see you about the disappearances from the Inland Docks. I’ve read the Watchmen’s reports and the witness statements —”
Tagahra cut him off with, “That was what I told you to do. When I give a man an order, I assume he carries it out.” He gestured for Perinar to sit in the visitor’s chair.
Perinar swallowed nervously as he sat. “The victims all disappeared from dwellings in the streets immediately behind the warehouses, at night or early in the morning.”
Tagahra waved a weary hand. “Watchman Perinar, I am your Captain, not one of your teachers.”
“Yes, Sir,” Perinar said, clearly not understanding.
“Which means you don’t need to tell me things I can read for myself in my men’s reports.”
Perinar glanced at the two stacks of slates on Tagahra’s desk. “Do you read all the reports, Sir?”
Tagahra smirked. “It’s safe to assume I do.”
Perinar cleared his throat. “Well, Sir, five of the six people arrived in the city quite recently — within the last year.”
“So if someone is abducting them, he might be targeting people who wouldn’t be missed for some time after they’ve gone.”
Perinar smiled, perhaps pleased to have finally said something that hadn’t earned him a rebuke.
“I might have thought they’d simply had enough of city life and decided to go home,” Tagahra said, “except that we’ve had so many in such a short time, and no one saw them leave.”
“The dwellings of two victims showed signs of a struggle,” said Perinar, “but none of the doors or windows had been forced. That would suggest the victims knew the abductor, but I obtained lists of their, ah, known associates, is that the term? None of the names matched.”
Tagahra leaned back, gazing at a spot on the wall just above Perinar’s head. “What about the known associates of the other victims?”
“No names in common there either, Sir.”
“Really?” Tagahra straightened. “Six people living that close together, there’d surely be someone that more than one of them is friendly with.”
“The lists were, ah, rather short, Sir.”
Tagahra nodded. Given that the victims had come to the city to work and hadn’t been here long, it stood to reason they wouldn’t know many people. “A wizard could’ve opened the locks without needing a key.”
Perinar shifted awkwardly in his seat.
Tagahra paused, suddenly aware of the possibility of needless offence. “I’m not pointing my finger at any particular wizard, but it is something you learn how to do, isn’t it?”
Perinar glanced at his hands in his lap, as though wondering whether to confess something, then raised his head and stared straight at Tagahra. “It’s not something I was ever taught, Sir, though I was only in my third year when the school closed. I don’t believe Master Degoran would have included such a thing in the later classes.”
Tagahra leaned back again. “I saw Sergeant Adramal do it. Twice.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know what they teach at Thuren.” He paused. “Where is Adramal these days, Sir?”
Tagahra had thought Perinar would never work up the courage to ask him that. The two young wizards had been smitten with one another at Kyturil, though the fires had cooled when they’d been apart, and they’d broken things off shortly before Adramal had joined the Watch. Tagahra wondered what she’d ever seen in him, but perhaps women from the western wilderness had lower standards than the ladies of Kyer Altamar. Perinar had gone home, but had evidently had second thoughts, as he’d returned to the city a few fortnights later, not long after Adramal had fled to Salmar.
Tagahra considered answering Perinar’s question with, You’re not authorised to know that, but that would only make him more determined to find out. He settled for, “I don’t know,” which, he realised, wasn’t really a lie. Yebran had told him she’d gone to Salmar, but hadn’t said whereabouts in Salmar.
“So,” said Tagahra. “A wizard might’ve used a spell to open the doors of the victims’ homes. He might also have used a silence spell to cover any sounds of a struggle.”
“That wouldn’t explain why no one saw any of the victims disappearing, Sir.”
“It was night,” said Tagahra. “Everyone else was asleep.”
“Not everyone, Sir. The first disappearance was just before dawn on Nerupar’s Day. Four people who were on their way to work at the docks passed by the building in Regent’s Row where the victim lived, over the course of perhaps half an hour. None of them saw him leave.”
“Maybe he went out the back.”
“That building doesn’t have a back exit, Sir,” said Perinar.
“How do we know the time of his disappearance, anyway? He could’ve spent the night somewhere else.”
“At about the same time as those four were passing the building, Watchman Kerekh and Watchman Ethkarn met two men in Tharl Street, heading towards the Western Market. One of them appeared to be very drunk, and the other was supporting him. The drunk man’s description matched our missing man.”
Tharl Street and Regent’s Row were only about a hundred yards apart, so the drunk could well be the victim.
“Odd for someone to be that drunk so early in the morning,” said Tagahra. The taverns closed halfway through fourth watch, and the long autumn nights should give plenty of time to sleep it off. “Why do you say he appeared to be drunk?”
“His movements were consistent with drunkenness, Sir, but neither Watchman smelt any drink on him, and his face was white, not red. The other man said he was taking him home.”
“Did they find out which tavern he’d been in?” said Tagahra. “The landlord shouldn’t have let him get into that state.”
“They didn’t ask, Sir, as they weren’t certain that he was drunk.”
“Any idea who the sober man was?”
“They didn’t recognise him, Sir. I checked the description against files, but didn’t find any likely matches. They said he spoke with an unfamiliar accent.”
“It’d be worth circulating his description to the rest of the Watch,” said Tagahra. “And ask Kerekh and Ethkarn to come and see me at their earliest convenience. I have an idea what that accent might sound like.”
“What might that be, Sir?”
“I want to see if it’s anything like the way Sergeant Galbreth talks.”
Thanks for reading. Sign up for my newsletter if you'd like to be informed when the full book goes on sale.
March's Writing Progress
Stone & Silence went to my beta readers at the start of the month. Most of them have come back with comments now. They all found some problems, but fortunately nothing that will require a lot of rewriting to fix, so we're still on track for a release in April.
I finished culling the words I tend to overuse. Then I read the whole book aloud to myself, which is good for catching typos, grammatical errors and awkward phrasing. (If I can't read a sentence aloud without tripping over it, it's a safe bet that the reader will find it difficult too.) I found and fixed some more continuity errors and plot holes, so even though I've cut quite a bit since last month, the book is actually slightly longer than it was then. It now stands at 125,000 words.
While I was waiting for the beta readers to get back to me, I started writing my next book, a sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. I'm just shy of 10,000 words into the first draft. It doesn't have a title yet, and currently goes by the very imaginative working title of Dragonrider 2.
Stay tuned for a sneak preview of Stone & Silence!
I finished culling the words I tend to overuse. Then I read the whole book aloud to myself, which is good for catching typos, grammatical errors and awkward phrasing. (If I can't read a sentence aloud without tripping over it, it's a safe bet that the reader will find it difficult too.) I found and fixed some more continuity errors and plot holes, so even though I've cut quite a bit since last month, the book is actually slightly longer than it was then. It now stands at 125,000 words.
While I was waiting for the beta readers to get back to me, I started writing my next book, a sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider. I'm just shy of 10,000 words into the first draft. It doesn't have a title yet, and currently goes by the very imaginative working title of Dragonrider 2.
Stay tuned for a sneak preview of Stone & Silence!
March 10, 2016
Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Genius
Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Genius is a new exhibition at the Science Museum in London. Leonardo is perhaps best remembered today for his paintings, but he was the archetypal "Renaissance Man," studying and advancing almost every area of human invention and ingenuity.
As the title suggests, this exhibition is about the machines he designed. Some were built and worked very well, some weren't built but might have worked, and some were wholly impractical - usually because of the limitations of available materials or lack of a suitable power source. (Steam engines wouldn't be invented for another couple of centuries, so machinery was limited to water, wind, human or animal power.) Most of the models here were originally built in Milan for an exhibition in 1952, the 500th anniversary of his birth. 2016 doesn't seem to be a significant anniversary in his life, so I guess someone at the Science Museum just likes him a lot.
Next to each model is a little video screen showing a computer-generated animation of how each machine worked, and there are interactive displays and quizzes dotted throughout.
There's a tendency nowadays to see Leonardo as a genius unrivalled by any predecessors or contemporaries, but he existed within a rich Italian tradition and culture of art and engineering. His reputation in engineering rests mainly on his skill as a draughtsman. The exhibition reproduces many drawings and sketches from his notebooks, which are remarkable in their precision and attention to detail. You can almost believe that his pictures of tanks and gliders and helicopters are representations of things he saw, not things he imagined.
Allow about an hour to go around, depending on how long you want to spend watching the videos and playing with the interactive exhibits. Admission is £10 for adults, including an optional £1 donation to the museum, and the exhibition runs until 4 September 2016.
As the title suggests, this exhibition is about the machines he designed. Some were built and worked very well, some weren't built but might have worked, and some were wholly impractical - usually because of the limitations of available materials or lack of a suitable power source. (Steam engines wouldn't be invented for another couple of centuries, so machinery was limited to water, wind, human or animal power.) Most of the models here were originally built in Milan for an exhibition in 1952, the 500th anniversary of his birth. 2016 doesn't seem to be a significant anniversary in his life, so I guess someone at the Science Museum just likes him a lot.
Next to each model is a little video screen showing a computer-generated animation of how each machine worked, and there are interactive displays and quizzes dotted throughout.
There's a tendency nowadays to see Leonardo as a genius unrivalled by any predecessors or contemporaries, but he existed within a rich Italian tradition and culture of art and engineering. His reputation in engineering rests mainly on his skill as a draughtsman. The exhibition reproduces many drawings and sketches from his notebooks, which are remarkable in their precision and attention to detail. You can almost believe that his pictures of tanks and gliders and helicopters are representations of things he saw, not things he imagined.
Allow about an hour to go around, depending on how long you want to spend watching the videos and playing with the interactive exhibits. Admission is £10 for adults, including an optional £1 donation to the museum, and the exhibition runs until 4 September 2016.
March 7, 2016
States of Mind at the Wellcome Collection
The Wellcome Collection in London "explores the connection between medicine, life and art." I went to a new temporary exhibition there, called States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness.
Consciousness is a tricky subject for an exhibition, or any kind of presentation, as nobody really knows what it is, or how it works, or why we have it. States of Mind looks mainly at what happens when consciousness (or the brain in general) goes wrong or behaves in unexpected ways. As there are so many possibilities, the curators have had to be very choosy, and the limited space means they can't go into much depth with any of them. A good chunk of the space is empty, though, perhaps to let you stand back and properly appreciate the art pieces. I think the exhibition would be better without most of these, though as I've said elsewhere, I have a very low opinion of most modern art.
The most interesting sections were about false memory syndrome (apparently about a quarter of adults can be persuaded to believe that some made-up event happened to them when they were children), and new research that could allow doctors to "talk" to people in comas. The latter involves wheeling the patient into an MRI scanner and asking yes-or-no questions. The scanner doesn't have the resolution to distinguish the thought of "yes" from the thought of "no" (and even if it did, we have no idea what those look like). So instead, the researchers told the patients, "For 'yes,' imagine yourself playing tennis. For 'no,' imagine yourself walking through the rooms of your home." Each thought causes activity in different regions of the brain, far enough apart that the scanner can reliably distinguish them. (Interestingly, imagining yourself doing something causes activity in the same regions of the brain that are active when you actually do it.) So this could provide a useful test for distinguishing coma patients who might eventually wake up from those who probably won't.
Allow about an hour to go round. Admission is free, and the exhibition runs until 16 October 2016.
Consciousness is a tricky subject for an exhibition, or any kind of presentation, as nobody really knows what it is, or how it works, or why we have it. States of Mind looks mainly at what happens when consciousness (or the brain in general) goes wrong or behaves in unexpected ways. As there are so many possibilities, the curators have had to be very choosy, and the limited space means they can't go into much depth with any of them. A good chunk of the space is empty, though, perhaps to let you stand back and properly appreciate the art pieces. I think the exhibition would be better without most of these, though as I've said elsewhere, I have a very low opinion of most modern art.
The most interesting sections were about false memory syndrome (apparently about a quarter of adults can be persuaded to believe that some made-up event happened to them when they were children), and new research that could allow doctors to "talk" to people in comas. The latter involves wheeling the patient into an MRI scanner and asking yes-or-no questions. The scanner doesn't have the resolution to distinguish the thought of "yes" from the thought of "no" (and even if it did, we have no idea what those look like). So instead, the researchers told the patients, "For 'yes,' imagine yourself playing tennis. For 'no,' imagine yourself walking through the rooms of your home." Each thought causes activity in different regions of the brain, far enough apart that the scanner can reliably distinguish them. (Interestingly, imagining yourself doing something causes activity in the same regions of the brain that are active when you actually do it.) So this could provide a useful test for distinguishing coma patients who might eventually wake up from those who probably won't.
Allow about an hour to go round. Admission is free, and the exhibition runs until 16 October 2016.
February 29, 2016
February's Writing Progress
I finished the second draft of Stone & Silence on 4th February and started the third draft on 6th. I'm now about four-fifths of the way through that. I've cut about 12,500 words from the second draft, and the book now stands at 124,000 words. Every time I get to this stage in writing a book, I'm amazed at how much fluff crept into the first draft, and how obvious it is when I start looking for it.
I usually tell people that my second draft is for structure or "big picture" items - plot and character arcs - and my third draft is for language and style - I've figured out what I want to say, now I have to say it in the best and fewest words possible. In practice, there's a lot of overlap between those phases.
At the moment, I'm focused on culling the words that my critique group tell me that I use too much (like "that" and "like"). My editing program has a mode that allows me to highlight all occurrences of these words, so when I see a lot of red on the screen, I know I have some work to do. I don't always remove excess occurrences of these words, but seeing a lot of red often prompts me to ask whether there's a better way to write that passage. There usually is :-)
This highlight mode also displays dialogue in a different colour from the rest of the text, which makes sections with a lot of dialogue or a lot of narrative stand out. Those are likely to be lazy writing, or have pacing problems.
It should be going to beta readers in the next week or two. Unless they find any massive problems, I should be on-track for a release in April.
I usually tell people that my second draft is for structure or "big picture" items - plot and character arcs - and my third draft is for language and style - I've figured out what I want to say, now I have to say it in the best and fewest words possible. In practice, there's a lot of overlap between those phases.
At the moment, I'm focused on culling the words that my critique group tell me that I use too much (like "that" and "like"). My editing program has a mode that allows me to highlight all occurrences of these words, so when I see a lot of red on the screen, I know I have some work to do. I don't always remove excess occurrences of these words, but seeing a lot of red often prompts me to ask whether there's a better way to write that passage. There usually is :-)
This highlight mode also displays dialogue in a different colour from the rest of the text, which makes sections with a lot of dialogue or a lot of narrative stand out. Those are likely to be lazy writing, or have pacing problems.
It should be going to beta readers in the next week or two. Unless they find any massive problems, I should be on-track for a release in April.
February 3, 2016
The Crime Museum Uncovered
The Crime Museum Uncovered could be described as a museum within a museum. The Museum of London plays host to selected objects from the Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum (popularly known as the Black Museum). Normally, only police officers and carefully chosen visitors are allowed to see these, so this exhibition is a rare opportunity for insight into crime and the methods used to detect and solve it.
Most of the artefacts in this exhibition were used as evidence in the relevant trials, so there isn't much said about unsolved crimes. (In fact, any object that relates to an unsolved crime might still be needed as evidence in a trial, and so wouldn't be in the Crime Museum to begin with.) The exhibits are a mixture of specific cases and general information about some type of crime, such as counterfeiting and drug trafficking. The specific cases seem to have been chosen mainly for their notoriety, though some (also) highlight advances in methods of detection, such as Dr Crippen, who was the first criminal to be caught through the use of wireless telegraphy, and Donald Thomas, the first to be caught after the police asked the BBC to broadcast an appeal for help. (Remarkably, the latter wasn't until 1948, 26 years after the BBC started transmissions.)
At the end is a short video in which various people ask whether it's appropriate to show these objects to the public, and if so, how they should be presented. The Crime Museum is meant for training police officers, and to bring (some of) it out to the public risks causing distress to victims and their families and risks making voyeurs of the patrons. I thought the exhibition handles the subject sensitively and respectfully, though I suppose I might feel differently if I or anyone I know had ever been a victim of violent crime. (Then again, if I had been such a victim, I probably wouldn't have gone to the exhibition in the first place...)
Tickets are £10 to £15 for adults, and the exhibition runs until 10 April 2016.
Most of the artefacts in this exhibition were used as evidence in the relevant trials, so there isn't much said about unsolved crimes. (In fact, any object that relates to an unsolved crime might still be needed as evidence in a trial, and so wouldn't be in the Crime Museum to begin with.) The exhibits are a mixture of specific cases and general information about some type of crime, such as counterfeiting and drug trafficking. The specific cases seem to have been chosen mainly for their notoriety, though some (also) highlight advances in methods of detection, such as Dr Crippen, who was the first criminal to be caught through the use of wireless telegraphy, and Donald Thomas, the first to be caught after the police asked the BBC to broadcast an appeal for help. (Remarkably, the latter wasn't until 1948, 26 years after the BBC started transmissions.)
At the end is a short video in which various people ask whether it's appropriate to show these objects to the public, and if so, how they should be presented. The Crime Museum is meant for training police officers, and to bring (some of) it out to the public risks causing distress to victims and their families and risks making voyeurs of the patrons. I thought the exhibition handles the subject sensitively and respectfully, though I suppose I might feel differently if I or anyone I know had ever been a victim of violent crime. (Then again, if I had been such a victim, I probably wouldn't have gone to the exhibition in the first place...)
Tickets are £10 to £15 for adults, and the exhibition runs until 10 April 2016.
January 31, 2016
January's Writing Progress
Progress continues on Stone & Silence, the fourth and final Barefoot Healer book. I'm nearly done with the second draft, with 81 comments still to implement. That sounds like a lot, though I started with over 600. Most of them are "find a better or shorter way to say this" rather than "rewrite this whole chapter to fix this massive plot hole." I've recruited the beta readers, and the book should be going to them in about a month.
I finished recording the audiobook of Death & Magic, which came in at 46 hours and 40 minutes of raw material. I started editing it, but put that on hold to concentrate on Stone & Silence. It'll probably end up being 11 or 12 hours, which sounds a lot, but is fairly typical for a modern novel.
I finished recording the audiobook of Death & Magic, which came in at 46 hours and 40 minutes of raw material. I started editing it, but put that on hold to concentrate on Stone & Silence. It'll probably end up being 11 or 12 hours, which sounds a lot, but is fairly typical for a modern novel.
January 14, 2016
Big Bang Data
On 9 January, Breda and I went to see Big Bang Data, an exhibition at Somerset House in London. The tagline is "Art, Selfies and Surveillance," which I'd say is a fair description. It examines how our ability to generate, gather and analyse vast quantities of data has exploded in the last few years, and what implications that has for individuals and societies.
In 2009, humanity produced more data than we had produced in the whole of our history up to that point. By 2012, it was estimated that we produce 2.5 exabytes every day, or about 2.5 quintillion bytes. (A quintillion is 1 followed by 18 zeroes.) These sorts of numbers are hard to even comprehend. One exhibit comes from an artist who asked Twitter users to post a tweet during a particular second of a particular day. About 5000 people took part. The artist printed the results, and they occupy four books, each as thick as a dictionary. (Though he seems to have included everybody's profile picture as well as the actual tweets, some of which were also pictures instead of text.)
I found the exhibition a bit of a mixed bag. The presentation and layout aren't great - some pieces are too spread out, wasting space, while others are crammed together. I didn't care for most of the art pieces, finding them meaningless or trivial. (Though I should point out that I have a very low opinion of most of what passes for art nowadays. It's only a matter of time before I'll be thrown out of the Tate Modern for ruining other visitors' enjoyment by laughing...)
The pieces that try to do something with publicly-available data are more interesting, though I was surprised at how little processing the computer does in most cases. The interest comes mainly from the fact that some type of data is available that wasn't available before, and there's a lot of it. For instance, there's one map that tries to work out how happy or sad London is at the present moment. It looks at Twitter and Instagram posts that have geographical coordinates indicating they were posted in London, and then searches them for words that probably indicate the poster was happy or sad when they made the post. It doesn't attempt to understand the meaning of the post, and so could be quite badly misled by sarcasm and irony. I suppose the thinking is that most people won't do that sort of thing (or not deliberately, anyway), and so if you can gather enough posts, the average will usually be quite close to the truth.
It's not stated whether the creators took account of how the demographics differ between "the set of all Londoners" and "the set of all Londoners who have an Internet-connected device that can geotag their posts and have a Twitter or Instagram account and make posts to it that can reveal how they're feeling." If you assume they're the same, you could be in for a nasty shock if you use the map to make any important decisions. (Remind me to tell you sometime about the racist pothole detector app...)
There's a big section on how data can be misused and abused, whose centrepiece is a video about the Edward Snowden revelations. The main thrust of this is that the various government spying programmes are illegal under the Fourth Amendment to the US constitution. I'm not sure how much that means to your average visitor to a British museum. (For that matter, I wonder how many Americans could tell you what it means without looking it up...)
An off-the-wall idea towards the end is that we might be less upset about companies and governments using our data if they had to pay us for the privilege. It has a little app where you can construct a dummy license that says who can do what with your personal data and how much they have to pay you. It talks about using blockchain (the technology that underpins Bitcoin) for tracking and enforcement, but it's not clear what would stop a dishonest person or organisation from copying your data out of that system and into an unrestricted one, where they could sell it against your wishes. It's also not clear why a company that decided to use this system wouldn't simply recover the money they paid you by charging higher prices (and then spin it as "tell us everything about yourself and get a discount!") On the other hand, if the system becomes widespread, it might prompt companies to think about what data they actually need, and what data makes a difference to their profits and customer satisfaction, rather than vacuuming up everything it's not actually illegal for them to collect. (It wouldn't stop the likes of the NSA, because what they're doing is already illegal, and they know it's illegal, and they don't care.)
Overall, the exhibition is thought-provoking, if a little uneven. I may have expected too much of it, as I've already come across many of the concepts and issues in online articles and in the course of my job. If you're not an IT specialist or a spy, you might find it eye-opening. Tickets are £12.50 for adults, and the exhibition runs until 20 March 2016.
In 2009, humanity produced more data than we had produced in the whole of our history up to that point. By 2012, it was estimated that we produce 2.5 exabytes every day, or about 2.5 quintillion bytes. (A quintillion is 1 followed by 18 zeroes.) These sorts of numbers are hard to even comprehend. One exhibit comes from an artist who asked Twitter users to post a tweet during a particular second of a particular day. About 5000 people took part. The artist printed the results, and they occupy four books, each as thick as a dictionary. (Though he seems to have included everybody's profile picture as well as the actual tweets, some of which were also pictures instead of text.)
I found the exhibition a bit of a mixed bag. The presentation and layout aren't great - some pieces are too spread out, wasting space, while others are crammed together. I didn't care for most of the art pieces, finding them meaningless or trivial. (Though I should point out that I have a very low opinion of most of what passes for art nowadays. It's only a matter of time before I'll be thrown out of the Tate Modern for ruining other visitors' enjoyment by laughing...)
The pieces that try to do something with publicly-available data are more interesting, though I was surprised at how little processing the computer does in most cases. The interest comes mainly from the fact that some type of data is available that wasn't available before, and there's a lot of it. For instance, there's one map that tries to work out how happy or sad London is at the present moment. It looks at Twitter and Instagram posts that have geographical coordinates indicating they were posted in London, and then searches them for words that probably indicate the poster was happy or sad when they made the post. It doesn't attempt to understand the meaning of the post, and so could be quite badly misled by sarcasm and irony. I suppose the thinking is that most people won't do that sort of thing (or not deliberately, anyway), and so if you can gather enough posts, the average will usually be quite close to the truth.
It's not stated whether the creators took account of how the demographics differ between "the set of all Londoners" and "the set of all Londoners who have an Internet-connected device that can geotag their posts and have a Twitter or Instagram account and make posts to it that can reveal how they're feeling." If you assume they're the same, you could be in for a nasty shock if you use the map to make any important decisions. (Remind me to tell you sometime about the racist pothole detector app...)
There's a big section on how data can be misused and abused, whose centrepiece is a video about the Edward Snowden revelations. The main thrust of this is that the various government spying programmes are illegal under the Fourth Amendment to the US constitution. I'm not sure how much that means to your average visitor to a British museum. (For that matter, I wonder how many Americans could tell you what it means without looking it up...)
An off-the-wall idea towards the end is that we might be less upset about companies and governments using our data if they had to pay us for the privilege. It has a little app where you can construct a dummy license that says who can do what with your personal data and how much they have to pay you. It talks about using blockchain (the technology that underpins Bitcoin) for tracking and enforcement, but it's not clear what would stop a dishonest person or organisation from copying your data out of that system and into an unrestricted one, where they could sell it against your wishes. It's also not clear why a company that decided to use this system wouldn't simply recover the money they paid you by charging higher prices (and then spin it as "tell us everything about yourself and get a discount!") On the other hand, if the system becomes widespread, it might prompt companies to think about what data they actually need, and what data makes a difference to their profits and customer satisfaction, rather than vacuuming up everything it's not actually illegal for them to collect. (It wouldn't stop the likes of the NSA, because what they're doing is already illegal, and they know it's illegal, and they don't care.)
Overall, the exhibition is thought-provoking, if a little uneven. I may have expected too much of it, as I've already come across many of the concepts and issues in online articles and in the course of my job. If you're not an IT specialist or a spy, you might find it eye-opening. Tickets are £12.50 for adults, and the exhibition runs until 20 March 2016.
January 1, 2016
Goals for 2016
This is what I'd like to achieve this year in terms of writing and reading...
Finish Stone & Silence and have it on sale by April.
Finish the audiobook of Death & Magic and have it on sale by April.
Record another audiobook and have it on sale by the end of the year.
Write the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider and have it on sale by the end of the year. This will probably be another novella, so it won't take as long as the other books.
Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir.
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. I currently have 74 unread books on my Kindle.
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books. One of these years, I will get around to finishing that film about the paddle steamer Waverley...
Come back in twelve months to see how I got on!
Finish Stone & Silence and have it on sale by April.
Finish the audiobook of Death & Magic and have it on sale by April.
Record another audiobook and have it on sale by the end of the year.
Write the sequel to The Accidental Dragonrider and have it on sale by the end of the year. This will probably be another novella, so it won't take as long as the other books.
Start writing the sequel to The Mirrors of Elangir.
Don’t let the TBR pile get any bigger. I currently have 74 unread books on my Kindle.
Upload at least ten minutes of edited video, not including any videos that promote my books. One of these years, I will get around to finishing that film about the paddle steamer Waverley...
Come back in twelve months to see how I got on!
