Chris James's Blog, page 16

Further Evidence of Autumn

[image error]This is the time of year when I am most grateful for living within a 20-minute drive of the centre of a European capital city (depending on the traffic, natch), yet right next to thousands of hectares of forest.  Like so much in life, we can’t see the actual process of the changes taking place around us.  Only by repeated observation can we evidence that the colours of the leaves do in fact change.  It’s the same thing with seeing your children grow up: this week, Eldest Daughter passed her driving test at the first attempt.  I told her how proud I was of her, that she should be proud of herself (although to bear in mind that she still doesn’t have too much actual driving experience), and then gave her a playful clip round the ear for making me feel old *sigh*

So, here are some more autumnal photographs, taken today.  And because this morning I had Crazy the dog with me, at the end are a few photos of her doing her favourite thing: chasing the sticks I throw

Documenting the New Motorway, #5: Rising Columns

Today we’ve had a beautiful early autumnal day, so I decided it was high time to cycle back to the Vistula and see how the bridge for the new S2/A2 motorway extension is coming along.

The first two shots are from the east bank looking across the river to the west bank, then there are two shots of the supports on the east bank:

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Here are images of more supports as the motorway comes down to ground level:

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This bridge is for a local road that will pass over the motorway.  It is interesting to see how much excavation is still required for the carriageway underneath:

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Here you can see how the new motorway has cut through the forest.  Eighteen months ago, there were only trees and cycle tracks here:

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This shot shows ul. Patriotow (Patriots’ street) between Radosc and Miedzeszyn.  That large swath of sand to the right is where the carriageway will go under the street, because that seems to have been the preferred solution given that there is also a railway track on Patriotow:

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Here are two ‘before’ shots that will not have ‘after’ shots on completion, as they look from the middle of the motorway at Radosc: the first is looking west, the second looking east:

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Finally, at Radosc the new motorway will be raised on stilts to allow the passage of wildlife through the forest (that’s your author there for scale); again, 18 months ago there were only trees here…

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Evidence of Autumn

It’s been a long, hot summer here in Poland, on a latitude that is really too far north to expect five months of near-unbroken heat.  But at last it’s on the way out now.  Here are some shots I took today evidencing autumn’s arrival.  Later, and by popular demand, are a few more shots of our chickens, which have turned out to be excellent gardeners with exceptional weeding skills.  Finally, Evidence of Autumn is also the title of a Genesis B-side from 1980.  And, as you might expect, any Genesis B-side is way better than most other bands’ A-sides, so enjoy

Elon Musk Announces New Invention, Causes World’s First Mass Ejaculation Event

Elon Musk today unveiled his latest technological invention, and caused what his supporters claim was the world’s first “Mass Ejaculation Event” or MEE.  In the first few minutes after Musk made the announcement on social media, scientists at seismic monitoring stations around the world reported a sudden uptick in seismic activity which, Musk supporters claim, was consistent with millions of men under the age of 40 involuntarily ejaculating at the news of Musk’s latest invention.

But just what was the earth-shattering announcement that caused the world’s first ever MEE?

A spokesman for Musk, Dave Bonehead, explained: “Elon’s newest invention is his most radical and unique, yet.  He calls it the ‘wheel’, which is a device made in the shape of a perfect mathematical circle.  Elon believes it will have many uses in numerous applications.”

[image error]When other commentators pointed out that the wheel had in fact been invented several thousand years ago and was already widely used, Bonehead elaborated: “They are missing the point.  This is Elon Musk’s wheel.  He has already drawn up plans for the ‘Really Fucking Big Wheel’ and even the playful ‘Silly Fucking Investors’ Wheel’, because Elon wants everyone to know he does have a sense of humour, so everyone will love him.  Nevertheless, you have to understand that this also represents the source of Elon’s genius: by putting a profanity in the name of his inventions, he looks incredibly fashionable, because, before him, no one in the world had ever profaned in public.  His brilliance knows no boundaries.”

However, a number of respected scientists from around the world were quick to issue a joint response to Musk’s ‘wheel’, which was posted to social media this afternoon and which read: “Dear Elon, just because you still can’t match what NASA was doing 40 years ago, that doesn’t mean you should act like a complete prick—however much you want future historians to record you as the poster boy for the Age of Stupid.”

[image error]Nevertheless, Bonehead remained positive, saying: “Firstly, everyone under the age of 40 knows that anyone over the age of 40 hasn’t got a fucking clue what they’re talking about, which is what Elon told me to say.  Secondly, Elon is definitely on a roll.  As he announces further unique inventions, we all know that a compliant media will publicise them without questioning their pointlessness, so we can expect more Mass Ejaculation Events in the near future—watch this space!”

Famous Sex Worker Contracts Sexually Transmitted Disease

There was widespread shock in England today when the most famous sex worker in the country was confirmed to have contracted the debilitating sexually transmitted disease Polonium Novoichok Extremis, known colloquially as ‘Russian Clap’.

Speaking from her luxury penthouse overlooking the river Thames, the sex worker, who goes by the pseudonym of ‘London’, told our reporter: “Obviously, I’m devastated.  Everyone knows that for centuries, I’ve been more than happy to open my legs for anyone with money.  I may not be in my prime anymore, perhaps not as beautiful as I was two or three hundred years ago, but that doesn’t mean I deserve to get such a nasty dose of Russian Clap.  Really, I never had any trouble with those delightful Huguenots.”

However, doctors were confident that London would recover, providing that everyone just pretended nothing had happened.  One leading gynaecologist said: “As always, we expect London will make a full recovery after the appropriate palliative care of turning a blind eye to international criminality, although of course we also expect that next year Brexit will leave her completely fucked anyway.”

Headlines and Deadlines

[image error]Today marks one year since I published The Repulse Chronicles, Book One: Onslaught, and it feels like it’s only been a couple of months.  A year ago, I certainly expected and planned to have Book Two written and ready to go by now, but it isn’t (stop cheering at the back!).  Although the reasons are many and varied, there is a note of irony in why Book Two will not be released until the beginning of next year, at the earliest.

When I put out Repulse two years ago, I had intended it to be my last novel.  And it would’ve been had it performed as poorly as my preceding books.  But it didn’t; quite a few of you read it, and that encouraged me to write the Chronicles companion series.  However, in August 2016 I didn’t know Repulse was going to find so many readers, so a good acquaintance of mine put me in touch with The Polish History Institute, who, bless them, have kept me quite busy this year; so busy, in fact, that Invasion remains only partially written.  So the deadline has to be moved back to the first few months of next year.  Hopefully.

Another thing I find curious is how the news agenda has changed since I wrote and published Repulse.  Obviously, much of my inspiration for that book came from what the headlines were in 2015.  Since then, the news agenda has changed completely.  Today we lurch through the bright new uplands of the Age of Stupid, where ignorance is celebrated and verifiable facts treated with the contempt that used to be reserved for falsehood.  Today satire can barely begin to mock the reality in western governments’ race to the bottom of feeble-minded simplicity.

At some level, of course, this isn’t even news.  Anyone who knows Russian history and Putin’s biography knows exactly why the Age of Stupid has come to pass.  It is quite easy to imagine the embittered, young, East German KGB agent’s shock and humiliation at the abrupt collapse of his beloved Soviet Empire.  It’s even easier to imagine his anger at the way companies from the West moved in like third-rate carpetbaggers to steal what they could from the Russian people.  If anyone was going to thieve Russia’s vast wealth, it was always going to be other Russians.  And so they have.

Putin will never attack the West militarily, because he knows where it would end.  But make no mistake, from Moscow’s perspective Russia is at war with the West; a war of mis- and disinformation; a war of classic Russian duplicity, misdirection and obfuscation.  The UK and US have fallen for it hook, line and sinker, with the Great Brexit Con and Putin’s asset installed in the White House.

Europeans, however, tend to have a better grasp of history, and apart from Putin’s useful idiots in Poland and Hungary, we have so far proved relatively immune to the social-media salvos of this new war.

In another little irony for me, an early draft of Repulse did have Russia as the antagonist, with the 2062–2064 war taking place over the natural resources in the Arctic Circle.  I recall at the time ditching that scenario because, one, in the next fifty years the importance of natural resources will lessen, and two, Russia was so enfeebled militarily the story did not seem believable.

But who needs a strong military when you can undermine and destabilise your enemies’ societies without firing a shot?

Two Years of Gratitude So It’s Time for a Giveaway

[image error]Today is the second anniversary of the publication of my novel Repulse, Europe at War 2062–2064, and if you’re one of the 4,700-odd readers who have given it a try over the last two years, thank you.  To mark the occasion, for the next two weeks you can get an e-version of any of my other books for free.

How?

All you have to do is post a review of Repulse on the book’s product page in your local Amazon territory or on Goodreads, then contact me at the email address chris[@]chrisjamesauthor[.]com (remove the square brackets) or at any of my social media accounts.  Include your email address, the title of the book you’d like, and then, with gratitude, I will gift you a copy of that title.  Reviews are vital to all authors, whether good, bad or ugly, although I assume that if you didn’t enjoy Repulse, you’d not really be too keen on anything else I’ve written, but nevertheless the offer still stands.

In addition, this giveaway also extends to those of you kind readers who have already posted a review of Repulse, so please contact me if you like the look of any of my other books.  You’ve got two weeks, and I’m right here waiting

A Few Holiday Snaps

If there’s one thing I love about going on vacation to the Austrian Alps, it’s that to get great images, I don’t need to do anything much more than climb up a mountain with my camera, point, and shoot.  The views are always breathtaking and the Austrians have organised access to the natural beauty around them with excellent efficiency.  All of the shots below were taken last week on and around the mountains surrounding the idyllic, picture postcard town of Gröbming, a part of the world which offers bags of things to do for all the family.

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Before Austria, we also travelled to Blighty, where on one day we visited Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.  As luck would have it, the Royal Navy’s newest and biggest aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, was in port, and I had a rare opportunity to photograph it together with the Royal Navy’s most famous warship, HMS Victory.  The first shot is of the aircraft carrier seen from Victory‘s poop deck, while below that I’ve got Victory on the right with Queen Elizabeth in the background.  Finally, there’s the aircraft carrier from the harbour.

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Predictions for the 2018 FIFA World Cup

[image error]Today sees the start of the flagship tournament of the most corrupt sport on Earth, the FIFA World Cup, which is being held in the most corrupt country on Earth, the Russian Federation.  There will be tens of thousands of losers but only one winner: Vladimir Putin.

The group and early knockout stages will go very well over the next couple of weeks, and the reputation of Russia—and by extension Putin—will be burnished.  Then, probably at a quarter-final or semi-final match, a bomb or series of bombs will explode in a terrorist atrocity.  Between 50 and 100 football fans will be killed, with many hundreds more injured.  At once, Putin will vow to find and punish the perpetrators.  Some days later, probably when the tournament has finished, he will produce “evidence” found by the FSB that “proves” Ukrainian nationalists carried out the attack.  This falsified evidence is probably already sitting on an FSB hard drive in Moscow.  The FSB will identify the perpetrators as Ukrainians who have successfully escaped back to Kiev.  Ukraine will deny any involvement and claim that the FSB staged the attack in a repeat of what Putin did when he needed a pretext for the Second Chechen War.

Nevertheless, Putin will mass his troops and deliver an ultimatum to Kiev before invading, probably around mid-August.  And all of this will be possible because, at a certain level, Russia is already at war with the West, only we in the West choose not to realise it.

For several years now, Russia has been patiently utilising every Soviet-era trick and manipulation, allied today with the enormous manipulative power that comes from mass data aggregation.  The war in Syria, to drive millions of refugees into Europe to destabilise it, is Putin’s work.  Nefarious involvement in the UK’s Brexit referendum has seen the Kremlin make good use of British Fifth Columnists like Nigel Farage and Arron Banks.  But most important of all is Putin’s key asset in the White House: the loudest mouth in the world attached to the most feeble-minded head, who will do all of Moscow’s bidding.

[image error]When the West’s own intelligence agencies find irrefutable evidence that the World Cup terrorist attack was engineered by Russia itself, the 45th president of the USA will be on Twitter to decry it as fake news; he will be offering support to his handler in the Kremlin, claiming that Russia has every right to “take down the bad guys”.  But his key use will be to hobble NATO.  Russia no longer needs to attack NATO militarily, because its asset in the White House can dead-leg the organisation from within, as and when required.

Putin, the FSB and the Kremlin have worked very hard and have been very patient.  Now, the stage is set and the play begins today.  And before the year is out, Putin will have Ukraine back where he’s always believed it belongs: as part of Russia.

When all this will have happened in a few months’ time, Western commentators will throw their hands in the air and wonder why the West did not see this coming, when the signs were there all along.  Why indeed?

Remember, folks: you read it here first.

You know it’s summer when…

…a dragonfly comes into the living room and starts bashing its head against the only closed window, trying to get back out.  Fortunately, eldest daughter was on hand to set the thing on its way to freedom.  In other news, if you’re one of the 103 new readers who read one of my books in May, sincerest thanks and do please leave a quick review if you have a moment.  Oh, and those chickens finally laid their first eggs yesterday (yay!), and the cock is looking thoroughly pleased with himself.  Now, with the History Institute dealt with, I need to get back to my WIP so in a few months, I can strut about the place with a similarly imperious-yet-thick-as-shit look on my face

New cover for the brilliant Vokhtah!

[image error]I don’t usually re-blog other content here, maybe due to some odd feelings of territory, possessiveness, or just desperation to appear to be a half-arsed Alpha-male, I dunno, but I must make an exception for A. C. Flory’s Vokhtah.  I first read this novel six years ago and it remains a firm favourite.  If the literary genre of Science Fiction means anything at all, it stands for originality and pushing imagination to the limit, the kind of stories you will not find anywhere else.  Vokhtah epitomises that ideal, eschewing every remotely predictable story-telling trope to deliver a remarkably unique yet wonderfully entertaining story the likes of which you absolutely will not have read anywhere else.  Buy it.  Read it.  Be amazed by it.  Thank me later.

 

via Vokhtah – cover reveal and an excerpt