Chris James's Blog, page 5

When spring arrives

The first warm day of spring arrived today. And for the first time in a long time, it had the good manners to turn up on a Sunday, when I was not at work. I took all of the phots below this morning. Finally we know winter has gone, till next time. Yes, we will probably have a light frost or two before the end of May, but the deep freezes and snowfalls are done. Phew, we made it through another winter and can soak up and enjoy the sheer beauty of spring. Mrs James does know how to look after a garden.

Oh, and last weekend we went to the farmers’ market and picked up eight new hens, seeing as our current batch are in their fourth year, and a few have already ended up in the large soup pot (sans head, feet and feathers, obviously). Stay safe, peeps!

Happy Easter 2023

Here are a few pictures from our traditional Polish Easter Sunday, which involves more fabulously delicious food than you can shake a stick at and a visit to the cemetery to light a candle for those who are no longer here. Then, for me it’s back to the WIP because, you know, these ground-breaking, critically acclaimed science fiction novels don’t write themselves (yes, I know I should take a day off).

Happy Easter to you all and stay safe!

The frustrations of near-future speculative fiction writing

I’m generally loathe to discuss my writing on this blog, unless I have a new title to publicise.  The reason for this is that I really want my books to do the talking for me.  However, every once in a while something happens that makes me want to shout: “See? That’s what I said would happen!”  So, this week I deliver a thoroughly wordy and nerdy post for you, for a change.

On Tuesday, The Guardian published a story on how 3-D printing has, for the first time, produced edible food (well, just about).  In the Repulse Chronicles, set in the 2060s, there are devices called replicators, which I intended to be the next step on from 3-D printing.  There are construction replicators, marine replicators (read the books if you want to know ;)) and replicators that produce water and food.  However, there are snags and the food replicators can only deliver cheap, unhealthy things like burgers and pizzas.  If the name ‘replicator’ seems familiar, it is.  One negative review on my books includes the criticism “…replicators straight out of Star Trek.”  That’s not quite right, at least scientifically, but the reason I chose the name is that life often imitates art—and you bet I want my fiction to seem as lifelike as possible.  For example, when the first space shuttle was unveiled in 1976, it had been named Enterprise after a campaign by Star Trek fans.  These days, given the lack of originality in popular culture and the importance of IP, it seems to me more than possible that the developers of the next-gen 3-D printing will seek a familiar name to set it apart from its predecessor, and with the notion of Star Trek’s replicator firmly in the popular consciousness due to relentless repetition, the question is: could there even be a better name?  Calling the next-gen 3-D printing ‘replication’ will tick all of the required boxes to excite investors and drive up the share price to ensure continued funding.  And that’s why I called those machines ‘replicators’.

Ultimately, near-future science fiction writers tend to rely on nothing more complex than extrapolation.  For example, long before scientists split the atom in the 1940s, writers speculated about what an ‘atomic world’ might involve.  In his 1914 novel The World Set Free, H.G. Wells foresees nuclear bombs that explode continuously.  Indeed, the beginning of the twentieth century offers much speculative fiction that today may seem fanciful; perhaps as fanciful as today’s speculative fiction will seem to future generations.  Another example from Wells is his short story The New Accelerator.  In it, a scientist develops a potion that, on drinking, accelerates the imbiber’s physiological functions so that he (and it is always a ‘he’) moves many times faster than the world around him, which appears static and almost immobile.  This story trope has featured in many science fiction shows since, including a variation of it in almost every series of Star Trek.

Another author of that period worth noting is Jack London.  Next to his terrifying The Iron Heel, which describes a plausible near-future USA that has descended into a dictatorship, he wrote short stories one of which, for example, featured two young scientists in a fierce competition to be the first to discover the secret to invisibility.  While this may seem fanciful to us today, it is worth bearing in mind that, at the turn of the twentieth century, the ‘secret’ to invisibility was considered on a par with the ‘secret’ to powered, heavier-than-air flight, and of course the ‘secret’ to splitting the atom.  This seems complimentary today to how we fret about the ‘secret’ to sentient artificial intelligence, of if we can build our own black holes and use them to traverse interstellar space.  As it was 100 years ago, some of these advances may arrive very soon, and some may not arrive at all.

Ultimately, this is the unknowable issue with extrapolation for every author of near-future speculative fiction.  A more recent example that I find instructive is Douglas Adams’s Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Unlike Wells and London, Adams still has many living and vocal fans (and rightly so).  However, some are trying to ‘retrofit’ Adams’s work by claiming that he foresaw the internet.  This is not quite right.  The eponymous book was stated to be a very large book, but it was a book nonetheless.  In the late 1970s, the silicon chip existed and the potential for storing ever-increasing volumes of data in ever-smaller devices was well understood.  For all his comedic genius (which I adored back in the day), Adams simply extrapolated from what was available then, proposing that a book containing the sum of all of the knowledge in the galaxy could be carried around on a handheld device.  But in keeping with the publishing norms of the era in which he wrote it, Adams’s galaxy-spanning book was subject to periodical updates, new editions, and did not include any of the real-time features the internet of today boasts.

By the early 2060s, I don’t for a minute believe that the tech I have predicted will exist precisely as stated.  My work wilts painfully in comparison to the authors I’ve named above, so I expect that the next-gen 3-D printing will receive a more dynamic sobriquet.  On the other hand, when a newspaper in 2023 publishes something that looks even slightly like something I’ve suggested might possibly happen, you can bet your bottom dollar (does anyone even use that phrase anymore?) that I will reference it and try to get my grubby hands on as much kudos as I can.

To end, here is a picture of Wafer, one of our cats, feeling comfy in a carrier bag (nope, I’ve no idea, either). Thanks for reading and stay safe.

Home improvements… of the mid-life variety

Here are a pair of before-and-after shots of the stairs down into my cellar. See if you can spot the difference. The cellar is where I do all of my writing and a lot of my working. Lately, I’ve found that getting up the stairs in silence has become impossible. I have to make some kind of “H-ups” sound or a grunt or groan as I heave my limbs upwards. It dawned on me a couple of weeks ago, when yet another birthday came and went, that time might finally be upping the price on my joints and their flexibility.

As you can see, Eldest Daughter came to the rescue by ordering those very good-looking silver stair rails that, this weekend, I’ve fixed with my new Bosch drill. I had to replace my existing Bosch drill, which I bought when I built the house, when it packed up. I was slightly miffed about that until I realised that I built this house 22 years ago. Right. So maybe the old drill was entitled to pack up, after all that time? Not sure how all those years managed to slip by quite so quickly. Well, at least enough of me has still not packed up that I can measure, drill and fix the required home improvements that will allow me to keep going when more of me does pack up.

In other news this week, the thriller writer Christopher Fowler sadly passed away on Thursday, aged 69. I’d been following his blog for several years and regarded him as one of those writers worth trying to emulate: he was erudite and very accessible; a writer’s writer, and it is a shame he has gone far too soon.

Regarding my own writing, I have been very much on the back foot of late. The focus of my full-time job has changed for the better but in a way that limits my writing time, and over the winter I got burned by an open-ended freelance job that unexpectedly put my own timetable back by at least two months. However, I am writing and do plan to publish the next novel as soon as possible, although that’s unlikely to be before the summer.

Speaking of which, I’m going to embed again a video I made eight years ago now (already eight years!) that shows what will soon return with the spring in just a few weeks. So, if you’re in the northern hemisphere and feeling done in, fed up and run down after four months of darkness, take three and a half minutes to remind yourself of all that is just around the corner. Stay safe, peeps.

That was the year that was

Happy New Year to you, wherever you are! I have a funny feeling that 2023 might be even more challenging than 2022. Stay safe and find somewhere warm to lay down, like Bonnie the cat here, who also wishes you a Happy New Year while really appreciating the underfloor heating in my hall.

Happy Christmas and thanks for reading

Another year has flown by, and I hope this holiday season finds you and those you care about as healthy and happy as possible. If you were kind enough to read my stuff this year, you have my sincerest thanks, the sincerity of which does not fade with annual repetition. The fact remains that without you, my readers, there would be no point to writing, so I really cannot value you too much. You are fabulous

Here are a few pictures from our Wigilia yesterday evening. I’m not saying we ate a lot, but the next meal I’m planning to have is a small snack around the beginning of February. Happy Christmas!

From left: Youngest Daughter holding Milka, Mrs James holding Joey (rescued from the Mazurian lakes), me holding Bonnie (turned up unannounced and pregnant in the garden and decided to adopt us), Only Son holding Wafer (rescued from the foot of a mountain in Slovakia), and Eldest Daughter holding Splidge (daughter of Bonnie).

Author admin

If you’ll forgive this somewhat egotistical post, here are a selection of new pictures of… me.

Love it or loathe it, author admin is something that can’t be put off forever. My previous author profile picture was in fact taken in 2007, some 15 years ago. I’d been meaning to sort out a new one for ages but had to wait until I came across a highly talented photographer called Gosia Jasinska. If you’re in Warsaw or its environs and looking for a professional photographer who really knows their job, then I can strongly recommended Gosia. And she’s fluent in English, too! To see more of this photographer’s work, visit her website by clicking here, or contact her at her LinkedIn page here.

While I am of course very happy to get a decent new profile picture, it’s consistency that counts, so be sure to check back here for my next author profile picture in late 2037!

The Poster Boy for the Age of Stupid strikes again

Imagine if you had one good idea that, a few years later, yielded you almost limitless wealth? So much money that you could end global hunger. You could improve the lives of countless millions of human beings less fortunate than you. You could champion charitable causes and promote initiatives in numerous countries to stem the rising tides of injustice all around us. So much money, in fact, you could do almost anything.

Instead, you take a chunk of USD 44 billion and use it to buy a second-tier social network platform independently valued at USD 12 billion. You then kill its main income stream by alienating its key advertisers, fire half the workforce, and disable the system for verifying that famous people are who they say they are. And all because your vast fat-berg of an ego demands that your ungainly phizzog fills the world’s front pages for a few days.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave this week, you know well who I am talking about. And no, I will not sully this blog by naming him. Among fools, he is lauded as some kind of genius. He launches “star” ships that crash in flames. His entire space programme today cannot even replicate what NASA was doing over 50 years ago. He sells “autonomous” cars that kill pedestrians. He founded a tunnel digging firm called the Boring Company (Geddit?! GEDDIT???!!!) that will likely achieve little of what it promises.

For myself, as an independent author I have to use social media to try to get my message out. And that includes Twitter. For the most part, only a handful of other users read anything I post on the site due to my limited reach, but the platform is useful for keeping up to date with the news, as many global news outlets (CNN, Sky, BBC) post their reports there free to watch. But if the platform disappeared tomorrow, who would really miss it? Only in our prehistoric capitalist paradise could something with little-to-no objective value be deemed to be worth so much.

And to think that last year, those journalistic minnows at Time magazine made that feeble-minded simpleton their Person of the Year. If there were an international award for stupid mistakes, perhaps called the “Brexshit Award for Outstanding Idiocy”, it would be difficult to think anyone else could beat the Poster Boy for the Age of Stupid this year.

Anyway, the lack of frosts so far this autumn means my local forest still retains some colour. Take care and be safe, peeps, for the Age of Stupid clearly still has many years until it runs its course.

1 November in Poland (2022)

As regular visitors will know, on All Saints Day Eldest Daughter and I visit a local cemetery to photograph graves adorned with thousands of flowers and candles. This year is no different. All images were taken this evening at the Parish Cemetery for Alexandrow and Falanica in southeast Warsaw (Cmentarz Parafiainy dla Aleksandrowa i Falanicy).

Peak autumn

The first frosts arrived this week, and I’m as certain as possible that we passed peak autumn. Here are the photos I took over the last few days while walking the dogs. My local forest really doesn’t get any more beautiful than this.

Have a good week and stay safe, peeps!