Chris Beckett's Blog, page 17

Daughter of Eden Audiobook out

Daughter of Eden is now out as an audiobook from Audible.   It’s read by Imogen Church and, listening to the sample, I think she’s done a really wonderful job of it.  I felt I was listening to Angie Redlantern herself telling the story.  Which was a strange and rather moving experience, given that Angie (possibly my favourite Eden character) came out of my head.  Click on this link for the free sample and judge for yourself.

Modernity isn’t what it used to be

I was thinking (vaguely) about  J G Ballard and his seductive apocalypses: empty swimming pools, crashed Zero fighters, abandoned atomic test sites, Sputnik-era satellites, disintegrating artistic communities in decaying Californian villas.  And it struck me that modernity itself was seductive in the mid-twentieth century. Deadly, perhaps, doomed, toxic, even unspeakable, but nevertheless very sexy.

And it struck me then that modernity is no longer sexy.  There’s nothing sexy about these tablets and phones we fiddle with so obsessively.  They’re desireable, no doubt, but not in a dangerous or sensual or edgy way.  Their appeal is to the anal desire for neatness and tidiness, the kind of gratification that, according to Freud, begins with the pride taken by our infant selves on seeing our little toddler turds safely deposited in the potty.

Ballard said, apropos of Crash, ‘I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape.’  He wasn’t saying this was a healthy situation, but there’s no denying its glamour.

It struck me that the equivalent image for our current era would a person immersed in rearranging the icons in their smartphones.

* * *

A slightly different thought that also came to me was that, in spite of much trumpeting about the breakneck pace of change these days -the way the world has been turned upside down by the internet, vastly greater computing power and so on- in fact my own experience (I was born in 1955) has been that the pace of change over the period of my life has actually been much slower than in my parents’ generation.   The attitudes and mores of the current generation of young adults are much more similar to those of the generation (mine) that reached adulthood forty years ago in the 1970s, than were the attitudes and mores of the 70s generation to those of the generation forty years before them, which reached adulthood in the 1930s.  The idea of the ‘generation gap’ was current in the 1970s, for instance, but we have no equivalent term now.

Think of generally accepted attitudes to race, social class, sexuality or marriage in the 1930s, the 1970s and the 201os, and surely it’s obvious that the 1930s are the outlier, meaning that the pace of change has slowed.  (In fact, in some respects, the 2010s show signs of things moving back towards older forms.  My children’s generation have much more conservative ideas about marriage, for instance, than were the norm in their social class in the 1970s.)

Or think of popular music.   Who could deny that the music of the 2010s is much more similar to that of the 1970s, than the latter was to the music of the 1930s?   In fact music from the 1960s and 70s remains well-known and liked by the current generation of young adults, and the music of the 201os is still played within a similar framework (look at all the bands at Glastonbury which still use the electric guitar/bass/keyboards/drum format that was typical of 60s and 70s bands).  But in the 1970s we knew virtually nothing at all about the music of the 1930s.

So it looks to me as if computers and the internet may have been slightly less earth-shaking, culturally speaking, than we often imagine.  Perhaps in the long-run, they will been seen to have been much less instrumental in changing social attitudes than mid-twentieth century innovations like television, cheap air-flight and (the biggest of all in my opinion), reliable contraception.

All of which could explain why present day modernity seems so much less sexy than the modernity of forty years ago.  If cultural change is indeed slowing down rather than speeding up, then one would expect the new to seem less shocking and exciting than was case back then.  We have many new conveniences, it’s true, but convenience and glamour are very different things.

*  *  *

All of which isn’t good news for science fiction writers, I’m afraid, and perhaps explains why the genre no longer has the prestige it had in the days when Ballard started out.

Moonshots once seemed like the beginning of the future, but now are receding into the past.  And, however hard we try, ever more sophisticated devices for organising information just do not have the same allure.

Problematic

A Canadian student group apologises for including he Lou Reed song ‘Walk on the Wild Side‘ in a playlist, on the basis that the lyrics of the song are transphobic and therefore ‘problematic’.   Transphobia seems a pretty weird charge to lay against this particular song -a song which actually celebrates a transexual character in its opening verse- but let’s leave that aside.  What I find actually creepiest about this story is the use of the word ‘problematic’.

To be clear about this, I don’t mind people strongly objecting to what other people say.  ‘I find X’s views utterly obnoxious’, is fine.  So is ‘X’s views are racist” (and indeed so is ‘ X’s views are transphobic’, whether or not it happens to be a reasonable charge in this particular case).   But ‘X’s views are problematic’, which in a way sounds more polite, less confrontational, I find quite nauseating.

I’m trying to figure out why.   I think in part it’s the very politeness that I object to, the tight, anal, priggish, self-control that is implied. But I think perhaps also it’s the implication that there exists a single correct account of the world, which the speaker possesses and others do not.

Thus, while ‘I find X’s views obnoxious’ is a good strong statement about X’s views, it’s also a statement about the speaker, an implicit acknowledgement that the speaker is a particular human being with a specific viewpoint.  ‘X’s views are racist’, while it makes no statement about the speaker, at least lays out a specific charge which defenders of X may if they wish challenge or refute.  ‘X’s views are problematic’, on the other hand, suggests that the speaker knows for certain how the world ought to be described, and is therefore able, in almost clinical way, to identify even small deviations from the true path, in order that they can be nipped in the bud.

Human beings have been trying to describe the world for several hundred thousand years, for Christ’s sake!  No one has finally reached some sort of perfect understanding.  Not even you!  In fact, there isn’t even such a thing, only a series of approximations, each of which, in its way, is problematic.

 

Tweet tweet

When I joined Twitter originally, I it was because my daughter had persuaded me that it would be good way to promote my books, let people know about new posts here etc. ‘Well,’ I told myself (like the kid accepting a free sample of heroin), ‘what harm could it do just to try?’ I am now addicted. I must spend many hours each week looking at it, and use it as my primary source of news.  Yet –and I guess this is probably true of all the best addictions– a large part of me really loathes it.

When I say I loathe it, I’m not talking here about the really nasty things, the trolling, the rape threats, the racism, the routine anti-semitism.  Those are vile of course, but I tend to hear about them at second hand.  I am talking more about things I see every day.

Dissident dissents.  Dissident labelled.   Comforting straw man used as punchbag.

So, for instance, I attempt to have a debate with someone who disagrees with me, and instead of engaging, they project onto me some stereotype they have of people who disagree with them, and shout angrily at this imaginary being.

Intruder dismissed.  Intruder dehumanised.   Echo chamber restored to full working order.

Or.  I come across a conversation between people I more or less agree with.  An outsider joins in who takes a different view.  The outsider is headed off.  ‘That shut him up!’ someone observes.  ‘Not so much “him” as “it”’ says another.

Offender identified.  Offender pilloried.  Cosy sense of community achieved.

And then there are the great feeding frenzies of indignation.  Someone says something that you disapprove of: Exhibit A.  You share Exhibit A with your followers, held at arm’s length with tongs. Howls of outrage ensure, continuing agreeably over many hours, becoming increasingly ad hominem all the while.  (Not only is Exhibit A despicable, but the person who said it is physically repulsive, sexually perverted etc etc.)

But this isn’t really Twitter I’m talking about.  It’s the human race. Twitter just makes these things more visible.   Irving Janis described all this back in the seventies when he characterised ‘groupthink’ as including the following:

Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group…
Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid
Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”
Mindguards— self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information

I find myself increasingly thinking about the role of biology in this.  It seems to me that many behaviours which we think of as typically human are simply part of our animal nature.  Creatures right across the animal kingdom –not just mammals, but birds, fish, insects, crustaceans…– engage in elaborate and time-consuming behaviours intended to protect their territory and see off intruders.  It’s one of the main functions of birdsong, for instance.

And, after all, that’s what Twitter is named after.

Tweet tweet.

My Next Novel

My next novel, America City, is now at the proof-reading stage.  It even has an Amazon page already, though you can’t yet preorder. I’m getting rather excited about it.  It’s starting to feel real.

This book will be a new departure for me in that all three of its predecessors were set on my sunless planet, Eden, but this takes place in North America in the twenty-second century.  No more glowing forests or hmmmphing trees, though I think readers may still be able to spot links of various kinds between America City and the Eden books.

Like my previous novels it’s to be published in the UK by Corvus, and should be available from 2nd November.

And there’s another book behind it too, my next short-story collection, Spring Tide, already good to go, and also to be published by Corvus.  It should be coming out in the UK in the Spring of 2018.  This is a new departure too.  I have published two previous collections, and one of them won me a prize, but this is my first collection to consist entirely of previously unpublished stories, and my first ever published fiction, whether in the long or short form, that really could not be defined as science fiction.

Spring Tide

My third short story collection differs from the previous collections in two respects.  Firstly, all the stories are original to this book and have never appeared in print before.  Secondly, this book will represent my first published foray outside of the parameters of science fiction.  Some of the 21 stories in this book include fantastical elements, but none of them (at least according to my definition) could be described as SF.

From Corvus, Spring 2018

America City

The United States a century in the future.   As a result of climate change, powerful hurricanes hit the east coast every year, each time a little further north.  And large areas of the southern half of the US have insufficient water, meaning that many towns and cities, and whole swathes of farmland, are no longer viable.  Each year a steady stream of refugees from southern states heads north, but they meet an increasingly frosty welcome, and some northern states are threatening frontier controls to keep them out.

Holly Peacock, a bright young British PR professional who has settled in the US, begins to work for a charismatic US Senator called Stephen Slaymaker, who rose from poverty via army service in Africa, to build up one of America’s largest trucking businesses.  Slaymaker is campaigning for a huge government-funded programme to shift the American population northwards, and so prevent the north-south divide from tearing America apart.    When Slaymaker stands for President, this Reconfigure America programme is at the core of his platform and Holly’s job is to win support for it.

But how to sell the idea to northern voters that they should welcome in millions of refugees from the south, and pay for it too in their taxes?  Working closely with Slaymaker, Holly finds a way, but it involves fighting dirty and has catastrophic consequences which she didn’t anticipate at all.

From Corvus: November 2017

Cambridge event with Brian Catling: April 27th

If you are in or near Cambridge on April 27th, I am meeting Brian Catling at Heffer’s bookshop at 6.30pm – 8pm.  Details/tickets here.

To Become a Warrior 2017

I first wrote ‘To Become a Warrior’ in 2002.  It was published in Interzone, and subequently in one of Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best anthologies.  It’s about Carl, a poorly educated, not particularly bright young man who’s been left outside of the prosperous, liberal society of which he is nominally a citizen, and his recruitment by a murderous gang of ‘shifters’ who want to take the world back to the world of the Vikings.

It was one of a number of stories set in this world, the first being ‘The Welfare Man’ written in 1993.   Judging by reprints in anthologies and reader’s polls, they have been among my most popular stories.  However, I didn’t include them in either of my story collections, choosing instead to incorporate them into my second novel, Marcher.

My work as a social worker – when I wrote the story I was only a couple of years on from working as the manager of a social work team- had given me a powerful sense that even a prosperous, economically booming, middle class town like Cambridge (where I lived then and still live now), has another side to it, people who share no part of the prosperity.  There was the famous Cambridge, with its beautiful old buildings, its ancient University, its IT and biotech industries, its bright, educated, liberal-minded citizens, and there was this alternate Cambridge which no one comes to visit, where I would go as part of my job.

When I incorporated ‘To Become a Warrior’ into the novel Marcher, I shifted from first to third person, added and changed details to make it fit in with the rest of the book, swapped around some characters, and gave the story two additional endings, in keeping with the novel’s theme of branching time lines and alternate presents.  Below, I have restored the original first person short story, except that  this time I have opted for one of the other endings.

I’m putting it out here now to mark the inauguration of Donald Trump.   A clamour of rage and fear is going up today from the members of, so to speak, my own tribe, the liberal middle class.  We see everything we value under threat, and we look around for people to blame.  But I have a strong sense, which I’ve tried rather clumsily to explore in previous posts (for instance this), that we ourselves must take a share of that blame. If you leave people outside, they turn to others who offer to take them in.

Anyway, here it is in full, ‘To Become a Warrior ‘ to mark this historic day:

© Chris Beckett, 2002, 2017.  Not to be reproduced without permission

  To Become a Warrior

Where I live it’s the Thurston Fields estate only we just call it the Fields.   Which it’s what they call a Special Category Estate which is crap for a start because everyone knows it’s a dreg estate and we’re the dreggies.  Which is we’re the ones they haven’t got any use for, yeah?   I mean fair enough, I can’t hardly read and write as such.  Which I’ve never had a job or nothing only once I had a job in this tyre and exhaust place.  Like a job creation scheme?  Only I was late the second day – right? – and the manager, he only told me to do something about my attitude, so I fucking smacked him one, didn’t I?

And I’ll tell you what mate, not being funny or nothing, but if you never lived on a dreg estate you’ve got no idea what it’s like.  You might think you have but you haven’t.  I’ll tell you one thing about it, the Department runs your life.  The DeSCA, yeah?   The deskies we call them.   Which you get different kinds, like housing deskies which if you’re some girl who gets pregnant, they’re the ones who get you a flat.   (Mind you, if you’re a bloke and you want a flat you’ve got to find some slag and say you love her and that, know what I mean?)  And you get teacher deskies, and benefits deskies.  You even get deskie police.  But I tell you what, mate, the ones we really hate are the fucking social worker deskies.  Like they try to be so nice and understanding and that, all concerned about you – know what I mean? – but next thing they’re taking your fucking kid away.

Like my girlfriend Kylie, well my ex-girlfriend because I dumped her, didn’t I?  She had her kid Sam taken off her and she went fucking mental, know what I mean?  I mean, fair play, he is a whinging little git and at first I thought, great, all day in bed and no distractions.  But it did her head in and she was crying and that, and she was down the Child Welfare every day and she didn’t want fucking sex no more or nothing so I thought to myself, I can’t hack this, I’ll go fucking mental, know what I mean?

(Which then she tried to top herself which her mum said was down to me but it never.  It was the fucking deskies.)

#

Anyway, one day I was down the Locomotive with my mates when this geezer comes in – yeah? – and he only had a skull tattooed all over his face!   I mean like so his face looked like a skull, yeah?  Which my mate Shane goes, “Shit, look at that!”   This bloke he looked well hard, but – yeah? – we must have had twelve pints each minimum, so I thought to myself, fuck it.   And I go up to this skull geezer – right? – and go like, “Who the fuck are you?”  (Shane was pissing himself, the prat.  He thought it was hysterical.  He thought old skull face there was going to beat the shit out of me.)

But the skull guy just laughs.

And he was like, “I’m Laf, who the fuck are you?”

So I go, “I’m Carl.  What kind of name is Laf for fuck’s sake?”

And he was like, “Watch it mate,” only he was laughing, know what I mean?  And he goes, “It’s short for Olaf.  It’s a warrior’s name, alright?  I’m a warrior of Dunner I am.”

I didn’t know what the fuck he meant but I didn’t want to look like a prat or nothing so I just go, “Warrior of Dunner, huh?”  (You know, American and that).

And he laughs and goes, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you mate?”

So I go, “No I don’t, mate, but I reckon you’re talking out of your arse.”

But he just kind of looks round the pub at the blokes slagging each other off by the pool table and at the kids arsing about on the machines and at that old slag Dora with her wrecked fucking face who comes in every night and drinks till they chuck her out.

So he looks all round – right? – and then he looks back at me and he’s like, “This place is shit isn’t it?”

And I’m like, “Yeah?”  Because, like, I can see what he means in a way but I drink there every bloody night.

And he goes, “Want to come and meet some of my mates?”

And I’m, “Yeah okay.”

And he’s, “Only I’ve taken a liking to you Carl.  I liked the way you came over like that.  More bottle than your mates there.”

Well then we walk straight out past Shane and Derek and they’re like trying to make out it’s hysterical  – yeah? – but really they’re fucking gobsmacked, aren’t they?

And Derek goes, “Where the fuck are you going Carl?”

But I don’t know, do I?

#

Laf’s got his car out there – it’s like a really old Mondeo – and, it was well good, we ton across the estate at 90, with the windows down and the music on full blast.  (Well the police don’t bother with the Fields at night, only if there’s a riot or something.)

And we go up Thurston Road, right up near the wire where there is them three big old tower blocks – yeah? –  which are all sealed off and that because they’ve been like condemned.  (I mean: they’ve always been condemned and sealed off like that since I was a kid, because of asbestos or something, I think.)

Me and my mates, we’ve tried to get into those places but they’re like not just boarded up they’re steeled up – yeah? –  with metal plates and that.  Only it turns out that Laf and his mates have managed to get into one of them called Progress House.  Like there’s a kind of service door or something round the back which it still looks like it’s locked up but they can get in and out, yeah?

Inside it was really dark and echoey and it smelt of piss.  You couldn’t see nothing but Laf goes charging off up the stairs: one floor, two floors, three floors…

“Wait for me,” I go.

But Laf just laughs and he’s like, “You’ll have to get fitter than that, mate, if you want to be a warrior of Dunner.”

Those places are like twelve stories high, yeah?  Which right at the top they’d opened up a flat.  You could smell the puff smoke from a floor below.  Which there’s this room in there, like a cave – yeah? – with candles and that, and weird pictures on the wall, and there are Laf’s mates, three of them: one fat bloke in one corner, one really evil-looking bloke with greasy black hair in the other corner and then this boffy-looking fucker in the middle.  And he’s got glasses on and he’s rolling up a spliff.

“Good evening,” he goes, really posh.  And he’s like, “Welcome to Progress House.  This is Gunnar” (that was the fat one), “this is Rogg and my name is Erik.  Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

I look at Laf and I’m like, “Who the fuck is this?”

And Laf don’t say nothing in words but he’s kind of frowning at me – right? – like he’s going, “Respect, man!  This geezer is well hard, know what I mean?”

(But, like, he’s got a skull all over his face!)

Erik laughs,  “A word of advice, Carl.  Laf has chosen to let you into our little secret.   We do that from time to time, because we are, well, we’re missionaries in a way.”  (I didn’t know what he was talking about at first.  I thought missionary meant, like, sex with the geezer on top, know what I mean?)

“But if you were to reveal our secret to anyone else without our permission,” goes boffy Erik, “I personally will kill you.  I mean that quite literally.  And I assure you that what I have just said is not a threat but a promise.”

And Laf is like, “He means it, mate, he’s well evil.  He’d kill a bloke, no sweat at all.”

And Erik laughed, really pleasant – yeah? – like some posh bloke on the telly.

#

You would not believe all the gear they had up there, yeah?   We did E’s and A’s and M’s and C’s and fuck knows what else until the walls were wobbling like jelly – yeah? – and it was like Erik was talking into this blob of jelly from outside somewhere, down some tube or something.

“Have you heard of Dunner, Carl?”  he goes.  “Or Thor, some call him?”

And I’m like, “…er, no, don’t think so, mate…” – right? – like I’m talking up this tube?

“Well, he used to be big around here,” goes Erik.  “Thurston means Thor’s town for one thing.  Did you know that?  Come to that he’s got a whole day of the week named after him.  Thursday means Thor’s day.”

“Yeah,” goes Laf, “and Wednesday’s named after his dad, right, Erik?”

“That’s right,” goes Erik.  “Woden’s day.”

 And I’m like, “Yeah?” (Which if anyone else had come up with this shit I would just have laughed, know what I mean?)

“Dunner or Thor,” goes Erik, “is the god of thunder.  And he’s a warrior god.  His weapon is a big hammer which crushes anything it strikes.  As I say, he used to be big around here.  Your ancestors would have worshipped him.  They would have sacrificed to him too, animals and even human beings.  So you can see they took him very seriously indeed.”

And I’m like “So?” but I don’t say nothing.

“And now,” goes Erik, “here is another secret.  But this one I am happy for you to tell who you like.  Because it’s the government who wants it kept as a secret.  It’s the politicians and the do-gooders.  It’s them who don’t want anyone to know.”

Well the room was as big as a fucking football pitch now – right? – with that Erik talking over the p.a. in a big echoey voice like God or something.

“Do you think about the universe at all, Carl?”

“As in, like, the sun goes round the earth?”  I go. “Stars and that?”

Erik does his nice TV laugh.

“That’s it, Carl, you’ve got it in one. Stars and that.  But listen and I’ll tell you something.  The whole of this universe of stars and space is just one tiny twig in an enormous tree and every second, every fraction of a second, it’s branching and dividing, making new worlds.”

I laughed.  But – it was weird, yeah? – I could fucking see it.  Only it didn’t look like a tree.  More like millions of black worms in the dark that kept on splitting in two and splitting in two and splitting in two – yeah? – like viruses or something.

“There are millions of other earths, millions of other Englands, millions of other Thurston Fields estates,” he goes – and like I said, he’s like God or something, I couldn’t even see him with all the E’s and A’s and shit going round me, just hear his big echoey voice all round me.

“And we don’t come from this one,” he goes, “Laf and Gunnar and Rogg and I, we’re shifters, we come from another world.  Anytime we want to we can go to another world too.  So we can do what we want here.  We can do whatever we want.  No one is ever going to catch us.”

I heard him moving about somewhere out there, know what I mean, like he’s on a different planet?

“Look at these!” he goes.

Well I’m lying on the floor with my eyes shut and when I open my eyes, even though it’s only candles in there, it still feels, like, too bright, know what I mean?  So it’s a job to see anything at all as such – yeah? – but I see he’s holding out a bag with pills in it, hundreds of dark little pills.

“These are seeds, these are Lok seeds.  Every one of these will take us to another world.  Think of that.  We can travel between the branches of the tree like Dunner does, with his hammer in his hand.”

And then that Rogg speaks, that evil bastard with the greasy black hair, and he’s a Scotchman or a Geordie or something.

“Yeah,” he goes, “and you know what we’s looking for, mate?  We’s looking for one of Dunner’s worlds.  Know what I mean?”

I go, “Yeah?”

“He means a world where Dunner is still worshipped today,” goes Erik.  “We know they exist because the seeds come from there and because of shifter stories.  There are thousands like us, you see, Carl, thousands of warriors of Dunner moving between the worlds.  And we tell each other stories.  We swap news.”

Then that fat bloke talks: Gunnar.  You know how some big fat blokes have these, like, really high little mild little voices?  Gunnar was one of them, right?  He had this gentle little voice – yeah? – really polite and high.  I’ll tell you what, though, I reckon he could beat you to a fucking pulp.  But he’d still talk to you like really kind and gentle while he was doing it – yeah? – in that small little gentle high voice.

And he’s like, “Do you want to know what it’s like in Dunner’s worlds, Carl?”

And I’m “Yeah” and he goes, “Why don’t you tell him, Erik?!”

(I’ve got my eyes closed again – right? – and those black worms are splitting and wriggling and splitting all the time all round me.  But those shifter geezers’ voices are far away, coming down like from like ten miles above me or something.)

“Of course,” goes Erik, “of course” and he’s drawing breath, like this is the good part coming up.

“Does civilisation mean anything to you Carl?” he asks, “Or democracy?  Or human rights?”

“You what?” I go, not being funny or nothing, but I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

But they all laugh like I’ve made a really good joke!  So I feel well chuffed, don’t I?

“They don’t mean shit to me!” I go, like doing the joke again.

“Of course they don’t Carl,” goes Erik kindly, “and do you know why?”

“Because I don’t give a monkey’s,” I go, but they’re tired of the joke now and they don’t laugh no more.

“The reason civilisation doesn’t mean anything to you, Carl,” Erik goes, “is that civilisation isn’t there for your benefit.  You’re not part of civilisation.   Civilisation is for the others out there across the wire.  They don’t care what you think.  They don’t care about what you can and can’t do. They give you a dreg estate to live in and a DeSCA department to look after you.  All they ask in return is that you leave them alone with their civilisation.   Just keep out of the way, is all they ask, and let them get on with their civilisation in peace.”

“Yeah?” I go.

“Carl don’t want to know all that, Erik mate,” goes fat Gunnar in his little kind voice.  “He wants to know about Dunner’s worlds.”

“I was coming to that,” goes Erik and he, like, growls.  He does not like being interrupted.

“You see Carl, in Dunner’s worlds there is no civilisation, no democracy, no human rights.  And there’s no DeSCA either, no Special Category estates, no wire.  A young chap like you doesn’t have to go to the deskies for money or a place to live.  No.  What you’d do in one of Dunner’s worlds is find yourself a lord.  A warlord, I mean, a great warrior, not some toffee-nosed do-gooder who sits on committees about social exclusion and goes to the opera.  You’d go to a lord and, if you promised to fight his enemies for him, he’d look after you, he’d make sure you got everything you needed.”

“Yeah?” I go.

“And Carl, mate,” goes fat Gunnar, “that wouldn’t be like a deskie flat or nothing he’d give you.  Don’t think that, mate.  He’d have a big hall, with a big fire in the middle, and you’d live there with all your mates.  And you’d drink all you wanted, mate, and eat all you wanted and get as pissed as you wanted and when it was time to sleep, well you’d just sleep there in the hall, with all your mates around you.  So you wouldn’t never have to think about money or nothing, and you wouldn’t never have to be alone.  How does that sound, my old mate?”

I laughed.  “That sounds like fucking heaven mate.”

“Yeah, and you don’t need to work or nothing,’ goes old skull-face Laf, ‘All you got to do is fight!   It’s your job, like.  You even get to kill people and that and there’s no police or nothing to stop you.”

Which I’m like “Great!”

“Fair enough it’s dangerous,” goes Laf. “You could get killed too, know what I mean?”

“So?” I go, laughing.  “Who gives a shit?  When you’re dead you’re fucking dead, right?”

“Well said!” goes Erik.  “Spoken like a warrior! But actually it’s better than that, Carl my friend, it’s better than that.  If you die fighting, Dunner will take you home to Valour-Hall, where all the brave warriors go, and then you’d live again.  And then it’s feasting and fighting for ever and ever, until the Last Battle at the end of time.”

And Gunnar’s like, “So what do you say, then, Carl my old mate? Do you want to be a warrior?”

Well, of course I do, don’t I?

“Yeah!” I laugh.

“Well there’s a test you have to pass,” goes Erik, “ a little test…”

But one of them is putting this spliff into my hand – yeah? – and I don’t know what they put in it but next thing I’m down on my knees half-way through my mum’s front door, chucking up all over the fucking lino.

#

Well, the next few days – right? – I’m like, “Did I dream that or what?”

I even went down there to Progress House – yeah? – and no way could anyone have got in there, know what I mean?   Steel plates and massive bloody locks.

So I go, “Well, I must have dreamed it,” know what I mean?

But down the Locomotive when Shane and Derek and that go, “Where the fuck d’you go with that skull bloke?” I didn’t say nothing, know what I mean?  Because – yeah? – I remembered that boffy geezer Erik go, like, “That’s not a threat it’s a promise.”

I didn’t feel like taking a chance.

#

But, like, a couple of weeks later I was just going down to the pub in the morning  – right? – when this car pulls up.  Which it’s only that dodgy old Mondeo and that fat geezer Gunnar driving it.

“Hop in, my old mate!” he goes, leaning back to open the back door.

So I get in the back and that evil Scotch bastard Rogg – yeah? –  he’s there in the front with Gunnar and he passes me back a spliff and, like, we’re off.

Next thing we’re at the line and Gunnar is showing his ID to the cop.

And he’s like, “Alright mate?  How you doing?” in his kind little voice.

“Not so bad,” the cop goes.  Which he’s a bit surprised – yeah? – like he’s not used to people being nice to him and that.  And he’s like, “Have a nice day!” as he lets us through the wire.

And Rogg laughs and goes, “Anyone tell you you can’t fake deskie ID cards, Carl?  Well you can.”

And Gunnar’s like, “There isn’t nothing our Erik can’t figure out, Carl mate.  He’s one in a million that geezer.  He’s diamond, mate, he’s pure diamond.”

#

We go right across town – right? – to this posh area where I never been before.  And Gunnar parks the car – yeah? – and we get out and it’s like there’s shops that don’t sell nothing but coloured fucking candles right?  And shops that sell little toys made out of painted wood which any normal kid would smash in two seconds flat and they cost like a week’s money each.   And all these rich bastards in fancy clothes and posh voices – yeah? – like la di da, this and la di da that and “Oh really Jonathan, that’s ever so sweet of you!” and beautiful bitches in posh sexy clothes like TV stars.  And you look at them and think, “Shit I fancy you, ” but you know if you tried anything they’d just laugh at you like you was an alien from space or something with tentacles and that, or eyes on fucking stalks.

And Gunnar goes, “Do you know this place, Carl mate?”

And I go, “No.”

And he goes, “It’s Clifton Village mate, where the rich people hang out.”

“The beautiful people,” goes Rogg with, like, an evil sneer.

Then Gunnar puts his arm across my shoulders – yeah? –  like he’s my dad or something.

And he’s like, “How’s this place make you feel, my old mate?”

And I’m like “How would I fucking know?”

“Angry maybe?” goes Gunnar kindly.  “Does it make you feel angry at all mate?”

And I’m, “Nah, I don’t give a shit,” like with a shrug and that.

And then I go, “Yeah, alright, angry then.”

“That’s the way, my old mate,” goes Gunnar, “That’s the way.”

He’s still got his arm round me like he’s my dad or my kind uncle.

“Now listen, Carl mate,” he goes, “how would you like it if you could do whatever you wanted here?”

And I’m like, “Eh?  What d’you mean?”

“How would you like it, Carl,” goes Rogg, “if you could smash these shops and burn these cars and fuck these women and blow away any of these smug bastards you wanted?”

“Yes, how would you like that my old mate?” goes Gunnar.

“Well of course I’d like it,” I go, “but you’re having a laugh with me, aren’t you?  You’re just winding me up.”

“No,” goes Rogg, “no wind-up, Carl.  It’s what we’re planning to really do.  And I’ll tell you the beauty of it.  The beauty of it is we’ll have swallowed seeds, so when the police come along we can just laugh and let them lock us up, because we’ll know that in an hour or two we’ll be in a different world and they won’t ever be able to get us.”

And it’s like it finally dawns on me, yeah?  It dawns on me for the first time.  If you’re a shifter you can really do shit like that.  That’s what it would mean to be a warrior of Dunner.

So a big smile spreads over my face – yeah? – and I’m like, “Sweet, man!  Fucking sweet!”

“And you can be there,” goes Rogg. “You can be there with us if you want to, if you’re willing to take the test, like.”

And I’m going, “Yeah, no problem, mate, no sweat at all”, when this old geezer comes walking past and suddenly stops, like, and looks at me.

“Well, well,” he goes.  “Carl Pendant isn’t it?  What a nice surprise!  Do you remember me?  Cyril Burkitt?  How are you doing Carl?  It must be all of fifteen years.”

And he, like, smiles at Rogg and Gunnar – yeah? – like any friend of Carl’s is a friend of his.  (Which Rogg don’t say nothing, and Gunnar’s like “Alright, mate.  How you doing?”)

And I’m like, “Oh alright, you know, mate” and that.

Well he’s only my old social worker I used to have when I was in care and that.  Which they’re all tossers but I sort of liked the bloke. He didn’t never get funny with me or nothing – yeah? –  like I remember one time when I’d fucked up as per bloody usual and he says to me “You just don’t get it do you Carl?” and I go “No I fucking don’t” and he laughs and he’s like “Well that makes two of us I’m afraid Carl.”

Anyway, old Cyril Burkitt looks at Rogg and Gunnar again and he’s like, “Well, I won’t keep you from your friends Carl.  But I’ll tell you what, I’m retired now.  If you fancy calling by for a chat sometime you’d be very welcome. I don’t see such a lot of people these days, you see, so I’m always glad of company.  And I’ve often thought about you over the years and wondered how you were getting on.”

And he gives me this little card – yeah? – with his address and that.

#

Well then I notice Rogg and Gunnar looking at each other with, like, a funny secret sort of look.

So I’m like, “What?”

“A deskie, right?” goes Rogg.

And I’m like, “Yeah.”

Which they look at each other again – yeah? – and sort of nod.

“Well that’s your test then, Carl mate,” goes Gunnar.

And I’m like, “What is?”

And Rogg goes, “Go to his house, Carl, and kill him.”

#

Well I thought, “This is a joke, yeah?”  So I’m laughing and I’m like, “Oh, he’s not that bad, not for a deskie, know what I mean?”

And Gunnar goes, “No Carl mate, you don’t understand.  That’s your test!  See what I mean, mate?  It’s what you’ve got to do to become a warrior.  Are you with me, my old mate?”

“You’s got to make a sacrifice for Dunner,” goes Rogg.

Which, like, they’re just looking at me – yeah? – and waiting.

And I go, “Shit!”

And Gunnar goes, “Fair enough if you don’t want to do it, Carl mate.  No hard feelings or nothing. But if you do want to be a warrior, well, that’s the test you’ve got to pass.  Know what I mean?”

So I like swallow – yeah? – and I’m thinking, like, well, all deskies are the same really.  Alright some of them act nice and that but it don’t mean nothing.  Which anyway the stupid git, if he goes round giving out his address and that, some fucker’s going to get him – yeah? – and if it’s not me it’s going to be some bugger else.  So it don’t make no difference really anyway.

So I laugh – yeah? – and I go, “Yeah, alright.  I’ll do it.”

#

So Laf – right? – he takes me over in the car the next day to the place where Cyril Burkitt lives.  (Which it’s like another part of town which I never heard of.    Only I never really been nowhere much outside of the Fields as such, except down the Centre – yeah? – to clubs and that and once we went over to Weston on a school trip and Shane had six pints of lager and threw up all over the teacher.)

And he stops like a couple of streets away and he’s like, “Now it’s along there and then turn right and it’s number twenty-three, right?  So don’t get lost will you, Carl?”

Well I’m like, “Fuck off,” know what I mean?  Laughing and that to show I’m not worried or nothing.

So I start to open the door but he’s like, “Hang on a minute, Carl mate.  You’ll need this, you prat!”

Then he gives me a gun as such and it’s like, “This is the trigger, mate, and this is the safety catch, and this is a silencer so there won’t be any loud bangs or nothing.  And listen, mate, there’s ten bullets in there, so when he’s down, empty the lot into the bastard, know what I mean?   Into his head and that, yeah?”

So I’m like, “No worries mate.”

He laughs and lights up a spliff for me.

“I don’t need no wacky baccy to give me the bottle for this job mate,” I go.  “It’s no problem mate.  It’s no sweat.”

And he’s like, “No Carl, I’m not being funny or nothing, mate. It’s just, like, to make it more of a laugh, yeah?  Know what I mean?”

#

Then I’m outside Cyril Burkitt’s house – yeah? – and it’s doing my head in because I never really thought he had a home or nothing, know what I mean?  He was just a deskie, yeah?  And, like there’s a car outside and flowers and that, and a milk bottle, and there’s, like, a little path from the gate made of bricks, and coloured glass in the front door: red and blue and green.  And through the front window – right? – there’s this big room with loads of  books and that.  Which I can see him in there – yeah? – reading the paper by himself.  And there’s music playing, yeah?  Violins and that.

So I ring the bell, and he looks up and sees me through the window.  Which he, like, smiles and gets up and comes to the door.

“Hello, Carl!  This is a nice surprise!  I didn’t think you’d come.  I didn’t think you’d have the time for an old deskie like me!”

He’s got like a cardigan on, and brown slippers and, like, old-man jeans, and he hasn’t shaved yet or nothing.  He don’t look like a deskie, really.  Just some old geezer, know what I mean?

“Come on in, Carl, come on in.  Can I get you a cup of tea or something?”

And I’m like, “Yeah, thanks, tea” so we go through into this big kitchen like on telly or something with like wood everywhere and a stone floor and that.

Which he gets the kettle and goes over to the sink to fill it up.

“Let me see now, Carl, is that milk and four sugars?  Have I remembered that right?”

Then he turns round smiling and sees the gun in my hand.

#

And he’s like, “Oh.”

It’s weird, he don’t look scared or nothing, just like, tired.

“I see,” he goes.

And then he laughs!  Not like really laughs, but like, a little sad sort of laugh.  Know what I mean?

“All this hatred!” he goes, “I should be honoured really I suppose.  It’s almost like being loved.”

“You what?” I go.

“Never mind, Carl,” he goes.  “Don’t worry about it.”

He puts the kettle down slowly and then he goes,  “Someone put you up to this, I suppose, Carl?  You were never much of a one for thinking things up for yourself.”

And I’m like, “Mind your own business.”

Which he nods and sort of sighs.

“Listen Carl,” he goes, and he’s really slow, like he’s thinking out loud.  “Listen Carl.  My wife died a while back and she was the only person in the world I really loved.  And then my career sort of petered out, as you may have heard, not that it was ever much of a career and not that I was ever much cop at my job – as you probably know better than most, I’m afraid.   So I really don’t have a huge amount to live for.  Oh, I get by alright.  I potter around.  I weed my garden.  I do the crossword.  I watch TV.  But really it doesn’t make much difference to me if my life ends now or whether it goes on for another twenty years.  Do you see what I mean?  I mean: if you really need to shoot me, well, be my guest!”

Well I’m like, “What the fuck?” but I don’t say nothing.  I’m pointing the gun at him, and my finger’s on the trigger.

“But listen Carl,” he goes, “I don’t know who put you up to this but, you know, you are very easily led.   I do suggest you think very carefully about whether it’s actually in your interest to shoot me.  You really do need to think about that.”

And I’m like, “Fuck off, don’t give me that deskie shit now, alright.  Just fucking leave me alone.”

It’s doing my fucking head in, know what I mean?  My hand is shaking so much I can’t hardly point the gun.

“I’m worried for you, Carl,” he goes, “It probably sounds strange, but I really am.”

Which then – yeah? – I can’t stand it no more and I pull the fucking trigger just to make him stop.

 

 

© Chris Beckett, 2002, 2017.  Not to be reproduced without permission

 

The smartsplaining voice

There’s a lot of talk these days about a growing contempt in the world for evidence, for experts, for reason itself.  It’s a real concern. Not much hope for the future if decades of meticulous scientific work on climate change can all be tossed aside by know-nothing ‘common sense’.  Not much hope for a decent society if obvious lies can be uncritically accepted as true, while facts are dismissed out of hand

But another kind of ugliness that’s been coming to the fore lately is the voice that says, in effect, we smart people know best, and those thick people should just shut up and wait to be told what’s good for them.  Weary, angry, contemptuous: the smartsplaining voice, it might be called.

Clever educated people who are good at reasoning, should be careful not to assume that this alone makes them right.

I remember once in my social work days, visiting a barely literate client and her saying to me resentfully at the end: ‘I suppose you’re going to go away and write this all down, aren’t you?’  However reasonable I was, however conscientious, the fact remained that my interpretation of events was going to go on the record, and hers was not.

A few years later, after a change of job, I acquired a reading ticket for the Cambridge University Library, and had the habit for a while of sitting in the cafe over there to write.  As I half-listened to the people at the tables around me, academics and students coming and going with their cups of coffee and tea, I noticed that I could go all day without even once hearing a regional accent of any kind, only the distinctive drawl of the British private school system.

There’s no question in my mind that every one of those people in the library would have been much better at rational argument and far better-informed than that former client of mine in her council house three miles away.  But every one of their arguments, however beautifully constructed, would necessarily be based on their own experience and what they’d read, and I’ll bet that neither their experience nor their reading equipped them to know anything about that woman’s world.  (This is true of me too, incidentally, although my former job afforded me small glimpses into it.)

So when some of them become politicians, or economists, or entrepreneurs, their judgements about the world, however carefully reasoned, will take almost no account at all of what that woman feels, what’s important to her, how she imbues her life with meaning.  Their judgements will, on the other hand, be very amply informed by the needs of people like themselves, what’s important to them, what imbues their life with meaning.

And that makes me think that what may look like a revolt against reason itself, may be in fact be a revolt against a class that is very good at reasoning, and very good at explaining why the world ought to be run in a way that suits that very same class.   Not revolt against reason as such, in other words, but revolt against reasoning that (however unintentionally) is rigged in favour of the reasoners.   After all, if you’re good at reasoning, you’re good at rationalising too.

Which is why I think that members of that class, including me, would do better to think about what we’ve been excluding from our view of the world, than to dismiss whole groups of people as ignorant thugs.