Geoff Nelder's Blog, page 31

Review of Alternative Reality News Service: Luna for the Lunies.

Alternate Reality News Service, Luna for the Lunies by Ira Nayman

The third in the Alternate Reality News Service books, and in which this reviewer’s LOL muscles were exercised in at least 11 dimensions and two universes.

Published by CreateSpace, 2012   274 pages

ISBN: 978-1470053734 for paperback

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/126271 for ebook of various formats.

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

ARNS: Luna for the Lunies by Ira Nayman

In the spirit of alternate reality I am starting near the end. Bear in mind that this isn’t just a humorous book, it is absolutely hilarious in its own bizarro fashion. Each chapter is an alternate something. You might expect eco textbooks to have chapter headings as in this book such as Alternate Technology and Alternate Politics, but not an Alternate Glossary. How many other books have a glossary boasting that the words are NOT those you’d find in the book! Hilarious. One item to tickle your alternate eye might be – Parallelogramme (noun): a telegram from a parallel universe.

 

Between the ten chapters is a longer story – The Reality Threshold – which teases readers with insights into the manic workings of the Alternate Reality News Service office and its staff. I like this because one of the few problems with short story / article collections is the lack of a main character with whom the reader can connect. With this interwoven story we get to know Brenda Brundtland-Govanni, her six feet six height and pink sundress, and engage with her desires.

 

As fans of the earlier ARNS books would expect there are zany inventions and what-ifs that strangely are just an extension to the logic and practice of what happens already. So many times, I read something Nayman invents and think – so obvious, why hasn’t it already been done? Why haven’t I thought of it first? A few examples: a computer program that enacted via search engines trawls the world to erase everything about the target individual. Innocuous? Not in the hands of Ira Nayman – the holes in the internet grow… Then there are the alternate gadgets: the Teen Annoyance Reduction; Aural Confusinator; fridges that send messages not only to the authorities re: the unhealthy contents, but to fridges in other cities, for a natter.

 

As a climate aficionado and lover of stochastic phenomena, I am particularly fond of the international havoc caused by the discovery and attempts to capture in China (and sell) the individual butterfly whose effect will create a hurricane in the US.

 

There are many more incidents and phenomena in this book that challenge conventions, crease that smile and raise an eyebrow, but there is an academic piece that intrigued me. Theories on humour have interested me for years, as it has for philosophers, psychologists and comedians. Are all jokes based on someone’s misfortune as Bob Monkhouse claimed? So, my eyes pricked up when I read a reference to Aristotle, as I knew he had written on Comedy in his Poetics tomes. Did Ira Nayman elaborate on incongruity theory of comedy, superiority, or relief theories? Nearly. An intelligent argument explores why jokes lose their humour with time. He comes up with a formula: the half-life of a joke is proportionate to its relationship to popular culture. His exemplar is to quote a 2,300-year-old joke he found in one of Aristotle’s lost books on comedy. It isn’t funny anymore. Why? His ruminations take us into the latest science. No less than the Large Hadron Collider, which on smashing sub-atomic particles reveals an emission discovered to be humour. It degrades via black holes to another dimension. Hence some old jokes are no longer funny because their humour is rib-tickling people in another dimension, or a parallel universe. Makes sense to me. Or as Nayman has it, the universe has the last laugh. Just maybe not this universe.

 

There’s far more than I can mention in this review, such as when apostrophes go’’’’’’ berserk; and fly-through fast food outlets for witches leave pedestrians running for cover from litter falling at terminal velocity.

 

As always, Ira Nayman, crosses my reality threshold at 90 mph and leaves me laughing, thoughtful, inspired and enriched even if no wiser. I strongly recommend his Alternate Reality News Service to readers in all dimensions and universes.

 

Update on things

I am delighted to report that Robert Blevins of Adventure Books of Seattle is eager to publish  the third editions of Hot Air and Escaping Reality. I will let you know when they are ready.

LL-Publications have sent me the proof copy of ARIA: Left Luggage and I am going through it, making ammendments as the proofreader requested. Very handy to have American editors at this stage, pointing out that they don’t use terms like grog. There are also some minor plot continuity errors, which are now fixed. Amazing how these things slip through after being rewritten, redrafted, gone through a critique group and poured over. It will be published this summer and already some famous book reviewers have promised to read it. Waterstones in various towns have agreed to let me do signings. So much to do.

Grandchildren are growing up fast. Amy is talking more legibly and Oliver is making jokes. His dad told him to eat his carrots so he can see in the dark. What did Oliver say? Put the light on, daddy!

I’ve read an exhilirating bizarro – humorous SF book by Ira Nayman. The review is in the above blog. The one I haven’t written yet. See, I’m into alternate time zones.

The Respectable Face of Tyranny by Gary Fry

A review by Geoff Nelder of

The Respectable Face of Tyranny by Gary Fry

Spectral Visions Volume 1

Published by Spectral Press April 2012  website here

Suppose you are a recently divorced man with a typical teen daughter to bring up and protect. Stress enough for most ordinary people. Then add acute financial problems resulting in having to live in a caravan on a cliff top and you need fortitude. Into this mix your caravan is in the enigmatic landscape of Whitby, North Yorkshire, and you have more imagination than Roald Dahl seeing what might be hallucinations on the beach where the dinosaurs lived, and you too would wonder what life is all about.

Gary Fry has crafted a cunning tale here. No quotidian (his word of the month I think, and I like it) ghost or horror story but a recipe for madness, and yet a grasp for sanity as Josh sees symbols of his financial woes in the Jurassic landscape. This story, like others, by sheer coincidence – in the Spectral Press unique collection – have a personal resonance for me. I too have fossil hunted on Saltwick Bay, wondered about the disintegrating concrete boat from a World warring era, and smelt the metallic tang of pebbles but also the pungent nose-pinching odours of seaweed. I am a keen admirer of fiction that uses real geography and it is cleverly used here.

Praise be to the ammonite god that Whitby Abbey is used and yet no mention of Dracula is called for. Yeay – a first, surely. No vampire is needed to make this story stand out as a literary gem. A dwelling on life's struggles in the static dwelling on the cliff – where strange electric flocks might be the children of the creatures of that coastline's geological strata.

Who isn't beset by financial problems in this global recession? If they lost you your marriage, home, and gave you new problems, how your mind would contort to find solutions. Yet, only in Gary Fry's imagination has these elements combined – the ancient and the modern, past souls and contemporary life.

Thank you to Gary's publisher, too for allowing font size changes to great effect. For example – On the beach    '… heard the sound return to him several times, on each

occasion quieter, quieter, quieter'

This is reminiscent of Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz p83 where Brother Francis timidly speaks in a tiny font to the Lord Abbot, then when asked to speak up, blurts out in capitals. Hah. That was in 1960, and generally it's been discouraged since and can look childish, but masterfully done here.

A theme in the story is on tattoos. Teenage Sally wants one, of course, and dad doesn't want her too, of course. Cliché so far, but it develops in an undercurrent way, and I love the way she teased him. Also the tattooed man in Whitby Fair so reminded me of Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, as does – in a good, ironic way – Gary Fry's publisher himself: Simon Marshall-Jones. You are in this story, just as delectable.

This story isn't to missed by those readers of the noir side to contemporary life, tainted by ghastly visions, supported by love. Cleverly done.

Any publishers out there?

The publisher of my humorous thriller, Escaping Reality, and Mediterranean thriller, Hot Air, has given up publishing. Not because sales are low, which they are but ironically picking up just recently. Brambling Books was a one man and his wife business, like many small presses. He's had misfortunes in 2011 with family and friends dying in South Africa, NZ and Australia. Not only did he have businesses with them out there that need sorting out, but their deaths have hit him, emotionally, much harder than he expected.

We parted on good terms but it leaves me with the problem of finding a publisher. The difficulty is that both books have now been published by two small presses, and in the case of Escaping Reality, have almost certainly peaked its sales some 5 years or so ago. Again, ironically, my local independent bookshop, Bluecoat Books – in Chester, have just ordered 6 more from me on sale on return. If it wasn't for those trickle sales I'd be tempted to go to an ebook-only publisher.  I am keen to get Hot Air into paper print because apart from 15 poorly printed copies from the original Dutch publisher, its never been available in print worldwide and I've been asked for it many times.

I could do self-publishing. However, I've never done that and I'm too busy reading, writing, reviewing, editing and cycling, etc to learn how. I need a publisher to take them on – not to spend a lot of money on them – I'll do the promo, etc.

Later this year, a science fiction small press is publishing my ARIA vol one (Left Luggage) SF novel, and I've already got offers of signings at some Waterstones, so it would be good to have the other books available too.

I still like the ebook cover art for Hot Air and the paperback cover, but this is an opportunity to redo the Escaping Reality cover. I've always thought it was too much like a hard-nosed crime than a humorous thriller.

Any ideas gratefully received.

Locked out in Llangollen

On Wednesday I had a mission. To take photographs for a piece I'm doing for Cycling World on riding along the ridge top of Offa's Dyke in Flintshire. The road is the B5101 from Treuddyn to FFrith Hall. It's only about four miles but it has two unique features. There are few sections of the original Offa's Dyke that have been metalled so vehicles can travel along it, and to my knowledge it might be the only stretch that hasn't been widened with the original ditches on either side. King Offa, in the 8thcentury, built the ditch either as a boundary, defensive line, or as a power statement to his Welsh adversaries. Generally it runs between England and Wales and was formed by digging a ditch and piling up the waste dirt and rocks into a ridge. The B5101 – I wish it had a more grandiose name. For example in Coedpoeth is Heol Offa, which also runs along the dyke though it isn't so obvious.  The second point of interest in this road is a red sign warning drivers of "Cyclist in road – Beicwyr ar y fford" wonderful. I want one – preferably two suspended in front and behind me! Not seen a notice like that before. The lane is so narrow there, because of it being perched on top of Offa's Dyke, that there are traffic lights to permit vehicles in one direction at a time. The lights change too fast for my short fat hairy legs, and obviously for other cyclists too, hence the sign.

A wider section of the B5101

I filled my digital camera with views of the road – enhanced by blue skies and gorgeous woodland and hillsides, plus the two pretty villages of Llanfynydd and Ffrith – with its going-nowhere-mineral-railway viaduct.

The photo here is of a wider section of the B5101 and there are ditches either side behind the trees. I love the way the tree branches curve over as if to meet and grab passing cyclists…

At the T-junction with the Minera Road I veered right to Coedpoeth to see if my pal, John Marchant, and his wife, Rita were in. We had a long chat during which he effused about how wonderful the Escape Velocity: The Anthology was – see earlier blog. Heading away from Coedpoeth, through Minera, I tackled the steep lane up World's End. Love the bleak treeless landscape on the plateau – it's like going from Deciduous woodland below to the tundra in just a few miles. A few years ago on the way up I felt a wind fly past me and saw it was Chris Boardman and his North Wirral Velo cycling club. They all helloed as I puffed up the incline and waved back. My brakes held as I whizzed down through the water ford at World's End.

In Llangollen I couldn't go to the YHA hostel because it's one of the hostels sold off – along with all the others in a 20 miles radius, including Chester, Bala, Corwen… so sad. However, there is an independent hostel – Llangollen Hostel. No chores, friendly staff, reasonable rates, clean duvets, well-equipped lounge, kitchen and dining room. Breakfast is thrown in. I met Peter Williams, who had cycled from Chapel-en-le-Frith (this Frith, Ffrith business is getting well used in this blog – wonder what it means?). Some of his route coincided with mine from Chester to Nottingham so we had much in common. After the proprietor (I suppose he's not a warden as in YHA?) left – we thought to go shopping or whatever – we also left to get some tea. Problem. We didn't know the code to get back in! Never mind we assumed it wouldn't be long before the owner returned. It was on my way to the shops when I realised I'd lost my wallet. The hostel was prepaid but I always carry some spare coins. I had 6 pounds to buy enough for dinner, supper, midnight snack and the next day's sports drinks and food. I guessed that my wallet fell out of my rear pocket near the Royal Oak in Kinnerton when I stripped to remove my vest. Do I use some valuable rare coins to report the card to Lloyds bank, but I don't have the number of the card, nor of Lloyds – all would take even more money especially as Vodaphone have no signals in Llangollen. I bought some food and returned to the hostel. Peter and I arranged to leave the door ajar but someone had closed it. I assumed he was still in town, maybe gone to a restaurant or a pub. I knocked but no reply. A note on the door said to call  a landline number if no one was in. So the min charge of 60p of my diminishing cash called said number – voice mail. Back to the hostel. I knocked and waited for two hours.

What would you do? Suppose, as actually happened, the 'warden' had left until breakfast and you had insufficient funds for another hotel? It was getting cold and my bike and belongings were locked up. I could a) find a bush to sleep under, b) report myself as destitute to the local police, or phone home. I'm sure my wife would have loved to arrive home after a long day in London, to jump in the car to drive the 20 odd miles to get me. And I would have had to return the next day to collect my bike. Eventually another guest turned up and he had the door code. Then I wondered about Peter. How would he get in? I stayed in the lounge writing up my SF story, Target Practice, until 11pm then shrugged and went to bed. At breakfast he said he was already back in the hostel when I'd returned but didn't hear my knocking. Hah. Oh well.

Hey, thanks to the man who picked up my wallet in Kinnerton. He phoned my wife, so she did have a journey to make for me after all. Life, eh?

My first published fiction story was called World's End, and involves a cyclist and spot of mystery. Read it free here.

Award potential? Quick

I've just returned from a cycling marathon puffing up Welsh mountains visiting names such as World's End, Heol Offa, Horseshoe Pass and Llangollen. A non-writing friend  in Coedpoeth, Wales, I dropped in unannounced, for a cup of tea en route was keen to tell me how much he enjoyed Escape Velocity: the anthology I'd given him a few weeks ago. He's been reading SF for over 40 years and pressed upon me that it was by far the very best collection he'd ever read. Wow. I know I'd spent two years going through thousands of submissions, selecting the best from our Escape Velocity mag included. One of mine is in there to lower the standard but he liked that too. Then he said why not enter it for the BFS best anthology? I said I don't think as editor that I am allowed… but perhaps another member of the BFS could.

Details: Escape Velocity: The Anthology contains stories from 40 contributors including Jaine Fenn, Sonny Whitelaw, Ian Whates, the controversial Rebecca Latyntseva, TTA's Roy Gray, Rob Harkess, Catherine Edmunds, and so on. A mix of hard SF, time travel, thoughtful ponderings, a cartoon…

Published 8 April 2011 by Adventure Books of Seattle, (owned by Robert Blevins) edited by Geoff Nelder and Robert Blevins ISBN-13: 978-0982327197

or Kindle on Amazon see http://amzn.to/H04ZqB

pub website http://adventurebooksofseattle.com/

Between you and me I'd hoped that by involving 40 writers that they would have bought copies for themselves and friends but few have done so. It really is an excellent collection and even though I plugged it here and there a lone voice isn't enough. If you are a member of the BFS I would be very grateful if you would consider nominating our Escape Velocity: The Anthology (31 March 2012 deadline -  aaarrgh)  http://www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk/british-fantasy-awards/

for the category of best anthology collection of short stories.

Mars a day

Mars in fiction was aired at Saturday's Chester science fiction library book group meeting. As I walked up to the library I saw the group had grouped outside in the sunlit wide paving and thought a decision had been made to go al fresco. Then I saw a picket line outside the library doors. The local Conservative council had changed the weekend-work contracts for librarians, care-workers, staff in schools, care homes and residential establishments effectively cutting their income. Picture here is of the Chester main library. It used to be a factory making motor cars. If you can zoom in on the decorative top of the building it says Westminster Coach and Motor works. Didn't they build factories grand in the 1920!

Chester Library

We supported them by not crossing them and instead walked to a local pub that has a large garden. Drinks, and outdoors – perfect for us, and support for a good cause. Ironic too, because there are two SF book groups in Chester and it is the 'other' rebel group that started off by meeting in the same pub garden. In practise everyone but a few are in both groups and enjoy the chance to discuss SFF books twice a month!

The 'rebel' group discusses agreed individual books while the library group probes themes and tropes within the science fiction and fantasy genres. This week it was the turn of Mars. In an earlier blog I gave my review of my chosen book on Mars – Philip K Dick's Martian Time-slip, which was more a fictional study of Schizophrenia than about Mars. Similarly, most fiction seems to be about people – allegories on politics, philosophy and sociology (Ben Bova, Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear) than Mars itself. Early works written before the 1960s, when they did use Mars, thought the canals were real and that Mars would be easily colonised, once the natives there were made friendly. We couldn't find a book that addressed the terra-forming of Mars seriously – ie solved the problem of the solar wind stripping most of the atmosphere because of the lack of a magnetosphere on the planet as it is now. Some of the group regarded Mars as an uninspirational place for future fiction now it is thought to be sterile and arid. However, I and a few others feel there is scope for imaginative tales to make use of such apparent futility. Hidden life beneath the surface, for example. Us writers are always up to a challenge. For example John Rennie in our group suggested (tongue in cheek but he IS a scientist) dropping a mini black hole down to the core of Mars to generate sufficient heat to regenerate convection, and induce a magnetic field again. The stuff of fiction.

Our leader, Alex Greene, had read more widely than the rest and was able to quote episodes of Star Trek and many other books.

Squash Pizza Hut

Our two grandsons have left our home. The first visit for Nathan. I do hope he enjoyed his stay, he only complained a couple of times but then he is less than two months old. Oliver at just three, is a delight. He commandeered my summerhouse and wouldn't let us in… unless we knocked. He isn't brilliant at eating all his meals but when al fresco, he did much better. He helped me in the garden, moving one lot of soil to the wheelbarrow even though it added to my workload later. His favourite book for the last three days turned out to be Squash the Spider! By Nick Ward. No, the spider isn't squashed (but it was a close call). We read it to him at least ten times and he was quoting phrases from it in the right places… eg Tee hee, Boo, I'm not scared. Wonderful. Thanks to our former neighbours, James and Lindsey Musker, for giving us this book, among others, when they migrated to Australia. As my daughter drove them down the road I recited to myself, missing them already.

I've been able to avoid entering pizza restaurants for several years. Being vegan my choice is limited to salads, pasta or some kind of dry pizza based round thing. However, as a kind of belated Mothers Day celebration I was driven to a Pizza Hut and found myself pleasantly surprised. Yes, the pizzas have cheese but it wasn't compulsory. There was much more salad choices than I recalled and lovely sunflower seeds to enrich them. Then it became clear that the CEO had been watching Come Dine With Me or Master Chef. The plates came as flat, matt black with rounded corners. Two issues presented themselves immediately: how do I stop the cherry tomatoes shooting off the plate with no rim? You can't stab them with forks because they invariably both implode and explode in such a way that my tie (or whatever) has changed colour and wetness. The second issue slowing the start of my meal and making me hesitate worryingly throughout, is the hole.

For some unfathomable reason the plate has a 2 cm diameter hole in the bottom left corner. How can one expect to enjoy shovelling the wonderful salad, tomato-base, olives, peppers and assorted primary colours around the palette when there's a hole in it? Pressure I can do without. Maybe it's a test. To verify my wife's allegations I can't keep food on my plate. Or a game, to prove the converse.

Luckily I managed to eat my fill – about half the pizza – without any food disappearing over the rim of the void. When the waitress arrived I enquired after the hole. She didn't, at first, understand my query but finally asserted it was to make life easier for carrying. I didn't get that. Ordinary plates don't have holes, and usually come with a little lip to prevent wetness and cherry tomatoes escaping. As a chaser question I enquired why my hole was bottom left while my wife's was top right. "Nothing significant," she replied, suspiciously.

"Are the plates matt black to promote heat absorption under the food to make it cool quickly?" I asked, "or to radiate infrared from the uncovered parts of the plate to warm us up?" She refused to respond.

Which brings me to a short story I'm preparing to write. An asteroid on its way to smite Earth is deflected by courageous astronauts, but it re-directs itself back to Earth. Asking my Chester SF book group, pal, Alex Greene, he tells me there is Star Trek Voyager 61, called Rise, which has a similar plot. Ah well, at least mine is directed at Earth, and called Target Practice, and will be humorously written. Wonder if the asteroid is big enough to house a Pizza Hut?

I'll be glad when plates are back to normal, and won't be drilling holes in our grandchildren's plates any time soon.

 

What I do with my spare bike

I am back in Chester after cycling 100 miles (should be less but got lost) over the Pennines to Nottingham to loan son my spare bike. Thanks to Ilam Hall Youth Hostel chef for the vegan dinner and brekkie! That's even though the nut roast he first offered had milk in the recipe and he had no soya. However, he made vegetable fingers and vegan gravy that just melted in my mouth. Having said that I was so hungry after cycling off 6k Calories I'd find anything vegan delectable!

Ilam Hall photo from West Leigh Junior School

There were 50 junior school kids at the hostel with their amazingly calm teachers, but I was put in a family room in a separate building so wasn't disturbed at night. In fact I slept in a double bed with quilt, and the room had an en suite shower room. No chores these days.

Ilam Hall was originally built many centuries ago but rebuilt in early Victorian days as a mansion with gothic towers and crenallated battlements set in beautiful grounds in a picturesque limstone village in the hiking honey spot of Dove Dale in Derbyshire. I felt as if I was on holiday even though I was really on a family mission. Here's their webbie.

Whether I am hiking all day with all my staying-over chattels or stamping on pedals with all I need in my panniers I have a dire need to keep everything to a minimum. My toothbrush is sawn in half, laptop – if brought – is tiny, and I've done my best to lose a kilogram before hand – not always successful. So I often don't take a book to read, hoping that there is something SF or interesting on the games and books shelves in the hostel lounge. There usually is, however, they are often too big to read overnight. Wouldn't be great if short story anthologies were acquired by hostels and guest houses? Good examples, of course would be any of the ones I am in or edited – haha – Escape Velocity: the anthology, Dimensions, Northern Lights, Monk Punk anthology, M is for Monster, and many more. Many of them are listed on my Amazon page here. I should really have bought some thin anthologies that slip into my pannier. They don't have to be science fiction and fantasy. I love the writing of A.L. Kennedy and Julian Barnes and they produce shorts. Perhaps you, dear blog reader, can suggest slim anthologies I should buy to take on my trips.

Of course I could get an e-book reader but would I risk it bumping over cattle-grids at breakneck speeds?

I would have benefitted from having a Kindle or Sony e-reader, Kobo, etc on the homeward journey by train. I expected to see some as I usually do but not today. The cheapest train journey from Nottingham to Chester was via Derby and Crewe. At Derby the train filled with naked legs… until I looked up and saw it was just high hemlines. Must be a big wedding, I thought, but they'd brought aboard bottles of champagne and copies of Racing Times. Yep, they all disembarked, giggling, at Uttoxeter race course. At Crewe, the passengers were more track suits and even Shell suits. Oh well.

Coming back home

Spent a splendid week in the Northern Lake District. Some family members warned of ongoing winter weather and we did see snow on the first full day but all it did was to enhance the look of the mountains. We walked up by Carling Knott to hike around and above Holme Wood and back along the lesser known Loweswater Lake. Cool weather but the exertion warmed us as did the views. Of course Keswick was as delightful as ever and wife enjoyed her fish and chip dinners. Sadly, we found the tea and fancy cakes at Brysons' to be not up to their usual high standards. More hikes in Borrowdale and finding little cafes such as in Grange, more than made up for Brysons' shortcomings.

The photo is taken on the eastern shore of Derwent Water and shows an unusual sculpture. A large rock split in half and a maze-like carving on the polished faces. It's known as the Centenary Stone – details here

I visited a pal, Les Floyd, at his home in Carlisle where we caught up with each other's writing news, and publishing. Good to meet again his mum and brother.

I popped into Waterstones books in Carlisle where the manager invited me back to do a book signing once ARIA is published. Also he'll stock Exit, Pursued by a Bee – yeay!

Speaking of Exit, I found while I was away that it was the highlighted book at Beyond Worlds here  Brilliant!

Part of the holiday was for Gaynor to get on writing her Masters and me with ARIA volume 3. Both of us succeeded in both hiking, writing, and resting.