Geoff Nelder's Blog, page 33

3D Flyover

 For an article on the cycle ride I did in Spain in October, I logged on to map my ride. It's a bit fiddly for the free version and I had to start over twice, however, the route follows the roads I took pretty accurately now. In the 75 km I'd cycled an accumulated height gain of over 1000 metres. Then I discovered the little 3D button on the right of the map. It is a small window but gives a great feel of a helicopter ride over my route. It revealed a few wriggles through housing estates I don't remember doing but overall it is faithful. It takes 14 minutes from start to finish. This is faster than the 6 hours it took me even on a carbon fibre race bike! Give it a go, it's free!

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/62830076/

I might use this resource again.

Ultimate Adventure Magazine is out!

ULTIMATE ADVENTURE MAGAZINE

BIKING | CLIMBING | HIKING | TRAVEL | CAMPING | ADVENTURE

 Issue #1 – Jan/Feb 2012

In this first bumper-packed 190 PAGE 60,000 WORD issue, we have an interview with CLAUDIO VON PLANTA, famous for filming Long Way Round and Long Way Down with EWAN MCGREGOR and CHARLIE BOORMAN, where he talks about his adventures behind the camera in places like Afghanistan and Africa, and tracking down Osama Bin Laden…

We have interviews with best-selling horror novelist  GUY N. SMITH, New Zealand rock-singer and recent Glastonbury performer JORDAN REYNE, ultra-marathon runner ANDREW MURRAY and top SFF artist VINCENT CHONG.

We have features on climbing in Scotland, crossing Australia on a postie's moped, Geoff Nelder cycling in the Akamas mountains in Cyprus, making a short horror medical zombie film, and heading to Mexico in search of buried secrets.

All this, along with news, letters, competitions, the ANTI-CLARKSON column, Whackjob Jim Column and The Horror, The Horror Column, reviews of kit, motorbikes, caravans, restaurants, books, video games, albums and sports fuel, short fiction by Garry Charles, a serialised graphic novel by Martyn Pick, your favourite Grumpy Old Man — and Ultimate Kids Adventure, something for the kids (and their parents!) to do at weekends.

Available as:

• a PDF (suitable for PC, MAC, iPAD etc) at www.uamag.co.uk

• a text-only version for your EPUB and Kindle (MOBI) readers at www.uamag.co.uk

• an online readable magazine at ISSUU: www.issuu.com/ultimateadventuremagazine/docs/issue1

• a print version, which can be purchased at www.lulu.com

Alternative digital versions are also available at Amazon, Lulu, iTunes and Barnes & Noble.

All UAMAG digital versions are FREE! We must be mad…

We hope you enjoy!

Andy Remic

Editor

Please note: NOBODY has been paid for anything in Ultimate Adventure Magazine. Every little bit has been done out of our love of biking, climbing, hiking and travel. So please please please help us by tweeting, facebooking, spreading the word to your friends and on forums – our continued existence will depend on our download figures!

First contact novel – again

I had a long train journey today so I took Carl Sagan's Contact – sucker for meeting aliens – and I wanted to see how the book differed from the 1997 film. I was never happy with that ending – cop out, over-religious, etc. Sagan's prose is intelligent but far too much info dump and very slow action. Then I get to the end. The same. Then I turn to the very end – it was written from the script of the film – aaarrggggh!

Sparrowhawk by Paul Finch

Sparrowhawk by Paul Finch

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

Pendragon Press 2010

Reviewed the Kindle version via Brentwood Press 2011

ASIN: B006FORSP0

The paradox of conflicts between what you see and know.

 

Once freed from a vile debtor's prison Captain Sparrowhawk of the 16th Light Dragoons had to pay for his freedom with a strange guarding mission. Four aspects of Paul Finch's novella drew me in: authenticity of geography and history; the exquisite writing style; personal coincidences; and most of all the grim storyline fascination of apparitional ghouls from the past, and the satisfaction of finally solving the puzzle.

1843 was an interesting time in England for social contrasts and political awakening. Add this to one of the coldest winters on record and we have terrific conflict and tension. As a climatologist I know about that winter, so I was mightily impressed by the research Finch did to make the narrative real. Same with other details. He refers to toppers. My granddad was nicknamed Topper because he regularly wore one at the weekends and as a joke in the pub even though he had risen no further than master plasterer as an artisan. Later in the story, our hero was battling suicidal odds in Afghanistan (so topical). My other granddad was wounded there during the third Anglo-Afghan war in the 1920s. How did Finch know my family connections so well – hah.

Sparrowhawk is paid and instructed by the enigmatic and beautiful Mss Evangeline, who knows an uncomfortable amount of information about him. She is the key to the puzzle in this story and turns the lock iteratively with each chapter. Clever.

Also smart is the writing. Just listen to this description of Angus. 'Here, an attendant was waiting, a big, raw-boned fellow with thick, red whispers and braces over his linen undershirt. The tattoos on his brawny arms indicated a military background. When he spoke, it was with a Highlands accent.' You are there with Sparrowhawk. Not only is there superb Show (as writers and editors urge on their writers) but the language is of the 1840s. We have costermongers –street sellers, 'haranguing the public from their barrows, selling everything from eel soup to pigs' trotters, from lemonade to kitchen grease, from frogs, lizards and snails to rare and exotic birds, most of which would be sparrows and finches done up with colourful paint.' Finch's research is beautifully revealed in words such as that lovely harridan and breveted, right down to knowing popular tunes of the day as constables would whistle In Dulci Jubilo on their beat. Trust Finch to be aware, unlike Hollywood directors that you don't fire guns from the same place twice. I think Paul Finch must have been in the SAS, and have a time machine.

Sparrowhawk questions the veracity of what he experiences, but his brought-to-life father denies him a right to question it and to face the existing reality. Interesting philosophical stance, but it is whimsical and the probable hallucination vanishes, yet stays as a torment.

Some readers may feel that some of the narrative detail is infodump eg about the Peterloo massacre of 1819 but it is well done, and relevant to the plot. It is forgiven when a man-lion creature is described inside the terror, as having eyes that are 'pits of molten gold' – I wish I'd written that.

This novella is unmissable for any aficionado of ghost, horror, and historical fiction.  

Link to Amazon.co.uk Kindle

 

I don't believe it

So I say to a room full of my family, "You've all heard of Dan Simmons, right?" None had. "Come on, the Hyperion series, Hugo winner blah blah." I am blanked. I'm chuffed because Dan has accepted my facebook friendship and sent me a personal message, not that he knows me from a speck of interstellar dust but my opportunity to brag falls on deaf ears. Do other SF writers and readers have this problem with family and friends?

Retreat and advance

Although I'd booked a weekend break away in a Derbyshire country cottage as a holiday, with the laptop packed, it was bound to be a writer's retreat too. For both of us – wife came too – because she had Masters 'crap' (her words) to do while I worked on critiques and volume 3 of ARIA. We nearly didn't go because the forecast was for snow, and Gaynor confided she'd rather had gone to a nice warm hotel, preferably in London. Aarggh. Justification then of my comment in a short story that holidays for wives is shopping in another place. Don't shoot me down; it is true! Well, nearly so. In the end although we encountered snow and sleet enroute, and the police blocked the road between Macclesfield and Buxton because of an accident, we made it to a converted farm barn in the village of Hulme End between Leek and Matlock. Why is it that in the evenings away from home, even with the TV on in a corner, I chisel away far more words than at home? And that's what happened. 2, 000 words on Friday, another on Saturday night and more early this morning. That and a critique of some of the short science fiction stories in the BSFA's Orbiter group.

Oh, and I read the whole of The Holy Machine by Chris Beckett. I spent the first half of the book not liking it then I slowly warmed to the theme but without reaching red hot. I have an inbuilt distrust of science fiction books with a religious angle and this one had several. In the future an atheist enclave are surrounded by extreme religious bigoted communities of all the major religions. They hate the atheists, fair enough, but also their robots, calling them ungodly, manifestations of the devil. No one argues that if God existed he might have made Man clever enough to make robots to do the chores and work that humans find difficult or distasteful. The atheists' rulers fall into the cliched trap of corruption and so end up having to accept religions after all. In fact they developed robots in order to cut down on the number of religious people allowed into the enclave to work. Sounds rather like the Israeli situation only read atheism for Judaism. Our protagonist hero smuggles a beautiful robot sex-worker into the outlands but is too stupid to make her wear a burka or a headscarf so the bigots kind of spot her beauty and become very curious. Too many silly things, and typos, to make me endorse this one I'm afraid. Never mind, just enjoy the pictures taken on Saturday Dec 10th in Derbyshire. Cold but dry and a terrific 7 miles walk in the Manifold valley back to the cottage. Near the village of Wetton, after a pub lunch in Ye Olde Royal Oak (been a pub open there for nearly 300 years) we walked up the Manifold Valley past a cave known as Thor's Cave. Next time I'm taking a torch and find out what Thor had for dinner.

Near Hulme End in Derbyshire. Out on a walk between writing and reading stints.

Professional Writing Academy

Mark Iles is a friend who is also in the BSFA Orbiters for critiquing each others science fiction stories. Mark also is a professional writer and one of his missions was to interview me. It appears here. My mugshot is there but hey ho.

Chester on Saturday 3rd Dec 2011

If you wondered about the outcome of the Chester Library Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group meeting then a link to another blog is here. Alex Greene wrote that superb summary and assessment of the books we discussed and finally picked on. I dithered over whether to pick Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles for my unmissable Desert Island Book but chose in the end that strangely compelling fantasy The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer.

I was upset on my walk into the city for that meeting. Once our own children grew up and left home I didn't give infants much of a thought. Then grandson Oliver came along followed a year later by Amy and they've changed my life. I can't walk past charity shops without popping in to rummage their toy baskets instead of just the books and DVD shelves. Yesterday, a young woman sat on a low wall with a little lad about Oliver's age (nearly 3). The woman was unscrewing the cup/cap off a vacuum flask. I saw the clouds from the hot liquid but didn't know what beverage it was. As I passed I thought, "Surely not…" I was wrong. A few steps later and I heard the little lad cry, followed by the woman cry. I turned and saw the woman trying to finger the scalding drink from the poor boy's lips. Luckily, I always carry a water bottle. I rushed back to them and offered cold water. The woman was too distraught to do anthing but said, "Yes, please, thank you." in an Eastern European accent. Not the time, and no time, for remonstration, I took her cup, emptied the still steaming contents and poured in cold water. The boy took it and bubbled his lips and drank. Hopefully, his blisters won't bother him too much.

A few minutes later I, like so many other onlookers, watched in amazement at a man in a top hat and tails playing a piano while cycling it into the heart of Chester. I have no photograph of him but he is on YouTube playing while cycling at other events. Good for you, Rimski – here is a link. Good to see both my hobbies together – bicycling and piano playing.

Yeay, Maggie Ball, who runs the famous Compulsive Reader website has bought a copy of my SF mystery – Exit, Pursued by a Bee for her dad, who is convalescing. Let's hope the ironic comedy, the sex in space and mysteries will pull him through. If you know someone who will hug you for a copy then go to my web page with reviews and links here.

Which SF book… oh dear

I am drawn to post-catastrophe survival stories and read three in a row recently. George Stewart's Earth Abides, Walter Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I'd read Stephen King's The Stand last year and it rather like Earth Abides in many ways.

All classics in their own right but each leaving me wanting. I am a glutton for good writing – when I read a phrase and say, 'I wish I wrote that.' I didn't get that from Earth Abides. And yet the courage and persistence of the main character doing what most decent men would do over the years and charting the way Nature would reclaim North American cities is admirable. It comes under that category that so many SF stories written in the mid 20th Century fall in where the protagonist is nice – and so lacks that gritty conflict modern readers want. Yet Miller does that in Canticle. Terrific writing, scary deaths of the main characters and yet amusing in a noir way. I suppose the book troubled me as it is about how faith – especially the Catholic Church in whatever morphed form it has post nuclear war – is necessary to pull Mankind through. It's done tongue in cheek and I can still enjoy the way the story is told and smile at the characters. The Road is marvellous with grit and conflict around each dark corner yet hope is wired all the way through.

For the next Chester Library SFF book group meeting this coming Saturday 3rd December we are having a Desert Island Discs session where we each suggest a SFF book we couldn't live without. That is sooo hard. I am also at a disadvantage to many of the others in that although I have been reading SF for decades my rubbish memory denies me the opportunity to recall enough details to talk about most of them. Also I have been writing more than reading in the last ten years. To top that I don't normally like to re-read books on the grounds that life is too short. Besides the fact above that I am drawn to post-apocalyptic stories, I also want to be awed by vistas new, which generally means exploring new planets or weird places. And I want to enjoy the writing style. I've no time before Saturday to read Gene Wolfe's books and the many others I see listed on 'must read' compilations on the web. I think M. John Harrison's Light is high on my suggestions though I may yet cause issues with some by suggesting one of the best books I've read for writing style and imagination: The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer. It is fantasy rather than science fiction but imagine a story from the point of view of an ancient non-human entity, who collects souls that collects items. It was Fischer's The Thought Gang that re-energised my urge to write. It's all his fault!

I don't suppose I'm allowed to have my own Exit, Pursued by a Bee as my chosen book. Ha ha.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

I have a file of story ideas I've collected over the years. A kind of todo list – about 50 pages long.

Thinking of making time to write one up as a December crit group story I saw I'd written a potential title:

This Space Left Intentionally Blank.

So what is the story? Dunno, the rest is blank. Shortest story I've written.

Perhaps it is a literary equivalent of that enigmatic short piece of music that has no notes… John Cage's 4'33

Promo Friday at several writing and publishing forums today so I've plugged the Kindle version of Hot Air Grab a copy of ebook Hot Air while stocks last. Feisty woman protagonist is abducted after witnessing a crime from a hot air balloon. I was arrested on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca while fieldworking research for Hot Air. This, vid trailer, reviews and purchase details from http://geoffnelder.com/hotair.htm

Also my Science Fiction mystery Exit, Pursued by a Bee at http://geoffnelder.com/exitbee.htm