Book of Lost Nights

T Party bud and fellow word-botherer Tom Pollock got in touch to see if I fancied watching a cagematch between Stephen Hawking, isaac Newton, and Paul Dirac. The point was to see which of these eminent Lucasian Professors, should they find themselves trapped in a balloon that desperately needed to lose some ballast, would need to be heaved over the side in case of emergency.

Since no reasonable person could possibly refuse such an offer, 6:30 on a cold Wednesday night found me settled in the very comfortable attic room of Foyles, where Manjit Kumar, Graham Farmelo, and JP McEvoy argued passionately but with tongue and cheek about the relative merits of Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac, and Stephen Hawking respectively. At the end, the audience voted by show of hands.

I got to thinking, while this went on, that this was an interesting but ultimately futile thought experiment. The thing being debated is the perception of utility, not the utility itself which is impossible to measure and historically contingent anyway.

So how do we perceive utility? And who, in fact, won?

Well, in ascending order, first out of the gondola was the unfortunate Professor Hawking. Though the only living professor (and everyone is always more famous after they’re dead – my guess is that had he expired before he hit the ground, he would have got second place) it seems that the act of popularising science is not what we look for in our scientists.

Which suggests that the virtue associated with scientists is not that they are educators.

Next to plunge to his doom, a victim of the force he discovered, was Isaac Newton. His case wasn’t helped by the fact that he was clearly an unpleasant character, and a lot of his work has been superseded by equally clever men with equally cool hair.

The winner was Paul Dirac; largely, I think, because most people in the room could grasp that the equations of quantum mechanics are in fact super-hard. And while I can only speak for myself, I voted for him because while all of the Lucasian Professors are clearly cleverer than me to an astonishing magnitude, his work seemed the most genuinely a) admired and b) incomprehensible to the layman.

So the value in the debate, as well as being a bit of fun, was discovering what people think of when they think of “scientist”, or what the popular idea of a scientific exemplar entails.

Which is what?

Well, all three were white male Cambridge men, but as Lucasian Professors that’s pre-selected in the sample to a certain extent. Tellingly, they all had issues relating to others – issues either intrinsic to their characters or forced upon them by circumstances. Their heads, as it were, were elsewhere. They all dealt in difficult conceptual maths backed up by practical experiment – applied and theoretical mathematical and physics, so the concrete objects of their research are everyday and tangible (things fall down, the night sky is black with twinkling stars) but the theoretical journey remains opaque and mysterious to the non-cognescenti. Or, at least to the likes of me. 

I think that’s the answer – the scientific hero inhabits a world where maths, a barrier to most, becomes a liberator to those who brave it. They leave the ordinary world behind and take to the stars. The tragic sacrifice is they make is that of human connection.

And while this in no way reflects the reality of lived experience amongst the people that do this for a living; crunching numbers, dozing through presentations, staying up late to write papers to raise their RA rating – this seems to be the popular dream of them.

And the dream of a thing has great power, or, at the very least, can spare you from getting chucked out of a balloon.

5 Comments | In: Books, Events, History, Technology, Writing | tags: authors, foyles, graham farmelo, isaac newton, jp mcevoy, manjit kumar, paul dirac, science, stephen hawking, t party. | #

Ookapalooza is over and was fabulous (I am now in love with the Aran Islands – thanks very much to Sumit for the lift over!). We stayed a week in Clifden, in an enormous and beautiful house. It was wildly productive for all involved -  has already posted on her progress,  has sent his opus on to his agent, and  I know produced a fair amount of short fiction. Everyone had a fabulous time! 

And of  course, Sleepwalker has gone off to Judith, and I am left clambering over the ruins of my life, which currently looks like the aftermath of the world’s wildest party. I stumble through it scratching my head, wondering where the hell I left the car keys.

Happily one thing I can now do is read, and I finally finished The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, which I loved unreservedly. How I envied the endless, vigorous inventiveness of it all! The book of short stories set in that world, The Apple, is next on my reading list. My big favourite last year was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, so I think my enchantment with big picaresque pastiches is here to stay.

I also finished According to Jane, by Marilyn Brant, which K D Grace lent me. In it, a modern girl finds that Jane Austen is living in her head and giving her love life advice, which was fun and all, but I would have expected a bit more culture clash comedy. Also, at the end, there is a section where the characters interview the author, which is the sort of thing I find teethgrindingly precious. I’m not sure that’s Marilyn Brant’s fault. When I was a teenager, I wrote unbelievably dreadful stories where I interacted with my own characters (being a lonely girl in want of friends – actually this is what According to Jane is about) and the memory is mortifying. The idea of doing this as an adult just freezes my blood.

In terms of movies, I saw Resident Evil: Afterlife last night. Please don’t ask me why I do these things to myself. Possibly I find horribly written, horribly acted movies reassuring, but I suspect that the more prosaic answer is that I arrived too late to catch a showing of The Runaways.

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Somehow Milla Jovavich sails through the more car crashy moments, comparatively unaffected. My admiration for her was complete under the circumstances. The guy playing the villain appeared to have been specially chosen for his resemblance to a character in a terrible Capcom cut-scene. He looked CGI even before sprouting zombie mouth tentacles. He wore sunglasses in semi-darkness, which doesn’t make you seem sinister anymore, it just makes you resemble Bono. It was all there, the black leather, the Darth Vader-esque underling murder, the smirks…

The actress(?) playing Claire Redfield seemed breathless in all her dialogue, because she’s desperately holding her stomach in and pushing her chest out to look sexy. Watching it took me back to the days when I used to go nightclubbing at Legends and had to do that all the time. The mere memory of it was exhausting, but probably better for my core musculature than watching terrible Paul Anderson movies. Though they say laughter is good for you.

Still no idea of what to write next, though at some point when I’m less burned out I’ll collate some Sleepwalker sequel ideas. And I’m signed up for a burlesque lesson next week with K D Grace at Sh!, so wish us luck! Until then, it’s books and loafing and finding my damn car keys…

Currently Reading: One Day by David Nicholls

9 Comments | In: Books, Events, Movies, Theatre, Travel, Weird, Writing | tags: authors, burlesque, jane austen, k d grace, marilyn brant, michel faber, milla jovavich, million monkeys, ookapalooza, resident evil afterlife, reviews, t party. | #

Sorry for the radio silence, guys – still getting Sleepwalker ready.

So I’ve thinking about possible sequels. At present I’m engaged in the ghoulish occupation of sacking and rifling the past for occasions (and indeed juxtapositions) of high drama that can inspire my next move. Enter bubonic plague.

One of the things that I read recently to this end was London’s Plague Years: Lord Have Mercy On Us by Stephen Porter. 

London Plague Years by Stephen Porter

I’d picked it up in trade paperbook in the bookshop in Old Street station. It’s a fascinating subject and the figures were all explained in exhaustive detail, but I couldn’t help but feel that it could have done with a few broader remarks about the history of the period to contextualise the plague for the general reader. For instance, there is reference to the impact of the plague on the Civil War, but not so much about what living through the Civil War was like with the added annoyance of the plague. Perhaps the assumption is that the reader should already know a sufficient amount about the period, but this reader frequently found herself lost.

That said, it is interspersed with frequent and lively contemporary accounts of events, and seemed meticulously researched. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

But its primary charm, if that’s the right word, was the reproduction of the Bills of Mortality. These were civil service reports drawn up by the parishes in plague years reporting who died of what. It became compulsory to compile them whenever the number plague dead became higher than a certain amount.

However, the Bills themselves open up a fascinating window into what death looked like to people three and a half centuries ago, when one could die of “lethargy”, “surfeit”, or a “rising of the lights”. (If one could die of either lethargy or surfeit, I’m a little puzzled as to why I’m still alive, but no matter). Reading through the rich, pithy descriptions I find that as a writer I’m enchanted by their muscular, no-nonsense language, before having to remind myself that real people were dying of these causes, being buried, being mourned (spawning more deaths even – there is a figure given for those who have died of “grief” or “hangd and made away themfelves”).

I’ve transcribed the 1665 Bill from the Institute of Historical Research site just to give a flavour of what I mean. I’ve resisted the temptation to regularise the archaic spellings, which in their inconsistency also suggest something about the times.

Finally, to get a true sense of the scope and terror of Bubonic Plague, check out the figure next to “Plague” below. And then remember that plague was traditionally underreported in these things, as walling up the infected was difficult, dangerous, spread panic, and cost the parish money:
The Bills of Mortality, London 1665

1 Comment | In: History, Research, Writing | tags: authors, disease, london's plague years, reviews, science, stephen porter. | #

So the weekend before last - 17th/18th – was the Sleepwalker novel workshop. It happened in the BFI Southbank’s Benugo bar, which turned out to be a great venue to do it in, being comfy, quiet, and having access to natural daylight. A lot of T Party venues err on the dark and dungeony side, and since we had had an (admittedly great) talk with Mike Carey the week before in the George, it seemed a lot to ask people to spend summer weekends there twice in a row.

I’ve attended a few novel workshops for other people from the T Party, but I’ve never had my own picked to death by them before then. It was, I have to say, terrifying and yet exhilirating. Terrifying because a lot of what you believe to be transparent and indeed on-the-nose in your book is in fact murky and opaque, and exhilirating because so many people get what you’re doing, and some even occasionally approve.

I was absolutely blown away by all the work and thought people put into their crits, especially since Sleepwalker is a fairly chunky girl. I taped the session, being aware that the first time you hear some things about your baby, you resist or reject them – you break out the Ego Fu, if you like - and my feeling was that when calm and alone, I could revisit them with a clearer head. This turned out to be a great idea, and I was able to soak up loads of excellent food for thought. I’m a total evangelist for this method now.

In any case, the past week has been spent collating the notes, annotating the MS, and drawing up plans of what to tackle, whether some things should be tackled at all since that conflicts with other things that need tackling, and what order to tackle it all in.

Shouts are going out to the oldskool Sheherazade alumni Melanie Garrett (who also hosted a beautiful BBQ the night before) and K D Grace, as well as other T Party writers Denni Schnapp, Tom Pollock, Sumit, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Mark McCann, and the awesome staff at BFI Southwark.

Thanks guys. It meant a lot to me.

Currently Reading: Lord Peter Views The Body – Dorothy L. Sayers

No Comments | In: Writing | tags: authors, denni schnapp, k d grace, london, mark mccann, melanie garrett, mike carey, rosanne rabinowitz, sumit says, t party, tom pollock, workshop. | #

So, it’s time to pick Sleepwalker up again.

The workshop is still about ten days away, but already I can see a few things that need more work – the character voices (Astrid’s especially), a couple of missing scenes (particularly John’s first betrayal of the Raven), and cuts, cuts, cuts. I’ve already had some feedback from K D Grace and Melanie Garrett, which while pointing out real areas for improvement, leads me to believe that the project is not entirely doomed. In fact Kathy blogged about it, which just makes me feel all snuggly-happy inside, like a sunbathing meerkat. Melanie, meanwhile, plied me with champagne cocktails on the lawn – we had a fab conversation on the sequel, possibly a conversation where my arms windmilled drunkenly a lot while I shrieked. 

You know, people slag off this writing lark, but I definitely can see an upside.

In the meantime, I saw Eclipse at the weekend, so I’ll probably be reviewing that in the near future. Saturday Mike Carey is coming to speak to us at the T Party, which should be good, and then next Sunday is the Sleepwalker workshop, which now looks like it will be taking place in the BFI bar on the South Bank, subject to final review. The week after that, I’m a signed up guest of K D Grace’s as she reads from her new novel at the grand opening of the Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium in Portobello Road, so the next month is going to be pretty exciting. 

Exciting, but lots of hard work, as the book rewrites will also have to happen.  All this and a new job too! Still, it will be great to be properly back in London.

Currently Reading: Brethren by Robyn Young

2 Comments | In: Movies, Writing | tags: authors, eclipse, erotica, k d grace, london, melanie garrett, reviews, workshop. | #

Anyway, still trying to come to terms with the writing hiatus. Ideally I should be spending time thinking about the next book, but that’s not where the energy is.

The big news this week was that Marcus Chown, who so heroically guest-blogged on these very pages right here, found his book We Need To Talk About Kelvin has made the longlist for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books on Wednesday. Congratulations, Marcus!

This was great news, but not that surprising – at least to me, who’d read it (my review is here).  

Happily, I’d just finished reading the new edition of his earlier book The Afterglow of Creation, and to celebrate these tumultuous events, I thought I’d talk about that.

The thing about The Afterglow of Creation is that it’s about cosmic background radiation: its discovery, significance, and what it tells us about the early universe, specifically about the Big Bang.

The central principle is this – a long time ago there was a humongous explosion which gave off light and heat – the Big Bang. It happened everywhere at all times. Like everything else that was once really hot but is now cooling down, it gives off a kind of heat – a radiation of just under three degrees above absolute zero – and this is cosmic background radiation. It can be measured and these measurements extrapolated backwards and from this we can learn cool and awesome stuff about the creation of the universe.

Now, if you’re anything like me, this talk of cosmic background radiation is doubtless slightly scary. Maths will be involved, of the most terrifying kind, and feature squiggly symbols and letters sandwiched in between the numbers like scorpions hiding in the crevices between rocks.

You can relax, however, because you are not going to be stung. Chown prefers a high-level discussion of the principles involved, laced with charming anecdotes about how the experimental problems of tracking down signals that are quieter than practically everything else in the universe are tackled by the scientists involved – a kind of litany of wildly creative DIY. People build high altitude balloons, share experimental space with gently rusting canisters of nerve gas, and mistake their Nobel Prize winning scientific discoveries for the interference caused by pigeon droppings on their kit.

It’s fascinating because radiation is a fairly esoteric subject, but nevertheless the enthusiasm with which its tackled both by the principle actors and their biographer is perfectly infectious. By the time the COBE satellite project is moving through the belly of the beast that is NASA you really are on the edge of your seat. A potentially very dry subject is carried off with enormous wit and clarity, with a correspondingly sensitive approach to the human element involved.

If I had a criticism at all, it would be that the book could have used a couple of images, even if only black and white diagrams. It would have been nice to see what a perfect black body curve looks like.

But this is just carping, ultimately. The Afterglow of Creation is a great achievement: a really interesting look at a difficult but vital subject. And I am too intrigued by the reference to this universe showing marks that it might have collided with another universe to think straight. I’m utterly captivated by this idea. The book is full of moments like that.

Finally, I’m linking to this – a rather spooky .WAV file of the sound of the first 760,000 years of the universe, simulated by John G. Cramer, copyright 2003. If you’ve not heard it before, be sure to check it out!

Currently reading: Brethren by Robyn Young

No Comments | In: Books, Technology, Writing | tags: authors, faber and faber, marcus chown, reviews, science, we need to talk about kelvin. | #

So, the latest draft of Sleepwalker is finished – the hard copies are printed (with the exception of one) and await delivery/posting to the workshop participants.

I only downed tools on Saturday, and am already inundated with ideas where I missed a trick, or concentrated on the wrong thing, or chose a wrong POV. Hey ho. There will be a chance to revisit – I just need to keep notes till then.

In the meantime I’m feeling a bit feverish and listless – I suspect the sudden cessation of mad activity means I’m coming down with something.

Next time I’m going to finally review the Marcus Chown book, while revelling in my newfound sense of leisure…

Currently Reading: Brethren – Robyn Young

2 Comments | In: Writing | tags: workshop. | #

Sorry for the lack of updates – but Sleepwalker Mk 2 is haring along at present and should be done in the next fortnight. For the present, it’s all hands on deck. 

*bites nails*

Watch this space…

Currently Reading: The Afterglow of Creation - Marcus Chown

No Comments | In: Writing | | #

So, something that has been exercising me a lot lately is this: what shall I work on once Sleepwalker is finished?

Not that Sleepwalker is anywhere near done, mind – but the fact remains that one morning in the not too distant future, I will be waking up in a post-Sleepwalker world.

I’d had vague plans to write a sort of secular possession story – you know, The Exorcist as chick-lit – but I wanted one without vomiting, spooky interiors, and intense men in cassocks shouting “THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!”. However, increasingly I wonder how you would dislodge a supernatural being without supernatural means, and whether the whole idea is just muddle-headed.

I also had a kind of SF novel about a woman who has the power to read minds who performs a ceremonial role in her divided, warring society, told from the point of view of her naive and besotted bodyguard, who then gets an extended education in conspiracy and realpolitik when he suspects she’s colluding with the enemy leader. But managing a character whose practically omniscient presents its own difficulties.

And I also fancy having a bash at an archaeological thriller of some sort. Something I discovered in writing Sleepwalker is that I really enjoy writing historical fiction, though I don’t yet know how that I’m proficient enough to write a whole book of it. I’d ideally like to entwine two plot strands, a present and a historical one, into a single whole. As for subject, I have a couple of ideas, but too vague to mention out loud, for fear that disturbing the air would be enough to make them vanish in their current tenebrous form.

Hmm. I shall think on.

Today’s pet peeve: Makers of Robin Hood, please take note. Medieval Europeans did not burn their dead on pyres. The prevailing belief at the time was that you would need your body on the Last Day as it would rise up again, and burning it was something pagans did. I know Max von Sydow does cut a splendid figure on his burning bier, but really. No. Just no.

CURRENTLY READING: Hostage To The Devil - Malachi Martin

2 Comments | In: History, Movies, Writing | tags: max von sydow, medieval, robin hood. | #

Sorry it’s been a while since I updated – lots has been going on here – started a new job, and getting used to paid employment after decadent writerly torpidity has taken some getting used to. I did, however, manage to get a bit of Sleepwalker done, and am now writing another new scene to replace the rather three vague and sprawling ones that I’m sacrificing to Precis, the God of Word Count.

One thing that happened was that I finished reading The First Crusade by Thomas Asbridge which Simon and Schuster very kindly sent on (Rosanne’s copy hardback of The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, which I’m loving, was simply too precious and huge to cart about on the train). It also had to take precedence over Marcus Chown’s The Afterglow of Creation, because I need the Crusades research stuff this instant – so the Chown will be up next.

Reading The First Crusade is a bit like watching a horror movie – starving Crusaders eat the rotting bodies of their enemies at Marrat al-Nu’man, scheme in Macchiavellian fashion against one another, experience fantastical visions and find +5 Holy Lances buried under church floors, shoot their enemies’ heads into cities by catapult, die of injuries sustained enduring trial by fire. Entire ships of new recruits appear – 1500 Danes, for instance – and within days they have died of plague, to a man. It’s all a lot like the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, except it’s much, much harder to tell the good guys from the orcs.

The book begins with an analysis of why over 100,000 people would, over two years, suddenly drop everything and go haring off across the world to storm a city they had never seen – and even more miraculously, keep at it in spite of disease, starvation, and constant peril of death or enslavement. Lots of work has previously suggested that Crusading fever was little more than a cynical attempt by younger sons and disenfranchised knights to engage in looting and land-grabbing. And of course this is true in part. But Asbridge argues that it is also true that as many entrenched and secure nobles and heads of families also took up the cross.

As to why, he makes a convincing case that “an authentically spiritual age” with its Christian message of pacifism, ascetism, and self-sacrifice was absolutely at odds with the vicious and violent realpolitik of medieval Europe. To survive and thrive, the knightly class could only engage in behaviour calculated to lead to damnation. The extremely controlling behaviour over sex, religious observances, and every single facet of life meant that this fear of Hell was something shared by the whole population, from the kings downwards. By synthesising warfare and religion into the concept of Holy War, the Church offered the spiritually haunted population a means of reconciling the opposing poles of their existence.

Not even the Pope could have foreseen how explosive this formulation would prove to be to people living in the constant shadow of damnation and under threat of an imminent apocalypse. Certainly the Greeks and Muslims didn’t, and a sense of their shock and horror comes vividly alive.

If I had a criticism, it would be that I would have liked to have seen more material from the Muslim side and their strategic decisions – sources something beyond “HOLY CRAP THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS!” as translated from medieval Arabic. Judging from the extract of his latest which I read late last year, he’s way ahead of me on this score, so looking forward to starting on that soon.

Currently Reading: The Afterglow of Creation by Marcus Chown, The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman and The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (I know, I know…)

No Comments | In: Archaeology, Books, History, Research, Writing | tags: authors, marcus chown, michel faber, philip pullman, reviews, simon and schuster, thomas asbridge. | #