67 - Murder

We give birth to characters. We give them life. We grow up with them. We give them back stories. We get inside their heads and they become a part of us. And then we kill them.

Why?

Because they annoy us? Because it's their time to die? Because it's necessary in order for the plot to continue? Or simply for a shock tactic that will keep readers/viewers interested?

A character's death should serve a purpose. Okay, sometimes that purpose is to not have a purpose. Sometimes killing off a character simply for shock value can be a great way to breathe new life into a piece, but only if done well. Generally character deaths should give birth to something else, no? We can't just go around killing off character after character. Spooks quickly got into the habit of introducing characters just to kill them off and generally it's more of a shock if a character survives.

Like everything else in writing there's no exact formula for killing off characters. I know there are many examples where it works brilliantly and many where it doesn't. We can all think of a TV series where they kill off one of the audience's favourite characters. Sometimes it works. Often it reduces the audience.

I think the best way to know if a character has been killed off well is if we regret their death but we don't regret the decision to write them out. If done expertly, we actually mourn these fictional people's deaths. We feel like we want to go into their world and save them and yet, we know the piece is better for their death. We know that these raw feelings that have been awoken in us should be treasured. For fiction to make us feel like this is phenomenal. We're glad and yet we love these characters. We want them to survive. We want them to have happy endings.

65 - Yellow

Aberystwyth had a shitload of fantastic bookshops. I spent many an hour and many a pound in them. In one I bought A Wreath of Stars by Bob Shaw. It was a book I'd never heard of written by an author I'd never heard of and, if being honest, about 90% of the reason behind me buying it was the striking yellow dust jacket.

I loved it and found another two of his books in another bookshop just down the road from the first; The Palace of Eternity and Orbitsville. Neither were published by Gollancz and they both had fairly standard '70s sci-fi covers.

In fact I hadn't come across another classic yellow-cover Gollancz book nor a Bob Shaw book since leaving Aberystwyth in May 2008. However, down in Brighton over the weekend I found two more Bob Shaw books both with beautiful, simple yellow covers. One was The Peace Machine and the other was Night Hawk. The latter was signed and therefore quite expensive and I'm now feeling gutted that I didn't buy it.

Point is, I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that both Bob Shaw and these beautiful yellow books only seem to pop up in bookshops in coastal university towns.

50 - Ring. Ring.

I went through a bit of a crime fiction phase a few years back and one of the best I read over that time was James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. More than being a simply fantastic novel, it has one of my favourite titles of any novel ever.

Along with Flowers for Algernon and The Catcher in the Rye, it was one of those novels I'd known about for years merely because of its unusual title. Wordy titles, to me, are far more appealing than short, snappy ones.

What's most intriguing about The Postman Always Rings Twice is that the title has no relation to the story whatsoever. There's no postman in it. Cain has said that it refers to his friend Vincent Lawrence who would always wait nervously for the postman to arrive bringing news of submitted manuscripts. He'd always know when the postman arrived as he always rang twice. This can be seen as a metaphor for fate and as suiting the lead character's situation in the novel.

Personally, I don't really care as I think an enigmatic title that has no bearing on a novel's plot is far more intriguing. The working title of my novel at the moment isn't particularly great but is pretty wordy and refers to an event no longer in the novel. Now it only sticks around because: a) I can't think of a better title and b) it's my poor man's allusion to The Postman Always Rings Twice.

46 - Feeling sexy

So I was redrafting Chapter 12 of my novel today and had to write a sex scene. Man, I felt awkward. That's a pretty pathetic attitude to have, right?

I wouldn't include the scene if it didn't need to be there. Unfortunately it does. I don't want it coming across as a desperate attempt to be sexy. As long as it's functional, I'll be happy. Still, I was writing it feeling like a teenager whose dad was trying to have 'that talk' with him.

I tried thinking of other novels with sex scenes and only one sprung to mind as I wrote - American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. If you haven't read it, then know the sex scenes, like everything else in the novel, are graphic but serve a point. They're not too sexy or ludicrous, just graphic. Oh, and they nearly all end with Patrick Bateman mutilating the women involved. Good stuff, but it wasn't much help.

Hopefully by the time I come back to this chapter on the next draft I'll have manned up a bit or done some actual research into better written sex scenes. For now, I'm sure the scene has been imbued with a great sense of awkwardness, and what's sex without awkwardness, right?

45 - Literary exchange #1

Me and my friend decided to do a literary exchange this year. The plan is to lend each other five of our favourite books that the other hasn't read. To start I lent her Flowers for Algernon and she lent me Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Now I've seen the films and pretty much everyone in the English-speaking world knows the story, but I thought I'd try and read it with an open mind. I can't lie; it was better than I expected.

So I thought in continuing the way I read it, I'd write a few words on the book as if it weren't some huge cultural phenomenon - as if it were an unknown story.

The first thing that strikes is how solid an imagination J.K. Rowling has, and how good a sense she has of what will appeal to children. There's a bit of something for everyone. There's classic escapism. There's a sense of there being more to life. There's some entertaining characters and best of all there's magic.

For a children's book it's a great little read. There are flaws, most of which I overlooked seeing as it's intended for children. Everything that happens is fantastically convenient. The writing isn't exactly brilliant and the dialogue is often clunky and full of clumsy exposition. Most of all I found the sense of right and wrong in the book to be too clear-cut. Characters are either very, very good or incredibly evil and malicious. But as I said, it is meant for children.

Overall I preferred Artemis Fowl. It has a better plot and the character of Artemis is far superior to Harry. Still, I really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and I'm sure if J.K. Rowling ever pens a sequel I'll give it a read.

42 - Ringworld

Ringworld - Larry Niven (1970)
I picked this up in a charity shop just before Christmas having heard of it before but didn't really know what it was about. The basic premise is pretty wicked; a group of four explorers travel to Ringworld, an artificial world in the shape of a ring (akin to a Dyson sphere) orbiting a sun. Crash landing upon its surface, the four must find their way free of this world, exploring it as they do so.

The whole way through reading this novel, I was reminded of Bob Shaw's Orbitsville (1975) a similar story in which mankind discovers a Dyson sphere. As such I couldn't help comparing the two throughout and I've got to say that I found Orbitsville far more entertaining, was better written and imbued me with a greater sense of awe.

Niven's novel is hard science-fiction and as such frequently explains precisely how things work. Now I have nothing against elaborately conceived worlds that don't dumb down the science to appeal to a wider audience, but in Ringworld I found it pretty intrusive. Most of it was fairly hard to follow for my brain which has very little understanding of science. It also slowed the pace more often than not and I would have been far happier to simply accept that a house could float than have characters hypothesise how and why before finally agreeing upon a theory.

Of the four main characters, Louis and Speaker, were likeable but Nessus and Teela were both pretty annoying. There isn't a lot else to say other than I did actually enjoy it. I just found that the points of wonder were often too far apart and that I've read far better examples of the genre. If you like big adventure, discovery sci-fi and you come across this, give it a read, but I'd recommend Orbitsville and Gateway ahead of it.

32 - Holes

I've mentioned before that I have a fondness of stories that are brave enough to leave certain things unresolved and unrevealed. Stories that don't tie up all their loose ends. Stories that keep an air of mysticism about them. Stories that favour pacing over exposition.

Of course all this has to be done on purpose, and done right, otherwise you're left with a frustrating gaping mess. All too often a glaring plot hole can ruin a story. But I think a story filled with plot holes is frequently preferable to one that tries to account for everything.

Gaping plot holes are better than:

Stories that stop to dump a shitload of information on you every few scenes.¹

Stories that continue for an age after they should have concluded, in order to tie everything up to perfection.²

Stories that take too long to find momentum due to the fact that they explain everything you encounter in excessive detail.³

Okay, I hate stories with paper-thin plots that have been dragged out to breaking point.⁴ I hate stories that leave a crucial point unresolved to either make a point or simply annoy you.⁵ But I'd still take either of these in favour of a story that treats me like I'm some kind of forensic reader demanding an explanation for every single detail.

1 - See Ringworld
2 - See Metal gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
3 - See Kushiel's Dart
4 - See Windtalkers
5 - See Broken Flowers

28 - Stand on Zanzibar

Two months and 650 pages after I started reading it, I finally finished John Brunner's remarkable Stand on Zanzibar.

The novel is set in 2010 where crippling overcrowding has lead to widespread eugenic legislation as well as frequent instances in which people simply go mad and run amok in public, killing dozens. Written in 1968, many parts of the novel are eerily prescient.

But the most fascinating facet of Stand on Zanzibar, in my opinion, is its narrative style. There are four types of chapters. While 'Continuity' chapters follow the main plot, 'The Happening World' chapters do no more than provide snippets of conversations and information that give us the wider view of the world. 'Context' chapters provide just that, often via excerpts from newspapers and 'Tracking With Close-Ups' chapters generally focus on minor characters.

Though the plot therefore progresses fairly slowly, the pace is pretty consistent throughout and the world Brunner has constructed is beautifully rich. This isn't just down to length. I've read novels twice the length that still don't come close to Stand on Zanzibar's depth. It's possibly one of the most deeply constructed novels I've read.

The narrative style, John Brunner's prescience and the dark and philosophical plot are all equally strong reasons for reading it. It truly is remarkable and I strongly suggest giving it a read.

18 - The future

Watching a film/reading a novel from the '50s set in the '90s or early '00s can be humorous if the description of the world is slightly off. Living on the moon, alien neighbours, laser guns etc. That's not to say that people back then absolutely believed that's how the world would be.

Modern sci-fi has wised up with plots being set so many hundred years in the future that by the time humanity reaches that point, the film/novel will probably have been lost so no humorous comparisons can be made.

Thing is, I don't think we'll ever get to the state where we have hover cars, robot servants, laser guns or complex societies living off-world. I doubt our robot servants will ever rebel and wage war upon us. I doubt we'll ever invent time travel or teleportation devices. Certainly not in my lifetime, and doubtfully in any lifetime. I don't know how this gels with the fact that I would happily write about such a futuristic society.

I'm sure there are currently many scientific advances that massively undermine what I just said. I know nothing about science. I'm just a cynical bore. I'd love all those things to occur, I just doubt they will.

Children of Men is a film I think has a very realistic view of the future. Ignore all the fascism/infertility plot and focus on the technology. Set in 2027, basically all that's different is cars are slightly changed and there are TV adverts everywhere.

Then look at Minority Report. I doubt in 2054 we'll have huge automated highways and cars that take us up to our flats. As cool as jetpacks and sick sticks are, I can't see them ever existing in a widespread way.

I'd loved to be proved wrong of course. Also, for the record, in a war against the machines, I think I'd side with the machines early on.

14 - My favourite book

This is my copy of Vurt. It's not my favourite novel. It comes close. Definitely in my top ten, but like most things I find it hard to pick a specific favourite. Every time I reread Vurt, The Beach, I Am Legend, Ubik or any of a handful of others, I change my mind.

What I can say is that this particular copy of Vurt is my favourite book. It is my most-loved collection of printed pages glued together along one side and bound between rigid or flexible covers.

It's cover is still shiny and stiff but flexible enough that I can bend it to my heart's extent. The spine is broken and creased and the edges all round have gone soft and dirty. The pages are curled and worn and the bottoms of the last hundred pages are stained yellow from a time I lent it to a friend.

But best of all, more than any other book in my collection, it has its own smell. A lot of my books have a rich, musty odour from having spent four decades travelling the world before ending up in a second-hand bookshop for a quick stop prior to entering my possession. But my Vurt smells specific. It's a smell I can't describe other than it reminds me of Vurt. It reminds me of the characters and the plot and of Manchester, despite never having been there. Most of all the smell reminds me of the kitchen in my first flat where I read Vurt for the first time in near-enough one sitting.

I can remember each time I've read it since and breathing in that smell, flicking through those pages, wondering what that stain is, having crumbs fall out of the pages, running my thumb up that creased spine.

I lent it to someone a few months ago whom I shortly after briefly lost contact with and I panicked. I could easily buy another copy of Vurt but that wasn't the point. I almost lost my copy, and I'm glad to have it back.

10 - Post-apocalyptic fiction

Post-apocalyptic fiction is one of my favourite sub genres of sci-fi. With all these novels starting from the same basic concept - civilisation has ended and it's a battle for survival - it's fascinating to see how each of them creates its own personality.

The Day of the Triffids is one of the most famous and one of my favourites. It's just one of those novels that sticks with you forever. I love how it cleverly shifts between survival from each other and survival from the triffids. 28 Days Later... was in part based on it, making that one of my favourite films.

I Am Legend is another cracker. Shorter and more intense than TDOTT, the focus on the protagonist going mad is brilliant and the ending is one of my favourite endings of any novel. If you've only seen the Will Smith film, which butchered the ending, read the novel, if just for that ending.

Additionally in my bookcase alone I've got:
The gritty, ultra-realistic yet beautiful The Road.
The painfully boring The Pesthouse.
The entrancing The Chrysalids.
The stunningly-written, if heavy-going, Riddley Walker.
The paranoia-drenched The Penultimate Truth.
The uniquely satisfying A Canticle for Leibowitz.

But if there was one post-apocalyptic novel that really grabbed me by the collar and kicked me in the groin, it was The Death of Grass by Samuel Youd, writing under the pen name of John Christopher.

A simple concept; a virus that attacks rice crops and all forms of grass, spreads across the world bringing famine and eventually causing the world to descend into chaos. The story follows the narrator and family trying to make their way from London to his brother's farm in Westmorland.

It's an incredibly bleak and disturbing novel. The characters descend into moments of barbarism comparable with The Lord of the Flies and it's all too convincing. I only wish I could have been around to read it on publication in 1956, before I'd become desensitised to the violence of films and novels.

I can't help myself but talk about one of these barbaric moments in the novel, so stop reading if you like post-apocalyptic fiction, because I'd really recommend The Death of Grass.

***SPOILERS***

One such example of the brutality of this novel, is when the narrator and his family approach a house about a third of the way through. They knock on the door and the owner and his wife warn them away with shotguns. The narrator and friends then murder this innocent family simply to grab some supplies under the belief that, "it was them or us." This violence is emphasised by the fact that the main characters are all likeable, 'nice' people. This shock value continues right up until a truly unforgettable and disturbing conclusion, which I won't spoil here. Just read it.

4 - Philip K. Dick: Page to Screen

I'm a massive Philip K. Dick fan and there have been plenty of adaptations of his work. Here's my thoughts on those I've seen, in case you wondered.

A Scanner Darkly based on A Scanner Darkly
Controversially, this is my favourite Philip K. Dick adaptation. Arguably pointless in that it brings little new to the story, it pays the most respect out of all the films based on his work. The bleakness, the paranoia and the characters of the novel have been transferred near-perfectly and large sections of dialogue have been lifted word for word. The rotascoping is a stroke of genius bringing the scramble suit to life and creating a surreal, hypnotic experience that gets the 'feeling' of the novel spot on.

Blade Runner based on Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?
Although Ridley Scott made an absolute classic with Blade Runner, bringing enough to the story to make it is own while keeping its core, I'm too staunch a PKD loyalist to admit this is the best of the adaptations. Too much of the novel was changed for my liking and Harrison Ford isn't the right casting for a true PKD hero, but it's undeniably cinema gold.

Total Recall based on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
Arnold Schwarzenegger is the antithesis of the PKD character - a paranoid, insecure everyman. Strictly speaking, it's a fairly dire adaptation, but it's a fantastic film in its own right. Verhoeven's trademark violence plays out beautifully and Arnold delivers those one-liners with his usual charisma. 'See you at the party, Richter!'

Minority Report based on The Minority Report
One of the better Spielberg films of the past 10 years, this film is a little too sexy for its own good. Tom Cruise is a bit cool and everything is slick, neatly tied-up and ultimately happy. Good fun with some neat ideas and it's solid in its own right, but it's just too 'Hollywood' for a PKD story.

Screamers based on Second Variety
Critically panned and regarded as being nothing more than a wannabe Blade Runner mixed with The Thing, I have a deep love for Screamers. It's a paranoid, bleak '90s sci-fi with the legendary Peter Weller playing the lead. The ending of the story was changed and it suffers as a result. Not a great film, but for nostalgic purposes, I adore this film.

Paycheck based on Paycheck
The biggest crime with this film is not that it doesn't do PKD's story justice, but that John Woo's career had completely hit rock bottom. Vaguely entertaining but generally stupid.

Next based on The Golden Man
Horrible. Simply horrible.

1 - Evolution, of a sort

I’m failing to get any further with redrafting my novel at the moment and yet I’m somehow alive with a huge compulsion to write. I think it’s simply that I want to be writing new things. That’s why I’ve joined One A Day. I won’t go into the details, suffice it to say the aim is to write one blog a day for a year. It seems fitting to kick start the process by writing about writing itself.

What I love about writing most is that it’s an organic process, constantly evolving and transforming until it becomes something so very different from what you started out with that you forget how you got there. I can generally remember where a single idea for a story originated from, but most of the finer points are lost in the annals of my mind.

I know that when I was writing a piece I made conscious decisions. I know when I was writing a piece I was influenced by what I was reading, watching and listening to at the time. I know that when I was writing a piece I did some things by accident and they just stuck.

Sometimes I wish I could tear apart every little detail of a story and see why this is this, even if it’s for the most banal reasons – such as the time I made a character obsequious simply because I came across the word and liked it.

I started writing a piece yesterday. It’s a truncated form of a novella idea I’ve been toying with for some months and for some reason that I have already forgotten, I have started writing it in a garbled, semi-phonetic version of English.

I’ve clearly taken direction from A Clockwork Orange, Riddley Walker and 1984’s Newspeak but I’m sure I wasn’t consciously paying homage to/ripping off these pieces when I started. Now I’ve got to such an involved level with this language that I can’t stop.

I know I’m alienating any audience by making the piece tougher to read. I know it adds little if anything to the story. Worst of all, I’m finding it hard letting go. The language is evolving every time I return to the piece. I’m deciding on specific spellings and new rules, but I guess that’s the basis for an entire other blog. I just wish I could remember why I thought it was a good idea.

Cover art

Much to the pleasure of publishers, I can't help but be drawn to a book by its cover art. Though I try to avoid buying brand new, unread books due solely to a doodle on the front, I find myself buying second-hand books this way. I often want to replace books I already own once I discover a different edition with superior cover art.

I'm particularly a fan of the trend of having a simple cover depicting one key element of the novel's plot - an element that's importance and relevance only becomes important once you've read the novel.

Below are four of my favourite covers from my sci-fi collection. Each depicts a key event or item in each novel; the comet shower; the Curious Yellow Vurt feather; a can of Ubik; a doorway to another world. All are incredibly slick, effortlessly cool and deeply powerful.
I often think about what I'd want on the cover of a book should I ever get published. A pipe dream sure, but the mind wanders. Yet the more I've discussed this topic with other sci-fi writers, the more I've decided that I think I'd rather have a classic trashy cover than a minimalistic one. A messy drawing of an astronaut in a jumpsuit standing in shock as an omnipresent alien towers over him. Partly it's a loyalty to the roots of sci-fi, as well as being more fun and reminding me of my childhood.

I have such vivid memories of trying to get into such books when I was about eight. I'd pick up a book because the cover depicted a jumpsuit-wearing man fighting off a pterodactyl on an alien planet as a gleaming spaceship roared to his rescue. But upon reading these books, I could never appreciate the story inside and would end up flicking through the text vehemently searching for the word 'pterodactyl' or 'spaceship.'

Below are some classic examples of such covers - covers I'd love should I ever get published. I welcome the trashy, sci-fi stigma that comes with these illustrations. It's a stigma that usually comes with sci-fi anyway.