My "Big England" piece is up at Temperama

Posted on 2006-08-22 by Martin McCallion

The lovely Dave Hill has posted my piece in his Big England series.

Such is Dave’s posting frequency that it has already rolled off his front page. But such is his site’s popularity that it went straight in at number 10 on a Google search for my name; and it has now risen to number 3, I see.

Ironically, since I close the piece by being cruel and dismissive about cricket, yesterday’s news made cricket interesting. Who ever thought that I would know the name of a cricket umpire?

Dave himself has some thoughts inspired by the matter in The Guardian’s Comment is Free blog.

But pop over and read my ‘This Is England’. Oh yes, and: you need to scroll down to my comment to get a correction to the intro.

Technorati Tags: big england, dave hill, temperama, england, guest spot, guest column, guardian, comment is free, cricket

Book Notes 12: The Last Temptation, by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli

Posted on 2006-08-09 by Martin McCallion

The last of my three recent graphic borrowings from the library, and the one I expected to like most. But it’s a bit lightweight for Gaiman’s work, and for my taste.

It’s based on work that Gaiman did with Alice Cooper for a concept album that the latter released in 1994. I didn’t know that people still made concept albums, but there you go.

Also there is one theme in particular that Gaiman was to revisit in American Gods; namely that of the town where children disappear periodically. In American Gods the periodic disappearance (and murder, let’s face it) of the child acts a kind of spell, which protects a town from the encroachment of the rest of the world and the forces of modernity and ‘development’. In this work, there’s no suggestion that the children’s absorption into the ‘Theater of the Real’ brings advantage to anyone other than the the semi-mythical ‘Showman’. Gaiman was perhaps using this work to develop some of the ideas that he would return to later.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but as I say, the work as a whole seems shallow and perhaps incomplete, compared to, say, The Sandman.

Technorati Tags: book notes 2006, books, gaiman, neil gaiman, the last temptation, michael zulli, comics, graphic novels

Book Notes 11: The Originals, by Dave Gibbons

Posted on 2006-08-08 by Martin McCallion

More graphical stuff from the library. Quadrophenia with hover-bikes and -scooters. It’s beautifully drawn, and well-enough told, but really, why?

There is literally no other technological change. Oh, there might be differences in the materials of the clothes, of the contents of the pills: but the look is pure 1965 - or 1965-as-remade-in-1979. I really don’t see what the point of this was.

Technorati Tags: books, book notes 2006, dave gibbons, the originals, quadrophenia, mods, rockers, hover-bikes, comics, graphic novels

"Hackers crack new biometric passports"

Posted on 2006-08-07 by Martin McCallion

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Hackers crack new biometric passports

“The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,” Mr Grunwald told Wired.com. “From my point of view all of these [biometric] passports are a huge waste of money – they’re not increasing security at all.”

No surprises there, then. Except maybe how quickly it’s happened. Single point of failure, anyone?

Technorati Tags: politics, id cards, single point of failure

On Countries, Nationhood, and Being Invited to Write a Guest Spot

Posted on 2006-08-04 by Martin McCallion

Dave Hill is a novelist, Guardian writer and prolific blogger. He is running a series of guest pieces on his blog. They’re on the theme of “What I Like About England (or not, as the case may be).” He was inspired to do this mainly by all the flag-waving furore during the World Cup (with maybe some influence from Andy Murray’s attire at Wimbledon).

I’m pleased to say that he has asked me to contribute. I’ll post here, of course, when my piece is up. In the meantime I’ve been thrashing out some of what I might say in the comments thread of one of the earlier pieces.

Dave’s overall title for this project is ‘Big England’. You can see all the pieces to date here

Technorati Tags: blogging, writing, dave hill, temperama, big england, nationhood, nationality, cultural identity, countries, england, guest spot, blog guest

Middle-East Madness

Posted on 2006-08-03 by Martin McCallion

I’ve been thinking that I should write about the state of things between Lebanon and Israel, as it is the most profoundly dangerous ongoing event in the world at the moment. But I would have found it hard to express what I wanted to say without coming over as anti-Israel, and so running the risk of being called anti-semitic.

In fact I’m opposed to the actions of both sides, where the ‘sides’ are defined as the Israeli government and Hezbollah. And it is the innocent civilians of both nations who suffer.

Anyway, it turns out that Tim Bray has already written a better post about this than I could have, expressing pretty much everything I wanted to say:

Once again: Military violence against civilians is wrong, and if you have an argument that convinces you it’s right, your argument is broken.

And:

Those leaders, though… anyone who’s read first-hand reportage about the Hez leadership knows they’re bloodthirsty racist fundamentalist barbarians who would really like to kill all the Jews and revert the world to fourteenth-century ways. Scum.
As for the Israeli political leadership, we have to act on the assumption that they actually kind of understand what’s going on around them, and that they launched this in full knowledge that they intended to kill hundreds, displace hundreds of thousands, and break a country. And there’s a sickening suspicion that they knew it wouldn’t work, that this is all playing to the domestic political theater; which would be getting into MiloÅ¡evi? territory. Scum.

I recommend reading the whole thing.

Book Notes 10: Skizz, by Alan Moore and Jim Baikie

Posted on 2006-08-02 by Martin McCallion

The local library is proving a great source of graphic fiction at the moment. Another early-early Moore, one of which I had heard, but had definitely not read.

It is Moore’s interpretation of a theme that was then very common, the alien lost on Earth. It wears its debt to ET quite openly: one of the characters even referring to the film for inspiration in how to deal with the alien.

That said, it’s entirely possible that Moore developed it without prior knowledge of the film: it wasn’t a new idea when ET used it.

Skizz is a gentle, heartwarming tale of respect between intelligent beings, regardless of difference. A human girl meets the “other”, and finds he is not so “other” at all.

And it has a genuinely nasty and scary baddie, and reconciliation between generations. Highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: book notes 2006, books, book notes, comics, alan moore, skizz, jim baikie

Book notes 9: Redemolished, by Alfred Bester

Posted on 2006-08-01 by Martin McCallion

I found this in the local library, having never heard of it before. It is a relatively recently-published (2000) collection containing some of his short fiction, some essays, and some interviews he did with people as diverse as Isaac Asimov and Woody Allen.

The title is, of course, a reference to his famous novel The Demolished Man, and appears to have been chosen mainly because the ‘deleted’ prologue to that novel is included here.

The non-fiction is interesting, not least in showing part of what Bester did for a living after he more-or-less dropped out of SF for a long time (he made most of his money by writing for TV).

The fiction, on the whole, is slightly disappointing. I enjoyed it well enough, but it hasn’t aged well: most of it reads as quite dated.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the stories was the one which taught me the meaning of the word “fugue” (both musical and psychological) many years ago. I recalled that I had learned it from a story, but not what story it was: ‘The Four-Hour Fugue’. Who said SF wasn’t educational?

Technorati Tags: book notes 2006, books, alfred bester, bester, fugue, library, redemolished

Book notes 8: The Complete DR and Quinch, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Posted on 2006-08-01 by Martin McCallion

I found this in the local library. I thought I hadn’t read it, but I remember reading the ‘Something something, oranges something’ episode (AKA ‘DR and Quinch go to Hollywood’) back when I was at university in the 80s. I expect they were reprinted by one of the American companies (possibly coloured in?) and I got some of them.

This is early-early Alan Moore, and of course is nowhere near the quality of his later-early work such as V for Vendetta or Watchmen, or his more recent work like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it’s quite fun.

As a parent of young kids, though, I now see it as surprisingly violent. Not that I’d censor it, or anything: just that it’s something I’m more aware of. Or aware of in a different way. Back when I was a student I’d probably have celebrated the violence for its wild- and cartoon-ness.

Indeed, I discovered that the book used — presumably coined — the term ‘napalm dispenser’, which I borrowed for a round-robin work that I was involved in back in my university days, and which had hilarious, and nearly calamitous results. I should probably write a blog post about that one day. It involved cucumbers.

Technorati Tags: library, DR and Quinch, Alan Moore, napalm dispenser, comics, book notes 2006, books

A Labourer at the Bitface

Warning: contains language from the outset

Monthly Archives: August 2006