Hal’s Experiment

I though I’d draw your attention, if I may, to Hal Duncan’s experiment over at Notes From The Geek Show.

Hal is experimenting with sidestepping the traditional route to market (via publisher) and going straight to the audience. Hal will publish Scruffian’s Stamp (a teaser is on the post linked to above) if he recieves donations amounting to $150 and if he doesn’t reach that amount all donors (horrible word but I’m in a hurry) will receive a PDF version.

The publishing model being tried is not news because plenty of people have tried this and usually this is met by a roll of the eyes and a comment about the standards of self-publishing…

See: you’re doing it right now…

No, not you lot who know who Hal is, the other lot. (And yes: I know you’re now a rather small group, I’m working on the stats issue.)…

I digress.

The point I am making in a very long winded way, is that the experiment is of interest because Hal has already achieved that writerly milestone of editorial validation, having published two books via a mainstream publisher, the cubist fantasies Vellum and Ink respectively. I can’t speak for Ink (it’s still on my shelf – I try to prolong the anticipation with sequals) but Vellum really is very impressive: ambitious in scope and executed with flare.

For this reason I’m both interested to see how Hal gets on with this approach and would urge you to donate.*

I’ve set my stall out as an admirer of Hal’s work before, and a review of Vellum will probably appear in the next few weeks, but I’d also encourage you to pick up copies of his books. You won’t regret it.

* As I will be when the dayjob ponies up next month.

Friday Flash Fiction: Between the Breakers

Between the breakers
By Neil Beynon

He wobbles across the uneven rocks, scattered like broken teeth across the beach, until he reaches the smooth compressed sand beyond. He pauses for a moment, turns to look back at the cliffs behind him. If he is looking for something he does not find it on those rocky peaks looming large.

The tide is out and it takes him a little while to reach the edge of the ocean. He walks between the twin rows of breakers that line either side of his path like watery sentinels. He does not pause as he steps into the water, heedless of the cold saltwater on his shoes and trousers: it is not the first time he has done this. He wades out further into the water, ignoring the persistent slapping of the waves that almost push him back and his breath coming in short sharp drags.

When the water reaches his belly he stops but he does not turn back.

He looks down at the seabed; the sunlight breaks on the water casting small fragments of rainbow into the brine. She is waiting when he lifts his head. There between the half drowned breakers she stands, head and shoulders out of the water, face looking back at him. She looks exactly the same as she always does. He does not move as she draws close.

“You’re back?”

“Yes,” he answers, “I said I would be.”

“And you are such a keeper of your word?”

The woman’s hair is slightly wrong, just a hint too dark, the texture just a step the wrong side of smooth but beneath that she is slim as ever, gazing on him with beauty sculpted from high cheekbones and eyes that shone azure.

“You want more?” she asks.

“I want you,” he says. They are close enough to touch and he reaches forward, his hand running down her arm as if reassuring himself she’s real. “I want this.”

She does not flinch, as her eyes suggest she might, but steps closer. She raises her own hands, they slide up over the side of his face, she is cold to the touch but he sighs as if slipping into a warm bath. She holds him by either side of his temples, stopping him moving or looking away.

“It hurts,” she says.

“Why?”

“This form, her skin, it is not my shape.”

“What is your shape?”
“Is it even her shape?”

“I have missed you.”

“I am not her,” she says, letting him go. He could run now but he does not. “Why did your kind…? Is this how she felt?”

He shrugs.

“Even now, second time round, you will go again and carry on as normal. Until the next time.”

He says nothing for there is no answer: she is not wrong.

“It hurts, this shape hurts.”

“It’s not the shape,” he replies. He is tempted to look away, guilt coiling round his stomach and he fancies he feels something brush past his skin, an eel perhaps.

“No: it’s not,” she replies, staring at him with unblinking eyes.

He does not resist as she pushes him down under the water. It’s like a sheet of moving glass has been put between them as he looks up at her holding him down, the light splintering around her like a halo. From this perspective he can’t even notice the differences, she is the woman he remembers but not, he realises, the woman he knew and not even the salt water burning in his nostrils can distract him from her stare. He can feel the anger in her arms pushing him down, the proof of feeling, of caring enough to rage, and it is wonderful.

His chest is bloated tight with carbon dioxide and his hands do a frantic crab dance across the seabed, divorced from his mind and in search of a weapon. He finds one, pulling it free of the suction of the sand before letting it drop back to the floor. Afraid it will break the spell.

The tide is starting to turn and before long there will be no sign of his tracks as the ocean’s sweeping journey up the beach wipes clean the stains of his passing from the sand. Light is exploding behind his eyes warping his view of her, melding her into something else, his lids grow heavy and it’s hard to remember to keep his mouth closed.

She’ll let him up soon. She always does.

Review: Star Trek

I managed to see the new reboot of Star Trek.*

Some background: I am, for my sins, a long term fan of the series although I lean towards TNG over any of the other offerings, and best not to get me started on the TNG films. I do not consider Star Trek to be science fiction, it’s space fantasy – the science is bad, the speculative elements minimal and the amount of tech predicted has more to do with the number of fans going into science than any hard graft by futurists. I do not dress up.

The point being I was sceptical about a) the need for another film and b) the wisdom of rebooting some of the most iconic characters in television. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Shatner as Kirk and no one has ever really successfully out Vulcaned old Nimsy. Throw in the painful wounds inflicted by Enterprise’s attempt to go retro and….well:  I was a hard sell.

Yet, despite not thinking of myself as a full on fan for some time, the thought of not going didn’t really enter my head.

For that I am infinitely grateful because JJ Abrahms somehow – in a trick worthy of Scotty – managed it.

The film takes us back to the moment of James T. Kirk’s birth but it soon becomes clear that something is wrong, things are not unfolding as the canon dictates: Kirk’s father sacrifices himself in order to save his crew and his family, James T. grows up fatherless, a perpetual troublemaker that has no intention of going into the fleet and people know what Romulans look like. Things change when Kirk meets Captain Pike in a bar room brawl and follows the pretty Uhura into the academy promising to beat his father’s record to the Captain’s chair.

Keeping up so far?

Yes, the plot is horribly complicated and convoluted as time travel based stories usually are but don’t let that put you off. You see the tricky plot is there to attempt to keep the likes of me amused and interested (granted many won’t be but I was). For the wider audience, that JJ is hoping to convert to new fans, the film is loaded with high action sequences peppered with light camp comedy (it is Star Trek after all) and some full on operatic villains. JJ was never going to please everyone but he’s done his best to create an accessible film and for the most part he’s succeeded.

There are plenty of nods to the original series including the pursuit of an abandoned storyline but it’s really the changes JJ brings that I think make the film enjoyable. The cast is more the ensemble piece the series was supposed to be, diverting some of the attention away from Kirk to Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. While Pegg is woefully under-utilised as Scotty, his performance is bang on the money without slipping into parody as does Karl Urban as McCoy with a wonderful homily to the late Deforest Kelly. Zachary Quinto, as the rebooted Spock, manages to riff off Leonard Nimoy, neatly sidestepping trying to match the elder Vulcan’s performance, and bringing his own strangeness to the part.

Chris Pine, stepping into Shatner’s boots as Kirk, is the man with the hardest job. Shatner is iconic not because he’s the world’s greatest actor – he isn’t – but because the Kirk was such a large part of sixties pop culture that he’s imprinted on western culture. He was the figurehead for Trek – so bad he was good. Pine doesn’t even bother to do a Shatner – it would be silly and risking parody – but lets the supporting cast provide the feeling of familiarity, while he injects Kirk with a character more recognisable from Star Trek’s apocrypha than its canon. It is only at the end of the film, when Kirk ascends to the command he will hold for the majority of his career that Pine allows an element of Shatner to enter his performance as he takes the chair, legs crossed in an improbably camp pose. It is, perhaps, the most well judged shot of the whole film.

A great romp and a successful if pointless reboot. See it – popcorn optional but recommended.

And yes: I don’t understand the lensflare either.

* Why they feel the need to reboot everything in sight I have no idea but that’s a subject for a different post.

Friday Flash Fiction: Move On

Move on
By Neil Beynon

See the worn stones, uneven and scattered like die cast by the giants.
Let your feet find the path, they do not forget.

Feel your skin raise as you draw closer.
But do not worry: the magic will not hurt you.

Pause by the wall; trace the words beneath the paint.
Find the gap and remember to hold in the years as you go.

Should you pass another soul do not stop, do not speak.
The spell is easily cast and swiftly shattered.

At the bronze be wary of the metal or wake the frozen from their icy embrace.
They would not thank you to be freed of their chains.

Look up at the slate sky and walk the grass of the hill that does not change.
Further down, further in: past the alleys, paste the wasteland.

Mind the shades as you go: the buildings that have sunk away.
The snippets that loop endlessly, the faces faded and distorted.

Stop in the stone courtyard.
Raise your eyes to the window looking for the ghost not there.

Feel the dark heat locked away, hear the stone speak.
See the fragile chains that tether and know how thin your protection is.

See the mirror and the stranger looking back from the land you cannot tread.
Give thanks he is on the other side. That he is gone.

Move on.

Friday Flash Fiction: Buck

This week’s flash fiction. Feedback, as ever, is welcome.

Buck
By Neil Beynon

It feels like I’ve been on the run forever. In reality it’s only been a few days and already I’m tired of it. The city is almost disserted, many of the shops are boarded up and construction works lie abandoned as if someone started operating on the city, trying to save it, and then gave up. The wind carries dust on it and whips round the corners of buildings that don’t look like they’ve been cleaned since they were built in the nineteen hundreds. This city bites. I raise my collar and start out across the square towards the hotel.

I can still taste the sugar from that too sweet soda. One more than I should have had and so thick with syrup that I could practically chew it, my heart is racing a little from the E numbers, my mouth covered in a light moss of acidity. Perhaps that is why I feel like the few people I encounter are staring at me, that they know what I am and why I am running. But how could they?

It is a relief to reach the hotel and I tread the thirty-year old carpets to my tobacco stained room at a pace, eager to lock myself in its musky but safe embrace for a few hours. The door is ajar when I get there like the silent hello of an unexpected punch to the belly. I stop.

“I know you’re there,” he says, from within the room.

My eyes dart for either end of the corridor, calculating whether I have enough time to run or not. I know the answer even as he, helpfully, provides it.

“No where to go,” he says. “You might as well come in.”

There is a new smell in the room. It is like sweat mingled with straw and something else that I can’t quite place, it doesn’t matter: I recognise it anyway. Buck is sat in the chair by the window, his long legs stretched awkwardly in front of him, backlit by the sodium streetlight outside the window and smoking on of those thick cigars I loathed. The room, a small box like affair, showed no signs of being turned over, that is I left it looking turned over and so it still appeared. Bed linen strewn in memory of lost sleep, my few possessions scattered where I left them and a half eaten pizza, breakfast, left on the nightstand.

“I don’t have them,” I volunteer.

I can hear him smile in spite of the shadow that masks his not-quite-right features. I can imagine the gleam of his pearly white buckteeth flashing at me as he breaks into a low chuckle.

“Did you really think I would be bothered about the product disappearing?”

I am as silent as the city that appears to have expired while we’ve been talking.

“I am never short of product my friend. No, I have come here because of principles.”

“How did you find me?”

“I have my ways.”

Ma always told me not to be afraid of him. She said he was a good thing, that his arrival was something to be celebrated and that I should be grateful he came at all given how little we had. But then she described him. Later and all too recent in my mind I discovered just how much she celebrated his visits, the memory burned into my retina like the cigarette burn on the back of the hand I’d seen her running over his bare back.

“You’re not allowed to use your ways,” I offer. “I know the rules: only for the duty.”

“ Ah yes, but you interfered in the duty,” he replies. “Like I said: it’s the principle of the thing.”

“So what you going to do? Kill me?”

Buck chuckled again. He removed his fedora with care and placed it on the coffee table next to him, his ears springing up with what seemed like palpable excitement at being freed. As he stood I was reminded just how tall he was and how much power he had in those legs. If he was going to kill me I was dead already. Knowing wouldn’t help.

They never show him like that on the cards. On the cards he’s just regular sized and regular shaped but then they don’t seem to have much idea about him at all. I mean: six-foot bunnies don’t grow on trees do they? My plan had been to draw him out into the open, to force the public to see him for what he was, to expose him. Instead it was me that felt naked.

I’m a bastard, figuratively and actually. Everywhere I shouldn’t have been I was, everywhere I should’ve been I wasn’t and constantly in trouble with the man, not to mention Ma. Yet, I never went round climbing into people’s houses leaving eggs everywhere. Don’t you ever wonder why a six-foot bunny would do that? Do you really think it was out of the goodness of its heart? Ma was the last straw. She’d had visitors before but a bunny? No way.

He lifted his arm, the gun should’ve gleamed I suppose but it didn’t. Instead the weapon was another shadow, only one with sharp lines instead of the usual charcoal smudge.

“You going to kill me Buck?”

“No Nicholas. I have something far worse planned. You’re coming with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“North.”

And we did. And it was.

Friday Flash Fiction: Still Rising

Due to Internet fail I am posting this using the equivalent of smoke signals. It may look a mess.

Still Rising
By Neil Beynon

“Where are you going?”

Fahl stopped at the foot of the stairs, turning to the speaker with the creak of age as old as the tower he intended to walk up. It was Lumin staring defiantly back at him, his robes freshly pressed and his bright blue eyes gleaming in the torch light. Fahl sighed and leant on the rail that lined the stairs, in his other hand a long stone knife gleamed.

“Where are you going?” repeated Lumin.

“To do what must be done.”

“The city is no longer under siege Fahl.”

“And I would have it remain so,” said Fahl, turning to climb the stairs. The Mage’s pale skin looked even worse under the torch light, he moved as if the scars crossing his arms were piped with lead and his hair fell in matted knots.

“No,” said Lumin. “Nonsense, they’re gone and it’s time for you to get some rest. When did you last eat?”

“It is my duty.”

“If they return you will be no use to us in this state,” said Lumin. “You can barely stand.”

Fahl paused. The arm stretched out to the rail bore an angry scab from the last time. It still hadn’t healed. Not a good sign. His eyes felt like orbs of sand that were slowly disintegrating into the dust he had to keep wiping from his face.

“OK,” he acquiesced.

“Let me take the knife.”

Fahl passed the blade handle first.

“Good, now come and have some breakfast.”

The two walked out of the tower into the courtyard. The troops had been busy overnight and the grass that had sprung up during their long confinement had been removed. The sun rose over the city walls on the still beat of pink wings. The warmth made Fahl stop and let his tired eyes bathe in the light.

“See,” said Lumin. “The sun still rises.”

Fahl smiled.

In the distance, beyond the walls, there came the sound of swords crashing and lives lost.

Top Ten Books 2008

This is the time of year where I go a bit list crazy. This time up it’s the return of the infamous Books What I Read in…, last year we stopped at five but this year I’ve done ten as my reading levels have been a little higher and I just couldn’t cut the list down. Interesting to note I upped my SF and fantasy reading, going to need to balance that out a bit more next year.

Anyway, here goes:

10. From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell – There is a problem with influential writers. Often, if you come to them sometime after they’ve made their initial impact, you find a weird sense of deja vu permeating your reading of their work. You know you haven’t read the work before but their impact on other writers and indeed other media has become so widespread that you feel as if you have. I’m too young to have caught Watchmen when it was originally released and, although I enjoyed it, that feeling kept bugging me throughout. Not so From Hell, beautifully written and drawn, deliciously dark and meticulously researched – it was an absolute delight to read. Moore at his story-telling best. Skip the film. No really: skip the film.

9. Spin By Robert Charles Wilson – I raved about this book at the time I read it. The review predates bookrater.co.uk and can be found here. Wilson’s a talented SF writer that manages to successfully blend huge SF ideas with good characterisation and Spin is a damned fine example. A good introduction to SF in my opinion.

8. Signals to Noise By Neil Gaiman & Dave McKean – OK, by now you’ve figured out that the deal here is these are the best books I read in 2008 rather than those released in 2008. Neil gets two entries by virtue of my only reading Signals to Noise for the first time this year and him releasing a damned fine book (more on that later) but in point of fact it’s Dave McKean that pushed this into my list for 2008. Gaiman’s prose is typically very good but McKean’s art is…something else…it’s just a beautiful book and I often take it down off the shelf just to flick through the art. If you’re wondering what the fuss is about when it comes to Gaiman & McKean: a) where have you been and b) read this book.

7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – Reviewed on bookrater.co.uk, you can read this here. My opinion on this one hasn’t changed, I wish it had been written when I was a child and I can’t wait for my niece to be old enough for me to read it to her, complete with voices.

6. My life as a Fake by Peter Carey – Actually a fairly recent entry that I haven’t had time to review yet, although I will. I am fond of Peter Carey’s work and will periodically dust off my copy of The True History of The Ned Kelly Gang just for the joy of how it’s put together. My Life as a Fake is a typically well-constructed novel full of rich layers and skillful prose that I read on one sickly Sunday, binging on Carey’s riff on Frankenstein.

5. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – OK, I admit it: I hadn’t read this. There I said it. If you’re a hardcore SF fan then you’ll have read this and you won’t need me to tell you it rocks. Better than 1984 for the simple reason that it has somehow managed not to age as much as Orwell’s classic. Bradbury’s prose is typically liquid and his characters beautifully crafted. If you’re a fan of literature (let alone SF) you need to read this.

4. After Dark by Haruki Murakami – I’ve been meaning to check out Murakami for ages, this year I finally did. After Dark is a stunning tale told over a single night and focusing, at its core, on two sisters and their shifting relationship. Dark and evocative, this novel will leave you feeling like you’ve been up all night drinking too much coffee and you just hallucinated the story, in a good way. Read it. Read it now.

3. Living Next Door to the God of Love by Justina Robson – Review on bookrater.co.uk, you can read it here. This book has hard SF, myth, pop culture, character driven story and some damned fine writing all wrapped up in one package. I loved it and have resorted to pushing it at anyone I think will read it.

2. The Scar by China Mieville – I read a ton of China’s stuff this year and if this list went to thirteen then all of his stuff I’ve read to date would be on it. Sadly, thirteen is unlucky. The Scar is my favourite China novel because I think, out of the stuff I’ve read, it’s his most well-rounded work. I love King Rat but it does have a few bumps that, to paraphrase a friend, mark it as a first novel and you can tell China seems to be feeling his way through the story, searching for his style. Perdito Street Station is great and wonderful but it does bloat in places. In contrast The Scar is tight, confident and told in the kind of beautiful prose style that only China can deliver. I want to read it again just writing this.

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier & Klay by Michael Chabon – Chabon was claimed by the literary set by virtue of publishing mainstream first but I think most genre fans have spotted that is heart really belongs to us. I can’t say enough good things about this novel: the characters enthrall, the blending of history and fiction masterly don, that lyrical prose style, the dash of myth…I’m basically gushing. The guy has a pulitzer; he doesn’t need some tired taff to know he’s good. Still my favourite accidental spot, even if he did look terrified at being recognised.

Friday Flash Fiction: Steps

Tried to do something a little different, not sure it works but I hope you enjoy anyway. Feedback welcome.

Steps
By Neil Beynon

The carriage is nearly as empty as the city through which it rattles. Jay sprawls across the seats, his thick, dirt-encrusted boots hanging over the edge of the worn fabric, blocking the aisle. The sodium flicker from the passing street lamps strobes across his face as he stares aimlessly out the window, the passing tower-blocks still spilling light though there is no one left inside them. The frequency of skyscrapers drops as the train pulls further out of the city, tracks running down from mid-level to ground level and out through the strata of the city’s history towards the countryside beyond.

Jay flicks at the metal looped around his wrist, the empty chain dangling from it irritates him as he tries to bend a paperclip into the small aperture on his involuntary jewellery. It won’t budge. Jay curses as the tide of city-lights recedes making it harder to see but he does not stop – he is a man with renewed purpose. Besides, there’s nothing to see out the window now the city has been left behind, nothing he hasn’t seen before.

The train leaps on the track and the paperclip is lost under the seats. Jay doesn’t notice because he’s too busy clutching his chest, his heart is an angry fist and his mouth is dry, for a moment he thought the train had left the tracks, his nerves are shot. In an effort to calm down he pulls a small collection of paper from his pocket that he eyeballs with thirst, drinking in each word of the neat copperplate hand. He sniffs the paper for the scent of the author but he has abused the paper too much and he can’t smell anything but the musk of his own sweat.

Jay sighs, folding away the letter carefully and returns his gaze to the window of the train as the first glow of dawn races across the horizon. He is nearly at his destination and he pushes the remaining cuff under his sleeve as the train screeches to a halt. Through the dirt encrusted windows of the station Jay thinks he can see the fractured edges of the gateway.

“Shit,” is all Jay manages to say. Jay strides to the door, his fingers pushing between the rubber to force the doors open. Jay’s good at forcing things. The doors open with a token show of resistance and Jay steps onto the platform. He has not seen a sunrise in some time and so he spends the first few moments letting the sunlight warm his face before turning to look at the sky. It is alive with oranges, pinks and purples that cast strange patterns across the clouds and in the middle of it all sits a stone staircase leading into the sky.

Jay smiles, the gateway is still here and he is not too late. His hand clutches the letter in his pocket as he descends from the station down towards the area at the foot of the steps, there are a few people milling around still and they wave to him. He returns the wave although he is not really paying them that much attention, his eyes are on the steps and the maelstrom of colour circling the top of the steps, it is so bright he cannot look at it for long.

The wind shifts and a gust sends his letter scattering across the grass away from the gateway, he chases after the leaves but only manages to salvage the last page, his tears at this turn of events smudges the signature. Someone places a hand on his heaving shoulders and their movement eases. Jay neither notices nor cares as the metal falls from his wrist to the grass, Jay can smell cinnamon and it isn’t coming from the paper in his hand.

“Hello Jay.” Smiling he turns to face the light.

Friday Flash Fiction: Wings

I am not sponsored by Red Bull, honest. It was a bit of a struggle this week and so I may take a break next week not least because I will be out at another Neil Gaiman event, apparently in a crypt. Anyway, a long winded way of saying I hope this isn’t trite and you enjoy:

Wings
By Neil Beynon

“Why?” She asked.

“I did it for you,” said the creature. “I did it for us.”

She looked at the stumps where the creature’s wings had been, bloody and angry from the violence done to them and her hands gripped tight around the railing. She looked away across the city, the horizon was shimmering towards sunrise and neon smears marked the progress of traffic through the city. They were up high, on top of the tower, and the haze of pollution had not reached them yet, the air was cold and smelt of the sea beyond.

“You didn’t do it for me,” she said. “You did it for yourself, because you secretly you wanted to be like that, like them.” She pointed at the city below.

“No I wanted to more, like you.” the creature insisted, stepping closer.

It placed a hand on her bare shoulder; the creature’s skin was hot and dry, making her painfully aware of how cold and clammy she was, of how sick she felt. She shrugged it off.

“You deserve more,” said the creature. “I did it so I could be more. I changed for you.”

She turned to look at him. The wind had made her eyes glassy and she clutched her arms to her body as if hugging herself, the creature looked away from her eyes – it disliked seeing itself reflected on them.

“But I didn’t ask you to,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” said the creature, shaking its grey head.

She smiled and ran her hand down its jaw. “I know,” she said. “That’s why this is so hard.”

And she unfurled her wings, dropping the assumed form like a soiled robe, as she in turn dropped off the side of the tower and then lifted into the sky on the updraft. On the horizon the sun clawed its way into the sky and the air began to smell faintly of petrol.

Review: The Graveyard Book

I’ve reviewed The Graveyard Book over at www.bookrater.co.uk:

The story goes that it was a small cemetery near Gaiman’s house in the eighties, where he used to take his son to ride on his tricycle, that merged, in the author’s head, with The Jungle Book to produce the idea of a boy raised by ghosts. That’s why we have The Graveyard Book. Of course Gaiman’s son is now a grown man and The Graveyard Book has only been on release a few weeks. Why did it take so long?…

Check out the full review here.