NASA pic of the day

Stunning image today... Click for a bigger version.

Guillermo del Toro

Genius:

"If you get bored with nothing to do, you are not a writer."

Loads of great quotes in the above article. Check it out.

In the absence of anything resembling news...

...Have a photo.

The Enemy

Those of you that know me (and it’s probably about 99% of the visitors I’m getting at the moment – hello there!) will have heard of my enemy. I’ve talked about them before numerous times – my war with them, their invasion of my space, my killing a few, capturing others…

Yes, I’m talking about squirrels.

My wife and I moved into our sunny maisonette in south-east London a few years ago, and a few months later, grey squirrels moved in as well. They climbed up the ivy on the side of the house, slipped in through the air vents under the guttering, and camped out in the gap between the floorboards above our bedroom, beneath the second bedroom in the attic.

They tended to get in after a hard day’s foraging at around ten or eleven at night, and get up (and so get us up) at about five the next morning. They scampered, they galumphed, and they chewed through the spotlight wiring so that half of the lights in our bedroom stopped working.

It drove us to distraction. Grey squirrels are different from other vermin (and yes, they’re officially vermin – more on that later) in that they cause a lot of wanton destruction. You can live with mice – just – and rats are unpleasant but at least you know they’re not going to gnaw out the joists in your attic and have the roof come down on top of you.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t get at the place that was affording them entry. We’ve got the first floor of the building and our house butts straight up against the neighbours garden, leaving no access . I tried going around there once to ask nicely if I could get into their garden to hack away at the ivy in the (probably deluded) thought that it would die and thus the squirrels would cease to trouble us, but after a mumbled conversation with a person with a strong accent through a letterbox I came away disappointed.

So I took the battle elsewhere. For a while I was humane. Then I was ruthless. My good friend Colin had several suggestions with what to do with them once I’d captured them including drowning, freezing, gassing them with exhaust fumes, and freezing them with liquid nitrogen. I took him up on none of these.

Instead, the ones I captured I chose to release several miles away. Officially this is a no-no. It’s illegal to release vermin once you’ve captured them. If you’re seen by police, you can get arrested.

I took the chance.

To be honest, after killing one and disposing of the body, I was so wracked with guilt I decided I couldn’t do it again. If I got caught, so be it.

So why am I writing about squirrels on this blog?

I came home today and heard a funny noise in the kitchen. The boiler’s been on its last legs for a while now, so I initially thought it was that.

Then I looked down.

A small furry face peered back at me from underneath the dishwasher.

It’s a little bit of an understatement to say that I flipped out. The squirrel vanished beneath the cupboards. I cast around me, trying to work out what the hell I was going to do: the chances of me catching the little bugger were slim to none, plus it’d hidden at the far back corner under the cupboards, far out of reach. To top it all off, my wife has been preparing a wedding cake for a good friend, and it was IN THE KITCHEN.

…sorry. My caps lock went on.

I blocked the exits, all apart from the back door that opened onto the rear stairs down into the garden. I got the trap but that was pointless: it was an inch too big to get under the cupboards. The only thing I could do was to remove the last kick board where it cowered and scare it into heading for the back door.

I spent a fruitless twenty minutes trying to remove the kick board. When I finally lost my temper and got the board loose, the creature shot out the other side.

There was a snap. I looked over.

One small, very scared squirrel, right in the middle of the trap.

It turns out there's an air vent in the chimney. It must've crawled down the chimney and into the kitchen that way, probably not long before I got home. I've since covered the vent to prevent any further unwanted guests, and will get a proper grille over it in due course.

More on writing next time. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my victory, small as it may be.

The Quantum Of Solace

I’ve just watched “The Quantum Of Solace”.

…What was all that about, eh?

I enjoyed Casino Royale immensely, but this sequel seems to be a mis-fire on many levels. There were little touches I enjoyed – the sequence during the opera where Bond listened in to the secret meeting; the montage detailing his subsequent escape; the quiet “thank you” from the Canadian operative near the end – but these were brief flashes of brilliance in a muddled mess.

I think there’s a rule developing: if your character swings on a rope or a chain during a fight sequence, chances are the film’s not going to be great. It’s true here, it’s true of the climax of Stardust (which has more than a few moments of brilliance itself) and it was true of the god-awful Van Helsing, where pretty much everyone swung on chains at some point. I think it was part of the casting call.

Special effects have developed to the point where you can almost believe it’s all happening in front of you, but there’s always a slight disconnect, a slight feeling of “pop”, usually a sign that the character is standing in front of a green screen. I can usually tell, sadly.

Anyway, all of this is an excuse to post this:

The Reading Pile

This is my reading pile:


Going through them in turn:

Iain M Banks, Matter.

Iain Banks (with or without the M) is the writer I want to be when I grow up. I can’t wait to dive into Matter, the latest Culture novel.

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.

The final book in his seven part series. I’ve read them all before, but haven’t revisited them until now. It’s been great following his progression through thirty odd years of storytelling. I’ll hopefully have time to do a blog post on the series once I’ve finished this.

Sunnyside by Glen David Gold.

This is a signed first edition hardback. Yum. I love signed first editions and have a small collection – more on that another time. I found “Carter Beats The Devil” at a charity shop in Arundel and when I started reading it I fell in love. He’s got a great writing style and I was very excited to find a pile of signed Sunnyside’s in Waterstones recently. I’ve made a start on this but haven’t had time to devote to it properly yet.

Kate Atkinson – When Will There Be Good News?

This is the third Jackson Brodie novel and is actually my wife’s copy. I like her writing but struggled with Emotionally Weird. The previous Jackson Brodie novels have been good so I’ll hopefully like this too. One for the commute.

Nick Hornby – A Long Way Down

I’ve read most of his other novels. I thought High Fidelity and About A Boy were great, but I’ve found his later work to be a little too dour for my liking. How To Be Good was a tough read in places, and I stopped reading him until recently, when I borrowed SLAM. That, too, was difficult. Funny to begin with, and ferociously easy to read – his writing slips down very easily – but then it took a darker turn and I struggled to finish it. I know this one’s dark too, so it’ll be interesting to read.

Paul Auster – New York Trilogy

This is a new one for me. Never read any of his work before, but this comes highly recommended. This was his first novel.

Michael Collins – Carrying The Fire

Ah, Michael. Possibly part of the family – who knows? I should really find out. For anyone who doesn’t recognise the name, he was the third man on Apollo 11, the one who stayed behind whilst Neil and Buzz went down to the Moon’s surface in Eagle. This is his account of that astounding historical moment, as well as the rest of his career. At some point I’ll get Buzz and Neil’s biogs, but I’m most interested in Michael’s version of events – doubly so, after reading favourable reviews.

And finally, American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

Neil is a poster boy for how to interact with fans and the world in general – affable, caring, intensely interested in a huge range of subject matters, and owner of a body of work that is astoundingly varied. For me, nothing can top his work on Sandman, but American Gods is still a very good book. This is the first time I’ve revisited it since it was published. I’m just under halfway through, and am enjoying casting the characters for the film version in my head – I can’t help seeing Brian Cox as Wednesday. Shadow remains uncast at present; he’s only vaguely described in the novel, and is hidden away in plain sight for the most part – perhaps that was Neil’s intent. It’s a little frustrating, to be honest – the peripheral characters are far more interesting in some ways – but it gives us a relatively unfiltered view of events. It’s been long enough since I last read it that I can’t quite remember the end, so I’m looking forward to getting there soon.

Halo 3: ODST

I should be writing my novel.

I’ve got the first three chapters and synopsis of book #1 at an agent, and I’m ten thousand words into the first draft of book #2, and what am I doing?

Playing ODST, that’s what.

Halo 3: ODST (standing for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) is the latest game for Xbox 360 from developers Bungie. Bungie designed and released Halo: Combat Evolved for the original Xbox, and was largely responsible for that console’s relative success – without it, it’s my belief that Microsoft would’ve ended up with so much egg on their face they wouldn’t have seen their way clear to devising the Xbox 360, and so wouldn’t be in the position they are now: leading the console war against Sony and the Playstation 3. (I’ll ignore the phenomenon of the Wii for the purposes of this post – a topic for another time).

Bungie released Halo 2 for the original Xbox, and such was its success that when Microsoft first released the 360, most gamers’ cries were not “cool! A new games console!” but “Will it play Halo 2?”

Of course it did.

When Halo 3 came along, designed solely for the 360, people gathered it to their breasts and loved it like a child.

But they didn’t quite love it like a firstborn. No, the Halo crown had been tarnished somewhat. Bungie had, to my mind, lost its way a little.

How did this occur?

Let’s step back to Halo: Combat Evolved. Check it out:

So what have we got? Obvious homages to Cameron’s Aliens, cool tech, a vicious alien Covenant hell-bent on wiping out humanity using a giant space weapon… And Master Chief. “That’s not going to happen”.

Cool.

Halo 2 was a long time coming, and when it arrived, the multiplayer was heralded as the way forward for online console gaming: smooth, easy to navigate, and more importantly, great fun. But the single player campaign left a lot to be desired. The graphics, stretched to breaking point on the (by then) old Xbox, popped in and out of existence. The campaign also relied on an old storytelling technique: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just under half of the campaign was told through the eyes of the Arbiter, a disgraced Elite from the original game, fighting against the Covenant, now taken over by the Brutes, gorilla-like aliens that were a new addition to the Halo series in part 2:

This cut scene exemplifies all that Bungie did wrong in the Halo series: focussing on a bunch of alien politics and back-story when all I’m interested in is Master Chief blowing stuff up. I simply didn’t care.

Halo 3 brought things back on track somewhat, but by that time the first flush of love had gone, and although the single player campaign had some stand-out moments, and the multiplayer was as polished as ever, it wasn’t quite the same. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had stolen Halo’s online crown, regularly beating it on Major Nelson’s weekly top ten online games, and my frustration with Bungie reached a peak when they released a teaser for a teaser trailer, showing less than nothing. Hugely frustrating, and as far as I was concerned, a real turn-off. I stopped visiting Bungie.net as often, and made no concrete plans to pick up ODST.

That was until more details came out.

The first thing that I paid attention to was the fact that Bungie were releasing all of the original Halo 3 multiplayer maps on a second disc to accompany ODST. Good move as far as I was concerned: I wasn’t prepared to shell out exorbitant Microsoft points to purchase the maps online, and the multiplayer environment had been so mauled by teenage Americans calling everyone “fag” and other unsavoury things, I had no desire to re-enter the online arena – that was until I heard about the extra disc, and Microsoft’s canny new “party” functionality, meaning that the screaming Yanks could be silenced and never heard from again. Hurrah!

The second point in its favour was Firefight. Nicked from Gears of War 2, it’s a four-player co-op fight against wave after wave of Covenant baddies, with brief pauses to reload and restock on grenades, etc. I’ve yet to get stuck in, having spent most of my time to date on the single player campaign, but am looking forward to it.

The third thing was the inclusion of the boys from Firefly. Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk play three of the troopers, and they’re just great. I understand that it was Nathan who suggested casting the others to Bungie’s Marty O’Donnell, but it was a canny move. You get more of a sense of familiarity, a willingness to see the characters succeed and meet up after the accident at the start of the game that sees the team split. I’m a huge Firefly fan (more on that another time too!) so this was the thing that tipped me over the edge.

And boy, I’m glad I did! The graphics are great, the gameplay is as good as ever, and the story is back to Bungie’s best: no cutaways to the aliens, just human humour, explosions and a huge beating heart in the middle of it all. I even heard a reference to Ghostbusters, so there you go.

Now, if I could only get some extra time to go back to my book…

The Idea Storm

Terry Pratchett (who has enough ideas for all of us put together, it seems) writes in Wyrd Sisters of Hwel the playwright, who is unusually attentive to the ideas that sleet through the universe. More hit him on the noggin than anyone else, and plays pop out of him left, right and centre. He’s not necessarily happy about it, but he’s certainly creative. Neil Gaiman writes of Richard Madoc in Dream Country, book 3 of the Sandman series, a writer bereft of ideas and going to extraordinary lengths to break the dry spell. China Mieville likes the conclusion of the story so much, he’s suggested that there be a book of stories put together based on it.

I’m somewhere in the middle. Ideas come to me relatively easily, but not easily enough that I never worry about never having another. Dry spells occur from time to time. When they do, it’s important to not panic, try to remain open to my surroundings. Inspiration can strike from the strangest of places…

Today’s been a good day for ideas. I’ve been picking away at something in the back of my head for a while now, trying to untangle a bundle of potential plots. This morning, walking to the canteen at work on the way to get a coffee, I passed a wall full of abstract paintings, recently put there by a fellow worker. One, a riotous mix of blues and reds, smeared choppily on in thick oily brush strokes, really struck me, and I heard someone say in my head “Fire on the water! The water’s on fire!"

I walked away, the image percolating in my head.

An hour later, I have the plot of a book. I’m going to call it “TFOS”, abbreviated here until I’ve actually written it.

Sometimes it really is that easy. Odd coincidences and images collide and create something unforeseen. There’s more work to do, of course: a lot of tweaks, some adjustments to be made. What I end up with may not resemble my initial idea at all. The combination of plot machinations, character interventions and further inspiration may pummel the idea into a completely different shape, but only time will tell.

It’ll be fun finding out.

Culture

I've been immersing myself in culture over the last few weeks. Seems only fair I should mention a few of the events here.

Firstly me and the wife got free tickets to see "The King and I" at the Royal Albert Hall. Daniel Dae Kim (him offa that Lost) played the King. Here he is in action, erm, sitting on a bed:


It was a charming production, although the sound levels in the Hall made it difficult to hear some of the actors when they weren't singing. Stunning set designs too.

We've also been catching up with films we'd missed. Special mention has to go to The Lives Of Others, which just blew me away. An amazingly moving film, packed full of great performances. It thoroughly deserved the Oscar it won in 2007. If you've not seen it, search it out and watch it. You won't be disappointed.

Other films we've seen recently include 300 (meh), Ghost Town (very good), The Last King Of Scotland (good as well, but a slightly bewildering mix of fact and fiction), and Wanted (the less said about the better).

Another cultural event took place last night in Trafalgar Square, when we attended a free open air screening of La Traviata, Verdi's opera, that was being performed in the Royal Opera House just around the corner. I'd not seen it before, and it was a great performance, added to by the surroundings - including police sirens, helicopters, and the odd person trying to walk across your picnic. Always fun. My favourite part of the evening was, after the live announcer had been informing everyone that the Royal Opera House was up to date and you could follow them on twitter, he turned to the assembled crowd and said "Will you all tweet tonight for us?" to be met by a crowd of boos, "certainly not", etc. I think I just saw twitter jump the shark.

I've also been rereading favourites of mine from my bookshelf, ostensibly to distract myself from the novel, which is at a delicate, almost-out-there-but-not-quite stage. Rereading things like the Sandman series, or the Dark Tower series, guarantee that I won't stumble across a plot device or character that seems eerily similar to something I've written. I've been avoiding reading the book reviews in SFX and on io9.com for a few weeks, too.

The book is getting a final spit and polish, which should take around a week to finish. I've sent off the first three chapters and a synopsis to friends of friends, and the feedback is starting to come in. Thankfully it's positive, so far at least. I just need to finish this draft and then I can switch off the brain and enjoy the summer!