The Black Widow

For a little Halloween treat head over here and listen to a classic Alice Cooper track, The Black Widow, which begins with a cameo voice-over from that gentleman actor with the velvety voice, Mr Vincent Price.

Branded Woss

I'm not going to go into the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross thing much - they acted like a pair of drunk teen tubes (made to look worse by the fact Andrew Sachs has acted like a gentleman); joking on the air is one thing, regardless of taste, but phoning up an old man and leaving lewd messages on his answering machine on air is pretty poor (and obscene phone calls are illegal as far as I know so they are lucky he never asked for charges to be pressed). I think they should be punished but with style - hold Brand down and tell him his rat's nest hair is going to be forcibly combed. That will scare the hell out of him. And tell Woss he is welcome back on the air but must attend elocution lessons to lose the speech impediment and also learn enough manners to be passed off as a Duchess. Meantime here's a great take on it from B3TA made by Beau Bo D'or which nicely catches the ridiculous tabloid frenzy that unscrupulous editors have been stoking (come on, there are far more important news stories going on, why is this taking so many columns and so much airspace?):

Richard Morgan on IO9

One of my favourite authors and all round good eggs Richard Morgan, gives a fascinating interview over on SF site IO9. If you've read some of Richard's work before it won't surprise you to know that he touches on sensitive subjects like morality, race, religion and other areas of contention (Richard has a gift for being able to make comments on heavyweight subjects while still delivering high octane action), as when he refers to the reception of his attack on the rampant free market in Market Forces:

"The book was really written as a critique not so much of the systems but of the mindset of this kind of boorish American businessman asshole machismo. I didn't really think I was saying anything spectacularly unusual. I thought anybody who looked at would say, "Oh. Yeah, that's right." I ran into an awful lot of people for whom market forces are a kind of religious faith. I hate to caricature, but I do think American culture has a faith problem in the sense that there's much more of a willingness on that side of the Atlantic to take things on faith, and just accept stuff.and believe in something wholeheartedly.

In Europe people just seem to be a lot more cynical about these things, whatever it may be, if it's religion or politics or whatever. And yet it would appear there are a lot of people for whom free markets are tantamount to a kind of religious faith. And by writing the book I'd stomped on that as if I had written a viciously anti-Christian satire. That may be it, I don't know. It may be that it was a book in which it's hard to sympathize with everybody because the characters are all fairly unpleasant."

Cool Doctor Who figures

I'm seriously liking the latest Doctor Who action figures range. You have no idea how hard it is to resist the urge to buy more of them when I see them at work! I couldn't resist adding a Tom Baker figure (complete with his manic grin) from the Classic Who range to stand next to my David Tennant figure on my desk though. Yes, I know, I'm a big kid, so what? One of the best things about being grown up is being able to buy yourself some fun toys from time to time. And I know my friend's wee boys will go mad for these too, think I know what to buy for at least two of my Christmas presents this year...

Win Wyndham

Over on the FPI blog we've got a competition running just now to win five newly reprinted editions of one of the classic British SF authors' book - Penguin have given us two sets of five John Wyndham novels, Midwich Cuckoos, the Chrysalids (which we've just done recently in the Edinburgh SF Book Group I set up a few years back), Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Trouble With Lichen, all boasting very modern, new covers. The competition runs until the end of this coming Sunday (26th October) - you do have to log into the main FP site to enter, but there's no purchase necessary and it puts you in with a chance to win a set of novels by one of the important Brit writers of the 20th century by answering a pretty simple question.

Strathaven in autumn 3

Strathaven in autumn 3
Originally uploaded by byronv2

Its Scotland and its autumn and (when it isn't raining) it is stunningly beautiful - the blue of the sky, the soft, golden autumnal sunlight, its low angle creating long shadow as the year draws to its final quarter and the trees are a wonderful mix of green and gold and red. The wind carries leaves around in little spirals, slowly drifting on invisible currents to the earth where they gather in piles against walls, just waiting for a foot to kick them back up into the air again. Travelling through to dad on the train from Edinburgh to Glasgow at the weekend past harvested wheat fields, the remaining stubble glittering gold in sunlight, short and wiry tufts like the face of a man who hasn't shaved for several days, lines showing the patterns the farmer made upon the soil.

Strathaven Ales Craigmill Brewery Aleberry Damson beer

Strathaven Ales Craigmill Brewery Aleberry Damson beer
Originally uploaded by byronv2

A nice visit to the outskirts of Strahaven to the Craigmill Brewery, a 17th century mill building by the River Avon, where after buying some bottles of various ales to take home I was invited downstairs where I got to taste their brand new Aleberry Damson Beer, made with locally grown fruit. Its not even made it as far as the local pubs yet so only a few folks have had the pleasure of this rather lovely ale, which I've just posted a review of on the Blog o' Beer.

Please use an alternate route

Even more bloody roadworks announced in Edinburgh. Major disruption, we're sorry for inconvenience, please plan to use an alternative route, the usual platitudes as if the utility companies give a monkeys, really. Well I would use an alternate route except I can't because you twats have ripped it for the bloody useless tramline you are forcing on the city which will be no use to most of the residents. And how nice of the tram bastards to rip up two huge junctions on the busiest bus routes at the same time to make things even better and then the utility companies ripping up one of the main alternate city routes while that's going on, what great timing. And to garnish this mess on the way home tonight I saw them ripping up the junction near my home and putting in temporary lights. The same junction spot that's been ripped up four times in the last year. Useless, sodding, incompetent eejits.

Beer and guest blogging

I've been posting a handful of reviews onto the new Blog o'Beer (BoB) along with Darren (or Ariel as most in the SF&F community know him) and Ed Ashby, who have been seriously piling into the reviews with great gusto (or perhaps they are just piss artists, but if so they are piss artists with some flair). I've just added a new one on a local beer from the Clyde Valley, Old Mortality from the Craigmill Brewery, and this week has also seen our first guest blog from acclaimed fantasty novelist Tim Lebbon, who very kindly wrote us up a report on a local beer festival down in the lovely West Country.

Strips

I heard at work from the BBC this week - comedian and sometime cartoonist Phill Jupitus had a very good programme on cartoonists and cartooning a few moths back, which was very well received so Radio 4 have come up with four more. They are in fifteen minute segments, with the first one in which Jupitus meets the legendary Gary Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury (which has been a satirical thorn in the side of many a politician, bless 'im) was last week - it can still be heard via Listen Again and there is also a permanent link for this one. I'm told that hopefully the other three in the series will also get perma links and not just the usual 7-days only Listen Again. This coming Tuesday sees a chat with some up and coming New York cartoonists, the next week Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor, creators of Alex (which has become very topical at the moment with the financial meltdown) and then finally Bill Griffiths, creator of (among others) Zippy the Pinhead. Full details are over on the FPI blog.

Fry in America

Seems to be something of an American media theme this last few days, no doubt prompted by the presidential circus, but as it means we get the national treasure that is Stephen Fry with a new show, "Stephen Fry in America", as he crosses the United States in a London taxi cab (not his own one which he so famously drives around here in Blighty though). I had no idea he was almost born in the US when his father was offered a job at Princeton but he turned it down. Hard to think of Fry as American, he seems to quintessentially British - I mean Twinnings got him to advertise their tea, he cooks on an Aga and gives a wedding present to Prince Charles. All of which might have made him annoying except he seems such a lovely bloke, fiercely intelligent and very funny and self depreacting with it. America's loss was our gain.

Magnum, PI

Can anyone enlighten me as to why I imagined a thrash metal version of the theme to old heavily moustached cult show Magnum PI? Its not like I've seen it anywhere recently, I don't know where it came from, but for some reason when one of my colleagues shoved on some very loud rock after closing time while they were tidying the store I suddenly imagined the growling singer and thrash rock they had on covering the theme from Magnum PI.

American dreaming

BBC Radio 4 has been running a fascinating series entitled "America, Empire of Liberty", presented by historian David Reynolds, which I've been listening to over the last weeks. The actual history, leading up to, through and just after the War of Independence and the actual establishment of a country out of a disparate groups of revolutionaries and often competing and arguing states is interesting enough, but the series has also done what any good history should do - present the links between the Then and the Now. History is not a static, dry study but something dynamic, events from decades and centuries before constantly bleeding into the present the the future yet to be born, which makes it a shame so many people tend to ignore it (and that escalates to tragedy when we see what our so called leaders do in ignorance of historical precedent).

Take for example on of last week's episodes - some parts of the series have touched on US history I was familiar with, but this part I didn't know: the Aliens and Seditions Act, passed by Alexaner Hamilton's Federalist Party in the 1790s as debate raged over the newly independent US's stance on the growing global conflict between France and the British Empire. This largely forgotten act delivered unheard of powers to central government (and at a time when US central government was very weak, by design, most power designed by Jefferson et al to be held more locally at state and county levels, not like today where the executive has steadily accumulated powers to itself). Basically a 1790s War on Terror (WOT?) it allowed the president to deport aliens without right of appeal and to silence criticism in the interests of the country. The parallels between the 18th century and the draconian changes to civil liberties in the laws of the US, UK and other countries in the post 9-11 world are disturbingly familiar.

Likewise debates over a newly minted land of so-called liberty happily ignoring the rights of women (even when President Adams wife implored him to remember that a land of democratic liberty which ignored one entire gender was pure hypocricy. She was, of course, ignored by the male leaders, many of whom, truth be told, for all their fine rhetoric, were not overly mad on giving all men the vote, let alone women, unless they were the right kind of men (well bred, well off, basically the New World's aristocracy), thus again repeating old mistakes even back then. And then there was the odious issue of slavery, not to mention the way the native American Indians would be treated...

Meanwhile on the TV the BBC has just started a new series by Simon Schama, "The American Future: a History". The first episode also linked the Then and Now, exploring the seemingly insatiable consumerism of the US and its almost unshakable belief that it can endlessly exploit natural resources throughout its history, noting how this belief is slowly (and perhaps a little too late) being shaken as drought in the West means constantly shriking water for more and more people, to say nothing of the over-dependence on oil driven not only by car culture but an over-sized (and extremely inefficent) car culture.

Schama brings us right up to date with both Obama and McCain's campaign comments on climate change and resource management and comparing to a century or so before with one man telling the good and great of Westward Expansion that there simply was not enough water in the land for all the cities and the farms they planned (he was booed of stage, but he was right) and in more recent history replaying what Jimmy Carter told America during his presidency (but more Americans preferred to listen to a B movie actor at that election than a man who had been a farmer and actually knew what he was talking about in terms of managing the land).

Reviews from the past: Mutants

This is one of my non-fiction reviews of a pop science book from 2004 (originally published on The Alien Online), a fascinating, touching and very human study of genetic variation in the human form by Armand Marie Leroi. You may have seen the TV series which followed on Channel 4 in the UK and Discovery in the US as Human Mutants; the book was shortlisted for the Aventis Science book award and won the Guardian First Book Award:

Mutants,
Armand Marie Leroi,
Published HarperCollins

What is human?



Humanity - the pinnacle of evolution. A creature which can walk upright, engage in sophisticated language, entertain abstract thought, manipulate its own environment. Humans are also the sum of the DNA. Being such a sophisticated form of life does have a drawback, however - the more sophisticated something is the more there is to possibly go wrong. The thousands of genes and electro-chemical signals which create a human child and regulate its growth can and do go wrong. Fortunately for most of us the genetic flaws which we all have (on average around 300 per individual) are normally not malignant. For some people throughout history and even today the story is quite different.

Leroi begins by explaining how it is the aberrations from the norm which can so often illuminate what the normal function of certain genes are. After his thoughtful introduction Leroi divides the book into different - although often related- areas, such as gender, skeletal structure and ageing. The first chapter begins suitably enough with embryonic development, both ‘normal’ and abnormal. Here we come face to face - or rather face to faces - with what is probably the best-known form of embryonic abnormality, the conjoined twin. As with the accompanying TV series Human Mutants we are introduced to the wood engravings of Ritta and Christina Parodi and also to the sad spectacle of their little skeleton; conjoined and on display in death as they were in their short life in 1829.

This is a common device in this book - Leroi frequently refers to historical cases of human mutation, from conjoined twins and court dwarves to African pygmies and hairy ‘wild-men’. This serves to purposes - it, of course, gives some historical range and depth to the cases being studied. Leroi examines not only the mutation but also the life of the afflicted person and the studies and theories made of them by academics of the time, contrasting it with modern science and theories of genetics, taking us from Classical theories through the Enlightenment, Nazi eugenics up to the Human Genome project. This offers not an overview of scientific evolution but also offers a view of the way in which those who are different have been seen by society over the centuries.

The second function this method of discourse provides is to humanise the cases being discussed. It would be too easy to view these mutations as merely interesting cases of study and curiosity, especially when Leroi is discussing modern scientific methodology. It is to his credit that these interesting cases remain interesting but also remain human. In a way this is a major part of Leroi’s argument - that no matter how unusual or distorted the body is, each of these people he discusses are individuals; they are human beings.

Naturally there is a form of voyeuristic pleasure to be had from this book; the author admits as much himself. It is hard for us not to look, or even gape sometimes, at some of the Cycloptic babies in jars in Dutch medical museums or 8-foot tall giants. Even when regarding an ‘Elephant Man’ with a scientific viewpoint there is arguably still a voyeuristic element present. Again it is to Leroi’s credit that he is able to admit to this without giving in to it totally - this is not a simple freak show like some old carnival. It’s a sensitive subject area to deal with, especially when discussing contemporary mutations such as Fibropdysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, a (thankfully) rare skeletal disorder where bones simply do not get the signal to stop growing. The skeleton continues new growth until the person’s body literally seizes up until a premature death.

Not all of the mutations here are of the spectacular variety however. There is also discussion of the everyday mutations that we see every day. The mutations which give some of us blue eyes and red hair and others brown eyes; make some people tall, some shorter; some with dark skin, some with pale skin, makes some average and others beautiful. Leroi ventures a little into controversial territory by discussing theories of race - an area of science which has all-too often been abused to justify political motivations (Nazi eugenics, US government enforced sterilisation of black men in the 30s).

Leroi explains that modern genetic research has shown some 80% of all genetic diversity is present in just about every corner of the globe. To be sure there are regional variations with some genetic traits obviously (sometimes visually) stronger in some places than others (such as red hair in Scotland or Ireland), but 4/5 of our genes are common in every land and amongst every people. In a way he is saying that there really is no such thing as ‘race’ in science; it only exists in political viewpoints. Again this is consistent with his message that despite every mutation every person here is a human being of equal worth to every other person. A white person, who became black, conjoined twins, dwarves, hermaphrodites, Europeans, Aborigines - all of them human. The human body can take many unusual twists and turns in its formation, yet it still remains the body of a human being. And, Leroi points out, we are all of us mutants. A successful species flourishes through biological diversity and that means mutations (something for you to think about next time you read an X-Men book).

This is a fascinating science book which treats a potentially controversial or even macabre or ghoulish subject with great sensitivity and respect. It’s a treatise on human development and on scientific progress and understanding. It’s about being human.