The row over gay adoption

I've got three things to ask the churches about this stupid row:

1. How many gay priests are there?
2. There are ten commandments and last time I looked none of them said "You shall not give children to gays to be adopted" or even: "You shall not be gay". Why don't we hear you making a fuss about other commandments, like the one about adultery, or "you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to them", or: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour"? Why don't we hear you banging on about the Sermon on the Mount precepts, especially the one about "turning the other cheek", or "the meek shall inherit the earth"? Or even "love thy neighbour"?
3. Which is better, a kid being in a loving home with gay parents, or languishing in an institution? Is it the latter because you can abuse them there?

Finally:

• Why don't you just go back to your medieval torture chambers where you belong?

[note on the book cited below - it mentions the torture chamber in the Tower, where the Protestant chief inquisitor invented the rack to torture Catholics as painfully and long as possible. Nice one, God lovers.]

I'm currently reading : Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage
By Stephen Budiansky.

Technorati Tags: Religion; News; Children;

Hybrids: Progress report

With less than four months to go now to publication of Hybrids, the proofreading has been completed, and happily my editor, Stella, has accepted 99% of my textual corrections and abrasions. I've submitted my acknowledgements and a dedication.

Although you've seen and commented on the draft cover - thanks again - there'll be a final one soon, which hopefully incorporates all the feedback on what main character Johnny's face looks like (not a monitor, but using the 'plastic flexible displays' (there's a video here). I had amended all descriptons in the book to reflect this, but that hadn't got through to the artist. I expect this technology will be common in the future. I'm now waiting to see what the designer comes up with and will post the results here as soon as I get them for your feedback.

I've told Stella and the PR people about my operation, and they are drawing up a publicity schedule.

I am due to present the concept of a Hybrids TV series to BBC commissioning editors on Feb 22 and yesterday took part in an excellent training workshop for mid-Wales media types provided free by the generous Welsh Assembly Government on presentation skills.

This is all fun, but a distraction from writing. Nevertheless I am now in the swing of Hybrids II, with 12,000 words under my belt.

Just remember - watch the machines, for you can be sure they are watching you!

Technorati Tags: Novels; Writing; Fiction;

Should Britain have war capability?

Take Blair and Iraq. The people told him not to go to war. He ignored them. The people of Iraq are now much worse off. Last week he said he still wants Britain to have full defence capablity and be able to make more wars. He also wants a new generation of Trident (WMD) too.

Let's imagine a child. This child wants to play with a dangerous toy. You say "Not a good idea," but he does so anyway, and burns the neighbour's house down. Then he says "Want to play more with it."

Would you say the boy was stupid? Would you take the toy away?

If the boy was a man, would you say that describing his behaviour as psychopathic was accurate?

What's the difference between this boy/man's behaviour and Blair's?

The best book about Taoism I've found

The best book on Taoism i've ever found, in my humble opinion, is now all online, courtesy of Google - a good thing as it's out of print.

Tao and Method: A Reasoned Approach to the Tao Te Ching By Michael LaFargue

Should I have this operation?

I have to decide whether to have an operation.

The purpose is to help me walk properly again and prevent possible future trauma, like whiplash, paralysing me.

A vertebrae in the neck is pressing on the spinal cord, interfering with the signal to the right leg, causing it not to work properly.

The operation involves removing this vertebrae and replacing it with a titanium mesh filled with bits of the crushed bone, and securing it with a titanium plate and screws to the vertebrae either side.

I would be off work for two months.

My book Hybrids is out in May. There will be interviews & signings and of course I don't want the operation to interfere with this.

The book is partly about (in my mind) disability and responses to it.

I was born with mild cerebral palsy which has led to this condition.


For the first ten years of my life
I tried very hard with my body,

For the next eight years I hated it, hated it.

For the next twenty years I was in denial, denial, denial.

But ever since then I can't avoid it, avoid it, avoid it.

My body bites back
It reminds me who I am
I'm fragile, so fragile
But I want to be strong

I am familiar with the surgeon's scalpel
With the physio machines
With the assistive aids

It's always been true
That if I tried that much harder
I'd make a difference.
Self-improvement.

But now things have changed, changed
I don't have that power, no power

I have to make friends with the men in masks
i have to place trust in their interventions, inventions, intentions.

What do I care if there's a risk?
I've always been impulsive, daredevil, crazy
If you cross the road it's usually less safe
Than an afternoon spent in theatre number two.

Perhaps after four years the chance to walk, walk, walk
Like you and you and you
Is worth more than a legful of stuck fear.

But the wall of pain
is not easy to approach.

Can we learn this simple lesson?

2006 saw the end of the American neo-con dream (as the BBC's Paul Reynolds describes here).

The idea of American domination of the planet based on military might has foundered at the first hurdle -- a tiny, poor country called Iraq. The world has paid a huge cost for the massive mistake made by these extreme rightwing conservatives, who have pulled Tony Blair in their wake. We can only breathe a big sigh of relief, and another huge sigh at the idea that we all have to pick up the pieces and try to carry on from where they began back before 9/11 and the Bush administration's criminal (because based on electoral fraud) rise to power.

I just want to underline one simple lesson to be learned from this unsavoury episode in global history. It is so simple that even a child understands it, and yet some politicians find it terribly hard to get their heads around.

It's just this: opposition breeds opposition. Conflict breeds conflict.

Cast your minds back to the days following 9/11 and remember the global outpouring of sympathy for America. Never has most of the world been so united in such support for the American people. Briefly, there was an idea that out of the carnage of that attack, could come a realisation that to prevent such things happening again, one could talk with one's enemies, negotiate one's way out of a crisis. That by talking to the administrations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other neighbouring countries, one could isolate Al Qaeda and the Taliban. America at that point was in a position to call in a lot of favours. It seemed to me briefly possible to obtain a non-violent solution to the problem of Osama bin Laden.

Instead, the Bush administration wanted revenge. The Neo-cons like Donald Rumsfeld saw an opportunity not just to attack Afghanistan, but to target their number one enemy, Iraq. In a few weeks, all that sympathy and goodwill in most of the world was squandered. Hatred of America began to spread like a stain. The unjustifiable level of its violence was used as an excuse to foment anti-American activity -- and by extension, anti-British activity -- in many parts of the world. We now know what a disaster the whole episode was.

Many people saw this coming right at the start -- I'm afraid I am one of them, but it gives me no pleasure to think "I told you so" in these circumstances.

It's a simple fact; I say it again: opposition breeds opposition. Aggression and breeds aggression.

For example, just remember the Second World War. When the Nazis bombed the hell out of England, did we roll over and say okay we surrender? Does any country adopt that reaction when attacked? Of course not, they unite against a common enemy. So why is it that an attacker thinks that when they attack another country they will surrender? America may be the mightiest military power on the planet. They may have by far the largest military budget. But that counts for nothing when your enemy adopts different tactics.

Where do we learn how to deal properly and sensibly with opposition? I know where I learnt -- from martial art philosophy. Taoism, t'ai chi, kung fu -- they all explain how the soft overcomes the hard. How the hard and rigid can be easily broken, but the soft absorbs the shock and bounces back.

The bigger they are the harder they fall. Case in point -- America.

Judo explains how to use the power of your enemy against themselves. T'ai chi demonstrates how you meet opposition by moving out of the way, offering no resistance for the enemy, and then with a minimal effort help them on their way using the momentum of their own attack to topple them or let them tumble to the other side of the room.

In warfare such tactics require thought instead of brute strength. It requires wisdom and patience, not the arrogant, self-centred, narrowminded and ideologically driven madness of the neo-conservatives.

The only battle worth fighting is for hearts and minds.

To create loyalty and friendship you behave with generosity and therefore inspire thanks. You lead by example. If your democracy is so great then it will produce a well-balanced, great and prosperous country, and others will want to emulate it. How, through behaving like a bully, can you expect anyone to be persuaded that you are right?

Why should anyone want to adopt a political system which contains such injustice and inequity as that demonstrated by America nowadays? Many of its people are poor, illiterate, and live in daily terror of violence from gun crime. Hmm, that sounds a bit like Iraq.

What the world needs is not a single superpower. It did not need two superpowers. America did not win the Cold War, Russia lost it. Soviet communism and American imperialism both now belong to the past and deserve to be buried there, along with Nazism.

My hope for 2007 is that we can begin to put this behind us and move towards greater global harmony.

Tools for Tanzania

Wanted: Tools for Tanzania
We've just had a flying visit from Joseph Sekiku, who runs Fadeco, a grassroots development project in NW Tanzania. This remote area of Tanzania is informally twinned with the Dyfi Valley where i live.

I'm chair of Friends of Fadeco, which i and some friends started eight years ago after I visited the region and met Joseph.

Joseph is a beautiful man after my own heart, a total inspiration, modest and visionary, and supremely resourceful as Africans have to be.

He is one of three people in an area the size of Wales with a population of 500,000 that have a degree. Most are illiterate and subsistence growers.

I am fully aware of the dangers and ambiguities of much so-called 'development', but we support Joseph's work because it is appropriate, sensitive, and necessary.

In particular we are now supporting the building and fitting out of a training centre - The Eden Centre for Sustainability. They need equipment to train people so they can become self-reliant, and gain an income.

Tools for Self-Reliance is making a delivery to the area in January 2007. We want to get as many tools as possible on this trip. The tools they need are:

Sewing machines: treadles, hand or even electric; carpentry sets: saws, planes, etc; mechanics tools: spanners, car jacks, ladders, wielding tools, soldering tools; masonry tools: brick making machines, trowels, squares, tape measures. etc. A 4X4 motor cycle which can pull a small trailer.

Please donate anything you can.

If you're local perhaps you can leave them at in Machynlleth: Peter Harper/Andy Rowland's houses (21 Heol Pentrahedyn, Machynlleth) or Taliesin: Flic and Richard's /Temperance House or Corris: mine (Glanydon, by the bridge). Or we can pick them up. Someone can then take them all down to TFSR Crickhowell (Is anyone going that way in January?).

If you're not local, TFSR has many local branches. Or go to the FoF web site - link above - and join/make a donation.

We're also supporting a radio station - Joseph has just got a licence from the govt. If anyone has a transmitter, or can donate £1000 to buy one. This would allow the broadcasting of vital health and ecological information to an illiterate and rural population otherwise unreachable.

Thanks!

Origins of the modern Christmas

Why December 25? Because The Romans held a festival on December 25 called Natalis Solis Invicti which marked the birth day of a solar deity called Sol Invictus or Mithras. There's a beautiful temple of Mithras, in Merida, Extremadura, Spain.

Sol Invictus is Latin for The Sun Undefeated - as he survived the shortest day, the Winter Solstice.

In the Vatican is a 3rd century mural of Christ as Helios, the Sun God.

Who is Father Christmas? The traditional Father Christmas was neither a gift bringer, nor associated with children. He has his roots in Paganism.

By the time of the Anglo-Saxons in England (around the mid-5th century AD), it was customary for an elder man from the community to dress in furs and visit each dwelling.

At each house, in the guise of "Old Winter" (or "King Frost" or "King Winter"), he would be plied with food and drink before moving on to the next. It was thought he carried the spirit of the winter with him, and that the winter would be kind to anyone hospitable to Old Winter.

The tradition was strengthened when the Vikings invaded Britain (during the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century) and brought their own midwinter traditions with them; these involved the god Odin, traditionally represented as a portly, elderly man with a white beard.

The custom was still kept in Medieval England, after a decline during the Commonwealth under the Puritans.

Christmas itself was banned by Puritans between 1647 and 1660.

The custom became widespread again during the Restoration period. Father Christmas was also a significant character in Christmas Mummers' Plays.

A book dating from the time of the Commonwealth, The Vindication of Christmas, depicts Father Christmas advocating a merry, alcoholic Christmas and being cynical about the charitable motives of the ruling Puritans.

During the Victorian era, he was merged with "Old Winter", "Old Christmas" or "Old Father Christmas", and the charitable Saint Nicholas, a Greek Orthodox Saint (or Dutch one, depending on the version). This character did give gifts to children.

In 1863, a caricaturist for Harper's Weekly named Thomas Nast gave Santa a "flowing set of whiskers" and dressed him "all in fur, from his head to his foot." Nast's 1866 montage entitled "Santa Claus and His Works" established Santa as a maker of toys; an 1869 book of the same name collected new Nast drawings with a poem by George P. Haddon identified the North Pole as Santa's home.

In 1931 Coca Cola helped popularise this already existing, portly, sack-wielding image of Santa in a successful advertising campaign, but did not create the image, as they would have you believe.

Perhaps it's time to return to the roots of Christmas, and away from the modern consumer frenzy, which is hardly compatible with either Christianity, paganism, or sustainability.

How scientists are stupid

What is it about scientists that they never learn? Isn't the scientific method supposed to be about: theory -> prediction -> observation -> evaluation -> new theory? The so-called falsifiability method?

But here they are in the latest edition of the New Scientist - a special half-century birthday edition - all lining up to tell you all the wonderful things they think are going to happen in their own specialist fields in the next half-century. The leaders in their respective fields wax lyrically about everything from unlimited supplies of transplantable human organs to invisible technology with the potential to create life on other planets, from information sharing between parallel universes to robotic scientists, from artificial life mimicking human consciousness to the death of religion, and whole body replacement.

It all seems strangely reminiscent of the Sixties, when scientists envisaged a future where we would by now have conquered Mars and Venus, be living a life of leisure serviced by robots, and flying around in our own personal hover cars. Instead we are living in a world which is for my money even worse than any of the pessimistic dystopias created by science fiction writers ever since then.

Of course it's not science that is to blame for this necessarily. It's the application of scientific discovery and technology by politicians, society and economists. We are creating the largest amount of species extinction in the shortest amount of time since the asteroid that wiped out all the dinosaurs. We are sitting on a massive population explosion in which most people don't have access to clean water and enough to eat let alone can afford a whole body transplant when they get ill. We cannot eradicate war and the arms trade. We are causing irreparable harm to the planet's climate.

It's astonishing how optimistic the scientists are. Don't they ever poke their heads out of their own research cubicles to look at the world around them? Don't they learn from experience? Isn't that what science is supposed to be about?

None of them even mention climate change, biodiversity loss, the lack of clean water supplies, eradicating war, resource depletion or a hundred other problems affecting the world's poor or the environment.

Are these scientists really any better than the leaders of monotheistic religious cults who themselves never look at the practical effect of preaching that theirs is the one true religion - while claiming it to be morally irreproachable?

Perhaps if scientists ruled the world things might be a little different, but they don't. Instead we keep electing people who don't know much about anything except how to persuade us that they know best and convince us to believe in their vapid promises. We listen to people who appeal to our short-term and narrow interests.

I'm glad that scientists don't rule the world, since they have little idea of the value of the imagination. They are far too specialist to see the big picture.

Perhaps our only possibility of being saved by science is that scientists will one day create a machine that is capable of computing all the possibilities and mapping out for us the best of all possible worlds.

But even if this was possible, I'm sure that nobody would trust it sufficiently to do what it says.

The manufacture of terror

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller of MI5 has made the unusual step of going public to say that MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance.

Do we believe her?

The threat from this quarter is certainly higher than it was before the asinine invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But 30 plots? Here are some reasons why we should treat her remarks with some scepticism.

1. She made it at the same time as asking for more government funds, and government departments always want more funds. And yet MI5 is already twice as big as it was pre-9-11. But do we want to live in a paranoid state? Does the potential threat to a few individuals really justify this level of stress for the whole population?

2. Eliza talks of future threats such as dirty bombs, biological weapons and other horrors, designed to make us rush into her protective arms for safety. I'm sorry, I've heard it before, and even if it may be true, again, the potential threat doesn't make me want to live in the kind of country Eliza wants to create.

3. The timing of her remark comes just a few days after Dhiren Barot was sentenced to at least 40 years in jail for planning a series of attacks, for maximum effect. Fear distorts judgement, and she knows that.

4. An example: over 1,000 arrests have been made under anti-terrorism since 9/11. Out of those, 27 have been found guilty of which only nine have been Muslims. Less than 1% of those arrested.

5. Fear breeds fear. We are in danger of helping to create - as we already have done by our meddling - itself caused by faulty intelligence - more of the very thing we fear.

Let's try and learn from history, get some perspective.

The origin of MI5

Modern Britain began in the 16th century with the foundation of a Protestant state. At that time the majority of the British population was Catholic. Lord Burghley and Francis Walsingham helped to found the secret service - today's MI5 - to protect this fledgling state from real and perceived Catholic plots and bolster the hegemony which they benefited from.

Yes, the motivation was religion and power.

At this time, wonderful innovations were introduced - such as torture on the rack to extort confessions, usually suspect, sanctioned for use by Queen ELizabeth and employed by one of the most perverted sadists ever to serve the British State, a man called Topcliffe.

Walsingham created a network of paid informers, dubious spies, encryption experts, forgers, shady double dealers, fanatics, criminals, businessmen wanting diplomatic help with deals in exchange for information, and agents provocateur, to gather information (or misinformation) about Catholic priests and their supporters at home and abroad, in order to persecute and prosecute them.

Many of these 'plots' were invented, manufactured or helped along for political ends. This eventually resulted in his entrapment of Queen Mary Stuart, and her execution.

There is no difference between the methods used then and now. They just seem to be more sophisticated. Then, as now, Burghley and Walsingham exaggerated the threats for their own purposes. They used all the techniques of modern spin for propaganda. They spread rumours to stir the population against Catholics.

Walsingham even proposed an alliance with Islamic Turkey against Catholic Spain before the Armada.

How things change - or not.

The enemy changed

Only twenty years ago the enemy was still Catholic - the IRA. How distant this seems now.

But there was another enemy in the '80s - so-called anarchists. I myself was allegedly one of these, and operated on the fringes of various activities in London. I saw first hand the absurd attempts of MI5 to infiltrate and spread scare stories about anarchist activities.

At one point an attempt was made to plant an agent in our collective. He was spotted straight away, so inept was he. Simultaneously it emerged that Greenpeace London's group - the one campaigning against McDonald's - contained more agents reporting on each other than it did real members.

Every so often a scare story about an anarchist plot to blow something up would appear in the press, which we knew was a silly season tactic, more to do with MI5's funding needs than reality.

How times have changed - or not.

Of course there is a threat - but mostly it's from misguided little-more-than-children. A simple change of foreign policy will nip most of it in the bud, don't we know.

So should we trust Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller?

I wouldn't trust MI5 further than I'd trust Tony Blair. Can I make it any clearer? I trust my cat more.

Mass graves of babies in Ireland

I met Barry Simner the other night at our local writers' group. He's a long-time tv scriptwriter. He said that he was researching a story in Ireland recently and came across two mass graves - 5000 bodies each - of babies, being dug up.

This is literally a buried scandal of Irish life... For various reasons - mostly to do with Catholicism of course - unbaptised, some possibly aborted, babies were secretly buried at a locally known spot out of town.

Everyone knew about them but 'officially' they did not exist - no one spoke of them. Presumably most towns have such spots.

As the Vatican is now considering abolishing limbo - the fantasy place where unbaptised babies' souls are alleged to reside for eternity - this topic is coming to the surface, again literally, in Irish discourse.

Parents, unable to grieve publicly for their lost children, need to be able to do so but have been prevented by a moralistic Church.

Another example of the anguish caused by a so-called compassionate religion.

Anybody have any more info on this?

Whose agenda is served?

Last Saturday the lead item on BBC News all day was the one about a BA air hostess suing her employer because as a 'devout Christian' she couldn't wear a cross openly at work.

There was so much newsworthy material around all day, including major riots in Chile that didn't even make the bottom rung of the news. How was it decided this should have top billing? Why? Who sets the agenda? We should be very worried.

People who are so monomaniacal about what they wear (like the teacher/hijab wearer the previous day, whom someone sensibly suggested should be fired) would be advised to have cognitive therapy to 'cure' them were they not claiming to be a member of a major religion.

As it is these attention-seekers are given the attention they crave, which only serves to inflame the siituation further, causing more with their type of mental disorder to come forward.

Politicians are required to 'declare their [commercial] interests' and disqualified if conflicts of interest arise. Any employee who is evangelical or fundementalist has a similar conflict of interest and should similarly be disqualified. There's no such thing as a 'higher calling' - it's actually a form of hallucination.

Praise for Orhan Pamuk

It is entirely appropriate that Orhan Pamuk has been awarded the 2006 Nobel prize for Literature.

I don't believe critics who say his comments on the Armenian genocide have been influential in his winning this prize.

I predicted a year ago he would one day get it. His work simply deserves it.

My Name is Red and Snow are among the best books I've ever read, and the former rivals novels like 100 Years of Solitude in its poetry, scope, multi-levelled effectiveness and ambition. Not to mention its enjoyablity.

He straddles the difficult terrain between east and west, Islam and Europe with imagination, courage and dignity.

I've seen him speak and exchanged a few words at the Hay Festival. A modest man with a thorough and complete approach to his work, who believes in truth and the power of literature to enlighten and have a positive influence. An example to all writers.

In literary and academic circles the announcement that he's become the first Turkish person ever to win a Nobel prize has been justifiably greeted with joy. "He is a representative of modern Turkey," said Cengiz Aktar, an academic in Istanbul. "He will probably now become the conscience of modern Turkey." Let's hope so.

Naturally he has his critics. Especially in a corrupt government that wants to have it both ways - to be 'European' and to abuse the powerless. More power to Orhan Pamuk.

Sad news, Terry jones is ill, gig is off

from Terry's agent:

"Bad news, I'm afraid. Terry has had to go into hospital for emergency surgery (actually it's next Friday) but post op will need other treatment. His consultant is saying it's best for him to cancel things for the next six months. I'm awfully sorry but I'm sure you understand. Keep my email and maybe sometime in the future....."

I've sent our best wishes to him. Thanks everyone. Sadly the gig is postponed indefinitely.

Monty Python Brian's Second Coming!

We've confirmed Sunday 7 January 2007 for monty Python's Terry Jones and Sue Jones-Davies, stars of 'Life of Brian', to be at the Machynlleth Tabernacl and discuss the film and see a screening to raise money for Fadeco. A big thank you to both of them. I don't think they've ever met since making the film, though Sue's made a few more films and is now ... my yoga teacher!

This is the biggest fundraising event Friends of Fadeco has attempted and a big opportunity to raise our profile. [If you're not a member please join by going to that web page and downloading the form!]

It might be nice to have a get-together afterwards at someone's house in Mach as well, to which we could invite Terry and Sue, to chat more informally, with a small buffet. I wonder if anyone wants to volunteer their house and we could all chip in with the buffet?

Could we have a get-together to plan the event, and who wants to do what? I'd like to start on publicity now, to maximise turnout and awareness. Could we meet on Monday 16th in the White Lion at 7.30? Is there anyone else as well - other FoFs - eg in Taliesin - that you could tell about this please? Feel free to pass this on.

With Pete Telfer [of documentary production company the Pixel Foundry] we are hoping to film the event and cooking up an idea for a documentary programme where we might fly Terry and Sue out to Tanzania to see what's really going on there. We're working on the idea 'The Second Coming of Brian'. What would Brian think if he came back 2000 years later and saw the mess people had made of His legacy?

We've suggested the idea to Terry's agent and I'm waiting to hear back.

Hybrids proof copies mailed out

Hundreds of uncorrected proof copies of Hybrids have just been mailed out.

Cover blurb

Are you...

• A slave to your computer?


• Welded to your mobile phone?


• Joined at the hip to your iPod?

Maybe, one day, you will be...

Johnny and Kestrella are hybrids, victims of 'Creep', a virus whiuch cauases sufferers to merge with frequently-used items of technology.

As hysteria grips the nation, they live in fear of being rounded up and sent to the mysterious Centre for Genetic Rehabilitation, never to be seen again...

Compelling, contemporary and though-provoking, David Thorpe's sci-fi thriller is esssential reading for the cyberspace generation.

• Winner of the nationwide HarperCollins/SAGA Magazine competition which attracted nearly 900 entries.


• The panel of judges included Ornage prize-winning author Helen Dunmore, who says: "The writing is sharp, the dalogue good, and the action pacey and page-turning. But there's real depth to this story too. like all good fiction it makes the reader see the world in a different light, like HG Wells and J ohn Wyndham."


• Also from the judges: "wonderfully original...totally fresh and exciting...vivid and unputdownable."

Publication: 8 May 2007

• Proof mailing to all key influencers including UK buyers, journalists, teachers and librarians


• Blanket review coverage and features in national, local and trade press, magazines and online


• Major feature in Saga magazine, as well as reviews and author interviews in teen press and national and regional newspapers


• Radio interviews.

For more information contact:

• Catherine Holmes, Press officer, tel. (+44)(0)20 8307 4453


• Alison Ruane, Head of Marketing, tel. (+44)(0)20 8307 4380

ISBN 0 00 724784 4 | £5.99

Praise

Word is my friend
I shall not want.
I make him lie down on white
And he leads me to the waters of comfort.
He mines my soul
And directs me towards the light, for his and my sakes.
Even if I am lost in the field of confusion
I will not be afraid.
For he is with me;
His grace and his logic.

You provide me with riches beyond count
And unite peoples.
You have swept a wind of clarity through my mind
And my well of inspiration will never run dry.
But your loyalty and warmth
Will bring me calm all my life
And I will live in the House of Word
For ever.

[from a radio play, The School Play, I'm writing now]

I'm on Wikipaedia. How weird is that?

My younger son came in yesterday and said "You're on Wikipaedia". We looked. And I was.

It was almost as weird as the day nine months ago when I found a book I did a long time ago, Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect, was for sale on Amazon, when the publishers melted away 15 years back.

[I've since taken over the stock and ordering of it. So if you want to buy it direct from me, please email me, then I get the whole cover price instead of just 40%.]

Who does this kind of thing? Methinks the latter was a comic shop in the US called Mile High, and I don't know which lovely person did the Wikipaedia entry.

Anyway, being a stickler for truth and accuracy, I have updated it. So you can go and see it - and even change it - if you really like.

Maybe anyone, however obscure, can be on Wikipaedia, for doing hardly anything: "Jack O'Donnell [fictitious name] in 1989 wrote ascreenplay 'The Other Side of My Foot', which was never made." I wonder how at Wikipaedia they decide how trivial something has to be before it goes in?

Science fiction is the main literary tradition of the last 100 years

Science fiction is indisputably the main literary tradition of the 20th century and, for all we know the 21st, although there are some who may not want to recognise the fact. Over the last 100 years, ever since Einstein achieved his revelation with his special theory of relativity, science has pushed back our understanding of ourselves and the universe to an unimaginable degree and brought technological benefits and curses that previous generations would have called miracles and cataclysms.

By using technology to magnify and extend our natural senses we have made exponentially revelatory discoveries about the world around us whether by burrowing deeper into the nano scale or peering further back to the far side of the universe and the beginning of time. We have discovered how tiny and insignificant we are, and how, if there is only one God, He must surely have His hands full with all those billions of galaxies to look after, so what time could He possibly have for us? The more we discover with our hyper-magnified senses, the more we develop and refine our theories of reality -- although each generation of scientists has liked to appear supremely confident in its knowledge. Cumulatively, the effect has been to instil in us a sense of inevitability of progress -- a future which goes on until the heat death of the universe -- in which mankind has the potential to continually adapt himself in order to survive, and in which cultures and societies may be disruptively different from our own.

As a partial consequence, fiction writers have had their imaginations magnified by a greater ability to perceive the possibilities for human endeavour, and compare them with the reality.

One of JG Ballard's insights is that Surrealism is the main visual tradition of the 20th century, as well as science fiction being the main literary tradition. As someone who studied Surrealism and Dadaism, I would say that it is not just the visual tradition of Surrealism but the philosophy of Dadaism and Surrealism together which represents the only sane and the dominant response for witnesses of the tragic vulcanic chasm that exists as a tectonic rift valley between the parallel paths of the development throughout the last 100 years of science and technology on the one hand and human political misgovernment on the other. After all, at the beginning Andre Breton could not even imagine that Surrealism could be a visual art movement.

Dada, Surrealism and science fiction all employ the imagination to objectivise aspects of our present condition which we may find painful or difficult to explore otherwise. From HG Wells through Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Ballard himself, William Gibson, Ursula LeGuin, Marge Piercy, Kurt Vonnegut and many more, science fiction has been used to seduce us into accepting the dark and unforeseen consequences of our shortsighted decisions. It has of course also been used to trace the dreams of imperial fantasies, especially when sanctioned by the mighty corporate finance of the planet's dominant hegemony -- we are talking Star Trek, Star Wars and similar space opera. Here we see America dreaming an interplanetary pastoral allegory of how it would like the rest of the world to perceive its benign expansionism. Such films have dominated the top ten box office smashes of the last twenty years.

And then there are comics, specifically American comic books, which frequently merge both Surrealism and science fiction to create, as Stan Lee himself has often said, a modern mythology all the more remarkable for being the product of hundreds and hundreds of authors working in concert to create a self-consistent universe populated with fantastic characters who act out their parts in cosmic dramas of life, death and ultimate meaning, as well as love, tragedy and betrayal. Like any good pantheon from Norse to Hindu mythology, there is always one superhero you can choose to identify with, whether it's the driven, guilt-ridden Batman, the messianic Warlock, the simple-minded, clean cut Superman, the Jekyll-and-Hyde rage machine that is the incredible Hulk, or the macho loner with the sensitive heart who is Wolverine. Although much of this pop art is trash, it has also produced its share of the greatest literature of the last hundred years, from the keyboards of writers such as Neil Gaimon, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, whether or not these are recognised by departments of English literature in any of our universities.

A central principle of Surrealism is taken from Pierre Reverdy, who remarked in 1918 that the most powerful poetic image is one which brings together the most disparate and even opposing elements. The further apart they were originally the greater the charge generated by compositing them side-by-side. A central principle of Dadaism is that rejection and gallows humour are legitimate responses to the absurd atrocities generated by the so-called developed world's way of life. Mainstream 'modernist' and 'post-modern' literature, with the exception of 'sociological' big picture fiction, has failed to tackle these issues with such effectiveness and engagement. Much mainstream literature, particularly in Britain, tends to concentrate on pitiful singular dramas of frequently isolated and alienated individuals. By contrast science fiction takes the big picture and forces us to confront what is at the focus of our blind spot when we stare into the mirror. And it frequently does it by using the above principles.

The greatest exponent of this type of writing and the greatest writer of the 20th century is undoubtedly.... William Burroughs. To call him a science fiction writer is a bit like calling Mozart a pianist. The potency of Mozart lies in overarching virtuoso energy and originality of his total vision, and the same is true for Burroughs. If one were to seek out a single metaphor which more than any other expresses the relationship of the individual to the time in which he lives during the last hundred years it has to be that of the junkie and his supply chain. Eric Mottram's book on Burroughs, the Algebra of Need, explains brilliantly how this metaphor pictures humanity as trapped in the web of exploitation and deceit that is the inevitable result of predicating that society on naked economics, removing meaning from life, and the leeching of power from the individual to those at the top; and how the success of this system is akin to the success of a virus which infects its host and uses it to manufacture further copies of itself, ad infinitum. The means of the infection of our minds is metaphorically the same. The result is the environmental and human suffering and devastation which we see around us burgeoning on every continent on the planet.

This can be the only valid topic for any self-respecting and compassionate writer nowadays. The corporations have hypnotised us by letting us wallow in one end of the Horn of Plenty, but at the other end of this supply line is a vision of hell on earth. Science fiction writers can help us visualise a better alternative.

Richard Collins

Richard Collins is a local writer and an old friend. He is the author of two published novels, the first of which, The Land as Viewed from the Sea, was shortlisted for the whitbread First Novel Prize in 2004.

This novel is set in unnamed but recognisable locations around this part of west Wales - anyone who knows the area will have a great time recoginsing them. And anyone who knows our community, will have fun trying to identify the real people his characters are drawn from too!

It is a Chinese box of a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, a beautitiful love tale lyrically told.

Richard's second book, Overland, was published in May and is a road movie set on the continent.

I have a feeling his third novel, in development on now, will be even better - like his first, a complex interweaving, this time of identity, outdoor theatre and gardens. He is currently seeking an agent.

Richard and I are co-chairs, with his partner Flic, of Friends of Fadeco (there's a picture of us both on this link!), which supports local development work in one of the poorest and remotest parts of the worls. We have all been to this part of NW Tanzania and come back enriched.

We urge you to join the FoF, and send us donations to help the grassroots developmnt work there, including building and running a training centre.

Richard is a great guy, and one of these days I'm going to build his web site. In the meantime, you can discover a bit more about Richard Collins here, here and here.