The pile, she grows.

Something I try and avoid is piling up too many books in the "too read" pile. I am basically a childish type, who bristles under the yoke of authority: that's why I never got on with the idea of canon - regardless of any politically tinged rhetoric about dead white men and critical shibboleths, it's more of a matter of "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me".

With The Pile, the "you" in that statement becomes me. I become my own oppressor! How ironic!

So, here's the pile, as it stands:

The problem is that there are just too many books I want to read and they are too readily available. Everywhere I go I seem to be falling over good books begging to be acquired! Where do they all come from? Well, for some classic "boring crap about me", hit the link!

Shine: An Anthology of Near Future Optimistic SF edited by Jeste de Vries

Back in 1995, when I arrived in the UK desperate to become a writer I was looking for a way "in" to the  UK SF scene. I think it was Andy Cox (then editing The Third Alternative, now editing Interzone) who put me in touch with Tony Lee of Pigasus Press, editor of the small press mag The Zone. Tony didn't buy any of my stories (at that time - he later bought my story "Insured for Murder" for the Premonitions anthology) he suggested, with charming naivete regarding national rivalries, that as a New Zealander, I might be interested in writing a profile of the Australian writer Greg Egan. Well, as it happened I was already a huge fan of Egan (we all were back then!) and that was the beginning of a non-fiction writing blitz that went on for nearly a decade.

Between 1996 and 2007 I wrote dozens of reviews and articles for The Zone, first the print magazine and then the website. I'd previously been working as freelance editor and journalist in New Zealand, and I'd been keeping a reading journal for a while so I was already tempered for this type of work, and I picked it up pretty quickly, I think. Among my favourites are my reviews of The Emperor of Dreams, the Fantasy Masterworks collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories, my double review of The Day of the Triffids and the authorised sequel, The Night of the Triffids, Lint by Steve Aylett and Jack Vance's last novel Lurulu. I was also very pleased with some of my longer pieces, such as this overview of Jack Vance's work and my interviews with Micheal Moorcock and Kim Newman (who were both utterly charming).

I wrote quite a bit about comics, too and was pretty pleased with my reviews of the marvel Essential volumes for The Fantastic Four and Howard the Duck, and some obscure eighties numbers I remembered from the 80s such as Skreemer and Kid Eternity. Most particularly, I wrote quite a bit about Alan Moore, including this profile that I was very happy with, a review of The DC Stories of Alan Moore, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol 2 and finally Black Dossier.

That was the last review I wrote for The Zone, an oddity in 2007 that came out of the extraordinary day I describe in the review, because by that time, I'd more or less given up on it and it was the first thing I'd written for them in nearly two years. (I wrote a variation on this piece for the Kapi Mana News, which I posted on this blog here.)

Why did I stop? Well, there are a few reasons. Most importantly, I'd only ever got started as a kind of distaff project to my own fiction writing, and I'd found that it was beginning to take over from fiction all together. As my life changed (kids, new job) I found that I didn't have so much time for writing and I really wanted to concentrate on my fiction (a bit like this blog...). This seems to have worked and I've published stories in each years since then and written another novel, so I think I was right to give that more space.

I had also grown a little jaded with reviewing, for a few reasons. It had started to become a bit formulaic for me. I was getting tired of random "if you like x you'll like y" style reviews, and I wasn't interested in pushing the pseudo academic direction that seemed the only alternative to me then. I was also getting bored and annoyed with the books. I realised I took much more pleasure in old second hand things or reprints than i did in the new novels coming out. I wondered what the point of it all was - who cared what I thought? Who was I really writing for?

That review of Black Dossier is an important turning point. Because of the events surrounding it, and the influence of the MA in creative and life writing at Goldsmiths that I was in the middle of just then, I began to see another way. I began to think of books not as puzzles to be taken apart and solved, but as mirrors that reflect who we are when we read and that reflect into the past of our lives, and as experiences we carry with us into the future. I started this blog on the advice of David Marston (of David marston writes) and I've been influenced in this by his blog, especially his recent entries about politics and the election. I became interested in the idea of the letting the personal and subjective elements of  myself leak in to my reviews, and that's when I thought I might be ready to write reviews again.

So, my review of Shine is kind of an experiment. I'm reasonably happy with it, although I think I still felt perhaps overly obliged to address the work and not myself (perhaps it was just that sort of book). There's a balance to be kept, of course, and I don't think my reviews for The Zone will be as personal as the writing I do here about my reading, but I think I can do a bit more than I do on this occasion. It'll be a bit more occasional than it was at my height (and I have a blog to care for now, as well!) but hopefully I can find new ways of thinking and writing about books in the future.

It's oh so quiet...

Isn't it though? I've got a lot on right now - it's That time of the year for me - so I'm not posting as much. Plus, work has gotten busy again, and I have less time to bunk off and spit out posts on this and that.


I'm also holding off blogging about Shine until my review goes live on The Zone - I'll provide a short, complementary perhaps entirely tengential commentary here when it does. Otherwise, reading has been slow - I found Shine a slog, perhaps an early indication of which way the review's gonna go and The Still Point is a fine novel, but not my usual thing, so that one's going slow, too.

Not sure what I'll read after that, but I'm inclined by some crime. I'm also tempted to re-read Vance's The Demon Princes (for the zillionth time) cos it's been a few years and I do realy enjoy it. And, since I read Beyond Black, maybe Wolf Hall.

In the meantime, here' the video of that Bjork song, leached from youtube:

State of Change

Today, I launch my little foray into online self-publishing in the shape of my short novel, State of Change.

This was never my intent in blogging. I started off just looking for an outlet that was somewhere between a journal and a fanzine, somewhere I could blather about whatever took my fancy without having to worry too much about whether anyone else was interested. It's a place for me to blow off some steam, but with enough discipline to make it creatively useful rather than just an indulgent blow hole.

Well, I dunno how well I've succeeded at that, but i get a bit of traffic, and I think that maybe I can capture some of this to promote my mission in lilfe, my fiction writing.

I'm blog a bit more about my fiction in the coming months, but I'm going to statr of with State of Change. For this purpose, I have established a second blog where it'll be published in ten parts between now and the autumn. After that, I'll put it all together in a pdf and then... well, I don't know. It'll disappear into obscurity, I guess.

Well, with out further ado, here's a link to the introduction and to part one. I'll be publishing every Sunday between now and ten weeks from now, so tell your friends (but maybe not your Mum as it gets a bit saucy in places).

Tempus Fugit

So, I've been meaning to post for a while about We3, Civil War and my post man, but it's been a busy week, with the Clarke Awards on Wednesday night and lovely big gobs of day job stuff to deal with.

Now, I hate link posts (although, of course, some of my favourite sites a just link sites, like Arts & Letters Daily) but, well, here's a couple interesting links (erm, vai Arts & Letters Daily).

First off, this nifty review of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci. I used to describe myself as a skeptic, until the likes of Pigliucci infested the scene with a kind of agressively triumphalist scientism that rubs me the wrong way. I think skepticism is about doubt, and Pigliucci's stuff has always had insufficient doubt in it for my liking.

As I get older, I think of myself as increasingly Fortean, partly because I am interested in the social phenomenon of wierd phenomena, and partly because I have doubts about the non-reality of both spirtism and the ETH UFO thing. I mean, they're both highly unlikey, and I don't think either is true in anything like the popular conception, but from time to time, I get the notion of explanations that don't cntradict known science or the available evidence.

Second link is a depressing article about the US national debt, and, by extenstion, the debt of all dveeloped nations (the developing world has its own hair-raising problems).

I take some comfort in the fact that money and value are entirely social constructs, that don't have any objective reality outside that which we care to give them. Regardless of the mind-boggling levels of debts that modern nation states accrue, people still live and work and trade and things are okay for most people most of the time.

Whatever disaster awaits, I think that we can, we the time comes, define our way out of the corner. Although, some rich people might end up less rich than they thought they were (by whom I mean the lower middle classes and above of all the western nations who are - often without understanding it - a global financial elite that most of the world's population couldn't even dream of joining). The question is, can we manage the redefinitions without a global war? I hope so!

Finally, take a look at my new blog, State of Change. This is going to get cracking next week (perhaps not 1 May as planned, as it's a ballet day etc) but expect weekly episodes of my amazing first novel coming soon!

Monty Python Tribute

SCENE: A bar in the seventies. Behind the bar, Eric Idle is polishing glasses. Enter Terry Jones.

Jones: I'd like a cocktail please, bartender.
Eric: Of course, sir, might I reccommend a peanut colada.
Jones: Oh, a pina colada! Yes, yes, I like them, and walking in the rain, ha ha.
Eric: PEANUT colada, sir. Like a pina colada but with satay sauce. Delicious.
Jones: Oh, er no, perhaps something a bit sweeter?
Eric: Maybe an Edwyn Collins?
Jones: An Edwyn Collins? What's that?
Eric: You take a Tom Collins and add orange juice.
Jones: No, no, drier than that
Eric: An old fascist, sir?
Jones: Is that like an old fashioned?
Eric: Not really, sir. You rub a tall glass in nationalist rhetoric and then smash it over the head of the nearest communist.
Jones: No, no, I want a drink.
Eric: A margerita: tequila, lime and margarine, chilled to the consistency of runny lard. Very popular around here, Sir.
Jones: No, look -
Eric: A margetini?
Jones: No!
Eric: A singapore slinky! Gin, benedictine and cherry brandy served in a huge metal spring. It's had them snaking drunkenly down the stairs in Raffles since 1893.
Jones: Look, all I want is a refreshing aperitif, no peanut drinks or margerine or giant metals springs.
Eric: A line punch, then sir?
Jones: Line punch? What's in it.
Eric: Er, well, that's the end of the sketch, sir. Line punch, punch line. Do you see?
Jones: Ah. (pause) So, no chance of a drink, then?
Eric: Sorry, sir, sketch is over. (shrugs) Sorry.
[cue hilarious Gilliam animation]

Still nothing!

Well, we're a week in and there's still not much here in the way of content. I want to put up my comments about Durdane, but it's going to be a few days til they're ready. In general, I hope to have a substantive post here every week, so I'm not going to start publicising it (in my modest way!) until I've got a few in the bag and ready to roll. General categories will be:

What I read - vague book reviewish things, not like a formal review, more of a "my take" sort of thing;
My complete works - being a post to or about all my published writing, and perhaps some of the unpublished stuff;
Stories of note - links to interesting articles and why I think they're interesting;
Jokes - if I think up any jokes, I'll post them here!