A Son of the Rock

The Rock, 9/3/10

That’s better!

Four losses in a row and then we go and beat the league leaders. Just as well I don’t ever bet on the result of a football match.

From the team sheet it looks as if we might have lined up 4-3-3 but, with Chappie, who knows? By all accounts we lost the place after going 3 up and they were down to ten men.

I see Dr. Jan got the nod again. I don’t suppose Michael White will be too pleased especially after Saturday’s events.

Up to sixth again – on goals scored. Despite Chappie complaining we don’t score we’re actually third top in that department. It’s the goals against that’s the nightmare.

Pan, 1989. 172p. (The cover shown is the Daw Edition.)

Joachim Boaz was a deformed orphan before the Colonnaders took him and reshaped his body with “silicon bones.” It was only after this radical surgery and to forget his past that he renamed himself after the two pillars of eternity at the ends of the universe, Joachim and Boaz. The enhancements mean he is susceptible to torments (and later, pleasures) to an intense degree and also that he is more or less incapable without his spaceship in close proximity.

He sets off to the elusive planet Meirjain, which takes a complex orbit in and around the closely knit stars of the Brilliancy Cluster, where time gems allow the past or future to be observed. Unfortunately such gems are contraband.

It is a measure of Bayley’s eclecticism that these meanderings, which many an SF writer would have explored minutely and at great length, are not the main focus of the book.

There are, though, musings on the cyclical nature of the universe and on whether Joachim will suffer his torments over and over again, all in Bayley’s somewhat dry style – which involves a lot of info dumping and telling rather than showing.

It would almost be absurd to complain that this tends to be at the expense of characterisation as Bayley’s intent is more to expound ideas but it does make for a less engaging reading experience.

Unfortunately, there is, too, a degree of casual sexism which may have gone unremarked on first publication over thirty years ago but jars badly nowadays and, towards the end of the book, the least enticing sex scene I’ve ever read.

This is probably one for Bayley completists only.

The Rock, 6/3/10

Down to only one goal against.

If this trend keeps up we’re bound to get a point on Tuesday night.

But then we’re playing the league leaders; so how likely is that?

Four losses on the trot.

This is relegation form, guys.

Hampden Park, 3/3/10.

Totally meaningless for the future qualifying campaign of course, but a win’s a win and especially welcome for being the first in a home friendly for umpteen years.

Craig Levein may make us hard to beat again.

Can’t see us being easy on the eye, though.

Balmoor Stadium, 2/3/10

It was only two this time.

Looking at the team sheet I’m wondering if this was Chappie’s attempt to show that his usual selections are the right ones. But…. three changes to the midfield and still no place for Ross Clark?

Yet the Blue Toon fans on Pie and Bovril say we ought to have won.

And down to seventh.

Who’d be a Sons follower?

My first response when the good lady informed me of Michael Foot’s death was there goes Plymouth Argyle’s most famous supporter. Come to think of it he was probably the only supporter of their’s I’d heard of.

He was very proud of the fact that he’d been registered for them as a player on his ninetieth birthday. (To play only on the left, of course, never the right.)

Quite what his view would be of the ridiculous advertising campaign for an insurance company that seems to take the Albion’s supporters in vain I dread to think.

His other incarnation (as a politician) reached its peak when he was elected leader of the Labour Party. Unfortunately for him, or perhaps fortunately as I don’t think he ever really wanted to be PM, this was at the time the Thatcher juggernaut was in full swing.

There was a confected furore when he arrived at the Cenotaph for the Remembrance Day observances in 1982 wearing what was dubbed a donkey jacket but was more like a duffle coat. This was taken to be disrespectful of the dead – mostly by those who’d never been within miles of a battlefield themselves. (He had himself volunteered for military service in the Second World War but been turned down due to his chronic asthma.)

The Queen Mother – no left winger – apparently thought differently as she is said to have told him, “Very wise. It’s cold today.”

In all of his utterances he always seemed to be one of the few politicians who are genuine and mean what they are saying.

Michael Foot: 23/7/13 – 3/3/10. So it goes.

Gollancz, 2008, 502p.

I thought this one might be a bit of a slog. I know readers nowadays want a lot for their money but 502 pages is pushing things a bit. I buckled down, though, and got through over 100 pages a couple of nights so it wasn’t too much of a struggle.

Tom Dreyfus is the Prefect of the title, an agent of Panoply, the police force of the Glitter Band,* an agglomeration of diverse habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, a satellite of the sun Epsilon Eridani, the environment where the bulk of humanity now lives. Another detective novel, then, but with Space Operatic aspects.

The setting is a return to the universe of Reynolds’s previous Revelation Space novels but in this one the action takes place solely within the Glitter Band; apparently an ultra-democratic polity where votes on anything and everything take place all the time – including on whether Panoply may deploy weapons.

Someone has used a spaceship drive to destroy the Ruskin-Sartorious habitat thereby killing hundreds of people. The obvious culprit is punished but Dreyfus’s investigations lead him to believe this is merely cover for a much wider conspiracy. One of his assistants, Thalia Ng, is sent to begin software upgrades to the voting protocols on four habitats but when the last one is completed the constant contact (known as abstraction) the voters have with the centre is broken. A takeover of all four habitats ensues. The rest of the book is concerned with the efforts of Panoply to counter this insurgency and to prevent its spread to the whole Glitter Band. On the way this leads to the unmasking of two mysterious figures from the past, Aurora and the Clockmaker. The latter has put Panoply’s chief into mortal danger.

Once the set-up is over with and the plot gets into gear, the narrative flows nicely. There are plenty of twists and turns, with shifts in the balance of power, plus wheels within wheels, inside Panoply. Dreyfus is your standard good cop but is convincing as such, as is Thalia Ng. Some of their antagonists are a little less convincing, however.

A possible spoiler follows.

The main problem with the book is that the story merely stops. After those 502 (small font sized) pages the final conflict which the narrative sets up remains unresolved. Perhaps the book was too long already. Or is Reynolds going to give us a sequel? Whatever, while enjoying the ride, I was left somewhat unsatisfied.

*Since the disgrace of Mr Gadd I wonder if Reynolds regrets the name he gave this cornucopia of habitats?

2003

In a double episode at the beginning of this series the writers use the shooting at the end of series 1 as an opportunity to lever in the various characters’ back-story. (though to be fair one of the incidents is referred to again later on.) Quite why President Bartlet’s aides were nearly all portrayed as failures before joining his campaign is a touch strange. The device, however, also enables the prolongation of tension (one of our heroes is in critical condition) during these two episodes where not much actually happens.

One of the principal characters from season 1, the youngish woman with the middle aged woman’s hairdo – played by Martha Kelly? – has disappeared without mention. A new one, a rabid Republican, has been introduced to show how nice and inclusive we all are. The President’s chief lawyer seems to be replaced during this series but we’re only told this after it’s happened and the new one has been advising him for half an episode.

The story arc of season 2 is mostly concerned with the ramifications of Pres Bartlet’s multiple sclerosis being hidden from the public who elected him; a long build up to the cliff hanger at the end of episode 22 where we have to wait for next season to find out if he’s decided to run again. Not really any suspense when you’re watching the box set as there are obviously more series to come.

I suppose this storyline is by analogy with Bill Clinton’s troubles; both with Ms Lewinski and Whitewater - a Grand Jury apparently awaits Bartlet.

There is still a lot of info dumping going on – too often with characters telling others things they should already know – but I’m certainly entertained by the minor arcana of the US constitution. (At least theirs is written down.)

One final thought. There are Gilbert and Sullivan buffs in the US? Who’d have thought it?

Gayfield, 27/2/10

Well the goals against predictor didn’t need to be changed……

I don’t know why I bother going to Gayfield. We almost never do well there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen us win in Arbroath. Maybe I should just stay away.

Despite the fact we started brightly and the trialist (David Winters) blasted in a great cross by Chissie we soon began to go up blind alleys on our left hand side.

Even though in the first half Arbroath were poor, at half time I didn’t fancy us holding out for another forty five minues.

And so it proved. The midfield became more and more invisible as time wore on and in the end we lost our customary three.

Apart from Dr Jan, only the trialist and maybe Dennis Wyness (who did get the ball in the net for 2-2 but was given offside) of the starters get pass marks. Scott Chaplain and Ross O’Donoghue had the worst games I’ve seen them play – which is saying something. Even Ben Gordon was rubbish; and Chris Smith continues to look like a mistake waiting to happen.

The fans gave Chissie some stick but he was cruelly exposed by lack of support from midfield.

Ross Clark and Derek Carcary improved things a bit but we were chasing the game and pushed up too much, so lost the third goal.

The trialist seems to be a player, though. Onebrow’s verdict on him was he’s too good to sign for us. He and Wyness linked up well and he’d have put Wyness in for a one-on-one if Dennis had been alert enough to it.

Arbroath’s defence looked decent which makes me puzzled as to why they’re so low in the table.

Yet for all the above we’re still fifth.

How?

I reproduce below the latest information from my spoken word performance group, Writers’ Bloc.

You’ll see the theme of this event chimes with a couple of the posts I have made recently.

You may be wondering what has happened to Writers’ Bloc. Well, preparation is in progress for some exciting new shows, but in the interim, some of us will be gathering with some well-known associates for a major event at Glasgow’s Aye Write! book festival next month:

http://www.ayewrite.com/Programme/Events/theearlydaysofabetterfuture_events.htm

Leading SF and fantasy novelists Richard Morgan, Ken MacLeod, Hal Duncan, Deborah J. Miller and Mike Cobley discuss the shape of things to come with editor, critic and general ne’er-do-well Andrew J. Wilson at “The Early Days of a Better Future?”.

Can things only get better or do we have to look over a mountain of rubble to see beyond the next fifty years? Scottish writers are leading a renaissance in British speculative fiction, but does our national identity have any future at all? Are rhetorical questions all we’ve got to offer?

Join the panel for a lively debate punctuated with short, sharp and shocking stories — and some very special surprise guests.

THE EARLY DAYS OF A BETTER FUTURE?

Sunday 7 March, 20:00-21:30 at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow G3 7DN.

Tickets: 7.00 (6.00 concessions).

Book early to avoid disappointment and ensure that it’s not just
Glaswegians who get to have their say.

We hope to see you there!

Writers’ Bloc.

http://www.writers-bloc.org.uk/

better read than dead