Ready, Steady, Fables!

The book of Rhysop's Fables is ready at last!

Tired of being given good advice in fables and parables by wise men, sages and gurus? Why not try Rhysop's Fables instead, a set of 150 amoral and irresponsible fables? There are no messages here telling you how best to live your life. That kind of thing is entirely up to you! The philosophy of Rhysop's Fables is that there are no answers to life because life is not a question...


Join a cast of crows, clouds, aardvarks, snails, robots, foxes, dinosaurs, ghosts, pickle jars and many other beings and things in the great quest to fail to unravel the mysteries of existence! You won't regret it; and even if you do, you won't regret your regret!

To buy this book from Amazon, click on this link: Rhysop's Fables.

Thanks!

The International Punfest

I have been writing fables recently, lots and lots of them. In fact I've just completed 150 of the blighters and soon I'll put them all in a collection of their own. One of these fables was inspired by a game of pun-tennis that I played with Bob Lock a few weeks ago. It's right to give him credit for the original inspiration of what follows. In fact, he planted the "Uzbekistan" seed from which the rest developed...

A suburban bungalow somewhere in England. A comfortable lounge with a sofa and a man sat upon it. A woman at a desk in a corner was spinning a globe of planet Earth and frowning at the countries that flew past. Then she opened her mouth to speak.
     “Uzbekistan,” said Anna.
     “I don’t know. Who is she?” replied Stan.
     “Turkey,” added Anna.
     “Well, if you already knew that Becky is a turkey, why did you ask me who she was?” grumbled Stan.
     “Chile,” said Anna.
     “Maybe she needs a blanket?”
     “Hungary.”
     “And a bowl of soup.”
     “Korea.”
     “She’s a turkey, you said. But that’s more of a lifestyle than an actual career. Anyway, I don’t think it’s important. I am more concerned about my own career and lack of income.”
     “Sudan.”
     “Why should I? He used to be my best friend. There must be better ways of getting money than that. Maybe your friend Caroline has some financial advice for me?”
     “Alaska.”
     “Please do. She’s very knowledgeable about many things. I don’t like her cooking very much, though.”
     “Greece.”
     “Too much. She fries every meal. But I’m no better and what’s good for the goose is good for the—”
     “Uganda.”
     “No, I’m not the gander. I’m the goose!”
     “Yemen.”
     “Far out! Groovy baby!”
     “Romania.”
     “Not really. I regret only the depression.”

¶ Travel doesn’t always broaden the mind, especially armchair travel.

Many thanks again to pun-master, Bob Lock!

Hogwash and Bum Note

My minor story-cycle of extreme exploratory daftness is now complete. Six tales featuring the two most inept and inelegant members of the Eldritch Explorers' Club... Thrill with Hogwash and Bum Note as they venture into the jungles of Yuckystan, tangle with Tarka the Rotter, flee from giant ducks, meet the monkey with too many cheeks, attempt to pluck notefruit from the Melody Tree, and finally go in search of the Infamous Anteater in order to get his autograph!


Hogwash and Bum Note are my version of Sapphire and Steel. Sort of. Their adventures can be read for a limited time for free by clicking on this link! Enjoy! Or don't enjoy! At your discretion!!

My Proposed BFS Reforms

Recently I filled in an online questionnaire about suggested improvements to the awards procedure of the BFS (British Fantasy Society). Why I was asked to do this is a mystery, as I'm not a BFS member or a member of any society. I'm a contrarian-libertarian-individualist, but we'll let that pass for the moment. Maybe the questionnaire was sent to me because of a simple clerical error? I filled it in anyway.

I imagine that my responses will be ignored, as the proposals in this blog post will probably be ignored; but as an enthusiast of the literature of the imagination I have as much right as any other enthusiast to express my thoughts on the matter. Whether these thoughts are ignored or not is a moot point. So I intend to keep expressing them. For anyone who isn't in this particular loop, the BFS is a long-established society that (among other things) holds an annual ceremony in which anthologies, novels, short stories, etc, can win an award. The procedure followed is conventional: a longlist, a shortlist, a result!

However, concerns have recently been raised as to the integrity of the system. Dark mutterings have been on many lips: the entire procedure is corrupt, they say! And yes it is, and it has been for a long time, doubtless since the inception of the society. Most societies are corrupt, aren't they? All of them are, probably. In a bid to clean up the BFS act from inside, a fellow of integrity and talent (the decent and honourable Graham Joyce) has finally been given a mandate to reform the entire awards protocols. He is asking for suggestions. Here are mine:

(1). Disband the BFS. Don't have a society at all. Writers should be independent mavericks. The existence of literary societies encourages the formation of cliques, of mutual back-patting, of mob psychology, of unfairness. Dismantle the BFS and sell off the jowls and egotism. That's my preferred solution, but it's never going to happen. And so:

(2). Keep the society but don't have an awards ceremony. The whole concept is ludicrous. For instance, are we really supposed to believe that Stephen King's The Dark Tower VII was the best fantasy novel published in the entire world in the year 2005? Better than Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore? Better than Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown? Better than Ismail Kadare's The Successor? Better than Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake? Better than Jose Saramago's The Double? I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the point. The BFS 'best novel' award can never represent the best novel out there. How can it? The task is impossible. The scrapping of all awards ceremonies seems the only logical course of action to me.

(3). However, scrapping the awards ceremonies will never happen because there are too many vested interests involved; there is too much desire on the part of business insiders to keep the awards going. So then. The best that can be done is to try to keep the system as pure, independent and uncorrupted as possible. One of the main weaknesses of the BFS voting system (any voting system really) is canvassing. It's not merely that canvassing is open to abuse but that canvassing itself is unfair. It gives an unreasonable advantage to those who can canvass and disempowers those who won't or cannot. Ten years ago I received an email from a writer who had a book on the BFS longlist. His scheme was to form a voting cartel that would take it in turns to vote for each of its members. He asked people to vote for him that year, promising that he would vote for them the following year. A good definition of corruption. My solution to this is simple: anyone caught canvassing at all for votes should be instantly struck off the longlist (or shortlist, if they have reached that far).

(4). An option should be available to strip previous winners of awards retroactively if evidence emerges that they used dishonourable methods to increase their chances. If an author is caught cheating, all his or her awards should be stripped. This should be a deterrent to many potential cheaters. So the writer who sent the email mentioned above would lose any awards he previously (or in point of fact subsequently) won.

(5). Some sort of provision should be made to make sure that writers who are by nature outsiders aren't neglected or overlooked because of the political workings of the system. For instance, a writer who prefers not to network and socialise, who perhaps alienates other writers by his disarmingly honest attitudes, shouldn't be punished as a consequence. I therefore propose an extra award: 'Best Outsider', to be decided by an independent judge or judges and not by 'popular' vote. How else will talented outsiders receive the recognition due to them? It must always be remembered that it's the work that is being rated, not the worker.

(6). Democracy is often praised in our culture as the highest form of political evolution. But the objections Plato raised to it 2400 years ago still haven't been properly answered. Democracy often empowers the ignorant and encourages populist posing. To maintain the purity and independence of the awards ceremonies, the longlists, shortlists and eventual winners should be decided only by competent, widely-read judges and not by ordinary proles. These judges should be drawn only from a pool of expert writers, scholars or readers who agree to forever sign away their own eligibility to win an award. A few years ago I got talking to a writer of very little talent who had spent years attempting to further his career through networking; he attended every convention he could and promoted himself with all the energy and drive that he failed to put into his actual writing. Having managed to secure himself a position as a BFS committee member, he lamented the fact that he wasn't eligible to use his position to help one of his own books get onto the shortlist. The fact that this was an unethical aspiration didn't seem to bother him. The BFS really doesn't need administrators of his calibre.

On a more general level, I would like to object to the fact that the BFS (British Fantasy Society) often seems to function more as a BHS (Not British Home Stores but British Horror Society). When I raised this point recently, an engaging and erudite chap, Stephen Theaker, who is a BFS insider, replied that the awards longlists are often dominated by horror titles but that the guests of honour at the conventions are drawn from a far broader spectrum. This seems to be true. I was delighted to note that Brian Aldiss, the greatest living British writer, was a guest of honour at the 2011 event. However, the fact that the awards longlists are still dominated by horror titles is a real problem. The membership is clearly dominated by horror fans and these horror fans can be pressed into service by horror writers. The horror scene tends to be small and tribal. I'm not saying that the horror fans' votes can necessarily be bought by direct bribes from the horror writers, but friends do tend to vote for each other despite the actual merit of the work in question. Maybe there should be a separate category for 'Best Horror Novel' to help filter the muddy waters?

Finally, I think it's very important to remember that fantasy literature isn't a speciality of Western writers. The finest fantasy novel of the past decade, in my view, is The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Some of the best fantasy writers out there aren't British or American. Why are they so poorly represented in the BFS awards procedures? This needs to be addressed.

Small Horses Galore!

Unlike humans, animals are refreshingly non-judgmental. Not one of these tiny ponies seemed bothered by the fact that I resembled a bumbling buffoon as I tramped the fields and hills. But shabby clothes are so much more comfortable than smart ones. That's my defence. Besides, I passed over so many stiles on my way to this field that I can be forgiven for passing over style too...

Gloomy Seahorse

Many years ago I told myself that if I ever started my own publishing company it would be called Gloomy Seahorse Press. Not for any particular reason, you understand, but simply because I liked the name. However, I never had enough capital to fund the business... But with the growing popularity of ebooks it now seems to me there's an opportunity to realise my ambition in a slightly different manner. And so I have launched Gloomy Seahorse Press as a whimsical and imaginary imprint. How many books it will ever produce is open to question: I have absolutely no idea.

All I can say at this stage is that the first title is ready to be downloaded and read by anyone who owns a Kindle or one of those other newfangled digital book reading devices... And that first title is The Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a collection of exactly 100 of my stories, most of them from the early days of my writing career and many of them unpublished before now. Think of this book as a minor Decameron... And at the low price of $4.99, it works out as less than 5 cents per story (that's 3 pence in British money).

If you wish to buy it, simply click on this link... You'll be helping me out a lot if you do (but if you don't buy one, that's fine too, of course!)

Seaberry, Eat Berry!

A fortnight ago, Adele and I were sitting in The Dolphin in the village of Llanrhidian after one of our monumental bicycle rides; there was a pile of books on the windowsill and I browsed through them; one of them turned out to be a superb hardback volume called Wild Food by one of my gurus, Ray Mears. In these harsh economic times, with the price of shop food soaring to ludicrous levels, the art of foraging for one's meals is once again becoming an essential skill.

I am a fruit lover and I particularly love berries, but I'd known nothing at all about the 'seaberry' before leafing through Mears' book. A few days ago we chanced upon some bushes laden with fruit. They aren't easy to pick: the sea-buckthorn shrubs on which they grow are armed with vicious thorns. Supposedly the flavour is too bitter to be deemed enjoyable unless the raw berries are treated, but this turned out not to be the case. I found them delicious! Like an incredibly intense blast of orange, passion fruit and lemon: sweet on the tip of the tongue, sour at the back. There is bitterness too, but nothing unpalatable.

It turns out that seaberries are packed with vitamins, including levels of Vitamin C fifteen times higher than that of oranges! Indeed, they are considered among the most nutritious fruits on the planet. I became an instant convert. However, I would ask potential harvesters among you to remember that they are a vital winter food source for several species of bird and to take only sparingly.

Reviews That Come Back to Haunt

Once upon a time I did a lot of reviewing. I reviewed books and magazines for various publications. I always guessed that at least one review I wrote would come back as a ghost and haunt me. And it has finally happened. Fortunately it's a good ghost and a fairly nice haunting...


This is a picture of Quantum, an excellent example of popular science writing by Manjit Kumar. I picked it off the library shelves recently and found it informative, clear and engaging. In other words, I recommend it! Kumar's bio at the beginning of the book explains that he was the founding editor of Prometheus, a journal that covered both the arts and sciences; and he goes on to remark that this publication was once praised by a reviewer as "perhaps the finest magazine I've ever read." My first thought was: high praise indeed! But can the opinion of that anonymous reviewer be trusted?


Then a corner at the back of my mind began to itch. The quote seemed vaguely familiar. I wondered if I had read that review somewhere. Then in a flash it occurred to me that I was the reviewer in question! I even recalled where I had reviewed Prometheus: in an issue of a 90s magazine called The Zene. I went through boxes of old stuff without much hope; but to my surprise I found the relevant issue and review. Yes, I did say that about Kumar's journal. And yes, I did mean it.

Kharms Before the Storm

(A story in the style of Daniil Kharms)

Kharms said to Lakoba, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
   Lakoba answered, “No, go ahead.”
   Kharms remained silent.
   Lakoba gasped, “Well? Go on, I'm waiting!”
   Kharms frowned. “Waiting for what?”
   Lakoba cried, “For the question!”
   Kharms replied, “But I asked it and you gave me your answer. I asked, do you mind if I ask you a question? That was my question. And you answered: no, go ahead.”
   Lakoba reddened. “In that case you asked your question before I gave you my permission to ask it.”
   Kharms said, “Does that make you angry?”
   Lakoba bellowed, “Livid!”
   Kharms shrugged. “Nonetheless I am satisfied.”
   Without hesitation, Lakoba rushed at Kharms, twisted his arms behind his back and threw him out the window.

NOTE: Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was born in St Petersburg; after criticism from the Soviet authorities his writings were supressed and he found himself unable to publish anything, yet he continued writing. He specialised in absurd and rather monstrous flash fictions that often featured people falling out of windows. Imprisoned, he was deliberately starved to death.

A Brief List of Titles for Unwritten Stories

Without wishing to strut and preen, I am often praised for my unusual titles. The method I most commonly use is to keep lists of potential titles and wait until I have an idea that fits a particular title. Then I'll write the story. I dislike writing a story if I don't have a title for it. I find that the prose doesn't flow so smoothly...

Often the titles themselves generate the story itself, in the same way that a gene may control the growth of an organism. So the more offbeat the title, the more original the resultant story! Titles will often jump into my head from nowhere. A phrase such as 'The Canapés of Wrath' is obviously a twisting of the Steinbeck title; other phrases, such as 'The Realisation of Vast Headgear', are more mysterious in origin. Why should such a sequence of words appear in my mind? There's no obvious reason. It's a mystery!

Anyway, I note down these titles and slowly work my way through them. The list keeps changing as I add new titles and turn others into stories. Some titles wait on the list for a short time; others wait years or even decades. What follows is a short extract from my list. I hope eventually to turn all of these titles into stories.

* As I Walked Out One Midsummer Night's Dream
* Noah the Second
* The Senile Pagodas
* Wheel of Beasts
* Vile Bodhisattva
* Poppadam and Circumstance
* Apple Ubu
* Shelling the Toad
* The Singing Sands Have Lost Their Voice
* The Swedish Pharaoh
* Djinn Septic
* Occam's Beard
* Ghoulysses
* Monkey Knows a Thing
* The Extra-Haunted Dolls' House
* Abaddon in Abydos
* Pepper on the Ginger Star
* An Awfully Bubonic Adventure
* My Rabbit's Shadow Looks Like a Hand
* Wuthering Depths
* The Once and Future Peasant
* The Aching Soul of Solomon the Cobbler
* Sigma Octantis
* Doom it Heavenwards
* Dribble as I Dawdle
* Confessions of a Medicated Lurker
* This Werewolf Prefers Muesli
* The Nine Billion Names of Tinker Bell
* The Infringing Lanterns
* Ondes Martenot on my Pillow
* Dynamiting the Honeybun
* The Baker Street Cimmerian
* Tropic of Nonsense
* The Fruit Pastille City
* The Dream Chapati of Tarquin Platt
* The String Theory of Women
* The Great Me
* Bedsteads Across Iberia
* Hannah and her Cisterns
* Sadie Loverlei’s Chatter
* Nat King Cole Abhors a Vacuum
* The Unvoiced Complaints of Kika Puffus
* Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Minor Disturbance
* Whoops a Buttercup
* Gin and Chthonic
* The Original Copycats
* The Cheesy Smile of Bethany Kraker
* Pell Mell in Pall Mall
* The Utterly Conventional Abode on the Perfectly Normal Hill
* Clumsy Carnacki – the Ghost Loser
* Daftness and Chlorine
* The Cat that Chilled the Scene
* Abridged Too Far
* Genghis Kan't
* The Biscuit Viziers of the Tongue Sultan
* Owl Scared of the Dark
* Caterpillar the Hun
* The Further Fangs of Suet Pudding
* My Bearable Smugness
* The Realisation of Vast Headgear
* Moonmoths, Umbrellas and Oranges
* Hepcats are from Neptune, Bum Notes are from Uranus
* Jesus the Creep
* When the Tide Comes In, Belinda Puts Out
* The Heat Death of Mr Universe
* The Elephantine Doggerel of Mouserian Catullus
* Knights that Go Bump into Things

Weber the Winner!

Chômu Press, who published my new collection Link Arms With Toads!, held a prize draw recently. The winner would receive a free signed copy of my book. To make it even more personal, I decided to write a poem about the winner on the inside of the back cover. To do this I needed personal information. I'm delighted to report that the eventual winner, Marc Lyth, was good enough to provide this information. Marc often uses the pseudonym "weber" while online; this was my starting point and I extrapolated from that, incorporating some of the other details about his life he was willing to share with me. Here's a picture of the completed poem in the book itself:

As well as a copy of Link Arms With Toads! it seemed only proper to include some other gifts. After all, it could be the case that he won't enjoy my writing style. So I threw in another book, an anthology of Lovecraft tribute stories called Cthulhu Unbound. I do have one story in that anthology ('Abomination With Rice') but there are plenty of other stories by other writers too. I also threw in two minor chapbooks and included manuscript versions of two very short stories I wrote last year ('Down in the Park' and 'An Inconvenient Fruit'). If I ever become as famous as I believe I deserve to be, these manuscripts will be worth a lot of money in years to come. If I only become as famous as certain other people believe I deserve to be (naming no names) they will be worth absolutely nothing! Here's a picture of the array of gifts:

As the poem is indecipherable in the earlier photo, I have taken the liberty of including it on this blog post too. It's called simply 'Poem for Marc Lyth' and it goes something like this:

Caught in a weber spun by himself
Marc waits patiently for the secret
spider of his mind to come
and suck out his juice
with all the stealth of an eight-legged elf.

"Fangs for that!" he'll say. "Most kind of
you, dear spider. Have a nice day!"
or words to that effect.

He lives alone with his books and his cat
and a balding head
which he has never yet read
because he prefers hair-raising tales.
He dismantled radiators in his youth
and we find that's proof (if any were needed)
that he deserves to be eaten
by the secret spider of his mind.

The cat's name is Balrog:
that's another reason.

A jujitsu black belt, Marc should be able
to handle himself in any situation
but the secret spider of his mind is an expert too
and knows all his moves.
Before closing its jaws on his quivering flesh
it will dance for him
an eightfold Can Can,
the sort of thing we can all do without.
But that's Lyth, I guess.

Too Many Books at the Same Time -- Still!

I can't seem to get out of the habit of reading too many books at the same time. It's getting ridiculous! I thought I should gather them all together in one place, stand back and realise exactly what I've let myself in for! How long before I start getting all these mixed up?


Anyone who can identify all of these will win a free copy of Michael Cisco's The Great Lover, recently published by Chomu Press... Most of the titles are easy but some (because of the camera angle) are tricky...

Bad Mr Naipaul

Let's state the obvious first: women are equal to men. They deserve equal rights and opportunities and pay. This is a self-evident truth.

Now let's consider the recent fuss that has followed the comments of V.S. Naipaul that no female writer is his match: he claims that prose written by women is narrow and only sentimental, that it fails to engage with big themes in the way that his own work does. Basically, he has asserted the superiority of his fiction over that of any female writer.

It was a silly thing to say. Naipaul is intelligent enough to have anticipated the negative reaction to his comments, so one can only assume that he wanted to stir up trouble. And yes, the reaction has been strong... Male writers have been especially eager to lambast him, almost as if they were waiting for something like this to happen: the perfect opportunity to prove their own maturity while girls are watching.

One of the problems with the writing world (and I say this as an insider) is that there are too many people who are desperate to conform, to remain on good terms with everyone, to say only safe, bland, acceptable things, never to rock the boat, to protect their own (paltry and illusory) reputations, to be the ultimate sycophants, to be perfect tactical twats... In such an environment, Naipaul's attitude might actually come over as refreshing. Entirely wrong in factual detail but entertaining in spirit.

I can't stand misogynists, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, etc, but maturity wankers aren't far behind in my personal list of undesirables. It's easy to ape public outrage and make all the right grand gestures of defiance when there are no real consequences, when the target is so distant it's almost an abstraction; but it's much harder to fight for those tiny incremental changes that really do make a difference. I wish that some of the men who stamp their feet theatrically on behalf of women when there is no chance of making a difference would instead do something small but useful in an arena where they do have some influence.

Let's put Naipaul's recent comments into true perspective. Imagine if he had said that no male writers were his equal. The resultant fuss would have been small or nonexistent. Let's also imagine that he had simply stated that no writers (of any sort) could match him. We simply would have chuckled at his eccentricity -- "Ho! Ho! What's that old egotist up to now, eh?" -- before carrying on with our business. So why shouldn't we ignore his comments now? It's quite easy.

I recently made a list of my 50 favourite writers ever. Not one woman made that list. Does this mean I'm a misogynist? It surely must! But wait a moment... In a list of my ten favourite artists, the first seven names were female. I'm in awe of Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, etc. So really it's just a question of taste, not of politics. We must never forget this.

Four Books Published in Four Months

I don't want to sound smug about it. I'm just pleased, that's all. The writing world is full of delays and postponements. Projects get cancelled, publishing companies go into liquidation, editors change their minds about accepted work, contracts get broken. The truth is that most writers need publishers far more than publishers need writers. Supply exceeds demand. It's rare that a book is published on the precise date the author has been told it will appear. Sometimes delays can stretch for years... All this inefficiency is less frustrating if you 'build in' the concept of delay into your mind-set when you first get involved with the business side of the writing world. Anyway, my four most recent books have all appeared in the past four months, right on schedule! It's a nice feeling. Very.

A Galley of Toads!

I recently received the Advance Uncorrected Galley of my forthcoming book, Link Arms With Toads! It's a proper bound book and everything, much easier to proofread than text on a screen! The guys at Chômu Press have been incredibly efficient and professional, so hats off to them! I don't actually ever wear a hat, but I'm willing in this instance to borrow one, just so I can put it on and then take it off!


Link Arms With Toads! is a collection designed to be a comprehensive 'sampler' of the totality of what I do, so it runs the full spectrum of all the genres I've attempted, and is therefore probably the best entry point for readers new to my work... Most of my other books are biased to specific genres, but this one is biased only to its own syncretist aesthetic. Get your laughing gear around that!

This collection features 18 stories, the earliest dating from 1994 and the most recent from 2010. One of the stories, 'Hell Toupée', is one of my own personal favourites, perhaps in the top 10 of all the stories I've written. Another tale, 'Discrepancy', provides the ultimate "key" to all my other fiction and in fact justifies the entire projected cycle of 1000 interlinked stories that I plan to write, if I live long enough to do so.

Link Arms With Toads! is due out in the middle of May but in the meantime here's the publisher's webpage devoted to the book, complete with a full contents list...

Hothouse

I read a lot of books during 2010. On my main blog I have announced that the best book I read all year was The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith. That volume is a collection of linked stories. But the best novel I read in 2010 was Hothouse by the superb Brian Aldiss, one of my favourite writers. Hothouse is one of his finest early novels, set on a future Earth where tropical carnivorous plants rule supreme and where the moon is attached to our planet by the giant cobwebs of mile-wide vegetable spiders. Notice the irony of such a book being photographed in the snow? But in fact some of the action takes place in the chilly regions of Eternal Twilight. I thoroughly recommend Hothouse to anyone who appreciates truly great literature: it's imaginative, inventive, magical, troubling and enthralling.

Fun in the Snow

Strange that water in its solid form, although cold to the touch, should offer so many opportunities for simple pure fun!


I'm now pondering what great novels I have read in which snow and ice are important factors. For example, there's an early Michael Moorcock novel, The Ice Schooner, not one of his best but still worth reading; I also recall with affection an excellent, very stark book by the Norwegian writer Tarjei Vesaas called The Ice Palace.


I'm sure there must be many more superb fictions that utilise snowy backdrops or foregrounds. I have waiting for me in a box of unread books two novels by Blaise Cendrars, Dan Yack and The Confessions of Dan Yack. The first of these at least seems to be strongly snow- and ice- themed. Everything I've read by Cendrars so far has been astounding!


Any recommendations of such books will be gratefully received!

Why I Dislike Horror

I have often said that I dislike horror -- horror fiction, horror films, horror soups (tripe and onions), in fact anything that has anything to do with horror. But I've never really explained why this should be so. It's time I provided such an explanation. Here it is!

I dislike the "horror" genre because when it comes to any particular horror product, it either (a) works, or (b) doesn't work.

If (a) is true then the result is that it scares me. I am frightened! I don't like being frightened, thanks! Last night I was sitting on a sofa with my best friend and a piece of fluff fell down on us. I'm not sure exactly what it was or where it came from. It might have been part of a ceiling cobweb. For an instant I didn't know what it was and I was alarmed! I made an alarmed expression with my face. My friend noticed my expression and it caused her to panic. She jumped up, cried out in fear and flailed at me with her arms while shouting, "What is it? What is it? What is IT?"

I didn't enjoy that experience. I don't believe that feelings of terror are useful to me. This holds true whatever the context. I don't like it when I cross the road and almost get hit by a speeding car. I don't like being menaced by savage dogs, bison or vultures. I just don't like being scared. In fact I regard it as an attack! If something frightens me, then it has opened hostilities on me. That's the way I see it. And I will defend myself. If I can't defend myself because I lack time or opportunity, I will plan revenge against the thing that has scared me! If a spider runs out at me from under the bed, I will dress as a giant bird and wait for it the next time with massively gaping cardboard beak. If a real werewolf lunges at me out of the night, I will dig a pit trap lined with silver spikes before the next full moon. And if I read a horror novel that frightens me, I will plan equally lethal retaliation against the author.

On the other hand, or talon, if (b) is the case, then the product has failed to do what it promised and I will want my money back. I will demand other forms of penance and reparations too... So horror can't win. That's why I dislike it. And possibly why it dislikes me.

Best Robot Fiction Ever!

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem is almost certainly the finest fictional book about robots. I don't like hyperbole, so let's keep a calm head while commenting on it. Surely it is one of the greatest collections of linked short stories ever written: it matches Calvino's The Complete Cosmicomics. Lem is a total genius, a writer of playful little fables that are also philosophically profound (and logically consistent). He has a beautiful style: he can make engineering terms sound poetic. His rigorously modern metaphors are as original as those of J.G. Ballard, but more varied and lyrical. For Lem, the Periodic Table is an unwritten poem. This book is the final and true ode of lyrical science, and each page is a fantastic, fabulous, incredible delight. I give this book 200,000,000 stars out of 10. And that's only because I'm not feeling so generous today. It probably deserves a googolplex of stars. At least.

Typical Cockney Names

Sometime in the future I plan to write a story set in London. The characters in my story will obviously need to have typical 'Cockney' names. I have racked my brains to produce a short list of suitable names that should help to give my proposed story the necessary sheen of authenticity. We should always remember that verisimilitude and authenticity are very important factors when writing make-believe stories set in the real world!

Here is my list. If anyone would like to suggest equally authentic 'Cockney'names I'll be more than happy to hear your suggestions.

* Alf Pieofeels
* Bertie Apples'n'Pears (and his wife Mrs Apples'n'Pears)
* Bobby OtherFruit
* Tommy Ol' China
* Jimmy Pie'n'Mash
* Lee V. Tout
* Mother Brown, née Sup
* Purr le King (a cat)
* Gor'blimey Guv'nor
* Reggie Dun Nuffing

I have also been toying with the idea of writing a story full of characters who are named after forms of transport. I have three names so far:

* John le Carré
* Joe le Taxi
* Jeff le 'Orse'n'Cart

Coincidentally, one of these characters is also a 'Cockney'. Can you guess which one?

A Few of My Favourite Anti-Fascist Stories

The Beautiful Antonio by Vitaliano Brancatti, an Italian novelist who was actually a member of the Fascist Party in the 1930s before he "woke up" and changed his politics completely. This fine novel is a satire on the compulsory state of permanent virility that all good Italian Fascist males were supposed to endure!

Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. One of the most terrifying, nihilistic and tragic books ever written, a collection of autobiographical stories by a concentration camp survivor that deal with the human mind at the limits of endurance. I bought this in Poland in 1999, forty eight years after the author committed suicide. The shocking theme of these tales is that to survive one has to become like one's tormentors and torment those even weaker than yourself...



Roberto Bolaño's bizarre, playful and devastating Nazi Literature in the Americas. This is a Borges-inspired or perhaps Lem-inspired spoof of biographical encyclopedias. It's a critique of the left as well as a satire on the right.

'Deutsches Requiem' by Jorge Luis Borges, a story based on the truly disturbing conceit that the Nazis actually won the war because what they stood for (violent force) was the thing that became necessary to destroy them. As the narrator of that story declares at one point, "What does it matter that Germany was the anvil and our enemies the hammer, just so long as there was an anvil and hammer..."

A short story by Italo Calvino entitled 'Beheading the Heads' (it can be found in his collection Numbers in the Dark). It proposes a political system which has an automatic inbuilt anti-dictatorial failsafe mechanism -- the execution of all politicians (including the good ones) every two years and their replacement with fresh volunteers...

Ernst Junger. He openly criticised Hitler and the Nazi Party in novels such as On the Marble Cliffs, a remarkably brave gesture considering that he was living in Germany at the time. But he criticised the Nazis from a right-wing militaristic standpoint, odd as that may sound -- he wasn't against war, force, the strength of will, elitism, etc, but he was against dishonour, cruelty and irrationality.