The Rime of the Postmodern Mariner

Ready, Steady, Fables!

2012-01-19T02:55:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-10T02:24:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-01T02:14:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-13T03:23:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-10-24T02:14:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-15T04:56:00.001-07:00

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!

2011-09-10T03:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-22T03:30:00.000-07:00

(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

2011-07-20T02:34:00.001-07:00

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!

2011-06-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-06-21T03:43:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-06T02:32:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-17T02:56:00.001-07:00

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!

2011-02-03T03:32:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-19T03:27:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-03T02:52:00.001-08:00

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!

2010-11-25T04:31:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-09T05:30:00.000-08:00

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.

My 10 Best Stories

2010-11-03T04:19:00.000-07:00

I have been writing almost without pause since December 1991. My total of short stories now stands at 559. My most recent is definitely one of my very best. So I asked myself which other stories would I include in a list of my best? I have selected a top ten. If I could only rescue 10 of my own tales from some unspecified disaster that threatened to obliterate my work, I would choose the following:

* The Impossible Inferno
* The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange
* The Quims of Itapetinga
* Eternal Horizon
* The Jam of Hypnos
* Jellydämmerung!
* The Hydrothermal Reich
* Southbound Satin
* Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival
* Thais Von Oort

Four of these tales have yet to be published.

The list is not in order. That would be too difficult. If I had to choose just one story to represent my ouevre I would pick 'The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange' or 'The Impossible Inferno'. I can't decide between those two!

I regret leaving out 'Lem's Last Book', 'Hell Toupée', 'The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge', 'The Swine Taster' and 'Depressurised Ghost Story'. These are probably in my top 15.

Fun with Signs #1

2010-09-22T13:42:00.001-07:00

(1) The original inscription.

(2) The proposed modification.

(3) Tee hee!

Corto Maltese Villain Procedure

2010-09-11T04:35:00.001-07:00

Recently, on my main blog, I held a competition to find a villain for my next novella, a 'Corto Maltese' adventure called The Coandă Effect. A total of forty people volunteered their names. I printed out the names, cut them into strips, put them in a hat and selected three. Here's a photo of the names in the hat:

And here's a more readable list of those names:

* Simon Kurt Unsworth * Simon Marshall-Jones * George Ibarra * Neil Jackson * Fiona Duffin * Simon Bestwick * Gary McMahon * Allyson Bird * Ethyl Deadgirl * Chris Ward * Hannah F. Lawson * Thomas J. Newton * Bob Lock * Luísa Ferreira * Tom Alaerts * Emma Murros * Catherine E. Mann * Matthew Revert * Brendan Connell * Phillip Stecco * Jason Rolfe * Gino Dros * Margaret Hindle * Huw Rees * Kathleen Probert * Jukka-Petteri Halme * Ian Alexander Martin * Jim Steel * Christopher Richard Barker * Jérôme Charlet * Joel Holmberg * Mads Pedersen * Mihaila Adrian * Daniel Corrick * John L. Probert * Mick Curtis * Nathaniel Tapley * Stephen Bacon * Caroline Grist * James Branson

The three names that came out of the hat first were:

The first name will be the main villain of The Coandă Effect; the second and third names will be lesser villains in the same story; Tom Alaerts will also appear as a lesser villain (this was privately arranged). I hope to use most of the other names in future stories, with the permission of the owners, of course!

Mathematical Joke!

2010-08-22T05:39:00.001-07:00

Q: Why was the bottle of Abbaye de Leffe (6.6% ABV) confused by the way in which Pascal's Triangle determines the coefficients which arise in binomial expansions?

A: Because it's a blond beer...

Competition Results!

2010-08-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

The prog-rock comp has now ended. According to my statcounter, a lot of people viewed the relevant page, but I had very few entries and nobody at all got the answer I was looking for! There were three entries worth mentioning.

The first came from Cate Gardner who pointed out that Michael Moorcock was involved with Hawkwind; the second from Tim Vermeulen who revealed to me that 'Stand on Zanzibar' was the title of a Bill Bruford song; and I had a flurry of suggestions from Paul Graham Raven which included the fact that there was once a marginal prog band called The Floating Opera and another called Alastor.

Paul's most ingenious guess, however, was this one: "If you're willing to accept Queen as a late example of prog (albeit one that valued memorable songs alongside the kitchen-sink stylistic excess and theatrical stageshow elements), then it could be pointed out that Freddie Mercury failed to "stand on Zanzibar", as his family fled the place during the revolution of 1964."

Brilliant! More brilliant than the real answer...

And what is the real answer? Well, I have zoomed in a little closer to one part of the photo of that section of my bookshelf...

As we can see, the volumes in the SF Masterworks series were originally numbered. Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker positioned next to George R. Stewart's Earth Abides forms the number 2112, which can be regarded as a futuristic year; the same year in which the action of the following concept album takes place:

All together now... "We've taken care of everything / The words you hear, the songs you sing / The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes / It's one for all and all for one / We work together, common sons / Never need to wonder how or why..."

Prog-Rock Comp

2010-08-01T02:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick competition. Take a look at the photo above. It shows a small part of one of my bookshelves. Can you spot the prog-rock reference? I have a very specific reference in mind, but if you come up with something different that's equally valid I'll accept it as an answer too... If more than one person spots the reference I'll have to throw a dice or toss a coin to determine who wins the following prize:

Yes, three of my chapbooks... OK, it's not the greatest prize in the world. It's not even the greatest prize in the land, district, town or street, but hey! it's a free competition. Email your answers to: rhysaurus@yahoo.co.uk

Closing date is: midnight on Friday, August 6th.

Backhorn or Shoescratcher?

2010-07-27T05:50:00.000-07:00

Adele recently pointed out to me the weirdness of that fact that backscratchers often have a shoehorn on the other end. "Do only people with itchy backs wear tight shoes?" she asked. I have no answer to that question, but I obtained one of the strange implements for myself and I decided to break all the rules!

Study the above photo. So far, so good. It seems that I am merely yet another of those unfortunate people who have itchy backs and tight shoes at the same time. But wait! I must be some sort of revolutionary! Watch how I proceed to employ the shoehorn attachment to scratch my back! Has this ever been seen before? Anarchy! Where will it end, O where?

As if not satisfied with this cultural upheaval, I decided to take my radicalism to the limit. Behold! I used the backscratching attachment to lever my foot into a shoe! Purists and pedants may wish to sneer and denounce my shoe as a sandal; they may also claim that I'm tickling my foot into it, rather than strictly levering it. But so what?

The gesture is what matters, not the petty details. Did Napoleon consider petty details when he crowned himself Emperor of France? Was Stalin interested in petty details when he conquered Berlin? Details are of no consequence; and if you don't believe that, peer more closely: the truth of that statement is in the detail.

* Back scratched with shoehorn!
* Foot levered into shoe with backscratcher!
* The world will never be the same...

The Taste of Dandelions

2010-07-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

I have been told that dandelions taste like honey. So I tried eating a few. But they don't. It's a fib, probably spread by bees.

To celebrate this fib I wrote a poem. It's not very good, mainly because I'm not a poet. Anyway, here it is:

Dandy Lion
stylish cat in a cravat
with cape and cane;

you thrill to nibble zebra cutlets
in absinthe sauce
until your little gutlets are quite full
at the Cafe Royal.

Such a decadent feast
for the king of beasts
is sure to make a stomach ache.

I wanted to add a line about hearing a "dandy lion whine" but I couldn't find a way of working it into the poem, so I left it out.

A Book Cast Adrift

2010-07-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

And let me not forget that the original point of this Postmodern Mariner blog was to promote my book, The Postmodern Mariner, probably my lightest and funniest book, though also my worst-selling book of all time (I have no idea why this should be!)... The fact it never had an official booklaunch might have something to do with the low sales. Hopefully a very belated booklaunch (two years late!) is coming up soon. Mind you, I have been saying that for ages...

If you enjoy strange comic fantasy, or if you are inclined to take pity on a poor author lost on the wild seas of the writing world, copies are still available direct from the publisher. Simply click on this link to visit his homepage.

The 10 Best Short-Story Collections Ever

2010-06-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

Having thought about this for several years, I think that I can now give a list that won't change too much in the near future. I only own five of my top ten, and so the above photo only shows half the list. That's better than nothing, I suppose! Here is the full list... Normally in such lists I issue a disclaimer that the books "aren't in any particular order" but in this case they are in order, with the best first.

The Complete Cosmicomics -- Italo Calvino
Sixty Stories -- Donald Barthelme
The Cyberiad -- Stanislaw Lem
Vermilion Sands -- J.G. Ballard
Collected Fictions -- Jorge Luis Borges
Locos: a comedy of gestures -- Felipe Alfau
Unlikely Stories, Mostly -- Alasdair Gray
Marcovaldo -- Italo Calvino
Keep the Giraffe Burning -- John Sladek
Complete Short Stories -- Saki

I'm sorry not to include anything by Primo Levi, Brian Aldiss, Roger Zelazny, Barrington Bayley, etc, but the point of top 10 lists is that great things do get left out. I'm also sorry to leave out Donald Barthelme's Forty Stories, which is almost as good as Sixty Stories. I wish he had combined them into one volume!

Equation

2010-05-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

A hand under the bird...

...is worth two in the bush...

Another One-Sentence Story

2010-05-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Confessions of a Health & Safety Approved Window Cleaner

I must admit that since 2005, when new working at height regulations came into force and I was compelled to clean bedroom windows with a telescopic water fed pole, I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to confess.

Henry Kuttner

2010-05-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

Baen Books are responsible for some of the worst covers in the SF and Fantasy book worlds. And yet many great authors are published by that company, including Philip José Farmer, Poul Anderson and L. Sprague de Camp. Recently I picked up Mountain Magic. I have been a fan of the weird-hillbillies-in-the-back-of-beyond sub-sub-subgenre ever since picking up a copy of Manly Wade Wellman's John the Balladeer more than fifteen years ago, a collection of short stories featuring 'Silver John', a wanderer with a guitar who meets, greets and beats supernatural powers among the Appalachian forests. That particular cycle of fantasies inspired my own 'Tin Dylan' sequence of tales about a Welsh bard who wanders the lesser hills and woodlands of Wales, meeting supernatural powers and failing to beat them.

Mountain Magic is a collection of three sets of such stories by David Drake, Eric Flint and Henry Kuttner. Each author gets a section of the book to themselves, and they work very well together, although the different stories weren't originally intended to appear under one cover. It was Kuttner's name that initially attracted me to the book. Years ago I read an obscure SF anthology of stories from the '40s and Kuttner's contribution ('The Voice of the Lobster') stood out a mile above the others for its ironic tone, intelligence and quality prose.

In Mountain Magic Kuttner's genius is demonstrated by 'The Hogben Stories', four interlinked tall tales of a mutated family of hillbillies who originally came from Atlantis (via Europe) and possess a selection of very peculiar talents, certainly not limited to turning invisible, flying and hypnotising animals. Although written before Wellman's 'Silver John' stories (which they possibly inspired) I regard them as superior: more inventive, imaginative and clever, and more in keeping with the flavour of the archetypal backwoods 'tall tale'. I wish I had discovered them sooner!

Henry Kuttner's 'Hogben Stories' have made me want to write a similar set of such stories myself. Ideas are turning over in my mind right now. I have begun far too many story cycles that still aren't finished, and I really ought to stop creating new ones, but I don't choose my schemes: they choose me. I guess my own sequence will be set in West Wales, probably somewhere in Pembrokeshire, beyond the 'Little England Beyond Wales', as the south of that region is known.

PM Question Time #8: with the Independent Shadow

2010-04-16T01:47:00.000-07:00

At last! Here is the final conversation between the Postmodern Mariner and the eight Sea of Tea pirates! When I began this side-project back in October 2006 I never expected it to take more than three years to post all eight interviews! Anyway...

The eighth conversation is with the pirate of the southeastern zone, José Gasparilla, and this is how it goes:

PM: You belong to a highly specialised genre?

JG: Yes, the tale of the man who becomes separated from his shadow. Chamisso wrote a story with this theme. I believe that Anodos in George MacDonald's Phantastes also loses his shadow; I can't quite remember. And Lord Dunsany wrote a book that is one of the best treatments of this conceit.

PM: You allude to his third novel, The Charwoman's Shadow?

JG: What I did was stronger than allude, in my opinion. I referred. But yes, that is the volume in question; a charming, magical read. Dunsany's style kept improving with age and his increasing use of whimsical irony makes his later work more palatable to my taste than his early dreamland stuff. He also wrote a couple of oddly humorous short stories about pirates.

PM: Are you the man or the shadow?

JG: I really ought to keep you guessing until the end…

PM: Of all the captains on the Sea of Tea only two weren't invented by the author called Hughes. We all know that Henry Morgan was a genuine historical figure, but what of you? Were you ever real?

JG: Not truly real, no. My first appearance was in a slim novel entitled There Were Two Pirates by James Branch Cabell. You may know the title of at least one other Cabell novel, Jurgen, which was banned for supposed obscenity and therefore became a bestseller. Cabell was a gloriously sophisticated writer with a style that was cynical, wise, inventive, absurd and funny: he was writing humorous fantasy even before serious fantasy had become a viable product.

PM: What are your memories of Spain?

JG: Nibbles with every glass of wine. Girls.

PM: Guitars?

JG: With every girl. Nibbles too. And nibbles with every girl, nearly. Which meant more wine… I was often a little drunk. Most people believe that Spain was the main victim in the so-called 'Golden Age' of piracy, and that English, Welsh, French and Dutch captains preyed exclusively on our merchant fleet; but in fact we had pirates of our own. I am one of them, obviously, but there were a great many more. The potential rewards were simply too tempting to keep us at home.

PM: Doubloons?

JG: Bless you!

PM: Did the climate and culture of your second home, Florida, agree with you? Or was it too thundery?

JG: Almost everything agrees with me; there will always be trouble if it doesn't! But I have no issue with storms, which is just as well: for the man who designed and built the Sea of Tea did so merely in order to create and witness a storm in a teacup.

PM: Would you prefer to sail on an ocean of coffee?

JG: An ocean of wine would be even better, for then the nibbles and the girls would be everywhere and I wouldn't need to use force to obtain them. The wine would reflect the starlight most wondrously and the soft music of the guitars would lap my ears in the same way the claret wavelets lapped my hull, gently, like old tongues. I would be happy on the winey deeps; happier than I am here…

PM: Look there! The sun is rising!

JG: Which means it's time for my bed. I'm nocturnal.

PM: Because?

JG: Haven't you guessed what I am yet?

PM: You are the shadow.

JG: Well done! What led you to that conclusion?

PM: The sunrise. You seem to be casting a man!

Too Clever For His Own Good

2010-04-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve just come back from Odyssey 2010, a Science Fiction convention held in the grim location of Heathrow. The book dealers' room in the hotel was gigantic and full of second-hand SF books. I’m addicted to buying books, an addiction I’ve been struggling with for years. I thought I was winning the battle but the sight of so many volumes by so many great writers proved a severe strain on my willpower. As it happened I only bought two books and they were both by authors I have given myself ‘permission’ to buy on sight, namely Jack Vance and John Sladek.

The Sladek book was a collection of short stories that I owned more than twenty years ago and lent to a friend named Gavin. Needless to say I never got it back. What made it worse was that I hadn’t actually finished reading the book when I lent it. But I was too busy for reading at the time, and he wasn’t, so I gave it to him. I thought he was only going to keep it for a couple of weeks and then return it, so I could go back to reading it myself. That was in 1987.

I thought a lot about that Sladek book in the years that followed. The stories I had managed to read influenced my own fiction considerably. I wanted to write the same type of stories. Funny but disturbing stories that managed to lampoon the SF genre while simultaneously contributing to it. Stories that made use of paradox and conceptual twists. Stories that were playful, relentlessly ironic and extremely clever.

It was a long time before I learned that cleverness isn’t a quality guaranteed to endear a writer to critics, readers and other writers!

Sladek specialised in writing stories and novels that deconstructed some of the most cherished clichés in science fiction. For example he once wrote a story demonstrating that the imprecision of the wording in Isaac Asimov’s famous ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ made them unworkable, with hilarious and catastrophic consequences for the human race. Far from being grateful for his insight, SF fans tended to react with hostility. Sladek found it increasingly difficult to get published as time went on, and even the support of such figures as Michael Moorcock didn’t prevent him from lapsing into relative obscurity.

I say ‘relative obscurity’ because his name is still familiar to true devotees of the imagination. Two of his best novels, Roderick and Roderick at Random, are both in print in a single omnibus volume and comprise volume 45 of the SF Masterworks series published by Gollancz. Another novel Tik-Tok, is also available from the same publisher. But his short stories have fallen into neglect, and his short stories are arguably his finest achievement.

I have heard it said that Sladek was “too clever for his own good.” It’s the same accusation that has been levelled against me. I find this a perverse and depressing criticism, as it fundamentally misunderstands the motives behind such writing. Sladek had original ideas that no other SF writer ever had before him, and he also had a deeper philosophical understanding of the workings of certain themes favoured in the SF field, and he also had a playful attitude to the possibilities offered by form as well as content. Surely he was generous to want to share these qualities with readers? That’s the way I see it, anyway.

PM Question Time #7: with the Trader in Fat Cat Paperweights

2010-03-30T02:48:00.000-07:00

Another instalment in the ongoing series of interviews that the Postmodern Mariner held with the eight Sea of Tea Pirates...

The seventh conversation is with the pirate of the eastern zone, Captain Dangleglum, and this is how it goes:

PM: Do piracy and trade go hand in hand?

CD: They go hook in claw instead, that's the truth, but I do regard myself as a hybrid of both: a private enterprise privateer. I can't call myself an aggrandizing entrepreneur because I don't know how to spell those words. I have been known to fleece my victims of everything they own and then sell it all back to them at competitive rates.

PM: Are you in receipt of any kind of grant for your work?

CD: I'm not. I believe in looking after myself and not relying on handouts. I have a nose for existing gaps in the market, and when those gaps simply aren't there I have a cutlass to make them, then I thrust my nose into the gap before it heals.

PM: You once traded in fat cat paperweights?

CD: Yes, in a story entitled 'The Man Who Threw His Voice', but in fact I was conveying ordinary cats and yoghurt on the same ship; it was only after those cats reprehensibly, though somewhat inevitably, consumed all the yoghurt that they became fat. Then I sold them as paperweights in the nearest port. It wasn't a deliberate product.

PM: You also dabbled with rain?

CD: I dribbled with it. I bought a downpour for a mermaid. I trade in anything under the sun, clouds included, and I will piratize anything under those clouds, even shadows. And yet I'm not cruel or vindictive. As buccaneers go, I'm one of the milder ones.

PM: How do you enjoy sailing on the Sea of Tea?

CD: It has its special moments, also its hours of tedium. Elevenses are nice. But I pass even the uneventful days pleasantly enough. I make sundials. I'm working on a moondial now: a much more complex creation. I know what you're going to say! The moon that hangs over the stewed ocean on which I float is actually a gigantic ginger biscuit. How can the reflected light of a ginger biscuit accurately tell the time?

PM: That question did cross my mind…

CD: Foolish man! Don't ever underestimate the power of biscuits! How might a biscuit unite the warring states of Italy? And yet Garibaldi did! So it's perfectly feasible that one might be able to indicate the hour at any time of night. Nonetheless, I am not obsessed with my time-keeping instruments. I have other hobbies too. I fill empty suits of armour with coal and set them on fire. They flex and glow and sometimes march across my deck leaving footprints of charred wood, then I push them over the side with a long pole and watch them hiss and sink in the tea!

PM: A worthwhile pursuit.

CD: I also indulge in intense naivety. Oh yes. I assume that sociopaths cure sociologists; that Nietzsche's 'superman' wore a red cape and red shorts; that pesto is a poison for insects; that Brunei is in the Middle East near Dubai; that chillies come from Chile; that oil slicks are dead rainbows fallen out of the sky; that steelworks with belching chimneys are cloud factories.

PM: Are you overfond of clouds?

CD: Overlooked by them.

PM: Can an overtone have undercurrents?

CD: The worst current I was ever caught in was just off the Isle of Garket. It was the dreaded Garket Flow! I didn't know where it would take me, but then I saw a sheet of paper floating past and I hooked it out and examined it. That sheet of paper informed me that the current would carry me to a pleasant place and so I lost all my anxiety.

PM: You mean to say that…

CD: That's right. I spotted a map in the Garket.

PM Question Time #6: with the Long Distance Personality

2010-03-24T06:58:00.000-07:00

Another instalment in the ongoing series of interviews that the Postmodern Mariner held with the eight Sea of Tea Pirates...

The sixth conversation is with the pirate of the northeastern zone, Captain Scipio Faraway, and this is how it goes:

PM: You have two brothers, I believe?

CF: Yes, I'm one of three, but we aren't triplets as is sometimes claimed. No, we're a pair and a half of offset twins.

PM: That sounds painful, even dangerous!

CF: But it isn't really. We went our separate ways soon enough. Even in the toy room our individual obsessions manifested themselves; for I, Scipio Faraway, played only with model ships, while Distanto could only abide balloons and dirigibles, and poor Neary cared merely for locomotives and the occasional traction engine.

PM: Do you ever hold reunions?

CF: They are difficult to arrange successfully and mostly we don't bother with such events. Indeed we consider them damaging to the spirit of independent adventure and maverick exploration that all three of us continue to cultivate inside our hearts and within our budgets. And yet there occur rare occasions when we accidentally meet: to give you one example, my schooner once fell into a whirlpool and was sucked to the seabed; through a subterranean passage it was drawn and to stay alive I had to empty and invert large glass jars to keep them full of air and ram them down on my head one at a time.

PM: Most fortunate you were carrying such jars!

CF: Yes, they were alembics destined for a perfume festival: I do some commercial sailing too, just to earn enough to continue my exploits. Anyway, along that passage was sucked my ship until suddenly it was pushed up a vertical flue by a geyser. Blue light shimmered above me. I emerged, breathless but alive, on the surface of the lake of a flooded crater. This crater belonged to a volcano that occupied the extreme end of a long narrow peninsula. On the western shore of the lake stood a special kind of steam train that laid its own track as it went along. It had come to the end of its own line, for there was nowhere left for it to go.

PM: And brother Neary was the driver?

CF: Indeed he was. He waved and I waved back and we exchanged pleasantries through megaphones. That takes skill, I assure you! Suddenly a cloud obscured the sun. But it wasn't a cloud: it was an airship, an airship belonging to my other brother, Distanto. He dropped his sky anchor onto a small island in the middle of the lake, then he leaned out of his gondola with a megaphone of his own.

PM: And called down more pleasantries to add to the ones you already had?

CF: No, to drop peas.

PM: Peas! Frozen or fresh?

CF: Dried. Thousands of them. The flared end of the megaphone acted like the barrel of a blunderbuss and scattered those vegetable bullets all over my head and my decks; they sounded like a healthier version of hailstones. He dropped them on Neary also and some fell down the chimney of his locomotive and were roasted in his smouldering firebox. The smell of barbecued peas drifted across the volcanic lake.

PM: Why did he do this to you?

CF: For fun.

PM: Did you retaliate?

CF: It wasn't feasible. My crossbow had been sent back to the shop for repairs. I could have draped sludge on his sky anchor, I suppose, to give him an unpleasant surprise when he hauled it up, but I didn't. The only sludgy substance I had available at that time was honey and that's too good to waste on anchors. When he ran out of peas he went away. I slipped a few times as I paced the deck in dismay, just as if I was treading on organic marbles. Neary chugged away in reverse not long after and he didn't wave goodbye; he didn't even glance at me as he passed.

PM: How did you get out of that lake?

CF: There was no way I could do it on my own. I had to hire the natives to dismantle my schooner plank by plank and carry it in pieces down to the shore, where they reassembled it. Then they demanded payment. I gave them the peas, told them they were beads. They were natives, after all.

PM: How did they react to that?

CF: With a private prosecution. My remaining glass jars, the ones that were still full, were impounded.

PM: They sued you?

CF: For every last scent.

PM Question Time #5: with the Living Rum Bottle

2010-03-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

Part of the ongoing series of eight interviews that the Postmodern Mariner held with the eight Sea of Tea Pirates...

The fifth conversation is with the pirate of the northern zone, Henry Morgan, and it goes something like this:

PM: You are Welsh, are you not?

HM: Indeed so. Born in the village of Llanrumney, which is now a suburb of Cardiff, a city that has grown enormously since I knew it. Melons are also things that grow enormously, some kinds. And coincidentally, there's a St Mellons in Cardiff; it's another suburb. But who was Mellons and why was she a saint?

PM: You assume that 'Mellons' was a she?

HM: Indolent instinct was responsible for that. You're right: the saint in question may well have been male.

PM: Have you ever read John Steinbeck's first novel?

HM: I have. Cup of Gold is the title and it's all about me. But I don't recognise myself in it. The Wales in that book is no less exotic to me than the real modern Wales. Poetic language aplenty, though, which I enjoy very much; and the scenes set in Jamaica and Hispaniola and Panama are evocative, even if rather fanciful. Steinbeck is usually defined as a writer who dealt exclusively with tough 'realistic' subjects, but in his early days he was an authentic romantic. In his last days too, apparently. I don't know that for sure: I've never read his late King Arthur novel. But one may presume. One assumes that one may presume…

PM: There you go, off assuming again!

HM: Mellons, King Arthur, Pieces o' eight: these are all good things to have assumptions about.

PM: What do you assume about pieces of eight?

HM: That there are no pieces of seven, or pieces of nine. That pieces zero to seven and nine to infinity simply don't exist.

PM: I have pieces of √-1, pocketfuls of them, almost enough to buy a new galleon and sail it to an equally new world where there are no awkward pauses, no robbers, no taxes.

HM: Yes but… Give them to me, all of them! Think of your loss as a sort of survival tax.

PM: Bah! I asked for that, didn't I?

HM: You are staring down the barrel of a flintlock pistol that has been loaded with grape. The grape has fermented and will wine, I mean whine, when it emerges, and that'll be the end of you. Smashed! So I actually consider you to be a wise man rather than a foolish one for emptying both your pockets like this. These truly are curious coins, by the way. They have only one side. When they spin they flicker in and out of existence. If a man tried to make a decision with one of these coins, he would never know if he was cheating himself or not.

PM: Are you indecisive?

HM: Not especially. No, I wouldn't say that. Perhaps.

PM: But do you ever toss coins?

HM: Only if they are crossing the equator for the first time. I dress up like Neptune, the god, not the planet, and put all my coins in a blanket, or a handkerchief if the takings are low, and the crew help me to throw them as high as possible. The crew also have to dress up like Neptune, but the planet, not the god. If a majority of the coins land on heads we continue in the same direction; if the result is mostly tails we turn the ship around and sail back; and if most of them land on their edge on the wooden boards of the deck, we sail up and down a segment of the equator itself, plucking the longitude lines like harp strings, with a rudder carved to resemble a thumb.

Ernest Bramah

2010-03-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

I love Jack Vance. One of the many things I love about Vance's writing is the formal understatement used by his characters in extreme situations. An earlier writer who was also a master of this technique was James Branch Cabell, and Vance was partly inspired by such novels as The Cream of the Jest (1917) and Jurgen (1919)...

But it was an even earlier writer than Cabell who perfected this particular art. Ernest Bramah published The Wallet of Kai Lung in 1900. This rambling novel contains many tales within tales and relates the adventures of the wandering storyteller, Kai Lung, who is a genius of diplomacy, as are the various bandits, barbarians and magicians with whom he comes into contact. All verbal exchanges at crucial moments are always extremely courteous on the surface, but with a devastating subtext just beneath.

There seem to be six 'Kai Lung' books in existence. I consider myself fortunate to have obtained the first three, all in different editions! Bramah was another big influence on Vance, but he has been out of print for a long time. An omnibus edition of all six 'Kai Lung' novels would be a welcome addition to any great library of imaginative literature; I hope some publisher somewhere gets the same idea!

PM Question Time #4: with the Opposite of Something

2010-03-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

It has been a long time since any Postmodern Mariner conversations were posted here. Eight pirates on the Sea of Tea; eight conversations!

The first can be found here; the second here; and the third here...

The fourth of the conversations is with the pirate of the northwestern zone, Captain Marlow Nothing, and it goes something like this:

PM: Do you regard your surname as enigmatic or merely unimaginative?

CN: Neither; it's purely practical. I had an accident many years ago and suffered amnesia, a severe dose. I forgot my real name. Clearly I could have adopted a pseudonym that didn't draw attention to my condition, but in fact I decided to take pride in the emptiness of my lost identity. When I struggled back to awareness I knew nothing other than how I felt right then. As I knew only my present feelings and also knew nothing, it thus follows that I must be Nothing. And so I am.

PM: Did your amnesia ever wear off?

CN: It did. And I remembered my original name, the name my parents bestowed on me: Marlow Nullity. You are free to consider this coincidence a mere contrivance, but I regard it as a special sign. Alas, I'm not in a position to explain the mechanisms of the sign but I can reveal its content to you now: 0. Yes, zero! The perfect number! Any number divided by zero is infinity; so it's logical to say that any person divided by me also becomes infinity, because I am a form of zero. This is very reassuring for a pirate captain. I cut my enemies into two, three, four or even more pieces and they are instantly transformed by the magic of mathematics into a quantity without end. My cutlass imparts eternal life!

PM: Very good. Are you insane?

CN: No more than many of my author's characters. And I've already lasted longer than most of the others. In printed words I date back to the story 'Percussion Cape', written in 1995; but actually the author conceived of me long ago, in 1982 or 1983, in an abandoned juvenile novel entitled The Jin-Septev. Yes, that title is meaningless but it has been recycled and mutated and I have it on good authority that he intends one day to write a new novel called Djinn Septic in which I'll play a deserved part. But these are technical matters outside my control.

PM: Is it true your author is a pompous fellow?

CN: He is also your author, so you are in an equally good position to answer that question; but I can hazard a guess that no, he's not especially pompous. Certainly he is playful and he often plays with the pomposity of other writers, and sometimes this game may involve feigning pomposity, but the irony will still be there, always. And yet it is not my task to defend him in any capacity whatsoever. Ask a new question!

PM: How many knees are best?

CN: Three pairs. The ones you wear every day; the backup pair on the obverse side that bend the other way; a spare pair. Three pairs for each man and woman, if possible. But it never is.

PM: How true! Favourite colour?

CN: Dark green, the colour of cucumber skins. Before the sunlight inside them is released. An unopened cucumber is a powerful thing. Do you know the King of Shush? He grows the finest cucumbers and pickles them in the classiest jars. We munch them together, he and I, when I go visiting, which isn't very often. One time he was passing me a big jar of very big pickled cucumbers but it slipped out of my grasp and smashed on the flags. The tricolours were sopping! The flag of the Seychelles became unreadable. Anyway, the cucumbers exploded, burst into light. A rogue spark from the impact must have set them off. Sunbeams everywhere, and just for an instant I thought I heard them speak, all together in one voice. "Why doesn't the Buddha get deep-vein thrombosis?" is what they asked. A curious acoustic illusion, no?

PM: I agree: no. Are all your crewmen also mad?

CN: Salty is what they are. And caffeinated from the sea spume. They are also versed in the best seadog sayings, but it is only I who has the right to shout, 'Hard to Starbucks! Hard to Portfolio!' when I want the ship to turn right or left. And I exercise that right, and left, frequently.

Primo Levi

2010-02-09T01:01:00.000-08:00

There are times when I pick a book at random off a library shelf and don't regret it at all. This slim volume caught my eye for no particular reason but turned out to be one of the best collections of short stories I've read for a long time (probably since J.G. Ballard's Vermilion Sands in 2001, if we're going to be pedantic.) I had heard of Primo Levi and knew he'd written a book called The Periodic Table that was named "the best science book ever" by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. I also had an idea he was an Auschwitz survivor, but that was the total of my knowledge.

Now I know better. I'm acutely aware that he was not only a scientist and an opponent of Fascism but also an excellent fiction writer. The stories in A Tranquil Star are worthy of Italo Calvino, and in many ways they resemble Calvino's own visions. Conceptual agility is the key phrase in any summary of the tales contained in this book: a truly profound scientific and philosophical intelligence underpins each text, and yet the formal mental rigour never weakens or obscures the artistic heart. Choosing a favourite piece from the seventeen on display here is a task fraught with difficulty, but 'One Night' stands out as almost unbearably odd and eerie: a train is forced to a stop by a mass of fallen leaves in a desolate landscape and falls victim to a tribe of dwarves who methodically dismantle it and the track it stands on, carrying each rivet and metal plate back into the forest.

D.F. Marenghi?

2010-01-16T02:36:00.000-08:00

The first time I heard the name Garth Marenghi was when the creators of the character, Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade, were being interviewed in the wake of their Perrier Award winning show, Netherhead. The interviewer became increasingly exasperated at their refusal to act out of character and eventually turned to the camera and growled, "That's not real comedy!" A few years later I chanced on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace on Channel 4. With very little publicity surrounding the show, it suffered from low ratings and was discontinued after only 6 episodes. And yet those episodes are true gems. Garth Marenghi is a horror writer who describes himself as "the dream weaver" and "the titan of terror". The main conceit behind Darkplace is that it was made in the 1980s but considered too mindblowing to broadcast and has lain the vaults ever since.

Although Garth Marenghi's personality and style are obviously a spoof of such abysmal 1980s horror authors as Clive Barker, Guy N. Smith, Shaun Hutson, James Herbert, Graham Masterton, etc, I was more struck by his physical resemblance to the prolific short story writer D.F. Lewis, to the point that I actually half-believed that Garth was based on him. I waited for others to point out the resemblance. No one did. Almost six years have passed and still nobody has commented on the likeness. Could it be that I am grossly mistaken? It therefore seems only proper to let the public decide the truth. Here are two photographs of the celebrities in question, but I haven't labelled them. It's up to you to work out which one is Garth Marenghi and which one is D.F. Lewis...

Meme What You Say

2010-01-06T03:34:00.000-08:00

The latest edition of Estronomicon has appeared online. This free webzine is edited by Steve Upham of Screaming Dreams fame. Steve is a superb designer and illustrator, one of the best in the independent press. I have been privileged that two of my book covers are his work (The Postmodern Mariner and Twisthorn Bellow) and I'm always highly impressed by his dedication, his perfectionism and inventiveness.

Today is Epiphany, which means that Twelfth Night was last night, and all Christmas festivities should have ended on the stroke of midnight. Failure to take down decorations will result in the Devil eating your head. However, the tradition has become a bit muddled and many sane humans believe that Twelfth Night is tonight. So let's be liberal and allow ourselves one last Christmas-related fling...

For myself, this modest last seasonal gasp consists in plugging the Christmas-themed edition of Estronomicon, which contains three of my stories, all very short. The first, 'Christmas Overtime', dates from 1992; the third, 'Stale Air', was written in 2007; but it's the second one I want to draw special attention to. 'The Precious Mundanity' was written last month, but I feel (perhaps mistakenly) that's it on a higher level than the others. This is because it utilises a conceit that is very simple and obvious and yet to my knowledge has never been thought of before.

And that's the hardest kind of writing to do, isn't it? Indeed, I have secret hopes that 'The Precious Mundanity' is a meme or that it will eventually become a meme; in other words a story that will be transmitted like a virus, orally or in written form, maybe mutating in the process but retaining its essential core. Stories can turn into memes, although it's a rare phenomena. I doubt my effort will ever prove as contagious as Fredric Brown's 'Answer'.

Best Books of 2009

2009-12-29T08:11:00.000-08:00

Note: this blog entry only concerns books that I read this year, not books published in 2009.

I read many books during 2009, perhaps more than in any other year of my life. There were a few clunkers. I was disappointed with Angela Carter, whom I finally got round to trying, and terminally bored by William Boyd and Françoise Sagan. Another author recommended to me, Shirley Jackson, turned out to be vastly overrated: mundane and lacking true ideas. I also read Jack Kerouac for the first time, but only as a collaborator with William Burroughs (in the novel And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks) but I found nothing exceptional. Burroughs, however, will always be a firm favourite and I enjoyed his Interzone, a collection of early work.

On the other hand, pleasant surprises included Muriel Spark (much better than I'd expected; The Driver's Seat is a slender masterpiece of darkness) and Daniil Kharms, a Russian absurdist from the 1920s who ended up as one of Stalin's victims (try Incidences, a collection of his stories, plays and letters).

But five books stood out above the others. The finest was probably In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman by Josef Nesvadba, a collection of intricately-plotted and conceptually ambitious stories. In no way does Nesvadba resemble Lem or Aldiss, and yet he shares their commitment to cleverness, style and originality. A vastly enjoyable but out of print volume. Some enlightened publisher needs to resurrect Nesvadba; he's a treasure chest waiting to be brought back up into the light.

Nesvadba might have been the best, but he wasn't a new discovery: I was aware of him for many years. Chancing on a brilliant writer for the first time is a special treat. Last year my two big discoveries were Bruce Chatwin and Blaise Cendrars. This year it was the remarkable Irène Némirovsky. David Golder is an utterly compelling novel about high finance in the wake of the Russian Civil War. Written when she was only 26, it tells the moving story of a Jewish businessman who buys and sells Caspian oil fields. The character interactions are sublime and the messages are always ultimately humane. Instead of grinding a single edged political axe, Némirovsky demonstrates an authentic understanding of the complexities of her subject matter.

In sharp contrast, Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth is pure fantasy. And yet its twin themes of redemption and transcendence appeal strongly to me. I wish more authors would tackle such large themes. I wish that some Welsh authors would do so. Why don't they? We never get any redemption and transcendence from Welsh writers. We get only pushers and losers instead. But that's a different rant for a different occasion... It was nice to return to Silverberg after more than two decades. I adored his Lord Valentine's Castle when I was in college: indeed I earned to juggle from it. I am mystified why I never sought out his other books until now?

It was even nicer to renew my acquaintance with Donald Barthelme. One of the writers who has had the biggest influence on my own career and aspirations, Barthelme constantly astounds me with his verbal and philosophic invention. He's a writer who doesn't deal with specifics but with sets, and achieves a deeper understanding of the specifics as a result: this statement needs to be explained properly in another post. That's what I'll do one day. Flying to America collects together the 45 published stories missing from his other three collections. Now we finally have Barthelme entire; and the result is good, very good.

Non-fiction... I always suspected that a time would come when I started to read more non-fiction than fiction. That day hasn't arrived yet, but it's getting close. I read many magnificent works of history and science and travel in 2009. A superb biography of Henry Morton Stanley by Tim Jeal made a deep impression; as did a book on the history of the Nizaris by an author whose name I have shamefully forgotten; I also enjoyed a biography of Brian Eno (perhaps my favourite musician) by David Sheppard. The most affecting of all, however, was The Orientalist by Tom Reiss, the biography of Lev Nussimbaum, one of the great lost originals of 20th Century Literature. Nussibaum operated under many aliases, including Essad Bey and Kurban Said: his brief life was adventurous in the extreme and he left behind a significant body of work. His novel Ali and Nino has become the national classic of Azerbaijan; but who talks about him these days? He has lapsed into an incomprehensible obscurity!

I'll wind up now by mentioning that I read dozens of short stories in 2009 by a variety of authors, including a few Borges tales new to me (there can't be many of those left) but 'Mother' by Philip José Farmer remains the most memorable: an utterly perfect piece of work...

Milorad Pavić (1929-2009)

2009-12-02T02:45:00.000-08:00

I picked a copy of Dictionary of the Khazars off a library shelf back in 1993, one of those acts of book snatching that usually bears no fruit but occasionally alters my whole perception of that cultural endeavour called 'Literature'. I was instantly enthralled by the novel's cascade of ideas and startling images, all rendered in a stunningly original prose style that made use of blisteringly strange and convoluted metaphors and similes. Added to this was the playfully experimental nature of the novel itself. Two versions, one male, one female, that differed only in a single paragraph, but a paragraph that supposedly changed everything about the story. It wasn't even essential to read either version from beginning to end, for both were constructed in such a manner as to be satisfactorily read in a non-linear progression. As if all this wasn't enough, the story told by the book was remarkable too: the historical moment when the mighty Khazar Empire decided to discard its old culture and accept a new one overnight...

So much for Dictionary of the Khazars. Despite its genius, I actually rate it as the weakest of Pavić's novels. Which means that the others are even better; an astounding achievement in the context of 20th Century literature. My favourite of all is probably Landscape Painted with Tea, set in the anachronistic theocracy of modern-day Athos. I have also a deep and abiding affection for The Inner Side of the Wind (surely one of the most poetic titles for any novel), a trans-temporal love story that is almost formally odd and yet contrives to be as ultimately moving as the most poignant works of this surprisingly extensive sub-genre (I'm thinking of excellent works in a broadly similar vein by Robert Nathan and Jack Finney). Even here, Pavić does not succumb to the (overrated) temptations of linearity. The Inner Side of the Wind is a two part story and both parts are printed back to back, thus the tales (and the lovers) meet in the middle and only truly there; content and form have been alchemically transmuted into one substance.

When it comes to my own work, Pavić provided inspiration for ideas and forms as well as language. There was a time when I tried far too hard to write like him. The zenith of my Pavić worship produced such tales as 'Spermaceti Whiskers', 'Thanatology Spleen' and 'Muscovado Lashes', where I give the impression of thrashing about in a box of pataphors. I eventually climbed out of that box because I knew my skills weren't pure enough for the task: the strain of being relentlessly original was too intense. And the world didn't need a cutprice Pavić: it already had the real thing. And yet, without my discovery of Pavić my confidence to be daring with the English language would be vastly smaller. I will always be grateful to him for showing me the way to this freedom.

Results of Poe-Themed Competition

2009-12-01T06:35:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of all 13 Poe references in the photo competition I ran last week. The competition was run partly to help promote my new Plutonian Parodies chapbook (pictured here). Before coming up with that title for the chapbook I toyed with various other titles including Twisted Poenail Clippings, Poe Jamming, Poe Go Sticks, Poe Curling Tales and Everything but the Ghoul. Fortunately I didn't choose any of those!

(1) Torch ('The Fall of the House of Usher' -- ushers in cinemas carry torches)
(2 & 3) Toy Lion ('Lionizing' and 'A Tale of the Ragged Mountains' -- the pun on the word 'tail' makes this one a cheat: also a fact that the toy is a fox and not a lion, but he looks like a lion)
(4) Bag of Salt ('The Oblong Box')
(5 & 6) Bottle with Rolled Up Papers Stuffed into Neck ('The Cask of Amontillado' and 'MS. Found in a Bottle')
(7) Two Non-Parallel Lines ('The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall')
(8) Model Cottage ('Landor's Cottage')
(9) Oval Portrait ('The Oval Portrait')
(10) Four Headed Creature ('Four Beasts in One')
(11) Map of Jerusalem ('A Tale of Jerusalem')
(12 & 13) Inverted Skeleton on Thread ('The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'King Pest')
(14) And now for the trickiest reference of all: the fact that I said there were only 13 references whereas in fact there are 14, the 14th being 'Mystification' which is a non-reference and therefore not even in the photograph (which is why it's so mystifying). I can't imagine that anyone could ever get this reference; and in fact nobody did. It was another cheat!

Many thanks to all who participated in this competition! Ross Warren got the most correct answers; and Steve Lockley got the fewest!

Do-Re-Mi

2009-11-21T03:27:00.000-08:00

My Own Version of the annoying 1959 Sound of Music song by Rodgers and Hammerstein:

Dough, a loaf, an unbaked loaf,
Ray, a science fiction gun,
ME, a condition causing lethargy,
Far, a Fawcett without the rah,
So, a Peter Gabriel album,
Laa, a Teletubby cut in two,
T, a bone in a bluesy Walker,

That will bring us back to:

Dough, a loaf, an unbaked loaf…
Etc.

The Monkey Wrench Gang

2009-11-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

One of the most important novels written in the last century, Edward Abbey's masterpiece, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), should be read by as many people as possible. The message it contains and explores is not only pertinent but essential. If you struggle against an oppressive regime, overthrow it and install yourself as an alternative regime, only the actors have changed: the play remains the same. If you seek not to change anything at all but only to keep everything as it was (note the past tense) -- through sabotage, disruption and general harassment of the Big Soulless Machine -- then the world won't have to become better, it will be better already. Like all solutions, an 'ideal' can be corrupted easily; but how does one corrupt a doubt, a problem, a question, a quandary?

Pretty Pretentious

2009-11-03T01:35:00.000-08:00

I wish critics and reviewers would learn the difference between the words 'pretentious', 'pompous' and 'grandiose'. They are not interchangeable terms.

Some of Dylan Thomas's poetry is pretentious -- in other words it pretends to have a meaning that it doesn't actually possess. Whether Dylan Thomas himself was pretentious is a different question. It could be that he simply never intended for those particular poems to have a meaning, in which case they function more as music than conventional poetry. He was certainly never pompous or grandiose; and neither was his poetry.

I remember reading the entry on William Gaddis in an encyclopedia of literature and finding the absurd comment that his work is 'possibly pretentious'. But what is it possibly pretending to be? Ambitious? But it is ambitious. Insightful? But it is insightful. Elegantly written? But it is elegantly written. If a writer's work is truly what it claims to be, then it can't be possibly pretentious (or even definitely pretentious), no matter how complex or difficult it might be...

Carlos Castaneda was pretentious. He pretended to be something he wasn't, namely a mystic with access to a deeper reality; but he wasn't pompous or grandiose. Khalil Gibran was both pretentious and pompous: his pseudo-Nietzschean declarations on morality, beauty and death are carefully engineered to give the impression of an enormous wisdom that simply isn't there. So much for his writing; his drawings are genuinely fine.

Kingsley Amis was pompous, but not pretentious or grandiose. His offensive conservatism never pretended to be anything other than what it was, and his pomposity was always provincial. Contrast him with Leo Tolstoy, who was grandiose in an extreme degree, but absoluely never pretentious or pompous. In such a case 'grandiose' should be a term of respect.

John Barth is pompous. He's also grandiose and arrogant. But he's never pretentious. He never pretends to be a genius -- he is a genius. The same is true for Nabokov. Nabokov was arrogant because he claimed to be better than other writers, but his work really is better than the work of (most) other writers, so by no fair means can he ever be called pretentious.

Georges Perec, on the other hand, was neither pretentious, pompous nor grandiose. Although it has the most grandiose title of all, his novel Life: a User's Manual is focussed on lives rather than Life. Neither was Perec arrogant. A smartass is what Perec was: a glorious one. It must be a bitter pill to swallow, but the blunt truth is that some writers truly are more clever than all critics; and sometimes even more clever than most readers.

Critics, please get your insults right!

Three New Chaps

2009-10-03T04:09:00.001-07:00

Not real chaps (human males) but chapbooks. In other words, slim pamphlets containing fiction. These three chapbooks are called Madonna Park, Plutonian Parodies and The Fanny Fables and they can be ordered from The Penny Dreadful Company at various places on that website...

Madonna Park contains six stories ('Big Game', 'Three Friends', 'The Big Lick', 'Madonna Park', 'Suttee and Sweep' and 'The Gun Fight'); Plutonian Parodies contains three parodies ('Poe Pie', 'The Lollipop God is Dead' and 'The Sun Trap'); and The Fanny Fables contains six fables ('Fanny is Famished', 'The Furry Godmother', 'Petal Put the Kelly On', 'Fanny of the Apes', 'Knobheads and Dipsticks' and 'Fanny of the Opera'). I like 'em. You might too!

If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Gums!

2009-09-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

My new novel is generally bigger than Swansea Marina... but only if you don't believe in perspective!

A One-Sentence Story

2009-08-24T03:17:00.000-07:00

Sloping Off

I was instructed to measure the angles of all the gradients of all the foothills and peaks of an entire mountain range, but I went home instead.

Dreamcatcher

2009-07-14T03:16:00.001-07:00

Adele's allotment is looking more amazing with every week that passes. Here's the dreamcatcher she made to protect her beans, beetroot, peas and herbs from nightmares. Vegetables that have nightmares don't taste as good -- that's a little known fact I made up just now. I have always been conservative when it comes to food (never to politics) but Adele has persuaded me to start eating flowers. Not daffodils and tulips but edible flowers: borage, marigolds and other things that look like daisies but aren't. Back in February this plot of land was an overgrown mess but now it's a lush brightly-coloured paradise of organic food. Gardening is an art form no less creative than music or literature and Adele has proved this through sheer hard work and enthusiasm!

Herb Spiral

2009-05-23T03:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to visit Adele's allotment for the first time in many weeks. The change astounded me. The place is bursting with life! Here's a photo of the herb spiral she constructed fairly recently. As well as being aesthetically pleasing to the eye, it's a practical way of growing herbs because it provides a large variety of different conditions in a very small space. Different herbs with different requirements can be planted at different locations on the spiral, enabling drainage and received sunlight to be controlled for the maximum benefit of the individual plants.

Salad Days

2009-05-12T02:34:00.000-07:00

Because Adele is hugely talented as well as lovely, she has been growing amazing vegetables on her allotment and has given me a selection for my daily salads. So amazingly tasty is her produce (vastly superior to the stuff I buy in supermarkets) that my tastebuds are dancing with delight! Here's a photo of the salad I had last night, complete with Adele's amazingly spicy rocket (she's the best rocket engineer since Sergei Korolev helped the Russians send the first man into space!)

WoW Interview

2009-04-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

The website WoW has finally shut down after several years of activity. Among other things, such as fiction, reviews and poetry, WoW featured interviews. I was the subject of one of the first interviews and the piece in question has now been archived at The Future Fire website.

This interview was conducted in Madrid, Spain in 2004 by Steve Redwood. Although many of the assumptions he made about me are completely wrong, that's a standard hazard in the interview business, so I can't complain too much!

My Only Haiku

2009-04-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

This is my first and only haiku, written almost twenty years ago when I wasn't entirely sure what a haiku was supposed to be...

A chord of her hair
plucked by clumsy fingers
sounds a single note

Mister Wine Gum

2009-03-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

Here's an outline of the Cerne Abbas Giant made from wine gums on the beach... Must be a promotion for my forthcoming novel, Mister Gum. And so it is! As far as I'm aware this book is due to be published at the end of June. I started writing Mister Gum back in 2006 but did most of the work last summer. The novel is made up of four interconnected parts. The first part is a satire against the teaching of creative writing; the second part is a satire against crime fiction; the third part is a satire against detective fiction; and the fourth part (this is the bit I really like) is a satire against satire. Presto!

A Pair of Burroughs

2009-01-31T04:42:00.000-08:00

I love the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the excellent pulp writer who created Tarzan, Pellucidar, Barsoom, and many other memorable characters and locations. Burroughs had a clear racy style and his fiction generates its own momentum. He was a conventional but extremely effective story-teller. I am happy to report that I have just started reading his second Tarzan novel, recently issued by Penguin.

I love the work of William Burroughs, the avant-garde writer whose extreme lifestyle and psychotropic explorations inspired his obsessive themes. Burroughs was simultaneously a crusader against, and salesman for, the trappings of modern paranoia. Heroin, time travel, sodomy, alien invasions, conspiracies, cut ups, fold ins: these were his entry points into the savage neuroses of the contemporary mind.

I love the work of Philip José Farmer, the playful genius who once tried to fuse both kinds of Burroughs in a single short story. That story, a wild piece of work entitled 'The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod', was a re-telling of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan myth in the style of William 'Naked Lunch' Burroughs... Now I'm wondering if it's time to try that experiment in reverse, to attempt a re-telling of a William Burroughs text in the style of Edgar Rice, and I'm wondering if I might be the man for the job!

The Welsh National Anthem -- in English!

2009-01-29T04:53:00.001-08:00

I recently found this highly accurate transcription of the Welsh National Anthem. For the full effect listen to the anthem being sung here by Katharine Jenkins and sing along. Ready?

My hen laid a haddock, one hand oiled a flea,

Glad farts and centurions threw dogs in the sea,

I could stew a hare here and brandish Dan’s flan,

Don’s ruddy bog’s blocked up with sand.

Dad! Dad! Why don’t you oil Auntie Glad?

Can whores appear in beer bottle pies,

O butter the hens as they fly!

Blaise Cendrars

2008-12-29T02:38:00.001-08:00

Occasionally I encounter an author new to me whose work leaves the lingering taste of an enigma. Who boosts my flagging enthusiasm for literature. Such authors come more and more rarely. Blaise Cendrars is the most recent one.

I actually bought his novel Moravagine ten years ago and added it to my improbably long list of books to be read, but I only managed to get round to tackling it in May 2008. At first I thought it was going to be another French surrealist black fantasy, like Lautréamont's Maldoror or Mirbeau's The Torture Garden or Bataille's Story of the Eye, and partly this is true: it's an episodic account of a madman called Moravagine (his name is an indication of his misogynistic purpose in life) released from an insane asylum by the doctor who is treating him, as part of a bizarre and unorthodox experiment. The amoral pair travel around the world getting into various scrapes.

But Cendrars rapidly loses interest in the 'black' side of his creation and something trickier and more ambiguous emerges. The novel becomes a catalogue of strangeness rather than one of horrors. It's the picaresque strangeness of Cendrars's vision convincingly carried by his feverish prose that I like so much. To the End of the World is more realistic and amusing than Moravagine and I'm looking forward to the Dan Yack novels, which promise to be a delerious mix of Jules Verne and André Breton. Surrealism with action.

The Real Identity of Tarzan

2008-11-18T03:08:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the original Tarzan novel. Formerly I only knew Tarzan from the Johnny Weissmuller films, all of which I enjoyed when I was a child, but the novel is far superior to the cinematic treatments, even superior to the later Greystoke film, which I still rate highly. The novel is an exciting read and the quality of the writing is far better than most pulp fiction of its day (it was published in 1914). Burroughs had a gift.

Thing is, there's a question about Tarzan that has bothered me since I started reading the book. In what country does the action take place? The jungles described in the novel suggest that Gabon, Congo, Cameroon or Equatorial Guinea are the most likely candidates, but Burroughs himself locates Tarzan's homeland at approximately 10 degrees south of the equator. That would put it firmly in Angola, just south of the capital city Luanda.

Bear in mind that Tarzan was actually the son of a lord and when he was an adult he left Africa for a civilised life in the West. Now remember that the publisher Pedro Marques (featured here with me and Jeff Buckley) was also born in Angola but moved to the West. The clincher is that 'Marques' is the Portuguese equivalent of 'Lord'. Therefore Tarzan = Pedro Marques. Quod erat demonstrandum!

PM Question Time #3: with a Subaquanaughty Boy

2008-09-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

The third of the conversations is with the pirate of the western zone, Jacob Qwerty Wuthering, and this is how it goes:

PM: You are the captain of a steampunk submarine. In what way do you regard yourself as a modern Nemo, in other words a free citizen of a realm without official rules and regulations or value added tax?

JQW: Hardly at all. First and foremost, I am anything but modern: all the trappings of my life are carved and moulded in mahogany and brass and I still refer to radio receivers as ‘wireless sets’. I’m more inclined to describe myself as an archaic Nemo, but that label is equally inaccurate, for the real Nemo was exactly contemporary with his own age, and ‘archaic’ is older than ‘contemporary’, and there’s no way I can precede the real Nemo because I’m based on him... Secondly, I didn’t base myself on him: that was done for me, without my consent, by my author. I am only based on the original Nemo in the most superficial way. My author had a steampunk submarine and needed a captain for it and so forced me into the role. Questions of my political significance simply never entered his head.

PM: But do you feel immensely liberated in your swirling deeps?

JQW: To a lesser extent than might be imagined. I don’t have all the oceans of the world at my disposal. My playground is the Sea of Tea, a giant teacup with no outlet, and so I’m confined to an area of 7,854 square kilometres because the diameter of the cup is 100KM. Having said that, I never feel claustrophobic or imprisoned because I always find plenty to do in my assigned territory. There’s the Earl Grey Atlantis to explore and various monsters to elude, not just the notorious Oc-Tea-Pus but also the Tannin Zaratan, Brew Behemoth and Milk No Sugar Sea Serpent. And there’s the perpetual game of postmodern piracy with my rivals. That keeps me especially busy.

PM: Which of your rivals is the best and which the worst, in your estimation?

JQW: I prefer not to cast aspersions. There are enough other things to cast during a liquid-based life. Possibly Henry Morgan is the best and worst, if that’s of any help. As for myself, I’m out of the equation because I’m not a pirate in the conventional sense. Yes, I loot and plunder and drink rum, but storybook pirates travel around on ships, not in submarines: I’m an anomaly. The western eighth of the Sea of Tea is my personal domain and it’s ironic that I’m mostly below the surface during the magnificent sunsets that occur every night over the porcelain horizon. One more disadvantage to dunking oneself under the high teas!

PM: Are you certain you have no ideology, no anarchist agenda, that urges you to ram galleons with the tapering brass nose of your vessel?

JQW: None at all. As I’ve already stated I’m not a Nemo, quite the reverse. What’s the reverse of a Nemo? An Omen, I guess, so I must be an omen, a warning of something to come, but what that thing might be isn’t contained within my awareness. I ram ships to depopulate the Sea of Tea, to ultimately make my life easier, to enable me to stay for longer periods on the surface without being spotted by hostile eyes. One day I will be able to enjoy those sunsets unmolested – when I’m the last pirate left in the entire teacup!

PM: Is it true you were formerly a museum curator?

JQW: Indeed so. I’m a curator and also the main character in a novel not yet written, a novel entitled Wuthering Depths. The idea for that book has been in the mind of my author for many years but he simply hasn’t found time to write it. One day he will, I hope, and then my identity will be more real to me. At the moment I feel like a musical echo from an instrument that doesn’t exist: and a pfaaarp without a trombone-mother is the saddest sound in any impossible orchestra. But at least I do have minimal substance rather than none at all. You wouldn’t be able to interview me if I was like them.

PM: Like who?

JQW: The people with no substance at all... People like Hokey Raindrop, Cassius Befuddle, Molas the Unrefined, Jimjam Spreadwinkle, unwritten characters without any shape, history or texture, pure names, ridiculous names, because I invented them just now, without any thought at all. When I order my submarine to dive and it reaches the very bottom of the Sea of Tea, my hull resting on the cracked china floor, I’m still high above people like those, even though I can go no further down, and that thought gives me solace and causes me to wonder what gives them solace? Not much, I bet! Moving on... you haven’t asked me about my favourite kind of cake yet. We’re in a sea of tea. Isn’t that an obvious question?

PM: Very well, I’ll ask the question now...

JQW: Teacake.

Coming Soon: Engelbrecht Again!

2008-08-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson is the funniest book in the English language. This collection of 15 linked stories featuring a diminutive surrealist boxer was published in a limited edition by Phoenix House in 1950. Wonderfully illustrated by James Boswell, it's one of the very few books I own that I'll never give away.

Engelbrecht is the most famous member of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club, a dubious society that fills the time between the collapse of the moon and the end of the universe by taking the concept of the 'game' to its logical limit, for instance arranging a rugby match between Mars and the entire human race, or playing chess with boy scouts and nuclear bombs as pieces.

Sixty or so years after his first appearance, Engelbrecht has returned for another set of exploits that will take him on a voyage around the world, into space, down to Hell, into a labyrinth of plots and counter-plots that could mean the destruction of the entire membership of the Surrealist Sportsman’s Club. Running the gauntlet with gorgons, competing in the mesmeric tour-de-trance bicycle race, climbing the north face of the largest ego in existence, playing tug-o’-war with entire continents and even indulging in a round of lipograms with the monstrous Père Ubu – all these are in a day’s work for the plucky Engelbrecht!

Engelbrecht Again!
Written by Rhys Hughes
Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer
272-page, smythe sewn hardcover limited to 300 copies
ISBN-13: 9780979633546
published September 2008 by Dead Letter Press

PM Question Time #2: with the Hunter of Moby K Dick

2008-08-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

One of the idiosyncracies of The Postmodern Mariner is that some of the action takes place on this blog rather than in the book, specifically the interviews with the pirates in 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival'. Unfortunately I have been rather lazy in writing and posting those interviews! The first interview (with Charlotte Gallon) was posted way back in October 2006.

But the second of the conversations is with the pirate of the south-western zone, China Melville, and it goes something like this:

PM: You are bald and often seem to have socialist cheeks. Can you offer an explanation, convincing or otherwise, for these factors?

CM: I can, and what's more, I will. First the convincing explanation. A life on high seas, higher teas or highest sighs tends to be rough and ready, like the knuckles of honest workers; and coincidentally, the honest workers on my ship all have knuckles that resemble rough and ready lives, viewed from afar, or down the wrong end of a telescope. To express solidarity with my crewmen I wear my head in the style of a knuckle, that working joint of an honest fist!

PM: And the unconvincing explanation?

CM: My head and cheeks were rented out from Lenin, shaved clean with a working razor and inflated with protactinium gas. As you may know, thanks to your bourgeois education, protactinium is highly toxic, radioactive and scarce. But it’s the only element that sounds even vaguely like the word proletariat, so it’s the bright silvery actinide for me! Harbour no doubts about that…

PM: Yes, that really is quite unconvincing. But talking about harbours, what is your favourite port city?

CM: I don’t subscribe to favouritism. I don’t even subscribe to subscription. Both are capitalist tricks. If some reactionary force tried to compel me to choose, perhaps with threats of torture, including the gluing onto my bald pate of a ticklesome wig, I would resist while crying communist slogans! On the other hand, if an heroic figure of major socio-political importance, for instance Lenin, politely asked to make the choice, then I would respond with this answer: “only a port city whose workers are fully in control of the means of production will ever have its quaysides scraped by the barnacle-encrusted hull of China Melville’s ship as it prepares to dock!”

PM: You are relentlessly political, are you not?

CM: Only revolutions are relentless. No individual should compare himself to a revolution, partly because individuals don’t really exist. Man is a socialist animal and has only one context: the societal. Woman is also a socialist animal, just to redress the balance.

PM: Do you enjoy redressing women?

CM: That’s exactly the sort of humour I despise. In fact I hate all kinds of humour. Laughter was invented by the establishment to keep the proletariat in place. When an exploited dockworker or miner is giggling at something, his mind is off the struggle against oppression. Laughter tricks the lower classes into believing that life isn’t so bad after all. The only double act I ever laughed at was Lenin and Hardy and it was good socialist laughter, I assure you.

PM: As well as despising comedy you have also expressed a distaste for metafiction, by which I mean that you don’t like works of fiction that acknowledge their own status as an artificial construct. You seem to believe that if a character suddenly demonstrates an awareness of his or her own fictional status, perhaps by addressing the reader directly, then some sort of betrayal has taken place?

CM: That’s exactly right. And the fact that I’m also just a fictional character lends even more poignancy to my opinion, wouldn’t you say? What are readers, genuine readers? They are hardworking members of the proletariat who wish to relax their minds and simultaneously acquire new knowledge in the little free time they have at their disposal after the capitalist exploiters have stolen away most of their days. These hypothetical but real readers, with spanner blisters on their hands and sickle wounds on their knees, don’t want to be herded into a labyrinth of in-jokes, elitist allusions and ivory tower escapist japes…

PM: But surely fiction that refers to its own fictional status and thus constantly implies the existence of the real world is less escapist than fiction that exists inside the circumference of a closed loop?

CM: Please don’t interrupt without a consensus… Anyway, as I was saying, the true working reader prefers his truths to exist in a parallel dimension hermetically sealed, in other words in a non-metafictional story, than in a work that constantly reminds them it’s unreal – if you are reminded of that fact too much you start to instinctively attribute a quality of unreality to all phenomena, including real world objects and conditions. Ultimately you imagine that pain, suffering and the endless struggle against our oppressors is also unreal, which is exactly the situation that our oppressors desire.

PM: Who are your oppressors now? Haven’t they changed since you became successful? And why do some authorities often mispronounce your surname as ‘Miéville’?

CM: My oppressors are still the same. It’s just that I have the luxury of regarding them from a different height. Yes, I’m going up in the world, but I’m not climbing the same ladder as the capitalists. As for ‘authorities’ who mispronounce my name, I’m against all authorities except the future communal authority of the proletariat. That’s one authority that will never mispronounce anything. It’s barely literate as it is. If you can’t do something at all, how can you do it badly?

The Possibly Phoney Profundity of Puerility

2008-08-14T03:16:00.000-07:00

A strong candidate for the most infuriating show ever broadcast on British television must surely be The Late Review which appeared regularly on BBC 2 in the mid 1990s. It featured a panel of pseudo-intellectuals who sat on easy chairs and discussed new books, films, artworks, etc, while the host, an extremist moderate by the name of Mark Lawson, pretended to see both sides of the argument simultaneously while somehow silently insisting that fence-sitting was the only true position. The occasional guest reviewer of intelligence, such as Ian Hislop, served only to further highlight the greasy charlatanry of the regulars, a crew of vermin that included the failed poet Tom Paulin, simpering weakling and thickie Eko Eshun, quasi-academic hag Germaine Greer, textbook racial minority victim Bonnie Greer and useless rubber gargoyle Tony Parsons.

Tony Parsons in particular had already contributed heavily to a significant decline in culture when in the late 1970s he worked for the NME (New Musical Express) as a critic and opinionated moron. Together with his bloated girlfriend, the helium-voiced designer-lesbian Julie Burchill, the Parsons freak crusaded against beautiful prog rock, slandering its complexities, mocking its honourable ambitions, advocating punk as a replacement. So successful was he in this fascistic campaign that ‘prog’ soon became a term of abuse and its fans worse than pariahs. The fact that Johnny Rotten himself cited Van der Graaf Generator as a major influence made not the blindest bit of difference to the bigoted Parsons. I still resent Parsons for the way I had to keep my King Crimson and Gentle Giant albums hidden while listening to them in secret on headphones at night.

The great obsession of Parsons, Lawson, Paulin, Greer, etc, was ‘maturity’. None of them ever seemed exactly sure what maturity consisted of but they knew one thing for certain: it was the diametric opposite of puerility. Anything that celebrated puerility was automatically bad. Bodily secretions, even though we all ooze them, are puerile; and so is laughing at the misfortunes of others, even though we all do it; treating genitals as objects of humour is puerile; so is obeying the overriding male urge to gawp at women. In fact white straight males are fundamentally puerile. Maturity on the other hand involves accepting a special set of hypocrisies. Promiscuity is permitted provided a tally isn’t kept (I know I’ve slept with 18 women so I must be puerile: if I hadn’t kept count I would be mature) and backing down from a fight is a mandatory mature reflex, though how this differs from plain ‘cowardice’ is something I still don’t understand.

The very lowest level of puerility is the dreaded ‘sixth form’. This number refers not to states of matter but a particular stage of British school education. A story about breasts or testicles, no matter how clever, wise or insightful, is instantly given this label. It’s the insult that annoys me the most. I remember once writing an anti-authority satire in which defecation played a role. I tried to make the piece witty, politically aware, righteously savage: I was pleased with the result, believing that it struck a (very minor) blow for the common citizen against the ruthless machinery of local government. I proudly showed it to my girlfriend of the time and she glanced at it before pronouncing two words only: sixth form. I was both deflated and enraged by her response. I was 25 years old with an IQ of 148 but not yet published. Sixth form! What kind of sixth form existed that could boast such superb and affecting talents as myself? Years later I watched a documentary in which Roger Waters of Pink Floyd denounced his own Dark Side of the Moon album as ‘sixth form’. I dearly wish I had attended a school whose sixth form pupils were capable of producing such mesmerising gems of modern culture! As it happened I wasn’t entirely discouraged by my girlfriend and my first acceptances for publication followed within a few months of her comment, but it was many years before tits and bums resurfaced in my stories.

Tits and bums are important. We aren’t just rational civilised creatures: far from it! We are essentially puerile, all of us. People like Parsons, Lawson, Greer, are merely smoke and mirror merchants, pretending to be mature, which in itself is a form of puerility. As it happened I never entered the sixth form of my own school. I dropped out and went instead to a college where the tutors set off small bombs in the classroom and gave tacit approval to our own improvised explosive devices. They knew that blowing things up and farting are honest pursuits. I listened to prog in my room, took LSD and made bombs. I never had the chance to be sixth form. Incidentally, actually knowing your IQ is a puerile act: mature people shop at IKEA and pretend not to care. And yet, puerility may well be our most profound asset. It is everywhere so it must be vital to the human condition. The girl who says “Don’t talk to my breasts” is disparaging billions of years of evolution, the structure of DNA, biochemistry, physics, cosmology, the Big Bang, everything!

On the other hand this might not be so. No matter! The point is that at least I have dealt with a sticky subject (male ejaculate) in this book and I’ve done so not in a thoughtful or sensitive manner. Somebody had to. I knew it would be difficult not to stray into niceness and reasonableness but I kept a tight reign on my conscience. Instead of doing what is good I did what was right. To keep my mind focussed on the task before me, on the ineffable joy of tittiness and buminess, I imagined that I was writing the book especially for The Late Review. I fantasised that it would be discussed by Parsons, Greer, Paulin, etc, and that it would make them extremely unhappy, indeed that it would even encourage Mark Lawson to have his very first violent opinion. That will never happen but a healthy dose of self-delusion can work wonders. Bum titty bum titty bum bum bum.

Cherry Moon Girl

2008-07-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Adele is the most amazing person in the universe. I've said this before and I'll say it again. She is perfect and we are made for each other. She is my cherry moon girl. The only problem I have is that she has the same name as my sister. Because of this unfortunate fact, I once considered a relationship between us to be impossible. How could I date a girl with the same name as my sister, I asked myself? My real sister has a vile and grotesque soul and would consider such a situation to be some sort of warped 'victory' over me.

But I quickly realised that if I missed the chance to be happy with the one girl who was made for me, the only woman actually chosen for me by destiny, simply because of a fear of being mocked by an idiotic and childish sister, then that would represent a greater 'victory' for my petty, vindictive and possibly insane sibling. My girlfriend Adele is my soul mate and we shall be together forever. It is my sister who should change her name, not I who should abandon the love of my life. I suggest the following names for my sister, all of them more suited to her character than the name she was given at birth: Cruella, Caligulina, Maliciosa, Microbraina, Bullyiana, Buffoonia, Cretina.

Russian Around!

2008-07-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

This book came in the post more than a year ago out of the blue. Well not exactly out of the blue. Out of Russia. Three decades ago it would have been appropriate to say that it came out of the red. Not now. It's a Russian translation of the Mike Ashley edited anthology Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy. I very much like to appear in Mike Ashley's anthologies. The money is good and so is the treatment. He's a fine fellah!

It's nice to see my name written in Cyrillic script. The first foreign language I was translated into was Serbian, back in 2003, courtesy of Zoran Živković, but the Roman script was used. The Cyrillic looks more muscular, I think. I haven't yet seen the Greek translation of my New Universal History of Infamy. Greek is another curious alphabet. Curious to me, that is, not to Greeks. I have a small following in Greece. Also in Russia. There have been some discussions of my work on various Russian websites, for example here. I have no idea if I'm generally approved or disapproved of over there. I suspect both.

10 Best Books Recently Read

2008-05-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

Recently I remarked how I’ve lost a lot of the enthusiasm for reading I had when I was younger… That is mostly true, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t read some excellent books in the past few years.

I’ve kept lists of all the books I’ve read since the start of 2005, a total of 120 books so far. This total will keep increasing, but in the meantime these are the ten best of those books. This list will almost certainly change as time goes on: I’ll update it accordingly.

* Marcovaldo -- Italo Calvino
* Un Bel Morir -- Alvaro Mutis
* Big Planet -- Jack Vance
* Babel 17 -- Samuel Delany
* Roadside Picnic -- Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
* The Ascent of Rum Doodle -- W.E. Bowman
* Moravagine -- Blaise Cendrars
* The Viceroy of Ouidah -- Bruce Chatwin
* We -- Yevgeny Zamyatin
* The Complete Short Stories -- Franz Kafka

List of All My Books

2008-05-07T16:49:00.000-07:00

As there seems to be some confusion about the number of books I've written and the dates in which they were published, I've decided to create this official list. I'll update it each time a new book is published.

Books:

* Worming the Harpy (1995)
* Eyelidiad (1996)
* Rawhead & Bloody Bones (1998)
* The Smell of Telescopes (2000)
* Stories from a Lost Anthology (2002)
* Nowhere Near Milk Wood (2002)
* Journeys Beyond Advice (2002)
* The Percolated Stars (2003)
* A New Universal History of Infamy (2004)
* At the Molehills of Madness (2006)
* A Sereia de Curitiba (2007)
* The Crystal Cosmos (2007)
* The Less Lonely Planet (2008)
* The Postmodern Mariner (2008)
* Engelbrecht Again! (2008)
* Mister Gum (2009)
* Twisthorn Bellow (2010)
* The Coandă Effect (2010)
* The Brothel Creeper (2011)
* Link Arms With Toads! (2011)
* Sangria in the Sangraal (2011)

Vulcanology in Swansea

2008-04-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

In 1924 a chap named W.W. Moore published a small guidebook called Swansea, the Naples of Wales. He wasn't the first to compare Swansea with Naples. Nor was he the last. The fools who control the local government of Swansea still like to compare this city with Naples.

Why this obsession with comparing Swansea to Naples? I can hardly imagine two more different cities and settings. The bays are NOT similar, neither are the pizzas, mopeds or prostitutes. The people are different, so is the language, culture, history and climate, to say nothing of the general ambience and sense of aesthetics.

In fact there is only one thing they have in common -- volcanoes.

Naples has the lovely and deadly Vesuvius, likely to blow in the near future and kill thousands. Swansea has a volcano that is less literal but more literary, the Volcano Theatre Company. They are good, very good. Their most recent work was a fascinating interactive piece of drama called 'What am I doing here?', a satire on British attitudes, on racism, patriotism, tribalism, pseudo-reasonableness and our love of inappropriate analogies. It was strong rather than heavy handed and also funny and disturbing.

The play was sandwiched between two bus rides, the first a mystery trip to a secret location, the second a short comedy hop on a vintage vehicle. The filling was a sequence of absurdist tableau that were by turns faux-jolly, genuinely disturbing, profound and hilarious. We danced, we were imprisoned, we were tested. This was exciting theatre performed with crisp professionalism and perilous enthusiasm. It was also the most ergodic play I've ever attended: the audience were an integral part of the work. No breaking of the fourth wall was necessary here: there simply wasn't a fourth wall to start with.

Goodbye to WoW

2008-02-24T06:57:00.000-08:00

The website WoW is about to close. WoW was something of a living fossil from a more innocent era, an online social club for amateur writers where genuine politeness was almost the general order of the day. The person who ran the site was known only by the single letter “D” and lived in Swindon, I have no idea why. WoW was a good place for beginners to dip a toe into the foetid swamps of the writing world.

WoW will end with a simultaneous bang and whimper, publishing the first five of my ‘Don Cosquillas’ tales. My Don Cosquillas sequence (aka The Tickle Wheel) is open-ended and may eventually include dozens of stories. Or it may not. Story cycles rarely turn out exactly as I anticipate. Often my more ambitious and carefully planned projected sequences falter at an early stage while the looser and more spontaneous cycles flourish.

My Top Ten Writers of All Time!

2008-02-08T05:35:00.000-08:00

This blog post was originally intended to be a piece of maudlin self promotion. But it has turned out quite differently! Apart from a lovely publicity shot of my recent Sereia book – a lovely work of literature in every respects, authored by a lovely writer with lovely words – and a few announcements declaring my loveliness, there is very little about me or my achievements here. What a modest fellow I must be! Despite my arrogance, I verily believe there has never been such a modest creative genius in the entire history of the country Wales as myself!

The remainder of this blog entry is devoted to listing my ten favourite writers of all time. Constructing a definitive list of this nature wasn’t easy. There’s the danger that other candidates will occur to me after the list is posted. No matter! I am sorry to leave out John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, G.V. Desani, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cabrera Infante, John Sladek, Brian Aldiss, W.E. Bowman, Maurice Richardson, Samuel Beckett, Amin Maalouf, J.G. Ballard, Ray Bradbury, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Samuel Delany, Alasdair Gray and the Strugatsky Brothers. But it can’t be helped.

Here are the ten in question:
· Italo Calvino
· Jorge Luis Borges
· Milorad Pavic
· Stanislaw Lem
· Boris Vian
· Michael Moorcock
· Felipe Alfau
· Jack Vance
· Flann O’Brien
· Donald Barthelme

Nightmare Alley

2008-01-14T04:24:00.000-08:00

I started writing short stories seriously when I was 14 years old. The very first was called ‘The Journey of Mountain Hawk’. Everything I wrote between then and the age of 22 was lost. I won’t go into details of why, but I still feel a little angry at the circumstances. My juvenile writing wasn’t especially polished or sophisticated but I flatter myself that it contained some powerful and unique ideas, or rather a series of archetypal images and situations among the most resonant I’ve created. I have a good memory, so now I make occasional efforts to rewrite those lost stories, preserving the images but rendering them in more advanced prose.

I have just completed the rewriting of one of the earliest, a fable about a man travelling down an infinitely long alleyway, recreating all the most important images and even re-using the naive original title, ‘Nightmare Alley’. I feel relief and satisfaction at the completion (or rescue) of this lost story, which was an adolescent reaction to my discovery of Kafka. Somehow I have settled an unresolved issue from the past, taken a small revenge on the bad luck that affected me at one youthful stage of my life. It feels worthwhile.

My Online Stories

2007-12-11T05:57:00.001-08:00

Over the years a small number of my stories have appeared online at various websites. Generally these stories are not my best, but I've finally decided to provide links to as many of them as possible. My problem is that I can't remember exactly which stories are out there! The following list is therefore nowhere near complete, but I hope to gradually expand it in the future:

* Lunarhampton
* Gauntlet of Gorgons
* A Languid Elagabalus of the Tombs
* Shipyards on Saturn
* Gut Road
* God in a Basement Flat
* The Minotaur in Pamplona

* The Don Entrerrosca Tales:
(1) The Lute and the Lamp
(2) The Toes of the Sun
(3) The Promised Labyrinth

* The Expanding Woman
* The Folded Page
* The City That Was Itself
* Flintlock Jaw / Percussion Cape / Gatling Gums
* The Grave Demeanour
* The Martian Monocles
* The Maze

Zöe Chandler

2007-11-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

Zöe Chandler is one of those people who can do hundreds of things very well. In this photo she demonstrates the ancient technique of smiling while one's hand is on fire. Her other talents include acting, writing, directing, swordplay, photography, understanding cats, drawing pictures (including octopuses) and being utterly amazing in everyday life.

I first became aware of Zöe more than a year ago when she kindly offered to perform some of my work in her role as one of the Finn-Brit Players. Now she is directing a new play she has written herself, The Mourning Primrose, that is due to open next week, a swashbuckling romp featuring pirates, quests and intrigue -- exactly the sort of thing I like best!

Details of the performances are as follows:
Vernissa Hall, Tikkurilantie 36, Tikkurila, Vantaa (right opposite the Tikkurila railway station)
Friday November 16th at 7 p.m.Saturday November 17th at 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.Sunday November 18th at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets 8€ (5€ concessions, groups of 10 or more)

If you happen to find yourself in Finland next week, you could do a lot worse than go along. The Finn-Brit Players are an exceptionally fine bunch of talented and stylish people and Zöe is one of the greatest human beings ever to exist in the history of the world!

To Boldly Galão

2007-10-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

Portugal means many things to me, many good things, many amazing things, including friends, sunshine, cakes, books, music, beaches, amazing cities, trams. One of the most emblematic of these items is the galão, the Lusitanian version of the café con leche...

The oddest galão I ever had was in a Chiado café in Lisbon on 24th October 2007, where I had been invited to do a reading for the British Council's reading group. This galão resembled a spectrographic analysis of the drink in question: the hot milk, coffee and cream were displayed in distinct bands.

From such spectrographs we can determine whether a beverage is likely to be delicious or not. On this particular occasion my initial opinion was that the depicted galão was delicious. Confirmation of my belief was obtained by stirring the separate elements into a single blend, raising the glass to my lips and drinking it dry. Yum!

The Saragossa Manuscript in Albarracín

2007-09-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

I bought this book more than 10 years ago but my reading list is so long I haven't got round to starting it until now. Its author Jan Potocki (1761-1815) was a profoundly interesting character with a productive and adventurous life. But his many achievements and remarkable exploits didn't make him happy in the end, as he shot himself with a silver bullet fashioned from the knob of his sugar bowl...

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa is the longest book I've read for many years, 631 pages of very small print, but I'm flying through it because the momentum of the story is so great. Actually by 'story' I mean stories, as the novel is a complex interlinking of dozens of separate tales... Some of these tales are extremely strange and not a little daft, exactly the sort of literature I like best, and the colourful characters who relate them are also strange and daft, especially the mad geometer Don Pedro de Velásquez who tries to create a mathematical system to describe all human emotions!

Potocki's writing is somehow naive and knowing at the same time: there are many ironies and tricks. His book reminds me slightly of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, which I read when I was younger, but is far superior to it. Potocki is less dry than Maturin and much more playful. I started reading this book in the village of Albarracín and in the surrounding mountains and it was nice to know that I was finally getting to grips with it not far from Saragossa itself, though actually the book is set in many different locations, including the Sierra Morena, the Alpujarras, Madrid, Burgos, Italy, Portugal, etc.

Hannah F Lawson

2007-07-21T03:51:00.000-07:00

This photo doesn't really have anything to do with my Postmodern Mariner project. But I'm putting it here anyway, because it shows a person I love very much. Hannah is a writer as well and a very good one. I'm trying to persuade her to move more into the realms of 'fantastical fiction'... She doesn't seem reluctant!

This photo shows her on the last night that I saw her before I left for Spain. I'm missing her very much! I had a truly great time while living with her in Waunarlwydd and I can honestly say that she is one of the nicest, most intelligent, funniest and most interesting people I have ever met.

The Pirates, their Ships and their Zones...

2007-03-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

How Very Unshipshape!

2007-03-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been neglecting this blog rather too much! The Postmodern Mariner now looks set to be published in the summer. Hurrah! As for where the book launch will take place... I doubt it will happen in the Dylan Thomas Centre (though I'll certainly try to get it launched there). My publisher Steve Upham jokingly suggested the beach. That's not such a bad idea! It would certainly be an eccentric place for a book launch and might even attract local newspaper interest for that very reason! I can imagine the photographs too! The more I think about the idea, the more it appeals. However, we do have the Welsh weather to contend with...

When I originally set up this blog, I imagined it would contain passages of new fiction -- a sort of bonus for anyone who troubled to type in the URL given in the story 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival'... These new passages were going to include conversations with all the pirates that the Postmodern Mariner has dealings with. So far I have only created one of those conversations, so I guess the next post ought to be the second conversation! I also stated that there would be a prize for the first person to leave a comment on this blog. Someone has already done that -- and I'm going to arrange a prize for that person. But I'm also going to give a prize to the first person to leave a comment after the book has been published! That way seems more fair to everyone!

The Postmodern Mariner is Coming...

2007-02-09T03:01:00.000-08:00

POSTMODERN MARINER

The book is finished and has been accepted for publication...

It now consists of three parts, not two, and in fact the contents can be listed as follows:

Part One: Castor Jenkins, the Münchhausen of Porthcawl
(1) Castor on Troubled Waters
(2) Canis Raver
(3) The Plucked Plant
(4) When Wales Played Asgård
(5) Interstellar Domestic
(6) The Cream-Jest of Unset Custard
(7) The Day the Town of Porthcawl was Accidentally Twinned with the Capital of the Cheese and Biscuits Empire

Part Two: Catherine Piper at the Fates of Ooze
(8) The Lip Service

Part Three: The Postmodern Mariner in Person
(9) Rommel Cobra’s Swimming Carnival

All at Sea!

2007-01-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this blog properly in ages, so it's time to repair that deficiency! It turned out that 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival' was rejected by its target anthology, a rejection that made regular posting on this blog less urgent, because it delayed publication of the novelette (and the original idea was for readers of the anthology to arrive here via the link in my text).

So I then decided (as can be seen from my previous entry) to use this blog for other purposes... A place to store lists of my completed work, uncompleted work, etc.

But I have now planned for the novelette to form the second half of a new book, a slim volume entitled The Postmodern Mariner. In fact I have already found a publisher interested in this project... I am currently busy writing the first half of the book, and when that is done I can submit the entire manuscript. So it might be the case that Rommel Cobra will see print in the not too distant future anyway... which makes this blog a valid concern again!

RHYS HUGHES... Complete Story List

2006-12-03T06:46:00.000-08:00

Although I started writing short stories in 1981 (or maybe 1980) all those early works are lost. My earliest surviving story dates from 1989.

My scheme is to write exactly 1000 stories.

There follows a complete list of every story I have written for this scheme so far. All 625 of them. As this list grows, I'll edit this blog entry to keep up!

(1989)
* Raindancing
* The Third Blow

(1990)
* Big Game
* The 4-D Mind

(1991)
* Towards a New Arcana
* Interview with the City Treasurer
* An Ideal Vocation
* The Fury Machine
* Circular Reasoning
* The Catastrophe Trials
* Nathaniel

(1992)
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Dirigible
* The Younger Man
* The Magic Lamp
* Cutting Back
* The World Idiot
* Reflections of a Brass Head
* Friends
* Stepping Out
* Lucy
* The Cat
* The Journal
* One Better
* Thinner Air
* The Smile Inside
* The End of the Road
* Twelve Candles
* The Cellar Door
* Lunette
* Landing
* Time-Lapse
* The Faust Business
* Perpetual Motion
* On the Deck
* Convergence
* Virgil Leading Dante into Hell Takes a Wrong Turning
* Death of an English Teacher
* Midknight Express
* The Crime Continuum
* Necessity is the Mother
* The Myth of Sisyphus
* Christmas Overtime: a Vignette

(1993)
* Learning to Fly
* Be Like You
* The Forest Chapel Bell
* Floodtide
* Under the Tree
* Something About a Demon
* A Length of Rope
* The Dungeon
* Consolations of the Wild One
* The Roof of the World
* The Falling Star
* Multicoloured Leaves in Bright Spirals
* The Manticore
* The Landscape Player
* The Seed of the Damned
* Lady, Tiger and Protozoon
* The Juggler
* In the Margins
* The Illustrated Student
* Troubleroot
* Zumbooruk
* Seven Fables of Yearning
* Goblin Sunrise
* Making a Feline
* The Landslide
* The Masterpiece
* Mr Found in a Bottle
* Three Friends
* The Man Who Threw His Voice
* The Peat Fire
* The Achilles Tendency
* Quasimodulus
* A Family Resemblance
* Judgment Day
* The Queen of Jazz
* Dr Perambulator Wants to Marry an Aubergine
* Rancid Kumquats are Not the Only Fruit
* The Sealed Room

(1994)
* The Duvet Thief
* Sucking the World's Thumb
* The Indigo Casbah
* The New Men
* Fallow
* Three Dancers
* The Octopus Jar
* Velocity Oranges
* Walpurgis
* Passengers
* The Man Who Mistook His Wife's Hat For the Mad Hatter's Wife
* Oaths
* Never Hug an Aardvark
* The Two Kingdoms
* The Taming of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shrew
* Rainbow's End
* What To Do When the Devil Comes Round For Tea
* Tuberculosis Bells
* Cat O' Nine Tales
* Atlas Did Not Shrug
* Ghost Holiday
* Those Wonderful Words
* The Banshee
* Celia the Impaler
* The Wardrobe Tree
* Anna and the Dragon
* Six Characters in Search of an Executioner
* Loop
* The Big Lick
* Flash in the Pantheon
* Mastitis Groan
* Trombonhomie
* The Urban Freckle
* Worming the Harpy
* Eyelashes in My Nepenthe
* Romance With Capsicum
* There's a Woman With a Cactus Instead of a Head
* The Chimney
* A Carpet Seldom Found
* Flintlock Jaw
* One Man's Meat
* The Troubadours of Perception
* The Cakes of Gehenna
* Ten Grim Bottles
* Miserable With Groceries, Cuddly With Stubble
* Bracket
* The Thirty-Nine Million Steps

(1995)
* The Laughing Policeman in the Foreign Legion
* The Lover and the Grave
* A College Story
* Learning To Fall
* The Swiss Family Abacus
* The Semi-Precious Isle
* Cello I Love You
* A Horse Called Man
* The Good-News Grimoire
* Arquebus For Harlequin
* The King and Eye
* Thief Among Thieves
* Number 13½
* The Purloined Liver
* The Second Picture
* The Glossolalia of Hideo Frigg
* Éclair De Lune
* Madonna Park
* The Falling Lover
* The Blue Dwarf
* Grinding the Goblin
* Burke and Rabbit
* Percussion Cape
* The Golden Fleas
* Entropy
* The Apology
* Sexing the Confection
* Cosmic Bagatelle
* Pyramid and Thisbe
* The Furious Walnuts
* The Herb-Garden of Earthly Delights
* Eyelidiad
* Gone With The Wind in the Willows
* The Googol Seasons
* A Sort of Runic Rhyme
* The Impossible Mirror

(1996)
* The Business Diary of a Madman
* Rawhead and Bloody Bones
* Journey Through a Wall
* Primate Suspect
* Gatling Gums
* Elusive Plato
* The Hush of Falling Houses
* The Taste of the Moon
* A Person Not in the Story
* Mister Humphrey's Clock's Inheritance
* Go West, Young Ripper
* God in a Basement Flat
* The Metaphorical Marriage
* The Broom-Cupboard of Crossed Destinies
* Before Dawn in the Playing Fields
* Story From a Lost Anthology
* There Was a Ghoul Dwelt by a Mosque
* Bridge Over Troubled Blood
* Crawling King Prawn

(1997)
* The Animus of Objective Mammals
* The Quest of the Mouther
* Lunarhampton
* The Death of Ganymede
* Spermaceti Whiskers
* The Skull Farmers
* A Girl Like a Doric Column
* The Crippled Gollywog's Fox-Hunt
* A Vinaigrette
* Below the Carnival
* The Silver Necks
* The Wooden Salesman
* At the Molehills of Madness
* The Docking of Spaceship Earth
* Depressurised Ghost Story
* Nothing More Common
* Crash, With Shopping Trolleys
* Mortar Baby
* The Business Flight
* Matchlock Smith
* Thanatology Spleen
* The New Giraldus
* The Haunted Womb
* Voles
* The Pelican of Venice
* Pyramids of the Purple Atom

(1998)
* The Sound of Music in Hell
* The Expanding Woman
* The Singularity Spectres
* The Orange Goat
* Telegram Ma'am
* The Sickness of Satan
* Mah Jong Breath
* The Hypothesis
* The Tell-Tale Nose
* The Decibel Circus
* The Squonk Laughed
* Portrait of the Artist as a Rusty Bus
* Muscovado Lashes
* The Suppertime Sting

(1999)
* The Yellow Imp
* The Banker of Ingolstadt
* The Purple Pastor
* Thais Von Oort
* A Rape of Knots
* Ultima Thule
* Lanolin Brows
* Omophagia Ankles
* Alone With a Longwinded Soul
* Corneropolis
* The Muse Ouroboros
* The Spanish Cyclops
* The Swine Taster
* Gauntlet of Gorgons
* Far on Bicycles
* Young Werther Cheers Up
* The Mischief Towers

(2000)
* Surfing the Solar Wind
* The North Face of the Ego
* Tug of Worlds
* Engelbrecht at the Eisteddfod
* A Mermaid Supper
* Last Tango in Atlantis
* A Sandal Waiting to Happen
* A Monkey For All Seasons
* The Destruction of Destruction
* Engelbrecht and Ubu
* A Sumwot Labud Sattire
* The Chronic Argonauts Get Better
* The Undeniable Grin
* A Languid Elagabalus of the Tombs
* Asparagus on the Tooth
* No Stony Silence
* City of Blinks
* Jellydämmerung!
* The Macroscopic Teapot
* The Rake and the Fool
* Knight on a Bear Mountain
* The Hydrothermal Reich
* Toastmaster, Buttermistress
* The Story With a Clever Title
* The Century Just Gone
* Shipyards on Saturn
* The Marsh Callow

(2001)
* The Dirtiest Ararat
* The Crab
* The Lute and the Lamp
* Owlbeast
* Cockatrice at the Door
* The Hole Truth: a Lie
* Final Demand
* The Evil Side of Reginald Burke
* All For Nothing
* Tin in the Soul
* Robin Hood's New Mother
* The Wardrobe World
* Accordion Beach
* The Mice Will Play
* The Desiccated Sage
* Climbing the Tallest Tree in the World
* Islands in the Bathtub
* The Unsubtle Cages
* All Shapes Are Cretans
* Less is More
* The Lake of Flavours
* The World Beyond the Stairwell
* The West Pole
* Streetcorner Mouse
* The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart

(2002)
* In the Moonless Gutter
* Two Fat Men in a Very Thin Country
* Paradise Discarded
* Adventures in the Grin Trade
* Nowhere Near Milk Wood
* Sailing to the Island of Tools on the Ship of Fools
* The Gibbon in the Garret
* The Itchy Skin of Creepy Aplomb
* The Hyperacusis of Chumbly Mucker
* Eternal Horizon
* A Curry in Camelot
* The Cuckoos of Bliss
* The Small Miracle
* The Mermaid of Curitiba
* The Meltwater Republic
* The Toes of the Sun
* The Lollipop God is Dead
* The Eeriness that Lurks on the Far Side of Furniture
* The Old House Under the Snow Where Nobody Goes Except You and Me Tonight

(2003)
* The Decay of the Pilgrim
* The Cargo Cults of Salty Kiss Island
* Pity the Pendulum
* Ictus Purr
* Finding the Book of Sand
* A New Universal History of Infamy
* Encore
* The Jam of Hypnos
* Life and the Plumbline
* The Forever Forest
* The Office Castaway
* Life Sentence
* On Chromium Pond
* The Stuffed Goddess

(2004)
* The Crystal Cosmos
* Milk and Ladders
* Niddala
* The Minotaur in Pamplona
* The Promised Labyrinth
* Gut Road
* The Parasol Clerks
* Chianti's Inferno
* One's a Crowd
* Grumblebelly
* The Inflatable Stadium
* Early Morning Chocolate in Madrid
* 333 and a Third
* The Upper Reaches

(2005)
* Lovespoons in Peril
* Poe Pie
* The Candid Slyness of Scurrility Forepaws
* The Planet of Perfect Happiness
* Return to Zenda
* Sending Freedom Far Away
* Billion World Boat
* The Impregnable Fortress
* The Lunar Tritons
* Betrayal
* Errata of our Quiet Desperation
* The Lip Service
* False Dawn of Parrots
* Suicide: a Beginner's Guide
* The Rhondda Rendezvous
* Explosion
* Bitter in Sour
* Fighting Back
* Anton Arctic and the Conquest of the Scottish Pole
* The Culture Shock
* Twenty Six Broken Hearts
* The Ski Slope
* In the Sink
* The Homemade Hookah
* Scything for Girls
* Bless my Cholesterol Socks
* The Sweetheart Rosary
* The Bathing Bells

(2006)
* Dunces and Dragons
* Clouds Over Tunetown
* Last Thursday
* Envy
* Bald Men in a Shampoo Warehouse
* Vanishing
* Doom Laden Haven
* The Six Sentinels
* In Moonville
* The Quixote Candidate
* But it Pours
* Degrees of Separation
* The Folded Page
* The Surface Area of a Ghost's Wanderings
* The Most Boring Story
* The City that was Itself
* The Man who Gargled with Gargoyle Juice
* The Tallest Midget
* The Kissable Climes
* Abomination With Rice
* The Non-Existent Viscount in the Trees
* Ye Olde Resignation
* When the Microscopic Giants Took Over Happenstance
* Venus and Stupid
* Cracking Nuts with Jan Hammer
* Von Ryan's Daughter's Express
* In Sunsetville
* Fable with Turkish Coffee
* Sir Cheapskate
* Playing Impossible Instruments
* The Gala of Implausible Songs
* Oh, Whistle While You Work, and I'll Come to You, My Dwarf
* The Time Tunnel Orchid
* Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival
* The Hemisemidemiurge
* On Your Marks
* Castle Cesare

(2007)
* Castor on Troubled Waters
* The Plucked Plant
* Interstellar Domestic
* Canis Raver
* When Wales Played Asgård
* The Day the Town of Porthcawl was Accidentally Twinned with the Capital of the Cheese and Biscuits Empire
* The Cream-Jest of Unset Custard
* The Private Pirates Club
* Shared House
* A Real Nowhere Man
* The Strongest Monster
* Stale Air
* Suttee and Sweep
* The Mirror in the Looking Glass
* The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge
* Personification
* Lem's Last Book
* Smuggling Old Nick to Newfoundland
* Lettuce Prey
* Azure Like It
* Black Toffee Glues
* Tarzan at the Apple's Core
* Where Angels Fear to Bake Bread
* Pleasure For Treasure
* Riders of the Purple Mezzotint
* The Sponsored Hearse
* The Leveller of Neptune
* Boo to a Goose
* Whaling Well
* The Tenant of Arcimboldo Hall
* Canon Alberic's Photo-Album
* Message to Rosita
* Zucchini Overdrive
* Musicians in the Cold
* ¡Qué Pena!
* How Don Cosquillas Earned His Name
* Fanny is Famished
* The Strings of Segovia
* Description of a Liar
* The Juice of Days

(2008)
* Paired Down
* Nightmare Alley
* Rhodomontade and Piffle
* The Feet of Sciron
* The Laughable Career of the Tickle Master
* Risible and Shine
* Astragal and Bingbong
* Sackbut and Splashes
* Tarzan of the Chardonnay
* Found Kidneys
* Up Without Away
* Sinking Fast
* Salad in Dallas
* In Eclipseville
* The Groin Scratcher
* Plop Fiction
* Where the Sun Doesn't Shine
* Cop Hospital
* Plums and Oriels
* The Glue of the Scream
* The Rolling Hills
* The Furry Godmother
* Petal Put the Kelly On
* Celebration Day
* Oh Ho!
* Loneliness
* The Ghost Written Autobiography of a Disembodied Spirit

(2009)
* Hell Toupée
* Giddy Up
* Inside the Outline
* The Wings of Phoebus
* The Pots of Pan
* The Skin of Marsyas
* The Earlobes of Aesop
* The Shoelaces of Jupiter
* The Clangers of Paris
* Nemo's Omen
* Fanny of the Apes
* The Smutty Tamarinds
* Casimir the Converter
* Southbound Satin
* The Dwarf Shortage
* On the Shoulders of Pipsqueaks
* Wood for the Trees
* Buffoons of the Moon
* The Underwear Shop
* Rediffusion
* Arms Against a Sea
* Home Suit Home
* Poorly Dawkins
* The Sun Trap
* The Curdling of the Milky Way
* The Martian Monocles
* The Path of Garden Forks
* Fanny of the Opera
* The Phantom Festival
* The Pink Giant
* Knobheads and Dipsticks
* The Shapes Down There
* The Impossible Inferno
* The Gunfight
* The Antediluvian Uncle
* Better the Devil
* The Mistake
* The Violation
* Gaspar Jangle's Seance
* Pussy in Boots
* The Precious Mundanity
* My Own Worst Anemone
* Flicking a Fleck of Freckled Flapper
* The Armchair Generals
* The Darkest White

(2010)
* The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange
* The Talkative Star
* The Flesh Stocking
* The Astral Disruptor
* Eight Blathering Buccaneers
* The Grave Demeanour
* Is My Wife on Mars?
* The Pollinators
* The Spoon
* The Spare Hermit
* The Defining Moment
* Penal Colony
* Sally Forth
* Mate in Pi
* The Ditching
* Jenny Khan
* Stand and Deliver
* The Psychoanalyst
* Aldrin's the Buzzword
* Trenchfoot
* The Ugliest Idol in Christendom
* Moonchaser
* Discrepancy
* All in a Flap
* The Monkey's Pawpaw
* The Seal of Disapproval
* Down in the Park
* Sticky White Hands
* Cuntlock
* Flying Saucer Harmonies
* The Man Toucan
* Chuckleberry Grin
* The Thousand and One Pints
* My Biological Prism
* The Censor
* The Coandă Effect
* Monsters of the Victorian Age
* An Inconvenient Fruit
* The Maze
* Hatstands on Zanzibar
* The Magic Gone
* Latitude, Longitude and Plenitude
* Sangria in the Sangraal
* The Kind Generosity of Theophrastus Tautology
* Scaramouche's Pouting Mouth
* Knossos in its Glory
* The Quims of Itapetinga
* The Porcelain Pig
* Mad March Stylist
* The Xaratan
* The Yeasty Rise and Half-Baked Fall of Lyndon Williams
* Lyndon: God
* Bone Idle in the Charnel House
* Happiness Leasehold

(2011)
* Simplicity
* How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
* The Bannister
* My Crow Nation
* The Appendix
* The Blue Jewel Fruit
* The Gargantuan Legion
* The Mark of Cain, The Jeremy of Abel
* Orpheus on the Underground
* Hagmouth Town
* The Apedog Incident
* The Paradoxical Pachyderms
* A Stitched Dog's Tongue
* My Foot Walked Off Without Me
* Topaz Days, Emerald Nights
* Westward Ivanhoe!
* The Tale That Never Got Told
* The Polo Match
* The Fantastical Scholar's Chop-Logic
* Spider in Slippers
* The Puppet Masters of Tau Ceti
* ¿Qué Cosas?
* Making it Up as I Go Along
* The Logistics of Fictional Life
* The Integers
* The Shrug
* The Pastel Whimsy
* The Great Bicycle Migration
* The Longest Name
* The Esplanade
* The Rotten Otter
* The Ducks of Hazard
* The Extractor Fan
* The Garden Hoppers
* Knights that Go Bump into Things
* The Messiah of the Mannequins
* The Cheeky Monkey
* When the Faun Fell
* The Melody Tree
* The Burning Ears
* The Gates of Corn and Toffee
* Whether the Weatherman
* Note to Oneself
* Said the Spook
* Sigma Octantis
* Transmigrating the Bishop
* The Notorious Unclemuncher
* Read All About It
* Putting Things Off
* The Parable of the Homeless Fable
* Vampiric Gramps
* The Goat That Gloated

(2012)
* The Soft Landing
* The Canapés of Wrath
* Rhysop's Fables
* The Plug

Finished!

2006-11-02T07:31:00.000-08:00

I've just finished writing the story!
'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival' is finished at last!
Now I just have to type it up...

It has turned out to be rather longer than I originally anticipated. Closer to 20,000 words than my intended estimate of about 10,000 words! This may or may not effect its chances of being accepted for the anthology I have in mind, irrespective of what the editors think of the quality of the writing! But I feel confident I can get it published somewhere...

I definitely plan to give some sort of prize to the first person to leave a (genuine) comment on this blog. Probably a book. Maybe not the book the story appears in -- I'm assuming any reader who visits this site will obtain the URL from the story itself and probably won't want a second copy of the book... Maybe a nice Tartarus volume instead, the ghost stories of Oliver Onions for instance, or a signed copy of Alasdair Gray's excellent novel, Poor Things.

PM Question Time #1: with the Pirate Princess

2006-10-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Work on my story started again, came to another pause and now needs to start yet again... I am very pleased with progress so far. I have passed the section where the Postmodern Mariner persuades the eight surviving pirate captains to work together. He has a brief conversation with each of them and these conversations take place not in the story itself but in this blog...

The first of the conversations is with the pirate of the southern zone, Charlotte Gallon, and it goes something like this:

PM: Do you really believe that piracy is a fitting career for a lady?

CG: I do, and what's more, I maintain that women are better at it than men. For a start, men are interested only in the 'heroic' side of the business: the swinging from ropes, the swigging of rum, the accumulation of booty. But there's a 'domestic' side too and female captains handle this aspect of piracy far more neatly and convincingly.

PM: Isn't that a rather old-fashioned attitude? I'm sure that some men are just as good at domestic matters as women...

CG: Yes, but we are talking about piracy here, not about housekeeping... Consider the plank that extends over the deck into the sea. Captives are supposed to walk down this plank at the point of a cutlass. Male captains just use bare planks full of splinters. I always cover my planks with a nice pashmina throw.

PM: I'm sure that elevates the whole business.

CG: It does indeed. But domestic superiority is only one relatively minor advantage of the female pirate. We are, in fact, more deadly when necessary. We are required to be more cunning, more dominant and more ruthless because we are setting ourselves not just against the commercial shipping we prey on, nor even the warships that are sent to hunt us down, but the scepticism of society. A female pirate is still a curiosity, a freak, a greater victim of the distorted perceptions of the media than a male pirate.

PM: I assure you that I have no distorted perceptions about you.

CG: But you are just an imaginary character! If you were a real human being, a living man, I maintain that you too would regard my chosen career on the high seas as an anomaly. Your reaction would be wholly traditional: a mixture of disbelief, amusement, lust and distaste. It is against such reflexive responses that I must struggle to assert my individuality, a battle no less strenuous than an engagement against a heavily armed treasure galleon.

PM: Your outlook seems to be a fusion of femininity and feminism.

CG: I wouldn't put it quite like that. I come from an age when such distinctions were never or rarely articulated or even conceived. Pirates become successful or unsuccessful (which is the same as saying lucky or unlucky) for a variety of reasons. There is no formula for our basic psychology... I am not a woman who acts like a man. I am not even a woman who has managed to succeed in a male profession. I am something different, something that has no true counterpart in your own age.

PM: What is your age?

CG: 26.

PM: I mean, what age do you come from?

CG. Good question. Probably some period between 1720 and 1850. I may change my mind on this later, I may not. I suspect that the answer you are hoping for is this: I come from that age which exists only in old storybooks about pirates, specifically in the illustrations that accompany those books, the woodcuts and watercolours, seen when the reader is young and has little grasp of chronology and no appreciation of the physical stresses of working on a ship... That is a pleasant answer but not the right one. You must be satisfied with the one hundred and thirty year period I have already stated.

Sea Came, Sea Saw, Sea Conquered

2006-10-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

I made a small mistake in my last entry (I may have made bigger mistakes too, but I haven't noticed those yet!)... The Dunsany story I mentioned is actually 'A Story of Land and Sea.' It's a story, not a tale. Not sure of the difference, but it has to be significant! The entire text seems to be available on the internet here.

Work on my own pirate story has come to a temporary standstill because of personal problems -- this has been an extremely difficult week for me. I hope to resume work on the piece as soon as possible, maybe next week, when my circumstances are more secure (if indeed they become more secure: we'll see.)

In the meantime I have been pondering the question of stories set at sea, whether they feature pirates or not. Out of the 391 stories I have written, how many are set at sea? To answer this question, I decided to compile a list (in chronological order) of stories that fulfil this simple criteria... I found this an exercise no less difficult than pointless... Many of my stories include scenes at sea, or allusions to the sea, without actually being sea stories. The following titles, however, are stories in which the most important action takes place at sea (either a real sea or a wholly imaginary one):

* On the Deck
* Floodtide
* Zumbooruk
* The Man Who Threw His Voice
* Percussion Cape
* The Dirtiest Ararat
* Owlbeast
* Islands in the Bathtub
* The West Pole
* Sailing to the Island of Tools on the Ship of Fools
* Eternal Horizon
* The Cargo Cults of Salty Kiss Island
* Lovespoons in Peril

So now you know. And so do I... I think!

Jumping the Gun

2006-09-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I should have waited before setting up this fake blog? The publishing world is so slow that this blog might be discovered before my story is published. I haven't even written my story yet, let alone submitted it to the editor, and there's no guarantee it will be accepted even when I do submit it, and after that there's the customary long wait before it appears in print...

So: to anyone who discovers this blog before my story is published, leave a comment and I'll get back to you with some sort of prize, probably a free copy of the anthology that my story will appear in...

As for 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival' -- it is progressing slowly but promisingly. I am enjoying the process of writing far more than I normally enjoy the act of writing stories. It has a Jack Vance flavour, but is dafter than Vance, more extremely absurd. But I have just finished reading Vance's Showboat World and doubtless that excellent novel is having a direct influence on the style of my story. I certainly think that my dialogue has become very 'Vancian'.

I have recently read, or am about to read, or plan eventually to read, various other stories and novels that have pirates as major or minor protagonists, all the better to flavour my own story. Lord Dunsany's tales 'The Loot of Bombasharna' and 'A Tale of Land and Sea' are classic examples; I also hope to obtain (for free) James Branch Cabell's There Were Two Pirates, as one of my publishers in the USA has recently taken to reissuing many of Cabell's novels. Pirates are fun to read about and even more fun to write about; but not much fun to meet for real, I suppose!

Do You Feel Lucky Albatross?

2006-09-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

This spoof blog has been set up to enhance the reader's enjoyment of a story by absurdist writer Rhys Hughes (that's me!)

The story in question is called 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival' (an allusion to 'Monty Python's Flying Circus') and is narrated by a professional blogger known only as The Postmodern Mariner.

The motto of the Postmodern Mariner is:
"Do you feel lucky albatross? Well do you, punk?"

Near the beginning of the story, The Postmodern Mariner gives the address of his blog, and it occurred to the real author that it might be a nice touch to set up a real blog in case a reader decides to check the validity of the address.

If you are such a reader, well done! I guess you deserve some sort of prize. I don't know what yet!

The story is only in the early stages of being written. It is being written specifically for a pirate anthology that Jeff VanderMeer is planning to compile and that may be issued by Night Shade Books in 2007.