Halloween Writers' Bloc

With my pumpkin lantern grinning on the seat beside me, I drove through to Edinburgh yesterday for the Writers' Bloc annual Halloween show. It was a dark and stormy night, of course, even at six o'clock, and it will remain that way throughout Scotland until next June. Because I'm an idiot and was completely unaware that the clocks had gone back, I arrived an hour early. Fortunately the venue, The Three Sisters, was a pub.

We had some cracking tales of the macabre from Andrew J. Wilson, Caroline Campbell, Stefan Pearson, Jane McKie, Andrew C. Ferguson, Morag Edward, Hannu Rajaniemi and Gavin Inglis, including such ominously titled works as "How Clean is Your Haunted House?" and "The Fall of the House of Fraser." Spared the mind-bending terror of actually reading anything, I was happy to do a stint on the door. The pumpkin lantern sat at one side of the stage and smouldered, scaring nobody.

Some other writers turned up to watch the show. Paul F Cockburn, Neil Williamson, and Gary Gibson came through from Glasgow. Gary is a fellow Tor author who, although he's a nice guy, is much better at meeting deadlines than I am and is therefore an utter bastard. For the record, Neil and Paul are not utter bastards. I was actually reasonably sober when I spoke to Paul, which was a first. Finally, after meeting the guy several times, I have a face to connect to his blog.

After the show we marched off to Nichol Edwards, a late-night pub with a sticky floor which has suffered since the smoking ban was introduced. There are no longer acrid grey clouds to mask the strange odour of turnips which lurks in that place - although that might just have been my pumpkin lantern, which had become badly singed in The Three Sisters and was now starting to wilt.

Scar Night Reviewed at Strange Horizons

And a very nice review it is too.

The genesis of Scar Night and the particulars of its author's career make for an intriguing little tale in themselves. Alan Campbell began this, his debut novel, over ten years ago in Budapest, abandoning it after a few pages. During the subsequent decade he worked as a games designer for Rockstar, having a hand in the Grand Theft Auto series, eventually quitting and taking a crash course in creative writing. The resulting page-turner of an urban fantasy makes Campbell's arrival into the world of literature a cause for celebration.

Hilliary Eldridge Saves the World

Well... perhaps not. But the "electrical retort" patented by Hilliary Eldridge, Daniel J. Clark and Sylvian Blum on April 26 1898 is still a fascinating device.



It presents a method of "manufacturing hydrogen gas from water to be utilized as a fuel for heating purposes", as the scientists put it. The retort uses carbon electrodes, which are slowly consumed by the electrolysis process, producing COH2. This gas, a combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, burns very cleany in air, generating little or no pollution. You could run an internal combustion engine on this stuff and feel happy that you weren't destroying the environment.

Here, a french researcher called JL Naudin, shows you how to built your own electrical retort from a plastic bottle and a couple of carbon rods.

According to Naudin's experiments, combustible gas is produced when 35 Volts at 10 amps are applied. The Eldridge patent suggests using a steam engine and a dynamo to provide the necessary 350W. It's just a shame they didn't have 200W solar panels back in 1898. They might have been able to make all the "hydrogen gas from water to be utilized as a fuel for heating purposes" they could use, weather permitting.

Hypothetical situations which might be turned into a short story one day (but probably not by me)

1 -- How somebody might cheat at online poker...

Online casinos often run promotions to encourage new players to sign up with them. Adam notices that one of them is offering a $300 bonus to players who deposit $100 of their own. He thinks it sounds too good to be true. What's to stop him from joining the casino, then just withdrawing the extra cash? Well, he reads the small print and notices a proviso...

He can use the $300 in games, but the casino won't let him withdraw it until he has gambled the full amount 20 times. So to claim his "free" $300, he'd have to gamble $6000. Risky?

Adam persuades nine of his buddies to sign up too. They each receive a $300 bonus from the casino. These ten guys join to the same online table at the same time (taking up all the seats, so no strangers can interfere.) They each bring their $300 bonus to the game.

Everyone bets $150 on the first hand. Adam wins $1500 when the other players all decide to fold.
Everyone bets $150 on the second hand. This time, Zed wins $1500 when the others decide to fold.

Now only Adam and Zed remain in the game. They each have $1500.

Adam bets $750. Zed calls. Adam folds at the flop. Zed wins.
Zed bets $750. Adam calls. Zed folds at the flop. Adam wins.

After eight hands, Adam and Zed have each gambled a total of $6150. They withdraw their $1500 winnings, plus their original $100. The other players all withdraw their own $100. Adam's gang has made a $3000 profit in less than half an hour. They have a party.

2 -- How somebody might smuggle drugs into the country without being caught...

Homing pigeons with tiny, peck-proof cannisters.

3 -- How somebody might use their car every day, without paying for fuel.

Bob is sick of paying fuel prices. His car could run on vegetable oil, of course, but that's still 25p a litre, and he doesn't want his fuel to congeal on those cold winter mornings.

So he installs a few compressed air tanks instead. The expansion of this air pushes the pistons to move his car. He uses the air pumps at petrol stations to refuel. Sometimes this costs 20p, but mostly he avoids those stations.