Damnation for Beginners

I forgot to mention that my Subterranean novella "Damnation for Beginners" has received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly. So I'm mentioning it now. http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-59606-439-3

Prometheus

This film has split people. Either you love it or hate it. I'm firmly in the "love it" camp. What they could have done is this: "Bunch of characters unwittingly awaken an alien, which then kills them one by by one until the last character kills the alien in some final battle." In other words, they could have made it exactly the same as all the other Alien films.

Thankfully, they did something different. I don't want to drop any spoilers here, but the real horror in this film is not something bursting out of a chest, but rather the moment in the film when you realise why these alien giants created us and why the human race is going to have to die. Great concepts. I also loved Cthulhu and the frantic surgery the black supermutator catalyst gloop. And I loved the look of the film. So creepy. It's eerily similar to a place I've written about in my latest book. Also, Michael Fassbender was excellent. And so was Noomi thingy. And I love the irony in the final scenes and that the title works on multiple levels.

Some people over on IMDB have complained about certain flaws in the story. Notably - our protagonists just happen to stumble upon the alien base very quickly, and that as scientists they shouldn't have removed their helmets even if the air was safe. Well, yeah. But this is a story. The helmets come off so you can see the actors' faces, which allows them to act. Even these new see through plastic bubbles still create a barrier between you and the actor. And finding the base so quickly? As opposed to what? Flying round the surface for several days, mapping and taking readings? I don't want to spend four days in the cinema watching that. It's like the point William Goldman makes about unrealistic things that always happen in films - one of which is that a character can always park outside of a building he is visiting. In real life, Mel Gibson would drive around for 45 mins trying and failing to find a goddamn space for his Ferrari. But who wants to watch that? So - he gets there, parks, on we go. They get the planet, here's the base, on we go. If dreary realism is more important than story then turn off your TV and watch a blank screen for two hours. That's as real as it gets.

I did wonder why Michael Fassbender's character wears a helmet outside. Maybe they'd filmed him without a helmet initially, discovered that it spoiled the fantasy of a poisonous atmosphere, then rescripted it to give him a reason to wear it? And I smiled when, near the start of the film, they point out that one whole section is a self contained lifeboat. Whenever someone says something like that, you know the main ship is going to be destroyed. Was that a spoiler? Not really.

So the story's not perfect. Which story is? I think it's damn fine, an order of magnitude better than the previous Alien films, which is what it needed to be. Alien one and two were both great, but there comes a time when you have to move on. And that black gloop has opened up a whole new Pandora's box of possibilities.

That Endless dark, That Endless Grey Gloom. The Horror, The Horror.

If you've ever wondered what it might be like to survive after a megavolcano eruption blankets the skies in dense grey miserable ash that smothers the sun and lasts for what seems like an eternity, and brings with it an endless deluge of grey rainwater that softens everything and turns grass to mud and rots plants and leaves you desperately yearning for just one glimpse of sunlight, then simply visit Scotland in summer.

The Olympics

Olympic fever has gripped some part of the nation. I'm not sure fever is the right word. Malaise is probably a better one. I don't get it myself. The Olympic Games are essentially a jumping competition. People get together to see who can jump the highest. Part of it is also a running competition, where we discover who can run between two points slightly faster than the others. And then there's "who can throw something the furthest". So at the end of it, we will determine who is slightly quicker or stronger than the others on that day. And then everyone goes home. Thus heroes are made.

Heroes.

Heroes is a word that's misused when referring to athletes. The media uses it all the time. It can mean someone with great courage or someone who fights for a cause. Someone who triumphs over adversity. I think it means someone who makes a great sacrifice for others. It's used correctly when we talk about our soldiers. But please don't use it to describe someone who is good at playing, which is what sport is. All competitive sport is play fighting. Play fighting is practice fighting. And fighting is about asserting your dominance, which is about sex.

So the Olympic Games is a worldwide chest thumping confrontation driven by sex. The winner of the jumping competition (or the throwing a stick the farthest contest, or whatever the particular area of play it happens to be) comes from my tribe, my country, then I can celebrate because it means that my country is better than your country. Which means we can beat you up and take all your women any time we want to. Which means your women should come over here and breed with us.