Life of Andrew » Culture

Book Review : The Man Who Invented the Daleks, The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation

Andrew — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:51:44 +0000

The Man Who Invented the Daleks, The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation by Alwyn W. Turner

Terry Nation casts a long shadow over British television, although only in very particular corners. His main claim to fame (and riches due to canny licensing deals) is that he wrote the first Dalek story for the then new Doctor Who but his career stretches over many decades. Starting out as a comedy writer, he eventually made the switch to drama in the early 60s and never looked back. The list of shows he wrote for reads like a perfect rainy Saturday afternoon’s viewing: The Saint, The Avengers, Doctor Who, and Blake’s Seven, plus all sorts of other thick slices of cheese on toast. One of the last things he did was Macgyver, back when it was good.

This biography is a bit of a strange beast. It is incredibly detailed in some respects, going over each show (and sometimes individual episodes) with the kind of meticulous scrupulousness that only the British can muster.

On the other hand, Nation was a man who entered his chosen profession early, worked hard, made some contacts, and found success pretty early on. An admirable way to live your life perhaps, but not much to hang a great biography on. His childhood is covered in a few pages, somewhere along the way he acquires a wife. His first born child gets a brief mention, but only because Nation wrote a popular children’s book for her. His other child only appears for a sentence or two. There are no serious setbacks along the way, no lost loves, no professional rivals. Just page after page of Nation churning out stories.

And churn them out he could. Almost all his colleagues were in awe at the speed at which he wrote (his secret was never doing second drafts) and the consistent quality of his scripts (his secret was to have a lot of stock scenes that he could “recycle”).

In fact, this biography is a testament the Nation’s approach; like his serials each episode in the book is entertaining but the whole thing is a bit same-y if you consume the whole thing in one go. You don’t even get a chase through dimly lit corridors or a bomb to liven up the plot.

Only recommended if you really like this sort of thing.

Book Review : Two Non-Fiction Books on Destruction

Andrew — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:20:50 +0000

The Wizard of Lies By Diana B. Henriques

A relatively recent book on the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, including information straight from the man himself. I got this hoping for an exciting and twisty crime story about a master criminal, but it turns out the Madoff’s scheme was stupidly simple – he lied about some stuff and keep lying. He wasn’t even very clever about it, but somehow managed to keep the house of cards upright for decades.

Henriques’ book covers a huge amount of ground – going back to Madoff’s childhood upbringing to his peak as a pillar of the New York community. A huge amount of research has been distilled into a very readable story – just about everyone who ever met Madoff seems to have been interviewed, and enough time has passed that the full effects of the scam have been revealed. I just wish that the crime was more ingenious.

Recommended if you like this sort of thing

Death From the Skies! By Philip Plait

Plait runs the popular Bad Astronomy blog which is far more interesting than it has any right to be, this book is even better. There are many books that seek to explain the wonders of the universe in an entertaining way, but Death From the Skies! is the only one that takes the “How could this kill us all” approach. From supernovas to comets, Plait runs down the numbers and details exactly what would happen to the Earth should such misfortune strike (spoiler: it doesn’t look good).

Plait clearly explains the concepts behind familiar astronomical terms and breaks down the magnitude (usually way to large large) and probability (usually not small enough) of each occurrence. It’s all very entertaining, but not something you want to read straight before going to sleep.

Highly recommended

Book Review : Cryptic and Oceanic – Two SciFi Short Story Collections

Andrew — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:12:54 +0000

Cryptic : The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

A mammoth collection of scifi short stories by the prolific Jack McDevitt. McDevitt has an old-fashioned manner and his stories remind me strongly of the tales from the 50s and 60s that I grew up reading – this is not a bad thing.

Not every story is a corker, but most are good and some are downright excellent. My one complaint is that they tend to be rather constant in tone and style, I finished the book yesterday and the stories are all starting to blend together in my head.

Recommended if you like this sort of thing

Oceanic By Greg Egan

Another collection of Scifi short stories, this time by Greg Egan. Egan is a programmer, and his stories are hard-as-diamond tales of artificial life, strange physical frontiers behind every atom, and clear-eyed researchers heroically hunched over keyboards in darkened rooms. Great stuff, and this collection really shows his ferocious imagination and range as a writer. The title story (full text here) in particular is a very well done piece that packs a lot of depth into a few pages.

Highly recommended

Reading Old Books

Andrew — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:54:35 +0000

I have been going through a phase of reading old, out-of-copyright books – partly because I find it fascinating to see how various literary forms evolved over time, partly because if you go back far enough the books read like science-fiction – alien concepts and strange customs abound, partly because it allows me to affect an air of being well read, but mostly because you can download them for free from Project Gutenberg and I am a cheap bastard.

A Voyage to the South Sea by William Bligh

A while ago I read The Bounty by Caroline Alexander, a modern account of Captain Bligh’s famous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons expedition to Tahiti aboard The Bounty. It focused mainly on what happened after everyone got home again. This book is the tale told by the man himself, compiled by Bligh from his logs kept during the voyage and it is a fascinating read. Even if there wasn’t a (spoiler alert!) mutiny, it would make for a cracking story as Bligh has an eye for both nautical detail during the voyage and a keen interest in how Tahitian society (very different to the English system) worked after The Bounty arrives.

And breadfruit, the dude was obsessed with breadfruit.

Once the mutiny occurs, the story turns into an epic struggle of survival as Bligh and his few remaining crew find that people treat you differently when you turn up on their island without a fully armed three-masted collier anchored just outside their reef.

It is a real pleasure to drop into the world of a competent person doing an interesting job. Since it is taken directly from his meticulous logs there is a charming matter-of-fact style as things unfold without foreshadowing or subplots. The one problem for a modern reader is that it is almost impossible to avoid hearing the text being read in James T. Kirk’s Captain’s Log voice; the style is exactly the same.

A Journey of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

This early novel in the form of a diary purports to be a day-to-day account of the life of a young London man during the 1665 outbreak of the black plague as people were dying in their thousands. Defoe did actually live through the plague but he was only 5 at the time, so the story is fictionalized but obviously carefully researched. Defoe uses the experiences of the narrator to highlight how various aspects of society (the rich, the poor, etc) reacted to the plague, maintaining a detached tone while horrible things are occurring on all sides. The thing that struck me the most was the general atmosphere of resigned bewilderment that permeates the book – nobody in pre-germ theory London really understands what is going on but society continues on as best as it can while people are dropping dead and whole streets worth of houses are empty or contain only corpses.

After reading lots of disaster fiction (The Day of the Triffids, Dawn of the Dead, etc) I was heartened to see that people do not automatically devolve into angry, paranoid mobs during a real life events that kill a large percentage of the population, although plenty of isolated complete bastardry apparently will occur.

The Battle of the Safes, or, British Invincibles Versus Yankee Ironclads by George Augustus Sala

And now for something completely different. During the Paris Exhibition of 1867 a public relations spat broke out between a British firm of safe makers and an upstart American firm as to who made the safest safes. This was apparently a big deal in an age when people kept large amounts of cash on hand.

The American firm challenged the British to a public demonstration where each firm nominated a crack team to break into the other’s safe in the shortest possible time. Everything should be simple but the Americans (boo-hiss) keep changing the rules in their favour. Eventually the contest comes to an unsatisfying conclusion but everyone can see that the British (yeay!) have scored a great moral victory.

This is a short, enjoyable, one-sided account of an inconsequential event, filled with all kinds of intrigue and skullduggery. Nothing really gets resolved but it doesn’t matter unless you are really into safes (and the illustrations are great.)

Foo Fighters

Andrew — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:45:03 +0000

I unexpectedly went to the Foo Fighters concert yesterday.

Click to enlarge

Unexpectedly because I wasn’t planning on going, but a friend had to pull out and I bought her ticket. That was also unexpected, because I don’t really dig the Foo Fighters.

I mean, I think they are OK. Acceptable. Competent. But lacking in that spark that I look for in a rock band.

The weather was not good, it had rained all afternoon and Western Springs Raceway was already soggy when we turned up so we staked a spot on the terraces and watched the support acts. We missed local heroes, Cairo Knife Fight, a band I know nothing about except that bFM name checks them constantly but never actually plays their tracks.

The second support act was Fucked Up – a canadian punk/death metal outfit who should have been terrible but come over very well. The lead singer left the stage and spent most of the set wandering around the crowd hugging people and occasionally drinking their beer between verses.

Next came the highlight of the evening for me – Tenacious D. For a joke band they did a tight set and Jack Black is genuinely funny on stage.

Finally, the Foo Fighters. Although they are not my favorite band, you have to respect a group that are prepared to play for almost 3 hours, even if 20 minutes of that was Dave Grohl nattering to the crowd. They played all their hits (after 17 years they have had quite a few) and seemed pleased to be here. The crowd loved it and even the rain let off to let them play. I can understand why Grohl is so popular, he comes across as a sincere and decent person. In my book that is a strike against him as a rocker, but I seem to be outnumbered.

Despite the rain I had a great time at the Foo Fighters. Not enough to buy their music, but I certainly got my money’s worth.

No related posts.

Stuff from my Old Hard Drive

Andrew — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:14:47 +0000

I don’t usually keep a lot of files around. When I get a new computer I don’t tend to copy all my documents across – anything I haven’t looked at for a couple of months is probably not worth the fraction of a millimetre it takes up on the platter. On the other hand, some things I can never bring myself to delete. Here is something I rediscovered the other day:

This is one of the first MODs I wrote back on the Amiga. I never had a sampler or a very large collection of instruments, but I loved mucking around with MED trying to get a pleasant sound out of the 4 channel 8-bit sound. It is often said that there is a lot of crossover between programming and music, and the soundtracker clones of the 90s made that explicit which is possibly why I enjoyed it so much. Now days I can fire up GarageBand any time I want with any number of sampled instruments. I could say that I regret not having the time to produce music as an adult but the truth is that the inspiration isn’t there any more – my interests have moved in other directions.

Although none of my MODs ever sounded anything like as good as the music from the games and demos of the time, I am still pretty pleased with this one. It must date from form 6 (I was 16) which makes it vintage 1991. Listen to the sound of 20 years ago…

You browser does not support the tag, but you can still download the music from the links below.

Jungle Drums MP3
Jungle Drums OGG

Replacing a MacBook Hard Drive

Book Review : House of Leaves

Andrew — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:21:02 +0000

House of Leaves By Mark Z. Danielewski

A young man named Johnny comes into possession of a large cache of papers written (or dictated) by a elderly, blind and recently deceased man. The papers make up a nearly complete book, and Johnny devotes his live to putting it all in order. The book the old man was writing is an analysis of a film, The Navidson Record, a documentary about the strange goings on in a family home that is much, much bigger on the inside than its exterior walls can possibly encompass.

Most of the text of House of Leaves is from the old man describing the film (which, being blind, he has never seen) and adding his ridiculously footnoted academic criticism over the top. Despite being fascinated, Johnny, as self appointed editor, feels free to add his own rather more sarcastic and down-to-earth commentary on the plot, as well as long passages documenting events in his own life. Compiling the old man’s notes is taking a toil on Johnny’s mental state, and his additions get more disjointed and alarming.

House of Leaves is a hard book to pin down. The story within a story that The Navidson Record supposedly tells is a fairly standard horror tale of a spooky house, but it is filtered through at least 3 unreliable narrators before we find out anything. Johnny points out that many of the old man’s references are completely made up, and the film possibly never existed. But Johnny himself admits to the reader that he is an expert liar and occasionally adjusts the text. The appendix is filled with “supporting documents” that obscure things every further.

The format of the book itself is worked into the story. Like the house, the interior of the book is slightly too large for the cover. During the more weird passages the flow of text breaks up as paragraphs flow at weird angles or jump across pages at speed. Parts of the text are struck out (Johnny explains that the old man deliberately blotted out some pages with ink) leaving us to guess at the contents.

Parts of the book are incredibly funny, excellently parodying dry academic criticism. The plot of The Navidson Record itself is suitably creepy. Johnny’s tale of woe is a very dated I-take-drugs-and-fuck-a-lot-of-strippers-but-I-really-don’t-enjoy-it first-person narrative that just screams 90s fiction, but the fact that he is probably lying to the reader about much of it makes it a little more interesting. If nothing else, House of Leaves adds a little mystery into what can be a very obvious genre.

Recommended, I think

Book Review – Marooned In Realtime

Andrew — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:46:29 +0000

Marooned In Realtime By Vernor Vinge

Sometime in the near future humanity invents the “bobble”, a device that generates a perfect stasis field, time does not pass inside at all. Totally impervious, Bobbies can be used as weapons, shielding, long-term storage, or as a one-way time machine into the future. Far into the future in an unpopulated Earth, a small collection of people who (for various reasons) have bobbled for immense amounts of time decide to collectively bobble again for 50 million years.

But one person is left behind, forcibly unable to bobble, effectively murdered as she lives out her natural life while every other living human is in stasis. 50 million years later, the others immediately realise that they have a murderer in their midst. Can old-school detective Wil Brierson crack the case?

Marooned in Realtime attempts that most tricky of feats – the hard science fiction murder mystery, and it comes pretty close to succeeding. The rules of the game (how the bobbles work, the various motivations and personal histories of the suspects, etc) are well laid out and the book never feels dull, almost an action thriller rather than a detective story.

I completely missed the clues that pointed to the murder, the solution hinges on a rather subtle point. But by that stage it didn’t matter because the story has widened in unexpected ways as the full implications of what the characters have discovered about the world and each other becomes clearer. Mystery, action, spaceships, aquatic monkeys, evolved dogs, what more do you people want?

Highly recommended if you like this sort of thing.

Brandy in a Rifle Bottle

Andrew — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:24:15 +0000

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I have always thought that you can judge a drink by its bottle. The fancier the bottle the more wretched the drink seems to be a good rule to live by.

I don’t know anything about brandy and it might be fantastic, but I am going to avoid this one:

(sorry about the picture, it is not actually that colour)

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Game Review – GoatUp

Andrew — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:20:31 +0000

Jeff Minter, with his alter-ego/software company, Llamasoft, has been creating ungulate related games for as long as I can remember. On the Amiga games like Llamatron and Attack of the Mutant Camels were ridiculously over the top arcade perfection, with retro (even then) graphics, lofi sound, and pixel perfect controls. GoatUp is a fine addition to Minter’s metaphorical stable (as opposed to the real stable he probably owns.)

In GoatUp, you control an incredibly nimble and fertile nanny goat who must jump from platform to platform to climb an impossibly tall tower into the sky, picking up bonus items and powerups along the way. Every so often you will meet a billy goat, kissing billy goats gives you more points and also causes you to get pregnant. After a while you instantaneously give birth to a kid that follows you around, if you survive long enough you can get a long chain of offspring trailing behind you. This is useful for defeating enemies, but disturbing if you stop to think about it. Luckily, there is no time to think – you must always be climbing and the game is hard, hard, hard.

The old games lived by their control schemes and GoatUp provides several. The only one that really works well is moving via tilting left or right, and jumping with a touch. You can tell that some thought has been put into the controls, and they work much better than the tilt controls in other games. Speaking of old games, GoatUp’s graphics are deliberately designed to look like various games from the 80′s, some pretty obscure. Part of the fun is trying to remember the particular game that is being invoked.

Recommended if you like this sort of thing.