Fan mail? No, spam mail

I really thought that I had received my first piece of fan mail when the following dropped through my digital letterbox from JukePop:

annah brown said: Hello good day, i will like to meet you in person, am miss Anna, am from France and am leaving in London, please contact me on my email id at (annh1brown@hotmail.com), for more information about me. because i have some important thing i will like to discuss with you privately. Hope to hear from you soon. Anna, thanks

Well, much as I like being liked, my first instinct is to carry out some due diligence, a sort of digital version of dogs sniffing each others' arses.  And who would have believed that 'Annah' had emailed a whole slew of JukePoppers with exactly the same message?  Fancy that.  The little hussy.

So, I replied:

Thanks for your message.  Do we meet alone, or with all the other Jukepop authors you've messaged?  Could I suggest you book a function room, perhaps upstairs in a pub?

I thought that would be that, but no, she came back with chapter and verse.

Hello My Dear
How are you today? thanks for contacting me back, i will like to be kind and honest with you, i am a woman that have seen life, i have been in the social circle for many years, although it does not matter one's age, color or achievement, what matters in our life is your kindness to humanity

Dear, i believe that is the most important thing in life, I had been hardworking all my life, i must think of something better, to enjoy my life and probably have a family ,maybe relocate and start investing in other things, Anyway i will like to tell you more about me, My name is Miss Anna Brown, am from France, i was born in France, And i left France at Age of 12 Years to England, which to the glory of God Am working as an Senior Audit/banker in Islamic Bank of Britain Plc United Kingdom, is very painful i lost my only son at age of 4 years,

i was married but my Ex Husband got married to another woman, which caused our divorce, but is ok that is life for you, since he accused me of been so busy due to my bank work activities as accounting/auditing, that i was not having time for him and our son before he passed away, but he refused to understand that i was pursing a goal, i told him that soon i will resign and we will have enough time for each other but he was impatient, although is over between us, I am happy alone because I have everything i need, This is why I think of relocating to another country to get into investment and maybe own a small company which i can be able to manage on my own, Please would you tell me more about yourself too?  I will like to know more about you for me to know if we can achieve this goal together, your marital status and your country of origin
I will be glad to hear from you soon
Yours Faithful Anna 

My faithful Anna?  She can't even be bothered to address it to me, personally.  What about all the other JukePoppers getting similar messages?  The vixen.  Lovely set of photos, though.  Bet they're not of anybody called Anna.  I suspect 'Anna' is a boke with a beard and last week's underpants in an internet cafe in Lagos.  So, I replied:

Fascinating, but doesn't really address the points in my email, does it?

And, eventually, Anna responded unspecifically (isn't the bloke in the sweaty boxers even reading what I write?  This is what really annoys: that he's trying a scam with technology that would have seemed like magic to my grandfather, but can't be bothered to use the diligence and care that my grandparents' generation would have taken as read to make the conversation look genuine.  The only reason I pretended to me nibbling was to see whether he would respond to my points.  If this was about artificial intelligence then I'd be writing about 'the frame problem', but there's a bloke eating crisps in Nigeria at a keyboard involved in this, which should circumvent that old chestnut):

Hello My Dear How are you today?
i must thank you once again for your humble reply to my mail. I really appreciate it so much and i am very happy to read from you, well from your respond I'm convinced that the future has a special place for us, if only we could trust each other and also be honest and faithful to each other as well

Like i told you earlier, i was looking forward to accomplish a particular mission, which my ''ex'' husband was unlucky to achieve with me, I think with the little you have told me about you, it would be very wise to disclose this secret to you and also tell you my aim and plan. Because it would be of mutual benefit to us and maybe you could be the right person to utilize the opportunity with me, because i believe our knowing each other is the way God have destiny it

Remember i told you i am an Auditor of my bank and also the Chief of the International Relation Foreign Remittance Unit. Prior to my position here at my bank, i have the opportunity to loot out some amount of money of a deceased customer, whose autopsy result showed that he died as a result of gun shorts by unknown gunmen. As i was her personal accountant officer, before he died and from the account opening records, he did not indicate anybody as his beneficiary next of kin. Since 2008 to date, nobody has come forward as his beneficiary next of kin to administer the fund. The amount in question is the total sum of $9,500,000. (Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand USD).

I can provide all the required legal papers from the British Court to present you as the legal beneficiary to these funds if you would accept to partner with me in this deal. A lot of abandoned money lay around in this bank as a result of abandoned bank accounts, stock holdings, unclaimed life insurance pay-outs and forgotten pension benefits. I will definitely give you comprehensive details on how we would achieve this legally, without going against the laws of the country. Once you reply to me indicating your interest to work with me. I have worked with the bank for several years and have taken time to study the British inheritance claims procedures. I would appreciate it if you would treat this issue with every bit of confidentiality and maturity, putting my integrity foremost, because i wouldn't need any mistakes or regrets. I assure you that you will never regret it if you would take the bold step to partner with me in this deal. It would be wise if
we make every effort not to loose this golden opportunity. This happens in every bank around the world, even in your own country, but people outside the banking industry do not know this.

The fund will be shared at the ratio of 58% for me, 40% for you and 2% will be set aside to cover any expenses and tax in your bank, We will use the fund there in your country to build companies and for investment which both of us would manage, Please this is an honest request for you and i. i only plead for you to make this transaction a top secret because we do not have to trust anybody unless you and i alone.

Please treat this business proposal with utmost confidentiality and send me the following Information(s) for further application for this transfer if you are interested.

1. Full Name,
2. Address
2. Identification copy
3.Nationality

Thanks and best regards
Yours Faithful Annh Brown

Bored now.  Game over.

The space race

Or, possibly, claymation masturbation.  Either way, it's all poetry.

I've been invited to take part in an email poetry exchange, for which I have to summon up twenty friends.  Well, my email address book is packed with acquaintances, business contacts, addresses beginning 'info' or 'help', and so on, but I've struggled to find twenty email-able friends for whom poetry doesn't involve a marker pen and a toilet wall.  I know it's essentially a chain letter thing, which sit in one of Dante's circles of Hell somewhere between avarice and Donald Trump, but, hey, it's poetry...

So I'm throwing this open to the planet.

Simply send out an email with the subject line 'Poetry Exchange', following the instructions below - as if the text in bold were the email you've received:

Dear friends,

 

I'm involved in a collective, constructive, and hopefully uplifting poetry exchange.

It's a one-time thing and I hope you would like to participate. 

We have picked those we think would be willing and make it fun.

 

Please send a poem to the person whose name is in position 1 below (even if you don't know him or her). It should be a favourite text/verse/ meditation/quote. 

 

Don't agonise over it…

1. Richard Earl

richardjearl@gmail.com

2. Robert Bagnall

robertcbagnall@gmail.com

After you've sent the short poem/verse/quote/etc. to the person in position 1, and only that person, copy this letter into a new email.

Move my name to position 1, and put your name in position 2 . Only my name and your name should show in the new email. Send it to 20 friends BCC (blind copy). 

 

If you cannot do this in five days, let us know so it will be fair to those participating.  Seldom does anyone drop out because we all need new pleasures. The turnaround is fast, as there are only two names on the list, and you only have to do it once. How nice to receive a load of poetry on a dreary weekday morning!

Enjoy

Robert xx

Big in Japan - not

Looking at who's looking at me (very postmodern), could somebody tell me why, in the last 48 hours, my blog is suddenly big (relative to its popularity worldwide, which is not very much) in Israel?  Not that it's not great to have you guys along...

(You've managed to push Ukraine down into sixth place, by the way)

Take comfort: they've only got our eyes and ears

Stumbled across this delicious nugget in a review of a biography of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown: "Fashion moved on briefly to the picturesque - a dark wood, a tangled briar, an artificial ruin - but it didn't last: the sublime could only work if it were a real gorge or tumbling waterfall, decreed the tastemakers."

You know those bits in CGI-heavy movies, where the producers try too hard, thinking more-is-more?  That's exactly what they were saying, back in the late 1700s.  You can't fake it: the audience are too intelligent.  There's something innate that makes us bridle, whether it's at an unnaturally natural landscape or one explosion too many at the local World-of-Cine.

Which got me thinking: the film-makers have only got our eyes and ears (and nasal passages and subcuticle nerve endings for those novelty 4-D shows).  And, with those, they're aiming for an emotional impact.  It's a bit like traditional horticulture - hope you've thrown the right rootstock and shrub together to bring the best of the two plants' characteristics together.  But it's essentially trial and error.

Except now we have GMO (which I'm all in favour of) - rather than guess, spot the fundamentals of the plant that give disease-resistance and high-yield and bring them together, minimising the chances of unforeseen consequences.  Pick from a menu with your eyes wide open, rather than play blind man's buff in the hope that you haven't gone for red wine with fish.

What if film-makers could do the same?  Rather than hope the auditory and visual inputs brought the desired emotional outputs, what if they could plug directly into the neurotransmitters (as a sci-fi writer, you'll note that the hokum level in my terminology is rising) that make us laugh and cry.  Saying that 'The end of Casablanca always makes me weep' may eventually turn out to be literally true...

Or will great writing always prevail, and a weak script still be seen for what it is?  Will the audience still see through the smoke and mirrors?  I truly hope so.

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In other news, Fuzzy Hedgehog Press have picked up my story 'Where do all the Accountants Come From' for their forthcoming Beyond the Hedge anthology.  Inspired by a throwaway line in Robert McKee's 'Story' about him wanting to write a screenplay about an ageing bank-robber, my tale veers wildly off-piste to take in the Devil in a Laplacian universe.  Which, I don't think, McKee had in mind... 

Underwhelmed of Devon

Excuse me if I don't get up, but I'm finding the latest, greatest news in physics, the confirmation of gravity waves, a tad, well, underwhelming.

I know I should be excited by the effects of two black holes merging 1.3 billion light years away like neopolitan ice-cream in the sun (okay, neopolitan has three colours, but its the best analogy I can think of off the cuff) but, seriously, if the effect is about the same as a bacteria farting, why bother?

I'm very much of the opinion that science is not helpful to science fiction.  Each discovery may confirm a particular hypothesis, but discounts a potentially large set of ifs, buts and maybes.  By confirming gravity waves as something that affects atoms like, say, me breathing lightly on the Rocky Mountains, we've just made rips in the space-time continuum through which four-dimensional alien matter can pour not just less likely but, somehow, sillier if I were to suggest it.

And rips in the space-time continuum through which four-dimensional alien matter can pour is what I deal in.

However, on a slightly more exciting note, Night Lights: An Anthology of Short Fiction: First Contact, Conspiracy, and Space Opera, in which I have the story Shooting the Messenger is out now from Geminid Press LLC.  Buy! Buy! Buy!

Glad I'm not going mad

Knew I'd seen it somewhere...

Why not a War of the Words?

So, the BBC is planing a glossy new version of War of the Worlds.  (At least, I'm sure that I read that somewhere recently, but Google brings nothing up about it, although they are planning an adaptation of Len Deighton's SS-GB, about which I'm mildly excited).

Still, I'm going to proceed on the basis that I haven't imagined it.  It will, after all, be the 70th anniversary of his death this summer, to be celebrated shortly after by the publication of a sequel to War of the Worlds, the book having gone out of copyright.

But, let's assume the BBC are to produce a new War.  A great piece of writing; that opening monologue, whether read by Richard Burton or Morgan Freeman.  A landmark book.  Wikipedia lists ten films that it's spawned, plus a rash of telly and radio.  And let's not forget the mass hysteria and panic following the Welles radio play in 1938... that never actually happened.

And there's the basis of my issue.  It's been done before.  Over and over.  Good story, although we can debate whether the ending is a deus ex machina or early postmodern irony.  But there are so many new stories out there.  God knows, I'm trying to lever my goods into a crowded marketplace.  There must be at least one decent, filmable story by an untried writer?  Why not have a War of the Words to find a new voice?

The BBC is brilliant at bringing on new talent.  I'm immensely proud of my BBC artist number, garnered for a brief satirical sketch on Weekending some twenty-plus years ago.  I could just walk into Broadcasting House into the open writers' meeting for the show and pitch.  I download the Radio 6 Music Introducing podcast, new music by unsigned bands who just send in their wares.  It's what public service broadcasting is about, people.

It's one of the aspects that makes the BBC brilliant.  So, why so conservative here?  I'm not even sure whether the Wells brand is strong enough these days to make it an economic decision; if anything the choice (if it's really been made and I didn't dream it) smacks slightly of laziness.  I'm not sure that I'll be watching...

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And, talking of levering my goods into a crowded marketplace, PunksWritePoems Press have taken my story Litterpicking on the Moon for their Don't Wait 'til Doomsday anthology.  Which is nice.