Get off the bike

I've noticed a strong correlation between finding time to write (again) and the end of the cycling season, having been at least a week behind watching highlights of the Vuelta on the PVR.  And if you think the Grand Tours have no place in a sci-fi blog, then just consider Alberto Contador's win having broken his leg just a few weeks before.  Put that in a character arc and they'd just laugh at you...

So, let me make this science-y and fiction-y and just a tad controversial by saying that I have no issue whatsoever with drugs in sport.

Yes, you heard.  No issue at all.

Let me explain.  Sport, at a professional, dedicated level, involves living an entirely artificial life.  How you eat and sleep and everything in between is dictated by the demands of sport.  Take diet.  Carefully controlled, carefully managed and not just in the balance between carbs, fat and protein, but supplements too.

Everything that you push into your face - food, pills, whatever - has a physiological effect on you.  Except sweetcorn, that comes out the same, everybody knows that.  So how and why differentiate one from another?  One's a pill and the other's on a plate?  We can bat such presentational matters away simply, science can present one thing in the guise of another quite easily (e.g. here in Britain, horse meat as beef).

No, no, you cry, this is about drugs, chemicals.  But everything is a chemical when looked at at that level.  So what makes these chemicals naughty?

Is it the old chestnut of one being man-made and the other natural?  Why should a supplement derived from a plant be okay but one derived in a lab not?  What if, on a molecular level, they were the same?  We can make aspirin, or get exactly the same stuff from trees.  What then?

What if we could put together chemicals with some Breaking Bad-meets-Minecraft device?  We could then tweak and tweak a molecule from being some benign sugar to being king of the go-faster stripes.  Where's the line that was crossed?  You don't know because there is no hard, fast, objective difference.  Probe and the seemingly black and white distinction becomes a sea of grey as you push the envelope until it falls off the table.

Given everything the elite sportsman does is artificial the only way I see that you could justify banning drugs in sport is if you banned all artificial interventions and chose ordinary people at random to represent their countries.  Rather like the ancient Greek's approach to democracy - 'oi, you, you're a senator, get used to it...'

So much for science-y, where's the fiction-y?  Well, if Charlton Brooker can outline a story in his Guardian column and then, a few years later, bring it to life as the first episode of Black Mirror, although I seem to remember it was Terry Wogan who had to have relations with the pig initially, then so can I.

It's about a cyclist.  He's good, but not great.  On the fringes of a professional team, a domestique.  He's offered drugs.  He refuses, he has high ideals.  But the pressure mounts, to stay in the team he has to give in.  He takes them.  Performance improves, but so does a sense of guilt.  But the team management implore him to keep quiet.  They even seem adept at convincing the authorities.  He shops the team, throws his career away.  But then he finds out that he was taking placebos.  Had he kept quiet he would have been riding clean, but now no team will touch him as somebody who was prepared, even under duress, to ride dirty.

Better than Shakespeare, huh?

Aromatized wine-based drink

Sounds like science-fiction?  No, its already here and available at Lidl.

Remember kids, if we hadn't won the war we'd all be shopping there now and driving VWs.  Err, hold on...

Doctor Who, and possibly Why

I had my first proper look at Malcolm Tucker as the new Doctor last week, albeit in the second episode as my ten-year old decided to unilaterally delete the first episode off our PVR.

Not as sweary as I expected, particularly when the dalek presented him with the perfect opportunity to say something akin to 'a face like Dot Cotton licking piss off a nettle' which, if I ever get to use in context, I'll go to my grave a happy man.  But then, I suppose it's children's telly not politics.

First up, I have something of a problem with the new Doctor Who and have had since Christopher Ecclestone was (mis)cast in the role, to the extent I've probably only seen half a dozen of the twenty-first century version.  It's a problem that I've found hard to pin down.

In part it's down to a suspicion of the gloss and special effects over the creak of the older version.  But I know that's a bit like saying you preferred your football team when they'd scrape a nil-nil draw against Huddersfield rather than after they got bought out by an oil sheik and brought a load of Latin magicians in: just reactionary old codger-isms.

I like to think my issues are more story based.  I remember the stories taking themselves seriously (which probably means they came across as pretentious as well as portentous) rather than being knowingly silly (and is it me or have they got sillier since the last series?).  I liked the four 25 minute episodes ending with cliff hangers rather than one hour long story for the soundbite generation.  Room for more story, rather than room for more stories.  My recollection (and that's all the research I'm basing this on) is that the old Doctor had a tipping point that he had to be taken to to intervene - didn't he even have a rule not to interfere? - which gave a depth to the narrative.

I can see the temptation to ignore that so the Doctor can come out all quips blazing - but then again I can see the temptation for crack.

It's not that it's a children's program and I'm now all grown up - I thought The Sarah Jane Adventures which I watched with the kids generally excellent.  And I'm delighted for its success for the people of Wales where it's practically replaced the coal industry.

There was a moment in hokum which really made me think bout story structure (can you tell I wasn't really wrapped up in what was happening?).  In a very Star Trek landing-party moment (red tops always draw the short straw), in order to get inside the dalek the doctor and chums have to shrink.  There's a machine to do just that.  How fortuitous.

My approach to the story would have been to make the shrinking machine (it had a nice sci-fi name which escapes me now) a point of risk, a tool to be used only when the need to do so outweighs the damage it could do.  A tipping point.  The act one/two break.  Not so much as deus ex machina as deus lying around on the stage just waiting to be asked to intervene.  But, no, the writers just hand the story a resolution before we've had time to dwell on the problem to be solved.

There's a reason why stories have had a beginning, middle and end and why that works and starting in the middle doesn't and this felt straight into act two.

Then again, they're highly paid, successful writers and I'm still pinging stories at SFWA-accredited markets which come back home like pigeons.  Perhaps it's me clinging to old story conventions: no, no, you always leave the bottom button of a waistcoat undone? why? pah! what's that? no waistcoat? no tie?! a pierced nipple?!!

Who knows...

27

In decades to come etymologists - or whoever it is who decides these things - will decree that there are 27 letters in the alphabet, and have been since the dying days of the Twentieth Century.

The 27th is, quite obviously, @.

How does it feel to live in such a maelstrom of history that even the alphabet is being rewritten?  Our children's children's children will look back and wonder at this most incredible age.  Whereas we, in the eye of the hurricane, are probably more concerned with getting the bins out in time...

Some thoughts on time travel

No, nothing to do with killing your grandfather or sleeping with your grandmother...

This is a meme that's been at the back of my mind for some time now, but it was brought to the fore when, having moved to a new town, I gave our ten-year old a map and asked him to plan a walking route.

Not that he did badly; there's a lot of arcane symbolism on an A to Z if you're a ten-year old, although I would have thought going around one, not two, sides of a triangle would have been intuitive.

No, it was a large foldy piece of paper in the hands of a digital native.  Because he will grow up with a device, not a physical unwieldy map, in his hands.  And a device that translates and advises to boot.  And tells him where he is without having to look up a road name and then cross reference column and row and stare into the detail of a medieval streetplan, or line up churches, copses and hilltops on both paper and in reality.

Because they are all burdens which will be taken off his shoulders; necessitating skills, like hunting bison with sticks, which will become redundant.  His life will be easier than ours, particularly when we have connectivity up Everest and on the streets of El Dorado.

But - and this is where I don't know whether I'm being a seer or a fool - this is where I have a problem. Because challenges beget skills and abilities.  And without challenges we need be little more than Cartesian brains in jars.

Our generation learnt to read maps and then use maps.  His generation will simply be told where to go. There's a difference.  Our generation had the 'why learn maths when I can learn to use a calculator' question; his will ask 'why learn to do anything?'.  I genuinely wonder why we continually challenge him to improve his handwriting when he'll type virtually everything.

I've long thought that if and when the balloon goes up - let's say that sci-fi chestnut of the electromagnetic pulse that knocks over any silicon-based technology - that any fourteenth century youth would survive far longer than one from my generation.  He'd be able to catch, kill and cook his own dinner.  Mine would be looking for the tin opener and matches.  But my ten-year old's would be looking for the Ocado van and the fire-making app.

However, it's only just occurred to me that this process is on-going.  As technologies replace challenges (like the word processing package built into this blogger that takes the pressure off my being able to spell) our raw abilities erode.  And it's still going on.

So what of the future?  TV dinners mean some can't-cook-won't -cook; will food synthesis make it a completely lost art?  Anti-gravity will mean we'll never have to lift anything heavier than a finger ever again.  And then soon we won't be able to at all.  Communication by thought will destroy the art of conversation.  Robot cars will mean nobody can take the wheel when the machines go bad.  And so on...

But I know what you're thinking; can I cast any positives into this gloom?  Well, how about cryo-technology?  Because somewhere out there in this deskilled future may lie the last analogue native, deep frozen, probably thawing automatically, ready to explain to mankind what happens when nothing happens when you press a button.

Assuming somebody has the skills to revive him, that is...

Cosmic (dog) Egg

It is with great pleasure that I can announce that I've been offered a book contract for my sci-fi novel 2084, previously subtitled The Meschera Bandwidth which gives this blog its web address.

And it is with greater pleasure that I can say that it took me about ten minutes and no legal advice whatsoever to turn it down.

The lucky recipient of my decision was Cosmic Egg, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing.  As for my reasons, let me simply quote the feedback I left on their site (everything is done by logging into a database; even the contract offer email was unsigned and came from a no-reply address which rather gives an insight into their style):

Exploitative terms which do not suggest any desire on your part to develop a long-term mutually beneficial relationship

It wasn't so much that they wanted money to publish it - over £2000 - although I have a personal rule not to pay for publication; backing by a publisher, to me, represents independent verification of the quality of the raw material.  No, it was the fact that they would retain the rights, i.e. own the book, for the duration of copyright which, correct me if I'm wrong, would mean they would have it until 50 - or is it 75 now? - years after I'm dead.

But let's go back to the money question.  What other industry other than the arts makes the producers of the raw material pay for it to be processed?  No, really, think about it.  Name one.  I can't.

Actually, I have some sympathy for publishers and can understand why they'd wish to pass some of the business risk back to the author, particularly of niche products (which a sci-fi novel called 2084 isn't intended to be).  They'd argue that it is the information revolution, which has allowed me to submit to, and decline a contract from, Cosmic Egg with such ease that has flooded the market with product.  How do you get a new book by an unknown author noticed under those circumstances?

But my sympathy stops when a publisher wants me to pay for them to take a story off me for my lifetime plus most of my children's.

But maybe publishing is at a bleeding edge here?  What deal will farmers get when we can synthesise our own food?  What deal will anybody get when we have universal 3D printing with (to use Peter F Hamilton's term) 'raw' that can be turned into anything from aircraft engines to underwear?

The answer is simple: farmers will stop trying to sell foodstuffs at a loss, and the aeroengine and panties makers will adopt the new technology.  Only authors keep writing stories when the world has more books in it that anybody can read in a lifetime.  And under those circumstances is it any surprise they're increasingly being asked to pay to publish?

So, why do we do it?  Well, to paraphrase Louis Armstrong, if you've gotta ask you ain't never gonna know...

The Off-Net

Last time I mused on some fairly obvious future inventions.  I did try to spin the in-ear translator into a storyline involving the 2065 peace negotiations between the Taliban and the west, but I kept coming back to gremlins translating innocent phrases into pork products, and given Daily Science Fiction put a parental warning sticker on my last story over a fairly lame bit of slang I didn't see it having legs...

I'll add a couple of culinary items to the list.  Firstly, the microwaveable tin can.  I'd pay the premium.  Secondly, genuinely hob to table cookware - a pan with a lid that acts like a sieve to drain my pasta but still seals when I want it to, and a body that can take a flame but I can also eat out of; non-stick even when I've gouged it with my knife.  If you want to have a go inventing that remember to send me my 10%...

But this posting wasn't intended to be about reinventing the kitchen, although co-incidentally Radcliffe and Maconie were musing on the possibility of cubic peas on 6Music yesterday.  I thought I'd predict a black swan that is, possibly, already happening.

The rise of The Off-Net.

We all know people who aren't online because of circumstances, lack of confidence, lack of knowledge, or plain old inertia.  They probably make up most of the planet.  Here I'm positing another group, a blink-and-you-miss it demographic - those who actively refuse to take part in the Information Age.  Those who have opted-out.  The Digital Amish.

And opting-out is an activity.  It's like sitting in a leaky boat trying to stop data escaping.  Actually, a better analogy may be like trying to stop water evaporating, with the rise of CCTV snapping your face daily.  Just sitting still may be being recorded somewhere, somehow.

It's hardly surprising some will take minimising their digital footprint to an extreme.  We hear a lot about the dark side of the net, whether it be child abuse, personal data wriggling loose, or active snooping on us by governments.  We probably don't know the half of it.  I'm not the first person who gives a digital shrug to most of it which, when you think about it, is an odd response.  It's like we've all been conditioned to, well, not give a monkey's.  Conditioned?  Mentally poisoned, possibly...

But I know there are people out there who take it seriously.  I'd say too seriously but, hey, I'm one of the ones who have already been got.  They're Donald Sutherland and I'm Jeff Goldblum, or possibly Veronica Cartwright (hmm...).  They're the people who used to wear tinfoil hats but have got more subtle since the 60s.  They're the Off-Net.

I included the Off-Net in a story, They Hide in Plain Sight, yet to be sold.  In this, in the 22nd century, they're space hippies brought together by word of mouth to worship a new messiah.  Not sure it's the most coherent piece I've ever written but, hey, is all of PK Dick's oeuvre?  But those are the successors to today's Off-Net, some of whom may still have their parents' tinfoil hats as heirlooms.  Who knows who they are or what they're doing today.  All I know is that they won't be reading this...