The sign of 'the penguins'

A fun afternoon in Greenwich, first to be grilled for a forthcoming podcast about some things what I have writ, and then to a special preview of the newly reopened Caird library at the Maritime Museum.

Whereas once the museum's vast wealth of records on the history of ships, pirates, migration and cool space stuff was housed down the road in Kidbrooke, it's now neatly packed into 9 kilometres of shelves at the museum, which I got to poke my nose round. The chief appeal will be to maritime researchers and those tracking family history (and there's a digitisation project going on at the moment).

But for the casual, nerdy passerby there was plenty to excite, if you have the sense and sophistication to be excited by weird old books. There's volume after velum-wrapped volume of old maps, complete with dragons and monsters, and a sailcloth bound edition (1779) of William Buchan's Domestic medicine: or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines with an appendix containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners - this copy as used on the Bounty under Bligh.

Of the greatest excitement to me was a copy of Aurora Australis, the book written and published by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1907 over the winter (April to July) of 1908. It's full of drawings, poems and short accounts of the trip by members of the crew such as "Interview with an emperor" (i.e. an emperor penguin). Dork that I am, I thrilled to see ice-berg hyphenated. But the book, the physical object, is a thing of wonder.

The front matter explains that it was "Printed at the sign of 'the penguins'" - beside a neat, square logo - "by Joyce and Wild. Latitude 77°..32' South, Longitude 166°..12' East Antarctica". One of the librarians helpfully told me that this was one of maybe 100 copies produced (the museum holds two copies). That's the print run of some of the small-press stuff I've worked on or reviewed. And they don't compare.

The cover is hard wood - made from a packing case, as the stamp on the inside clearly shows. But it's the quality of the book that's really impressive: good quality lay-out and editing, printed beautifully on a good stock of paper.

So we get an impression of the kind of man that expedition leader Ernest Shackleton might have been in his need to add a second, "Additional preface" with the following caveat:

"But the reader will understand better the difficulty of producing such a book quite up to the mark when he is told that, owing to the low temperature in the hut, the only way to keep the printing ink in a fit state to use was to have a candle burning under the inking plate; so if some pages are printed more lightly than others it is due to the difficulty of regulating the heat, and consequently the thinning or thickening of the ink. Again the printing office was only six feet by seven and had to accommodate a large sewing machine and bunks for two men, so the lack of room was a disadvantage; but I feel that those who see this book will not be captious critics".

Shackleton would later be a member of Captain Scott's ill-fated expedition, while his amazing, old-skool heroism in getting his crew - every one of them - safely back from the Antarctic is featured in this week's Corpse Talk comic strip by Adam Murphy in issue 3 of the Phoenix comic. The books I've mentioned - and a whole bunch more cool stuff - is available on request at the Caird library - subject to the terms and conditions on the website.

No Gary Mitchell

Went to see the new Star Trek this morning and golly it is good. Smart and exciting and often very funny, and I’ll avoid spoilers in what follows.

Jim Kirk is a bit of a tearaway in the Iowa of the future. But his dad was a hero in Star Fleet and he’s encouraged to sign up himself. As he meets some new chums – “Bones” McCoy and a girl whose surname’s Uhura – he’s got to battle the guy who sets his exams, an alien dork name of Spock…

Oh, and then there’s a big battle in space. With a dude called Nero – which is, m’colleague tells me, the Finnish word for “genius”.

I used to really resent Star Trek as the sort of popular, beefy schoolground bully to Doctor Who’s weedy victim. I even wrote my undergraduate dissertation on Star Trek: First Contact and the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie (basically: both try to make a long-running television series accessible to a wider audience by making them darker and more violent, with varying success). In them days I’d argue – a lot – that Doctor Who at least had people running up and down corridors, rather than walking and being pompous. But most of all what I begrudged was Star Trek being really quite good.

(My favourite episode of TNG, which used to scandalise its fans, is that one from the final year where they turned down the lights and turn the regular cast into monsters. Ryker’s a Neanderthal, Howlin’ Mad Murdoch’s a spider, and Worf is some kind of were-buffalo chasing the increasingly gibbonish Picard. It occurs to me now it the episode of Trek that’s probably most like Doctor Who.)

But recently this childhood injustice has been turned about. Voyager and Enterprise seemed – from as much as I could watch of them – to tediously go where no one else has bothered before, with ratings and credibility ejected into space. While Doctor Who, this side of the pond at least, is now all big and much beloved of the cheerleaders.

There’s a small part of me that wants to crow at this reversal. But the heroes of both franchises have a thing about extending a hand to their adversaries. And so not only was I hoping to enjoy the new film, but I even did some research.

“Where No Man Has Gone Before” is the second pilot episode, ignoring the not-broadcast-til-later pilot which didn’t even have Captain Kirk in it. It’s a bold, exciting story in which Kirk’s best mate of 15 years – no, not Spock but the not wholly sci-fi sounding Gary Mitchell – is infected with some kind of space alien something that gives him shiny eyes. Gary starts being able to control stuff with his mind and, since he seems to like causing mayhem, James, er, R. Kirk has to take him down.

There are lots of surprises, even though I thought I knew my Trek. It’s a visually dazzling episode, full of neat effects and coloured costumes. The multiracial crew is really quite radical – Kirk calls the heads of department at one point, who include a woman, an old doctor and Mr Sulu, without it being remarked on. Yet at the same time, Gary Mitchell is surprisingly rude to the blonde psychologist – effectively tugging her pigtails because really he thinks she’s nice.

It’s also odd not to see the expected regulars – Scotty and Spock are there, but no Bones, Chekov or Uhura. (There was some talk about Uhura at a panel at Gallifrey earlier this year and her positive role as a Black person on telly. I love the idea of Dr King slumped in front of Star Trek; and perhaps his wife asking if he couldn’t find anything useful to do…).

Kirk is also surprisingly terse, ready to shoot his pal the moment he’s taken over. He hardly needs Spock to enforce logic – he’s a steely guy in command, as ruthless as Connery’s Bond. Life in Star Fleet is sexy but also obviously dangerous: they seem quite used to losing their comrades. I suppose the production crew and most of the actors would have served in the army, and for all its brightly coloured sense of fun, the Enterprise is a submarine out in uncharted waters.

There’s no Gary Mitchell in the new movie, and there’s no patented ripped shirt for Kirk. And yet I can easily believe the crew in the cinema will grow up to have that more-than 40 year-old adventure. There’s no walking pompously up and down corridors discussing the new political regime of the planet Ng'othruok, either. Trek has damn gone and got its groove back.

I’ll post some more (when the film is out next month and I’ve seen it with Scott) on what it does that’s a bit like Russell’s reboot of Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, my chums Will and Nimbos have both blogged about making “Pressure Valve”, their own sci-fi movie, which they did in 48 hours as part of a Sci-Fi London dare:

This and that and whatever

I seem, touch wood, to have avoided the Dr's icky cold and yet am beset by an infection of my own. She pointed out last week that I keep saying the phrase "this and that and whatever". And since I'm not doing it consciously, I don't know how to stop.

I'm not even sure why this particular phrase has such appeal or even where it comes from - assuming it's been picked up from somewhere. But this blog has been a good place to exorcise the bits of nonsense that rattle round my brain.

Today I have been working on two revised outlines for things as yet unnannounced (I've signed a contract for one of them, the other might not even happen). I've also done a bit of proofing of the Dr's book and been to the gym. Got home before the heavens opened and the cat was freaked by hail.

Lunched with Scott Andrews yesterday who I'd not seen since last year due to our adjacent jettings off around the world. We got to swap notes on what unannounced and uncommissioned projects we both have at the mo and a chance remark - that he was thinking of doing something anyway - gave me the twist I was looking for in one of my outlines today. So hooray for Scott.

Last night, the Dr called me out to Brixton to join her and G. in The Prince. We talked of many things I didn't quite understand (museums and theory and, er, I forget) but my role was to advise G. on what is good in Doctor Who. To my great delight, the Dr was herself able to advise on what might be the Good Stuff. She even listened to Son of the Dragon yesterday, all on her own.

I think I have turned her. Bwah ha ha, etc.

My mates’ scribbling #2

One way not to write is to spend lots of time deciding on names for your characters. Is he a George? Is he an Alan? Does that fit on the shoulders of a bloke who's just invented the warp drive and is, really, a Mim?

Some scribbling buddies pick place-names from maps or borrow surnames from the cast and crew in programme guides. Or you find that their aliens are anagrams of where they've worked. In Dr Who and the Pirate Loop, anyone who isn't Doctor Who or Martha is named after friends-of-mine's kids. (And their parents don't love them if they don't buy them copies.) And in Dr Who and the Time Travellers, it was all about killing my friends.

Because of the wibbly wobbly, timey wimey paradox going on in that book, one pal managed to get himself killed more times than any other. Colonel Scott Andrews is shot, he's strangled, I think he falls down some stairs and there's also a bit where half of him is embedded in a wall.

The real Scott Andrews is, as it happens, one of my scribbling pals. His latest book - and first novel - is School's Out, the third in Abaddon's Afterblight Chronicles, in which a mystery disease wipes out everyone who doesn't have O negative blood. Lee Keegan is just 15 when his mum is one of those to suffer the cull. Alone in a world descending into chaos, Lee heads for his public school. It's a place of weird rules and traditions, and institutionalised bullying - but it can't be any worse than anywhere else. Can it?

As you'd expect, this is a pulpy, violent shocker, a series of increasingly grotesque and bloody incidents. Chapter Ten features a glimpse of my corpse.

"'Still, couldn't they have just, y'know, knocked on the door and said, "hi, we're the neighbours, we baked you a cake?" I mean, there was no reason to come in guns blazing, no reason at all.'

'Look where it got them.'

'Look where it got Guerrier, Belcher, Griffiths and Zayn.'

I had no answer to that.

'I don't want to die like that,' he said eventually.

'If it's a choice of being shot or being bled and eaten, then I'll take a bullet every time, thanks. After all, been there, done that.'

'Yeah, yeah, stop boasting,' he teased, sarcastically. 'By my reckoning you've been shot, stabbed, strangled, hanged and savaged by a mad dog since you came back to school, three of those in the last twenty-four hours.'

'I also shat myself.'

'All right. You win. You are both vastly harder and more pathetic than any of us.'"

Scott Andrews, School's Out, p. 157.

The prose style is straightforward and things are kept moving quickly, which makes for an exciting read. While the pulp format doesn't exactly encourage any great depth, I was impressed by how often Scott muddied the moral waters. The insane tyrant who doles out macabre punishment is given an opportunity to put his case - and, as Lee himself admits, it's almost convincing.

There are also some fun tangents as Lee compares the events he's caught up in to those suffered by the school's other old boys. One particular drastic action is inspired by a former pupil who died in the First World War. This kind of thing helps make this more than just trashy, guilty pleasure.

Perhaps there are a few too many references to films and TV, and the "witty" quips as characters face death and dismemberment aren't as smart or funny as the characters might think. But then my own teens were all risible jokes and endless quotations from Blackadder. Lee is even accused of behaving like he's the hero in an action movie, rather than a spotty adolescent with a rubbish haircut. So it's all part of the point.

Lee narrates the story and we watch him changed by the events he's caught up in. He becomes a killer and learns some nasty truths about what it is to be a leader. The grim tone of the book then comes from him. Even early on, he shows (or recalls) little remorse for the loss of his friends. Scraps of detail show us that he's a snob and a hypocrit - a public-school boy who rants about posh kids. For most of the book he has to hold down fierce anger, and he's quick to judge other people. Yet it's not lost on him that his own mistakes have cost a lot of people their lives.

Lee is, in short, a bit of a dick. And that's what sets him apart from similar, self-reliant and righteous heroes of shocker fiction, such as Richard Hannay or Bill Masen. He also reminded me of Harry Potter's angry tantrums in The Order of the Phoenix - an element of the book kept thankfully to a minimum in the film.

As a result, I didn't ever really warm to him and was unmoved by the horrible things that befell him. Perhaps it would have helped to have had more from the perspective of the school's young matron - a character who's fate we really care for. But that's not to fault the book. It's a well-told, well-structured, inventive and absorbing example of its kind. The problem is that this genre of gritty misery is not entirely to my taste.

So if I'm picking any holes at all it's because I'd have wanted to do things differently. And that is no doubt why Abaddon employed Scott and turned down the five things I sent them. Pah.

Oh, and what a cop-out. The wuss only got to kill me once.

Mile-high film club

Marie Antoinette is a colossal exercise in missing the whole ruddy point.

It looks nice and is stylishly played, but the emphasis of the script is all in the wrong place. We watch Marie leave one sumptuous court for another. She learns posh gossip and how to excite her husband. She dances about in the gardens and goes to some very good parties. And then some yokels turn up and she’s very brave and won't run away.

Since she’s a bit of a free spirit (no, she will go to the party!), there’s a lot of punk music and typeface. This juxtaposition of the contemporary and historical would be pretty revolutionary, if we’d not seen the same thing before. It’s Casanova, it’s A Knight’s Tale, it’s Britney in the End of the World.

But it’s also pretty dim. You have to fundamentally misconstrue history to see Marie Antoinette as a punk. Rather it’s the mob who tear down her glam lifestyle – and we hardly see them at all in the film.

The film entirely fails to deal with why the mob might have grievances. The nearest it gets is to have Marie protest that she never said, “Let them eat cake!” But this is an age of public flayings and the guillotine. The general violence offended both Casanova and de Sade.

By not dealing with that – by consciously not showing it – the film is more perverse than anything those two got up to. The French court was not merely a fatuous bubble of champagne parties: in context it was clearly offensive.

Flushed Away was fun (though not helped by DWM pointing out how the lead rat looks like David Tennant). It lacks the charm of Wallace and Gromit, and that’s not merely for being set down the toilet.

It’s fast-moving and full-of-gags enough to hide a pretty ropey plot about a posh boy falling for a working class girl. Like the singing mice in “Babe”, there are singing slugs to raise a smile whenever things get a bit unfunny. And, as S. said, it’s telling how often the slugs feature. I laughed a lot, but it’s not one to watch again.

The Prestige was probably the best of the lot, about the rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians. Leads Batman and Wolverine were as manly-tough as you’d expect. Bowie had a nice turn as Tesla, and Michael Caine was as effortless as always.

Unfortunately I sussed the various elements of the ending before we were mid-way through. This may have been due to discussing The Time Travellers all weekend, which turns a few of the same tricks. (Well, it does if you can make the cognitive leap that Hugh Jackman is playing Scott Andrews).

It’s clever and deft from the start, with all kinds of nice palming of plot device. But the real trick of magic is not merely the mechanics of the con, but of managing to disguise them. The audience has to be left mystified.