J is For…

It’s not often that my science fiction and fantasy influences stretch to poetry (my literary influences perhaps) but for the letter 'J' I’ll make an exception. I’ve always loved the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. There is something about the playful nature and suggestiveness of the language that I think all science fiction and fantasy writers and readers respond to. I love the way he crafts fantastical creatures and a fairy tale landscape purely out of sounds and letters. At its heart, the poem is a piece of nonsense verse that tells a tale of monster-slaying. The most impressive aspect of the poem is the way that is makes everyone into a fantasy writer. We all create our own versions of the setting and its strange inhabitants – it is open to endless interpretations. There have been film and cartoon versions of the poem and while they are fun, they cannot do justice to the poem because the reader is intended to be intimately involved in the description’s realisation. This was Carroll’s genius. He skilfully constructs the suggestion and then hands the poem over to our imagination. I find myself attempting to employ similar strategies in some elements of my work and believe that it was reading Jabberwocky as a child that probably planted that seed. I reproduce this classic poem here for your enjoyment.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

‘Thunderous’ Applause

I was sad to read of the death of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury earlier in the week. I won’t repeat here a mini biography of Bradbury, suffice to say that he was an early innovator, long-term and stalwart advocate and then elder statesman of the genre. His fiction is well-respected, frequently anthologised and nominated for numerous awards. His passing is a clear loss for science fiction writers (to whom he was an inspiration), science fiction readers (to whom he provided so much entertainment) and culture generally (to which he contributed a great deal). His works are too many and too wide-ranging in subject matter to summarise but my personal favourite is the short story A Sound of Thunder, which I not only love personally but had the privilege of teaching it to a class of thirteen year olds. I’m not sure that they appreciated his skill and imagination as much as I did, but they certainly loved the idea of the characters hunting a Tyrannosaurus Rex on a Time Travel Safari!

RIP Ray Bradbury

I is for...

Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The 1978 version. There is nothing wrong with the 1950s version. It’s great but I remember seeing the 1978 version when I was younger and it stuck with me. I personally think that it is the best version – and there have been several since. It stars a plethora of science fiction stalwarts: Jeff Goldblum (The Fly; The Jurassic Park), Veronica Cartwright (Alien) and Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek). In the title role is Donald Sutherland, who has dabbled in the genre, and is excellent as health inspector Matthew Bennell. Sutherland finds himself investigating reports of an infestation in San Francisco while simultaneously discovering that his friends are making allegations that their loved ones are not themselves. Cue: pod people!

The film has a gritty 70s feel and is appropriately paranoid – no doubt reflective of the Watergate period. The health inspector angle is a good one and while Sutherland gets to play it straight and Cartwright gets to scream the place down, Goldblum and Nimoy have a great time with lighter approaches to the roles. There are some fantastic scenes. One stand out is a sequence in which Sutherland and friends discover that the key to moving through a city of pod people without drawing attention to themselves – that is until a horrible, mutant dog with a human face runs up to Veronica Cartwright and makes her scream out. The best scene is the final one of the film. I won’t ruin it. It’s classic.

H is For...

The Handmaid's Tale.

Continuing my A-Z of author influences - both big and small - I've chosen The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood for the letter H. The Handmaid's Tale is a excellent piece of dystopian science fiction from a Booker Prize winning author. I have had the pleasure of by studying this novel as an A-Level student and then teaching it at A-Level to students. It is an excellent book - clever, relevant and shocking. Science Fiction usually proccupies itself with the concerns of the present rather than the future and The Handmaid's Tale seems terrifyingly possible. As well as being immensely popular and highlighting Margaret Atwood as both one of the most important authors - let alone science fiction authors - of our time, The Handmaid's Tale won The Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Nebula Award, the Prometheus Award and the Booker Prize.

The Handmaid's Tale is a great science fiction story with something to say. It showed me what science fiction was capable of achieving: that although the popular tropes of the genre, like spaceships and interplanetary war, were important and immensely fun to write and read, they were not necessarily required to craft a skillful and engaging piece of science fiction. Highly recommended.


Other recommended science fiction by Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake


Similar science fiction by other authors:
The Children of Men - PD James
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 - George Orwell

G is For...

Continuing my A-Z of creative influences, Gattaca is a science fiction film starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law. It is directed by Andrew Niccol and has a fantastic score composed by Michael Nyman. When I first watched this film, it impressed with with its stark representation of the future. It's a future that rings true, however, when you consider some of the social implications of technologies being developed in the present. At the heart of the film there beats a heart so determined to succeed and overcome almost impossible odds, that it is hard not to get swept up in the drama of it all. Many films profess such a accolade, but Gattaca really is a film that examines what it is to be human - on all kinds of levels. It is a film with a grand message, set against the backdrop of a future society and space exploration. It reminds film makers and authors that sometimes the best science fiction stories are told without the need for huge combat set pieces and special effects. I highly recommend this film to anyone who wants something a little different to refresh their science fiction palate.


Synopsis (from IMDB)

In the not-too-distant future, a less-than-perfect man wants to travel to the stars. Society has categorized Vincent Freeman as less than suitable given his genetic make-up and he has become one of the underclass of humans that are only useful for menial jobs. To move ahead, he assumes the identity of Jerome Morrow, a perfect genetic specimen who is a paraplegic as a result of a car accident. With professional advice, Vincent learns to deceive DNA and urine sample testing. Just when he is finally scheduled for a space mission, his program director is killed and the police begin an investigation, jeopardizing his secret.

F is for...

You turn right. Unfortunately, you have disturbed a flesh-eating ghoul.

If you wish to crap your leggings, TURN TO PAGE 261.

If you wish to offer the ghoul some provisions from your backpack (or your body), TURN TO PAGE 32.

If you are thinking, 'Damn, should have turned left', then flick back to the PAGE you no doubt are still are marking with one finger and pretend this never happened.

Fighting Fantasy books. Looking back at these influences, it seems apparent that from even an early age I was a reader who wanted a degree of control over the characters and narrative. Between my love for the Choose Your Own Adventure books and the Fighting Fantasy books of my childhood, it appears obvious that I would want to take complete control of the reading experience as an author in my own right. Fighting Fantasy books were gamebooks set in a fantasy realm in which you controlled a character and could make decisions regarding how the character progressed through the story. Your character had recorded ratings for different skills (like combat) that were used to determine the outcome of certain situations as you progressed. The idea was not only to enjoy the story but also to be part of it and through a certain degree of luck and skill, get through to the end alive.

The significant difference between Fighting Fantasy books and Choose Your Own Adventure books was the introduced element of chance. A reader didn’t simply live or die on the basis of a decision. Dice introduced an element of luck that added an extra dimension to the experience of reading and narrative outcome. With these books you could choose to take items that might or might not have significance later on, choose skill sets that might benefit you and actually get legitimately lost on your journey, if you weren’t careful about the decisions you made. Another great addition were maps and an established background: a realm or range of interrelated realms in which a significant number of adventures took place. They also expanded to include classic science fiction and dystopian settings. I spent many hours with these books and found them to be highly enjoyable. Part game, part story – in which you are the hero.

While the Fighting Fantasy series were incredibly popular – a publishing phenomenon, really – an honourable mention should go out to some of the other series that helped to popularise the format. I especially liked the Golden Dragon series (that had their own punchy style), the humorous and engaging Grailquest (about a young hero called Pip in King Arthur’s kingdom), Lone Wolf (that developed a large, committed following) and The Cretan Chronicles (adventures in Ancient Greece).

I’m glad to say that the phenomenon remains with us today. My publishing company produced a gamebook only last year called Hive of the Dead by my esteemed Black Library colleague CZ Dunn. Jonathan Green, author of the popular Pax Britannia series, is the writer of many popular Fighting Fantasy gamebooks including his latest, the fun and inventive Night of the Necromancer. Jonathan has also moved with the times and made the transition to gamebook adventures as Apps for the iphone and ipad. His first one of these is called Temple of the Spider God and is already proving popular.


I leave you, however, with my top 5 Fighting Fantasy books from the Eighties. Honourable mentions go to Sword of the Samarai, The Citadel of Chaos, House of Hell, Caverns of the Snow Witch, Midnight Rogue, Battleblade Warrior and Freeway Fighter. See if you agree.


5.




4.



3.

2.




1.

E is for...

The Empire Strikes Back. Back to creative influences with one of the most influential pieces of cinema in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre. For that reason alone, I won’t bother to provide a summary of the plot and characters. If you haven’t seen it – I advise you to do so: you’re in for a treat. It is by far the best of all the Star Wars films. It does everything right: the settings are varied and exciting; the main characters become as interesting as they ever get; the story gets darker and sheds earlier narrative naiveties; for its day (1979) the special effects and choreography are wonderful; the soundtrack was exhilarating; all the best aspects of the first film are retained and then further built upon.

I remember the first time that I saw this movie. As a child I had entered a corner shop video store (remember them?) with a couple of friends. There was a wall-mounted television set and the lady behind the counter had just popped a VHS cassette into the video player. The Empire Strikes Back started. Two hours later I became aware of reality again. My friends and I had been so enthralled by the beginning of the movie that we had sat down on the carpet and watched the entire film while other customers mooched about us, perusing the shelves and making their rental choices. The lady behind the counter gave us a kindly and knowing smile as the three of us got to our feet. We sheepishly made a pretence of looking around the video store, before saying thank you and leaving – stepping into the brightness of the daylight outside. The experience stayed with me, as did the film. I think that from a young age the film undoubtedly inspired and influenced me creatively. Check out the 1979 trailer for the film (that seems largely made up of explosions!)



As a creative extension of my childhood interest in the film, I also remember regular trips to the supermarket to buy Star Wars figures. The myriad of new characters The Empire Strikes Back introduced really gave the impression of a universe beyond the screen. My favourites were always the rarer figures, based upon characters only really glimpsed in the background of scenes from the film. I suppose that even then I revelled in the opportunity to imaginatively fill in the blanks, contribute to the character backgrounds and add a narrative of my own.

D is For...

David Mitchell. Not the comedian – the author. Mitchell is responsible for the novels Ghostwritten, Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas – all of which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Mitchell is a deft writer, who loves experimenting with structure and perspective. The novels are pieces of literary fiction that effortlessly explore certain science fiction ideas and concepts – although he is not regarded as a science fiction writer.

Ghostwritten is probably my favourite and was Mitchell’s first novel. It takes the reader around the world through a series of subtly interconnected narratives, from a doomsday cult and Sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway, through stories in Mongolia, St Petersburg, London and finally New York. The final narrative deals with an artificial intelligence that has become sentient called the Zookeeper. The Zookeeper calls a talk radio show called the Night Train to debate with the host the moral question of allowing humanity’s continued and damaging existence on planet Earth. The host, of course, considers the call a prank but indulges the caller, not realising that the Zookeeper is actively making a real decision. The narrative then brings us back to the subway terrorist attack in Tokyo in a fascinating conclusion to the book.

Even more ambitious is the novel Cloud Atlas, in which Mitchell moves through time rather than space. The novel is composed of narratives, the first beginning as a journal by a passenger on a sailing boat, touring the Pacific islands in 1850. This narrative is encapsulated and part of the story that follows, which concerns the letters of a composer living in Belgium in 1931. This in turn hands over to a murder mystery set in California 1975 and so on. The middle sections of the book are the most fascinating – each section moving further and further into the future – one story becoming part of the next. A genetically engineered clone called Somni~451, who works in a restaurant in a near-future dystopian Korea, observes the previous story as a holographically projected ‘orison’. This then connects to a story about primitive humans in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. The brilliance of the story-telling is truly revealed as in the second half of the novel we work our back through the narratives and back through time. It is pretty masterful. What is even more impressive is Mitchell’s control of language. Each narrative has its own style, from the 1850s journal, through the 1930s letters, the futuristic ‘orison’ and the degraded / evolved language of the tribespeople in a post-apocalyptic paradise.

Mitchell’s concern for detail that informs, his structural experimentation and thematic ambition definitely had an effect on me as a reader and a writer. David Mitchell himself has won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for fiction and has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize twice. I highly recommend him.

C is For...

Choose Your Own Adventure books. I used to love these books as a kid. This was clearly the author coming out of me at an early age. I wanted more control in my fiction. Nowadays this kind of control is achieved through the glorious interactivity of console and computer games. In the early Eighties, however, choosing to turn left or turn right, fighting enemies or running away, was determined by questions posed at the bottom of pages and flicking halfway through the book (an added element of suspense) to find out what fate awaited your character. Although the books themselves varied in quality and imagination, the concept of the Choose Your Own Adventure books was a piece of genius. Readers could actually become the main characters in the books they were reading – influence storylines through decision making and even die (in a fictional sense!) if they made poor choices. The series ran into hundreds of books and became a publishing phenomenon.

I remember reading a lot of these books and the series often wandered into the realms of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Interestingly, my two favourites were more down to earth choices: The Deadly Shadow, which involved the global hunt for a Russian spy that was literally a ticking time bomb, and Mountain Survival – a plane crash in the Rocky Mountains survivalist story that Bear Grylls would have been proud of. I have fond memories of these
books as a child.

Do you remember any?

B is For...

Blake’s 7. A trip to the late Seventies required for this one. This is an Alphabet of Influence or Inspiration and I have to e honest and say I was a young child when Blake’s 7 was shown initially. It was a piece of British television space opera, undoubtedly created to cash in on the cinema success of films like Star Wars. It had woefully poor special effects and sets, in comparison, but was popular in its time. The series was a piece of dystopian fiction about a group of political renegades led by a freedom fighter called Blake and their fight against the oppressive forces of the totalitarian Terran Federation. They escape incarceration and steal a spaceship as part of their getaway that turns out to be an alien vessel called The Liberator. The Liberator is faster and more powerful than anything the Federation has and Blake and his band of revolutionaries and criminals (his ‘Seven’) use the ship to both escape and take the fight to the Federation. The series follows these adventures. In this respect, Blake’s 7 shares a great deal in common with the more recent science fiction series Firefly.

I remember little of the characters and plots: I don’t even remember the titular character, coming to associate the series with another main character called Avon. This suggests that as a child I came to the series late. Seeing Blake’s 7 through the eyes of a child, I could overlook some of its clear weaknesses. Taken as a product of its time, however, it was unusual and interesting. Its dark and pessimistic tone appealed to me, as well as the fact that it seemed to concentrate on anti-heroes as opposed to characters in a clear-cut conflict between the forces of good and evil. The ship was cool, also – even if the effects were not and both the artificial intelligences, Zen and Orac, came to be characters in their own right. Blake’s 7 remains highly regarded to this day, often achieving high positions in science-fiction polls. Many consider Blake’s 7’s enduring legacy to be the long-term story arcs that are now commonly employed by American science-fiction series and are absent from Blake’s 7’s contemporaries. The series is often the centre of rumours concerning its re-issue or re-invention but for the time being the Blake’s 7 universe lives on in the audio adventures of fellow Black Library author James Swallow. His blog can be found on the bar to the right.

A is For...

Writers do not operate in a cultural black hole. They are influenced by what they read, they watch and experience. They are influenced by texts from both their youth and their present. This is an unavoidable consequence of a free exchange of ideas. Many writers are happy to have influenced other writers – influence being a form of compliment, however big or small. New Historicism is a category of literary theory that deals exclusively with such a process. For New Historicists, ideas do not exist in a vacuum and there are no instances of truly isolated genius: all writers are influenced by history, their personal history of experiences and the cultural expressions of the time.

I thought it might be a good idea from time to time to pay compliment to the speculative texts (science-fiction, fantasy, horror etc.) that have influenced me – both in a big and small way. These might be books, pieces of non-fiction, cinema and television, cartoons and comics – anything that I feel has influenced me in some way and colours my creative perspective: an ‘Alphabet of Influences’. Today we start with A and perhaps on the surface an unusual choice. Arnold Schwarzenegger . He might be a limited actor, a staunch Republican and infamous womaniser - and I don’t think that I can forgive him for the last two of those – but his project choices across the 1980s and 1990s kept the science fiction and fantasy genre strong. Of course, full credit needs to go to the writers and directors of those films, but Schwarzenegger’s involvement did ensure certain projects got made and helped push such speculative genres further into the mainstream. There is some cheese among these choices – no doubt. I’m not ashamed to say that I did enjoy some of his films during that period and some are still very watchable today. The key thing for me is that he visibly championed a set of genres that other actors and creatives had neglected, helped make them commercially successful and therefore ensure their further expansion. Here are my top seven Schwarzenegger science-fiction and fantasy films. See if you agree.


1. Terminator 2: Judgement Day










2. Predator






3. The Terminator







4. Conan the Barbarian












5. The Running Man









6. Total Recall








7. Red Sonja