Category Archives: Life

The new New World Order

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In January 2011 I got one of those emails every author likes to get from time to time, from a fan saying how much he liked The New World Order, my deliberately Turtledovian take on the English Civil War.*

Oh, and he was John Wakefield, Head of Speech Broadcasting at University Radio York, and would I mind if he adapted it as a radio drama?

Hmm, decisions, decisions. One of those things for which you really need to go on a long walk, indulge in a couple of cold showers, maybe sign up for a meditation course to put you into the right frame of mind for weighing up the pros and cons … Okay, it took about 1.5ms to say yes. Rather, yes in principle, but sadly you ought to be asking the rights department of Random House, not me.

Which he did, and they said yes, and everything went quiet for a while … until now. Part 1 will be broadcast this Sunday, 11th November, by URY and part 2 on the 18th. That means it won’t be heard on the air outside the university campus, but as far as I can tell from their website, it’s streamed. Just saying.

I’ve had the pleasure of a preview of both parts and it is excellent. I find it hard to believe these are fresh-faced students. It has a specially composed score and a cast of tens. It was odd to hear someone else’s interpretation of what a Holekhor accent ought to sound like, and I always imagined Oliver Cromwell as sounding like Bernard Matthews, and sadly my dream cast of Russell Crowe, Kate O’Mara and Philip Madoc (in his War Chief role) were unavailable and in one case dead – but against that are some pitch perfect performances. I must single out the actor playing Prince/King Charles who manages exactly the right mixture of affability and spite, plus a suitably wobbly adolescent voice in the first half. My hero Daniel is cleverly played as both a 12 year old and a 17 year old by the same actor. And I was carried away by the sound effects, not least the adrenaline pumping excitement of an airship taking off – all clanging bells and shouted orders and roaring engines.

Some of the dialogue seems to be mine – which is nice, as it suggests I can actually write it – and some is revised for the purposes of the show with no discernible join, which is as it should be. A couple of scenes here and there are condensed or elided but again you can’t tell if you don’t know. I wondered if they would assay the epilogue, which describes real events in both our world and the world of the Holekhor and makes it obvious (to us) exactly who they are, but that bit was omitted – probably for the best.

It’s a shame it’s a one-off performance; I hope John and the rest of the team can use it in a portfolio for a future career. I wish them every well-deserved success.

(* Summary: dimension-hopping technologically advanced Neanderthals return from whence their ancestors disappeared to thousands of years ago and interrupt the events of 1645.)

BristolCon 2012

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Thoroughly enjoyed myself last Saturday at BristolCon, which is now its fourth year and therefore an established tradition of fandom. Bristol is an excitingly science fictional kind of place (see here if you don’t believe me) and full of surprises. Like, I hadn’t expected to be the opening and closing act.

Okay, that might overstate my role – but I was on the first panel of programme 1 and the last of programme 2. The opening number was a discussion on “Colonising the Solar System”, with Michael Dollin, Aliette de Bodard and Dev Agarwal and moderated by Guy Haley: could it happen? Would it be economic? Would we actually want to live in a Martian colony? And so on. That last question of course needed some clarification. Would I want to live in a small capsule buried beneath the Martian topsoil to escape the radiation? Not really. Would I want to live in a Robinson-style town-sized community inside a domed crater dome with full access to the natural wonders of Mars? Hell, yes!

For the closing act, I moderated a panel of Dolly Garland, Joanne Hall, Jonathan L Howard and Leigh Kennedy on “Nano or Nono – How to survive a writing challenge” – mostly discussing NanoWriMo, which three of the panellists had assayed but Leigh and I had not. We could all talk knowledgeably about the art and discipline of writing, though, and I think we  gave value for money. Favourite anecdote: Jonathan L Howard on how Dennis Wheatley once met a tax demand by retreating to the library (his personal one, of course) with nothing but a box of cigars, a crate of champagne and a typewriter, and banging out yet another occultic potboiler. At the words “library”, “champagne” and “cigars” alternative suggestions for how he might have met the tax demand did begin to come to mind, but I suppose the life of a wealthy gentleman writer must be a hard one.

As the very closing act, immediately after that panel I gave a reading from Phoenicia’s Worlds to an audience of five, three of whom I didn’t even know. Needless to say I was plugging my forthcoming publication at every available opportunity. And on that sort of subject it was good finally to meet Colin Tate of Clarion Publishing who will be re-publishing His Majesty’s Starship and Jeapes Japes next year. Cover designs! Oh my! (Pictures will follow when available …)

And in between all that, a very busy, involving and rewarding programme of Lots of Other Stuff, including Guest of Honour interviews with Gareth L. Powell and John Meaney. But the most enjoyable egobootistical moment was derailing a kaffeeklatsch with Philip Reeve and Moira Young. The sequence of events in the first five minutes went roughly:

  • Philip opens his mouth to speak.
  • Fan 1: Are you the Ben Jeapes who wrote His Majesty’s Starship?
  • Fan 2: Oh, I really loved that! Will you sing my copy? [Produces it]
  • Fan 3: I really liked The New World Order.
  • Me: [having signed copy and absorbed praise] … a-a-a-nd back to you, Philip …

Lunch was a baked potato with tuna and salad and homemade drizzle cake in the Arc Cafe beneath St Mary Redcliffe, which I mention only because it deserves the publicity and I’ve never had a meal in a church undercroft before. Bristol is truly full of surprises and I look forward to going back next year.

Ben and the Race Relations Act

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Sunday’s episode of Inspector George Gently – I watch period police dramas, I can handle it, I could give up any time – said nothing new but still much that was worth saying about race relations in Britain in the 1960s. The most telling point for me was that the BBC news, immediately after, was read by a black man.

I don’t believe this country is yet an interracial paradise. I do think it’s doing much better than it was in 1960-whatnot.

I had a sheltered upbringing and I know it. I spent 10 years in private, boarding school education, where the skin colour was not 100% white but the exceptions tended to be people like the future King of Swaziland – not really representative of the streets of Brixton. I found Constable Savage funny for its absurdity more than its satire. I suppose my personal wake-up call to the tensions out there, that I had so far either blithely ignored or been happily sheltered from, was the riots of the early 1980s. I have to admit that when I read some of the aired grievances of the rioters, unlike my mostly Tory colleagues, I didn’t find them that unreasonable. I’d riot if the police could, and did, stop and question me every ten paces for being suspiciously white.

I freely admit to using a particular word to describe black people, quite routinely. It was in my everyday vocabulary. And yet. I can honestly say there was no intended malice, and when I learnt how offensive the word was, I stopped. And even then I could tell the difference between casually saying of a man of African ancestry that “he’s a $WORD_THAT_ONLY_SAMUEL_L_JACKSON_IS_ALLOWED_TO_USE”, purely for descriptive purposes, and sneering that “he’s a …” with the clear implication that the one word was all you needed to know about the individual. I could tell the difference between unintentional and deliberate offence, and I was offended by those who chose the latter.

I even remember being branded as a “$THAT_WORD-lover”, believe it or not. We lived in Bangladesh when I was aged 12-14. It was a pretty comfortable, privileged existence and it did not make me an authority on the problems of the Third World or give me any searing insights into race relations – but it gave me marginally more than many of my contemporaries had. And so, in one quite heated discussion – can’t remember what, or why, or when – that was the soubriquet I acquired. One boy even went to far as to write on my homework – shortly before it was due to be handed in – “Jeapes for $LA_LA_LA_CAN’T_HEAR-YOUs”. I tipp-exed it out. The teacher scraped the tipp-ex off to expose the message, and wrote in the margin, “don’t be childish, or, choose your friends with more care.”

The irony is that the boy in question was probably the most liberal of us all in other regards. He was proud that his barrister father only ever defended, never prosecuted, and was vehemently opposed to the death penalty.

I was never quite sure what to make of the historical rebranding of, say, Agatha Christie’s Ten Little $DUM_DE_DUMs or the name of Guy Gibson’s dog in The Dambusters, but China Miéville at a convention a few years ago put it well enough for me to come off the fence. Roughly, paraphrased: which is better, to preserve the historical purity of the original text, or to do what we can to remove that word from the ammunition of race hate? If one less kid gets called that word in the playground then by all means call the dog Trigger or Digger or whatever. If you really have to, mention the fact of the original usage in a footnote, and leave it there.

I’ve no idea where I’m going with this, so here’s Constable Savage again, to finish with.