The other side

OK. Survived that. I think I did generally alright, and I didn't come unstuck with any of the questions. I may have rabbited on too much on a couple of them though, but I was able to stop myself going too far I think. Anyway, there are three other candidates, so it'll be a day or two before I know what's happening one way or the other. However it works out, I feel OK about how I got on today.

In the pipe (again)

Another D-Day today. This time it's the NEMO modelling position with NOCS itself. I'll be giving two short presentations (10 minutes a piece) and answering questions in just over an hour's time. As usual, I don't feel like I've prepared enough. But I suspect that nothing short of regular monthly interviews would dissipate the dread that I have when I face these. In a way, it could be argued that it's a good thing that I don't have a whole lot of experience, that I'm good enough at what I do not to require routine reassessment. But, this morning anyway, I'd much rather have had buckets of experience and be much more blasé about the whole thing. Anyway, it should all be over in a little over two hours.

Patron of the arts

C's become a patron of the arts!

For the last few years, we've been visiting a chap called John Souter in Winchester during the Hampshire Artists open-house weeks in August. He's a former engineering lecturer (if I remember correctly) who does sculpture in his spare time.

Anyway, every year that we've visited him, all of his best pieces have already gone by the time he opens up his garden to visitors. Well, fed up with this, C asked John if he did commissions, and while he didn't take specific requests, he did promise to contact C the next time he did something that he thought she'd like. And here it is ...

Pushkin looks on, unimpressed ...

The sculpture's current resting place indoors ...

(No) success in the garden

For a couple of years now I've been growing sunflowers in the summer. As further evidence of our rubbish summer, the following is the pinnacle of my green-fingered efforts this year ...


My poor sunflower never even managed to bloom fully. While the insects got to it too, its slow growth during the summer was what really did for it. Arse.

Q: Who watches the Watchmen?

Something of a break with what I usually read: a geeky graphic novel (as opposed, I guess, to geeky science fiction).

In the past few weeks, Alan Moore's seminal deconstruction of the "superhero", Watchmen, has been getting a lot of airplay because of an upcoming film adaptation, and the release of a rather impressive trailer to herald this. Watchmen has actually been a defining fixture of the comic book scene since it was first published back in 1986-1987, and my attention was first drawn to it around about then (= high school) by Graham.

Needless to say, I didn't take his superlatives seriously at the time, and it's taken till almost the arrival of a big screen version for me to get around to it (although I'm in good company there - a columnist at the Onion has recently made the same journey).

The novel [*] is set in an alternative (and then-present) 1985 in which "costumed adventurers" (or "masked vigilantes" depending upon viewpoint) are, or were, a real phenomenon. Starting in the late 1930s, a succession of individuals began dressing up and fighting crime in the cities of the US. As the phenomenon grew, a group of these individuals formed, and called themselves the Minutemen (and, later, the Crimebusters). However, as scandals, tragedies and personality clashes took their toll, the group disbanded, and "costumed adventurers" were finally outlawed in 1977 following police strikes. Some, however, still continue in their activities as either illegal vigilantes or government-sponsored operatives in the Cold War. The latter plays a key role in the novel's backdrop (perhaps unsurprisingly given its publication date), with tensions between the US and the Soviet Union ratcheting up following the latter's invasion of Afghanistan.

The novel begins with the brutal murder of one of these government operatives, the Comedian, and the subsequent investigation by one of his Crimebusters colleagues, Rorschach, the only vigilante still active (and whose name stems from the interpretative inkblot psychological test). Rorschach becomes convinced that this murder is part of a plan to eliminate former "costumed adventurers", or "masks" as he calls them, so he sets out warning his former colleagues. These include the Nite Owl, a Batman-esque "mask" who formerly specialised in high-tech gadgets to fight crime, and whose now quiet life is punctuated with regrets about the end of the Crimebusters. Rorschach also visits Dr. Manhattan, another government operative and the only Crimebuster with real superhuman powers ("gifted" on him accidentally in a particle physics experiment). Dr. Manhattan is practically god-like, and is the US's main "weapon" in the Cold War, responsible for success in Vietnam in this alternative history, and a potential "nuclear shield" if the missiles start flying. However, Dr. Manhattan's abilities are gradually eroding his humanity, a fact only too obvious to his girlfriend, and former "mask", the Silk Spectre. Informed of the Comedian's death, she is almost pleased because of his attempted rape of her mother, a defining event that she has never forgiven him for. Finally, Rorschach visits Ozymandias, a retired "mask" but now a successful high-tech businessman and philanthropist, and Moloch, a former super-villain but now a withered shell of a man, dying of cancer.

These meetings with Rorschach inspire reflections from each of these characters on the Comedian, an utterly amoral man with a supremely nihilist view of human nature. They also trigger further plot developments. During a press interview, Dr. Manhattan is publicly accused of causing cancer in his associates, causing him to leave the Earth for Mars, and abandoning the Silk Spectre. Ozymandias is almost the victim of an assassin's bullet. Rorschach himself is captured by the police, and framed for the murder of Moloch, who had previously supplied him with telling information about the Comedian. And, now separated from Dr. Manhattan by a falling out and his self-imposed exile on Mars, the Silk Spectre becomes a house-guest of Nite Owl, a development that awakens both memories of their "mask" days, and new feelings for one another. These developments lead the Nite Owl and Silk Spectre to take up their "masks" again, convinced that Rorschach's investigation was onto something. After springing Rorschach from Sing Sing, the investigation continues apace, with subsequent discoveries revealing a dark conspiracy. Ultimately, events transpire to create a peaceful new world order, albeit one with rotten foundations, and whose morality asks much of the remaining "masks" who know its secrets.

From a purely structural perspective, Watchmen is considerably more challenging than its comic book origins might imply. Much like other more conventional novels, rather than being a simple, linear narrative, chapters are devoted to different characters and viewpoints, and there's a considerable amount of reminiscence that carefully fills in the backstory. Furthermore, aside from its graphic panels, the novel also includes short, full-page text sections at the end of each chapter. These take various forms including excerpts from a biography, magazine interviews, a psychologist's report and even a scholarly publication. They don't supplant the main graphic panels, but they also impart a lot of significant background material to flesh out incidental aspects of it. And then, on top of this, the graphic panels themselves feature a comic-within-a-comic, a gothic horror tale of a stranded seaman's disastrous efforts to get back to his family, and to save them from malevolent pirates. (And I'm sure that there are between-panel tricks going that are too clever for me to work out.)

The characters themselves are also framed in a far more rounded way, and have individual complexities and moral depths that one might expect more from literary fiction than a stereotypical comic. None of this came as a big surprise to me, since I've read a handful of the "more serious" comics over the years (plus a smattering of the more, well, conventional), but it's still rather singular that one graphic novel might contain several distinct moral visions. The most prominent of the novel's characters are Dr. Manhattan and, particularly, Rorschach, although Ozymandias brings his own brand of utilitarianism and even the Comedian is given a degree of complexity and ambiguity. Throughout the novel, Dr. Manhattan gradually loses his ability to empathise with the humans around him, eventually coming to see their plights in a sort of "value-free" light, remarking at one point that:

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

Rorschach reaches somewhat similar conclusions to Dr. Manhattan about the nature of the universe, and the meaning it puts on our lives, but he responds to this very differently:

Looked at sky through smoke ... and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us ... The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach.

Admittedly, the characters are drawn rather heavily with stereotypically individualistic philosophical outlooks (e.g. existentialism, nihilism, objectivism, utilitarianism), but together they present a far more interesting moral tapestry than most fiction. And, to my mind, it's always useful to be confronted by outlooks in opposition to one's own, so that one can re-evaluate and clarify one's own thinking. Mainstream fiction may have many virtues, but it doesn't frequently engage so transparently with these sorts of issues. Although, equally, that might just be me completely missing the subtext of all of the books I read!

Still, if you can't expect overblown dissections of morality from the inherently overblown superhero genre, where are you going to get them from?

A couple of quick final points. The calamitous event in New York near the end of the novel now foreshadows a later event in our own world (albeit with direct consequences around 1000 times more dire). Interestingly, they also provoke similarly positive international reactions to those that occurred in our world almost exactly seven years ago. However, we now know from first-hand experience that the good will and cooperation created by terrible disasters can be dissipated rather rapidly, something that even Watchmen doesn't consider.

Overall Watchmen is a worthy read. Obviously its genre (and format) means that it operates at a more simplistic and, well, cartoonish level than more conventional fiction often does, but its still an impressive piece of work. And, regardless of its individual worth, it's clear that it has cast a long shadow over much of popular culture in its aftermath. Watchmen's deconstruction of superheroes (together with The Dark Knight Returns), in particular, has clearly been a significant shaping force. TV series like Heroes, and films such as The Incredibles are considerably in its debt (the latter even steals, and plays for a joke, an episode from Watchmen that illustrates the perils of wearing a cape).

Anyway, back to regular fiction for my next book I think.

---

But will it make a good film? While there are always doubters whenever anyone tries to convert a favourite novel to the screen, and Watchmen does present a number of challenges, I don't think that it's impossible to pull off. Unlike conventional novels, its art design is obviously already fleshed out (and, looking at the trailer, has been carefully followed), and while there are internal monologues, they mostly carry character development, and the novel's central questions of morality can be posed through the action carrying the story.

However, this latter point is something of a weakness, since lazy filmmakers may be tempted to shave off the character development and just rely on the plot to make their points. While the resulting piece might still make a fairly solid action film, it would only be a shadow of its source material. Whether this happens may depend on how the studio sees the film - is it to be allowed the sort of length afforded to "classics" like Lord of the Rings, or is it to be a standard, truncated 2 hour action film? The former may allow the filmmakers to create the world of Watchmen faithfully, but the latter seems a not unlikely outcome.

On another point, one thing that's noticeable from the trailer is that the cast appears rather young. In the novel, the youngest character is still 35, and the others are in their 40s or even older. This may seem a trivial point, but it's not unimportant that these people are at this later stage in life. They've seen a lot, they've had their characters and morals tested, and have made certain accommodations along the way. I'm not sure whether actors in their 20s or early 30s can pull this off convincingly, but we'll see.

Anyway, in principle, given both a sympathetic filmmaker and (more importantly) studio, I think it could be pulled off rather well. But it could easily be a huge fiasco. Shortening it is pretty much a sure-fire route into trouble, one travelled frequently by book-to-screen translations, including the recent film of Northern Lights. But there are plenty of other ways that could stuff it up, and some of these, such as "updating it" to take in recent events, are an obvious temptation. Come next March, we'll see.

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[*] Although, yes, it is a comic book, I'm going to do it the courtesy of calling it a "novel" here. Partly through geek-respect, but also because it's less time-consuming than writing "graphic novel" every couple of sentences.

Arundel and The Dogs

Off at a 40th birthday event in Brighton on Saturday. The journey afforded us an opportunity (my first) to visit the somewhat posh town of Arundel along the way. As well as having a pretty impressive castle (now a public school), it has a couple of rather impressive religious buildings ...

St. Nicholas Church ...
A rather interesting, and life-sized, biblical diorama ...
The main altar of Arundel Cathedral ...
An interesting version of Mary, here with what appeared to be a barbed wire halo ...
The birthday boy (and wife; left) blowing out his candles ...
The dogs on parade, pre-race ...
One of my dogs (the red/magenta blur) losing out to one of C's (the orange blur) ...

A rather unsuccessful evening from a betting standpoint. Of 10 races bet on [*], I managed to score an impressive 10 losses. Still, at £1 per race, I wasn't breaking the bank. C was somewhat more successful with one outright win, and one second place. Given the odds, however, that still meant a cash loss, but she was able to leave with her head held high.

[*] My record is actually even worse than this sounds. Due to a mistake making a bet, during one of the races I had actually backed 2 out of the 6 dogs that were running. And I still didn't win.

Ocean iron fertilisation

We had a seminar today from XXXXX XXXXX, the XXXXX of XXXXX, a private organisation interested in technology for removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, primarily via ocean iron fertilisation (at least for now).

The seminar was a bit long-winded, and apart from being very "research positive" (i.e. more research would be nice), I wasn't entirely clear on what XXXXX was all about. Most of the aspects of the presentation that I found interesting were focused on non-OIF issues, such as the London Convention and the acceleration of CO₂ emissions (which, apparently, are increasing faster than previously estimated). So, while the background and legal aspects were covered pretty well, the OIF bits were given slightly short shrift. Then again, I think the speaker was assuming we were all au fait with those. Fair enough really given that NOCS people (myself included) recently produced a review of the technical aspects of ocean geoengineering.

Overall, I'm still rather hesitant about getting behind geoengineering. It's pretty much not what we should be doing, but at the same time I'm well aware that it'd be a conscious and (hopefully) rational change to a biosphere that has already been heavily impacted by (largely) unconscious changes. And there are a lot of technologies and strategies other than geoengineering that I'd really prefer that we tried first (even expanding nuclear fission!). Mostly those focused on decreasing emissions in the first place - surely the obvious strategy? One of XXXXX's main messages was that these possibly weren't sufficient, but I'm less sure about that.

Though the ocean is, in some respects, less impacted than the terrestrial biosphere, and could probably take the hit, I'm just reluctant to bring another part of the biosphere under our control. We've not got a good record on noticing or preserving ecosystem services, and it can't be a good idea to start messing with those that the ocean provides.

Ducks = 0

It's finally happened: we have no ducks left in the quad. I've been looking all this week, but there's no sign of the Runner. While I'd like to think that he/she has merely left the quad, I'm pretty sure that flying out wasn't an option. Unbeknownst to me until yesterday, the woman who organises feeding the ducks was taken ill last week, and this may factor in the Runner's "departure". By coincidence, I'd mailed her last week to see if she needed a hand with the feeding - I had thought that the zero response meant "no".

Anyway, assuming that I'm correct, that's a bit of a sad end to this year's duck season. It would also make for rather grim breeding success stats: 2 out of 32; a rather paltry 6.25%. And that's just to leave the quad - survival rate is unlikely to improve in the big wide world (actually, knowing the quad, perhaps it would!). It certainly puts a new spin on the "mother" of "Mother Nature".

Random Republican Ramblings

I caught some of the Republican Party's conference last night on News 24. There are many bad things that one can say about them, but you've got to hand it to them that they're brilliant at squaring circles.

For instance, their slogan this time around is "Country First". Who would have thought that a party practically dedicated to dismantling all of the infrastructure that gives a country definition (bar, tellingly, the military) would have the nerve to so baldly use the opposite sentiment in their campaign?

And, of course, a perennial bugbear of mine is the Republican Party's relationship with Jesus. It's difficult to understand how any organisation as avaricious and dedicated to personal/corporate selfishness could conceivably wave Jesus around as a totem. Does the lesson of Jesus and the money changers say nothing to them?

While I obviously have no truck with of the deification of Jesus, the guy said a lot of interesting and valuable things; things that are difficult to square with (at least as I perceive them) touchstones of the Republican Right. Gun-totting, gated communities, corporate greed, a blatant disregard for the less fortunate, "environment? what environment?", et cetera.

So, hats off to them. They're able to carry off with aplomb the political equivalent of having their cake and eating it. Wrapped up in a flag, and hand-in-hand with a presumably reluctant Jesus, they're able to barefacedly trumpet policies that, in part, constitute the reverse. But it's all up-front, so one can't reasonably complain about it. Kudos.

#remsouthampton

After following them for more than 17 years (since 1991's Out of Time), I finally went to see R.E.M. in concert in the Southampton Rose Bowl on Wednesday 27th August, accompanied by C, Dr. Morris and his new (to us) girlfriend, Sarah.

For most of these 17 years, I've been a big fan of R.E.M., but since their first post-Bill Berry album, Up, I've gradually drifted from them, and I've not (yet) bought their most recent album, Accelerate. It probably reflects both a change in my musical tastes, and their weakening as a musical force. Their latter albums, while not at all bad, have lacked quite as many stand-out tracks as their earlier efforts, and there has been something of a change to their music, in part down to compensations made for Berry's absence.

Anyway, all that said, I've always heard that R.E.M. are at their best live, so there was part of me that was keen to hear them before, presumably, I wrote them off for the longer term.

Just as well that Dr. Morris prompted me about their tour.

While my Faith was wavering going into the concert, it was thoroughly restored during it, and I left completely buoyed up with R.E.M. again. They got off to a winning start for me, with their off-album single Bad Day. It's a brilliant and energetic track to begin, well, anything with, and given my wavering Faith, it was something of an electrifying start. Seconds away, and I was already singing along with them.

Wisely, while they followed this up with a new (and short) track, they kept to old favourites for the next few tracks. With What's The Frequency, Kenneth?, I was reminded again that their much maligned album Monster, is actually a secret (if belated) success, and they returned to it later with Let Me In.

They also visited my favourite album, Lifes Rich Pageant, a number of times, again reminding me why it is my favourite. Other albums, most noticeably Murmur, got surprisingly short shrift, although generally there was pretty good, and at times surprising, coverage of their back catalogue. But they weren't dwelling too much on past successes, and they performed six tracks from their latest album by the end. While I shouldn't really have been surprised, these were all pretty good, and I'll doubtless add the album on my next Amazon spree.

Two particular highlights for me were Ignoreland and Electrolite. The former is an angrily political song that stems from the ring-wing control of America from 1979 through 1992. It's rather bombastic, but I'd almost forgotten how much I love its self-recognised venom. The latter is difficult to categorise, but it's a lovely, almost existential song. A great closer for its parent album New Adventures in Hi-Fi, but an even better concert song. Although it was only the twelfth song, it was so good I could have left then and been satisfied.

In introducing the political Ignoreland, Michael Stipe gave the first of several short diatribes about the current US administration. A bit of a soft-sell at a R.E.M. concert in Europe, but still good, and entertaining, to hear R.E.M.'s views. It certainly got a lot of applause from the Rose Bowl.

After a few quirky choices, including 7 Chinese Brothers and Auctioneer (Another Engine), the band finished their main set with the excellent Orange Crush and It's The End Of The World As We Know It. Just. Brilliant.

The encore had us guessing the song that they'd finish on, Man On The Moon, and I think Sarah picked that one out. We'd also been expecting, and were rewarded with, Losing My Religion, which (unsurprisingly given its success back in 1991) was the first song of R.E.M.'s that I ever knowingly heard.

Anyway, a fantastic night out. My Faith in R.E.M. has been restored. And the whole evening was topped off nicely with a surprisingly easy return journey home.

---

While I was only able to reconstruct those parts of the set list that I recognised (pretty much everything bar the last two albums), the full set list is available from a number of websites and was ...

1. Bad Day
2. Living Well Is The Best Revenge
3. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
4. Fall On Me
5. Drive
6. Man Sized Wreath
7. Begin The Begin
8. Hollow Man
9. The Great Beyond
10. Ignoreland
11. Animal
12. Electrolite
13. I'm Gonna DJ
14. Pretty Persuation
15. The One I Love
16. 7 Chinese Brothers
17. Nightswimming
18. Let Me In
19. Auctioneer (Another Engine)
20. Horse To Water
21. Orange Crush
22. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
23. Supernatural Superserious (Encore)
24. Losing My Religion (Encore)
25. Imitation of life (Encore)
26. Man On The Moon (Encore)

In passing, the support acts were Guillemots and Editors. Both pretty good, although the latter, with a very Joy Division and Smiths influenced sound, were definitely the better of the two.

#remsouthampton

No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die!

Part two in my series where I shamelessly read my way through C's birthday books. This time it's the new James Bond novel Devil May Care, by noted literary novelist Sebastian Faulks ("writing as Ian Fleming").



In a rundown part of Paris, an immigrant drug-dealer is murdered in a brutal, but seemingly trademark fashion. Meanwhile, Bond is on medical leave in southern Europe, where he runs into, but turns down, the attractive wife of a banker (a declined opportunity that even Bond can't believe). Returning to London, he is quickly brought up to speed on a suspected drug-lord called Dr. Gorner, a British-educated Lithuanian, who switched sides during the Second World War and who has a curiously deformed left hand, a "monkey's paw". Sent to Paris to meet Gorner, Bond again meets the banker's wife, Scarlett, who reveals herself as someone seeking his services against Gorner, who runs her sister, Poppy, as a drug mule. Bond stages a meeting with Gorner at a tennis club, where they play a game together, a game which Gorner's henchman, Chagrin, attempts unsuccessfully to swing for Gorner. Bond is then sent to Persia to follow the drug connection, where he meets up with Darius, the UK's local contact. A tip-off from Poppy sends Bond to a Caspian Sea port where he discovers an amphibious plane, advanced Soviet technology but with British markings. Visiting the plane for a second time, this time with Scarlett who was also tipped-off by Poppy, Bond is not so lucky and is captured by Gorner. Flown to a secret airbase in the Persian desert, Gorner reveals his plan to bring down Britain by flooding it with drugs and by provoking an international incident with the Soviet Union. For an extra dash of credibility, Gorner forces Bond onto an aircraft destined to be shot down by the Soviets to spark this incident. However, the plan fails when Scarlett secretly infiltrates this plane, and Darius is able to warn London about the amphibious plane. Parachuting to safety from the doomed aircraft, Bond and Scarlett find themselves marooned within Russia, but make their way to Finland with the help of a anti-Soviet trawler captain, eliminating Chagrin along the way. Back in the west, Bond attempts to meet up with a French contact but is ambushed by Gorner. Taking advantage of Gorner's embarrassment at his deformed hand, Bond turns the tables on him, forcing him to dive into the Seine where he is killed by the paddle wheel of a steamer. With Britain saved, Scarlett reveals herself as a British agent, thus explaining her impeccable timing and sharpshooting ability. Bond finally gets to take up the offer of Scarlett's that he previously declined. The End.

Much like the films and, I presume, Fleming's original novels, Faulks' novel follows the standard narrative structure. The only things missing, and these might be an invention of the films, are the opening action set-piece and the closing "James Bond will return in ..." legend. It seems stupid to me now, but until a newspaper dissection pointed this out, I'd never thought through just how narrowly formulaic the Bond stories actually are. Perhaps I just enjoyed them too much.

Anyway, this novel doesn't disappoint Bond fans. All of the familiar details are in there, and the novel even finds time to squeeze Bond's old ex-CIA chum, Felix Leiter, into the action. Faulks is clearly is fan, and references a fair bit of Bond lore in passing, including nods to Goldfinger and Hugo Drax among others. And he does a very competent job of the Bond oeuvre, the high living, expensive tastes, exotic locales, faintly camp enemies, dastardly henchmen, hi-tech weaponry, and so on. From what I've heard about the novel in reviews, Faulks has excelled in capturing (or is that pastiching) Fleming's style, and I can believe it.

A couple of other details interested me. As already noted, Gorner is something of a camp villain, and there are a couple of places in the novel that hint of homophobic attitudes. I think that might just be Faulks allowing his style to ape that of Fleming, or Fleming's time, a little too closely. There's also a streak of amusing Francophobia there too, with a subplot in which Bond's French counterpart, Rene Mathis, wrapped up with his fine dining and mistress, makes precisely zero headway in a parallel investigation, while Bond manages to begin, engage with, and close his investigation in the same time-frame.

Another interesting aspect is that Faulks seems to have included a few subversive details along the way (subversive, that is, to the "Bond worldview"). Rather than being staunch allies, the CIA are presented as fairweather friends, keen to get Britain to join them in their Vietnam adventure, and not above allowing Britain to take a hit to nudge it in their direction. Similarly, the character Darius gives a potted history of Persia/Iran that is, rightly, unflattering for Britain. However, these hinted details aren't allowed to interfere with the narrative, but I think they do represent Faulks having a little bit of fun with the Bond legacy. One of the weaknesses of Bond, and something that has been successfully inverted by the Jason Bourne films, is its portrayal of an unambiguous black hat-white hat world, something very much at odds with the known history of intelligence organisations. Still, I'm guessing that one of the terms and conditions for Faulks writing this novel was that he didn't subvert Bond along these lines. I'm guessing that it would be too easy to do this for it to be fun for Faulks anyway.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see if Faulks picks this up again. Rather like successful actors slumming it in pot-boiler studio projects to subsidise scripts closer to their hearts, I'd imagine that there would be advantages for Faulks' literary work from cranking out another Bond novel. Although the apparent success of this novel may mean that he's already set-up for life. We'll see.

Guano

A quick duck update. The Runner is still with us, but looks like he/she still has a bit of growth to go before leaving the quad is an option. The seagull chicks, however, appear to have finally gone. I don't think I've even seen them this week. They could be hiding on the other side of the roof, since I can't access a viewpoint for there, but up till now they've split their time between the two sides.

In other roof news, although there doesn't appear to have been an increase in seagull activity (in fact, it seems the reverse), there's certainly been an increase in guano production. The roof opposite has gone from slate grey to a rather speckled appearance. This happened last year too, and required a good dose of autumnal rain to sort it out. The strange thing is that it does seem to have happened in the absence of any change in seagull activity. Perhaps NOCS serves as an overnight rest-stop for seagulls who've spent the day gorging at the local dump or something? Clearly the world is just full of mysteries ...

Love letter to Twee-town

I'm now working my gradual way through the books that I bought C for her birthday (I'm sure that there's something ethically dubious about buying presents that you then get to use). First up, A Boy Of Good Breeding by Miriam Toews (which, according to the WP, is pronounced "Tayvz"; how does the written form of a name come to depart from its pronunciation so badly?)



Hosea Funk (comedy name #1) is the mayor of Algren in Canada, not just a small town, but statistically almost as small a town as towns can get. After Canada's prime minister rashly promises to visit Canada's smallest town, Hosea's mission is to keep Algren's population at exactly 1500, and his duties expand to include regular checks on the pregnant and the dying, and the redrawing of the town's boundaries to include or exclude necessary or superfluous citizens. The root of this obsession to win this visit lies with a story that Hosea's mother once told him, that the prime minister is actually his father. Meanwhile, Knute (comedy name #2), a former resident of Algren has had enough of Winnipeg and is returning to live with her mother and her ailing father. In further consternation to Hosea, she's bringing her young daughter, Summer Feelin' (comedy name #3), and there are rumours that the estranged father, Max, is also winding his way back to Algren from Europe. However, Hosea's demographic troubles also lie closer to home - his girlfriend Lorna wants to leave the city and move in with him. Can Hosea keep his citizens in check? And can Knute and Max bury the hatchet?

As the description above implies, this novel has something of a spiritual connection with the small town Americana epitomised by the likes of Northern Exposure and (the comedy elements of) Twin Peaks. All of the characters are fairly likeable, and all are pretty quirky in various ways. Among others, there's Max's mother, an alcoholic famed for periodically driving her combine harvester up and down the town, and the town's fire chief, a widower with an existential crisis that requires he sleep with more women.

The plot is similarly quite quirky, and never really deviates much from where you expect it to go when it starts off. That's not necessarily a problem at all, and it would describe any number of novels, but the rest of the novel is pretty slight. There is a small amount of character development along the way, but it's difficult to discern if there are any deeper themes here. There's almost an interesting relationship between Hosea and his dying friend Tom, but it's handled with almost too light a touch, such that one neither quite gets the point of it nor engages particularly with either character, despite the somewhat tragic situation. Equally, while the novel is quite whimsical, it never fully adopts this as its mode either, so it sits uncomfortably for me.

So, although it was quite fun to read, it's very much at the lighter end of literature, but it doesn't really make its lightness a virtue, or convince you that's what it's trying to do. Possibly it just didn't quite work out the way that the author intended - it's only her second novel after all. And her later novel, A Complicated Kindness, seems to have been much more successful (C really liked it when she read it).

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In passing, a rant. While Knute is, I think, supposed to be a likable character, she frequently just wound up annoying me, what with her laziness when she was supposed to be working for Hosea, and with the rather hippy-ish choice of name for her daughter. If that was supposed to be endearingly quirky, it misfired badly with me - all I could think about whenever Summer Feelin' turned up was the drubbing she'd be getting when she went to school. If you like a dumb name, get a deed poll and inflict it on yourself, not on your children.

And then there was one

It looks like the two eldest chicks in the quad are definitely gone for good (well, at least until next season - they seem to come back to breed each year). Meanwhile, the Runner is still biding his/her time in the quad, and is currently in the large water trough. Hatched around a month later than the eldest chicks, the Runner should be ready to leave the quad before the end of September. Perhaps we'll be leaving NOCS at the same time?

Pigs In Heaven

Not something that you expect from a writer of literary fiction, but Barbara Kingsolver wrote a sequel to her novel The Bean Trees. Called Pigs In Heaven, it picks up and continues the story of Taylor and her adopted daughter Turtle.



The novel begins with an incident involving Taylor and Turtle at the Hoover Dam that attracts the attention of the local press, and ultimately gets the pair onto an edition of Oprah. Afterwards, while they gradually slip back into their daily anonymous lives, the programme is seen by a young and ambitious Native American lawyer, Annawake Fourkiller. Seeing an echo of traumas from her own past in the life of Turtle, she tracks down and visits Taylor, who she puts the wind up of by questioning the irregularities of Turtle's adoption. Fearful of losing Turtle, Taylor takes her and goes on the run, abandoning her easy-going boyfriend, Jax. However, life on the road is more difficult than she anticipates, and their adventure quickly becomes a litany of temporary jobs and poverty line surfing. Meanwhile, Taylor's mother, Alice, attempts to track down Annawake to explore the legal alternatives on offer. Alice is helped by a blood connection to the Cherokee Nation, and family that coincidentally lives in the same Oklahoma town as Annawake. Further in the background, Cash, a Native American artisan tired of working in the tourist traps of Jackson, Wyoming, decides to return to home to Oklahoma to his tribe and whatever remains of his destroyed family there. Of his two daughters, one is an abused alcoholic long gone, while the other is dead, and he has no idea what became of his grand-daughter. With everyone converging on the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, there's a lot of scope for unanticipated meetings and endings.

In large part, the novel is very similar in texture and tone to its predecessor. Narratively, it shares the same multiple strand structure, although the connections are more obvious, so their binding together is more inevitable. Because it's a sequel, and because its central plotline (the possibly illegal adoption of Turtle) is identified early on, it's much more straightforward than The Bean Trees. While there are some unexpected developments along the way, where the novel ends up comes as no surprise. But this isn't a bad thing, and its a worthy sequel to the original novel.

However, it's still odd that the original novel was sequelised at all - it just isn't the sort of novel that one expects to see a follow-up for. My own (retrospective) theory is that the root of this novel is what appears a rather minor and glossed-over detail in The Bean Trees, the origin of Turtle. The first novel has a number of concerns, a major one being its commentary on events in Central America. That Turtle just happens to be of Native American descent is lost among these larger themes. C picked up on it, but I, not trained in even the less subtle aspects of equal opportunities, completely missed it (in my defense, Kingsolver really doesn't make a big deal of it). However, any Native American readers aren't likely to have seen it that way, and the adoption of one of their children by a white woman, however good-willed, is liable to have stirred up memories of events in this community. These are dealt with explicitly in Pigs In Heaven through the life history of Annawake, whose brother was "adopted" by a white family. Reading this, it's clear that what seemed a passing detail in The Bean Trees is actually an open wound for the Native American community. Now, given the way that The Bean Trees plays out, I doubt that Kingsolver originally intended to produce a sequel that picked this up. It seems more likely to me that her first novel inadvertently touched on this issue, producing a reaction that led to Pigs In Heaven. Having read several of her novels now, Kingsolver strikes me as someone who wouldn't let such a misstep lie, and would go out of her way to correct it, and draw attention to such a community-related issue.

With everything else that America stands for, good and bad, it's very easy to forget about the rich Native American cultures that were practically annihilated along the way. Having visited quite a bit of the US myself, I can certainly vouch that Native American culture is in large part invisible. So this novel acts as something of a salient corrective. It has certainly reminded me that while "red indians" seem a thing of the past, they emphatically aren't.

On an unrelated, astronomical sidenote, the eponymous Pigs in Heaven refer to the stars of the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. It's explained in the novel that there are six pigs (one of the low magnitude Seven Sisters is dropped), and that they represent six lazy boys that were turned into pigs and cast into the heavens in a Cherokee legend.

End of the Olympics

To mark the end of the Beijing Olympics, and to pave the way for the UK's hosting of the games in 2012, Southampton had a bit of a sports and culture event at its Civic Centre. As well as some gymnasts and a team of cheerleaders, Southampton's Chinese community provided a dragon.

Here's Southampton's mayor painting in the dragon's eyes in order to "bring it to life" ...

And here's it doing the dancing around outside of the Civic Centre ...

The Runner ...

... is last man standing. It looks like the elder cohort has stretched its wings and headed off into the wider world, but looking at the pictures below, it's clear that the Runner's wings have got a bit more growing to do before he/she can take the same step.

Solitary swimming

You can't fly with these

Ducks gone?

This week started with all three remaining chicks in the quad. In fact, in a rare display of (unphotographed) tolerance, I saw all three bobbing around in their water trough together.

However, after Tuesday, there's been no sign of the two older chicks, and bar what sounded like the Runner on Thursday, there's been no sign of him/her since Wednesday. There has been a lot of guttering action in the quad this week, but I would still expect to have seen the chicks at some point most days.

Death or departure then?

Whoops - stop the press! I've just clocked the Runner in the small pond. Looking a bit lonely, but otherwise appearing fine. That's a bit of a relief since, unlike the two older chicks, I didn't think that the Runner was able to leave the quad under his/her own steam, so was beginning to think the worst.

Never get attached enough to animals that you name them. That appears to be the main lesson to draw from life (= death) in the quad.

Anyway, I'll try to snap off a photograph of the Runner before I depart today. Assuming he/she hangs around long enough. The Runner isn't quite as active now that his/her mother's upped sticks and left.

In the pipe

Well, I've just this minute fired off my latest, and probably last, attempt to stay in the financially lucrative and high prestige world of science ...

The position I've applied for is entitled "marine biophysical modeller", and the role will be to run, analyse and publish biogeochemical aspects of the new NEMO model. In something of a change from my current position, this is a step up the scientific food chain. That has salary benefits, but brings with it pretty big expectations about getting funding. From the job specification, a day or so a week would be spent chasing cash. That's quite a change for me. Still, it comes to all research scientists sooner or later and, to be fair, I've dodged this particular "bullet" for a long time now.

Anyway, the plan appears to be that interviews will take place next month (September), and if I'm successful I should be in-post in time for the end of my current position. Of course, if I'm not successful, well, that'll see the start of an altogether new career, possibly in high street retail!

Betrayed by Judas?

We're back in sequel-land, this time with Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton, the follow-up to Pandora's Star.



By the end of Pandora's Star, humanity has triggered the collapse of the barrier that surrounds Dyson Alpha, releasing the aliens known as the Primes, and fomenting a devastating attack on Earth's colonies by the Prime known as MorningLightMountain. Meanwhile, only slight progress has been made by Bradley Johansson and Adam Elvin in their attempts to blow the Starflyer conspiracy. And Californian slacker Ozzie has just sailed off of the edge of a water world, seemingly catastrophically.

Judas Unchained begins with these, and many other, threads all up in the air. By its end, the influence of the Starflyer has been revealed, MorningLightMountain has been beaten back to Dyson Alpha and life is returning to normal in the Commonwealth.

While still an enjoyable science fiction romp, firmly in the high opera camp, much of the original novel's promise is, well, diluted by the sequel. First of all, it's far, far too long. While it weighs in only a little longer than the first installment, it replaces set-up and world creation, which are definitely strengths of the first novel, with a long-winded and occasionally tedious unravelling of various plot elements. The unravelling compounds this mistake of being largely action-driven, as if a long chain of fast-paced (i.e. confusing) sequences is somehow a substitute for gradual build-up and scene-setting.

Another mistake the novel makes, or rather continues, is its rather random switching between long stretches spent in different strands. It's even clearer in the sequel that Hamilton should have broken the strands into shorter sections so that one never completely lost touch with the developments in each. Here, strands can be left unattended for tens of pages, and it's made worse when Hamilton uses the return to a strand an an opportunity to instantaneously bump it forwards a bit. It may have been better to supplant some of the violence-laden passages with actual narrative development.

A bigger disappointment for me was the novel's banishing of two of the more interesting characters to only occasional sidenotes or mentions. The alien MorningLightMountain gets rather short shrift this time around, with the most interesting bits (including its fate) being only hinted at by the end. The artificial intelligence known as the SI gets similar treatment, possibly only so that it can appear a potentially malevolent off-stage actor. The "alien-ness" of both of these in the first novel (which, to be fair, they were also only sketched in) made them far more interesting that most of the human characters. More generally, while setting up a lot of interesting alien species in Pandora's Star, Hamilton simply dispenses with them here.

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but if I can raise another flaw in the sequel ... A significant portion of the novel deals with the pursuit of the Starflyer across the planet Far Away, and a key plot point here is that some/one of those doing the pursuing are actually sleeper spies working on behalf of the Starflyer. That's fine at first, except that the cast is gradually whittled down until it consists only of important characters, or those too peripheral for them to be interestingly revealed as Starflyer agents. Hamilton tries to play this for suspense, but he seems to forget that all of these characters, bar one, has been a narrator for the novel's strands. So there's actually no suspense, except that which is accidentally generated by a non-suspenseful situation being drawn out over many dozens of pages. By that point one starts wondering if Hamilton's going to pull a fast one on you. (He doesn't.)

Despite the foregoing, the novel is still fun to read, with some strands being considerably more enjoyable than others. Some of the novel's flaws are those of any sequel: the diminishing returns that inevitably result when a well-crafted world and storyline need to be resolved. Even books like The Lord of the Rings struggle by the time they get to the third book (which, to be fair, is only a separate book because of a publishing decision; actually, in terms of length, the whole thing is shorter than Judas Unchained!). But, as evidenced above, there are flaws beyond those brought on by it simply being a sequel.

Positioning it on the pulp-o-meter, I'd stick with my last assessment and place it somewhere between Neal Asher and Alastair Reynolds. I might even get around to reading some more Hamilton, but as most of his novels seem impressively wide on the shelves of Waterstones, it may be a while before I get back to him.