science42fiction

Review of Status Quo by Mark Rosendorf

geoffnelder — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:49:49 +0000

Status Quo by Mark Rosendorf
Published by Penumbra Publishing in 2012
ISBN: 978-1-938758-17-1
Paperback 215 pages
An outer space adventure by a motley crew of mixed ages and a cat, all curious about a hole beyond the moon’s orbit.
Reviewed by Geoff NelderWhen astronomer Gordon Maxwell discovers what appears to be a rift in space that is possibly a wormhole less than half a million miles from Earth, the authorities go to some trouble to deny knowledge of it to the general public and to discredit those people involved. One such is the narrator protagonist, student Alexander Copeland. The scene is set and the existing conflict is added to by the brutish military presence of Sergeant Reynolds, who bullies everyone.
Seven years later, while teaching a class, Alex is summoned to the Principal’s office where Reynolds, now a Colonel, recruits Alex and his cat to go on a mission through the wormhole. Alex reasons that the resurrection of the mission means something dramatic has happened. He’s right. Even though society is not permitted to know anything, a probe sent through the wormhole by Maxwell, has returned intact with a mysterious message. A problem for me is that Maxwell had sent a greeting to possible aliens the other side of the wormhole telling them exactly where Earth is – without consulting us. In my opinion it is pure folly to tell strangers where you live. They might decide you are worth enslaving, plundering and eating. Until we know better, a more cautious approach to contacting aliens is preferable. NASA is culpable in this folly by sending such an invitation to pillage us in 1972 with Pioneer 10 and later with Voyager.
The original astronomer, Maxwell, died a while after his project was cancelled and his daughter incarcerated in what we might call a hospital for the insane. She has been released for this new mission, along with Gilda a teenage brat (with redeeming qualities) and various other misfits the world wouldn’t miss if the mission didn’t return. This includes the cat and the military egoist, Reynolds. Never has such a crew been assembled, who have not received astronaut training and don’t even know how the toilet works or been tested for cat allergies. Poor Alex realizes something is seriously wrong here, and so does the reader. However, we continue because we are drawn into finding out about the wormhole and what’s on the other side, assuming the plucky crew are not disassembled, or if they are that they don’t reconstruct with each other’s body parts.
This story would appeal to teenagers: most of the characters are young, while the elderly (over 21) are quite crazy. There’s love interest, pets, a thirst for enquiry and an urge to prove the authorities wrong.
There are lines I wish I’d written such as: ‘I almost swallowed my Adam’s apple,’ and some that made me think out loud: ‘My tongue jumped to the back of my throat.’
I have to thank the author for making me investigate the true meaning of ‘outer space’. After 60 years of reading science fiction, I’ve always considered that phrase to relate to the volume of the universe beyond our solar system but in Status Quo – an apt title, by the way as the reader will discover although not ultimately – the phrase is used ubiquitously for anywhere above the Earth even before the Moon is reached. I found that the Karman line is 100 km above the Earth’s surface and defines ‘outer space’ such as that used by the 1979 Moon Treaty. I mentioned this in surprise to my wife, who already knew!

I will not spoil the ending, but if you enjoy a space adventure with aliens that are really alien – kudos to Mark Rosendorf for avoiding cliché there – and if you are not too worried about scientific accuracy, topped off with a satisfying finale, then this is the book for you.

Amazon Paperback Kindle

Nelder news
The third edition of my humorous thriller, Escaping Reality is launched today from Adventure Books of Seattle. The story is inspired by the 1960s TV series THE FUGITIVE starring David Janssen only set in Northern England and Amsterdam. It is a humorous thriller as the fugitive often has to rely on his wit and sense of humour to overcome adversity.

Escaping Reality

And in the UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escaping-Reality-ebook/dp/B00CWOU3YK/

THe first volume of my ARIA science fiction trilogy is soon to be joined by its sequel. The first is ARIA: Left Luggage. Blurb:
Today, Jack caught a bug at work. He catches a bus home. By the time he disembarks in the desert town of Rosamond, all the other passengers and the driver have fuzzy heads. Jack had caught an amnesia bug, and it’s infectious. Imagine the ramifications: The passengers arrive home infecting family; some shop en route infecting everyone they meet. The bus driver receives more passengers giving them change for last week’s prices and today’s amnesia. Some passengers just started work at the power plant, the water treatment works, the hospital, fire station. All to shut in weeks. Ryder, in the UK, realizes what’s going on but can he persuade friends to barricade themselves in a secluded valley, hiding from the amnesia bug?

Jon Courtenay Grimwood – “Geoff Nelder inhabits Science Fiction the way other people inhabit their clothes.”
Robert J Sawyer calls ARIA a “fascinating project”.
“Geoff Nelder’s ARIA has the right stuff. He makes us ask the most important question in science fiction–the one about the true limits of personal responsibility.” – Brad Linaweaver.
“ARIA has an intriguing premise, and is written in a very accessible style.” – Mike Resnick.

Kindle – Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/
Paperback Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Volume-1/dp/1905091958/

Kindle – UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/
Paperback UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Geoff-Nelder/dp/1905091958/
Publisher’s website with more details and formats. http://www.ll-publications.com/leftluggage.html

Buy it quick before you run out of memory!

Escaping Reality

geoffnelder — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:04:23 +0000

Escaping Reality was my first published novel coming out in July 2005. I knew little about publishing, and apparently less than I should about the art of writing. I was soon given pages of typos, although I didn’t regard some of them as such. My wayward brain has a lot to answer for. Anyway, Adventure Books of Seattle have decided the story is adventurous enough for them to use and have released it today as a Kindle ebook.

The artwork is by John F Keane

The story is inspired by the 1960s TV series THE FUGITIVE starring David Janssen only set in Northern England and Amsterdam. It is a humorous thriller as the fugitive often has to rely on his wit and sense of humour to overcome adversity.
For US Kindle owners http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CWOU3YK
And in the UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escaping-Reality-ebook/dp/B00CWOU3YK/

When originally published the Cumbrian Police raided several public houses in Maryport because the drug underground scene there is outlined in the book, even though the characters and story is ficitonal!

I’ll add links to the book’s story and pictures when I’ve updated my webpage. A taste of it is here http://www.geoffnelder.com/ERinfo.htm

I don’t want to know, but tell me.

geoffnelder — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:30:16 +0000

You know when you are in a critique group, whether online or in a face-to-face session, your stomach threatens to misbehave when your own stories are lacerated in a review? I was confident in many ways that ARIA: Left Luggage would survive book reviews because at least 10 experienced writers and several editors and two proofreaders have gone through it and their better suggestions had been incorporated. Even so, there is always a niggling feeling that while the concept of infectious amnesia is an original and fascinating concept, I could have treated it differently. A completely different plot. Yet, no one has actually suggested that. Instead I have received mostly encouraging reviews, and the occasional bizarre one.
By that I mean the reviewer liked the story and yet got it wrong. Reviewer Y for example, said Ryder was the one who’d opened the alien case before scarpering across the Atlantic to safety. Noooo. Reviewer W can’t wait for the sequel, ARIA: Returning Left Luggage so to find out how the aliens melt Snowdonia to lava. What? The Anafon Valley, dear readers, stays safe. That reviewer must have been reading more than my book at the same time! Several reviewers start writing a formal review, which often means a summary of the first third of the plot, then joke around pretending to have lost their memory.
So far I have not seen a bad review of ARIA. Another good one arrived today from poet, Emma Lee and it is on her blog at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/aria-left-luggage-geoff-nelder/
She makes an interesting point that I’d used metric instead of mph on a Welsh road sign. It shows how close she read the book. I don’t need to defend my use of metric but I might have thought that British road signs might have been in kph by 2015, the setting for the book considering I wrote it a few years ago. Most of British industry went metric in 1965 – the Meteorological Office went to Celsius, although they called in Centigrade, in 1962, but the TV presenters were under pressure to keep mentioning Fahrenheit until recently. I know Emma mentioned it only in passing and that it was only a niggle but such things can work on me. So… I searched for that metric road sign in my proofread document. I can only find a metric road speed sign that Manuel sees in Canada. Perhaps I missed it. So if you find a metric road sign in ARIA in Wales, please let me know and I’ll send you a free ebook of Hot Air or let you quiver with excitement with a pre-proofread copy of Xaghra’s Revenge.

ARIA is now listed on Ralan’s marketing website at

http://www.ralan.com/litboost/listings/aria-nelder.htm

Ralan Conley is famous for being the alternative to Duotrope as a writer’s resource for finding magazines and anthologies that might accept your short stories in speculative and humour fiction. Now Duotrope has sadly found itself needing to make a charge for subscription, I can see Ralan’s site being used more. Please send him a donation if you use his listings.

The ‘likes’ on my newish page on facebook is nearly 200 so if you are on fb and not liked ARIA yet please go to http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy

I can’t get enough…

geoffnelder — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:27:53 +0000

Valetta, Malta

…of being in Malta. From May 2 to 9th my wife and I holidayed at the Preluna Hotel, Sliema for the third – possibly fourth time. It’s on a magnicently paved shoreline and while we stroll along it, the locals are jogging, speed-walking or walking like us. I am thinking of plot lines while my wife talks to me. I nod but, honestly I am really listening too. She made me leave the laptop behind in Chester for the first time. That’s okay, it’s only a week and I had books to read such as Alastair Reynold’s Space Revelation, Vernor Vinge’s Fire Upon The Deep and Michael Summers’ The is Shop – more on those later. In spite of the reading I did get writerly withdraw symptoms after three days and so we took the ferry to the island of Gozo. It’s so laid back, picturesque and deeply moving with its awful history. In 1551 pirates in the pay of the Ottoman empire abducted the entire population of Gozo and took them to Tripoli and Constantinople slave markets, except for those to infirm for the journey. Surely their spirits cry out for revenge and that’s where my magic realism fantasy novel, Xaghra’s Revenge comes in. I take two of the abducted and two contemporary people and play around with their histories and emotions. The reader experiences the slave trade of those days and the frisson when past and present collide. If you are a publisher and are interested then go speak to my agent Rebecca Pratt for a taster.

While in Malta I met author, John Bonello. He writes fantasies, among other genres, in Maltese and is enjoying success with his local publisher, Merlin.

There’s a second-hand bookshop in Chester on the City Walls – website is http://citywallsbooksandmusic.webs.com/ Michael Summers works there and has written a delightful and thought-provoking anthology of science fiction called The Is Shop. Only £4.50 plus p&p – contact him at the shop or via the website. The emphasis of the stories is on science so these are truly science fiction but with humour and characters to enjoy. The first story I admire a lot – The Is Shop in which a young recruit to the shop is mystified by the lack of stock and so much wordplay and intrigue. It’s a shop story like no other.

I have chosen Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge as my choice book for the Chester Library SF book group for later this year, so I had to read it! I chose it because I like the concept of the Technological Singularity coined by Vinge – ie that one day the artificial intelligence machines on Earth will be sufficiently savvy to take over and humans will be redundant. I asked another SF group which of Vinge’s ficiton does this well and they said Fire Upon the Deep although ironically it was published after his paper on the TS. Very intelligently written with two children as main characters – a nice touch for what are adult concepts. Group mentalities in aliens is something I have written too in various stories.

Revelation Space is also interesting but rather cliched and with contrived resolutions in my opinion. I’m glad I read it.

Saint Margaret’s Bastion in Malta and my wife

1) NEWS in 2013: Voted best SF of 2012 at P&E Readers Poll. Suppose amnesia was infectious? Thank goodness it isn’t but imagine the ramifications if it was. ARIA: LEFT LUGGAGE is the personal story of people, the breakdown of society and yet hope for the few who escaped. Click on this link to Geoff’s blog, which has details including Amazon e-book and paperback http://bit.ly/10VIRKY

ARIA is endorsed by luminaries such as Mike Resnick and Jon C Grimwood.

2) 5 * reviews for the ebook HOW TO WIN SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS. Co-authored by two experienced judges in a dialogue form and has great reviews (not written by us or our friends!) at

http://www.ideas4writers.co.uk/books/storycomps.php

3) For something completely different try HOT AIR, an award-winning thriller based in England and the Mediterranean. A feisty woman witnesses a heinous crime from a hot air balloon. She’s abducted and kept in a watchtower on Mallorca until she escapes. A page turner on your Kindle at http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Air-ebook/dp/B0084OZL9E/

4) SF mystery EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEE is exciting interest. Several unique concepts written in an accessible style with a feisty woman main character and with a beginning and end on Glastonbury Tor – festival and all. Paperback and now Kindle at

http://www.amazon.com/Exit-Pursued-Bee-ebook/dp/B001CQC9LY/

Like ARIA at http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy

http://twitter.com/geoffnelder

Linking arms – a hugfest

geoffnelder — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:43:30 +0000

You’ll laugh. When ARIA was released I should have created a page on facebook (apologies for those of you you hate fb or just don’t use it. I find it quirky and bossy at times but great for swapping photos and news with family and friends, including writer pals and their events). At last I have done it and it is at

http://www.facebook.com/AriaTrilogy

At least I hope it works for you. You can like that page even if you are not friends with me on facebook. I am aiming for at least 100 ‘likes’ but I must not obsess about it. Via the facebook page create process I invited – suggested – to all my 700 fb friends that they might Like the ARIA page but not many did. I think many of the requests disappeared into the wrong facebook email boxes. Last year facebook created new email addresses for users but most don’t know how to access them – or want to. Some of us changed that address to our normal one so we can see notifcations. But, again many users turn off their notifications or are too busy living their lives to be bothered to like a little ol page like mine.

Also to boost promotional potential I have signed (free) for a promotional authors database at

http://www.authorsdb.com/authors-directory/2426-geoff-nelder

This could be useful. Who knows? Some things take off big time while others die off even if they are a good idea like Authors Database and my link to it above. I’ve entered my ARIA book one for its cover contest. You never know.

Double Whammy in May – in a good way

geoffnelder — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:23:10 +0000

The sequel in the ARIA trilogy has May 31st 2013 as the release date! ARIA: Returning Left Luggage is in the final stages of proofing, the art has been painted by Award-winning Andy Bigwood, and the promo engine is cranking up. By sheer coincidence May 31st is the day a while ago that my wife, Gaynor, was born. Luckily, she smiled when I mentioned her birthday is on the same day as the release of ARIA 2. Not so much, as poet, artist and writer Catherine Edmunds comments, a competing celebration – more using my book release as part of Gaynor’s birthday celebration. Yeay!

ARIA: Returning Left Luggage cover art by Andy Bigwood

Of course reading the sequel would make more sense if you read the first book in the series – ARIA: Left Luggage – links at the bottom of this page. Not unique but unusual for a science fiction trilogy is that the first volume has NO aliens, no battles in space, no Earth people going on interstellar travels. I believe it helped making the book more enjoyable as a medical mystery with the infectious amnesia for non-SF readers, although such plot aspects weren’t needed for book one either.

LL-Publications have asked me for a 800-word excerpt to hook readers and media into book 2. It was easy to do this for Left Luggage because the beginning was just right. The prologue told of Jack, who caught the infectious amnesia (ARIA) at work then spread it on the bus home. It was unique – and amazingly the idea of infectious amnesia still is unique in the fiction (and non-fiction) world. A reader tells me she lost some memory and other brain problems when she contracted meningitis so that is a kind of amnesia that is infectious but not retrograde, nor with everyone catching it within a few yards. Any day I am expecting an experienced science fiction reader to say, hey I read about infectious amnesia in this book in the 1950/60/70s by Niven/Heinlein/Asimov but they haven’t yet… Would it matter if they did? No, because it isn’t possible to have original ideas in absolutely every story – tens of thousands come out each year. Each story is unique because of the blend of characters, sub-plots, settings, writing style and factor X. Even so, it is rather cool to have an original idea and to have it published. Come on film makers, contact LL-Publications and buy the movie rights!

The 800-word excerpts for Returning Left Luggage is proving harder to pick. There are many many scenes that I like very much and whittled them down to five. One is of an ARIA victim trying to find his wife in an abandoned port in the South Pacific. It illustrates much of the dystopian problems and scenery created by ARIA. Butbutbut it involves shooting dogs. They are feral and maddened by starvation but even so, it might alienate [sic] dog-loving readers so while it remains part of the whole book it will not appear on the press releases! The others are too long so whichever I choose will involve even more lacerating than in the proofreading. I have enlisted the help of the Orbiter critique group, who helped me edit ARIA and still do so for volume three. So I’ve sent three possible excerpts to Mark Iles, James Odell, Chris Riley and James Steel for a poll on the one they think is best for a hook. Thanks – I’ll let you know the outcome. Daughter voted for a scene where Manuel seeks food in an abandoned shop and is caught – maybe.

I am slowly building up a twitter following at http://twitter.com/geoffnelder but I notice that some people have over 100,000 followers yet only follow a few hundred. Then I discovered that you can BUY thousands of fake twitter friends, youtube likes, and other social media connections. Such falsehood is probably excused by some a marketing ploy but it’s not one with which I would feel comfortable. It’s not much different to those authors who have fake identities to create their own ‘brilliant’ reviews on Amazon and fake blogs. I don’t have many followers on twitter – around 800 – the number goes up and down daily – but at least they are real. I think!

Wigan ate my sweets

geoffnelder — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:24:33 +0000

A warm feeling enveloped me at the Leigh & Wigan Words Festival yesterday as a small flash mob gathered around me in a corner of Wigan library to meet me. Mob might be an exaggeration of the quantity and an abuse of their good nature in the quality of their overt friendship. I’d come to talk about and sell copies of ARIA: Left Luggage but I wasn’t quite sure whether this was to be a simple sign and sell; move on to the next, or a reading, or a chat. No one seemed to know. Being a relatively small crowd we pulled their chairs into a semicircle with me, my box of sweets and books, facing them. I only knew one of them, Mike Hunt – the chair of the Festival committee and my friend from BeWrite Books days (RIP one of the most ethical publishing concerns). I’d met Joan on facebook but knew none of the others.

The group engaged me in interactive dialogue when I told them how I got the ideas behind ARIA with its unique concept of infectious amnesia, me being the first fiction writer to have received help from an astronaut in orbit, why science fiction allows me and readers to escape the limitations of setting our imagination on just one planet. The two hours flashed by and with great bonhomie they ate my chocs and bought my books.

A reporter and photographer from the Observer were there to quiz me for 20 minutes. Andrew Nowell was a cultured young man who recognised which Shakespearean reference is allured to in the title of my 2008 SF mystery – Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Clever chap. I look forward to reading his interview in me. All of you can when you buy the next copy of the Wigan Observer.

My nerves rattled in me for days in advance making me useless for fresh ideas and writing as well as domestic duties, but I need not have worried. Wigan Library is a fine new venue and the people are friendly – I didn’t even have to wear a rugby shirt.

I had ordered a large screen TV to show my short video trailer of ARIA but even a small screen wasn’t available. Shame. The youtube version of it has now reached 500 viewers! Go on, make it 501 now! ARIA video trailer here

Will Self drew a greater crowd and good for him, one day, one day…

A piece of practical advice which I’m told – after the event – by the chairman, is to ensure the blurb for flyers and advertisements emphasise that it isn’t just a signing but a discussion with the actual author. Apparently, more people would have attended if they knew that.

Upcoming4me has an intriguing piece about how I thought of and influences behind ARIA here.

Exit, Pursued by a Bee link is here

I have sweets!

geoffnelder — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:37:31 +0000

I fear I am going to be lonely at my book signing of ARIA: Left Luggage even though it won the ‘Best science fiction novel of 2012′ at the P&E Readers’ Poll. If you or your friends live in Lancashire or Merseyside, please point them in the direction of Wigan Library, Life Centre North, The Wiend, WN1 1NH where on Monday April 8th between 2-4pm I’ll be signing copies of ARIA and other books.

Yes, I have sweets!

Courtesy of The Sweet Club

It would be fantastic to meet with fellow writers and readers there. In fact I’d give you one of my books for free if you turned up if you mention this blog. Or your family and friends – so there!

My signing is part of the Leigh & Wigan Words Together Festival 2013, which is being organised by a former BeWrite buddy Michael Hunt. The train station is only a few minutes away.

The famous writer and raconteur, Will Self, will be there too – well, at the festival, not with me in the library, at that time but hey ho.

I had a story acceptance today from Futures – a management non-fiction academic journal. The issue has a focus of the relationship between science fiction and technological development. It seems that for every invention dreamed up by a science fiction writer, there is some archivist who will discover it already thought of by a scientist or engineer in the past. However, there is no way any archivist can know this for certain. Creative people imagine ideas all the time, whether they are scientists, engineers, poets, artists or scribblers like me. To keep tabs and track through a particular idea will never be perfectly accurate and does it matter anyway? I doubt if any science fiction writer is upset at the notion that their oeuvre has been discussed already because the process is individualised by them. I believe that the notion of infectious amnesia hasn’t been used before my ARIA trilogy but the uniqueness of that idea astonishes me. Hence I won’t be overwhelming surprised when some wag one day points me in the direction of a novel that already used it in the past. Every story is unique – the characters make it so. (see what I did there with Captain Picard’s famous line in every of his Star Trek episodes? You have to be a Trekkie to appreciate or to groan). The accepted story is Auditory Crescendo, which has been revised since its first publication. Funny because I had announced its acceptance months ago but I should have waited for the official say so today.

—

How to Win Short Story Competitions are steady. Get yours here.

Exit, Pursued by a Bee is at http://geoffnelder.com/exitbee.htm Several readers have pointed out recently that a principle notion in that book is being proved true. Ie that the universe might be chaotic but that the Earth is in a kind of bubble of stability. In Exit that stability is shaken when alien artifacts leave. Just shows that fiction might not be so unbelievable after all.

ARIA: Left Luggage continues to sell copies to wise readers. Links areKindle – Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/Paperback Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Volume-1/dp/1905091958/Kindle – UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/Paperback UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Geoff-Nelder/dp/1905091958/Publisher’s website with more details and formats. http://www.ll-publications.com/leftluggage.html Buy it quick before you run out of memory!

You tube video trailer http://youtu.be/oh0AAXIe8VU

Join me on twitter at http://twitter.com/geoffnelder

Whitstable by Stephen Volk

geoffnelder — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:07:15 +0000

WHITSTABLE by Stephen Volk

A Spectral Press: Spectral Visions III publication

Publication date: May 26^th 2013

A review by Geoff Nelder

I have not reviewed a novella quite like this. The protagonist is a real person. Yes, I’ve reviewed fictional biographies but they’ve been of people in the distant past – eg The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, not of someone I could have met and who, via the film media, we all have an intimate connection. It is kind of a fan fiction then, but far superior to most.

Peter Cushing was born on May 26^th 1913. Exactly a century later this novella will be released as a homage to the legendary actor, who lived with his wife in Whitstable.

Stephen Volk clearly researched Cushing’s life in great detail but this is not a biography. It is fiction and yet, as a film goer and Doctor Who watcher, I fell under the spell of Volk’s narrative and can say my disbelief was suspended in its reading. A reader should be forgiven if he or she believed this story was based on a real event.

The story is set in Whitstable in Kent in 1971 shortly after Peter Cushing’s wife died. He’s fraught with grief, feeling more like an old man than the young fifty-seven-year-old he really is. Morbidly insular he leaves his house to keep away from prying visitors but encounters a young boy who thinks the actor is Doctor Van Helsing, Cushing’s vampire hunting character in the Hammer films. The boy seeks help to vanquish his mother’s boyfriend, who is a vampire, or some other form of evil.

Although the story is woven around the boy’s concerns, transferred to Cushing, who takes on the vampire-hunt challenge for real as a welcome distraction from his grief, we experience much more than the plot. Between the bread of the main story is whole-fruit cinema jam, enough to make any horror fan salivate. Volk makes Cushing relate everything to something filmed by him or his contemporaries in a smorgasbord of cinema delight. Accordingly, the action in the novella reads as if a camera follows Cushing. For example he sees a boy about ten years old standing at an inquisitive distance, head tilted to one side with slats of cloud behind him and a substantial book under his arm.’ And in his conversation we have the boy picking at flaking paint on a signpost.

Resonance for me exist in little asides. Cushing is deluged with unopened manuscripts teetering in piles in his house. I had a literary agent in Stirling who vanished. When one of her clients persuaded the police to force her door there were heaps of unopened manuscripts, mostly in brown paper parcels tied with string, all the way up her stairs. She’s still missing but that’s another story.

There are aspects of the narrative that don’t ring quite true for me as a teacher and recipient of childspeak for decades. I don’t think a ten-year-old boy would make such long speeches so coherently from such an inarticulate family background and use words like ‘determined’, ‘crumbled’; although as a horror film enthusiast he might well say ‘vanquished’. Would an English junior schoolboy say ‘Movies’? Perhaps he would as he is surrounded by movie books and films, but it jarred a little. Not so much jarred as shocked when I found Volk had named the boy as Carl Drinkwater. Grief, I taught him at a school in Chester!

Volk certainly grabs other characteristics of children. ‘“No,” the boy said, sounding supremely affronted, as if he was dealing with an idiot.’ Haha my grandson does that to me and he’s only four. As do my granddaughters though by then I’m thinking it’s more about me.

A fascinating dialogue occurs between Cushing and Carl’s mother. She accuses horror films of being a bad influence on children. Interestingly this debate is in my family too. Batman’s activities create nightmares in my grandson. (though it could be a scam by him to have extra hugs in bed with mum). Cushing’s response, which I rather like, is that he doesn’t make horror films so much as enable an experience of fantasy , an escapism from the humdrum but one in which Good prevails over Evil.

Whitstable offers us insights into the acting profession. Love such quotes that I assume are either legitimate, or should be, such as the one from Olivier to Cushing: “Be sincere, dear boy, always be sincere—and when you’ve faked that, you’ve cracked it.” Note the ironic humour, and there are other lighter moments in what otherwise could have been too gloomy in its poignancy particularly the unwritten point that Cushing’s heavy smoking was probably a factor in his wife’s fatal emphysema. I admit to amusing myself, as Cushing does, in this clip:

“You’re Christopher Lee aren’t you?”

He corrected her with consummate politeness, tugging on his white cotton glove.

“No, I’m the other one.”

“Vincent Price?”

He kept his smile to himself. “That’s right.”

I also like his conversations with his deceased wife – consoling and urging him to have faith in himself. And as a reflection of his view that fantasy represents his work more than horror, he says: “Concentration camp: that’s true horror.” I say the same to my wife when she says something a tad awkward is a nightmare. No, a giant slimey monster eating you from your toes up is a nightmare!

There’s so much more in this novella, which has the depth and characterization of a novel. As a story it really finishes before the end, but aficionados of Cushing’s films, including Stephen Volk, and I, clearly didn’t want to stop.

The Afterword by Mark Morris is homage in action, a declaration of love and appreciation of the genre as portrayed by Peter Cushing and of the man himself.

—

A Spectral Press: Spectral Visions III publication

Publication date: May 26^th 2013

Available in Ltd Hardback and unlimited Paperback

Retail: £17.50 (UK) / 24€ (EU) / $30.00 USA / $30.00 RoW

Available from the publishers: Spectral Press, 5 Serjeants Green, Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK14 6HA, United Kingdom.

Pre-orders: http://spectralpress.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/whitstable-news-and-pre-orders/

Web: http://spectralpress.wordpress.com | Email: spectralpress@gmail.com

Nelder News:

Sales of How to Win Short Story Competitions are steady. Get yours here.

ARIA: Left Luggage continues to sell copies to wise readers. Links are

Kindle – Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/

Paperback Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Volume-1/dp/1905091958/

Kindle – UK – http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-ebook/dp/B008RADGYC/

Paperback UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/ARIA-Left-Luggage-Geoff-Nelder/dp/1905091958/

Publisher’s website with more details and formats. http://www.ll-publications.com/leftluggage.html

Buy it quick before you run out of memory!

You tube video trailer http://youtu.be/oh0AAXIe8VU

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Emergence by Gary Fry

geoffnelder — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:35:10 +0000

Emergence by Gary Fry

Published by DarkFuse in March 2013

ASIN: B00BYFFQJU

When a retired teacher looks after his young grandson, he discovers more than mysterious cones on the beach. The two of them find their deficiencies counterbalance each other making their loving relationship able to combat menacing phenomenon.

I’ve always rebelled against symmetry but there are moments when I can appreciate it, such as the Parthenon although seeing higgledy-piggeldy residences on a Spanish hilltop in random shapes pleases me more. I was the one who graffitied my sixth-form college with “Entropy will win” and yet when I encountered a pattern, even aspects of fearful symmetry in Emergence, it brought a warmth, a smile of appreciation.

The symmetries are more balances such as new and old, the emergence [sic] of understanding in a young boy versus the decline in the facilities of the senior character; the strangeness inherent in written alphanumeric characters when examined minutely by granddad finds resonance in the boy’s dyslexia then again later in the plot. Mention of which I ought to allude to for this review’s readers. Spot the similarities in my life – a coincidence?

A mother leaves her seven-year-old son, Paul, in the charge of Jack, his widowed grandfather. I too, am occasionally obliged (with pleasure) to supervise and edutain grandchildren. Jack is a retired teacher and so am I. Beautiful phrasing here “He’d been a good teacher, before cultural conditions had become so challenging that the task of pedagogy had been usurped by damage limitation.” Every former teacher will be nodding reading that. Jack is in his sixties, so am I. Jack lives on the coast of North East England – I don’t but my dad did, and I have been known to scramble for miles along the beaches looking for fossils and semi-precious stones. Jack finds conical objects sticking out of the beach. I found ichthyosaurus bones (and coprolite – fossil poo) on a beach. Grandson Paul and Jack get as excited about their beach discoveries as I do with mine, but there the story reaches the edginess of rationality allowing spooky paranormality to weave its ‘magic’ into the plot.

We don’t know the precise location of Jack’s house except that it is far enough away from the ‘silver tsunami of old people’ in estates of the elderly inhabiting many coastal honey pots around Britain.

Jack worries about a possible onset of dementia manifested by a recent difficulty with reading. He ought to consider AMD as the cause and treat other symptoms of old age with denial, as I do. Some aspects of life are immutable to Jack – and to all of us – such as “boys playing in sand is an inviolable cosmic rule”. A concept finding symmetry later.

Events in Emergence become more dramatic both on the beach and in Jack’s bungalow. He’s remarkably cool, considering the accelerating of weirdness happening in their isolated location, and he’s the responsibility of being in charge of Paul, but then the lad has skills offsetting Jack’s out-of-date expertise. The boy comes up with hypotheses for the oddities happening.

Although there is a science fantasy theme here, the story is more about the relationship between a grandfather and his grandson. It is beautifully crafted. Look out AL Kennedy and MR James even if they marry and produce literary offspring.

It could be said that there is a danger of both characters being too affable and the conflict in the narrative relies on the plot events. However, both man and boy have problems, which present their own conflicts resolved to an extent by them both having a meeting of minds – met my mind too.

Jack’s wife was a teacher, and so is mine. A gathering of coincidences then as I suggest above? No, although Gary Fry knows little about my life we now have proof of quantum entanglement. I am merely a particle of an atom, the other particle of which is a pen on the coast near Whitby. More stories like this and there will be a tsunami of literary tourists plaguing the Fry hideaway. Be warned.

The cover art above is a link to Amazon.com Kindle

For UK Kindles click here.

Or go to DarkFuse website here