Is it Science Fiction?

I have yet to read China Mieville’s The City and The City as I’ve been bogged down getting through Stephen KIng’s The Stand, a long-promised read (the 1400 page version). I make the admission in order to clarify that I am not making a judgement on China’s award-winning book. I love his other books mainly because of the literary style of his writing, and it shouts at me from the bookcase to be read.

It is fascinating through how doubt has been levelled at The City and The City as to whether it is science fiction or just a damn good crime story with a two city setting along with a ‘fantastical’ element. This opinion is set in the Guardian review pages by Alison Flood. She also says that China isn’t bothered what people think and that as far as he is concerned all his writiing is science fiction. Consider that China’s The City and The City has recently won  awards by people who know their science fiction – the Arthur C Clarke Award and  – it is nominated for the Hugo Award for science fiction novels. 

China says: ‘ ”What I don’t want to do is disavow the fantastic tradition I come from. This is a book from within the fantasy tradition, which hopefully can also be a perfectly faithful crime book – and a good book.”

Maybe it is pure crime or crime with fantasy, but is it science fiction? China says such discussions are silly but that’s a cop out.

What a contrast then to Margaret Atwood who shouts that NONE of her writing is science fiction even though most of us would consider stories like Oryx and Crake, set in the future with GM humanoids a yes for a SF genre. I explore her attitude and look at classical definitions of science fiction in Kalkion at this link

http://kalkion.com/column/it-science-…

Now I will have to rush the last 250 pages of The Stand so I can judge China’s latest for myself.

Why Dogs Bark

As a cyclist I’ve had occasion to leap sideways when a mutt barks suddenly, even when its behind a gate. It puzzled me why some dogs started barking when they couldn’t possibly hear or see me, so on behalf of the magazine, Cycling World, I spent the best part of six months researching the topic, doing experiments and persuading canine psychologists to talk to me. The resulting article came out in Cycling World in 2004. This month I updated the piece and it is published online for the first time in Kalkion at:  http://kalkion.com/column/971/why-dogs-bark

Home page

Umm, very good for morale. I am on the front page of Kalkion for a few days. http://www.kalkion.com/

Anyone wanting to buy a paper version of Exit, Pursued by a Bee can go to http://geoffnelder.com/exitbee.htm

and ebook at

http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-577-0

There is also a number of articles I’ve written at Kalkion, the latest on Hiding the Truth over UFOs here

http://www.kalkion.com/column/935/hiding-truth-over-ufos

updates

Phew, for a while I’d thought the serialization of my science fiction novel – Exit, Pursued by a Bee – was lost in the many interesting articles and files of Kalkion, but here it is! http://www.kalkion.com/node/645

A vastly more update is the birth of my first granddaughter, Amy Nelder. Born to my son Robert, and more so to his fiancee, Tracey, in Robin Hood’s city of Nottingham on February 11th 2010 and weighing in at nearly 9 pounds. Keeping a watchful eye is her big sister, Liddie-Ann.

Baby Amy is born!

The Moon

Sadly, I have yet to see the new 2009 release film entitled, Moon, but it is on my Amazon wish list. Meanwhile Kalkion ezine have reprinted my factual article on the moon at

http://kalkion.com/column/illusions-coincidences-and-moon/734

I combine a fascination for quirky facts and coincidences and my urge to debunk ‘common sense’. It was originally published in our Escape Velocity magazine, issue 3.

In the above kalkion edition is chapter 6 of my Exit, Pursued by a Bee science fiction mystery. The previous chapters can be accessed there too.

Exit, Pursued by a Bee is serialized

My science fiction mystery is available in weekly chapters free for readers at Kalkion at

http://kalkion.com/node/646

 

Kalkion column

I have started a regular monthly column at Kalkion, an internet-based magazine on science fact and fiction. Rather like our one print based Escape Velocity but covering slightly different ground.

My column is at http://kalkion.com/column/it-science-fiction/555 it’s about Margaret Atwood, whose writing I love to bits but not her attitude to the science fiction genre.

Sometimes my words will appear translated in the Hindi version, which is really cool – as they say.