I haven't quite been able to keep up the grand productivity of last week.  On Monday, I did what's become a weekly commute to go and see the friend with whom I'm creating what I've taken to calling 'Project M', in an entirely new medium for me.  Yesterday, I popped into London to have what turned out to be a very productive chat with Nick Briggs from Big Finish about the future of their Bernice Summerfield range (short version: it's got a very pleasing future).  I've written 3000 words of prose (for a new novelette that's been commissioned for somewhere rather wonderful) and fifteen pages of Demon Knights, as well as sundry plottings and preparings and guest blogs.  And I've managed to run six miles.  So all in all, not a bad week, especially when it's so sunny and glorious outside that I keep on wanting to leave my desk and... well, play cricket, really.

The very first thing I should mention on today's blog is the situation of Wash and Tashi Pratt-King, a 27 year-old Doctor Who fan (and Browncoat) who's been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, and his full-time caregiver wife.  The time of Wash's passing away is approaching, and he'd very much like to find someone to make a custom funereal urn to contain his ashes, made in the shape of a TARDIS.  Now, I did a bit of asking around, and dear old Mike Tucker found a commercially available urn in that style, but understandably, Wash would prefer something specially made.  If you're a maker of things Doctor Who, or someone who just wants to wish them well or help them out, either pop along to Tashi's blog above, or get in touch with her on Twitter (@RedTapeLass), and show them the support that a fan community can give.  All our love goes out to them both.

This week we watched 13 Assassins, a samurai movie from 2010, directed by Takashi Miike, and I must say, I think it's a bit of a masterpiece.  (Huge spoilers follow. Go see it.)  It concerns the efforts of the Shogun's advisors to find an honourable way of stopping the psychotic Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu from accepting the position of power already promised to him by the Shogun.  Rather in the manner of 'who will rid me of this turbulent priest', the job of assassinating the Lord is given to a samurai who has always wanted to find a cause to fight for, and is willing to give his life rather than end it in peaceful retirement.  He finds, in yet another new take on Seven Samurai, twelve others to accompany him on his suicide mission.  The story is set in an era of peace, with the Shogunate slowly unraveling, and every character is shaped by the political forces of a world that's starting to look as if there's no point to it.  It turns out, wonderfully, that the mad lord has been mentally deformed by the pressure of a society where he's not allowed to be happy in peacetime.  In other words, that he's expressing the same urge for glory as our hero feels, the difference being that said hero would have let himself continue fishing on his estate, rather than using whole families for target practice.  The team use alliances and diplomacy to send the mad Lord's army of retainers (led by an entirely honourable and competent warrior who's point of view is the militarist one that rules are there to be obeyed, no matter who's giving them) into a village they've set up as a trap.  Havoc ensures.  Terrible things happen.  Satisfaction is just about found in just about justice, all utterly undermined by the villain declaring that the hero has given him the best day of his life.  Miike paints a very realistic Samurai world, everything looking lived in and real.  His fights are spectacular, but there's no balletic wire work here; everything is possible, and lots of wounded men fall in the mud.  Indeed, one gets some idea of how the whole business of soldiery without gunpowder must actually have worked.  This is a Samurai Movie like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a Western.  That is to say, it's fully of that genre, in dialogue with it, yet it, pointedly, indicates its potential to go outside it.  Butch and Sundance leave the Western behind entirely for a spell, to set up the possibility that they might take up an entirely non-generic existence in New York.  A character at the end of 13 Assassins declares he's going to hop a ship to the USA, which makes one suddenly think, as in Butch, that, oh, yes, that character didn't have to live in that genre, other options were available, which is, I think, entirely the intended reaction.  Miike here is half John Ford and half Quentin Tarantino, because he's determined that the violence is going to be over the top and fun, also.  Except when we get down to the horror of it, and the camera view actually topples over, to see the messy struggles from the point of view of a dying man.  I also say Tarantino because of the tension and the precision in the set-up, because a few moments of severe horror are enough to make us feel nervy about the rest of the movie, because just and unjust desserts are served up, and because Miike establishes complete control of the narrative so he can do one astonishing, narrative-breaking thing.  The character of Kiga Koyata is the happy go lucky comedy relief our heroes pick up on the way, found captured in a trap in the woods, a man who lives in the wild.  Towards the end of the film, he's killed, skewered right through the neck, absolutely no doubt about it dead.  And then he pops up at the end again, utterly unharmed, just because the director has that power to reach down into a narrative, and, having shown us an explanation of the processes that lead to fascism, and the grinding awfulness that results, feels able to use the mercy of a god to save one good person.  Now, I've heard that Miike in interviews refers to Kiga as a forest spirit, a Yokai, and thus immortal.  But I like to think, especially since we flashback to the very human wife the character's missing, that he was speaking metaphorically.  I think that, unlike the system that the movie so illuminates and skewers, Miike demonstrated that one can ignore the rules in favour of mercy.

Tales of the Emerald Serpent is a proposed shared world anthology, looking for (and getting) Kickstarter funding, which should appeal to many visitors of this blog.  It's a sword and sorcery collective, in the tradition of Lankhmar, about the Free City of Taux and the infamous Black Gate district therein.  Authors featured include Juliet E. McKenna, Julie Czerneda and artist turned author (he must be getting fed up of that description) Todd Lockwood.  There's a video on the sight explaining the project, and there are all sorts of great bonuses for those who pledge different amounts of money, starting at $5.  Worth a look.

On the last edition of the SF Squeecast that we recorded, which isn't out yet, our guest was Saladin Ahmed, whose Throne of the Crescent Moon has been getting rave reviews lately, notably in Locus...


I mentioned on the podcast how much I love that cover, which does its business (which is to say that this is brand new high adventure in the style of The Arabian Nights) very well, only for Seanan McGuire's cat to start loving the cover so much she ended up eating it.  Saladin proved to be a very fun guest, especially since his chosen items to squee about were the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.  So it's with great pleasure that I direct you to the first chapter of the book with Saladin's description of it, reviews and a rather lovely map.  Do check it out.

In the run up to Eastercon, I'm going to be featuring two interviews with fans new to that event today, and two next Friday.  So firstly, take it away Kathryn...





What's your name?

Kathryn Peak.

Why did you decide to go to Olympus?

Because it’s about time. I must confess to being a bit of a sci-fi denier. I have read genre fiction since I was a kid, loved sci-fi on television and in films, yet as a writer always tried to write straight fiction. I think it was Einstein that said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well, it has taken years and years of not particularly liking what I was writing before I had my light bulb moment. I recently finished and shelved a novel. It is not good and will never see the light of day, but it was the first time I just let rip and wrote what I like to read, and like a confused child finally getting the joke, the penny dropped and I switched to writing genre.

What had you heard about previous Eastercons? 

I know only what I have gleaned from the Internet, which includes the web pages for this year’s and previous years’ events, blog pieces, and a lot of photos of Eastercon delegates. Now here’s the thing. In a previous life I worked in politics and for NGOs, and I have been to a lot of party conferences. And the photos from these conferences are really not that different. Yes, a lot of the people in the photos look a bit geeky, with the glazed look of someone who has spent the afternoon in the bar rather than in a conference hall. Now, if we could only get more of the delegates at political conferences to dress up in costume, I think more people would watch party conference coverage on TV.

What do you expect to be different from cons in your own fandom? 

This isn’t really a question I can answer, as the whole shebang is new to me. I am coming in from the wilderness; just hoping the natives are friendly.

What are you most looking forward to? 

Listening to panels on literature. I follow quite a few writers, reviewers and publishers on twitter, but they talk primarily about new releases. Every time someone mentions their influences, old books they have read, it sends me scurrying off to search them out. But mostly, I am looking forward to being a room with people talking about SF with as much enthusiasm as I feel about SF. I want to wallow in it. That would be nice.

How do you think SF fans will interact with fans from your subculture? What sort of panels about your own subculture's stuff are you expecting? 

Again, pass. I don’t have much to compare it to. My subculture is ‘writer in cubby hole’, and from the evidence on twitter, there are a lot of us out there, sending each other supportive messages and generally bigging up each other’s efforts. If I have any expectation it is an optimistic one. Much of the conversation on-line suggests that sci-fi is an interactive process, where fans are writers, writers are fans, and a good amateur fanzine is given reasonable currency. I would hope to find that played out at Eastercon.

How do you see mainstream SF fandom, from the outside?

I am still trying to get my head around what mainstream SF really is. When I come across fellow fans of SF, we may find a few points of reference, but the parameters are so wide that you can stay inside the bestsellers and mainstream franchises and still not read or watch the same material. SF fandom seems to lend itself to specialization. I suppose my only concern is one of ignorance. Of the books, shows, films and comics that I really like, I know a fair bit about them. But SF is huge and my consumption time is limited. The geek community has a reputation for knowledge one-upmanship that would leave me in the dust. In the egg and spoon race of life I tend to be the one on the sideline taking notes.

Do you think there's a chance you might ever move your primary fandom to being an SF fan? 

On the contrary, as a fan I feel like I’m still shopping for my particular thing. In that sense, Eastercon serves a useful purpose by being general, not particular, and therefore a good place to shop. Of course, as a writer I enjoy tickling my imagination and taking whatever bits and pieces seem interesting to me, so I don’t want to limit myself too much. Mixing it up is half the fun.

Thanks very much, Kathryn.  Next up is an old friend of mine ...

What's your name? 


Peter Anghelides. 


Why did you decide to go to Olympus? 


I was invited to attend and talk about Blake's 7.


What had you heard about previous Eastercons? 


I knew some of my pals had attended in previous years, and that it is one of the UK's biggest SF conventions. And that it's approach to what constitutes SF was quite eclectic. I keep meeting people who know more abut it than I do. I was talking to a Writers Group in Farnborough the other week, and said I'd been 'invited to something called Olympus 2012 in London', and several of them said 'is that Eastercon?'

What do you expect to be different from cons in your own fandom? 


I'm not sure whether I have a fandom. I suppose the cons I've been to in the past have all been about media SF, especially Doctor Who and Blake's 7.  And those conventions have, on the whole, been about having guests from the cast and production teams, and autograph lines, and episodes being screened, and people in costumes. Plus I enjoy meeting my pals at the bar. I gather than Eastercon is as much (if not more) a celebration of the fan community itself. But the biggest difference will be that I'm not as steeped in the broader SF as other attendees. But so long as I don't have to sit some kind of test to get in, I should be okay. 


What are you most looking forward to? 


Seeing how a big UK SF convention runs. The last con I went to was Galifrey One in a Los Angeles airport hotel, which had about 3,000 there. Eastercon is in a Heathrow airport hotel, so the downside is that the hotel pool will be a bit chilly. But on the upside, I won't be so jetlagged travelling in from Hampshire. The last time I was in that particular Heathrow hotel was for a business conference. So if I have a flashback and start to use words like 'leverage' or 'synergy', perhaps someone can shake me in an attempt to snap me out of it.


How do you think SF fans will interact with fans from your subculture? 


I'd have thought there'd be some overlap with other SF enthusiasts -- there must be common threads through the things we like. If they aren't interested in my subculture, there'll be plenty else to keep them occupied. But if someone asks me abut Tanith Lee, for example, I'll know more about her Blake's 7 episodes than her Tales from the Flat Earth series. (Are you sure there isn't a test?)


What sort of panels about your own subculture's stuff are you expecting? 


Just the one I'm participating in, about the new Blake's 7 audio series from Big Finish. 


How do you see mainstream SF fandom, from the outside? 


With the same fascination, I hope, that non-SF people view my enthusiasm for media SF. But I'm not sure what counts as 'mainstream SF' anyway. As a comparison, there are people who would assert that SF is not 'mainstream literature', which is not especially meaningful or useful. So I suppose I'm reluctant to categorise.   


Do you think there's a chance you might ever move your primary fandom to being an SF fan? 


So long as there isn't some kind of entrance exam.


Peter's website is here (he tweets as @anghelides) and you can find out more about the Big Finish Blake's 7 audios here. Thank you, Peter.

I think my musical favourite pick is appropriate today.  It's one of my favourite live moments, a Janis Joplin tribute where Joss Stone belts it out but then encounters (and bless her, laughs at the impact of it and gets out of the way) a complete scene stealer in the shape of Melissa Etheridge.  I particularly like how Melissa sings it at Joss.



You know, I'm getting into the swing of these Friday blogs again now.  And I'm really looking forward to Olympus.  Next week looks like it's going to be really busy.  Until next time, Cheerio!