Martin Rees: Our Final Century

Being an astronomer gives you a different perspective to life on Earth to the rest of us, as Martin Rees acknowledges in this book. While the rest of us spend our lives surrounded by life, astronomers spend their time staring into and thinking about vast expanses of lifeless nothing, watching stars blow up and seeing the evidence scattered all around us that shows how the Universe just doesn't look to receptive to life in general. We are just a small blue speck in the vast scheme of things, and specks get blown away all too easily.

It's why he's probably better placed than most to write a book like this, looking at the various ways we could wipe ourselves out over the next hundred years, and what steps we could take to increase the chances of our survival. He looks at a variety of scenarios, from 'bioerror and bioterror' through nanotechnology gone wrong to bizarre possibilities in advanced physics experiments that might not just destroy Earth, but could go on to destroy the entire universe - and it would all happen so quickly that we'd never know about it.

Rees is clearly and expert on his subject, and isn't just a mad prophet in the desert calling down woe on the works of mankind. He wants us to survive, wants us to be aware of the risks we face and what we can do to avoid them or lessen the risk. He's careful to end the book on notes of hope rather than despair, like a Nick Ross on a cosmic scale telling us not to have nightmares about the risk of our entire existence being stolen from us in the night.

However, it's not the book it should be, principally because it's too short, often reading as though it's either a precis of a longer and more detailed work or that Rees' editor was convinced by some of his earlier arguments and pressured him to finish the book before Armageddon overcame us all. Or, it may be simply to attract an audience for the book that might be put off by a larger and more complex work, which is a shame as some of his arguments don't carry the weight they could - for instance, there's little discussion of the risk of nuclear conflct beyond terrorism in the next century - if they were at greater length. One also wonders why Rees chose to devote so much space to the so-called Doomsday Argument when its philosophically rather weak (the most glaring flaw I spotted is that it could have been made at just about any time in the last several thousand years to 'prove' we would be extinct 'soon') when other areas are skirted over, but perhaps that's merely personal choice.

However, that doesn't stop this from being a generally interesting and informative book that's well worth reading, though one will have to resort to the extensive bibliography to get the real depth that would make the book a true classic.

Terrance Dicks: Timewyrm: Exodus

I can still remember my surprise when I first discovered what Terrance Dicks looked like. Target Doctor Who novels had been one of the staples of my youth, allowing us in those pre-video and UK Gold days to read those stories that had been transmitted before we were aware of Who or even before we were born in the case of many of them, and Terrance Dicks was the God of the Target novelisation. There were other authors, of course, and that prompted many playground arguments/discussions over whether the Ian Marter who wrote the books really was the same one who played Harry Sullivan. But Terrance was the name everyone knew, his name on the cover a promise that inside there would be 12 chapters of pure escapist fun, with a cliffhanger every three chapters (or sometimes two, if he was adapting a 6-episode story) and everything wrapped up in around 150 pages.

All I knew of Terrance Dicks was a name and that he had a few staple phrases for describing the Doctors - Peter Davision was always a 'young man with a pleasant open face' is the one that sticks - but my image of him was as some distinguished old man, probably a retired schoolteacher with a resemblance to Jon Pertwee, a pleasant, avuncular English gentleman. So, when BBC 2's Doctor Who Night revealed him to be an East Ender who looked as though he'd stepped out of The Sweeney rather than Goodbye, Mister Chips, it was rather a surprise. It was somewhat akin to the surprise I felt when Exodus turned out to be a surprisingly good book.

Exodus is proof that Who can be adult, but still keep all its old sensibilities. This is the same Doctor and Ace we know, but this time the adventure they're in isn't confronting some tinpot dictator on a barren colony world, this is them plunged into one of the darkest spots of Earth's history and dealing with it head on, not just being confined to some small scale action while the big history goes on unheeded in the background.

It's interesting that one of TV's most well-known series about time travel should have a paradox at its heart. We see the Doctor roaming across the universe, overthrowing tyrants here, helping revolutions there but all the time we're told he can't interfere with Earth's established history - we can see the Daleks thwarted in 2150, but their role models, the Nazis, have to remain in power. Dicks manages to find a way to square this circle, in a similar way to how Quantum Leap - another series cursed with a similar paradox - managed it. The Doctor might not be able to change our history, but he can make sure it stays on course and prevent something worse from happening.

It's this worse history we're presented with at the start of the book, as the Doctor and Ace arrive in a rather squalid London of 1951, witnessing a Nazified Festival of Britain and then finding the pressures of the time getting in the way of their attempts to discover what went wrong and put it right. We get to see the Seventh Doctor that had begin to appear on TV, ready to face evils head on, plunge into the heart of them and destory them from within. This is a Doctor who's not afraid to disguise himself as a Nazi and later even become a friend of Hitler himself to try and get time on the right course.

And from there, the scenes that follow within 30s Germany are superbly written. Dicks has clearly done his research into the nature of Nazi society and captures the all-pervading sense of fear and paranoia that surrounded the Nazi upper echelons, with the Doctor the perfect figure to throw into the mix, throwing off the careful weave of plot and counter-plot, while to find out just who's behind it all. What's more, the villain's a convincing one and an interesting trip into the past of the TV series, a chance to see what happens to those left behind when the stories finish. The real nature of Kriegsleiter's body is a particularly effective section of the book, and helps to give us a deeper insight into just what risks a Time Lord takes when they regenerate.

This is proof that the New Adventures could be properly adult books. To use an analaogy from American TV, Genesys was Cinemax adult - never mind the plot, look the breasts - while Exodus is HBO adult, the situation meeting the demands of the plot and not vice versa. It's a clear step up from Genesys, and a credit to Terrance Dicks.

A quick thought on Green Wing

I'll give the series a full review when it's over, but until then one thought I wanted to get down in case I forget it. In terms of cuteness, perkiness and generally radiating the air of being good and wholesome, is Sarah Alexander the Felicity Kendal for the 21st Century?

Identity

Identity is well-acted, competently directed, has an original idea at its heart and a surprising twist at the end. Unfortunately, it just happens to be complete bollocks as well.

I don't want to be too rude about the film, because it tries quite hard and giving it the sort of treatment I gave to Paycheck would be like kicking a puppy. It's trying so hard to be a good film and the writer and director have clearly filled several notebooks while watching The Usual Suspects repeatedly, its just that it fails to achieve. But then, it's better to fail spectacularly rather than succeed miserably, I suppose.

I think the main problem comes from the structuring of the movie. As I said, the director and writer have clearly watched Usual Suspects a few too many times and borrowed the idea of having the main story being told by a narrator who then turns out to be unreliable. However, imagine if Suspects had waited an hour before bringing Verbal into the interrogation room and just featured Kujan and others talking about the case until he arrived. The intention in Identity is clearly to create some kind of suspense as to when the events in the motel are taking place, but instead it just creates confusion so by the time of the reveal, you just end up thinking 'what?'

And while it is well-acted, all of the actors are playing the sort of roles they could do in their sleep - John Cusack is a good guy with a troubled past, Rebecca DeMornay's a bitchy Hollywood actress on the slide, Alfred Molina's a kindly psychiatrist and Ray Liotta plays a really intense guy who turns out to be a psycho. Gosh, didn't see that coming. If you're going to put actors in roles the audience recognise them in from an infinite number of other movies with no surprises, it's hard for us to care. They all put in good jobs, though it sometimes seems that Cusack's just faxing in his performance, but none of them have anything special to work with.

It's not a horrendously bad movie, just a disappointing one. If you've really got nothing else to watch then it fills an hour and a half quite nicely, but prepare to feel disappointed afterwards.

An open letter to the video directors of the world

Dear people who are only one step above directing Shop Gimp Theatre adverts for B&Q,

Stop using cheerleaders in your videos, no matter how they're dressed, no matter how 'ironic' you think it is, no matter how much you think your idea for using them will be so much better than the other guys who've done. It's trite, it's hackneyed, and we've all seen the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit enough times to know where you got your ideas from.

That is all.

Paycheck

Throughout Paycheck, I was aware of a deep grinding noise in the background. By the end of the film, I'd worked out it had two sources. First, the noise of Philip K Dick spinning in his grave and second, the sound of traffic passing through the tunnels they'd built in the holes in the plot.

You may have heard of the concept of the 'idiot plot' - a plot that's so stupid, with so many holes in it that it can only be made to make sense if everyone in the film is an idiot. This is not just an idiot plot - this is the Platonic ideal form of the idiot plot, in which every character, no matter how minor, no matter how intelligent their character is meant to be, behaves as though they're a total moron. You can make an idiot plot work, but it requires your characters to be idiots, and for the audience to understand that they are idiots (see for example, Dude, Where's My Car? which actually follows a similar plotline of missing memory, clues and advanced technology). However, you can't make an idiot plot in which your characters (even Bumface Ben Affleck himself) are supposed to be scientific geniuses of various description.

Are there two John Woos in the world? It would explain a lot. The first is the talented director of Face/Off, amongst other movies while the second is a talentless hack churning out drivel like Paycheck. And does screenwriter Dean Georgaris really exist, or is he merely a pseudonym for the five monkeys with typewriters or the Script-O-Tron 3000 screenwriting system? Nothing happens that hasn't been heavily foreshadowed (right down to pointing out that Affleck is a master of the futuristic martial art known as 'hitting things with sticks') and the sole purpose of the FBI agents (aside from Agent 'I shall temporarily forget that this is a no smoking building' setting off the world's most ridiculous fire prevention system) seems to be to act as a Greek chorus, telling us what's going on when there's no way to lever it into the rest of the script.

And can someone tell me just what Allcom is meant to do (besides being an Evil Corporation, of course)? Its organisation appears to have been determined at random, unless someone can give me a convincing reason why it appears to have a combined Time Travel and Botany division. Unfortunately for such a powerful and evil corporation it seems to have sent its assassins and hit squads to the same School Of Not Shooting Straight And Being Easily Distracted By Bright Shiny Things as the Empire, while the bosses have obviously gone to lots of special seminars with titles like 'Overcomplication: your key to success' and 'The end of the world: why it could be a business opportunity'.

On a sidenote, one plot point - that the discovery of any time travel technology by a nation would cause global nuclear war - was borrowed wholesale from an episode of the Logan's Run TV series. And before you complain that I'm giving away the story, tha only matters if you're intending to go an watch this film. If you are, then your main concern will be to stop your brain from exploding with anger at the stupidity of it, not that I've given away any plot points.

Anyway, before I cast this movie off into the outer darkness, and wish for a technology that would erase it from my mind, two last points. First, the ancient martial art hitting people with sticks. There's a scene early on which establishes that Affleck's character (he does have a name, but I've chosen to forget it) is rather good at hitting things with a long stick (no, it's not Kendo, just hitting things with sticks) which seems to be there for no reason, until you realise that Script-O-Matic 3000 doesn't allow that sort of wasted scene, and so later in the film, Ben gets his chance to hit some bad guys with a stick. It's just that he puts down a gun to do it. Yes, in the future, a stick will be a more effective weapon than a gun.

But the film's much more grievous sin is wasting Paul Giamatti, introducing him at the start, then losing him after about half an hour before bringing him back at the end for a 'everybody smile and laugh' ending straight out of Police Squad! Where his character (who in a vaguely bad film, rather than an abominally bad one, would at least have got to feature in an unsurprising twist at the end) goes for this time isn't explained, unless he stays locked up in the handy plot cupboard he wanders into.

In short, this is a bad bad movie. Do not watch it. Walk away. Leave it on the shelf at the video store and pick up something else. Change the channel. Petition TV companies not to show it. Avoid.

John Peel: Timewyrm: Genesys

(As I said before, no it's not that John Peel)

In retrospect, you have to admire Peel's courage in taking on this project. After all, this would be the first official Who story since the series ended and you can guarantee that no matter what he'd written, there'd have been someone complaining about it. Wisely, he realised this, and didn't go too far away from what was expected. That's not to say Genesys is just another Who story - it clearly takes advantage of the freedom of the new format - but it's still close enough to the original to reassure fans.

The temptation for any author would have been to start this book straight after the end of Survival, but Peel instead takes us into two seemingly disparate scenes - a space battle and then, back in Earth's past, Gilgamesh's meeting with (and refusal of) Ishtar. If you know even the basic story of the Epic of Gilgamesh (there's a good overview here, by the way) then Peel's intention is already clear by this point. It's a neat reversal of the format of the old Who historical stories. While they often played fast and loose with the established facts of history, here Peel presents the 'real' story that history played fast and loose with. Chariots of the Time Lords for those of you who remember Von Daniken.

It's definitely interesting to read a Who story set on a much wider scale than we ever saw in the TV series. Not limited to what the BBC special effects department can conjure up (or emulate in a quarry somewhere in the South East), we get entire Mesopotamian cities, huge temples, mile-long buried alien ships, evil Goddesses somewhere between Alien and Terminator 2 and Gilgamesh portrayed by a young Brian Blessed. Well, that's how we comes across to me, smashig down doors, shouting loudly and hamming up every scene he's in.

Of course, it does have it's flaws. While I'm sure the teenage prostitution and bare breasts of the Priestesses of Ishtar are probably historically accurate, I'm not really sure Peel needed to mention them so often. It seems too much as though he's waving a flag emblazoned with 'Look! This is an adult book!', as though he's not convinced his plot in itself is enough to justify that title. And yes, there is Naked Ace in this book, and no, I'm not going to discuss it.

Still, Peel's characterisations are good, and the Doctor and Ace are recognisable as the same people we saw on TV, though with greater depths than may have previously been encountered in a Doctor Who book. The story's also good fun. While there's no doubt that the Doctor will win in the end, and history will proceed as normal, Peel manages to establish enough doubt as to how he will do it, and there's always the sly smile as you see how he incorporates the Epic (and previous Who continuity) into the story. And of course, notbeing restrained by budget, the availability of actors or anyone's acting talent allows Peel to bring in a couple of previous Doctors for cameo appearances, though while the Fourth Doctor's appaearance at the start is relevant to the plot, the appearance of the Third near the end seems more like a bone thrown to the fans that a necessary plot development.

But, it's an interesting start to the New Adventures series, and sets up the Timewyrm series nicely with the baton being handed on to former Who script editor and veteran Target author Terrance Dicks for the the next book, Exodus.

Doctor Who novels: a quick introduction

I suspect that for most people who have any conception of Doctor Who existing in book form - especially those outside the realms of SF fandom -it's purely in the form of the Target novelisations of the TV series. However, during the time since 1989 that the series has been off the air it has been 'kept alive', so to speak, in novel form.

It began in 1991, when Virgin Publishing obtained the rights to publish new Doctor Who stories continuing the story from the end of Survival, the last televised episode. Peter Darvill-Evans, the force behind the decision, also took what would be a monumental decision. Rather than continue the 'Young Adult' style of the Target novelisations, the books would be aimed at a much more adult audience.

Virgin continued publishing the 'New Adventures' until 1996, when the rights reverted to the BBC after the American TV Movie starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. The BBC then began to publish their own 'Eighth Doctor Adventures' which were effectively a continuation of the Virgin series (though without featuring any characters created for the Virgin series to which they did not hold the copyright - it get quite boringly complex so I won't discuss it) which are set to conclude in early 2005, in time for the new TV series starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. New novels featuring this Doctor, as well as novelisations of the TV series, are promised. Interestingly, Russell T Davies, the Executive Producer/chief writerhead honcho/big cheese of the new Doctor Who series also wrote a Virgin New Adventure (Damaged Goods), as have Paul Cornell and Mark Gatiss, both of whom are contributing episodes for the new series.

There are also 'Missing Adventures', featuring previous incarnations of the Doctor and his companions in adventures set during the series' past.

Anyway, why am I telling you all this? Because I've started reading some of the New Adventures (there's a flourishing market for them on eBay, with some rarer ones reaching quite high prices) and thought I'd provide you with some background before I begin writing any reviews. The next post should be a review of John Peel's (no, not that John Peel) Timewyrm: Genesys, the first New Adventure.

If you want some more details on the books, try Outpost Gallifrey, the Dr Who Guide, or even the BBC's site about them (well the ones they publish, anyway)

In the post today

And possible forthcoming reviews: Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs, Beverley Knight's Affirmation, Martin Rees Our Final Century and The Orange Book, though any discussion of the Orange Book is more likely to end up here.

Reginald Hill: A Clubbable Woman

Despite having regularly watched the adaptations of Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe novels on the BBC, this was the first time I've read one of his novels. Even that was mostly by chance, mainly because I needed a third book to make up a 3 for £5 offer in Bookworld and this caught my eye. If it hadn't been the first book in the series, I'd have probably returned it, of course.

Having read it, I'm genuinely glad I did pick it up. Obviously, from watching the adaptations of his books on TV, I was aware that Hill is an expert at creating intriguing situations and crafting plots around them. One of the things that sets Dalziel and Pascoe above most other detective series is that the murders that occur in them don't seem to have just occurred to give us our death for the week with a cast of likely suspects. Hill's characters exist in their milieu (in this case, a rugby club) and the murder is a natural consequence of actions, reactions and attitudes set in train long before the story starts, not just a convenient hook for the story.

One thing that surprised me about the book was that it was written in 1970, and I can't help wondering what the reaction to it was back then. I don't usually check the copyright dates on a book when I pick it up, and I'd assumed that it had been written sometime in the 80s. It was only several chapters in, with a reference to miniskirts of all things, that I got curious about when it was written as the style felt as though it was written much mor recently. Hill's a lot like Elmore Leonard in this respect - many of his books feel much less dated than they should, partly because they don't make any special effort to root themselves in the time they're from. It's a recognition that human nature, especially of the murderous kind, can be eternal, or at least recognisable despite any differences between eras.

Of course, one can't talk about this novel without mentioning the brooding presence that lurks at the heart of it - Dalziel himself. He's entirely believable and yet a hard character to describe, perhaps because he's such a fluid personality, a man capable of slipping swiftly from the hail-fellow-well-met Bruiser Dalziel of the Rugby Club to driven, probing Superintendent Dalziel to angry, tragic Andy. They're all parts of a whole, though, the man who all the stories run through. It's also clear why Pascoe is part of this partnership as well. Like Dalziel, he's a man out of place, a university graduate in a police force that still thinks 'too clever by half' is a valid criticism, and he gets to see all the parts of Dalziel, understanding his boss on a level that others can't attain.

In terms of mystery, this isn't a perfect book - many clues are only discovered by chance or coincidence and the final climaxes are wrapped up quite perfunctorily, but this is a detective story in quite a simple sense, in that it's a story about detectives. I'm looking forward to reading some of Hill's later novels, as he's started from a good base and there's clear territory for him to expand and improve into.

Hello, good evening and welcome to nothing much

Well, I used that to start off What You Can Get Away With so why not a bit of symmetry between my two blogs?

So, for those of you wondering just what this blog is, well it pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin. I've been thinking for a while that I need to write more reviews of the stuff I read, watch and listen to (amongst other things) so this is a way of motivating yself to do that. I've been reading sites like Cold Fusion recently, and noticed how much fun you can have with reviews, so hopefully I can get to something like that eventually. Of course, I'm not going to inflict some of that B-Movie rubbish on myself, but you never know what I might find. Also, if I submit reviews to other sites (like some Doctor Who stuff to Outpost Gallifrey) it'll go here as well just so it's all complete in the same space.

So, let's see what happens. There's always comments boxes if you want to have your say.