Sci-Fi Holiday Death Monsters (or something)

FIRST of all let me say I'm sorry - I know I've been away and I promise not to go away for so long again.

Where have I been? Well, owing to work stuff and holidays, I just have not had the time to sit down in front of a computer screen - it's been mental.

But during my enforced absence I have had time to think about lots of things, but specifically sci-fi holidays and - watch out Branson - they just don't mix.

You see, it sounds very attractive to be whisked away to the moons of Jupiter for a weekend on a hi-tech spaceship, but something inevitably goes tits up.

Maybe the attractions or crew turn into unstoppable killing machines (Westworld, Jurassic Park), maybe the whole thing is part of some conspiracy to take over the world (Futureworld), maybe a passenger will be possessed (Midnight) or maybe the computer decides that the humans running around the ship have become pesky irritations ... THAT MUST BE ERASED (ermm, Airplane 2).

Of course, I'm sure that the vast majority of trips on the new Spaceplane will be trouble free, but it would be just my luck to book in for the one where all of the above happens at once.

Still, I could be the plucky, debonair hero who foils the cyborg plot with bad jokes and a spatula.

But I could also be the cannon fodder, wiped out in the first few minutes, becomes an alien host kind of character, whose survival plan is to scream and wet his pants.

One thing for sure - I won't be wearing a red shirt for my journey into space.

On my recent holiday (Cornwall since you ask, very nice) I came across some sci fi in the most unexpected of places - Land's End - and experienced my own version of sci-fi holiday disasters.

They were hosting a Doctor Who exhibition which we enjoyed, especially my son, Izaak, who is a big Who fan. We got to meet a Cyberman, Sontarans and Weeping Angels, to name but three.

However, the family put their foot down when I said we should visit Futureworld @ Goonhilly, a museum about the future or something where you can tour the giant satellite dish, build a robot and (what I really wanted to do) ride a Segway.

I know, a bloody Segway and they said no! Were they subconsciously worried Futureworld woul turn into an android bloodbath? I'd like to think so, but they probably just couldn't be arsed.

So I will have to file it alongside their refusal to go to Nasa when we visited Florida in 2003.

I still haven't got over that one.

Sci-Fi Heaven - Part Two

ANDY Sawyer leaned back and paused for a moment, before stating clearly and precisely "I'm sorry, but that is bollocks!"

The science fiction librarian and I were continuing our chat in the Sci-Fi Hub at the University of Liverpool's Sydney Jones library.

The Hub houses tens of thousands of books, videos, audio tapes and other sci-fi goodies.

The reason Andy was so animated is that the conversation had moved on to the sniffy attitude some people have toward sci-fi, and one author in particular.

He added: "When Margaret Atwood says in interviews that Oryx and Crake is not science fiction, but something called speculative fiction or adventure romance, well I'm sorry, but she's wrong.

"I mean, it's about genetic engineering in the near future!

"She is on a long list of people who seemingly look down their noses at science fiction, but it is as valid a form of literature and art as any other and has been from the start."

He said: "When the phrase was coined and just before then, it was the era of great inventors, and sci-fi allowed people to tap into that pioneering spirit by saying if you think this is good, just you wait!

“We have a current Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, who has been a guest at a sci-fi convention, and many other science fiction writers are incredible thinkers who influenced society on many levels.

“For instance some people mock Star Trek, but when Captain Kirk kissed Uhura, that was television’s first inter-racial kiss watched by millions of people, and that made a difference."

Andy paused for a moment, as if gathering the threads of his argument together.

“If people still say they don’t like sci-fi, I also ask them how come they know all the catchphrases from Star Trek? That usually stumps them!”

Andy - who has just been awarded the 2008 Thomas D. Clareson Award for outstanding service in the promotion of science fiction scholarship - explained he plans to keep expanding the Hub in the future, as despite its vast size, he feels there is plenty more material out there.

“We have only scratched the surface really. People around the world are writing some fantastic material and it fills the imagination to look at what they have come up with – their hopes and their fears too,” he said.

“In the Collection, we get to look after those dreams and nightmares.

“But there is so much going on that we don’t know about, such as stuff that comes from non Anglo-American society. That is really interesting. I know a Bollywood movie is being made, set in the year 2050. I can’t wait to see that.”

And despite his love of all elements of sci-fi, Andy is pretty sure the actual future will not be like the versions we read about.

“If it was, we’d be getting around using jet packs and matter transporters now, while hardly anyone back in the 1940s envisaged a computer terminal at your desk.

“The one guarantee is the actual future won’t be as predicted, but it is still very interesting, challenging and fun to read about.”

You can link to the Sci-Fi Hub here.

Andy recommends ... his sci-fi picks

IF people are looking to begin reading science fiction, the Science Fiction masterworks series of books is a good place to start.

However if I was to pick out my favourites, the first would be a writer called Cordwainer Smith.

He mainly produced short stories in the 1960s, with some fascinating ideas about class.

John Wyndham is a fantastic author, most famously in Day of the Triffids, but also The Kraken Wakes and The Chrysalids.

Finally, Ursula Le Guin has produced some wonderful work, such as The Dispossessed and the Left Hand of Darkness.
I like all kinds of science fiction, but I would personally recommend those authors and would feel at a loss if I hadn’t read them.

Hugo agogo!

THERE was the sense of an oncoming storm at this weekend's Hugo awards, of a terrible brilliance gathering momentum just over the horizon.

The maelstrom was centred around two men - Steven Moffat and Neil Gaiman - and one show - Doctor Who.

The Whorunning genius and the dark mastermind of storytelling picked up one award each, with Moffat getting the Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form prize for Blink and Gaiman the Long Form counterpart for Stardust.

Both were hugely impressive pieces of work and, in Moffat's case, his third victory in three years had a sense of inevitability about it.

Blink was so pants-wettingly brilliant that it was just not fair - not only one of the best Doctor Who episodes ever, but one of the best things on television in the past decade by a Gallifreyan mile (about 2.75 leagues, if you're interested)

It was (and I don't say this lightly) the lesbian spank inferno of TV shows.

While Stardust could not claim to reach the same cinematic heights on the lesbian spank inferno scale, it was funny, exciting and magical.

I love Gaiman's writing - try reading Snow, Glass, Apples more than once - but the film added scope and drama to the short story it was based upon.

Robert De Niro in drag? Claire Danes looking gorgeous? Killing a dead man controlled by a witch again and again? And did I mention Claire Danes?

Now, the rumour which has been going around is that the Moff has already asked Gaiman to write an episode of Doctor Who.

The sheer geek-charge of even thinking what that episode would be about makes the hairs on the back of the neck of everyone within a three-mile radius my street stand on end and dance the samba.

In my fevered imagination, I have already convinced myself that that is all they have talked about for the past few months.

I am convinced that even now - 17 months away from the Who's next series - they are huddled in a corner of a secret laboratory somewhere, cackling as they invent story ideas that are so good, anyone who read them would either a) go blind, b) go mad or c) wake up six months later in Cardiff, naked and covered in tattoos, asking what had happened.

Is that true? Who knows? A load of bollocks cooked up by a blogger with too much time on his hands? Almost certainly. But maybe, just maybe ...

As I said, hay una tormenta próximos ... there's a storm coming.

Sci Fi Heaven

"OK, I'LL meet you in the library."

With those words, I had my pass into one of the innermost sanctums of science fiction - the enormous Science Fiction Hub at Liverpool University.

Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, the Hub has grown into one of the greatest and most extensive archives of SF in the world, with tens of thousands of novels, manuscripts, magazines, tapes and other sci-fi paraphernalia stored away for scholars from across the globe to explore and enjoy.

That vast anthology includes an original manuscript of Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, a collection of works by Olaf Stapledon, and an original first edition of Amazing Stories.

All in all, this is the motherload of sci-fi stuff in Britain, easily beating out the collections of geeks across the land - me included - of a few dvds, magazines, and a lightsabre.

But still - the library? After all, Doctor Who had just had a nasty experience in one with flesh eating shadows. But the chance was too good to miss, so making sure to stay in the sunshine and listen for anyone saying 'Hey, who turned out the lights?', I headed in.

Science Fiction Librarian (how's that for a job title!) Andy Sawyer, who also runs a MA in science fiction studies for the university, has managed the collection since its inception.

His SF credentials were already well established by then, as a member of the Science Fiction Foundation and the editor of the magazine for the British Science Fiction Association.

He said: “My wife always says that I have turned my hobby into my job and she is right. I am lucky to be able to work surrounded by some of the giants of science fiction every day.

“It is tremendously exciting to look through the collection and see things like a typescript of Day of the Triffids. That has a famous first line about a Wednesday feeling like a Sunday, which sets the dislocated tone for the whole novel, but in this earlier version it is replaced by something much more mundane.

“It is thrilling to get that understanding into some of the great works of science fiction, to see how the author’s mind was working.”

The collection is one of only a handful around the world, with other archives being housed in California (That one's huge, said Andy), Kansas, Toronto, Calgary, and in Switzerland's wonderfully named House of Elsewhere.

The Liverpool Collection was originally based around Olaf Stapledon’s archive at the University, which was augmented by the archive of the Science Fiction Foundation in 1993 and a successful lottery bid for the John Wyndham archive. It is also the only one in the world to have two Hugo Awards among its collection.

Andy said: “We keep growing the collection steadily with donations from authors, magazines and private collections. Stephen Baxter has been tremendously generous, while Neil Gaiman has also donated soem of his work, to name but two.

"It is quite a small world and we sometimes get items left by a friend or colleague who has passed on, which can be poignant.

“There are always other things we would like to bring here though, and elements of the collection we want to update.”

Like many people, Andy has been delighted by the current renaissance in science fiction, fuelled by programmes such as Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica, but he believes the written word is where the real cutting edge still lies.

He explained: “The print form is still the historical background of science fiction and has always attracted some wonderful thinkers to the genre, right from its earliest days.

“J. Michael Straczynski, who created Babylon 5, said the thing about real cutting edge TV sci-fi is it is about 10 years behind what you read in the printed media, as opposed to everything else which is about 20 years behind.

“I think there’s a lot of truth in that. Science fiction has always been a kind of thinking tool that you can use to comment on society as it is now and explore it, or look into the future and imagine what it will be like.

“That presents a fantastic challenge for writers – for instance how do you describe something that no-one has ever done, or what it feels like to have an extra sense?

"Saying that, programmes like Babylon 5, Doctor Who and Firefly have some wonderful writing. When you have a Straczynski character called Alfred Bester, played by Mr Chekov from Star Trek, who is telepathic, you realise he knows what he is doing."

You can link to the Science Fiction Hub here.

Coming soon - part two of the interview, and Andy's sci-fi picks.