D is For...

David Mitchell. Not the comedian – the author. Mitchell is responsible for the novels Ghostwritten, Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas – all of which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Mitchell is a deft writer, who loves experimenting with structure and perspective. The novels are pieces of literary fiction that effortlessly explore certain science fiction ideas and concepts – although he is not regarded as a science fiction writer.

Ghostwritten is probably my favourite and was Mitchell’s first novel. It takes the reader around the world through a series of subtly interconnected narratives, from a doomsday cult and Sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway, through stories in Mongolia, St Petersburg, London and finally New York. The final narrative deals with an artificial intelligence that has become sentient called the Zookeeper. The Zookeeper calls a talk radio show called the Night Train to debate with the host the moral question of allowing humanity’s continued and damaging existence on planet Earth. The host, of course, considers the call a prank but indulges the caller, not realising that the Zookeeper is actively making a real decision. The narrative then brings us back to the subway terrorist attack in Tokyo in a fascinating conclusion to the book.

Even more ambitious is the novel Cloud Atlas, in which Mitchell moves through time rather than space. The novel is composed of narratives, the first beginning as a journal by a passenger on a sailing boat, touring the Pacific islands in 1850. This narrative is encapsulated and part of the story that follows, which concerns the letters of a composer living in Belgium in 1931. This in turn hands over to a murder mystery set in California 1975 and so on. The middle sections of the book are the most fascinating – each section moving further and further into the future – one story becoming part of the next. A genetically engineered clone called Somni~451, who works in a restaurant in a near-future dystopian Korea, observes the previous story as a holographically projected ‘orison’. This then connects to a story about primitive humans in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. The brilliance of the story-telling is truly revealed as in the second half of the novel we work our back through the narratives and back through time. It is pretty masterful. What is even more impressive is Mitchell’s control of language. Each narrative has its own style, from the 1850s journal, through the 1930s letters, the futuristic ‘orison’ and the degraded / evolved language of the tribespeople in a post-apocalyptic paradise.

Mitchell’s concern for detail that informs, his structural experimentation and thematic ambition definitely had an effect on me as a reader and a writer. David Mitchell himself has won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for fiction and has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize twice. I highly recommend him.

Bad Sex

Some of you following this blog will know that I have spoken in the past on the merits and issues associated with horror writer Stephen King. He has undoubtedly written some enjoyable and genre-defining novels and deserves his place as the ‘King’ of Horror. I am less appreciative of his writing-by-numbers approach to the creative process - which might be fine for King – but unhelpfully prescriptive for others. I am immediately distrustful of writers who dictate rules for other writers and artists. These rules seem totally ignorant of the literary and cultural developments of the past fifty years: poststructuralism; postmodernism; post-anything. What century did King think he was in when he postulated such unbreakable rules? This is discussed in greater depth here.


Personally, if you’re going to follow anybody’s advice, you might as well follow William Goldman’s famous declaration that ‘nobody knows anything!’ Something that Stephen King seems to know a little about is writing a bad sex scene, apparently. He has been nominated for this year’s ‘Bad Sex in Fiction Award’, awarded to one writer each year in order to (according to The Literary Review) "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it". King has been nominated for his time-travel romance, 11.22.63.

Misfits Report Card: Season 3


Misfits surprised me. I didn’t think I’d like it. Perhaps it was something about the way it was advertised. I had no idea that it had a supernatural element to it and thought it was simply about a group of young offenders on community service. For those who have not get experienced it, stop reading and go buy the boxset: it is a very good British science fiction series about a group of young offenders who experience a strange storm while out picking litter and are gifted with amazing and sometimes problematic super powers.

I enjoyed the first and second series but thought that they might experience a problem with the third, since Robert Sheehan wasn’t returning. The loss of the Nathan character bothered me a little. Annoyed me, possibly. The actor had done well out of the project and I thought it was a little churlish of him not to see it through to some kind of conclusion (most series do not have that long a shelf-life). I’m sure he’s been offered all kinds of roles but I think he jumped ship a little too soon. Wasn’t there any way of him honouring his commitment to both the material that had initially promoted him and his new opportunities?

Anyway, that isn’t the problem for Season 3 of Misfits. The series, appropriately, took the loss in its stride and wisely moved on without making much of Nathan’s absence. In fact, one of the strengths of Season 3 is the new character of Rudy Wade. His ‘power’ opens up a range of new opportunities and the actor, Joseph Gilgun, is entertaining to watch. The character very much occupies Nathan’s position in the group while at the same time making it his own. Not an easy transition.

The problem for Misfits Season 3 is not character-based. It’s ‘power’ based and ultimately started at the very end of Season 2. While finding Season 3 entertaining and watchable, I don’t like the way the writers felt the audience’s attention span could not be held with the old ‘powers’. There was still a lot to be done with invisibility, telepathy, personal-history time-travel and hypersexuality – as well as immortality (if Nathan’s character had continued). The Smallville-style myriad of powers given to different people on the estate was working also, giving the group an endless supply of varied problems and enemies. Swapping the powers around at the end of Season 2 has been kind of confusing. There is also an issue in so much as these new powers have been used quite sparingly in the first half of the third series, which isn’t particularly satisfying. The aspect I find most difficult is the nature of the new powers. I know the in-joke is supposed to be that the new powers were a rubbish exchange – but they still need to be interesting to watch. Alisha’s clairvoyance / remote viewing seem to have had very few applications so far. Curtis’ gender-bending abilities were an interesting single-episode study but are pretty useless, otherwise. Kelly’s rocket scientist intellect appeared like a joke that would be quickly solved with an early re-exchange of powers. Kelly has retained this narratively-useless power, however: perhaps she will have to defuse a bomb or something in some kind of finale? Simon’s precognition only seems to have stopped him falling off a wall so far – his Parkour-inspired gymnastics and ability to keep Alisha interested seem more impressive by comparison. When these are juxtaposed with the abilities of other characters in the series (like the power to travel through time and space and change human History) – the Misfits' powers pale in comparison.

So, am I enjoying Season 3? Yes, but having elegantly avoided a difficult problem right at the beginning through clever script work and casting, it seems to have run into some other issues. Time for a list...



Top 5 Misfits Powers (in order of preference)



1) Immortality

2) Telepathy

3) Precognition

4) Personal History Time Travel

5) Invisibility

C is For...

Choose Your Own Adventure books. I used to love these books as a kid. This was clearly the author coming out of me at an early age. I wanted more control in my fiction. Nowadays this kind of control is achieved through the glorious interactivity of console and computer games. In the early Eighties, however, choosing to turn left or turn right, fighting enemies or running away, was determined by questions posed at the bottom of pages and flicking halfway through the book (an added element of suspense) to find out what fate awaited your character. Although the books themselves varied in quality and imagination, the concept of the Choose Your Own Adventure books was a piece of genius. Readers could actually become the main characters in the books they were reading – influence storylines through decision making and even die (in a fictional sense!) if they made poor choices. The series ran into hundreds of books and became a publishing phenomenon.



I remember reading a lot of these books and the series often wandered into the realms of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Interestingly, my two favourites were more down to earth choices: The Deadly Shadow, which involved the global hunt for a Russian spy that was literally a ticking time bomb, and Mountain Survival – a plane crash in the Rocky Mountains survivalist story that Bear Grylls would have been proud of. I have fond memories of these
books as a child.


Do you remember any?

B is For...

Blake’s 7. A trip to the late Seventies required for this one. This is an Alphabet of Influence or Inspiration and I have to e honest and say I was a young child when Blake’s 7 was shown initially. It was a piece of British television space opera, undoubtedly created to cash in on the cinema success of films like Star Wars. It had woefully poor special effects and sets, in comparison, but was popular in its time. The series was a piece of dystopian fiction about a group of political renegades led by a freedom fighter called Blake and their fight against the oppressive forces of the totalitarian Terran Federation. They escape incarceration and steal a spaceship as part of their getaway that turns out to be an alien vessel called The Liberator. The Liberator is faster and more powerful than anything the Federation has and Blake and his band of revolutionaries and criminals (his ‘Seven’) use the ship to both escape and take the fight to the Federation. The series follows these adventures. In this respect, Blake’s 7 shares a great deal in common with the more recent science fiction series Firefly.

I remember little of the characters and plots: I don’t even remember the titular character, coming to associate the series with another main character called Avon. This suggests that as a child I came to the series late. Seeing Blake’s 7 through the eyes of a child, I could overlook some of its clear weaknesses. Taken as a product of its time, however, it was unusual and interesting. Its dark and pessimistic tone appealed to me, as well as the fact that it seemed to concentrate on anti-heroes as opposed to characters in a clear-cut conflict between the forces of good and evil. The ship was cool, also – even if the effects were not and both the artificial intelligences, Zen and Orac, came to be characters in their own right. Blake’s 7 remains highly regarded to this day, often achieving high positions in science-fiction polls. Many consider Blake’s 7’s enduring legacy to be the long-term story arcs that are now commonly employed by American science-fiction series and are absent from Blake’s 7’s contemporaries. The series is often the centre of rumours concerning its re-issue or re-invention but for the time being the Blake’s 7 universe lives on in the audio adventures of fellow Black Library author James Swallow. His blog can be found on the bar to the right.

A is For...

Writers do not operate in a cultural black hole. They are influenced by what they read, they watch and experience. They are influenced by texts from both their youth and their present. This is an unavoidable consequence of a free exchange of ideas. Many writers are happy to have influenced other writers – influence being a form of compliment, however big or small. New Historicism is a category of literary theory that deals exclusively with such a process. For New Historicists, ideas do not exist in a vacuum and there are no instances of truly isolated genius: all writers are influenced by history, their personal history of experiences and the cultural expressions of the time.

I thought it might be a good idea from time to time to pay compliment to the speculative texts (science-fiction, fantasy, horror etc.) that have influenced me – both in a big and small way. These might be books, pieces of non-fiction, cinema and television, cartoons and comics – anything that I feel has influenced me in some way and colours my creative perspective: an ‘Alphabet of Influences’. Today we start with A and perhaps on the surface an unusual choice. Arnold Schwarzenegger . He might be a limited actor, a staunch Republican and infamous womaniser - and I don’t think that I can forgive him for the last two of those – but his project choices across the 1980s and 1990s kept the science fiction and fantasy genre strong. Of course, full credit needs to go to the writers and directors of those films, but Schwarzenegger’s involvement did ensure certain projects got made and helped push such speculative genres further into the mainstream. There is some cheese among these choices – no doubt. I’m not ashamed to say that I did enjoy some of his films during that period and some are still very watchable today. The key thing for me is that he visibly championed a set of genres that other actors and creatives had neglected, helped make them commercially successful and therefore ensure their further expansion. Here are my top seven Schwarzenegger science-fiction and fantasy films. See if you agree.


1. Terminator 2: Judgement Day










2. Predator






3. The Terminator







4. Conan the Barbarian












5. The Running Man









6. Total Recall








7. Red Sonja

Electronic Shoeboxing #5

This time the scissors – like internet diving rods – zeroed in on a nice review for my first novel Redemption Corps. I found it on a reading community called Cafe Libri and the kind reviewer was a man called Kendall Fontenot. Part of the idea behind Electronic Shoeboxing is to help me keep track of responses to my work - building up a collection in one place – and also to recognize the effort readers go to when not only buying and enjoying a book but also posting their thoughts online. Anyway, thanks Kendall!

'Rob Sanders' "Redemption Corps" adds a wonderful character to Warhammer 40K's Imperial Guard Novel series in Major Zane Mortensen. Having read a number of the Warhammer books, I can honestly say that few characters have been as fleshed out in one tale as much as Mortensen.

"Redemption Corps" centers on Mortensen and his loyally lethal band of storm-troopers as they take on one suicidal mission after another. The Redemption Corps open the book by taking on a Volscian uprising aboard the "Deliverance." From there, they take on a planet seemingly hungry for rebellion and then tackle a rescue mission on a deathworld. These missions eventually culminate in a final face-off with a surprising enemy on a world literally facing complete destruction.

As the Redemption Corps cuts their way through each mission (losing many of their own along the way), it becomes obvious to Mortensen that these missions all have one point to them: to have him killed.

Preceding every chapter of the book is a glimpse into future events that does somewhat throw off the flow of the book. While these drop a number of clues and introduce numerous characters that do not appear until later in the tale, they don't ruin the enjoyment of the story at all.

Fans of Warhammer might not like the treatment of a particular group of warriors in this book, but their portrayal isn't that big of a stretch. You can find a similar portrayal of this particular group in one of the short stories in "Legends of the Space Marines."

As already stated, Mortensen is a fully developed character. Coming in with almost as much growth and description is Cadet-Commissar Koulick Krieg. He plays a very important role in this tale. Sanders develops this particular character slower, but it's this slow development that allows the reader to appreciate Krieg that much more.

A few members of the Redemption Corps (as well as a few strays they pick up along the way) do get some development. Vedette and Sarakota are two very interesting characters who I'd love to see in their own adventures down the road. I hope that Mortensen and Krieg return in more stories as well.

If you enjoy other Black Library titles that feature the Imperial Guard like "Cadian Blood" or even titles featuring the Astartes, you'll probably enjoy "Redemption Corps." It's an action-packed adventure full of page after page of violence, adventure, and suspense. Highly recommended.'

Infraction Police!

Lately, fellow author Aaron Dembski-Bowden has been blogging about the time-consuming dangers of posting on forums. Today I ran foul of a different kind of forum danger: moderator infraction. I had been posting on a forum, talking to some nice people about shared interests and shooting the interweb breeze. It is fair to say that the forum was not dedicated to my publisher Black Library or associated with their products. Wherever I post, like many people, I include a signature below my comments. This tends to be my blog address. I opened my email today to find that I had communication from the forum moderator, informing me that they had removed my signature from a post I had made. Okay, I thought. There was nothing explicitly about that in the conditions, but if they felt it was necessary. Chalk that up to a warning. Won’t do that again. But wait - I opened my next email to find that I had been issued with an ‘Infraction’ and had lost a ‘point’. This sounded serious. I didn’t know I had a point: and now I had gone and lost it. It seems that because I had posted more than once in a day and my blog address was displayed on that post also, I had to be punished. Presumably as an example to other disobedient posters. Perhaps the moderators are afraid of some kind of uprising. I daren’t go back. I can’t remember how many posts I made on that day and therefore how many cumulative infractions I have racked up (before I knew they were infractions). I fear being seized as soon as I try to cross the border. It only takes a mouse-click, you know. The second email informed me in no uncertain terms that I had committed the cardinal sin of ‘Unsolicited Advertising’ when I included my blog address in my post signature – the forum equivalent of kerb crawling or indecent exposure.

This is all a great pity. I had been talking to some nice and interesting people. Perhaps they had been making extra efforts to be nice because they were being forum-policed so stringently - I will never know. I'm just glad I made it out alive. I’ve said before on here that I’m not a fan of unnecessary rules and prescription and this is another example. The internet is about communication. Without people writing on their sites, internet forums would be empty. What is the point in getting people together in one place if you are not going to allow communication? There are many nice people on forums and running forums and I’m interested in talking to them, but these rules are just silly. They might have a place on Panfu or Club Penguin but they are ridiculous as part of internet forums where grown men and women from all over the world exchange views and ideas.

I have some advice for my friend Aaron, with whom I share some sympathy. Your problem is solved. Danger-averted. Add your blog address as your post signature and your access to internet forums will automatically be restricted!

Can The Undead Smell You?


The Walking Dead is progressing nicely and I’m enjoying the desperate adventures of Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes and his rag-tag group of survivors. I was talking about The Walking Dead on a forum the other day, however, and it occurred to me that the series might be breaking its own rules. This doesn’t stop me enjoying the series but the zombies do seem to be behaving differently in different seasons. In Season 1, Rick and several survivors escaped from a zombie swarm by hacking apart a corpse and draping rotting flesh over themselves as they shambled away. This, of course, reminded me of the excellent scene in Shaun of the Dead where the group take an amateur dramatics course in how to walk and moan, like a zombie. When it starts raining on the funk-covered Rick, the deputy sheriff is plunged immediately into peril because the zombies can now smell him. In Season 2, however, the zombies seem to have lost this ability. Rick and the survivors can hide under cars when hordes of zombies shuffle past and they remain undetected. Ducking below bushes and hiding behind corners seems enough to keep Shane safe from mobs of the undead in a high school.

AMV, the company that produces The Walking Dead, advertised a set of rules that they were using for their zombies before airing the first season. How do they match up to what we see zombies doing in the (still excellent) series?


Zombie Rule #1: Ability to run is based on the amount of time a zombie has been undead, and how much decay has set in.

Zombie Rule #2: Zombies decay but at a much slower rate than humans, and it's still possible to differentiate between young and old zombies.

Zombie Rule #3: Zombies are like lions: if they've eaten, you can walk by them without fear, but a pack of hungry zombies will attack you.

Zombie Rule #4: The quickest speed of any zombie is a shambling run. see Night of the Living Dead. NO sprinters exist.

Zombie Rule #5: Zombies are not dexterous. They cannot pick up or use any items more complex than a rock or a stick.

Zombie Rule #6: Zombies have poor eyesight but they do have a strong sense of smell.

Zombie Rule #7: Zombies cannot speak but can communicate by pack mentality. The herd tends to move together if they sight food.

Zombie Rule #8: There is no overt recognition of people or places, there is a sense of familiarity that can dictate where a zombie moves.

Zombie Rule #9: There's no known cause of the zombie mutation, but it's suspected to be a virus or infection.

Zombie Rule #10: Once you're bitten you'll die and reanimate as a walker. How long it takes is related to the nature your bite.

Best Episode... Ever!


Some series get better the further they progress and others tend to lose their way. The X-Files was more than a series – it was a late Nineties phenomenon. Every week, two FBI Agents, one a sceptic and the other a believer, investigated the strange, the supernatural and cases that defied scientific explanation. What made it special and gave it the cultural oomph to translate from genrevision to the mainstream was largely achieved in the early series – the first primarily. It wasn’t David Duchovny or Gillian Anderson, although they were both excellent. It was the writing. Audiences couldn’t get enough of the original concept – which in turn traces its origins from Seventies shows like Kolchak the Nightstalker. Even now, shows that fairly unashamedly advertise themselves as X-Files wannabes vie for our televisual attentions. On top of the obvious appeal of the concept, audiences were treated to weekly 40 minute instalments of weird, investigative delight layered on top of a character-driven ‘will-they-won’t-they’ romantic sub-plot akin to the dynamics in Moonlighting. Alas, despite having all of this going for it, The X-Files did end up losing its way and was never better than its first season. The reasons for this are debateable. I was always a fan of the ‘monster-of-the-week’ episodes and felt that a sub-story involving a specific group of alien creatures – what some called a ‘mytharc’- came to unreasonably dominate. These episodes always struck me a less interesting and possibly lazier.

I know what I think is the Best Episode from Season 1 of The X-Files. It would be interesting to know what other people think, however. The following classic ‘monster-of-the-week’ episodes appear on a poll on the side bar. Feel free to click on the names, check out the twenty second trailers for the episodes and vote for the one you remember most fondly. Better than that, watch Season 1 again!

Ep.2 Deepthroat

Ep.5 The Jersey Devil

Ep.8 Ice

Ep.14 Gender Bender

Ep.17 E.B.E.

Ep.19 Shapes

Ep.20 Darkness Falls

Ep.21 Tooms

Electronic Shoeboxing #4

The scissors are out again and I've reached for the Electronic Shoebox. This time my attentions have fallen on a great blog called 'Kaughnor's Cave', where I discovered a nice review for Atlas Infernal. I have copied the review here but if you wish to check out 'Kaughnor's Cave', and why wouldn't you, then follow this link.


"I picked up this book solely becasue the cover intrigued me. What the heck was this human doing wearing Harlequin gear I thought. Now, I'm not one to do book reviews, but I really enjoyed this one. I had just finished reading Path of the Seer (which was good as well) and was hungry for more Eldar fluff. I'm not going to go into the substance of the novel; rather just touch on what I liked about the book.

For starters, the Harlequins, as portrayed in the Infernal Atlas, kick ass! They manhandled Space Marines, Iconic Chaos Space Marines and even Deamons. I liked that a lot. All too often it seems that the Eldar are always being portrayed as the 40k whipping boy. I mean how many times has the Avatar bit the dust to a generic space marine hero. Anyway, the Harlequins are a force to be reckoned with in the book which was nice.

What stood out to me was the fact that the novel did not portray the GW war torn universe in the cardboard black or white manner which seems to be the norm. The protagonist is one crazy character that adventures in the grey areas of the fluff. I found it refreshing.

Finally, if your like me and starved for Eldar fluff, the book does touch on the Black Library and the interactions between Harlequins and Craftworld Eldar. I realize not cannon, but its nice to read a story that fleshes out the Eldar background.

Anyway, if you want a fun light read, I recommend giving Atlas Infernal a try."

What Would Rob Do? – Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’

Back to ‘What Would Rob Do?’ Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ is a classic. It has been one of my favourite movies since childhood – so I’ve had a decent amount of time to think about what I might have done if I’d been caught up in the terrifying circumstances on ‘The Nostromo’. Beware: spoilers below.


‘The Nostromo’ is a commercial towing vehicle dragging an oil refinery through the stars on a return journey to Earth. The crew are awoken from their suspended animation by a beacon from a nearby planet in deep space and landing on the small, primordial world mount of investigation. The beacon belongs to a crashed, fossilised alien vessel and turns out to be a warning. One of the crew is dragged back to ‘the Nostromo’ with an alien parasite attached to his face. An attempt to cut it from his face fails and results in the spilling of acid blood. The blood melts through the decks and almost burns a hole in the space ship’s hull, endangering everyone on board. The parasite implants an embryo in the crew member that spectacularly erupts from his chest is a horrifying birth scene. The alien hides in the dark corridors and air vents of ‘the Nostromo’, growing to maturity before preying on the defenceless crew – snatching them one by one. When only Ripley – the ship’s Third Officer – and the ship’s cat ‘Jones’ remain, they abandon the ship and set it for self-destruct. Thinking the alien is dead, Ripley prepares the lifeboat for suspended animation until she discovers the creature alive and secreted aboard the lifeboat. Ripley is forced to fight for her life in the close proximity of the lifeboat and – with the use of a harpoon gun, a space suit and a bulkhead – blows the alien into space.



This one strikes me as pretty simple and really comes down to what you are willing to lose to get rid of the alien. Using crew members as bait is unethical and after the creature demonstrates its lethality and acid blood, direct confrontation with the alien is not advisable. The lifeboat can only take three (a design oversight, might I say), so abandoning ship is not an option. By the time the creature is killing crew members there is still a good deal to play for. The objective is to get rid of the creature without further loss of life, while at the same time limiting damage and infection of the expensive ship and cargo.


After Brett’s death, when the alien’s full capabilities are made known, if I had been a crew member I would have advised against the strategy of using incinerators and hunting for the creature alone through the air ducts. Beyond the obvious danger, this strategy seems to me to have very little chance of success even if Captain Dallas survives the hunt. Dallas knows this when he begins to crap himself and wants out of the dark duct system. I would have advised (and feel that this plan would have appealed to the crew) that one small section of the Nostromo - probably the one containing the environmental / life support controls – be sealed off. The pressure bulkheads should be locked off and the crew should occupy the small section with the air, artificial gravity and heat contained within. Air ducts to the section also need to be sealed off – welded shut if need be. All other doors, vents and bulkheads should be left wide open. Airlocks all over ‘the Nostromo’ should then be opened and the atmosphere violently expelled. Close the air lock. Re-pressurise. Pump an atmosphere back into the ship. Repeat. As many times as you like until you feel sure that the damned creature has been sucked through the ship (with other objects and debris) and out into space.


Of course, it might be argued that the creature could have held on through repeated expellations. It is certainly strong enough, but the idea is to surprise the monster and flush the thing out through the airlock – perhaps even on the tenth, twentieth or fiftieth attempt. This certainly has a better chance of getting rid of the alien menace than chasing it through the ship with a flamethrower. In various Alien films, the vacuum of space seems to be the creatures’ Achilles Heel. Its lethality is checked at least a little in atmosphereless, zero-gee conditions. I could not know that on ‘the Nostromo’, however, but I believe that expelling the atmosphere has a much better chance of getting rid of the creature without loss of life than other potential plans. Even if the creature’s robust hide is broken as it is smashed against architecture on the way out of the ship, alien acid blood is going to be sucked out with the creature. Even if it doesn’t, the airlocks are already open so the danger is much less.

Ultimately, that is what Rob would do. That said, I might have listened to Parker: after all, Parker told the rest of the crew to ignore the beacon. ‘The Nostromo’ would never have landed on the alien planet or taken the parasite / creature on board. When the parasite is aboard, Parker advocates freezing the affected crew member – which might have actually worked. It might have at least saved the crew of ‘the Nostromo’, but would probably have infected and doomed Earth!

I Am The Law!


I am not a great fan of rules and laws for creative processes (see my previous mauling of Stephen King) but as a frequenter of social media, blogs and forums, I have to accept that there are certain online posting behaviours that are repeated to such an extent that you might as well create laws and observances for them. I was astonished to learn that many already exist, have their own names and everything. Here are a few. While I don’t personally endorse them as hard-and-fast rules in online discussions, you might have observed them in action.

1. Godwin’s Law
Godwin’s Law was created by attorney and writer Mike Godwin in 1990 and states that "As a web discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

2. The Law of Exclamation
This was first invoked on FactCheck.org in 1998 and states, "The more exclamation marks used in a posting, the more likely it is a complete lie. This is also true for excessive capital letters."

3. Pommer’s Law
First proposed by Robert Pommer on rationalwiki.com, the law states: “A person's mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”

4. Skitt’s Law
Skitt’s Law is an online version of Murphy’s Law. Simply put, the law states that "any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself".

5. Danth’s Law
Danth’s Law is named after a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum RPG.net. It instructs that “If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.”

6. DeMyer’s Law
Ken DeMyer, a moderator on Conservapedia.com, has several ‘laws’ but his Second Law states that “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”

7. Cohen’s Law
Created by Brian Cohen in 2007, Cohen’s Law states that: “Whoever resorts to the argument that ‘whoever resorts to the argument that... …has automatically lost the debate’ has automatically lost the debate.”

The Cold Equations


Something made me think of this. I can’t quite work out what but it reminded me of a short story I read in a compilation when I was a kid. The story had been adapted several times for radio and television but I encountered it again as a Twilight Zone episode that I had happened upon years later. The story is a science-fiction classic: ‘The Cold Equations’ by Tom Godwin, originally published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1954. It tells the story of an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) making its way across an interstellar frontier, carrying urgently needed medical supplies for a colony on a distant planet called Woden. The only crew is a single pilot called Barton, who discovers a stowaway aboard the ship – an eighteen year old girl. The girl, called Marilyn, hid aboard the vessel to see her brother, who is stationed on the colony on Woden. The problem is that the frontier is colossal and empty. The Emergency Dispatch Ships are disposable, one-way vessels – carrying only enough fuel to get their essential cargo, pilot and vessel itself to the planet surface of their destinations. Marilyn’s extra weight has used more fuel than the vessel can afford and the ship’s computer informs Barton that unless the problem is rectified, the ship will run out of fuel and crash into the planet surface. Both Barton and Marilyn will be lost, as well as the precious medical cargo that will save the lives of Woden’s colonists. Barton and Marilyn are confronted with ‘The Cold Equations’ of the story title and hard choices must be made.

I won’t ruin the ending but upon a re-read and re-watch, ‘The Cold Equations’ impressed me with its simplicity and power. It is widely anthologised, multiply-adapted and is respected as one of the best science fiction tales ever told. It is not without its flaws but for such a short piece of fiction it delivers on multiple levels: it’s a puzzle, a moral quandary, a tragic drama and a cautionary tale. I encourage you to experience it as short story (‘The Cold Equations’ by Tom Godwin – Public Domain copy) or the twenty minute, nineties low-budget television adaptation. Enjoy.