Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Well, what better way to round off things on this blog than to post a picture which I don't have the real right to post, but which is, y'know, of me? Seems about right somehow.

Anyway, this blog is not dying, it's moving - or, to be more accurate, I'll be moving my attentions to my 'new blog' and so I doubt I'll be posting here again (techical issues permitting) for the foreseeable future.

The reason for the move is pretty simple, really - for some time, I've been looking into trying to 'streamline' the number of places and locations I occupy online, and so I've revamped and reshaped my website so that it now includes automatic updates on my Twitter messages, and so it only seems logical that I shift the blog updates over there too.

I speak with utter confidence about this move, but of course if the server crashes or my technical ability reaches its limits, I may well be here again, so I won't be deleting this blog. Many of the links which you can see in the right-hand column are on the new site, so you don't have to feel lost and disoriented if you just use his blog as a stepping-stone to other people's pages. I don't mind being the guardian of the crossroads, even if Robert Johnson had his misgivings...

Anyway, I hope you'll come and visit the new blog, and maybe you'll even be so kind as to add John Soanes to your list of bookmarks? Thanks in advance.

Finally, if this is your last time of visiting, many thanks for your time and eyeballs over the last few years. It's much appreciated, and as intermittent as my updates may have been in the last year or so, it's always been reassuring to know that you fine folks were out there reading my nonsense. Seriously, you've been fantastic.

And you know what? So was I.

One Of The Perils Of Getting Older Is That Many Things End Up Reminding You Of Other Things, Which Leads To This Sort Of Post

Over the weekend, I was on a train, and saw two young-ish chaps talking quite excitedly. They were twenty years old at most, and they were chatting as they passed what looked like a glossy magazine back and forth.

If you're thinking it might have been a ... let's say 'gentlemen's leisure interest periodical', then I'm sorry to disappoint you; it was, as I saw when they sat quite close to me, a glossy rulebook or other supplement for a role-playing (or tabletop miniature combat) game, and their excitement and interest seemed to stem from the implications of this on their chosen game - I could hear them saying things like 'magic attacks' and 'stats', which rather reminded me of my teen years.

It probably won't surprise longtime blog readers to know that I was what is now known as 'a nerd', though back in those days you were more likely to be labelled a 'square' or 'boffin'. But we all know what that means - probably wearing glasses, not physically confident, not very good at talking to girls, and so likely to have solitary (or at least indoor) hobbies such as playing Dungeons & Dragons or computer games, or reading books or comics. And of course there were quite a few of us at school, as well as all the others who weren't like that.

Strangely enough - on a mathematical basis if nothing else - my school's equivalent of the cheerleaders and jocks so often shown in American films seems to have been known as 'the popular kids'. I say 'strangely' because the school year I was in had so many 'factions' in it (why, even the secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off refers to "the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads" at Bueller's school), that if you took out my group of friends, the other groups such as the gothic kids and the very studious kids, and the various loners, there were probably only about fifteen of the so-called 'popular kids', and none of us really gave a monkey's about them and what they did, so I have no idea where the presumed 'popularity' came from.

It's not like we ever took a vote on it or anything... though maybe it was an early example of the kind of 'implied consensus' or 'silent majority' that you often come across in later life. Returning to a film that was out at the time (and whilst it may seem lazy to refer to 1980s films, they were the cultural backdrop of the time, and I think we tend to try to find something that mirrors our own experiences in films and other stories), there's a nice exchange in The Breakfast Club which may touch on the truth of this:

THE PRINCESS

Your friends [...] look up to us.

THE GEEK (LAUGHING)

You're so conceited, Claire. You're so conceited.

... I never actually heard the 'school dynamic' verbalised like this, but I hope I would have responded in this fashion, as my circle of friend didn't look up to the 'popular kids'. We were too busy worrying that playing Daley Thompson's Decathlon on our ZX Spectrum computers would, as legend had it, kill the keyboard before its natural expiry date.

Anyway, when I saw the two chaps on the train at the weekend, I looked at them with a mixture of recognition and almost-pity; I say 'almost' because I was genuinely happy with my life in my teen years, even if the things that made me happy were incomprehensible - or risible - to other people: I was more concerned about whether I'd get my D&D character to Level 5 than whether I'd get to home base (no, not the shop) with a girl (and one of those events certainly seemed much more probable than the other during that era of my life). So I can't honestly look back on that period, and the way I led my life, in such a way that I pity those who seem to be treading the same path.

Yes, I could have shouted to the chaps on the train, "for the love of God, shave off the wispy beards and get some contact lenses and spend more money on cool clothes than 20-sided dice, and maybe you'll get to touch a boob this year", but they seemed pleasant and happy enough, and besides it's possible that they were both total hits with the ladies (or gents, I don't want to presuppose too much), and that I'm just projecting.

But after I'd thought about this sort of thing a bit, and both wallowed in nostalgia and cringed at the recollection of the clothes and large aviator-style glasses I wore, it occurred to me that there are often articles in papers and magazines nowadays with headings such as 'The Geeks Inherit The Earth', talking about how the rise of the internet, and the information age, has meant that many of my pasty cohorts have become very successful in their chosen fields, with the financial rewards attached to that. The heads of IT firms, founders of websites, creators of best-selling computer games and apps, and even the directors of films, are shown to have had classically nerdy formative years - and whilst some of them have made their way in the world by appealing to nerds alone, many of them work in fields with wider audiences.

It's intellectually amusing to see large crowds of people getting excited about seeing films like Watchmen and Avengers Assemble, when I was reading the source comics twenty-odd years ago, and whilst there's a slight frisson of 'Hah! I was right all along!', I can't get too triumphant about it - possibly because having that kind of teenagehood doesn't necessarily prepare you for being the victor, and maybe because of that sense of loving something niche that gets a little soured when it breaks through to a larger market (which of us hasn't either been or known someone who talks up a band, but the minute they get big, starts talking about them 'selling out'?). More than anything else, though, I think it's because the stuff I was into back then, like the stuff I'm into now, was a genuine interest, and wasn't on my list of 'Likes' to impress other people: it was stuff I was actually into.

Which, it strikes me, is probably why there are fewer bold claims of triumph from the swots and nerds and squares; whilst the people who were concerned about looking cool as teenagers are keen to claim they were right all along, when offered the chance to write a book, Bill Gates writes about future technology and the like. Whilst the 'popular kids' at school spent a lot of time (and, I'll wager, their parents' money) on their outfits for the '5th year social' (aka what would now probably be called a Prom), I was reading and re-reading Batman Year One, and not bothering about what anyone might think about this.

I think that's why the articles you see about the Rise Of The Nerds will tend to be written in the third person plural - that is, not written by the geeks in question; because they're still out there, doing their thing - coding, writing, rolling dice or whatever. But the chances are it's indoors.

They say the best revenge is living well, but I suspect many of those who were made to feel somehow 'geeky' will be living well albeit unseen by those who may have ostracised them in the past. Except for those of us who decide to post about it on the internet, of course.

It's Just A Cycle Of Disagreement...

 Boys, boys, boys.

 Instead of confusing the nice bookshop customers, can't you  just agree to disagree?

 Tch.

Ah, Remember When Columnists Used To Talk About The Wire All The Time? Those Crazy Bygone Days

I've come to appreciate that there's a lot of hype and nonsense around many TV shows - particularly ones which a lot of journalists are watching but in which yer general public show less interest (The Wire, Mad Men and the like), but the quote on the front of this forthcoming novelisation of the TV show The Killing may set some new hyperbolic record:

Seriously, Radio Times? Sarah Lund, who's been in 30 episodes of a TV series in the past five years (and only shown in the UK in the past 15 months) is the top female detective in the world? That seems rather short-sighted, almost as if the person claiming it has a very short memory indeed, or at best is a bit caught up in Killingmania. Has the source of that quote never heard of Jane Marple? Or even Jessica Fletcher?

Now, it's possible that the publishers of that book are being rather selective with the quote, so I went looking, and found this: The Radio Times Rundown Of The Top TV Women Police Officers, November 2011.

Sarah Lund above Jane Tennison? Oh, Radio Times, you disappoint me.

Get The Car Running, I'll Meet You At The State Line

I received this very scary e-mail this morning:

Obviously, I'm deeply troubled by it.

But more amused by the fact that the above shows the subject line; the e-mail had no content whatsoever.

I'm beginning to wonder if the phishy-spamsters are losing their mojo.

The Better Devil, You Know

As long-term readers will know, I'm currently working on a novel - but enough about me, let's talk about M'colleague, who's has finished his book, and guess what? E's only gone and made it available to buy on the Kindle Store, innee? Ee as! Ee really as!

Ahem.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to read a draft of the book, and it was a cracking read, and the author assures me that he's done further polishing on it since, so it's probably even sharper now.

So, get thee to Amazon, and for less than the price of a large coffee (ie: £3.08), you can get yourself a slice of fiction*. What's not to like?

The cover's pictured here, and this is the link to click on: Designer Devil - Stuart Peel

Go on, give yourself a present. You know you want to.

*You don't need a Kindle to be able to read it, there are Kindle 'apps' for mobile phones and PCs and the like. I know, this 'living in the 21st century' lark, it's nifty, isn't it?

Snap. Snap, I say.

It's been a while since I've posted 'booktwins' here on the blog, but this pairing strikes me as pretty blatant.

They're presented in what I believe to be chronological order, if you know what I'm saying...

Hmm.

Bubbles In The Cold London Air

Spotted on the rather literally-named Hilly Fields Park in South London yesterday afternoon, this splendid chap  was making enormous swathes of bubbles for the delight of passing children (and adults):

Mystery bubble-maker, I salute you. Especially as you didn't mind that the crowds of children were taking such fun in popping your handiwork.

I Just Saw These On Sale In A Shop

It was a pet shop, obviously.

But because I am immature beyond belief, it made me laugh.

I know, I know: this is how I choose to mark my return to blogging?

Tch.

Oh, It'll Take A Photo To Separate Those Two Drivers

Two recent films about motor racing, but sharing, it seems, one design:

In Which I Refer To My Gag, And Those Put In Place By Others (Who Shall Remain Nameless, At Least For Now)

As the writer of a radio gag about superinjunctions back in 2010, you're probably thinking I've got an opinion on this currently rather hot topic. And you'd be right.

For those of you who are a bit unclear on how they work, a superinjunction is an injunction which stops someone saying something, or even reporting that they've been ordered not to say it. And regardless of what you think about the issues of privacy or press freedom or Judges making law or the Human Rights Act or whatever, lurking behind most of these cases seems to be one common factor: someone did something they'd rather you didn't know about.

Most of the instances which the press have become very excited about have involved men putting their winkle somewhere they shouldn't have, though in the Trafigura case it was more a question of alleged business naughtiness; but it's still a case of people doing stuff which they know would reflect badly on them in PR terms. Whether it's sleeping with someone you're not married to, or paying someone to place items up your bot, these are things which are likely to make people tut and buy papers and think less of you. Which is why people who have a public image to protect, and sufficient money to afford it, seek a superinjunction.

And it's from this that the more tangled debates stem, and I think this pretty simple thing is easily overlooked in the more messy and interesting-seeming debates which are currently taking place - which is a pity, because all of us have to take responsibility for our actions, and if we do something we're not proud of, it's not the place of the law to hide that. If you're in the public eye, the media will be very interested in everything you do - this is not new, we've seen it since the times of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis, and if you have a propensity for behaviour (sexual or otherwise) which might not do your career any good, you probably have a choice to make about which to pursue.

But if you're going to do something which you'd rather people didn't know about, and someone does know about it, using a legal mechanism to try and pretend it never happened strikes me as both disingenuous and a little bit childish; it did happen - and it's interesting how this is rarely at issue in these cases, it's more a question of damage limitation - and if you thought it was a good idea at the time, maybe you should be adult enough to admit it, rather than trying to gag people who know about your indiscretion? It sounds like the worst kind of denial, like the Dead Parrot sketch or something, shutting your ears to the reality of the situation and hoping that the world will reshape itself to match your delusion.

And this bugs me because I like to remember things which often seem to get removed from the history books: like when the Chinese authorities opened fire on hundreds of students in Tianenmen Square, or Cheryl Tweedy (as was) assaulted a woman in a nightclub toilet, or the way the newspapers criticised Diana, Princess of Wales in the months before her death. All these things often seem to be forgotten or overlooked, but they happened, and it feels like 1984-style Doublethink to act as if one thing's the case (it didn't happen) when you know the opposite is true (well, yeah, it did happen).

In psychological terms, holding two opinions that clash that way is seen as a likely cause of 'cognitive dissonance', that awkward feeling we have when two ideas in our head don't quite sit together; most galling when we realise that our opinion on something doesn't actually square with the facts, but, well, doing stuff and knowing at the time it's not so bright, or realising that after the event, is part of being a grown-up and taking responsibility for your actions.

A prospect which some people in the public eye appear to have a bit of trouble accepting, so I can only hope that the adulation and money helps take the edge off. The poor dears.

A Delay, Not A Denial

Just to update you on Persona : there's been a slight delay in the app being approved by Apple (this sentence may hold the blog record for the most uses of the letters 'app'), so the revised start date is currently 15 January 2011.

I will, of course, keep you fully informed.

In the meantime, though, more pictures from Persona - some from Jane's story - are available to view here.

This is likely to be the final post of 2010, so have yourself a cracking start to 2011, and may the year bring you everything you could hope for, and a few surprises (pleasant ones, of course).

If you're out tonight, here's hoping your evening doesn't lead to you looking or feeling like Lucy, the Persona character pictured here.

See you in 2011.

It's Christmas Weekend, Right? So This Isn't Really Late...

A very happy holiday to you, my faithful and shockingly patient readers.

Hope you had a good day yesterday, and that any more time you have off between now and the end of 2010 is positively bottom-kicking.

I raise my steaming mug of tea to you, whoever and wherever you are, and wish you the best.

Pedantry, Like Achievement, Is Often Its Own Reward

Spotted in the Reference section of WHSmith.

I think this might be an example of irony, but that's a word which has had its meaning diluted to almost homeopathic levels by that Alanis Morrisette song and other misuses, so I hesitate to call it such.

That said, though...

Big Ups To All My Haters, As I Believe The Song Puts It*

Well now. It's been a while, hasn't it? If it provides any kind of justification for my absence, I've recently had a job which took me out of London (and away from easy access to a full-size keyboard), but now I'm back.

And what, you may wonder, have I decided is the best way to re-commence regular blogging activities? Why, tis nothing less than the perennial subjects of love and hate... well, kind of.

Love and hate, we're often told, are two sides of the same coin. Or there's a thin line between them. And so on. Basically, we're often fed the idea that the two of them are very close together - it's simple enough to see why, they're both extremes of feeling or opinion, and particularly in the field of emotion, disappointment and annoyance with someone we've formed an attachment for can easily cause us to become equally vehement in our negativity towards them; in films and TV shows, it's often quite common for characters who spend a long time being antagonistic towards each others to end up smooching, though I have to say that (relaxed licensing hours notwithstanding) I haven't seen that happen quite so frequently in real life.

If we're going to be honest about it - and I think we ought to, as life is often more complicated than simplistic presentations of emotional duality in programmes such as the Jeremy Kyle Show would have us pretend - there's actually a long distance to travel between love and hate, if we're using the words in their strictest sense. I love reading, and it would take quite a lot of negative reading experiences (that is to say, bad books or whatever) before that affection for the activity turned into hate. I'm sure you can think of things which you enjoy immensely - would it really take the equivalent of a coinflip, or a hop over some imaginary line, to make you hate them with equal intensity? I doubt it.

In reality, the line between love and hate, when viewed in three dimensions, manifests as a vast plane, with slight disaffection and indifference and irritation with at various stages between the two extremes. And if love and hate are sides of a coin, we should be honest enough to admit that it's actually more of a cylinder than a coin, with enough stages and distance from one side to the other as to make the particle acceleration corridors at CERN look like a cupboard for the electricity meter.

I increasingly feel that there's a problem with people presenting arguments or opinions in a way that suggests you either love something or you hate it; you're either a fan or a hater. And whilst we've often seen this used to simplify political debates - in 2002, a popular simplification was to suggest that any doubts about military action in Iraq equated with approval for the regime of Saddam Hussein - it also seems to be used increasingly in relation to more everyday issues.

Let's take an issue which, in and of itself, doesn't really matter, but which is often portrayed as some kind of ideological battle; the question of whether Apple products are better than PCs. To read a lot of review columns, or to hear people talk, you'd think that one was vastly superior to the other, and that using the opposition's products is the action of a seriously ill-informed person, whose brand allegiance (in whichever direction) is akin to that of a brainwashed dupe. The reality, of course, is a lot more nuanced - let's be honest, both have their merits (Apple's stuff is visually appealing, reportedly more stable [the iPhone 4 signal problems and iOS's tendency to eat battery life could be argued to have undermined this in recent times, though], and generally held to be technically superior; PCs are cheaper, and used in more workplaces and so more familiar) and their flaws. But the problem is, nowadays, you'd think that people either have an Apple or Microsoft logo tattooed on their heart, and this means that the discussions tend to be polarised - and this simplification means that facts get overlooked - such as the fact that Microsoft helped Apple financially in the 1990s by giving them $150m to bundle Internet Explorer with new Macs as the default browser; so, that big hatred and fighting between them you read about in the press? Probably more like business rivalry, but of course that's not so interesting, and it's more fun to portray their customers as engaged in some teeth-baring hatred.

The major problem I have with this situation is the way it reduces everything to a non-discussion, and removes any possibility of people conceding that their so-called opponent has a point (watch the way politicians will invariably try to ignore facts or events in debates, even if empirically and provably true, which don't make their argument look entirely true, as opposed to the best-guess opinion it really is). It means you can't point at flaws in anything without being labelled a 'hater' or 'anti', even if you're only trying to say that something has weaknesses in certain areas (cases in point: Lady Gaga is really not as stunningly original as many people insist, and Steig Larsson writes a lot of exposition).

As I've mentioned with tiresome regularity on the blog, my favourite TV programme of all time is Twin Peaks (it is my equivalent of Mark Kermode's love for The Exorcist), but I'll cheerfully admit that it's got flaws (the second season loses its way, certain storylines are just risible, and it's painfully clear at certain points that they're just making it up as they go along). As long as the catalogue of weaknesses in something doesn't overwhelm the things we like in it, then there doesn't seem to be any problem in liking it, but there's equally no problem in admitting it's not perfect - very few things are unimprovable (despite what the most vocal supporters might say).

Am I asking too much? Is it really now the case that you're either a rabid fan of something or a hater? I'd like to think not, and I'd also like to think that it'd be possible to see discussion of topics (and by 'see' I mean 'encounter', though if televised debates - on whatever topic - would like to actually show people admitting the strengths in their opponents' arguments and the weaknesses in their own, I'd welcome that) which actually reflect that there are many waystations between the positions of support or loathing for something, whether it be a political stance or a work of art or a brand of cola or whatever. Much of the time, opinions on things fall into the median, grey band of 'meh', and it feels to me that pretending that you have to pick a position at one end of the spectrum and fight it doggedly with closed ears and mind is oversimplifying, and doesn't actually enable a proper discussion to take place.

Although - ahem - I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I'm not so convinced of this that I don't welcome discussion of it. That would be hypocrisy, and of course the Post Comment button exists for your input (and not just about Apple, Gaga or Larsson, ideally)...

*That would be the number "They Know", by Shawty Lo Featuring Ludacris, I believe. Not really a fan, but it seemed appropriate to refer to it, by way of illustrating that merit may lurk where we don't expect it.

I Am Not Dead

... and nor is this blog, I assure you.

So, apologies to regular readers for the hiatus in updates - consider this, if you will, my summer holiday - and there will be a return to regular blogging soon.

After all, if I didn't post my idiotic and fleeting notions here, they'd just be lost to time and memory, and that simply would not do.

Thanks to those of you who've been so sweet as to send me a message asking if I'm okay - I assure you I most definitely am - it's just proving difficult to find time to blog in recent weeks. But that may change soon, and who knows what nonsensical thought-posting, its hour come round at last, slouches out of bedlam to be typed?

It's Like Ted Striker In Airplane! All Over Again

The instructions from a box of Optrex, but I can't help thinking it looks more like a deliberately mischievous series of diagrams telling a new drinker what to do with vodka shots...

Yes, I Know: The Only Frequent Thing About This Blog Is This Kind Of Posting

A Buffy image, from the best part of a decade ago, and the cover of a vampire book which I saw on the shelves just today.

Hmm.

Should Really Get Someone Else To Help Lace Up, Like That Bit In Titanic

The book was released a month or two ago, and the film's just come out.

So, if you're a fan of fiction involving people wearing tightly-fastened masks, it's a good time for you.

And you might want to chat to a medical professional about that. There's a lot of interesting other stuff out there.

I Have No Mic, And I Must Speak

Back in the 1980s, my family went to stay with some relatives for New Year's Eve. I don't remember much of the festivities itself, but one thing I do remember - for reasons that will become clear - is that nearby, about five minutes walk away in fact, was a comic shop.

Now, I'd been reading comics for a while, but my 'local' shop in Sheffield wasn't very local at all - it was a couple of bus rides away, and of course that kind of travel ate into the potential spending money (this was after Sheffield's insanely cheap bus fares had been abolished - boo! A flat fare of 2p was a fab thing to a cash-starved kid), so I tended to walk there with my friend Simon. Which took about an hour there and an hour back, so you can see why a shorter walk was so appealing.

This comic shop - I don't think it's there any more - had a pretty decent selection of recent comics, and also, as was often the case back then, also sold a lot of paperbacks (mainly SF, fantasy and horror), which you could then sell back to them for half the price in credit. So, being a bookish child and having a bit of Christmas money, I bought myself a book and a comic: All The Sounds Of Fear by Harlan Ellison, and the Warrior Summer Special (both pictured). Small pressies to myself, as it were.

I think I can, without fear of exaggeration, state that it was the greatest couple of pounds I ever spent, and that the combined effect of the two did strange things to my brain for which I will always be grateful.

The Warrior comic featured some stories by Alan Moore, whose work I was already starting to look out for (from the cover-date of that comic, I guess I was something like 12, and was just learning that certain names recurred on the credits of things I liked), and other writers as well, all of which made it a pretty heady brew, and then when I started to read the Ellison, my noggin was permanently bent out of shape.

If you've never read anything by Harlan Ellison... well, obviously, I think you should, but there's a fair chance you don't recognise the name, especially in the UK; this is pretty odd really, given that he is one of the most-recognised writers ever, but he tends to fly under the radar for a lot of people. Still, have you seen that original Star Trek episode with Joan Collins in? He wrote the screenplay for that? Seen The Terminator? Yeah, he provided (ahem) 'inspiration' for that. What about Babylon 5? He consulted on that, and the new version of The Twilight Zone and heaps of other stuff - and that's just his filmed work, his short stories are allegedly among the most reprinted in the English Language. So yes, I think you should read his stuff - it often has futurist backdrops, but don't let that fool you into thinking it's science fiction. Cos it isn't.

Anyway, I read the collection of stories in All The Sounds Of Fear, and whatever else that new year brought, it certainly opened with me having a new and strange outlook on just what the written word, when combined with imagination, could do. It's probably very much one of the reasons that I started writing - not because I sought to emulate his work, or anything so straightforward, but rather because it suggested there was a place in the world for writing down the more spiky and awkward of ideas, if you could do it. And that's why I cite him as my favourite writer, when asked - it sounds wilfully obscure to most people, but I like to think it's actually the truth.

Jump forward many years (past 1986, incidentally, when The Singing Detective made me realise just how unlimited the medium of TV could be), to last Friday night, on London's Southbank; it was raining, and England were playing a World Cup match, and that's why there was a limited turnout at the screening of Dreams With Sharp Teeth, a film about Harlan Ellison.

There were probably about 30 of us, plus screenwriter and friend of Harlan Ellison James Moran and the film's director, Erik Nelson, but the limited numbers weren't any kind of damper on the event - the film was funny and smart and showed HE in what looks like a fairly balanced light. Yes, there were scenes where he was a bit short-tempered, but there were others where he spoke about writing and literature with a passion, and when he read sections from his stories the talent was painfully evident. So yes, it was a good film.

Afterwards, Messrs Moran and Nelson asked the audience to come nearer the front, as they were going to do a link-up to LA, where they'd ask Harlan some questions. I moved down as requested, and indeed got a front-row seat, which I was pretty pleased about. They linked up okay, and asked him a few questions, and then they asked if anyone in the audience had any questions. There was a pause, and then I realised that my hand was up, and they were nodding towards me.

I'll freely admit I was quite nervous about asking my question, not because I was speaking in front of a small crowd (as anyone who knows me will be aware, I'm a hopeless attention-seeker), but rather because this was probably likely to be my only actual interaction with Harlan Ellison, whose work I've enjoyed for over a quarter of a century. If there's anyone whose work you admire, imagine how you'd feel in a similar situation. Yep, there you go, now you get it.

Anyway, with both the film and my own personal 'history with HE' (recounted above at length - and you probably just thought it was the usual self-indulgent rambling, but hopefully now it reveals itself as the vital backstory it was intended to be) in mind, I asked my question, which came out in a slightly gabbled and nervous way, and sounded something like this:

"We see you in the film speaking to college students, and a couple of people in the film say that your work should be taught in schools - what, do you think, would be the ideal age for people to first read your work? When would you most want to get hold of their fragile minds? Teenagers? Ten? Eight? One?"

As those of you who can read will probably note, this is actually a series of questions, mainly because I was gabbling to fill the gap caused by the satellite delay, and I didn't actually have a microphone, so it was a bit uncertain to me whether Harlan could actually hear any of what I was saying. But he'd heard some of it, it seems, because he asked "Was that a question, or a diatribe?"

Erik then summarised the question, and Harlan answered it, giving a solid and considered answer - but then again, I probably would say that, as he seemed to suggest that the age of 14 or so was about right, thus making me ahead of my time as a child - and I was suitably pleased, on a number of levels.

And as the second - and only other - question was about the long-delayed third volume of Dangerous Visions, which is decades past its due date, and HE tends to get a bit fed up with being asked about (and showed as much on this occasion), I think that I probably did all right, all things considered.

Apologies for length here, but I was really rather chuffed about it, and wanted to record the event in what, I guess, is probably the closest thing I have to a diary. Given that I've met Alan Moore a couple of times, and that Dennis Potter has been dead for a number of years, I guess I've completed my interaction with the people whose work remoulded my thinking in the 1980s, which feels oddly satisfying.

One final point: if you want to see a terrific example of HE's writing, read the short story I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, from which the title of this post derives. The title's remarkable enough, but the story itself... well, to say "it lingers in the mind" is several kinds of understatement.