Book Review : Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

This is a great book for all science fiction writers. In case you're not familiar with him, Kaku is a theoretical physicist* who here takes a serious look at some of the tropes and devices commonly used in SF (time travel, phasers, teleportation etc.) But this isn't one of those works that sneers at the crazy ideas of those writer types. On the contrary, Kaku is clearly a fan and demonstrates a pretty good knowledge of SF. He says himself it was a boyhood delight in the genre that turned him onto physics in the first place.

The result is that there's a treasure-trove of solid scientific material in here for SF writers to draw on. Not that I'm that hung up on strict veracity to science in SF myself, as some writers and readers clearly are. Story always wins, I think. But the more you diverge from believable science, the more likely you are to alienate a section of your potential readers. Plus I also found that reading the book gave me several great ideas for new stories.You could do a lot with gamma-ray bursters, for example.Or nanoships. Or antimatter rockets.

Kaku's writing is always clear and he obviously knows what he's talking about. And it's surprising just how much stuff actually probably isn't impossible. Time travel? FTL? Invisibility? Kaku sees all these as ultimately possible, in that they don't appear to contravene any known laws of physics. We just can't do them yet. He returns to the SF canon again and again and then explains how, actually, quite a lot of it just might work.

At times I would have liked him to explain things a little more. He mentions, for example, that you can't use quantum entanglement to communicate instantaneously across the galaxy (darn, there goes the plot for at least one of my published stories) and I had to spend a bit of time thinking about why that is. Perhaps it's just so obvious to him he felt it didn't need explaining. I think I get it now ...

Oh, and loath as I am to pit my 'O' level in physics against his brain-the-size-of-a-planet wisdom, it does seem to me he does get it wrong when he discusses precognition. This, he says, is definitely impossible because it transgresses basic Newtonian physics; it short-circuits cause and effect. But then he also says "In principle, Newtonian mechanics states that if you had a large enough computer, you could compute all future events". So, if you could build such a machine then that means you could predict the future doesn't it?

Anyway, great book. Must read some of his others.




* It isn't theoretical that he's a physicist, you understand. I mean he spends his time on the theory of physics.

Flash Fiction : Light Years (51/100)

... navigation. ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Flash Fiction Friday : Speed Limit

The traffic jam crawled past a sign saying 40. Calum shrugged and revved his engine. It was gonna be fucking tough to drive that fast.







Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly post of a work of fiction small enough to appear on Twitter etc.

Writtenwyrdd's Urban Fantasy Competition Voting Begins!

Voting has opened on Writtenwyrdd's 4th Bloggaversary Urban Fantasy contest. If you're not familar with this, the task was to create a flash-length piece of urban fantasy that alludes in some way to the following paragraph (itself constructed from words sent in by contributors) :

She slumps in the clammy darkness, her mind as dark and empty as the cavern, her bones aching with chill.  She is tired, not the ordinary  kind, but pure exhaustion so that she wants to die.  And, with it, her enemies are winning: she can no longer fight them off.  When the needle accurately finds her vein with the unholy injectables, fire dives and weaves within her blood.  Her power responds, rises within--the precursor to much, much worse than loss of control.

My entry is titled Blood of the Daemonium. I'm not going to do anything so tacky or insulting as just asking you to go and vote for me - you're all far too intelligent and discerning to be taken in by such a cheap ploy. But all the contest entries are over there, mine nestling among them, and a fine assortment of styles and approaches they are. Do go on over and have a read!

Wikifiction : Madness or Genius?

You know how you get these bolt-from-the-blue ideas in the middle of the night? The ones that seem fantastic at the time and then in the morning you can't remember what they were and you spend all day with them nagging away at you? Well, I had one of those the other night and for once I can recall it. Thing is, I can't decide now if it's actually brilliant or crazy.

You're familiar with Wikipedia, I'm sure : the encyclopedia that anyone (more or less) can edit and extend. What, I thought to myself in the middle of the night, what if there was a web site for fiction that worked the same way? People could post up stories and then other people could come along and rework them if they wanted : change the ending, introduce new characters, put their own name in, whatever. Who knows what weird and wonderful stories you'd end up with? You could maybe even upload classic, well-loved texts/stories and let people loose on them.

Wikifiction, I thought/dreamed to myself. You could call it wikifiction.

Well, as I say, it may be a crazy idea and quite possibly wouldn't grab anyone's imagination at all. And I see from a quick Google that I'm not the first to have the idea at all : there are already Wikifiction sites out there that do similar sorts of things. Seems I haven't invented the word after all.

Still, I don't know, it might be fun. What do you think? Madness or genius? Fascinating, revolutionary literary experiment or stop-messing-around-and-get-back-to-the-damn-novel stupidity? I'd love to know ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (50/100)

... correct ...


50! Half way there! How time flies. Can't believe our traveller is already 5000 years into his lonely journey.

If you're interested, here's a complete catch-up on the story so far :

One thousand light-years from home. Six centuries of time. The cold of vacuum. No hope. Earth? No word. The starship malfunctioning. I’m alone with the universe. New suns blink by, there, gone. I leave behind countless unknown novae, nebulae, neutron stars.

One week’s consciousness every year. Check the ship, correct ...

Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Flash Fiction Friday : A Loop

‘A loop?’
‘Yeah, cascading feedback in the time machine’s resonator.’
‘But that means …’
Light built to a blinding explosion.
‘A loop?’






Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly post of a work of fiction small enough to appear on Twitter etc.

Rockets published at WeirdYear

Flash Fiction piece Rockets is published over at WeirdYear today. It's free to read.

By the way : I just had to mention that this story was rejected by another publisher because "they didn't think Danny's plan could possibly work". Doh! What, I'm not allowed to make stuff up?

Book Review : Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

As the title suggests, this is a rewriting of Pride and Prejudice with added zombies. Yes, it's P&P meets D&D!

I enjoyed this very much. I'm a little surprised it's been so successful though. Are there really that many people who love both Austen and zombies? That's quite an A to Z. Still, it worked for me. The addition of the scourge of "unmentionables" infecting Britain works well. All the familiar characters are there and they remain surprisingly true to their original incarnations, even while battling the undead horde.

The book's a cheat though. It really only works because it is Pride and Prejudice. Ultimately you read it just to find out what happens to Elizabeth and Darcy and the rest. The zombies are just an occasional distraction. They're an amusing joke but they wouldn't, on their own, make this an interesting book. Towards the end I more or less forgot about them. I was just reading Austen's original again. But with more obvious "ball" jokes and some ultraviolence.

Zombie novels appear to be fashionable at the moment. There's a huge problem with them, though. It's hard to have an interesting, engaging zombie character. Because, you know, they're just reanimated corpses. Hard to identify with one of those (unless it's very early in the morning). Wisely, Grahame-Smith doesn't try. Only one of the original characters is zombified. I won't say which but it was never going to be one of the main ones.

Still, an enjoyable read. The zombies are well done and they do add some humour (although Mr. Collins is, of course, perfectly funny without them).

Book research footnote : Grahame-Smith could do better. England may or may not have been overrun with zombies in the 19th century. It certainly didn't have skunks and racoons. That's America you're thinking of ...

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Let Your Research Come To You

How much research do you do? It probably depends on what your write. If it's historical novels, you must research a lot. If it's present-day, slice-of-life stuff, you may do very little beyond some basic fact-checking. I heard an interview with Hanif Kureishi once in which he said he does no research at all - because living his life has been all the research he needs. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. If you write speculative fiction, a lot of your "research" will be just making stuff up, exploring your own imagination.

But, whatever your approach, I think what you might call passive research is a vital part of the writing process. By that I mean, simply, letting your story, your plot, your characters racket around in your brain while you get on with your life. Because, I find, it's quite amazing how often ideas, plot-points, names and phrases are just delivered to you. Someone will say something - it could be as simple as an unusual word - and you immediately know that it's what you need, that it has to go into what you're working on. It could be something you read in another book, or a phrase glimpsed somewhere, or anything.

As a trivial example, I've just reached a point in my WIP where my protagonist is repairing a giant water-wheel with tar (it's a long story). Then the other day, as I walked down the street, I saw they were repairing the road surface and had a big, steaming vat of tarmac giving off that acrid, cloying smell. Excellent! I immediately had some good sensory description I could include in my current chapter.

It sometimes feels like these ideas have sought you out, as if the whole thing is meant, as if it's fate. Actually, I don't believe it is. You know how you learn a new word and then suddenly you seem to hear it everywhere? I think it's like that. You start to see patterns, draw associations because your mind is open to suggestion. Because our brains have evolved to see patterns even when they aren't there.

As writers we can make use of this. You're not just writing when you're actually writing. Each day you swim through a sea of ideas, impressions, situations, associations. Keep your ears and eyes open and let your research come to you.

Flash Fiction : Light Years (49/100)

... ship, ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Flash Fiction Friday : Shoes

She’d lost count; he had only one pair of shoes. When they wore out he went to buy more the same. She saw then they could never last.







Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly post of a work of fiction small enough to appear on Twitter etc.

Electric Spec to publish Remembrance Day

I'm delighted to announce that Electric Spec magazine - home of "shockingly good short works of science fiction, fantasy and the macabre" - have just accepted an SF story of mine titled Remembrance Day. I'm really pleased about this one.

They had some very nice things to say about the story :

We enjoyed your work immensely and think it exemplifies the superior quality we strive to make available to our readers.

The story should be appearing in Volume 5, Issue 3 at the end of August. I'll let you know when it's available. It's a 5,500 word work set largely on a lawless Mars space station called The Möbius Strip. It's a setting I plan to reuse in further stories.

Electric Spec also maintain a great blog too, with lots of useful writing advice as well as information on the magazine. I was entertained by their description of their editorial production meeting out of which (presumably) my story emerged successfully.

Great stuff!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (48/100)

... the ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Flash Fiction Friday : Heart Condition

She’d repaired his heart in the first place, operated on his worn-out valves. Now, two years on, bored with him, she’d broken it again.







Flash Fiction Friday is a weekly post of a work of fiction small enough to appear on Twitter etc.

Last Shot of the War Published

As mentioned the other day, Last Shot of the War, a 50 word work of flash fiction, has now been published over at 50 to 1. Enjoy.

Ten Americanisms

Talli Roland - a Canadian living in the UK - has posted an affectionate list of her ten favourite British words over on her wonderful blog. It's an entertaining read.

As a Brit currently on holiday - sorry vacationing - in the USA, I thought I'd post a list of some Americanisms that have caught my eye by way of a gentle riposte. Some I like a lot; some, I have to say, make me wince. I wonder if you can tell which?

1. Gas. An obvious one. American for petrol, of course, and petrol is, you know, kind of a liquid at normal temperatures. I know, I know, it's short for gasoline, but even so I find it amusing when the guy asks How much gas do you want? I'm always tempted to hold up my hands and say About this much.
2. Apparel. Clothes shops (sorry, stores) don't sell clothes, they sell apparel. I guess it sounds a bit grander. Same with saying Entrees and not Starters at restaurants.
3. Winningest. The team or player who has won the most is sometimes referred to as the winningest. Problem is, I can't actually think of a better word to use instead ...
4. Rotary. The first time I came across a road sign saying this I thought, briefly, that it was maybe advertising some sort of spit-roast or barbecue or something. Not sure why. Then I realised I'd driven onto a roundabout. They do call them roundabouts too, though.
5. Restroom. A weirdly elliptical way of saying toilet. Sometimes bathroom too. But I don't want a rest, or a bath, I want ...
6. Pissed. Much scope for misunderstanding. In America, if you're pissed, you're angry, not drunk.
7. Thru. Let's face it, actually a much more sensible way of spelling through.
8. Liberal. Seems to mean dangerously radical in the USA, which will be amusing to anyone British.
9. Vegetarian. The USA is one of those countries where they can't believe you actually mean it when you say you're a vegetarian. A bit like France. They generally offer you just a bit of chicken or tuna or something to add ...
10. Live Free or Die. The slogan of New Hampshire, which is where we're staying. New Hampshire is about the most polite and lovely place you can imagine, but it's motto sounds like something from a Hell's Angels chapter ...

I could go on! Any others you like?

Two More Flash Fiction Pieces Published

Thaumatrope have published another of my Twitter-sized pieces today. This one is called Trompe-l'oeil. If I'm honest it's more of a joke, a tableau, than an actual story. But hey. This is my sixth sale to this particular magazine which I'm delighted about, especially because, although very short, these are conisdered pro sales.

I've also just heard that 50 to 1 are going to publish a 50-word piece of mine titled Last Shot of the War. That should be appearing over there any day now.

Please do check them out!

A Couple of Flash Fiction Competitions

I've come across a couple of flash fiction competitions that you might be interested in. I'll definitely be contributing to both.

The first is this one over at Spilling Ink Review. They're after 100 words or less, no entry fee and the chance to be included in their annual print anthology. Closing date is August 15th. This is the magazine that will be publishing my short story Seek Alternative Route in their Issue #2.

100 words too much? Try this competition over at the Arvon Foundation. They're after 6-word stories along the lines of Hemingway's famous :

'For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.'

Entry is again free, closing date September 1st and you've the chance to win an Arvon writing course week (which are all in the UK).

Good luck!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (47/100)

... Check ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.