C25K, or Couch to Five Kilometres if you love words, is a 10-week programme that takes you from “I can’t run!” to “I mean, I’m better but this is still awful!”. I have attempted C25K before and, as is my nature, succeeded easily. In fact, I have two medals from my local 10k in Ireland (I only did it once, my nephews were giving out the medals and each wanted to give me one). Since that time, I’ve kind of fallen out of the whole running thing. I did successfully complete C25K since moving to the UK but then I ran directly into a metal pole (the physical object, not my pitch for Polish Iron Man) and then stopped because it hurt to breathe for long enough that I probably should have gone to a doctor. Hell, this isn’t even the first time I’ve tried C25k this year, although that was put on hold by slipping on the stairs and it hurting to breathe for long enough that I probably should have gone to the doctor.

Anyway, it’s a good, well-structured programme and the JustRun app is very good. When it comes to exercise it’s the only thing I’ve come across where I’m like “Yeah, that won’t be awful”. Now to be clear, it is awful, but all exercise is awful so all you can do is put on your AliExpress Bluetooth headband pick some music and go. Any music is good, you can even go with a podcast or audiobook if you don’t mind the constant distraction of your own traitorous body falling apart. However, if you want to reach your full potential you need a soundtrack to keep you engaged, motivated and bopping.

And so, I’d like to present to you some content that no AI ever could, not because it’s forged by the true spark of human creativity but rather because I don’t think anyone would ever ask for this.

A Review of the Soundtrack of Sonic 2 for the Megadrive through the lens of motivation for C25K

If you gotta go fast (Which you really don’t, it’s more about building up endurance) then who better to inspire you than your personal hero and idol; Sonic 2?  Honestly, probably a lot of things, but one day the Mystic Cave Zone music is in your head and you’re like “Maybe this will work?” and, not to spoil the premise of this entire blog but yeah, kinda? Anyways, let’s get to it.

Emerald Hill Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. I mean, it’s mostly playing in the 5-minute walking warmup section but it focuses the mind.  Soon you too will be speeding along through the verdant lands, beset by enemies (mechanical piranhas/people who are walking like 5 dogs). It’s pretty good, probably good to run to but I don’t decide the playlist order. I mean I could but somehow making your own Sonic 2 playlist feels infinitely worse than just looking one up.

Chemical Plant Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. There’s a bit in this one where it does some fake synth saxophone and, let me tell you, I do a serious head waggle to it. It’s great, so great that when I looked at my armband and it said I had 7 seconds until I needed to start running, I didn’t even wait, I had to capitalise on this jam. That’s power.

Aquatic Ruin Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. Sure, it’s a definite downgrade from Chemical Plant Zone but you can’t expect every moment to eclipse the last. You can’t live your life like that, reader. There’s always some Aquatic Ruin in life, you need to appreciate it for what it is.

Casino Night Zone

Yeah, this is a bop… but it felt bad to be breathless and trudging through the woods while listening to this one because it feels a bit mocking. I think it’s the big synth brass? It’s like it’s saying “you spun and lost, my friend. Now endure the 100 spiky balls that are going to zip in at you”. Cruel.

Hill Top Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. This was actually pretty fun to run to. There’s something about its deeply irritating whine that transcends all notions of good and bad. It also goes “doddle do dodo dodo dodo WeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeee” at the start, just what you need in life.

Mystic Cave Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. This is perhaps the greatest piece of music in history, if the merit of music is determined by how often it gets stuck in my head. For clarity, I would like to say this is a bad metric as the charts would always be dominated by Mystic Cave Zone and Why Have You Brought Me Here? from Phantom of the Opera. You gotta give new artists a chance, you know? Although now I say that, maybe I should be running to Phantom of the Opera. I can just skip Masquerade, that’s allowed.

Oil Ocean Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. It’s good but is it running good? No, it’s not. I need something concrete to motivate me. This is too… wiggly?  Like come on, Oil Ocean, I’ve got real stuff to do.

Metropolis Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. There comes a time in the life of an old warrior where he feels more kinship with those he fought than with those he fought to protect. I used to hate this stage but now we are as brothers. It knows my struggles, it knows my strife, knows how much I hated that starfish enemy that just exploded. If you gotta get through the part of your run that goes through the carpark, this is the song you want on your side.

Sky Chase Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. I was a bit worried about this one, would it’s pure, digital serenity sap me of my will to keep running? No, never. Though, it did help that I was going down a hill at this point.

Wing Fortress Zone

Yeah, this is a bop. Unfortunately, it came on during a walking part. What a waste, it’s so triumphant. I guess it’s getting me mentally prepared for the big challenge, the last five minutes, so I allowed its powerful heroism to lift me up.

Death Egg Zone Part 1

This was not a bop! What is this? It’s like a fever dream. I have to run to this? In this moment I wondered if I should just skip back to Chemical Plant Zone to get me through, but I didn’t know if I was wearing the AliExpress headband that can skip songs or the one that changes the volume. Fun fact, both of them ring my mother if you long press the up button (I am not suggesting calling my mother is a universal feature of these headbands, I’m pretty sure it just calls the last person you called),

Death Egg Zone Part 2

Now THIS is a bop! I can feel the power, urging me forward. I’m nearly there, final boss. I can do this. I reach the end of my route; arms spread in triumph. Wait, I’m at the gate of the woods and there’s still like 30 seconds left. Ah damn it, I gotta run on the footpath. This is awful.

All Clear

Yeah, this is a bop. The triumphant music of the ending plays, congratulating me as I stumble out onto the road. Honestly, the swell at the end of this kind of gets me in a way I should be embarrassed about. Then again, if I wanted to avoid being embarrassed, I probably wouldn’t tell you the last person I called is nearly always my mother. (Sometimes she doesn’t answer WhatsApp so you have to actually ring her with your actual phone, look it’s normal).

Staff Role

Yeah, these are the bops. The last 5 minute cooldown happens with this megamix of all the classics, also some of the music from the 2 player stages I don’t quite remember but is pretty cool. It’s a good way to cap it all off. I am hero, I have done it.

Special Stage

No! I’m done! I wanna turn this off! The stupid plastic armband my phone is in makes it not recognise my fingerprint. Maybe if I just hold down the button on my headband it’ll just canc- oh, hey mam. Yeah, just running right now, hit this by accident. Oh… who’s funeral was it? Ah yeah, I don’t think I ever met them, but I’d probably know them to see them.

Conclusion

Yeah, it works. Would I do it again? Well, I’m only on like week 5 so I have to do it again. Oh, you mean the music? Well, should have been more specific with your question but yeah, sure.

Anyways, I better go lie down.

The Moment of Eclipse is a collection of short stories by Brian Aldiss. Yes, it is weird that I aspire to write fantasy yet seem to be constantly reading science fiction. In my defence, all the fantasy books I have to read are very long and all the science fiction has been under 200 pages. Is this a psychological thing and I’m being tricked by font sizing? 100% yes. Does it really matter because fantasy and science fiction are the same genre? Shut your mouth, every online book seller! They’re very different genres! Don’t you dare trot out that Arthur C. Clarke quote about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic! That guy also wrote this:

SOME WOMEN, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of an un-holstered lady officer through the control cabin.

Is this the person you want defining the genres? Be reasonable. Anyways, moving on from rampant sexism in the sci-fi genre, I’d like to talk about The Moment of Eclipse and… hold on… let me check my notes… oh… oh no.

The first Brian Aldiss novel I read was Hothouse and I love Hothouse. It’s the best Dying Earth type story I’ve read and there’s a lot of things I like in it. Like the bit where a spooky song compels anyone who hears it to throw themselves into a volcano and there’s a weird beckoning hand in there. 10/10, love it. Perfect. The second Brian Aldiss novel I read was Non-Stop and that was fine, probably undercut by every sci-fi TV show having stolen it’s core premise. Then I read Finches of Mars and I found it to be wild horny but it did have a mad horse making a speech about the end of days. So, what would Moment of Eclipse be like? Perhaps a mix of all three? Yes. Yes it is. Also, this will contain spoilers for everything.

The Moment of Eclipse

A film maker is obsessed with a married woman. She is married to an ambassador who is being moved to Lagos. The film maker follows them, hoping to seduce the wife. When he gets his opportunity he finds his sight is eclipsed from within. Turns out he’s riddled with parasitic worms but a doctor gets rid of them. He stops being obsessed with the woman because of this unpleasant experience. Not that good a story but it does set the tone for the rest of the book, which is to say it’s going to be awash with weird imperialism, racism, and sexism. Volcano hand, save me!

The Day We Embarked for Cythera…

I looked at this one on the index and drew a complete blank. Then I skimmed through it and kind of remembered it but not what it was about. From my research, it appears to be about people lounging around in a field. People talk about it’s “poetic prose” which I always take as a sign it’s not for me. The only poetic prose I’m interested is that crafted by the sonorous voice of the spooky volcano hand.

Orgy of the Living and the Dying

Tancred (good name) is a soldier stationed in India and he hears voices.The mysterious voices themselves are actually quite well done in the formatting, an entire line is underlined and just interjects itself in the story. It’s good! That’s the nicest thing I have to say about this. Tancred is cheating on his wife with Sushila;

Sushila now was almost nineteen, a mature and strong minded woman.

Cool, cool. Also, Tancred first met her when she stayed with him and his wife 3 years ago when she was studying nursing. So, obviously, when he got the chance to be stationed in one of the famine stricken parts of India, he tracked her down! Because since he first met her, when she was 16, he really wanted to sleep with her.

The plot of this one is that bandits attack the UN camp to raid the food stockpile and then Tancred kills them with… sound? Like a weird sound system? I assumed the voices in his head were caused by this sound system but they weren’t, he just hears voices that are sometimes lines of dialogue from the future and sometimes just other stuff. In the collected reviews at the back of the book, the TRIBUNE says

ORGY OF THE LIVING AND THE DYING is simply one of the most perfectly realized short stories you will ever read

Don’t you put such a powerful curse on me, Tribune! This story was awful. I considered stopping right here, not only because of how wretched I found this story to be but also because my wife is Indian and what if she glances at what I’m reading? I’m not one of your characters, Aldiss! I don’t hate my wife, don’t ruin my marriage…!

Super Toys Last All Summer Long

This is the short story that the film AI is based on. I liked it! Man makes a robot child for his wife because they can’t have kids and then the government gives them a license to have kids. You do kind of feel bad for the robot child, David, and it also doesn’t faff about. It’s good, it’s short and it avoids the Indian subcontinent entirely. A welcome break.

The Village Swindler

Oh no, we’re back! Jane Pentecouth is travelling in India when her father has a heart attack. She is helped by Dr. Chandauri,

a beaming and terrifying Hindu.

This story was vile. This story is just constantly turning to look at you and going “Is there not a savage barbarity in the Indian soul that even the kind hand of the British Empire could not fully smother?”

Wrong audience for that one, buddy. I despised this. In the story, Jane’s father needs a heart transplant and a beggar she encountered earlier offers his heart in exchange for 50 rupees. Jane is distraught by this, it’s so cruel! Dr. Chandauri just laughs because that guy’s heart isn’t even worth 50 rupees! He’s an untouchable so his heart would be weak cause he was so poor all his life! What savage barab-

Just fuck off? This and a few other stories are very concerned with how India is doomed to failure once the kind British leave and it’s just infuriating. India is actually doing pretty well all things considered and, even if it wasn’t, is that not less a reflection of the Indian soul than the incredible damage done by colonialist exploitation? Like what is this? I hate this so much.

Down the Up Escalation

Again, don’t remember this. Looked over it. I think a guy working in publishing is looking over his aunt’s manuscript and maybe has a heart attack? I don’t know. This short story collection has a spaceship on the cover, why is it doing this to me?

That Uncomfortable Pause Between Life and Art…

I got nothing. Paintings? Something? Wait, it’s short. I’ll just reread it.

Man meets older woman in the canteen at the V&A museum. They kind of talk about art. Some stuff about technology. Also, they’ve both been to INDIA. I guess this is probably based on some encounter Aldiss had but just cause he had to live it doesn’t mean I want to hear about it. In fact, if anything I’m looking for the literal opposite of that.

Confluence

I cannot begin to explain the flood of relief I experienced when I read the opening line of:

The inhabitants of the planet Myrin have much to endure from Earthmen, inevitably perhaps, since they represent the only intelligent life we have so far found in the galaxy.

Space! The Final Frontier…! I read on eagerly only to discover that this entire story is a translation guide. Like this:

en io play : The deliberate dissolving of the senses into sleep

gee kutch : Solar empathy ge nu : The sorrow that overtakes a mother knowing her child will be born dead

ge nup dimu : The sorrow that overtakes the child in the womb when it knows it will be born dead

gor a : Ability to live for eight hundred years

And I bet if I’d come across this story without being slowly consumed from the inside by a hatred of the British Empire, I might have given it more time. Like it’s an interesting way to tell a story, I bet you can get all kinds of insight by how the words relate to each other, but I was done. Or I would have been done if I wasn’t on holidays and this was the only book I had left to read. Well, I guess we just press on. Maybe the next story will somehow turn everything around and be amazing.

Heresies of the Huge God

THE NEXT STORY WAS SOMEHOW AMAZING. I love Heresies of the Huge God so much that I momentarily forgot about the horrors of Empire and was all about the horrors of Big Lizard.

A Big Lizard lands on Earth. And I mean a Big Lizard, one that spans continents. The lizard has impenetrable skin and nothing humanity can do can get rid of it. One day, it just leaves. Then, a few years later, it comes back.

Except, it’s clearly a different lizard, it has more legs, but the religion that sprung up in response to the Big Lizard decided it must be the same one because it’s the Huge God. As science and modern technology has completely failed to deal with the space lizard, people have just decided the Big Lizard is god and have constructed a narrative that makes sense of everything. The story is written by a worshipper of the Huge God and it’s a history of the world as understood by the church. It’s really good.

In the churches of the world, the Huge God was asked to give a sign that he had Witnessed the great victory over the American unbelievers. All who opposed this enlightened act were destroyed. He answered the prayers in 297 by moving swiftly forward only a comparatively Small Amount and lying Mainly in the Pacific Ocean, stretching almost as far south as what is now the Antarter, what was then the Tropic of Capricorn, and what had previously been the Equator. Some of his left legs covered the towns along the west American seaboard as far south as Guadalajara (where the impression of his foot is still marked by the Temple of the Sacred Toe), including some of the towns such as San Francisco already mentioned. We speak of this as the First Shift; it was rightly taken as a striking proof of the Huge God’s contempt for America.

It’s so good. I love it. Join Volcano Hand atop the Pantheon of Cool Aldiss Ideas.

The Circulation of the Blood.

This time, the British guy, Yale, actually left his wife to marry the Indian woman, Caterina. Is this progress? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. When Yale is gone on an expedition, his wife sleeps with her step son because, as rationalised by Yale, that’s just what happens when you leave a woman around a virile man. Cool, I hate this.

Oh also, this story is about immortality. Yale is a researcher and found some fish are immortal now because of some virus. He calls up his boss, Devlin, who comes to the island Yale lives on to say he knows about the immortality virus and he and a group of rich people have already used it on themselves. Devlin is about to kill Yale to keep the secret then Yale is like “But your immortality virus got into the sea and now whales are immortal yet they’re all beaching themselves on this island! Don’t you see what this means?”. Devlin is disquieted enough by this that he fails to kill Yale and leaves. Later, Yale speaks to Caterina and is like “lol, whales always do that here, I just wanted to freak him out. We gonna be immortal, baby!!!” which is a funny ending. I assumed there would be some terrifying consequence but I guess I got played.

… And the Stagnation of the Heart

Oh wait, there it is. Yale returns and we’re in India again (Nooooooooo!). This story is about the whole two tiered humanity of immortals vs regulars. There’s famine and immortal goats and, you know, maybe, just maybe, there’s some sort of inherent sav-

Let me stop you there. I don’t care. The story also contains this line:

The government will pay. Like all Indian legislation this bounty favours the rich and the strong at the expense of the poor and weak. Like everything else cool Delhi justice melts in the heat.

I actually read this one out to my wife, we’re still married. There’s something so weird about a British guy going “Of course, this favours the rich in society at the expense to the poor!” as I am currently just like… existing in modern Britain? Did you grow up in a house without mirrors, what is this?

The Worm That Flies

Argustal, an ape man, is looking for special stones. He comes across some tree men, people who became trees, and they offer him a lift. He finds his stone and heads back to his village. Then he has a terrible dream about being small. Crow, a weird dude, tells Argustal that the small version of him was called a “child” and everyone was a child once!

Twist, this is a continuation of the last story! The immortality virus rendered everyone sterile and now they’ve all been around for thousands of years and society has regressed entirely. Humans can’t remember most of their lives and many have changed their forms, some turning into the tree people or ape people or whatever. Argustal might even be Yale! He collects the stones because they’re actually records of the past but he doesn’t really understand them any more. He tosses one and maybe death comes back to the world? I’m not entirely sure, but I liked this one a lot.

Working in the Spaceship Yards

Dude works in the shipyard and has a relationship with Nellie.

The women were very emotional. Many of them fell in love with androids. The men were very bitter about this. My first love, Nellie, the FTL-fitter’s mate, left me for an android electrician. She said he was more respectful.

Go get it Nellie, know your worth.

Swastika!

Hitler didn’t die in the bunker, he moved to Belgium and now lives under an assumed name. The main character meets him for a nice chat. Story basically boils down to the fact that if you consider Hitler to be the avatar of Nazi ideology then he couldn’t possibly be dead because his ideology is still very much around. It’s pretty well done, like it’s inherently farcical to have a nostalgic Hitler reflecting on how it all went wrong but the kind of cosy, familiar tone of the piece really captures the odd nostalgia that people can have for terrible things. Also, when Hitler is being racist at least it’s clear I’m supposed to think he’s terrible. However, whenever India comes up I have to wonder if, you know, all taken together, was the British Empire a civilising influence upon the lawless parts of the world? To which I once again say please fuck off forever.

So yeah, that’s the book. Does

the presence of one Giant Lizard forgive all the awful stuff in this collection? No, obviously not.

Still, that being said, I would like to stress how big that lizard was:

The Huge God landed in what is now the Sacred Sea, upon which in these days sail some of our most beautiful churches dedicated to His Name. At that time, the region was much less pleasing, being broken up into many states possessed by different nations. This was a system of land tenure practised before our present theories of constant migration and evacuation were formed.

The rear legs of the Huge God stretched far down into Africa – which was then not the island continent it now is – almost touching the Congo River, at the sacred spot marked now by the Sacrificial Church of Basoko-Aketi-Ele, and at the sacred spot marked now by the Temple Church of Aden, obliterating the old port of Aden.

Some of the Huge God’s legs stretched above the Sudan and across what was then the Libyan Kingdom, now part of the Sea of Elder Sorrow, while a foot rested in a city called Tunis on what was then the Tunisian shore. These were some of the legs of the Huge God on his left side.

On his right side, his legs blessed and pressed the sands of Saudi Arabia, now called Live Valley, and the foothills of the Caucasus, obliterating the Mount called Ararat in Asia Minor, while the Foremost Leg stretched forward to Russian lands, stamping out immediately the great capital city of Moscow.

The body of the Huge God, resting in repose between his mighty legs, settled mainly over three ancient seas, if the Old Records are to be trusted, called the Sea of Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Nile Sea, all of which now form part of the Sacred Sea. He eradicated also with his Great Bulk part of the Black Sea, now called the White Sea, Egypt, Athens, Cyprus, and the Balkan Peninsula as far north as Belgrade, now Holy Belgrade, for above this town towered the Neck of the Huge God on his First Visit to us mortals, just clearing the roofs of the houses.

As for his head, it lifted above the region of mountains that we call Ittaland, which was then named Europe, a populous part of the globe, raised so high that it might easily be seen on a clear day from London, then as now the chief town of the land of the Anglo-French.

It was estimated in those first days that the length of the Huge God was some four and a half thousand miles, from rear to nose, with the eight legs each about nine hundred miles long. Now we profess in our Creed that our Huge God changes shape and length and number of legs according to whether he is Pleased or Angry with man.

It’s so good.

I watched Marvel’s Ironheart, it wasn’t good. At six episodes, it somehow had too much and not enough going on, as if they’d cut out everything they could but still needed to establish characters for future projects forcing the paper-thin plot to be stretched to include them all. However, I’m not writing a review of Ironheart, enough of the worst people you could imagine have already done so, but more to talk about the real issue afflicting our society: Star Trek.

 

Now, Star Trek is the greatest show in the history of the universe but, to be specific, I’m talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sure, I have a fondness for the others, but Star Trek TNG is the best one and I am willing to argue that till the end of time. However, as many such arguments have already been made (also by some of the worst people you can imagine), I’m not going to relitigate this on my website for my fantasy novel. Instead, let me paint you a picture.

Riri Williams was born in 2005 so she’s 20 max in Ironheart. She has a friendship with Xavier, who is the older brother of Riri’s friend Natalie. So, Natalie is probably around the same age as Riri as they were friends in school. I’m not sure how old Xavier is supposed to be but, since he’s presented as kind of a love interest, let’s say he’s around 23. He can be a few years north or south of that, it doesn’t really matter in my calculus.

So, Riri and Xavier bonded over their love of Star Trek. Makes sense, it’s the best show ever, but what makes less sense is they bonded over Star Trek, as in The Original Series. You know, the one that ran from 1966 to 69, a mere 60 years ago.  Sure, Star Trek TNG finished up 8 years before Riri was born but how did she dodge the 7 seasons of 22 episodes that were likely still in syndication? When she reconciles with Xavier through a letter, obviously the thing she quotes is Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Not Star Trek Into Darkness, a film that came out in 2013 that is essentially a remake of the Wrath of Khan, but the film that came out in 1983. You know, the film that is widely accepted as being the best Star Trek film. That’s the one Riri likes, the good one. She doesn’t have time to waste on TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, or even the new Star Trek series made in her lifetime.

Normally, shows get around this by going “oh yes, PARENT loves that show/music/dance hall jive so that’s how I got involved in thing that wouldn’t otherwise been culturally prominent”. Ironheart doesn’t even do that, Riri just loves TOS. Because? Well, does there need to be a because? Does effect really need a cause? She loves Spock and the Kirk, you know, from TOS.

This isn’t how nostalgia works. The reason I got into Star Trek was I used to turn on the TV at 4:45pm I would get the last 15 minutes of Star Trek TNG, aka the period in which the episode is resolved. One day, the end of the episode Masks, widely regarded as one of the worst episodes in Star Trek (when you discount the racist ones), and it was like a fever dream. Data has a mask on, Picard had a mask on, they were saying weird stuff, they were calling each other Masaka and Korgano. I was hooked. I needed to know more about this show. Turns out, it wasn’t all like that, but I still became a fan.

Like sure, it’s possible that Riri and Xavier had a similar experience and this anecdote was one of the many things cut from the show (Like the reason we’re supposed to be afraid of Red Hood. He can go invisible and bend bullets but an Iron Man suit seems a little bit stronger?) but that’s not what happened. What happened was they needed these characters to bond over something, they’re both kind of nerdy, so maybe it could be Star Trek. But it should be TOS because that’s the most famous one and we want people to recognise it. Otherwise, they’d have bonded over a niche, less recognisable thing and that level of specificity might make the characters seem more well-rounded and believable but at the cost of the audience just turning off the tv because they didn’t immediately understand a reference. Better to paint in the broadest possible strokes and add no believable detail because we only understand nostalgia as an abstract, commodified thing that is inherently good and in no way tied to a specific part of childhood .

Would the show have been saved if Riri instead loved Enterprise and Captain Jonathan Archer? No, no it would not. Would I have liked it? Well, it would have been the best thing in the show. Yes, that is a damning indictment of the show but man, loving Star Trek The Original Series is really emblematic of the shallow, paint by numbers nature of the plot. Maybe it’s about grief? Everything is about grief when you think about it. Maybe it’s about grief but also a way to set up the son of an Iron Man villain for future projects.

Also, unrelated to anything but:

How can Mephisto, played by who I thought was a cross between Adam Sandler and Nandor from What We Do In The Shadows but turned out to be Sascha Baron Cohen, and Red Hood (Off screen and off hood) both have slices of pizza when only one slice has been taken from the pizza? Also, why is the pizza cut like that? Is this an American thing? I don’t have any safety crust to pick up that middle bit, I know I could use that pizza trowel thing but I don’t want to. Like I get that Mephisto is the devil and all but this feels like a step too far.

The core concept of Rogue Moon is interesting, compelling and almost entirely sidelined to focus on characters who are neither of those things.

Something has been discovered on the moon. It’s a weird box. Maybe? Whatever it is, it needs to be investigated. Except, this book was published in 1960, before the moon landing, so how do we do that? Radio transmission that’s how.

 “Just like that? No rockets, no countdowns? Just a bunch of tubes sputtering and squish! I’m on the Moon, like a three-D radiophoto.” Barker smiled. “Ain’t science great?”

Dr. Edward Hawks has developed a way to transmit living people via radio waves. A subject is scanned and broadcast to a relay that reconstitutes them at the other end. When the US government discovers the strange moon box, Hawks is ordered to use his technology to figure out what it is.

Hawks begins his investigation but there’s a problem; the moon box keeps killing people for what seems like completely arbitrary reasons.

It is, for example, fatal to kneel on one knee while facing lunar north. It is fatal to raise the left hand above shoulder height while in any position whatsoever. It is fatal past a certain point to wear armor whose air hoses loop over the shoulders. It is fatal past another point to wear armor whose air tanks feed directly into the suit without the use of hoses at all. It is crippling to wear armor whose dimensions vary greatly from the ones we are using now. It is fatal to use the hand motions required to write the English word yes/ with either the left or right hand.

However, the transmitter technology effectively makes two people, the scanned person on earth and the version transmitted to the moon. So, when the moon box kills the duplicate, you can scan the original and start again. Except there’s another problem, the moon box doesn’t allow any information to leave:

Non-living matter, such as a photograph or a corpse, can be passed out from inside. But the act of passing it out is invariably fatal to the man doing it. That photo of the first volunteer’s body cost another man’s life. The formation also does not permit electrical signals from its interior. That includes a man’s speaking intelligibly inside his helmet, loudly enough for his RT microphone to pick it up. Coughs, grunts, other non-informative mouth-noises, are permissible. An attempt to encode a message in this manner failed. You will not be able to maintain communication, either by broadcast or along a cable.

So, not only will the box kill you but there’s no way for anyone outside the box to know why it killed you. Except, while conducting some of their trials, Hawks realises that if the original subject is kept in a sensory deprivation tank, their mind syncs with their double on the moon. For a period, they act as one person, meaning the original experiences everything the double does, right up until the moment they die. This solves the problem of mapping the moon box but introduces the psychological problem of everyone the box kills remembering their own death.

This is the starting point of book and let me say right now, I love all of this. This is so interesting and there’s so many directions you can go with almost any aspect of it. I love the moon box, I love transmitting people via radio, and the trauma inherent to knowing you died. It’s good, it’s really good. The problem is it’s like 10% of the 173 pages of the book.

So, the book begins with Hawks needing a new subject to send to the moon, one who can deal with dying all the time. He speaks to Connington, the Stetson wearing, Cadillac driving head of HR, and he has the perfect man in mind: Al Barker. A fearless daredevil, Al Barker seems like the perfect man for the job. His main problem is that he’s a difficult man to like but ultimately that means he’s just like everyone else in this book.

I don’t care about any of the characters, and I don’t even think the book is trying to make me care. It feels like it’s focusing on characters to show it’s a real book, not just some sci-fi story. These are real, flawed people and they have complex relationships to each other. Except not really? The book tries to tell me that Barker is an unfeeling, ruthless scientist but it primarily does this by having other people tell me that. Al Barker is an arrogant daredevil who rubs people the wrong way but again, this is mainly conveyed by people saying he’s hard to work with. Connignton, the HR cowboy, is a character who doesn’t even need to exist, his primary purpose being connecting Barker and Hawks. Okay, that’s it. You can be done now.

Or, we can have him give a speech where he talks about how good a HR manager he is.

Connington laughed again, his high heels planted in the lawn. “Me, I’m personnel man. I don’t look cause and effect I don’t look heroes. Explain the world in a different way. People—that’s all I know. ‘S enough. I feel ’em. I know ’em. Like a chemist knows valences. Like a physicist knows particle charges. Positive, negative. Atomic weight, ‘tomic number. Attract, repel. I mix ’em. I compound ’em. I take people, an’ I find a job for them, the co-workers for ’em. I take a raw handful of people, and I mutate it, and make isotopes out of it—I make solvents, reagents—an I can make ‘splosives, too, when I want. That’s my world. Sometimes I save people up—save ’em for the right job to make ’em react the right way. Save ’em up for the right people. Barker, Hawks—you’re gonna be my masterpiece. ‘Cause sure as God made little green apples, he made you two to meet…  An me, me, I found you, an’ I’ve done it, I’ve rammed you two together. … an’ now it’s done, an’ nothing’ ever take the critical mass apart, and sooner, later, it’s got to ‘splode, and who’re you gonna run to then, Claire?”

Claire is Barker’s girlfriend and she is Woman; a manipulative creature who is as mysterious and inexplicable as any moon box and spends all her time in a bikini lounging by the pool. It’s a Sci-Fi book from the 1960s, so I’m not expecting it to have good opinions on women, but there’s not all that much to Claire. She flirts with other men just to drive Barker wild! But she’ll never leave him because he’s the only man strong enough to tame her! Right, okay, can we get back to the moon box?

Well, not really? There’s a lot of interesting stuff bubbling under the surface of this book but nothing ever goes anywhere. We end the story not knowing much more about the mysterious box apart from how to cross from one side of it to the other but I’m fine with that. That all ties into the overall theme of the book that there’s no great answer that will solve it all, every advance creates new problems that once addressed will lead to yet more problems.

I’ve read plenty of Sci-Fi that was carried by its ideas and this could have been one if the ideas were the focus. Instead, the things I don’t care are explained in painful detail while the interesting stuff is glossed over in a monologue. In writing this blog, I’ve realised there was a lot of things I liked about the book yet when I was reading it I couldn’t wait for it to end. Like, look at this:

“I’ll take my own shirt off, sonny,” he rasped, and pulled it off over his head. As Sampson unbuckled the leg’s main strap, Barker looked twistedly at Hawks and ticked the edge of the armor shell with his fingers. “New artifices, Mage?” He seemed to be expecting some special response to this.

Hawks frowned. Barker’s grin became even more distorted with irony. He looked around him. “Well, that’s one flunk. Anybody else care to try? Maybe I should tie one hand behind my back, too?”

The ensign said uncertainly to Hawks, “It’s a quotation from a play, Doctor.” He looked at Barker, who solemnly wet a fingertip and described an X in the air.

“Score one for the NROTC graduate.” The other men in the dressing team kept their heads down and worked.

“What kind of a play, Ensign?” Hawks asked quietly.

“I read it in my English Lit course,” the ensign said uncomfortably, flushing as Barker winked. “Merlin the Magician has made an invincible suit of armor. He intended it for Sir Galahad, but as he was making it, the needs of the magic formula forced him to fit it to Lancelot’s proportions. And even though Lancelot has been betraying King Arthur, and they’ll be fighting in the joust that day, Merlin can’t let the armor just go unused. So he calls Lancelot into his workshop, and the first thing Lancelot says when he comes in and sees the magic armor is: What’s this—new artifices, Mage?”‘

Barker grinned briefly at the ensign and then at Hawks. “I hoped you’d recognize the parallel, Doctor. After all, you say you’ve read a book or two.”

Personally, I don’t think it’s a good enough parallel to warrant inclusion, but I can forgive it. What I can’t forgive is the fact it keeps going.

“I see,” Hawks said. He looked thoughtfully at Barker, then asked the ensign, “What’s Merlin’s reply?”

“‘Aye. Armorings.'”

Barker’s mouth hooked upward in glee. He said to Hawks,

“‘Armorings? Sooth, Philosopher, you’ve come to crafting in your tremblant years? You’ve put gnarled fingers to the metal-beater’s block, and hammered on Damascus plate to mime the armiger’s employe?'”

The ensign, looking uncertainly from Hawks to Barker, quoted:
“‘How I have done is no concern for you. . . . Content yourself that when an eagle bends to make his nest, such nests are built as only eagles may inhabit. —Or those who have an eagle’s leave.'”

Barker cocked an eyebrow. “‘And I’ve your leave, old bird?'”

“‘Leave and prayer, headbreaker,'” the ensign replied to him.

“‘You like me not,'” Barker said, frowning at Hawks.
“‘And surely Arthur’d not command you to enwrap this body’s hale and heart beyond all mortal damage. Nay, not this body—he’s not fond of my health, eh?—Well, that’s an other matter. You say this armor comes from you? Then it is proof, weav’d up with your incantings? ‘Tis wondrous strong? For me? As I began, you like me not—why is this, then? Who has commanded you?'”

The ensign licked his lips and looked anxiously at Hawks. “Should I go on, Doctor?”

He shouldn’t but he does. For two pages. I know it’s probably crazy to say a 173 book should be shorter but, while trying to find out what play this is, I found out that this book used to be shorter. In a review by Mark R. Kelly (no relation) for on BlackGate.com which suggests Budrys made it up and, even more chilling, it wasn’t in the original published version of the story. In fact, most of the stuff I found incredibly tedious seems to have been added to this expanded version. Take for example a brief excerpt from the several pages of description granted to Hawks going into a gas station.

He frowned and looked around at the doorframe behind him. He found a bell, suspended from the frame where the swung-back main door would have brushed it. It had been noiselessly cleared by the smaller screen door. He reached up and bent the bracket downward. His precise gesture failed to disturb the bell enough to ring it, and he stood looking at it, his expression clouded. He half reached toward the bell, brought his hand back down, and turned around again. A number of cars passed back and forth on the highway, in rapid succession.

This is wild to me. There’s a certain art to short stories that makes them different from… well… longer ones. Like you cut out the chaff from Rogue Moon and it’s a really good short story. It’d have so much more momentum and the sci-fi aspects wouldn’t feel so underdeveloped cause we wouldn’t have so many scenes were we desperately wished it’d get back to the point. I get that you probably can’t add too much extra to the sci-fi plot, it being about the unknowable mystery and insignificance of man in the grand cosmic scale, but that is reason to pivot to including the cowboy HR manager master plan to steal a guy’s girlfriend. 

Still, with all that said, there are some things I really liked from the book that I present to you in a bulleted list for some reason.

• As a partial counter the fact that the Moon Box doesn’t allow information to leave, the investigator is given a tablet tied to a cord. The idea being that, once the person dies, the tablet can be reeled back to check the investigator’s notes. This is great, this is how DnD players would tackle a mystery box and I love it.
• This section dealing with the Moon Box:

  Perhaps it’s the alien equivalent of a discarded tomato can. Does a beetle know why it can enter the can only from one end as it lies across the trail to the beetle’s burrow? Does the beetle understand why it is harder to climb to the left or right, inside the can, than it is to follow a straight line.

• As any piece of technology can fail, Hawks has to take multiple scans of Baker before they send him to the moon. He explains it like this:

  When Thomas Edison spoke into the horn of his sound reproducer, the vibration of his voice against a diaphragm moved a needle linked to that diaphragm, and scratched a variable line on the rotating wax cylinder. When he played it back, out came ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ But there Edison was stopped. If the needle came loose, or the wax had a flaw, or the drive to the cylinder varied, out came something else—an unintelligible hash of noise. There was nothing Edison could do about it. He had no way of knowing what part of a scratch was song, and what was noise.

  After this he goes on to explain it again with photo negatives but no, stop that. “No way of knowing what part of a scratch was song, and what was noise” is such a good line. 
• In parts I feel were added in the rewrite, there’s a few scenes where Hawks is being pressured to get better results. It doesn’t really play into anything and it amount to nothing but there’s something very real about inventing a way to transit humans and then your boss is like “Yeah but you gotta make it cheaper. Can’t we just sell some of these computers? You surely don’t need all of them.”
• People who remember dying on the moon end up with a lot of psychological issues. When Hawks meets one of these he asks:

  He sighed at last and asked Weston, “Can you do anything for him?”
  “Cure him,” Weston said confidently. “Electroshock treatments. They make him forget what happened to him in that place. He’ll be all right.”

  This is so grim and I love it.
• The alternative title for this was THE DEATH MACHINE which is a great name because it can either refer to the Moon Box or the scanning process that creates people just to kill them. Don’t get me wrong, I bought the book because Rogue Moon is a good name (It didn’t have blurb) but that title should be given to a book about a moon wandering off or, at the very least, a moon that can do stealth attacks.

There was probably more but if I can’t recall it now then it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the thing about this book that made me immediately hostile to it. At the start of the book Hawks meets the researcher who will be shocked back into good health, he says this:

“An dark . . .” he said querulously, “an dark and nowhere starlights…” His voice trailed away suddenly into a mumble, but he still complained.

Now it’s not the fact that he said something querulously (Why is he so whiny about dying? Jeez.) but rather I read this and thought “Surely it’s ‘a dark’? Is this a reference to something?”. So I googled it I only found references to this book and a reference to this book made in a My Little Pony fanfic that was based on Finnegan’s Wake. I have no greater point to make about this, I just felt like I needed to include it.

Anyways, Rogue Moon. 2/7.

Something I may have neglected to mention in my About page was that myself and my partner currently live in England.

I say “currently” but given we bought a house here now, it’s probably gonna drag on for a while. Now obviously, it isn’t ideal for an Irish man to be living in the heart of his ancient enemy but it could be much worse, I could be living in Dublin.

Awful.

Anyways, one of the good things about living in England is they have good second hand bookshops. Thanks to the amazing resource that is The Book Guide, I get to plan trips based entirely around going to different bookshops. It’s great. Now, we were slightly spoiled by going Suffolk and Norfolk first and stumbling upon the greatest bookshops ever? Yes, yes we were. But our latest trip to Kent and Sussex was still pretty good! I promise to eventually get round to writing about the bookshops themselves but today it’s about some of the books I ended up getting.

---

The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud

I have already read the Bartimaeus Sequence books but since I didn’t have a paper copy I decided to get this. It’s hardback! I like hardback books because they always reminds me of a new Terry Pratchett coming out, Eason’s bookshop in Limerick buying too many, and then it being cheaper than the paperback in a few months time. So thank you for the four hardback Discworld books, Eason’s purchasing manager.

Anyway, the Bartimaeus books are great. Fun fact, that skeleton is a former Prime Minister. Not the one you’d hope though!

---

The Gypsy by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm

I have been very slowly making way through Brust’s Vlad Taltos books (The divorce book slowed me down) so this caught my eye. Then my eye remained caught by everything else going on in this cover:

This is just Johnny Fives Aces with a confused owl. Why is the guy just… squatting on some girders? Also there’s a knife embedded in the presumably metal girder? This cover raises many questions but does answer the question “Who is Megan Lindholm?” by saying it’s Robin Hobb, an author I primarily know because they were near Terry Pratchett in the Eason’s shame corner of Sci Fi and Fantasy. I intend to read this but, even if I didn’t, it is too powerful an artefact to ignore.

---

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson

The Night Land is the worst good book I have ever tried to read. Here is an extract from a random page I opened:

And lo! in a moment, an echo to come out of the dark mountains to our backs; so that we lookt round very sudden; but whether the echo did be truly an echo, or some strangeness, or some unnatural call to come downward out of the gloom and horror of the Gorge, we did be all unsure; and indeed must run downward a while more, until that we did be all breathed, and to halt presently where we did feel to be utter free of the Gorge and of the strangeness that did seem to our minds, in that moment, to lie upward in the darkness of the great mountains.

The book was written in 1912 and, my understanding is, this is not why it’s written like this. This is a deliberate choice by William hope Hodgson. I don’t enjoy this style but the world of the Night Land is so compelling that I keep going back to it.

Fun fact about this copy I bought, it’s a part 2! When I picked it up in the bookshop I was warned of this, they had sold volume 1 the previous year without knowing it was in two parts. However, as this broadly lined up with where I’d gotten in my ebook version I decided to buy it anyway. Also, I think there’s fundamentally something very funny about just owning part 2 of The Night Land.

Also, after comparing it to the Project Gutenberg ebook, I learned that volume 2 begins at an arbitrary point, mid scene? Wild.

---

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

I’d never heard of this author or book so I was intrigued. The reviews at the back only made me more intrigued.

“A masterpiece… shows that a science fiction novel can be a fully realized work of art” James Blish

“A fine novel” Brian Aldiss

“Comes very close to realizing our ideal of science fiction” Alfred Bester, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Makes undeniably clever use of the dramatic potential of death and resurrection… designed to be enjoyed for its tension and savoured for its skill” Irish Times

“The cream of science fiction” Daily Telegraph

Well if it’s good enough for the Irish Times then who am I to say no? Arbitrarily, I decided this was the first book from the collection I’d read.

---

Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock

I’ll level with you, I originally got into the Elric books because I read a post on a forum that said they heavily influenced Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. Beyond the soul stealing sword, I don’t really think they did, but I still enjoyed the book. At home in Ireland I have my Elric omnibus and it’s good looking book.

However, this is not dissuade me from buying this little Stormbringer.

Behold the sky of teeth. I love it. Stormbringer is great and has really stayed with me over years, mostly because of it’s ending being very tragic but also very funny. So much so I immediately read out my favorite part of it to my wife and she was like “that’s awful” and I was like “hahah, yeah!”. It’s great.

---

Thieves World edited by Robert Asprin

When you start looking for funny fantasy books Asprin’s name comes up a lot. I read the first of his Myth Adventures series and it didn’t really click for me. Still, it was enough that when I saw his name I pulled the book from the shelf to be greeted by this:

There they are, the lads. From reading the back of the book, this seems to be a series of stories written in a shared universe. Apart from that, I know nothing about this and that’s how I want to go into this. As a veteran of online roleplaying, I love fantasy settings where different writers contribute and I look forward to seeing which hack tries to insert something that’s a rip off of an existing property and doesn’t fit at all. Like the guy who joins the forum and just adds Skyrim. Just straight up Skyrim.

Anyways, that’s it for now. Mostly because in previewing this post I realised the site is making all the pictures too big so I’m going to go edit that now. You don’t need to see the Stormbringer sky teeth in that much detail, believe me.

There is nothing new under the sun.

(more…)