Head! #9 Porpoise Song Contents It’s the sunday before Corflu. Outside the sun is shining, boats sail carefree and indolent on Novas, Nazis and Natural Selection 3 the blue waters of the harbour. Even the seagulls Christina Lake are out having fun, gliding across the sky, in- stead of bickering with each other on the rooftops Waking the Kraken 7 of the student flats opposite. Only I’m left in- Doug Bell side, trying to finish off the fanzine (and Doug too, of course, but he’s got his PS3 to play, so How to make a Science Fiction Movie 11 doesn’t mind about the boats and the gulls.) Pete Crump Yes, it’s a proud and foolishly time-consuming thing to be a faned! Bof! The Secret History of France 16 according to the Metro Sometimes I feel a bit cut off from fandom Christina Lake down here in Cornwall. In spite of the Internet, there’s nothing to beat face to face conversa- LOCS 19 tions with fellow fans to spark off ideas and pre- You lot! vent the day-to-day reality of work and other responsibilities from taking over. It’s that con- Art versation which is essential for the making of Covers - the One, the Only, Brad Foster! fanzines. Without it, the best intentions in the Headings on page 3 and 7 by ace fanboy, TAFF world will wilt and die (a bit like my Farmville plants, winner and all-round great guy Steve Green. once I got bored after Christmas!) and our plan We are please to welcome back, albeit from to produce two issues a year of Head! (and the far side of the world now John Toon, whose maybe a couple of perzines on the side) comes artwork brightens up pages 5, 20 and 25. to be revealed as delusional as my plans to lose Artwork on pages 15, 19 , 21 and 22 by the weight without cutting down on drinking beer! legendary William Rostler (as last ish kindly And perhaps that’s why we always seem to be donated by Sandra Bond). Anyone sitting on writing about conventions. Well, they are our a stack of un-used Rostlers let us know and only real contact with other fans, so they’re we’ll take them off your hands! bound to make a big impression. I’m not sure The Jeff Hawke strip on Pg 8 is of course by how we’re going to cope with two conventions Sydney Jordan. only a fortnight apart; it will either blow our poor Photos on pages 12-14 by kind permission of parochial minds, or turn us into publishing Pete Crump from his film “Harvest”. supergiants! Allt the other stuff is the fault of the Headitors. Luckily we continue to be on the mailing list for a Head! #9 was thrown together for Corflu Co- number of brilliant and inspiring fanzines. Is it balt and Odyssey 2010 by Christina Lake and just me, or is the quality of fanzines going up, Doug Bell somewhere between Olympic Ice- despite the much discussed decline in numbers? Hockey and the end of March. As every fan of Maybe this is something to investigate for a fu- 60’s psych-popsters The Zombies knows, this ture issue? year’s Eastercon committee can’t spell the name of their con correctly - it should be Odessey. Well, what have we got here to justify this little exercise in self-denial? All the usual fripperies from Drop us a line at: Doug and I. A few snippets on the last Novacon, a little bit of Wyndham, and a quirky soupcon of [email protected] hot air from the Paris metro. Then we have [email protected] Pete Crump, narrating the dramatic saga of his venture into science fiction film-making. Steve Or with locs, letters, love and liquor to: Green has come through with some great page headings, despite the lamentably short notice 35 Gyllyng Street we gave him and Brad Foster has yet again Falmouth amazed and gratified us with another fabulous Cornwall cover! TR11 3EL, UK. - Christina
2 Porpoise Song Conventions March 2010 Last year Novacon finally moved to a new venue in Nottingham which was a widely welcomed and positive move, but seemed to add a signficant amount of time to the drive from Cornwall. Train fares to Nottingham are astronomical, and it was not till after we’d done the drive that I realised that maybe we ‘d reached the tipping point in the viability of the two day Novacon...
It was Friday night at Novacon and I was trying Nevertheless, I was pleased to be there at to explain to my friend Juli why I’d driven all the Novacon. Doug and I had arrived a couple way from Cornwall to Nottingham in some frankly of hours earlier, and we’d quickly hooked up quite dodgy weather to attend this particular with Pete Crump, smug from his bargain convention. First Class journey from London, Lennart Uhlin, Doug’s Swedish best buddy, and “What’s the big attraction?” asked Juli, trying to Clarrie and Tim, the fannish heart of the be diplomatic. From her tone, I guessed what Bristol SF Group. The new hotel seemed she really meant to say was, “What on earth to promise all kinds of possibilities of possessed you!” reconfiguration of the Novacon experience, even if the bar staff didn’t seem too I’ve known Juli since we were at university comfortable with handling the real ale (the together. I’ve even taken her to a con before. Baa Baa Black Sheep, which like Mary’s lamb How hard could it be to explain? “Uhm, Justina had followed us from Walsall) or meeting Robson, she’s the guest of honour. I’ve read the unexpectedly high demand for drinks one of her books.” Okay, I didn’t like it as much from their new guests. as I’d hoped I might, but that’s not the point. I did want to give Justina another chance. “And The bottom line was I felt at home and then there’s a woman talking about Darwin. And happy to be back at Novacon. But how to a book room...” communicate that to Juli? I’ve driven all the way to Nottingham to stand in a beer queue, I could feel myself running out of steam. We talk to a Swede and see some friends who were sitting in the hotel restaurant, and Juli could we could see any time in Bristol? see for herself that this wasn’t a glamorous occasion. And although my friends had been Doug later supplied the word I was lacking. there when she arrived, no-one since had shown Community. It’s not about seeing friends, any evidence that they knew me, let alone that but about reconnecting with the community. they might constitute a reason for driving six hours to be there. Maybe fandom was easier to explain in the 80s. Perhaps I should ask Juli what she Usually I think of Novacon as a well earned thought of the convention she attended: break, after the toughest months of my working the post-Worldcon relaxacon in Leicester calendar. But this year, I’d been to Paris with where we re-enacted the Worldcon with the Doug in October, and taken several days off help of soft toys (interpretive dance not the week before to help out my mother, as having been invented as a fannish she’d broken her hip. In fact, the real break I communication medium at that point!) I needed was a quiet weekend at home. think I had fanzines as my justification back
Conventions 3 Head! #9 Conventions then. I was a fanzine writer and I believed to clean certain parts of her anatomy. I could that fanzines were important. But I could hardly see there were some fans round the table say that at Novacon, where fanzines were quite happy to put up with the fixed showerhead invisible, and the death of the Novas was high in exchange for the image of Kate’s on the agenda. handstands, but even they had to agree that the lack of a bath might be a handicap to After Juli had gone home, I rejoined the gang stocking beer for a room party. Dave Hicks just in time to hear Steve Green suggest that reminisced about how his partner Cat had what we needed was a NaNoWriMo for fanzines. imagined the beer being poured straight into We could hold it in September so the fanzines the bath when she first heard about the could be published in time to be eligible for the legendary American bath tubs full of beer. Now Novas. I was full of enthusiasm for the idea. it would all run away down the plug hole. Not How difficult could it be for fan editors all around that there seemed any danger of a room party the country to devote the month of September breaking out. An invitation to a private wine to pubbing their ish? After all, wasn’t that the tasting seemed far more likely. norm in Leeds back in the ‘80s? Anyway, it couldn’t be as hard as writing a novel in a month. Next morning I was still pondering how to explain There was only one barrier to the success of the attraction of Novacon, especially considering the concept. What to call it? Somehow, that the only item on the morning’s programme NaFaWriMo, didn’t have much of a ring to it. I wanted to attend was happening while I was still eating my breakfast. Maybe scheduling the I left Steve to battle with this weighty problem. Darwin talk at 10 am was a cunning plan to ensure that we didn’t all come down to breakfast Somewhat later in the evening, after much at the last minute. Good thinking, since the beer, crisps and chocolate had been consumed hotel were clearly boggled by the quantity of at our table, Steve announced he’d cracked it: breakfast being consumed and by 9.45 the we could call it National Zine Production Month. breakfast area was already short on coffee There was a certain drunken glee in his eyes cups, cereal bowls and other standard as he watched me work out the acronym: equipment for facilitating the breakfast NaZiProMo. Yes, in a single stroke we could experience. rescue the Novas, but only at the expense of turning fanzine fandom into a proto-facist The talk about the Darwin Correspondence organisation. Project was well worth attending, despite missing the beginning. What struck me was I did – briefly – wonder about getting the the sheer volume of Darwin’s correspondence domain name. and the speed of a postal service which could allow exchange of letters between two people The Black Sheep may have followed us from in London to proceed at a similar pace to email Walsall, but the dead pig was less willing. The (though with no social networking facility, unless hotel failed to come up with the late night bacon the recipients chose to read out their mail to butties, much to the annoyance of the friends and family.) It also renewed my desire committee, and the distress of Kate Solomon to start some archival research of my own (or and Malcolm Davies who had eaten nothing maybe become an archivist, an ambition that since sharing half a pitta bread in their room at Doug has now embraced since seeing the about seven that evening. “Why didn’t you advert at UCLA for an archivist to organise the get some food here?” I asked. But Kate and Grateful Dead archives). The speaker seemed Malcolm seemed vague about this. All I could to be enjoying herself. I wondered whether work out was it had something to do with the she had expected such an enthusiastic necessity of drinking lots of beer. reception early on a Saturday morning from a science fiction convention. Kate wasn’t too sure about the new hotel. It might look stylish and new compared to Walsall, A good start to the day then, even if the but how practical was it beneath the gleaming programme for the rest of the morning surfaces? For example, the shower head was appeared to be the book auction. Though if I fixed to the ceiling, which meant, said Kate, didn’t fancy that, I could always go to the that she was going to have to do a handstand book room and buy some books. And failing 4 Conventions Conventions March 2010 that there was going to be a book launch at trying to work out why he’d had the opposite 12.00. In other words, plenty of opportunity to reaction to Justina, and didn’t want to read buy books, but not much opportunity to talk her books, despite enjoying the talk. Still with about them. Though I could always go and Pete being the type of guy who can explain look for those conversations about SF that the Singularity, whilst simultaneously allegedly go on all the time in the dealers’ room; expressing Singularity-fatigue, perhaps it’s not I’m sure they do, but somehow they never surprising that pocket handkerchief elves just seem to happen to me. I just find myself flitting don’t do it for him. from table to table, in search of that elusive Graham Joyce novel or maybe the latest issue Maybe it was the lack of competing guests of Foundation, wondering why old SF books in that made the Nova debate loom large in bulk, a bit like old fanzines, induce a sense of the programme. Greg Pickersgill looked nausea and futility. Maybe that was why it was genuinely shocked at the size of the audience such a relief to get to the Fan Fund table where for this event. Surely this kind of interest Flick and Ang were running a competition to should be reserved for discussing important guess the name of a suggestive-looking potato. stuff like SF magazines of the 50s? It was It might not be science fiction, but everyone certainly ironic that people were more willing seemed to know at least one fan who deserved to discuss the fate of the Novas than actually to be known as Mr. Potato-Head. But the best vote in them. Having spent so much of the comment about the book room came later over 80s failing to win a Nova, and then not being the book launch wine, when Tony Keen pointed there when Doug and I won for Head!, it’s out that Brian Ameringen was now apparently emotionally hard to hear their day is past. pricing his books alphabetically, since he was Just as it’s hard to accept that the fanzine selling authors A-D for a pound and E-H for as I knew it has largely been superseded by £2.00. Luckily for Zelazny fans Brian hadn’t the blog, while the fanzine community, brought the rest of the alphabet with him! increasingly, finds its justification in archiving, fan history and going back to its roots in If the book room wasn’t doing it for me, maybe science fiction. Whilst there are several very I needed to focus on the guests. I noticed good exceptions to this in the UK (and many from the flyers round the bar that the modern more in the US), the special interest group is day convention tends to have quite a string of becoming ever more special, so I can see these. Newcon, modestly, only boasted three, Claire Brialey’s point that it gets embarrassing but Octocon had ten in addition to GoH George to receive an award on the basis of such a R.R. Martin, while Phoenix Convention seemed low voter turn-out, and Greg’s that maybe to have about 20. Even next year’s Novacon we’re giving the award for the wrong activity. was going for three. Was that the answer then? More guests might have helped justify the journey, I suppose, but guest overload can be tiring, and I was still recovering from Bristol- Con in September which had managed to cram two GoHs, eight guests and eight sub-guests into a three hour programme. At least at Novacon I could make a point of going to Justina Robson’s GoH speech.
Justina was charmingly frank about the feelings and motivations behind her writing. But despite her conviction that the Keeping It Real saga of Goth elves and faeries would turn out ultimately to be science fiction, I still felt myself drawn to her earlier more scientifically inspired SF. In fact I was all for running off to the book room to buy Mappa Mundi or Natural History (which disappointingly by the time I did so, the next day, turned out not to be there). Instead I ended up standing at the bar with Pete Crump Conventions 5 Head! #9 Convenitons But all the same, I don’t want to lose the Unfortunately, the drinks team didn’t seem to annual temperature gauge to the British fanzine share her enthusiasm. In fact they were so scene, whether it be stultifyingly predictable or busy being overworked elsewhere that none a wake-up call to the fact that I’m missing out of the drinks materialised. Eventually, after on something important (as was the case with some chasing, a beer and coke turned up, but Prolapse). And even if British fans continue to still no milk shakes. Finally, when we’d given up make a good showing in the Hugos and Faan hope, and were about to get them knocked Awards, why should our fanzine editors have off the bill, the waiter arrived with three glasses to get on a plane to get their egoboo? of sickly-looking yellow liquid. “Is it just me, or does this taste of custard More to the point, would that finally spell the powder?” asked Clarrie, after a couple of sips. end of the secret Nova Award winners party “’Fraid so,” agreed Pete. in the basement? The event par excellence of Doug said nothing, but it seemed to take the convention where you can buy the official him a few beers to get over the experience. Nova Award winners socks, as modelled this year by Doug and Dave Hicks, trade unwanted The Saturday night vibe in the convention bar Novas, or simply drink the champagne laid on was pretty mellow. While I’m probably the only each year by the convention? person to miss the convention disco, it would have been nice to have more of an excuse to One of the points the discussions did bring get dressed up. But looking around me, I home to me was how invisible fanzines are at realised that no-one really needed an excuse. the convention. Maybe it’s time to reconsider Claire Brialey seemed to have dressed up just the whole trading model of the SF fanzine to recline in the back rows at Steve Green’s scene and get out there and sell our fanzines TAFF talk, while others had donned their best to the rest of the convention, or at least put waistcoats just to mingle in the bar. The con them on sale in the dealers room. Forget the seemed to be split between people who had free giveaway tables and showcase new already heard part of Steve’s talk at the Brum fanzines as something unique and creative to group, and those who thought it de rigeur to be valued, coveted and collected. go in, even if just to heckle or look at the photographs. Ang was doing brisk business The panel closed with the exhortation to go collecting GUFF votes for the newly announced away and vote. So we did. Clarrie, Tim, Doug, race between Doug S. and James Shields. It Pete Crump and I swapped pens, eligibility was one of those programme items that was criteria and anecdotal evidence of our favourite only partly about learning and listening, mainly fanzines, while narrowly failing to get Lennart about being there, joining in and sharing it with up to speed via e-fanzines. It was the first others in the audience. Difficult to explain to time I’d voted before midnight in some time, an outsider as it’s a different model to either and the first time I’d been accused of ballot entertainment or education. stuffing since the long ago year when Blackbird’s Egg, an at that time non-existent fanzine, On the last day, I finally managed to connect came 4th. Maybe it’s always been easy to to the book room experience and found myself subvert the Novas – but not so easy to win in a conversation about rabbits with Greg one! Pickersgill and one of the dealers. Yes, rabbits! Not SF. Not even talking rabbits. Just rabbits. After all this voting, everyone was feeling Greg clearly feels the same way about rabbits hungry. I was supposed to be going out for a as I feel about goat. However much you cook meal with Lilian Edwards, to celebrate the a rabbit, he said, you can’t get away from its change of location from Walsall to Nottingham. essential rabbitness. But Lilian had called in sick via Facebook, and no-one in our little group could be bothered to Ah, the book room. The secret heart of the leave the hotel. Besides the hotel food had convention! seemed fine the night before. But it all went downhill when Pete, Doug and Clarrie decided That’s all it took. Suddenly I felt accepted, and to order milkshakes. The waitress was positively went on to find several books I wanted to buy, rhapsodic about the vanilla milkshake. and even bought some of them.
6 Conventions Conventions March 2010 And then, far too early, we were back on the Novacon, which I will be able to look back on in road again, setting out on the long drive back to years to come and remember that I was there Cornwall. That’s the worst thing about living in (if only because I’ve written this con report). Cornwall – it takes so damn long to get out and Whether I will remember it as the beginnings of back again. If I still lived in Bristol there wouldn’t the end of the Novas (whatever that might have been any of this soul-searching about mean), the start of my fixation on Justina Robson Novacon. But when you live so far away that or some other author or the camaraderie of every decision to do something is a vote against the group in the bar doesn’t really matter. What doing something else, you have to measure matters is that I took a positive experience away your experience. I don’t think I found the from the convention. But next year, I’ll try and answer for my friend Juli. But I found the answer make enough time to stay over Sunday night. for myself. I was at Novacon to be part of Cornwall to Nottingham for a day and a half of something. Not a big progressive something with convention is kind of hard to justify. delusions of grandeur. Just the first Nottingham
Cornish Legend has it that out in Falmouth Bay lurks the dread sea serpent Morgawr (think of her as the Cornish Nessie). However a chance encounter with a Science Fiction Classic lead Doug to discover that even more sinister creatures lurk within sight of his house, in what we are calling...
The SF content of my Christmas holiday this and of course the classic 80s BBC serial. year was fairly minimal, if you can call romping Whilst reflecting on these three separate my way through Neal Stephenson’s Anathem visions of the book I started to wonder if my minimal. Apart from that weighty book, I lack of reaction to the recent adaption was staggered bleakly through Cormac McCarthy’s more due to over-familiarity; I’d seen it too The Road and muttered something along the many times before. What I really wanted lines of “About time” as Russell T Davies wasn’t another battle against man-eating interminable farewell love-in finally ended. Then plants but to see The Kraken Wakes on there was the latest TV adaptation of The Day screen. of the Triffids which everyone seemed to universally hate. Maybe it was the booze I’d In case there is anyone out there who hasn’t been on all day, but all I could muster was read the book, a brief and somewhat bare “Well that killed a couple of hours”. While not a bones synopsis goes like this. A newlywed ringing endorsement, I have watched far worse couple of journalists are on a honeymoon things. It should be said I’ve also seen a helluva cruise when they witness meteors crash into lot better too. the sea. The British government investigates the phenomenon by sticking a bathysphere Adapting and updating a much loved book is down into darkest depths below, which in due always problematic. All the old clichés come course gets destroyed. Surprise…the meteors out about making it relevant to the modern contained alien invaders from another world. audience while trying to remain true to the Tensions mount, shipping gets attacked, source material. Triffids has had a rather spotty leading to an almost complete drop-off of history what with the dodgy 50s Hollywood film ocean freight. The aliens start attacking land Science Fiction 7 Head! #9 Science Fiction targets in sea tanks, before switching tactics novels. If you’ve ever had a pasty or small by melting the ice-caps. Land is disappearing; child snatched from your hands in St Ives by things look bleak, life as we know it looks dead the monstrous overweight seagulls you will and gone. understand where she got the idea for The Birds from. As a kid I read Chocky, The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos, but it was only Cornwall’s role in The Kraken Wakes is small recently that I finally got around to reading but important. It is to fictional Rose Cottage in The Kraken Wakes. I picked up a cheap the equally fictitious Penllyn near the real village battered Penguin paperback from the second of Constantine (only 5 miles away from where hand bookstore down near Falmouth’s harbour I’m typing this) that the main characters rush a couple of weeks before flying out to Australia to when society collapses around them. in 2006. My intention was to read it en-route Constantine is famous in our parts not for its and since I’d paid hardly anything for it, abandon cameo in Wyndham’s book but for its Post the book in whatever hotel we were staying in Office which has one of the largest selections rather than cart it back to the UK. Somewhere of single malts in the UK outside of Scotland. between Eastern Europe and India my plans This makes it the perfect place to sit out the changed as the main characters visited our end of civilization - I bet the Triffid’s Isle of home town of Falmouth, which I’d just left less White doesn’t have a ready source of 16 Year than 24 hours before. Old 1976 vintage single malt from the long dead Banff distillery. Cornwall doesn’t feature heavily in SF. Jerry Cornelius’s coffin emerges from the surf at Falmouth’s role is even smaller than Tintagel in The English Assassin (St Michael’s Constantine’s. The main characters have a bit Mount also gets a shout-out later in the book). of a pub crawl managing to visit four bars in After the pressure of being Captain Britain one afternoon and one sentence. None are proved too much for Brian Braddock, he named, but that started me wondering which became a hermit somewhere on Cornwall’s of the current bars would have been around in North Coast. Jeff Hawke’s ill-judged holiday to the fifties? Strong candidates would include the the depressed post-industrial town of Redruth harbourside olde-worlde Chainlocker complete comes to a crashing end as he get’s kidnapped with low-beams and nautical decorations. The by aliens in Counsel for the Defence. Despite dilapidated but legendary Seven Stars would being a newspaper strip this is real proper definitely have existed back in the fifties as it science fiction. For a start Jeff drove from has been family run for what appears centuries. London on the Cornish Motorway; the A30, (It is a place where your seat gets handed our main road into the county still has sections down from father to son, redecoration means that are not even dual carriageway. And sellotaping the wallpaper back up, and a trip to although only a very small fraction of her work the ladies usually involves the use of a torch. can be described as SF, Daphne du Maurier All of which makes it sound rather worse than it used Cornwall as a backdrop throughout her is. Why do people go there you ask? For the
Did you hear that Straw Dogs 2 will star Jeff Hawke?
8 Science Fiction Science Fiction March 2010 perfectly kept real ales that have meant the Additionally there are no real access points pub has never been out of the Good Beer Guide to the land near the harbor as the sea tanks despite its ramshackle nature. ) Apart from those can’t handle steep climbs. The hinterland two definites I’d have thought the small cosy beyond the harbor is not flat either. We Masons Arms and the Star and Garter with its should know as we stagger up the hill from views over the Fal estuary towards Flushing would out local pub almost every Saturday night be good candidates. and it isn’t easy, sober or drunk. I’m quite thankful for this as living so close to the Interesting as this pub diversion is, it was one harbour that hill is our only protection against almost throwaway line about sea tank attacks sea tank attack! in The Kraken Wakes that most intrigued me. So why would the aliens attack Falmouth? It “England’s only raids occurred in Cornwall, could be argued that this is the first and they too, were small affairs for the commercially significant port in England. most part - the one exception was an Newlyn and Penzance are further south but incursion in Falmouth Harbour where a Newlyn primarily serves the depleted Cornish few did succeed in advancing a little fishing fleet while Penzance main importance beyond high-tide mark before being is as the terminal for the Scillies ferry, The destroyed; but much larger numbers, it Scillonian. (At the time of writing Penzance was claimed were smashed by depth- may even be at risk of losing this to Falmouth charges before they could even reach due to an ongoing planning dispute over the the shore.” proposed siting of a new ferry terminal).
The Fal estuary is one of the world’s largest natural harbours (behind Sydney and Rio De Janerio) and has historically been the biggest and most important port in Cornwall. It was here that the Packet service ran until the middle of the nineteenth century carrying mail to and from the UK to all parts of the Empire. Nelson’s death at Trafalgar was first reported by Lt. Lapenotiere of HMS Pickle in Falmouth before he started his 37 hour epic horse ride bearing the news to the Admiralty in London.
Nowadays the estuary is multi-use. It is a Falmouth Harbour source of income for the Falmouth oystermen who fish using their traditional sail Falmouth has one of the most defendable or row powered boats (it keeps the oyster harbours against submarine attack in the UK beds sustainable rather than using industrial as the entire Fal estuary can be easily cut off dredging). Falmouth is home to a large sailing from the high sea by dropping submarine nets population, and although the yachties can between Pendennis Point and St Mawes as be really fucking irritating, I’m not sure that’d happened in WW2; this entrance to the provide enough motivation for aliens to estuary is a couple of miles away from the invade Falmouth. harbour which would explain why so many sea tanks were destroyed before landfall. However, If you asked any visitor to the town what the most striking thing as a Falmouth resident would be the most obvious strategic military about this sentence is why would anyone attack target in the estuary, they would no doubt the harbour in the first place? choose Falmouth Docks. But the real reason has less to do with the warehouses, cranes The harbour is of no strategic importance, and dry-docks that comprise our small not unless the visiting aliens have a major compact port. Falmouth’s docks are primarily grudge against waterside bars or fishing trips. used for re-fits and repairs not ship-building
Science Fiction 9 Head! #9 Science Fiction and although the odd military ship gets booked the action needs some purpose behind it. in for a service you could never really describe it Large naval bases, nuclear reactors, oil as a military port. The dock’s biggest commercial refineries all sited on the coastline would make and strategic asset is concerned more with the more understandable targets for a modern practice known as bunkering. Bunkering is audience; taking a leaf from Spooks the essentially the container ship equivalent of mid- perennial terrorist target of the Thames Flood air refueling, which makes Falmouth the first and Barrier would tie in nicely with the dangerous last service station for sea freight in the UK. sea-level rises that occur later in the book. This might not sound that important but the underground oil storage tanks at Swanpool were I’m also uncertain about sending the main one of the few Cornish targets of the Luftwaffe protagonists to hide out in Cornwall. Why? in WW2. Well there is nothing inherently wrong about the plan; indeed generally I think the idea is sound. Certainly the county is blessed with good agricultural land and is remote from large population centres and all the problems that go with them in disaster stories, but Cornwall is one long thin peninsula. Rose Cottage is mentioned as having views out to Falmouth Bay and the Helford Estuary, too close to the sea to be safe in my opinion. Personally I’d have been off to somewhere of far greater elevation, and further from the coast, like the Cairngorms.
Survivors is back on telly again, a programme Falmouth Docks which falls roughly into the same cosy catastrophe niche as both The Day of the So we have a reason for the Falmouth attack Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. I watch it even if the grasp on local geography is shaky. and although flawed I enjoy it enough to However one of the strangest things about the tune in again the following week. I could see phase of the book dealing with the land invasions a programme like Survivors working quite well is that it is there at all. The sea tanks attack down here; there are still rough edges to the seemingly random targets throughout the world, county, and despite economic growth it is still and mostly isolated and rural communities of a relatively poor and rural region. Wheras little military or economic importance. They don’t urban-centric Ballardian disasters would not do much damage, motive is never guessed at work here at all and I can’t see Cormac and all of a sudden they stop just as quickly as McCarthy’s ultra-grim The Road surviving they start. Structurally I understand completely intact either. A world where all plant and animal why Wyndham wrote this section of the book life have been wiped out, where everything as it allows the protagonists one of the rare is wet, grey and cold would not defeat the opportunities to have face to face contact with hardy Cornish spirit. I can even picture the the aliens as well as injecting some action into final scenes of the book - after a grim and the narrative with the invasion of Santander. dangerous cross-country trek the Man and But when you compare this to the more the Boy would arrive at the wave swept beach organised and systematic way the newt armies somewhere on the North Coast. Their hopes in Karl Capek’s War with the Newts attack the of finding life are dashed as the coastal land based civilization from their hidden landscape is just as dead as the rest of the submerged world, you start to think that country, and the sea is completely devoid of Wyndham’s invasion is a haphazard amateurish life too. Devoid of life that is except for the affair. few remaining hard core surfers, clad in their full winter wetsuits, sitting out on their boards If anyone is going to adapt this for the screen waiting for that one perfect set of waves. If this section would need re-thinking. I could see you don’t believe me visit us in sleet-filled Falmouth’s place in the story being dropped to January and we’ll show you how true this make more sense of this part of the book as would be. 10 Science Fiction Film March 2010 PROLOGUE
FADE IN: I am in a darkened cinema in Wrexham, North Wales, with about 100 other people. I am as nervous as jam in a sandpit. In a few moments a film will begin. A science fiction film. My science fiction film. Let me tell you how it was…
How To Make a Science Fiction Movie by Peter Crump
ACT ONE
FLASHBACK: Wrexham Science Festival, 2003. CUT TO: HOME: The budget of nothing I am listening to a talk by Lionel Fanthorpe. narrows the range of available themes. The When I think of growing up in Wrexham, I think science festival people will be looking for a film of pound shops, horrifying nightclubs and streets with science in it, so I settle on something to awash with cheap lager and drowned ambition. do with the protagonist’s insides (make him a As Lionel ponders Unsolved Mysteries, I wonder robot or clone or alien or exotically sick). The if he’s considered how mysterious it is that setting: a couple of rooms, and characters Wrexham is hosting a Science Festival at all. who talk a lot. Talk is, in a very real sense, cheap. I borrow a suitable plot from an old CUT TO: TITLE, CENTRED: Interzone and begin typing. 11 MONTHS LATER CUT TO: VILLAGE HALL, NORTH WALES: I’ve FADE IN: HOME: I read an email from Ieuan returned to the land of my fathers to find Watkins. He says the Wrexham Science Festival some actors. I’m watching a murder mystery is having a science fiction short film competition. by a drama group I know from back in the I should enter, though he doesn’t say why I day. I persuade three actors to perform in should, apart from my known association with my sf film: Lizzie, Jan and Ieuan. One is the Wrexham and a fondness for science fiction. wrong sex, but it’s nothing a bit of re-writing And the £1000 first prize. And the chance of can’t sort out. The plan is to get the thing broadcast on the BBC. Well, BBC2. Or, rather, made, even if it isn’t exactly what I had in the Welsh regional version of BBC2. To be mind to start with. I still need a lead actor. honest, it’s BBC2W, the Welsh regional digital version, only available on Freeview. In Wales. CUT TO: HOME: I call the number in the Eric The deadline is just a few weeks away and I programme and speak to Aidan, who was in have no script, actors, locations, props, Eric. He is ideal for the lead: skinny, with an equipment, money, time or experience. I’ve air of vulnerability. He is surprised to hear from never made a film in my life; I’ve not even a complete stranger, but after reassuring him video’d my arse. that zero-budget short sf film is not a euphemism for gay porn video, and with the CUT TO: BATHROOM: My wife is bathing. carefully-worded promise of a broadcast by “There’s not enough time,” I tell her, absently the BBC, he agrees. applying a fine exfoliant to her flawless back, “but it is at least theoretically do-able.” She a CUT TO: GLITTERING CORPORATE HQ, raises a perfectly sculpted yet sceptical eyebrow. LEEDS: It’s the perfect location, all smoked “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she says, takes a glass and brushed chrome, but my employers sip of perfectly-chilled Chablis and waves a change their corporate mind on the very day manicured hand in dismissal. I need no further the camera arrives and someone whispers encouragement. gay porn video. They panic, imagining the company logo visible in an energetic scene of FLASHBACK: EXT CLIFFORD’S TOWER, YORK: God knows what, and emphatically say No. I’m watching Terry Pratchett’s Eric in the rain. The outdoor production is shambolic but CUT TO: HOME: I’m ringing round potentially engaging. There’s a contact number in the sympathetic alternative locations and programme. frantically re-writing the script to remove all Film 11 Head! #9 Film the references to airy offices, glass lifts and CUT TO: SHED: Richard and I are shoving kipple glittering, modern facilities. Maybe I should just aside, looking for the lights. The BBC Studio film it in my living room. manager calls me on my mobile. Says he’s snowed in and can’t come to the studio today. FX: An animated MRI scan of two hearts, I don’t understand; I’ve just driven over the beating in contra-phase. It takes me three days Pennines and there’s no excuse-quality snow to animate. It’s not much of a special effect within fifty miles. He is unmoved, says we should but it costs nothing and looks better than I’d make alternative arrangements, and hangs up. hoped. It’s the convincer that shows the He must’ve convinced himself it’s a gay porn audience that there’s more going on than just video after all. Richard suddenly remembers he’s people talking (unless someone notices that it’s loaned the lights to someone else. He is the inside of a pig, of course). apologetic. I tell him it’s not really an issue because we no longer have a location and there should be plenty of natural light in the fucking car park.
CUT TO: WREXHAM ARTS CENTRE CAR PARK: There’s a guy who looks like he’s waiting for someone. I vaguely recognise him. He is tall and well-built. Also quite bald. “Hi,” he says, “you must be Pete. I could tell from the size of your camera. I’m Aidan.” I recognise him now. He’s the other actor from Eric. Not the thin, vulnerable-looking one with hair, but the strapping, Irish one with a bald head. I have hired the wrong bloody actor. CUT TO: BBC STUDIO, WREXHAM ARTS CENTRE: The manager is on the phone. I CUT TO: RECEPTION: Jan, Lizzie and Ieuan imagine he looks like a troubled Rob Brydon. arrive, and at least I have a full cast. I explain “So, it’s definitely not a gay porn video?” he my location predicament to the Arts Centre staff asks nervously. I reassure him, but he remains and they sympathetically show me a back room sceptical and tries a different tack: “It’s not a that I can use instead: a bare-brick example of studio as such, just an information centre seventies brutalism, used (it seems) for finger- and Internet cafe. But without the cafe part.” painting classes. I look disappointed and they I tell him that’s perfect. He reluctantly agrees let slip that they have a spare key to the BBC to meet on Saturday to let us into the studio. Studio as well. I promise to put everything back exactly as it was so that no one – especially the CUT TO: HOME: The first-draft script is pseudo-snowbound manager – would know we finished. It has the scientific rigour and were ever there. intellectual sophistication of an Ian Sorensen musical, but with much better jokes. The cast CUT TO: BBC STUDIO: “Now, boys,” I say, all get a copy each. It is terrible, with lines like: business, “pop your clothes on the chair, I have “There’s only a certain amount of space in the amyl nitrite, condoms, and bum-lube.” Aidan the thoracic cavity.” Thankfully, no one pulls is ready to bolt. The BBC Studio is smaller than out. I remember, BBC branding everywhere. We FADE OUT. cover logos and take down posters, transforming the studio into a minimalist office of the evil ACT TWO GenCorp. We can do nothing about the BBC logo etched into each window (the only light FADE IN: SATURDAY. INT CAR: A bright, crisp source), and there is no Internet connection to February morning and I am driving across display GenCorp’s website on the monitors as country with camera, props and scripts, planned, but we’ll manage. The working script heading for the BBC Studio. En route, I’m has the scenes out of order, grouped by location going to call on Richard, who has promised and camera angle, to minimise changes. We the loan of freestanding stage lights. are behind schedule; with time for only perfunctory discussion of character (“Jan, do it 12 Film Film March 2010 like Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love”), CUT TO: BBC STUDIO: We restore the studio basic scene-blocking (“sit still”), and no rehearsal to our best collective guess at its former state, (“Aidan, this is Lizzie; Lizzie, Aidan. Now hold arranging the furniture and tacking posters back each other like lovers”). Different angles create into position. I imagine the studio manager on the illusion of multiple cameras, and each scene Monday, trying to pinpoint his growing Dickian is filmed four or five times, for coverage. unease about his subtly altered surroundings Consistency is more important than artistry, but before discovering a small Blu-Tac penis sticking inevitably errors creep in: lines are repeated or to his desk. forgotten, the pacing changes between takes, FADE OUT. and the deficiencies of my dialogue become embarrassingly evident when spoken by trained FADE IN: HOME: It is two days before the professionals. It’s easy to write this shit, but submission deadline. I am alone with the master you really can’t say it. tapes copied safely to my PC’s hard drive, and editing software that I have no idea how CUT TO: BBC STUDIO, REVERSE ANGLE: While to use. the actors wrestle with my writing I face technical tribulations: I abandon the wide shots (the room CUT TO: COMEDY FACE OF DESPAIR: Every is too small), the variable winter sunlight foxes scene appears to be broken. Shots that were the camera exposure, throwing out the white painstakingly framed to exclude unwanted balance, and my cheap Jessops tripod is too clutter (a door, a window, a desk), now include feeble to support the weight of the camera which these items in the periphery of the frame. The trembles like a good blancmange if anyone viewfinder encompassed only 90% of the area blinks. I unearth the camera’s remote control it actually photographed. It’s a disaster. Then (yay!) but the batteries are lifeless (argh!). Jan’s I notice the other stuff: crew and equipment husband is despatched to buy some. I don’t reflected in glass, the BBC logo on the windows, want it to be like this. It is labour-intensive, not inconsistent time on a wall clock (due to at all creative, we’re beset by difficulties, and shooting out of chronological order), the there’s no time for lunch. I might as well be at camera’s hunting white balance casting alternate work. scenes with a ghastly blue or a fiery orange; unwanted actors’ movements, tiny in the CUT TO: FINGER-PAINTING STUDIO: The viewfinder, painfully obvious on a larger screen, extra location becomes GenCorp’s waiting room, crucial dialogue missing, obscured by noises lending visual texture to the film, but the off, or repeated in the wrong place; under- immovable deadline of the Arts Centre closing exposed shots, over-exposed shots, missing time looms and the last few scenes are rushed. shots, and I don’t think I can salvage anything. The final scene to be shot is a hand-held of Ieuan, crossing the room, a small non-speaking CUT TO: BATHROOM: “I can’t do this,” I tell role for which he has waited patiently all day. my wife, adjusting the temperature of her bath It’s a nice shot, and I conclude that my next water. “There just isn’t enough usable footage,” film should be a silent one. I add, peeling her another grape. She chides me lightly: “For fuck’s sake, Peter: man up!”
CUT TO: HOME: I cut together the four angles on the central dialogue. First attempt: he speaks, she speaks, he speaks, and the camera follows: him, her, him, and it looks wrong, like a bloody tennis match. I learn about J-cuts and L-cuts, use response shots as well as talking heads, and suddenly it’s less sucky. I manufacture drama and tension (missing from the raw footage) by cutting half a second here and there, like trimming fat from bacon. Speeches I once thought vital I realise are superfluous; whole scenes hit the trashcan. Cosmetic surgery becomes liposuction, then
Film 13 Head! #9 Film wild, joyous amputation. The discovery that I am happily chipping like a fifth panel member, script, direction and acting are comprehensively and for fifteen minutes there’s a bit of a sf trumped by editing is a wild epiphany. convention vibe going on. I am clearly, very publicly, pals with all the judges, which could FX: MUSIC: I want something menacingly prove embarrassing should I win. industrial, like Eraserhead, but a track from Biosphere, the first music I consider, FX: House lights fade. The first film has story, coincidentally matches the film’s opening acting, special effects and a budget. But the scenes and Biosphere lets me use it in return actors are gabbling, the sound terrible. My wife for a credit. It adds an off-the-shelf can’t hear a bloody thing either. The next films professional ambience to my film which I are hilarious: film students pointing a camcorder haven’t really earned or even paid for. I almost at their drunken mates. Then there is a feel guilty. technically accomplished entry from the USA; it boasts a spaceship interior, a slick action CUT TO: A MONTAGE OF EDITING ACTION: sequence, an Ellen Ripley heroine, a budget of I fix the static scenes by grabbing thousands, and no dialogue; a carefully screenshots, cropping them in Photoshop packaged, language-neutral, well made short (thus removing the peripheral clutter and fixing film distributed to every film festival on the the clock hands while I’m at it), and pasting planet. It is very impressive, but too obviously them back into the video as stills. No one will an exercise in winning to actually win anything. notice. I can do nothing about the inconsistent colour tone, so as a drastic remedy I render the film in black and white, which makes the problem go away and also has the unexpected side-effect of erasing the BBC logo previously visible in the windows, smoothing the light into something ethereal. It looks great, hides a multitude of technical sins, and might even be mistaken for artistry. I could spend forever tweaking and trimming; it’s difficult to know when editing is finished, but I have done what I set out to do: make an original short science fiction film. I slip the tape of the final cut into a padded envelope. FADE OUT.
ACT THREE CUT TO: TITLE, CENTRED: FADE IN: CINEMA FOYER, WREXHAM: My HARVEST wife and I are invited to the screening of shortlisted films, including Harvest. We are CUE MUSIC: “Chukhung” by Biosphere. greeted by the competition organiser who says Establishing shots, then Aidan’s head looms nice things about it, especially the brave, over the audience like a small moon. I know artistic decision to use black and white. Here every movement, every angle, every also is the cast with their partners and families, transition, every ridiculous, dumbfuck line. The looking excited. It dawns on me that the cast actors gamely repeat them for the thousandth have never seen an inch of footage – and I time. All I see are mistakes, hapless technical feel suddenly responsible, as if their future errors, and missed editing opportunities happiness (and, in Aidan’s case, career) projected fifteen feet high and subject to depends on how I make them look tonight. detailed scrutiny. I squirm in my seat like an over salted slug. Why didn’t I notice before CUT TO: INT CINEMA: A panel discussion that Harvest is at least six and a half hours about science and science fiction precedes the too long? My wife squeezes my hand screening. I’m surprised to see that Andy reassuringly. After several agonising days, my Sawyer is a panelist and one of the film judges. film approaches its climax. I feel like I’m slowly asphyxiating. Then, thankfully, it’s over. 14 Film Film March 2010 CUT TO: Other films, barely registering. There’s hope, good grace. I thank the cast. There is a one about the Second Coming set in what the smattering of polite applause. director thinks is a futuristic military location, but is obviously a recording studio. Another EPILOGUE follows the allegorical animated adventures of (V.O. BY MORGAN FREEMAN. IS HE unidentified fluid escaping from a bathroom. AVAILABLE?) Another is a UFO mockumentary. It’s nice when box office takings exceed the FX: HOUSE LIGHTS UP: “You’ve won this,” budget. The £1000 prize covered the camera my wife says, matter of factly. She is rarely hire and the remainder was divvied up among wrong. Sometimes it sucks all the surprise out the cast. of things. A reporter interviewed me by phone at home CUT TO: Harvest is announced the winner and in Yorkshire. The next day the centre-spread I step forward to accept the prize from my of the Wrexham Evening Leader was a toe- science fiction chums. What do I say? Harvest curling and largely inaccurate feature about is not the best film ever. It isn’t even the best Harvest. It made me sound like a right twat. film at the festival. It is the second least-worst Aidan made some career mileage out of the film. This is not false modesty, it’s just that words “prizewinning short film” on his acting the final product does not reflect the amount CV, but he’s gone on to bigger and better things of work behind it. I’m proud of everyone’s and they’ve surely dropped off the bottom by dedication, the effort everyone made for no now. reward, and I’m really very glad we won for that reason, especially after seeing how little The BBC transmission never happened because effort went into other films. But Harvest itself the video failed to meet the BBC’s technical is a problem child, difficult to love, lumbered standard. I found out that three festival films with a knuckle-bitingly risible Garth Marenghi were sent to the BBC on the same tape and script, no budget, little time, and a raft of near- judged as a whole. I was furious. I persuaded fatal compromises. I don’t say any of this aloud, the BBC to look at the master tape in isolation, of course. I wish I could say winning is exciting, but the broadcast slot slid by and the unwatched but it feels like I’ve won the parents’ sack race BBC2W quietly disappeared from the airwaves at the school sports day after a steward’s soon after. I got a £50 appearance fee. enquiry led to a disqualification. Maybe I’m just tired. I accept the bottle of bubbly and the It’s not a Hollywood ending. Were you expecting cheque from the deputy headmaster with, I one?
ROLL CREDITS
Film 15 Head! #9 Travel Thanks to some complimentary tickets from Eurostar, Doug and I were able to have a return trip to Paris last October. In between the bike tours, art and gastronomie, I found time for a new obsession...
Bof! The Secret History of France according to the Metro by Christina Lake
It was while I was walking along Rue Roland French otherwise. In any case the station gets Barthes, struggling with the concept of a road a cameo in the animated film “The Twelve named after one of my library’s most frequently Tasks of Asterix”, though Asterix himself borrowed French philosophers, that I came up doesn’t make it onto the metro, despite having with the theory that you could tell the history of his own theme park just outside Paris. Paris (and therefore France!) almost entirely through the names of its streets. Paris is thick with history, layer upon layer of it, from the Latin Quarter where they really used to speak Latin (according to our bike tour guides, though I can just imagine the QI buzzer sounding off and Stephen Fry chastising them sorrowfully), through to the bricks of the Bastille, now incorporated into Pont de la Concorde, and up to the Grande Arche of La Défense which was built to line up with the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre, not to mention intersect with the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Montparnasse on the Paris skyline.
You could say that Paris has a sense of the Lucky Luke on the metro - hoping for importance of its own history, and is continually his own station? ensuring that this history is memorialised in bricks, mortar, and of course street names. And from street names it’s but one short step The next battle, chronologically speaking, is to metro stations. If all you need to know Tolbiac on line 7, which celebrates an early about Paris is in the names of its streets and victory over the Germans, or the Alamanni as boulevards, then the condensed version must they were called back in 496. After that there’s be in the metro. For example, everyone knows a long gap.Apparently the French weren’t too that Pigalle is the stop for the red light district, proud of their military history between the fifth but who was Pigalle? Some well-loved prostitute? century and the end of the eighteenth, or else No, in fact he was one of the most famous royal victories went out of fashion after the sculptors of the 18th century, Jean-Baptiste French revolution. In any case, it was left to Pigalle. Pigalle did do a slightly risqué statue of Napoleon to notch up a record run of metro the philosopher Voltaire in the nude, but battles. (Oddly, the man himself doesn’t seem otherwise he was as kosher as they come, and to have a station). So we have Louvre-Rivoli maybe not deserving of quite so much for the Battle of Rivoli won against Austria in posthumous fame. A small square with a nice Italy, Pyramides for Napoleon’s 1798 victory statue would have done. in Egypt, Gare d’Austerlitz for trashing almost everyone at Austerlitz, Wagram for another Most of the station names are equally random, decisive victory over the Austrians and Jena and just as historic. There’s a whole swathe of for the winning match against Prussia, not to battles, starting with Alésia on Line 4, mention Place d’Italie on Lines 5, 6 & 7 which commemorating Julius Caesar’s victory over commemorates the whole Napoleonic Italian Vercingetorix, which, unusually for metro station campaign. It’s a bit like the metro’s been battles was one that the French didn’t win! But turned into a combination of greatest hits maybe a long diet of Asterix has convinced the compilation and t-shirt of the tour dates. 16 Travel Travel March 2010 And the Napoleonic war connection doesn’t end voilà au moins qui n’est pas banal!”, which can there. Just find any random name on the metro be roughly translated as “That’s not something and there’s a high probability that it will be some you see every day!” general from the Napoleonic wars. One of my favourites is Daumesnil on Lines 6 and 8, which Given that most of the Paris Metro was built honours General PierreYrieix Daumesnil who lost between 1900 and the 1930s, it might seem a leg at Wagram, but went on, wooden leg and surprising that there are a large number of all, to hold out against the allied invasion of references to World War Two in the metro Paris, stating that he would only surrender names, but then the Parisians seem to be Vincennes if they gave him back his leg, a claim quite gung ho about changing their street which as Wikipedia rightly points out, loses names, and with them, naturally, the something in translation over his actual words corresponding metro stations. For example, (however apocryphal, Stephen!): “Je rendrai during World War One, Berlin was renamed Vincennes, quand on me rendra ma jambe.” Liège, and Allemagne (the French for Needless to say he never got the leg back, Germany) became Jaurès. So by World War and finally marched out with full military honours Two there was no need to write Germany out to the restored monarch Louis XVIII. of the metro system, but post-war there was an attempt to reclaim some pride in France’s Failing a connection to Napoleon, the quickest role in the war through honouring members of way to get on the metro map seems to have the resistance. So one of the stations was been to do something quite interesting in the renamed Colonel Fabien for the French French revolution or one of the subsequent communist who carried out the first republics. Robespierre is there, as is Republican assassination of Germans during the leader Gambetta, and socialist Jaurès. In fact occupation of France (at a different metro you don’t even have to be famous so long as station, Barbès-Rochechouart) and another you met a bloody death, as did Saint-Fargeau station was called Jacques Bonsergent, for the (on line 3b), a revolutionary assassinated in first Parisian executed by the German 1793 for voting for the death of Louis XVI, and occupation forces. Further afield, the Free Guillaume-Chretien de Lamoignon de French resistance to Rommel in Libya is Malesherbes (or just Malesherbes for the celebrated by Bir-Hakeim, the metro station purpose of the metro station) who was for the Eiffel Tower. Place de la Bataille had its guillotined for defending the king. name changed to Stalingrad in 1946, and the Marbeuf-Rond-Point des Champs Elysees The Crimean war also left its trace on the metro interchange between Lines 1 and 9 became system , with Alma-Marceau, a station on Line Franklin D. Roosevelt in honour of the American 9 commemorating the Anglo-French victory president who supported France in the war over the Russians in the first battle of the war (or maybe just to save on paint for the signs!). and Réamur-Sébastopol named for the Siege Churchill, not surprisingly, never got a metro of Sebastopol (and the scientist René Antoine station, but De Gaulle himself landed some Ferchault de Réamur. There are a lot of these prime real estate under the Arc de Triomphe bizarre dual couplings on the metro as many after his death in 1970, when the metro station stations were called after the two road L’Étoile was renamed Charles de Gaulle - Étoile. intersections on which they were built.) Then there’s Crimée itself, meaning Crimean. I’m not sure why the French wanted to remember this war, as it was not a huge success. Maybe they just liked the novelty of not taking on the whole of Europe? There are also a few references to the Franco-Prussian war (not a great success either) before World War One appears with Gare de l’Est (Verdun) named for the French victory at the long and bloody battle of Verdun, and Gallieni, the Eastern terminus of line 3, called after General Joseph Gallieni who was famous for sending reserves to the Battle of the Marne in a fleet of taxi cabs, remarking “Eh bien, Travel 17 Head! #9 Travel But it’s not all generals and battles on the Acquitaine. But then royalty don’t fare too well Parisian metro. There is a fine array of writers, either, with only Philippe Auguste, king of France artists and philosophers down there: Picasso, around the same time as Richard the Lion Michelangelo, Diderot, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Heart, making it on board. Nor is there much Alexandre Dumas, Anatole France and most SF on the Paris metro, though the station for fittingly, Raymond Queneau, author of Zazie Arts et Metiers was redesigned in steampunk dans le métro. There are a number of style of Jules Verne by comics artist Francois scientists too, such as Parmentier who was Schuiten in 1994. responsible for getting potatoes declared fit for human consumption in 1772 (before that Thanks to the wonders of Wikipedia it’s been they’d been thought of as animal feed) and easy to piece together this small portion of thereby finding his way onto numerous French French history from the metro map. It’s not menus where ‘parmentier’ stands for any dish so much the famous names that exist in every with potato as a major ingredient. Or my old history of France that tell the story, but the friend Lamarck, whose belief in the heritability plethora of half-forgotten battles and generals of acquired characteristics was a huge boost that say something about Paris and what was to education, until advances in genetics once important to the Parisians. The names convinced the middle class they needed to of the metro stations also hint at the major outbreed the poor rather than send them to renaming of the streets of Paris subsequent school. to the French revolution and the discontinuities that have submerged many of the old names. The French philosopher Deleuze, who doesn’t have his own metro station yet, would call it nomadic distribution, a series without meaning, connected by points of intensities, where one high point of French history is accreted on to another, linked into a structure which has no chronological meaning, only the topological connections of the metro map. It’s all there to be played with, even down to Chateau d’Eau, which is apparently the French equivalent of Mornington Crescent.
The names of the French metro station seem much more evocative of history than the stations on the London Underground. True we have Victoria and Waterloo, but there seem to be fewer memorials to obscure battles and even more obscure people than in Paris. The streets of London are not so much paved with gold, as prosaic mementos to place names whose significance is lost in the mists of history. Maybe there haven’t been enough bloody revolutions in London? Then again, Geoff Ryman does manage to set a whole novel on the London Underground, introducing Whilst it’s interesting to see who turns up on it with some speculation on the origins of the the metro, it’s even more interesting to look Elephant and Castle underground station, so at who doesn’t. Women, for example. The maybe it’s just a matter of familiarity only woman I can find who’s not part of the preventing me seeing the magic. But to my name of a church or a bridge is Marguerite de mind, the names of the stations on the Paris Rochechouart, who gets a half credit in the metro seem the more exotic, bursting with Barbès-Rochechouart metro station, and mystery and untold stories, just asking to be apparently was an eighteenth century Abbess decoded and turned into a fascinating of Montmartre. No Georges Sand or Simone alternative history of Paris. de Beauvoir, Marie Curie or even Eleanor of 18 Travel Letters March 2010 vogue, was suitably dissociative. Fear and Loathing in Heathrow? Never having roomed with Lennart I cannot offer any useful comparison with other kinds of Swedish noises with which I do, however, have some experience.
Do tell? Can we get a fanzine article out of it?
Although typically well-written, the discourse on German TV towers, while suitably conveying the happy fact that Doug retains his kitten-like wonderment, suffered from the disadvantage of being about, well, Germany. Never forget that they bombed our chip shop.
Something tells me you’re still upset Nic.
I hadn’t thought about the movie ‘The Diva’ in many a year, so The Inevitable Byers reminder was welcome. I was still living in London at the time it first came out, with a fair degree of hype attached, at least in the circles I was frequenting, along with a lot of people trying (and failing) to pronounce “Beneix” correctly and wondering whether he might be a Curated by Doug Bell pseudonym for Jack Benny, or perhaps even Benny Hill. Back in those days I was still wont I always struggle with editing together the letter to go to an actual cinema to watch a movie, column. Do you just stick the whole LOC in something mostly denied me now since movie there or trim down to the most interesting points popcorn inevitably smells like cat sick to me. in hope of saving space? Do you string the Another movie that sticks in the mind from the letters together in some form of revealing 80s is ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ starring Rutger narrative? Questions, questions, questions...to Hauer, which had the strange gimmick of being which I have no answer. Mostly I just wing it. released theatrically and on video the same However one thing occurs to me, to be a skilled day. letter column editor you need a fair amount of intelligence, tact and diplomacy which brings me This contains the immortal line delivered by neatly onto one of my favourite fan-eds... Hauer, having just narrowly escaped an attempt to kill him, from the back of a car driven by Nic Farey ([email protected]) Robert Guillom Guailleuame Gilliam Gilliland the What’s all this then? bloke who played Benson: “The next time you decide to FUCK me... (long pause) Kiss me No sooner do I wish for another copy of Head first!”. The movie’s last line is “Fuck the bonus!”, in my This Here... #11 Egotorial than one shows perhaps suggesting a fuller analysis of movies up! I wonder if my mutant fannish power has in which “fuck” is part of the last line. I finally emerged, albeit several months (ahem) immediately think of the always excellent James after the traditional onset of powers at puberty. Woods in ‘Cop’: “...I don’t give a fuck!” Not I’m assuming there’s also a converse power quite up to the standard of “I know things which causes less worthy fanzines to disappear about pigeons, Lilly”, but you can’t have - oh that’s right, Gonzalez already had that one. everything. Where would you put it?
Some fuckin-A material in here, I was particularly Sorry Chrissy, but the old fraud Rushdie always pleased to see a couple of conreps and find out hits my off switch. what I was missing. Doug’s Eastercon, while not necessarily non-linear as may be the current Doug’s musical reminiscence made me realize Letters 19 Head! #9 Letters that he is stranger than I ever thought, as well look ridiculous. I have learned a lot about as not being able to arm wrestle worth a toot. Canadian fanhistory, but don’t have enough of More bloody Germans (they bombed our chip the facts to create a coherent essay about it. shop y’know), but I have to mention the band Propaganda who were well good. Pete is a great figurehead for fanhistory. He has a genuine passion for the subject, and Thanks for the tip Nic, I’ll check them out, but produces a damn good zine that is both I really think you should move on and get over informative and entertaining. The topics he the loss of your chip shop. covers in Relapse I find fascinating even though a lot of the events took place well before I Lloyd Penney (1706-24 Eva Rd, discovered fandom, or more often before I Etobicoke, ON, CANADA M9C 2B2) was born. I showed Yvonne the Brad Foster cover, and her comment was that she wondered if Brad I have very little contact with modern pop culture had ever done windowpane in the past, and if for a good many reasons. I may have half- he created something like that while straight, heartedly embraced it in the past, but now it he’s a wonderful artist indeed. seems like total crap. One reason for ignoring it now is reality television being everywhere. I Thanks Lloyd. Brad’s cover drew nothing but can’t abide it; it’s so unreal. Then, there’s cheap praise, we hope you like and have fun with the programming like the talent competitions like latest one. the Idol shows. Not everyone is Susan Boyle or Paul Potts. The final reason is that I’ve been It’s gotten to the point where any convention I working evenings through the week for more may be at, Worldcon or not, I will be looking than four years now, which means not only do for a particular person, and won’t find him or I not get to see the programming I don’t like, her. They will be there, but will somehow be but I also have not been able to catch any invisible to you. Hate to say it, that may be shows like the new Battlestar Galactica or the one of the benefits of Facebook. So many new Doctor Who. Somehow, that’s just fine people are on this media, if you don’t see them, with me. I’d rather read than watch, anyway. harangue them on Facebook and make dates to actually meet. I feel cut almost completely adrift from modern pop culture. I can’t stand reality TV and what I find some venues better than others for TV I do watch is usually restricted to good finding people. The last Novacon moved to a drama like Mad Men, a smattering of genre hotel in Nottingham and no matter where I shows like Galactica, Being Human and the was, which was usually in the main bar, I never occasional comedy like The Thick Of It. I’m felt that I saw all the people I wanted to over down to only a couple of comics these days, the weekend, and both the hotel/convention rarely listen to chart music, read mostly older wasn’t that big. SF, etc...
Some bars have bad nights...our regular First Thursday hangout, the Foxes’ Den, is usually first rate when it comes to getting orders straight. When they screw up, however, they do it in magnificent fashion, to the point where no one is quite sure if they paid for their own order, and the place just throws up their hands, and say thank God they’re regulars.
I would think that with happy chaps like Peter Weston around it must be possible to make fan history accessible. I’ve dealt with other fanhistorians who make such history not only stuffy, but fairly negative, and besides, fanhistory ended around the time they met more modern-era fans who made themselves 20 Letters Letters March 2010 A DIY convention...is that anything like a North American style relaxicon? I have also felt adrift in fandom, as if I matured a little (Ack! NO!) and suddenly found myself cut off from lots of things. I have made the decision that you can return to those activities that you had fun with in the past, and no one can now tell you you’re less of a fan for it. So now, we’re returning to con running and costuming, and fun is returning. The feeling of belonging is of great value, to me anyway, and I’ve felt as you do. I just jumped back in, and that belonging is coming back again. In the long run, the physical part of that belonging feeling is your friends and the people you fan with.
It’s the feeling of belonging I most get out of fandom. Occasionally when I find myself at a con I am not enjoying I get that feeling of disassociation but just from that particular convention, never from fandom as a whole. One of the joys I feel about fandom is meeting Randy’s piece is nicely written, as one would all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life expect. Dense writing, dripping with references. who I wouldn’t have the chance to meet He knows a lot more about film than I do, as I normally. Like Mike Meara for example who I would expect. I haven’t seen Diva, but his just met for the first time a couple of years equating it on one level with Gibson and ago at Cytricon. Take it away Mike... cyberpunk has prompted me to add it to my rental queue at Lovefilm/Tesco. So that’s a Mike Meara, Spondon, Derby win, then. A very striking cover, and nicely printed too. Brad is a Good Man, it seems to me. And now here’s another perceptive piece by Christina. I’m not a fan of mainstream fiction, Great title for the Orbital conrep. The coma- so I haven’t read “Midnight’s Children”, or inducing properties of cider are probably well- indeed anything else by Rushdie, nevertheless known, but it had never occurred to me to the parallels between it and SF were interesting. equate Ian Sorensen with Marilyn Monroe, not More interesting, though, was this National Child in this universe nor any reasonably adjacent Development Study, which I should have heard one. In fact, I can’t bear to think about it any of but haven’t, until now; please tell us more longer, so I’ll move on to the report itself. It’s about this sometime, Christina. good at giving me a flavour of a con I didn’t go to, while at the same time it seems to avoid at This seems a good point to mention John least 95% of what others might think of as Toon’s artwork; the cartoons on pp11 and 13 what the con was about. Clever, that. I were my favourites, but they’re all good. suppose it’s difficult not to have a Ballardian Please nag him to do more for you. mindset in an environment like that, though. We did! And are ever so grateful to John, as Sorry about putting that image in there. we imposed on him at what was probably the Actually, no I’m not! most inconvenient moment possible...during the process of emigrating from Bristol to New An item about TV towers in Berlin didn’t seem Zealand. to be very promising material, but again, Christina provides a real flavour of a trip I didn’t The way your musical tastes have moved go on. Using Bryson as the string which ties it around over the years left me out of breath, all into a bundle was very well done. Hmmm, Doug. You seem to be able to digest music I’m liking this fanzine. very quickly. There’s a lot of names here I’m unfamiliar with. Perhaps this is the time for Letters 21 Head! #9 Letters me to set up a Spotify account and check some once you get beyond that vibrant cover. The of them out. slightly time-lapsed nature of the convention coverage doesn’t trouble me, and is indeed Christina, I’m surprised that you should still feel almost welcome in the era of instant reportage. nervous at a con after all your time in fandom. I hope you won’t be offended, Christina, when You did fit in at YotT, though, but I agree with I say that I’d completely forgotten that you your impression that it was a bit too busy. Or were at Year of the Teledu for all that it’s possible is it that you got over-involved? I like to vary that it’s more your kind of thing than mine. Our the pace a lot at cons, and that includes having participation was as much as anything a product time to myself, reading, napping or listening to of old alliances — one or both of us had been music in my room; thus I recharge my batteries. at the majority of the precursor ‘funcons’ — and I have a lingering that I’m deemed A nice friendly lettercol with a lot of familiar representative of the kind of fandom against names. A zine without a lettercol is like fish and which YotT was in a sense a reaction. chips without salt and vinegar. Nothing much I can comment on here, but all very enjoyable. I never could decide whether the whole venture was a success. Chris Tregenza did a better job Mike, I hope you are not buying your chips of explaining what it was all about in the late from the same place as Nic, as the German’s programme item on the Sunday, ‘Something bombed his chip shop, you know? Wiki This Way Comes’ (a pun for which I’m afraid I have to take full responsibility), than in Mark Plummer his various pre-convention utterances, including ([email protected]) his article in BW#25, but I couldn’t escape the Delighted to see the return of Head — and with thought that there was a dominant strand of a splendid full colour Brad Foster cover too. I fun fundamentalism to YotT where seriousness, always liked Brad’s work but I think he’s really rather than earnestness, was the enemy. The benefited from the relative ease and affordability Perry Bible Fellowship summed up my feelings of colour printing. quite well:
And there’s a wonderful selection of material http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF193-Fun_Bot.gif
I was also a little amused that in its underpinnings this ostensibly new style of event — as you say, a kind of convention 2.0 — ended up being oddly fanhistorical, positioning itself as the latest instalment in a long line of funcons and in doing so setting out to document is lineage, just as Peter Weston had done with the list of past Eastercons he produced for the 1971 convention. And then, having done this, YotT actually managed to confuse the fanhistorians over at fanac.org who acquired a bunch of elderly photos from ‘Funcon’ and presumably googled the term and found the Teledu funcon chronology. Thus, for a while at least, Fanac had an album of photographs which purported to have been taken at a Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy convention in Birmingham in 1985, despite the fact that they featured a number of prominent American fans dressed in late sixties fashions, one of whom was Tony Boucher who’s been dead since 1968.
Oh, and in another happy accident, ‘teledu’, as well as being a kind of Javanese badger, is also Welsh for ‘television’. Greg Pickersgill had the 22 Letters Letters March 2010 idea of showing up ostensibly in the mistake While I’m agreeing with you (Doug), I’ll also belief that it was a serious academic conference agree with you (Christina) about foreign travel about Welsh television, although I think that — — at least up to a point. I cannot relate at all as Claire would say — that has to be regarded to Bill Bryson’s ‘childlike wonder’ at being ‘in a as being a better idea than it is a thing. country where you are ignorant of almost everything’. Where I part company with you is I would have dearly loved to have seen that! that I’m not sure I’ve moved on much from not wanting to go to a place where I don’t Elsewhere, I find all sorts of little resonances. speak the language which I’m afraid means Your (Doug’s) remark about how the collecting the whole non-English speaking world. Yes, I mania for music took over to the extent that too would wish to pass as a native, but it’s you found less and less time for listening to the simply because I’m profoundly uncomfortable stuff. Once I’d have bought vinyl albums for when I don’t know the rules and etiquettes, maybe three or four quid, or a little cheaper if and even more so when I don’t know them in secondhand, which was a major investment at the wrong language. I do feel rather bad about the time and which goes partway to explaining this — when I see Jim and Meike’s photos of why I played stuff to death back in those days. the Gaudí church in Barcelona, say – but equally The advent of cheap CDs which didn’t cost all I find the American and Australian conventions that much more, and that without taking pretty much absorb my available time and account of inflation and my own increased money for foreign travel and while, yes, I purchasing power, made it far easier to rack suppose that’s kind of limited, I don’t especially stuff up on the shelves without ever getting to want to have to give them up. play it more than once and sometimes not ever. And yeah, I pretty much lost touch with most Travel is more than just buildings though. new popular music years ago, but to be honest Travelling to foreign conventions is just as it doesn’t trouble me all that much. For me I broadening as any other sort of travel. You guess that the key thing is to find music that’s get a flavour of the local customs and colour new to me from time to time without being just through being in another country even at overly concerned whether it’s new per se. And a con, and as for spending time with all the so you’ve just inspired me to dig up Amon Düül local fans, what better way to pick up some 2’s Phallus Dei on Spotify — and indeed different knowledge and experiences? ‘Archangels Thurderbird’ and ‘Syntelman’s March Conventioning abroad is something I hope to of the Roaring Seventies’, and then ‘Restless do more of in the future. Maybe we should be Skylight - Transitor - Child’ which was what I lobbying for more cons to be run in places such was actually looking for. I’ve been a fan of their as Barcelona so we can see the Gaudi buildings Live in London record for probably twenty-five and hang out with fans! years — it always seemed to me rather reminiscent of early Gong or Pink Floyd played From psychedelic architecture it’s onwards to with the musical subtlety of somebody like the the very psychedelic Steve Jeffery. Pink Fairies — but it was only a few years ago that I noticed that the title is something of a Steve Jeffery ([email protected]) misnomer given that it was recorded just up What a wonderful psychedelic cover that is from the road from here, in the long-gone Greyhound Brad. Quite eye-wrenching in fact, and almost pub which used to be opposite the Fairfield Halls. a weird cross between brad’s usual ornate style Is it possible that somebody thought that Live and the geometric mind/eye game of Harry in Croydon wouldn’t sell too well? Turner.
At Uni I always thought that Croydon was the Much to enjoy inside, too, and it starts home of second-hand music. My flatmate Martin particularly well with Doug’s fragmented (and would often nip home for the weekend to stock increasingly bridge centred) recollections of the up on second hand vinyl from a shop I vaguely Heathrow Eastercon and its strange architectural recall being named as Beanos. Never went there central ‘feature’. I was reminded of it when I myself. The trip would have taken all weekend walked through St James’ Park on the way to there and back, as we were studying in the Clarke Awards ceremony at the end of Aberdeen at the time. May [that was the week we had this year’s summer] and the lake had been drained, leaving Letters 23 Head! #9 Letters just a couple of puzzled ducks standing about, racks. Doug’s casual mention of Ash Ra but unfortunately no glowing fish, although I Tempel floored me. I thought I was almost think that might have worried me. alone in remembering the ambient electronic and guitar doodling which inspired a lot of my My other persistent memory of that Eastercon own messing around with tape decks and is the expeditions of intrepid bands of more echo units. As did Fripp and Eno’s No sercon oriented fans up to the labyrinthine Pussyfooting, John Martyn, large amounts recesses of the second floor in an effort to of Gong (and later, Here & Now) and the discover the whereabouts of the 50 Years of Durutti Column. I even have a Here and Now the BSFA programming stream, a feat made fanzine, produced by the band in their free even more puzzling when the ‘please use other gig phase around 1976-77 and glorying in the door notice’ entailed going down a floor, along title Psychedelia in the UK. a corridor then back up another set of stairs to find the alternative door into the same room. Ash Ra Tempel are really odd...there stuff It was like a 3D version of the secret passage has a profound effect on me. Something in Cluedo. (Greg Pickersgill did it, in the fan about 7Up that they recorded with Tim Leary room, with a lead weighted copy of Fouler.) gets right under my skin. I find it drags me on a roller-coaster emotional journey I’ve loved the German language ever since everytime I listen to it, like I’ve been through their word for television was revealed as some really traumatic but ultimately uplifting Fernsehapparat (far-seeing apparatus) by my intense group therapy session! O-Level teacher, and only confirmed by the explanation that the German word for To Doug and anyone else who’s still into all of hovercraft (which I’ve woefully now forgotten) this, I can hugely recommend Stuart decoded as ‘air cushion travel means’. How Maconie’s Sunday evening The Freak Zone can you not admire a people with such a literal on Radio 6, which is wonderfully eclectic and approach to word coinage? can run the gamut between The Incredible String Band, cheesy French film soundtracks, I agree with Christina on Rushdie’s Midnight’s and Can, Faust or Van der Graaf Generator Children, although I didn’t actually spot the in the same show. Heinlein reference as such. When Rushdie freely uses elements of fantasy and science fiction The Freak Zone is one of the best radio- and comics he doesn’t appear to feel the need shows out there, but I fear that it will to be patronising or dismissive about them in disappear due to the BBC’s policy of axing the way some other “serious” novelists do. In anything that doesn’t pander to the lowest this, he’s like Michael Chabon, another writer common denominator. I love its eclectic mix with a strong SF/fantasy and comics sensibility of stuff, but find sometimes it overplays the who manages to get an appreciative audience Italian Library record thing too much for me. and award nominations both outside and inside However Prof. Justin Spear (son of the the genre without accusations of either genre Bonzo’s Roger Ruskin Spear) who does the slumming or sucking up to the mainstream. University of the Strange section is for me one of the best live DJs out there, and I think where it grates with me is when switched me onto 60’s French Ye-Ye pop with mainstream authors plainly deny what they write a storming set at the Green Man Festival a is SF because they write “well” and use “ideas” couple of years ago. Just so you know this in their books. Chabon I like. He’s a good author letter column was edited to the sounds of and to my mind someone who could have well The Litter’s classic garage rock album become a fan if he’d discovered fandom at Distortions, the valium-happy sunshine pop the right time. I could imagine him going to of The Sunshine Factory and the Animal conventions and fitting in. Collective.
Doug’s Secret Sounds takes me back, although The last word goes to Lilian Edwards who perhaps not as far as I would like to admit in was rather taken with Randy Byer’s article some cases, since my CD shelves still feature on Diva. a generous helping of 70s prog as I gradually replace my ancient vinyl from the HMV sales 24 Letters Letters March 2010 Lilian Edwards Incidentally I think Push, the sort of sub Heroes ([email protected]) movie which came out a month or so ago, Head is really good! Loved both conreps, and was also nostalgically channelling some of the also Randy’s review of Diva which really did its punk gamine/hitman tension of Leon as well bit for my current fixation on 80s nostalgia as the cyberpunk thing of Bladerunner (it was especially as it was once one of my faves too. set in slightly future Hong Kong) -making it I sort of lump together in my head that whole seem a better film than it actually was. run of evocative larger than real, wonderfully cool French films which took me from uni to Look does that count as a loc! I must really my first jobs in London - a fairly cyberpunk be reliving my youth. period of my own life really - all the way from Betty Blue in 78 (?) to Diva, Nikita, Subway Indeed it does! and Leon. Le cinema de look is a great genre name. I think there was indeed a sort of WAHF: cyberpunk sensibility going on there c 1981-84 which Gibson just also sort of tapped into (after Sue Thomason: What an eye-catching cover! all remember he didn’t even have a computer Ian Millsted: Is this the same fanzine by when he wrote Neuromancer!) Gibson also the oft mentioned Doug & Chris that I swore (I heard this story via John and Eileen so remember Tim and Clarrie brandishing in the probably accurate) that when he saw pub in Bristol quite some time ago? Yes it is Bladerunner he ran away screaming because and you should now be finding your own copy he didn’t want it to mess up the images he in the post Ian. Finally Eric Lindsay knows already had in his own head. Just things that how to party: I look up TV towers on the were in the air coalescing I think - punk meets internet. Well, actually I usually look up mobile orientalism meets emergent technology - phone towers, to see which ones use the right remember Brazil also came out the same year frequencies for in iPhone. The answer is the as Bladerunner , which has a different mix of only ones that work well are the most hated the same kind of influences in a steampunk (but most widespread) phone company. Great kinda way . fun.
Letters 25 Hey kids, are you bored? Nothing to do?
Try making the cool Head! #9 cover.
Not sure what the finished Robot Head looks like?
Brad Foster has the anwer below.