America: What I Have Learned

At the moment I'm not so proud of my own country, which has gotten me comparing it to the next one along - no, not France. I mean the more successful, handsome, rich kid who lives a few streets away, who the United Kingdom likes to hang out with so it can watch him play his Super Nintendo and perv off its much prettier mum: the United States of America.

Over the last few years, my life has become distinctly more internet-based, and as such, less English. I've been basically a hermit: I'm not even joking. More and more, I stay in and spend my time online - reading Roger Ebert rather than watching Jonathon Ross, catching up with Cheers on YouTube instead of following whatever the hell passes for British comedy at the moment, and carrying-out a lot of my social life on forums and Google-chat.

Mostly this has involved long talks with my co-author on this site - a slightly younger man from California whose company is always a pleasure, even if it does necessitate neither of us ever leaving our homes. One thing that comes up endlessly in these chats, endlessly, is cultural differences. I think it's fair to say that the general British and Irish understanding of what Americans are like is halfway between Peter Griffin and Samuel L Jackson, because these are the two representatives who we are mostly exposed to. We see US citizens, on the whole, as loud, stupider than us, fatter than us, aggressively Christian, pigheaded, extremely dangerous, and yet in all cases inexplicably adorable, like a puppy dog with a lit firework in its mouth. Although my main source defies all of these characteristics, I still think it's about right.

History's most terrifying single image, or kind of cute? YOU DECIDE.

And Americans see us, I think, as 'The United what?' or 'Susan Boyle', both of which are pretty accurate descriptions.

So for three years or more, I've picked-up a lot of little bits of information which completely surpised me. I'm going to share a few of them now - and remember, all of these are 100% accurate.

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1) They really don't have biscuits. They have chocolate chip cookies and they have Twix bars, and that is all. They have the word 'biscuits' which they use to describe a sort of scone-like thing that you apparently have with a pale, grey sauce.

2) To them, Kentucky Fried Chicken is a shameful place to eat and also, wierdly, the basis of racial stereotyping (I don't know why), rather than the 'kind of fancier alternative to McDonalds' it is here.

3) They do not know what the word 'beefburger' means, not even when you explain it by comparing it to 'cheeseburger'.

4) Alaska and Hawaii are nowhere near where I thought they were, and absolutely not where they appear on that bullshit map of theirs, which probably exists just to confuse us.

5) Instead of letter-boxes in their doors or the little boxes on sticks with surnames on, like you see in the films, they actually have large filing cabinets in the middle of the street.

6) Whatever their relative average intelligence, Americans are absolutely not uninformed. Sorry British people, but just because we speak more elegantly doesn't make us cleverer. Laziness is curiously not encouraged in the United States: the fierce, inhuman, competitive spirit that powers Samuel L Jackson and Ryan Seacrest on a daily basis lives within all of them, instilled at an early age. In terms of competition and personal pride, they're like Germans but without the organisational skills. If you think I'm making this up, Britain - have you ever been part of a 'spelling bee', which I understand is a spelling contest for children that takes place outside school hours, when X-Men is on, and is often voluntary? No.

7) They have a fast-food chain called 'In-N-Out Burger', and nobody over there finds that funny. This is by far my favourite US fact.

8) One more food one: Taco trucks. These are literal trucks where meat is prepared and eaten.

9) Americans do not know what the UK's flag is called, despite the fact that we were good enough to emerse ourselves in their culture like Malcolm McDowell with his eyes being held open in A Clockwork Orange, to the point that we have now quietly adopted their language, because it just seems easier not to try remembering how things used to be spelled... in the before-time...

Hoe-nor?

10) They really do prefer their version of The Office. They're not just teasing us.

11) 'Fox News' is apparently not a comedy.

12) Who loves orange soda? Kel loves orange soda.

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And with that, I'm really out of ideas. Believe it or not, after all that (when I try to be funny it always ends-up smarmy and hateful,) I'm very fond of the place. If we seem to obsess over the country and follow them around at parties, there are good reasons, beyond the obvious wanting-to-be-on-their-side-in-the-next-World-War.

Every time I look at a website, and every time Knight and I chat, I pick up another little fact I never realised, something awful they never dared show us or the occasional quiet triumph that never made it to the news here.

Meanwhile, we're sat around reading about how our children spent the day burning down Selfridge's in town. At least it beats watching bloody Outnumbered.

Aimless ranting and zombies

Hi, it's Buch again. I know I haven't been writing much on the blog here, so thanks for reading this. Honestly I just don't seem to have much to say these days. My world views are pretty much limited to, 'This videogame is cool', 'This movie sucks', 'I need to get a membership at the swmming pool and then maybe I'll swim more' and 'I hate everyone and everything on television, particularly all newsreaders and Phillip Schofield.'

"Is there any ITV show you aren't on, Phillip?"

And while each of these arguments seem valid, fresh and fascinating to me, I realise quickly how dull they must be to other people when I yell at the TV and just get stern, English looks of disapproval in response. But these are my major concerns in life, aside from angst about tuition fees and my ex girlfriend, and these of course form the wealth of fascinating life experiences that make up the entirity of the fiction and poetry I write.

So all I have for the blog is stupid, stupid smug humour and nerd rage. I guess you get both today, because this was supposed to be about...

ZOMBIES.

Yes, zombies. I remember about five years ago reading a blog by the author of A Modest Destiny, when he was dilly-dallying with a comic about a post-zombie future: he pointed out that nowadays when you announce you're working on a creative project about zombies, every single one of your friends says 'yeah, me too'. And in those five years, it just seems to have become ridiculous.

I should point out that I love zombies. George Romero's cheap horror-turned-classic Night of the Living Dead is one of my favourite movies (Dawn of the Dead actually seemed quite dull to me) and I recently finished reading Max Brooks' novel World War Z, which has to be the greatest entry to the genre since Romero invented it.

But I also just saw Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides (Stranger tides? The water and weather are just about the only things that never behave unexpectedly or pose a threat in the entire movie! Where are these stranger tides, anyway - isn't this still the Carribean? Cuz they were sailing over a maelstrom in the Orient last time and no-one batted an eyelid.) And I remember seeing the trailer and laughing as Disney desperately read out some of the cool junk they had been loading into the movie to grab interest: "Mermaids! Blackbeard! Zombies!" It worked on me, but I remember my brother and I crying out 'Robots! Ninjas! Phillip Schofield! Pira... oh, wait.'

Sadly when I got to the movie, they were actually zombies in the traditional, Voodoo-or-something sense of the word. It was just, you know, mind control. But I was also kinda relieved, because... do I really need to see flesh-eating undead masses again? I like that now, in the post-post-zombie-craze-craze, people are trying to be a little more unique with their zombies - make them fast, make them sing, make them intelligent, make them Nazis, make it a comedy, give them rat teeth, anything - but... damn. Enough with the zombies. Also superhero origin stories. Enough already.

Oh do fuck off.

So every movie is zombies, every non-ninja videogame is zombies (Dead Rising, the Resident Evil series, Left 4 Dead, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, Plants Vs Zombies, Zombie Cow Milking, I Made A Game With Zombies In It - those last two are actually real) and now it's infecting (ho ho!) novels. Like I said, I adored Max Brooks' zombie history book, but... I like novels. I like to pretend they're big and clever. Please be careful with them, young zombie authors.

Last year I read about half of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I remember seeing the cover and laughing out loud - it seemed like a wonderful idea: re-write every young woman's favourite book, deliberately vandalising it by adding every young man's favourite guilty pleasure and watch as Zack lays waste to the English classic. Sadly the novel really, really, really ran out of steam with that one joke, just endlessly repeated and awkwardly shoe-horned into a romance. I ended up putting it down and reading the original instead. Anyway - my point is:

The... WAR... of the Worlds... plus blood. Did you even read the title, Eric?

Yep. I'd like to start my tirade by pointing out that The War of the Worlds contains quite a lot of freaking blood. You remember that bit where it turns out the Martians feed / power their machines by extracting blood from fallen humans? Maybe the author here hadn't quite gotten to that bit when he signed for his royalty fees. Point is: how can you add a silly, violent, geeky element to a (brilliant) story about space aliens lazering everyone to death? For crying out loud...

I do wonder if I'm wrong to complain about the great tide (or horde, HO HO!) of zombie fiction we have seen over the last decade or so. After all - [REC.], 28 Days Later and numerous other recent works were genuine classics, right up there with Romero's early films. Hell, I have now written three short stories about zombies myself. I really like them.

And aren't all great stories still being endlessly repeated? Romero zombies are only 34 years old, so maybe that's why this bothers me. I'm not writing a rambling essay about how every vampire story is just Dracula, or how every mad scientist and monster are clearly Frankenstein and his demon. And I'd argue that the zombie tale is every bit as good as those two gothic classics.

It's a good story:

See, you have this attractive girl, Barbara, who suddenly realises the world is being over-run by the dead, come back to life and desperate to devour human flesh (Why not each other's? Why do they need to eat at all since they never show signs of tiredness or needing any external energy source? We may never know.)
Barbara and a bunch of people get stuck in a shack, and then somehow the zombies find them. And the zombies are now millions-strong, even though one would assume that they would eat their victims' flesh, rather than leave them to... anyway.
Someone betrays the group, gets infected or makes a mistake, and Barbara (or a protector) is the only survivor. At the last moment she escapes miraculously, only to realise too late that she is still not safe! Rather she has accidentally thrown herself into the horrible, poisonous, waiting arms of an even greater threat to her safety and dwindling sanity.

Activate the Cube!

And if your version of the zombie story is good, you'll put in a subtle allegory or subtext about a modern political issue. If you're Max Brooks, then you'll write several of these and mix them together with political speculative fiction. And I will love you.

I don't know what my point was here. I like a great many of these recent zombie films, games, that TV show I haven't seen yet, and books, but... I don't know. I guess they're still new: the early 21st century is for zombies what the Universal and Hammer Horror series were to vampires and mad scientists. Shaun of the Dead would be Abbot and Costello in that analogy. I kinda look forward to the day when zombies are old hat.

Maybe one day some twisted, translated, re-wrtten version of Night of the Living Dead will even be the equivalent of a Grimms' fairy tale. I hope so.

Quoth Darth Revan...

I know what you're thinking - once again these chuckleheads are talking about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Talking about it with barely contained tears in their eyes, talking about it like it's their first wife who died tragically and who was also their childhood pet. Talking until either they die from talking about it too much, or else Bioware hires them to write a second sequel.

Every time I write a piece of fanfic, I tell myself, that's it. No more of this, now. I'm 26 years old, and it's time I put all my efforts into writing actual fiction, instead of flash fiction about Jedi knights.

Well, I've given up trusting myself on that one, but with a ny luck, this one will be my last fanfic. If so, I'm glad it's about Revan, and extremely glad it's a collaboration with Anthony Lowe AKA Knightfall 1138. See, it was Knights of the Old Republic that brought me to Bioware, and indeed to Star Wars, and then to fanfiction, and then to writing fanfiction, and to my transatlantic friendship with Knight, and to writing, full stop.

All those things will no doubt continue to be big parts o f my life, but I think it may be time for me to leave KotOR alone, and shut up about it.


Over the past week or so, Knight and I have been writing two short stories (which link up together, much like Voltron), in the 1st person and from the perspectives of (almost) all of KotOR's party members, remembering moments from the game, and giving a 'eulogy' to Revan.

The Summer of Applejacks. Notice how Zaalbar is gleefully preparing to decapitate Mission with a machete in this picture.

Here is Knight's - 'Of the Sacrifice'
And then mine - 'Of the Fall'


They're just little scenes, but we enjoyed writing them quite a bit, maybe because they allowed us to say 'goodbye' to a fantastically good Star Wars character, who we now accept is almost certainly not coming back from 'the unknown regions or something, I think he said he was out of cocoa' (thank you again, Obsidian).

It's about Revan - his adventure or her second fall to the dark side depending on which of the two versions you read. But it's told in the 'voices' of the other crewmembers and really (not so subtly) it's about how much Knight and I cherish that videogame, and miss those characters.

If you miss that game too and happen to read it, I hope you notice some of the little nostalgic details we put in there, and go, 'Oh yeah, I loved that conversation / planet / scene too'.

If not, thanks for reading this, the latest in my series of overly sentimental theses about pop-culture and computer games. One thing that I love about KotOR, and its sequel, is how beloved they are, by so many people. When I was looking for a picture for this article, I found hundreds of drawings of Revan and the rest, some of them slightly disturbing and most of them a bit odd, but all of them showing the same love we're trying to reflect with these stories. When we posted the first chapters, they were swamped and covered by competing KotOR stories within hours. Annoying, but wonderful.

I love that people are still going on about this stuff. You know that Revan will make appearances of some kind in the upcoming MMORPG The Old Republic, as he already has in the adverts for it.

But you won't get anywhere sitting around here, chatting up old men all day! Shoo! We should return our thoughts to the mission, please, you know? I will leave you be. I'm here, if you want something done right! You got it. Whatever HK said. Dwooooo.



Once again, here are the links- Of the Sacrifice, and Of the Fall.

We have two chapters each up so far - there will be about five each eventually, and will finish uploading soon.

Buch's All-New Saturday Morning Cartoon Line-up

Lately I've been kind of depressed and concerned that I'm stuck in an awkward 'man-child' phase that should have ended a few years ago. I keep finding myself collecting nostalgic videogames, making silly jokes and losing the silent, aloof smart-guy quality I used to have when I was actually a child. It's strange: as a kid I acted like a lonely guy in his late twenties. Now -
I have it all backwards. I'm clinging to childhood joys...

And I'm starting to think the reason is just that somebody has to! Kids today don't have a fun, colourful childhood. I see them dressed like adults, more smartly than adults sometimes, cursing without finding it funny - just cursing. Just talking like everyone. Renting 15-rated comedies at my shop, because there's nothing else for them now.

Where my generation had Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, today's youths have Twilight, whatever animes they can understand and Epic Movie. Where we had Spiderman, Spiderman, Radioactive Spiderman, they have Tobey McGuire crying because the stress of his three jobs made him punch his girlfriend. I see these kids looking through the DVDs, trying to find which films rest halfway between what their parents are watching and what they actually want to watch. And they get something like Watchmen. It's the closest they can get.

The famous Saturday Morning Watchmen video is hilarious, but what's kinda sad is that it seems so funny nowadays. If 'Watchmen' had been mainstream in the early 90's, they would have made that show for real. And though it would have driven Alan Moore to homicide, it would have been really good. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a ridiculous parody of the dark, gritty comic it was based on, too, you know? And we loved it. There was even a Rambo cartoon. That was a movie about a traumatised war veteran killing cops. We had cartoons based on absolutely every succesful movie, toy line or videogame character. Absolutely every one. Whatever happenned to that?

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So because of a) this chip on my shoulder about the kids having nothing to watch, b) my sad reflections on my own immaturity, and c) three glasses of wine, I present the new summer line-up. Here's a list of recent (or recent-ish) movies that are just crying out to be turned into cheerful, enjoyable half-hour cartoons. On the television. For kids.

Dear TV producers: if you'd like to use these ideas, I will accept payment in the form of strawberry-flavour Nesquick milkshake mix.

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THE PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN

The pitch: In an age of swords and shenanigens, charming, rogueish, Bohemian pirate Captain Jack Sparrow commands the motley crew of The Black Pearl, seeking treasure, adventure... and rum! Every week it's a new mishap, a new mis-step and a new foe: Blackbeard, mermaids, voodoo zombies, the evil squid-man Davey Jones himself... or just the usual trouble from his old friends Barbossa and the East India Trading Company. Whatever he's fleeing, Captain Jack is always just sober enough to save the day, and fight crime!

Honestly, though: Well why not? I would have loved a 'Pirates' series on CITV.

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JAMES CAMERON'S 'AVATAR'

The pitch: Heroic marine Jake Sully now lives happily with the peaceful and mystical Na'vi aliens on the jungle planet Pandora. Whenever the human miliatary, lead by the cruel Commander Nevarius and his mechs, return to the planet trying to destroy the environment and steal their precious Unobtanium - it's up to Jake, his true love Neytiri and their tribe's best warriors (Ka'lor the strong, the wily and cunning Jee-las and the hilariously overweight Colbo) to save the planet, fight crime and put things right!

Seriously: Seriously! I don't know that it would have to be in CG, but just picture it! That movie was made for half-hour adventures. Cameron apparently is making two sequels, but why? The story (such as it was) is told already. If you're going to add to it needlessly to make a few bucks, do it like this.

The theme tune: Av-at-aaaaaaar! He's my av-atar... comes from afaaaaarrr... beyond the staaaaaars!

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NEO AND THE HEROES OF THE MATRIX

The pitch: Stuck in the middle of the never-ending war between humans and machines, chosen-one Neo and his band of cool, leather-wearing pals must bend the laws of physics to save the people of Zion from killer robots. Neo and his team spend half their time flying for their lives in the crumbled remains of Earth, and the other half thwarting the machines more subtlely in the virtual world of the Matrix, by foiling the Agents' sinister schemes and fighting crime.

Seriously: It would be like Swat Kats, this one. or like the old Batman cartoon. It would be the cool one, with stylish, angular drawings and lots of black.

Also: Here's another movie that was spoiled by two pointless sequels. It could so easily have been a fun, non-canonical kids' series.

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TOY STORIES

The pitch: Whenever young Andy's back is turned, his collection of toys come alive! Restless, lovable and wacky, every time they show their true colours, Woody, Buzz and the gang always seem to wind up getting into trouble, and sometimes even find the time to fight some crime. However, they get back home within 30 minutes, and at no point do they wordlessly embrace the inevitability of their own deaths, holding hands while rolling toward a furnace, treasuring the flicker of humanity they were allowed to experience. Adults find the show predictable, but the kids have fun and are less likely to self-harm in later life.

Seriously: I loved Toy Story 3 so much, but they were silently holding hands as they waited to die. In a furnace. Also I would like to see a series based on Up! in which no-one ever dies tragically within the first ten minutes. The Toy Story series would be like Rugrats. Rugrats was fantastic.

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HOT TUB TIME MACHINE: The Animated Series

The pitch: Adam, Lou, Nick and Jacob are four lovable losers who have lost sight of the present... and the past! Unable to solve life's problems with a little hard-work and common sense, they invariably choose to travel through time in their magical, time-travelling hot tub! But of course, things just never go according to plan. One minute they could be travelling back to the day before Adam's anniversary to pick up some flowers, and the next - oops! - suddenly they're giving those flowers to Jesse James, or ineptly fighting crime in the prohibition era! How will they cope with that one? What temporal trouble will they get into next?!

I know: This would be exactly like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures, I realise that. Give me time.

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THE SOCIAL NETWORK

The pitch: Heroic, brilliant (yet quiet and mysterious) billionaire Internet magnate Mark Zuckerberg needlessly-tweaks his beloved 'Facebook' by day... and fights crime by night! Whenever The Troll and his evil Cyber Pirates plan to steal personal information or flood the Information Superhighway with illeagally copied mucic, The Social Network will be ready! Utilising all his contacts from all the corners of the Web, Mark has assembled the ultimate force of technological justice! Marshalling representatives from Google, MySpace, various porn-rings and that Chocolate Rain guy, the mastermind and true force for good is always alert, proving that no criminal scheme can stand up to the properly-organised power... of friendship.

Seriously: Did you ever see M.A.S.K.? I would watch this.

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I'm kind of losing track of what I was trying to do here...

But I have more: just imagine The Expendables, Alien Versus Predator, Inception: The Series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Mass Effect or Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Those would be pretty cool, neh? How about Machete, Let Me In! or The Hurt Locker? Maybe even Saw? Fifteen or twenty years ago, I guaruntee all of those shows would have been made, there would have been less rubbish sequels in the cinemas, and kids would have had something to watch.

Maybe I'm just a twenty-something fool refusing to let go of the childhood joys he was too scared to embrace at the proper time. But I honestly believe that no story has ever been told which can't be improved by some bright colours, a good moral at the end...

...and a cool guitar theme. No story at all.

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Red Dwarf back from the dead (Have you been trying to explain about our future selves again, sir?)

Hello? Testin', one two three. Hello?

Ye-es!

--


Red Dwarf is something I discovered in high school, and then obsessed over, in the truest sense of the word, for the next eight or nine years.

Someone (who coincidentally I haven't seen since high school) just sent me this link - they're making a new series of Red Dwarf! Like, right now they're making it. As I type this, Robert Llewelyn is probably having his mask removed and complaining about it, wondering if his complaints are amusing enough to justify another book.

This is very interesting to me! Imagine if the news said, "Lucas unveils third Star Wars trilogy!" or "Turns out there are invisible Dinosaurs! How bout that?" Really interesting. Dwarf is the reason I write, and the standard I aspire to. It shaped my teenage years, my sense of humour, voice and personality. Red Dwarf.

-

But here's the thing. I don't want any more.

It's not just because series 8 was a massive disappointment. And it's not just because last year's special episode, 'Back to Earth' was somehow even worse.

I don't want a Red Dwarf IX because Craig Charles, who plays Lister, is 46. I just read that in the above Daily Mail article.

At the start of the show, Lister was 25 (how old-do-I-look??) and even by series 7 (after many new seasons, reinventions and Craig Charles' unwarranted stay in prison) the guy was only 28 (and I feel a new maturity about myself. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I tried to urinate on Rimmer from the top of D Deck. Oh wait a minute... Friday.)

The credits at the end of the last-broadcast show began with "The end" - to contrast with "The beginning" on the first episode's credits. And though the show claimed it was joking... even then I figured they weren't. Or it was a half-joke. Maybe.

So - for years I waited... and co-creator Doug Naylor toiled to make a movie happen. The plot... sounded pretty bad (the baddies were called 'Homo Sapienoids') but I wanted to see it more than anything. It never happenned, for various reasons.



And then, out of nowhere, after a decade, came the all-new special, Back To Earth. And this was a really wierd experience for me - Knight will attest because I poured my confused feelings out at him several times - because it was bad. My favourite, favourite writer ever, ever had written a bad show (although there were some flashes of real brilliance in the third act).

Worse than that - with the exception of Kochanski, all the characters were old. Like, old old. I don't mean to sound like a sneering teenager, but they were old. Understand that these characters were like friends in my head - dear friends, honestly. And now... Lister was old. Kryten was old! The Cat was old and wrinkled. And Rimmer was old and wrinkled and grey and thinning... and some of them were getting fat.

And they were on Coronation Street for some reason.



I know that so far this entry has been garbled, confusing and quite frankly duller than an in-flight magazine produced by Air Belgium. But I'm getting to my point - here we go now.

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I don't want Dave Lister to be 46.

At the age of 25 he fell in love with Kristine Z. Kochanski. After that, he got stranded in space after the end of humanity and longed to get back to Earth and to get Kochanski back. He was a disgusting slob who consumed nothing but curry, lager and cigarettes, and it was funny. He spent the next few years still a slob and still in love with Kochanski... but slowly becoming more mature, more romantic. In one of the novels, he was marooned on a planet and grew a field of jasmine in the shape of two K's. At the age of 28, he met Kochanski again and lost Rimmer, the hologram bunkmate he hated, and who existed purely to 'keep him sane'. Rimmer was easily the funniest one, and he had now left the show, becoming a hero in the process. The story was coming to an end, right?


In the Back to Earth special, he was forty-something... still living on Red Dwarf, still a slob in a leather jacket, still pining after Kochanski. Rimmer was losing his hair. And the jokes weren't funny.

I like to pretend 'Back to Earth' didn't happen.

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Okay, I'm being overly dramatic!

Craig Charles says he refused to settle without a script as good as the golden age of series V and VI. Well. If he's right, I owe the Dwarf people a big apology for this blog (if indeed anyone read this far!) Part of me is very excited about new episodes.

But - a new series as good as the glory days? Or even decent? I don't see it.

It's a comedy about four or five lonely, odd young men (and a perfect woman at one point) alone on a space ship. usually in silly costumes. They shouldn't still be there at 46. They were supposed to be on Fiji by now. Or in the Ganymede Holiday Inn with moustaches. Or repopulating the human race after destroying The Rage. Or something. We weren't supposed to see them getting fat.

Let's get back to what we were doing... (the KotOR love letter essay)

I've been playing my absolute second favourite videogame (after Joust) the last couple of weeks - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I think we may have mentioned the game before.

This may not seem like anything out of the ordinary for me, the man who plans to name his first child 'Darth Revan' regardless of gender, and his second either 'Carth' or 'Carthette' (and I had a goldfish named Trask, we worked opposite shifts; I guess that's why I haven't mentioned him before) but this is interesting because I haven't played this thing in years. The reasons are firstly that the original Xbox game plays very badly on the Xbox360, and secondly... I was really worried that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered.

Knightfall and I really, really love this game, and I enjoy the nostalgic talks about it so much - and I enjoy using it as a baseline for comparison to any other videogame RPG - that I would have been truly sad if it turned out that I'd embellished it. After all, when I played this game I was in a rough place. I was lonely and miserable and got sucked into Bioware's strange 4000-year-old Star Wars world just because I needed some escapism. I wasn't particularly a Star Wars fan at the time (though I liked the movies in a silly, self-aware jokey way) and I'd never played a role-playing game. It was actually the first game I'd picked up since the Nintendo 64... I needed something silly to do to cheer me up, so I got an Xbox and the Star Wars game.

And it totally worked. After the intial day of "what the hell is this turn-based combat" confusion, I played this 40-hour interactive story through over and over, ten or twenty times through. What I loved was how every single time, I found a quest or a line of dialogue that I'd never experienced before. Nowadays we have DLC for that, but in KotOR, there was no need. It was already massive enough. It was all in the details, the sheer quality of the writing and the acting. I remember playing through it again and again, dreaming the story at night and living it all day, and thinking "God-damn... this story is so much better than the Star Wars prequel movies."

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And, playing it again, thanks to a new laptop...

I was right! I'm very happy to report that it's still the best damn game out there... provided you know the difference between a Rodian and a Duros, anyway. But then, when I picked this thing up, I didn't know much about Star Wars, 3D games or role-playing. But once I had made it through the training area and the first planet... once I had touched down at the Jedi training academy and built a lightsaber (with my choice of colour - I went with yellow because I fancied Bastila)... once I had role-played the process of becoming a Jedi knight with my own lightsaber, robes, Millennium Falcon-looking spaceship and team of fascinating, beautifully-acted sidekicks... I was hooked. For about 7 years.

I remember thinking, "Where are the cool starship and the amazing sidekicks in Phantom Menace? There's... Jar Jar, I guess, and that black guy with the plastic guard outfit... and that shiny ship that Amidala had that time... the HMS ShinyShip I think it was..."

So I'm about halfway through my game now, my first in a fair few years, and once again getting totally caught up in it. Even though I know, almost word for word, I want to know what happens next. I want to influence the tiniest of details in this story, fine-tuning it as only a loving fan can. I want Carth in Jamoh Hogra's black-and-white cowboy armour. I want Mission to cheer up without forcing her to (she's my surrogate daughter, that girl) and I want to crack dumb jokes at Juhani until she snaps and tries to behead me in that wierd... little bathroom place she lives in.
And I absolutely won't get on with my life until I've done those things.

Carth wears the black and white cowboy armour. The protagonist has a random surname and a real-world first name, and that face that looks a bit like a young Barbara Streisand with the blue eyes and the black hair tied in a small ponytail. She has a single yellow lightsaber and brown Jedi Master robes and levels-up in repair and persuade and I LOVE THEM.

-----

What I truly love about this game, more than any Bioware game that's come since (I've played them all to death and somehow I'm always just a touch disappointed) is that the good/evil decisions are... a little something more than that. As Carth, that handsome bastard, said to me last night outside the Ebon Hawk, "I used to think 'The Dark Side' was a fancy way of describing what I see every day. People are cruel and selfish, and cowardly. But I'm starting to think for the Jedi, it's different." That handsome fuck. That sums it up - because the characters are Jedi, the good / evil aspects of this particular story really allow you to create a character - and better, they allow you to make the story into one of temptation. You know, like Anakin Skywalker, only not rubbish. That's Star Wars.

Your guy can be a noble hero, a cartoonish villain, or a bit of a rogue who wears a leather waistcoat and cracks jokes because she's got a real nasty streak and keeps finding herself swinging between massive acts of charity and Vader-choking that jackass in the cantina who keeps insulting her. And near the end (all good/evil RPG's should have this) there is a distinct choice: the game stops and gives you one heroic dialogue choice and one that just says 'Death to the Jedi'.
The game is saying this is it - good or evil, no turning back. Save the galaxy in the last dungeon, or else murder your friends right now and take over the woooorld instead. I loved to craft the character as if s/he were a recovering addict: always wanting to solve her problems by lightsabering people's knees off, and being kept juuust on the right side of things by her endless invasive chats with the various party-members who were all sick of her, and all hesitant for various reasons, to mentor her. You can't do THAT in Mass Effect 2.

I remember landing on Dantooine for the first time and really liking how there was a flock of birds who followed you in. I thought, 'Huh! Birds in Star Wars - awesome!' (I hadn't been paying attention to Naboo in Phantom Menace, but I ask you, why should I?) The birds were there on Kashhyyk, too. That's a really nice touch. When I saw those birds again a week ago, it honestly felt like coming home. I've missed these birds, and I've missed the poorly-animated fictional Space Opera characters onboard this ship. All their superb little nuances.
And I'm looking forward to seeing my favourite, Jolee, again so damn much. He was a better Ben Kenobi than Alec Guinness (or even Professor Frink), if you took the time to keep pestering him.

That's all I can think of, at any rate. Let's return our thoughts to the mission, please. I'm here if you want something done right, you know?

I should go.

100 Words Part 3: 9,200 Words

So damn close to 10,000 words... if only they would run an 8-day special event and I could have a round number!

--

So it's the end of the month, and that means I have another batch of 31 100-word-long stories to show-off.
Last September, Battlechantress at the Fanfic Forums let us all know about 100words.com - a 'Social tasking' site, or a writing' game where, once you sign up, you must write exactly 100 words every day for a month. Some people use it for a blog, some people write poems, some stories, and some like Battlechantress, Knightfall and myself use it for a combination of them.

--

This month, I wrote a Christmas and Christianty theme, as well as an ongoing fantasy story with a daft twist. I wasn't going to bother after October and November, but my mate Chris was doing it and I wanted to write alongside him.

So here is Chris' batch for the month.

And here is Chantress'

And here is Knight's excellent October one...

-----

AND - here are MIIIIIIINE.

My October batch (Halloween/superhero theme, ongoing mad scientist story)

My November batch (theme of memory / history)

And my all new, super-smashing December batch!

---
After coming up with 92 ideas for these little pieces (some of them good, some of them clearly rushed...) I am exhausted. I have really enjoyed this game, and will almost certainly be having a few more goes sometime in 2011.

Till then, here's a few of my entries from this month:


1.

In the beginning was the word. The word was 'Strewth': God's truth. It was a contraction. It was the beginning of the evolution of language.

God had created Uluru, and around that he had created Eden. It was a land of desert and grass, which held and blended every facet of the beauty of the Earth. Monsters roamed and patrolled Eden, and coral lay around its edges like a halo, but more colourful. The people he would place there would be beautiful.

It was an experiment, a prototype. He thought maybe it was a bit much. But it was good.


14.

Sophia has one of those wedding dresses that actually looks kind of boring, plain. It's basically just an ordinary dress, except white. We could have bleached one of her regular dresses. But she doesn't need a fancy costume. Nothing could make her more beautiful t- no, it's a bad dress. I wouldn't have picked it.

She likes it, obviously. I catch her eye and she gives me her new smile. It's like the awkward, secretive one she gave me for ten years, but now it ends with her thrusting her head forward a touch, sweetly. Yeah. I finally won you.


25.

An angel watched over the spectacle of the messiah's birth, its expression unreadable.

This was not a handsome man with feathery wings and white clothes. Angels are indescribable. And I don't mean like you think that very lovely view you saw is indescribable, or the beauty of the girl you loved. I mean truly. It's not just that I can't describe it, either. I don't mean to use the word as an excuse for my poor vocabulary. Not this time, anyway. The angel was indescribable. Incredible.

The mother below held God incarnate in her arms and worried about a census.

YouTube and Hitler

I had to share this. I've just had the most extraordinary experience on YouTube. You know how YouTube has 'recommended videos for you' based on what you've watched and searched for in the past?

Well, apparently at some point (whilst trying to find British sitcoms online) I watched this clip from 'Bottom'.

Okay, fair enough. Quite funny, obviously I forgot about it. But YouTube didn't forget! YouTube carefully noted that I enjoyed a comedy sketch where a character named Eddie Hitler insults Jehovah's Witnesses and uses the phrase Nazi Germany. It thought carefully about this, and months later, provided me with the best possible video - thoughtfully selected based on my interests and personality...

A moving, musical tribute to Adolf Hitler, posted on his birthday, asking 'Will you remember me?'

....

Now I don't want to post a link, just because the person who uploaded it smugly states 'I just want youtube hits' and I've already given it three. But - it's a series of clips of Hitler's 'finest' moments, intercut with poor, poor Sarah McLachlan's 'I Will Remember You'.

Gee. Thanks.... YouTube.......... that's just what I wanted......

I guess this is some kind of dumb joke, but every single one of the 'Suggestions' videos on the right were along the same lines, only not joking so much.

It was the user comments that stopped me laughing at the ridiculousness of what I was looking at.
Some were mock-supportive of Hitler, some were genuinely sad about his being no longer with us, some were Neo-Nazis yelling slogans in bad German, and some were just people, offering horribly misinformed opinions either for or against. All of them were unbelievably depressing. Here are some from the first two pages!

'What genocide?'

'Hitler killed between 15 and 17 million people. Christianity has killed 21+ Million.'

'So answer me this, why are Jewish people so bad. I know a lot of Jewish people and they never hinted wanting to do something as evil nor does their historic or region also say.,\'

And...

'that was clever'

Fanfiction Shenanigans

I finally finished my Star Wars fanfiction!

I've been working on this story, on and off, for seven or eight months. It really feels wierd to leave the characters behind now.

--

I just realised that I've been writing internet fan-fiction for just over 2 1/2 years. I really had no idea it had been so long... but I happen to make a note of the starting and finishing dates for all my pieces of writing.

And it made me nostalgic. I'm going to drag this story out, so here we go.

A few years back, I was seriously depressed, studying Psychology (a subject I was really bad at) at University and very lonely. As a kid my hobbies had been writing/drawing little comic books and playing Nintendo. As a teenager I had more or less stopped playing Nintendo and instead obsessed over TV and film comedies. I saw this as 'growing up'. When I was at my most miserable, I started to miss the Nintendo and I bought a second-hand X-box and a copy of Star Wars: Jedi Outcast. It was a 3D shooting/platform game I had played at my mate's house, which was fairly ordinary except for three things: Billy Dee Williams was in it, you could get a lightsaber which would actually mark the walls if it touched them (OMG), and John Williams' amazing 'Star Wars' score played every time you were in a gunfight.

I loved the game, and I suddenly gained a deep appreciation for the original trilogy of Star Wars films. In the game you got to drive an AT-ST, shoot at stormtroopers, fire lightning from your fingers and choke people to death, talk to Luke Skywalker, and explore the galaxy far, far away as a rough, wise-cracking 'Just a guy with a lightsaber' who, of course, eventually matures into a proper Jedi knight. Unlike most Jedi, he matures by eviscerating several hundred enemy troops, but there you go.

Hungry for more, I went out and bought the game right next to it on the shelf - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I think Knightfall and I have told this story to death, but I really liked the game. I started watching the movies more and more, and even became extremely fond of the 3 new prequel movies. When Revenge of the Sith came out, I skipped an exam (the anticipation for which was crippling me) to watch it. The movie was just good, but the experience was one I will always remember. At the very height of my Star Wars fandom, and in my saddest days, I saw a Star Wars film for the first time, on the biggest of big screens.

Three years passed, in which I dropped out, came back, dropped out again, developed a hobby playing Bioware role-playing videogames and fell in love. At the start of 2008, inspired by comedy websites I loved and egged-on by my brother, I started up Microsoft Word and dashed out a parody script to Episode 3 - 'Revenge of the Angst'. (I took it offline eventually when I re-read those websites and realised I'd subconsciously ripped some of them off). But I had a lot of fun writing it.

The joy of writing it made me read more. I slowly made my way through a few books, and then a glut of Star Wars books. In the first half of 2008 I wrote two more pieces - a giant parody script of Bioware's Mass Effect and a short Star Wars story about a werewolf on Tatooine. The latter was terrible, but the former was actually really successful.

'Mock Effect' got me over a hundred reviews from people who had read it, and that just blew my mind. This was the best time of my life. I was madly in love, not at University anymore and writing comedy which was being read and enjoyed by lots of people. The parody script even led to a fanfiction website being created to house it, which has now outgrown it to become an awesome community and an excellent Mass Effect fansite.

Needless to say, my ego swelled massively. I began writing more and more (fanfic), trying out different styles and genres, and reading a little more still. At the same time in 2009, I wrote my second big project - a 35,000 word story about... Mass Effect. Mass Effect is a very good game. That year I also wrote a few little poems, more fanfics and a short story with a completely original concept.

Now we're halfway through 2010. I'm starting a new course next year, studying English and creative writing. I have been wanting to leave fanfic behind, and move on to become a serious penniless amateur writer still living with his parents.

I've found it very hard to get started on new original stories, and ended up leaning back on fanfic. I was happy to 'move on', but there had always been one story concept at the back of my mind, since way back when I played Jedi Outcast. I had always wanted to write a story about a Guy With A Lightsaber.

It would be about an ordinary civillian who finds a jedi laser-sword and has a brief, low-level adventure fighting the Empire. It would be set right before the time of the original films, but it would incorporate the Jedi mythos that had come into it in recent years, and dominated the novels I loved.

-

So - my new Star Wars fanfic - also probably my last fanfic - Star Wars: A Thousand Generations. Yes, this big, personally-revealing biography was nothing but a cheap plug for my new fanfic, Star Wars: A Thousand Generations. Works every time.
Now, I don't claim you can have a better time with Star Wars: A Thousand Generations than without it.... but why take chances?

It's another big writing project (31,000 words) and it's finally finished.

--
--

Now... I don't know what's next! Hopefully a lot more writing, in any case. I really enjoy it.

Authors are filthy, lying bastards (Crs Buchanan's classic tale of lost love and discovery)

Three years ago (it might have been four) my girlfriend-at-the-time Wendy gave me a copy of The Princess Bride as a birthday present. She inscribed it 'to my Princess Bride' in an attempt to piss me off, and it absolutely worked. She also threatened to send me flowers - secretly I wished she had ;)
I love flowers.

I'd never read the book - I was only a little bit aware of the film but didn't know anything about that either. The novel had a long introduction, where author William Goldman told the fascinating story of how S. Morgenstern's classic (and very long) novel 'The Princess Bride' had changed his life. He explained immediately that this novel was not his own work, but an abridged version of Morgenstern's masterpiece. This introduction went on and on, detailing how the book helped him grow to find his talent as an author, and about sharing it with his family. He wrote at length about the process of adapting the old text, filming it as a movie, and the legal trouble he had had with the late Mr Morgenstern's estate. If it hadn't been a gift from a girl I was absolutely crazy about, I might have given up, confused and wondering what the point was. (I like to think I have more patience now, due in no small part to Wendy.)



There was one tiny thing that confused me - he kept talking about the European country 'Florin', where it was supposedly written, as well as set. I live in Europe, and I'd never heard of any nation going by that name... though I was familiar with the coin. Aha! I thought, about a third of the way into into it. This is rubbish. It's an in-joke. There was no S. Morgernstern - Goldman was playing with my head, and apparently just because he thought it was funny. The way he did this, and the little obvious-lies that tipped me off, made me laugh, and suddenly I couldn't put this big intro down. I wanted to beat him, by figuring out what bits were false and what bits were true. I called up Wendy and thanked her for the gift, telling her how much fun I was having before the story had even begun.

By the end of the intro, I had it all figured out. The part about his teacher, that was true. The part about S. Morgenstern's book inspiring him were not. The part about being tempted by a Hollywood actress was false, but the part about his strained relationship with his wife and fat son - that was so brutally honest and touching, it had to be true.

I looked him up afterwards, only to discover that every single word was fiction - there for no reason other than setting up the hilarious pretend-annotations he included in every chapter. I kept imagining Goldman laughing at me for feeling bad for the son he never had, empathising with his pretend adoration of his pretend wife - and it made the book ten times better.

Later, when I saw the film version with Wendy (she had watched it plenty of times as a kid and wondered what I, the big reader, would think of the movie), I was really disappointed. For one thing, almost none of the characters were how I imagined them (Cary Elwes, you don't count - you NAILED it, sir) the story was different in places, and Peter Falk kept interrupting, talking to the kid from The Wonder Years about the plot.

The movie missed out on the best part of the book - unlike the brilliant novel, never once did it actually try to fool you. It was a story-in-a-story... kinda... but an obvious one. Peter Falk wasn't lying, he was acting. And thus, his scenes seemed pointless to me: a pale, meaningless imitation of Goldman's glorious tall tales and disingenuous assertions.

Tell you what though - that movie has a killer music score. I like the film, by the way - it's just that the novel is a million times better, primarily because of the lie.

***


At the moment I'm reading Wm (I think that means William - what's with these lying Williams?) Paul Young's novel, The Shack. Beneath the title it says, 'Where tragedy confronts eternity' - which made me chuckle because it sounds a bit like it's going to be a long, hard read.

This is a very famous 'Christian book' about a man who spends a weekend talking to God. Every review or quote listed on the jacket or inside talks about how faith-affirming it is, and not one actually mentions its quality as a novel. Fair enough - it's a book with a message, and the fans like it not for its quality, but for what it represents. No problem. I like a lot of really bad 'gay movies' because of their tacked-on pro-equality messages, so I can appreciate where the Christian reviewers are coming from here. Curious, I decided to give it a read and see for myself. For once, I wasn't setting out to criticise, just to see what the fuss was about. And, honestly, as a one-time Christian myself, I wanted to see if this sensationally-popular first novel would have any effect on my own views.

I'm about half-way in at the moment, so I'm not reviewing it here. So far it seems fine, maybe slightly below average, but I haven't finished it so what do I know.

I mention it because it begins with an introduction by Young, explaining how the protagonist, Mackenzie 'Mack' Allen Philips, is a close friend of his and how everything that happened is accurate, as far as he and Mack can remember it. Oh! I thought, like a sucker, my three-year old warning system failing to spark enough synapses to get through the accumulated dust. This is actually true? A guy really claimed to have spent a weekend with God, and this is more-or less his own account? Well, this I gotta see. No wonder it's done so much to affirm people's faiths. Imagine if it really happened...

And I started reading, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The quality of the actual writing is sometimes not great - and the author has a real tendency to lapse into All-American hugs-and-prayers cheesy bullshit (in particular there is a scene where Mr Young actually casts himself as Mack's wise, friendly and all-around awesome best friend, who does everything he can to help the guy out. It's actually pretty funny how cool he makes himself sound.) But - I was enjoying the book and the writing plenty, despite flaws. (No author is without jarring flaws that seem obvious to everyone but him.)

The plot has problems too - in that it seems very stock and unoriginal, in parts. I don't think I'm giving anything away by mentioning that Mack's daughter is kidnapped and presumably killed early on - and there are to chapters detailing the experience. Throughout these I kept thinking that the section of the story was rather unoriginal and dull. But - how could I fault the author for that? This is what really happened, after all - as accurate as he could write it with memory - and honestly, how could I pick the chapter apart when it detailed the actual kidnapping of an actual little girl? I'm a sarcastic git, but not a monster.

Well, obviously... as you'll have guessed if you didn't know... there is no Mack. The book is pure fiction, though details are based around the author's own life and maybe even his wife's personality is in there too - just like every book ever. Whereas this same trick enthralled me when William Goldman did it, this time I just don't see the point!
Even in the Blair Witch Project, the fake true story helped to make it scarier. What does this achieve - trick you into finding it more moving? That's cheating, Wm.

The Da Vinci Code was full of lies, too. At the beginning there is the now-famous 'FACT' page, which is just a list of all-but-proven hoaxes and speculative opinions, all of which are twisted beyond recognition to serve the (really thrilling) plot later.

Suddenly The Shack doesn't seem as good. I'm still enjoying it, but what was a harrowing, painful-to-read kidnapping is now a formulaic, by-the-numbers book plot. What was an author making himself look good in an unavoidable cameo is now... just really silly.

Fooled yet again.

**

I'm not sure what my point is in this article. But it's interesting how the two books sparked such different reactions in me with the same trick. I guess when a comedian tells you a lie and winks as he does, it's different.
Now I could be wrong here - I could be doing Young a great disservice. Again, I haven't finished it yet, so I'll reserve judgement. I have more patience now - thanks Wendy. I wish I could have shared this story with you too.

Next I'm going to read A Study in Scarlet by one John Hamish Watson. I read the first couple of chapters last week and I'm amazed by the central character, once again an old friend of the author. Can't believe this guy, man. Also there is a new videogame about the time he caught Jack the Ripper, which I will be playing later. I didn't even know that Jack was eventually caught!

I think from now on I'll stick to true-stories that are actually true. I'm sick of being made to look a fool.


** n.b. All the details in this blog entry about myself and my life are false. **

DVD Subtitles

This is just a short blog, but I wanted to gloat!

I'm watching the film 'October Sky' (an anagram of 'Rocket Boys', the original title - neat!) and by the way this movie is fantastic. I'm really loving it - it's a rare thing to see an inspiring feel-good story that genuinely inspires you and makes you feel good. (I have a few complaints about its depiction of trade unions, and I just spotted a single 'aggressive negotiation' but...)

I like to watch films with the subtitles on (I'm not hard of hearing, I mean I like them anyway). I suppose it's a wierd habit, but I have lots of them. I like to read along so I can pay closer attention to the dialogue and picture the script... I dunno. But sometimes you notice oddities in the subtitles. Always there are lots of occasions where the subtitle-writer has shortened lines to make them quicker, and often random changes will be made. It must be a wierd job (I would LOVE to be a subtitle guy.) I used to have this amazing copy of 'First Blood' where almost every line in the movie was completely different to what was written down. The subtitles told an alternative, wildly stupid version of the story, and removed every single swear for some reason. Oh, and they even changed the title line! 'BUT THEY SHOT FIRST!!!'

And I'm loving the subtitles on my copy of 'October Sky'. They're very good, aside from occasionally shortening. But!
This film is set somewhere in the southern United States, but on my version the subtitles have been translated into British English. 'Math' is always pedantically changed to 'maths'... and this is the best part: 'ass' is changed to 'arse', every time! 'Imm'a kick your arse, boy!'

We need this on the DVD of every American film!

-

Makes me damn proud. We may have bad teeth, we may all be football hooligans. We may now be governed by a strange coalition of the party who closed the mines and the party who nobody voted for.

But damnit.

We will correct your spellings with our last breath.

Buchanan Writes Again

This is another of the more personal entires from me. I've had a sort-of writer's block (or a lack of interest in writing) for a while. I suppose it's more a lack of confidence, actually.

As a consequence, all I've written lately has been a poem, a bad fanfic and a very short story which was experimental, and I really dunno how it turned out. I guess I've been kind of disheartened lately, for various reasons, and I got into the habit of reading instead of writing. After I got tired of that I got to playing games again.

So the upshot of all this is, I'm working on a new story! Not fanfic, either. I want to get a couple of original pieces of work under my belt before I start my English degree in September.

--

This one is a sci-fi short, but science fiction in the literal sense, not space opera. It's set in a future where robot workers have all but eliminated the need for human labour. As people struggle to fit into the new way of life, somebody takes advantage and builds all the robots to be 'male'. The story is about Elise, a lonely woman who makes a life-companion of one of the robots, and obsessively attaches herself to it.

(Holy crap... it's Kimberly Brooks! Good actor, hey!)

I guess I'm stealing the setting and concept from I, Robot and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It will have that sort of feel to it, anyway. But it's also allegory about sexism being inherant to societies. I'm still working out my plot, and trying very hard to get my Feminist point across, and to not make it look like the exact oppisite. Allegory is hard.

It's been a while since I really put my all into a story and was completely proud of the result. I think it's time to stop moping and do it again.



Looking back on my computer... I realise I actually started this thing last July! Bloody hell! I'm going to re-design the story and write this. I need an ending...

The title will be Synthetic Autonomous Man. Indulge this post - I'm a lazy artistic soul, woe is me until the muse takes me, etc etc.

(Still) remembering Red Dwarf

I felt like writing something personal, so I thought I would talk about the huge impact Red Dwarf had on me, as a writer and in general.

If you're not familiar with the franchise, it's a British sitcom (and four comedy novels) set in space. It's a simple sitcom set-up about 'four or five people who don't get on having to live together' but which also satirises and/or pays loving tribute to all manner of space operas and science-fiction classics. The premise is simple - an amiable slob awakes after three million years of suspended animation in the middle of black, empty space. There are no aliens and no advanced civilisation. For company he has a hologram resurrection of the crewman he hated most, a creature who has evolved from cats, a senile old computer and a fussy, subservient robot.

From 1989 to 2000 they had a series of sitcom-style misadventures, and Star Trek-style adventures, all with perfect characterisation, a wonderfully dark and witty sense of humour, and fascinating storylines. I always think of it as 'Blackadder in space'. And I could spend the day writing an introduction to it!

I'm a big fan, and I'm amazed it's never come up on this blog until now. As a teenager, I watched my carefully-collected videos of this show religiously, believing every line to be flawless and the actors to be the finest comic talents on Earth. When I got older I started to see the flaws and grow tired of the well-worn tapes, but I can still remember most of the lines in the first seven series!

But one part of the franchise that remains at the highest in my estimation is the books. Beginning quite early on in the show's run, the two writers, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (this was back in the day when British TV shows ran for six episodes a year and were written by only two people) began working on a series of Red Dwarf novels. Rather than write a spin-off or simply novelise the shows, Grant and Naylor (using the pen-name Grant Naylor) decided to begin anew, so that they were writing two seperate versions of the story at once - the TV version focused on jokes and brief adventures, and the novels' version was more dramatic and epic.

The novels Red Dwarf (AKA Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers) and Better Than Life are genuinely brilliant sci-fi comedy. Much like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, but... maybe this is me... so much better! So much deeper, funnier and more engaging.

Then came the great divide, where my heroes Grant and Naylor had a personal argument of some sort, and split for good. It was like watching my parents divorce. Grant went on to write excellent comedy novels and Naylor continued Red Dwarf, but not very well. Despite bold new ideas and characters, the show never quite recovered. It teetered away and ended on a whimper and a false 'to be continued' (well there was the recent 'Back to Earth' special, but that's another story.)

And it killed me that the show never had an ending. Now I would never know - does Lister find his way home? Do Lister and Kochanski finally fall in love? What becomes of Rimmer after his brave departure? It sounds very silly, but it took years for me to accept that I'd never know.

---

But, I distinctly remember a wonderful moment, when I was reading the last chapter of Last Human by Doug Naylor.

---

See, after the split, both authors wrote one more Red Dwarf book - each of them contradicting and disregarding the other, and each a direct sequel to Better Than Life. Now my divorced parents were asking me to choose which one I loved most. At high school I wrote a novel-length fanfiction which feebly attempted to bring the storylines into one.

Grant wrote Backwards, which took a very dark turn, but evolved to become extremely witty and with deeper characters than ever before. As well, it was a thrilling, scary adventure with brilliant science fiction in the first half (on 'Backwards Earth'). Best of all it included a massive, dramatic expansion of my favourite side-character, 'Ace Rimmer' - the dashing alter-ego of Rimmer with his legendary catchphrase, 'Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!'

And Naylor wrote Last Human - much more the traditional style, but with a tight, excellent space opera plot, great gags and...

... an ending.

In the final chapters of the book, Lister and Kochanski are in love, together and perfectly happy. They never made it to Earth (well they kinda did) but that's all part of the climax. All of the transformations and journeys that began in Red Dwarf and the first episode of the series come to an action-packed and fantastic conclusion, and there is nary a joke in sight. The third act of Last Human is what dreams are made of.
And though there is no Ace Rimmer, the real Rimmer brings his story arc to a close, by fathering a son and becoming the hero we'd wanted him to be since we grew to love him in episode 6.
And as he sacrifices himself to save his son and his crewmates, Rimmer sends a message in Morse code - S.M.A.K.I.B.B.F.B. Get it? It's an allusion to a character who never even appeared in this book's time-line, but that's what makes it so powerful.

I cried! I cried tears of joy that the dearest fictional character I'd ever read had finally become what I wanted him to be. I'm not saying that I prefer the Naylor book to the Grant book (don't make me choose, mum and dad!), but it left a powerful emotional effect on me.

And I re-read that book over, and over, and over again. I remember the third or fourth time I reached that ending, that perfect last chapter, and thinking, "This is what I want to do. I want to write stories with jokes and rich characters, and I want people to feel like I do now, just because of printed words. And I want to keep trying to write a book as good as this, but never make it! That'll keep me trying"

I've been through various odd phases in my life since then, but I'm never happier than when I write fiction, hear great comedy or find myself unexpectedly moved by something. Red Dwarf taught me 75% of what I know about writing, and completely shaped my sense of humour. Rimmer gave me an attitude, The Cat gave me a sense of childlike wonder, Kryten gave me too much self-deprication, and all of them have effected my strange accent. Lister gave me a laugh, some ideals, some beliefs and a hopelessly romantic soul.

Now I even like to imagine parallels between 'Buch and Knight' and Grant and Naylor!
Last year I got a tattoo of the Morse code for 'SMAKIBBFB' on my left arm. I'm not a tattoo kind of guy, but it's to remind me of my goal as I write. I can see it in the corner of my eye when I type. Like those books and some of the classic episodes, it never fails to inspire me.

The final line of Last Human never left my head. I keep wondering about featuring the line at the very beginning of one of my own stories. It would have to be a special one!

Slowly, gently, almost impercebtibly, the grass began to sway.

'Life of Pi' and muttering

I haven't been writing much lately - and hardly at all here on the blog.

I've had a lot of hours at work, and been busy with other, secretive things and applying to University.

I just recieved official confirmation of my application through the post. With any luck, and a successful interview, and a succefful application for a loan, I will be studying English and Creative Writing in September!

Assuming I will get in... I've ordered a stack of books, so I can be a little more 'well-read' by the time it starts. There are some classics in there, some modern hits that I think I 'ought' to have read, and some that randomly took my fancy (and some indulgences, i.e. Mass Effect.)

I want to get a good chunk of them read before the end of summer. I'm picturing a summer of working hard, saving money, and reading in parks, beneath trees! I even bought a nice cushion so I can read in bed. That's commitment!

Anyway, this is a huge deal for me. Finally getting a worthwhile occupation (well, kind of?) and in three years a good qualification. And it's in a subject I really, completely love, so I think these three years will be a lot of fun. I will post updates to this.

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Also I just finished reading 'Life of Pi' by Yann Martel. It won the Booker Prize in 2003, and came highly recommended by a friend, who I've often disagreed with in the past. But I absolutely loved it.

It is, essentially, an ordinary castaway story, focusing on one single character. But that character is so beautifully written and realistic and so interesting to read, and there is a unique spin on the story in the form of a Royal Begal tiger (and a giraffe and a hyena, and an orangutan) that share the lifeboat with him. And there are some surprises at the end... well I certainly didn't see them coming... which are just wonderful. I read the last few chapters with my mouth wide open, willing my brain to process the words faster so I could find out more.

There isn't a great deal of plot here - it's a book about Pi himself, and more quietly about religious faith vs scientific 'reason'. I love character studies, and well-rounded, deep, interesting voices. This is full of that. And the deepening layers of fictional 'narration' passing themselves of as fact work to suck you in and make you believe in Pi all the more.

Here is a wonderful passage from the book:

I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.