Mark Charan Newton

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I’ve been blogging here for three years, it seems, and the traffic has been much higher over the past couple months than ever before, and staggeringly so compared to the first two years. So I thought I’d highlight some of the more popular pages – in no particular order – for any newcomers:

Why SF is dying, and fantasy fiction is the future – the infamous post which sparked off a wonderfully respectful flame war.

Some interesting things I never knew about being a writer – this post is surprisingly high on the hits ladder, with over 5,000 views.

Serious fantasy reviewing – talking about the obvious.

What makes a good book blogger, from a writer’s point of view? – again, pretty self explanatory.

Interview with my editor – where I chat to Julie Crisp, getting an opinion on publishing from behind the scenes.

The road to publication, a very early post where I offer some vague advice on how to limit a writer’s chances of rejection.

Some of my personal favourites:

Tie-in fiction doesn’t mean what you think it means – I’m a supporter of tie-in fiction, and have spoken extensively on the subject.

Book cover conversations are so very clichéd – in which I generally rant about people ranting about covers.

In other news, the Earth is flat – One of my more recent flurry of environmental posts. In future, I will probably not hold back from warring with folk who deny man-made climate change.

Authors and politics – where I muse on whether or not authors should talk about their politics (they should), and what readers think. The results were surprising.

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Excellent article in the New Statesman, on the recent suggestion that Christina Hendricks “who plays sassy secretary Joan Harris in television drama Mad Men, has been identified as the woman with a body others should healthily aspire to.”

Wrong choice, right idea… It is likely that Featherstone’s decision to tout Hendricks as a body-image role model was based on asking the girls in the office who their favourite curvy celebrities were. Unfortunately, following her comments, aspirational photos of Joan in a range of tight dresses have illustrated nearly every report on the anti-airbrushing campaign, sending a clear message about the limited ambitions of women’s liberation today. We don’t want young girls to starve themselves to resemble a modern advertising executive’s wet dream, so we’ll settle for encouraging them to emulate an advertising executive’s wet dream from the 1960s…

Joan may be curvy and confident, but that confidence comes from her skill at manipulating men sexually, embracing her role as an object of fantasy and encouraging the secretaries she supervises to dress prettily, stay quiet and accept sexual bullying as part of the job. Her male bosses consistently demean her intelligence.

Read the rest.

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A rare interview with a grand master of American literature, Don DeLillo:

DeLillo now lives in Westchester County in New York State with his wife, Barbara, a landscape designer, but he has not completely left his childhood neighbourhood, a place he insists still “looks the same, though the people are different”: an influx of new immigrants, Serbs, Croats and African-Caribbeans. Every year, he goes back to meet old school friends from the streets of his childhood. “We meet on a major street and have a meal together and a laugh,” he says. Inevitably, the conversation will turn to baseball, DeLillo’s first love – what he calls his “second language”. Baseball, he says, “was just so natural, because we all grew up with it. We played it; we listened to it on the radio, and then we went to Yankee stadium. It was a taken-for-granted pleasure”.

Read the rest. DeLillo is one of my favourite writers and, after reading this interview, I was relieved that he came across as an extremely honest and humble individual. It’s more than pleasant to see.

They say never meet your idols, but the SFF genre – through conventions or signings – has always offered this opportunity. I’ve met several authors whose work I greatly admired and I can honestly say that they have all been wonderful people. Not only have they met my expectations, but they’ve taken the time to chat amiably. Had they come across as rude or obnoxious, there would have been a good chance (perhaps because I’m that stubborn) that I simply wouldn’t have bought their books, or wouldn’t have been as excited about their future releases.

Which isn’t to say that people should be nice so you keep buying their wares, but that there is some strange psychology at play here. Writing, in particular, seems to make connections directly with the minds of others – one of the points of the art, surely. But that also means that there is a one-way familiarity going on, from reader to writer (at least until a dialogue opens), and it’s something for writers to think about. I wouldn’t even equate it to fame – because it’s not, it something different than that, and book sales for the majority of authors would never equate to fame anyway.

I’ve been published by the majors for about a year now, and I’ve got to that stage where I receive mail or even meet people who like the books. A few may even be referred to as fans, but that sounds ridiculous even typing such a phrase. And I’ve realised, after my good dealings with my favourite writers, just how self-conscious I have been not to make a mess of this new species of social discourse.

But I do wonder how writers like Neil Gaiman or George R. R. Martin cope, however, with the sheer weight of expectation that people have of them, due to the connection with their work, which has grown exponentially as more people read and discuss their books. What happens when writers become famous? Maybe they get used to the fact that they must be as wonderful as the writers presented in articles or interviews, or risk disappointing people. Do they feel some kind of sheepish guilt at the fact that people travel miles around have their books signed?

On the other hand, some writers probably don’t give a shit, and resent even having to talk to people who have spent time engaging with their work. How do fans feel when they see their favourite authors coming across like buffoons in an interview? Luckily, I can’t even think of any examples of that right now. Which is probably a good thing.

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Behold, 14 discs of fantasy fiction:

Rather tasty, no? You can listen to a sample here.

Steven Crossley is a fantastic narrator. I’ve had a quick listen to some of the tracks and it all sounds good so far – all names correctly pronounced, which is the main thing.

It’s very surreal hearing your own words read back to you. I mean, I’m familiar with them, but there’s some strange psychological disconnection now. It is as if the characters have taken a step closer to being real entities – or that I no longer “own” them. This says a lot about the quality of the narration, I suspect.

And, after listening to this, I’m suddenly interested in downloading more audiobooks.

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Not a review, this – just some impressions. First I’ll be upfront: I’m a big fan of Harrison’s work. Nearly everything that he’s written is of superior quality. His descriptive power is second-to-none, and he can distinguish any environment with remarkable power. This is especially noticeable in Climbers, his non-SFF novel.

It’s the story of Mike, his recovery from a failed marriage, and his integration into the rock climbing community over the Yorkshire Moors. The culture of climbing, and the people involved, are discussed at great length – observing their experiences at the rock-face and in cafes and pubs. The story is presented as various reminiscences for the most part, so don’t read this expecting a simple plotted narrative. Like memory, it jumps around. These collections of images and stories build a picture of what is, ultimately, an obsession with climbing, the perfect climb, and how everything else in life seems to fade away amidst this lifelong yearning. I personally didn’t feel these collections provided the emergent properties of Light; which is to say that the collections remained mere observations, and you drew the weight of emotions from them yourself (this is perhaps a technique gleaned from Katherine Mansfield, of whom Harrison is a noted fan). The book was beautiful, that’s for sure. The depiction of the landscape is so accurate and vivid, and the prose… well it’s Harrison on perfect form.

What I find especially fascinating is observing how Harrison approaches his non-SFF novel. Much of the same level of alienation seems present; as does his way of making the texture everyday life seem utterly bizarre. Some of the rock formations which the characters tackled might well have been on another planet. I’d love to see him handle urban environments in a similar way – it would no doubt be up there with Iain Sinclair and J.G. Ballard.

Afterwards, I couldn’t help but wonder: how would other genre writers cope with writing mainstream fiction? Would the themes and nuances be the same? Do we rely too much on worldbuilding and wow-factor to carry us through? (Perhaps this is projecting my own concerns.)

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Give the recent furore over cloned meat entering the food chain, I thought I’d share this comprehensive study into “Risks and consequences of the introduction of cloned animals for food production”, by the Testbiotech Institute for Independent Impact Assessment in Biotechnology. If you’ve not the time to wade through it all, here is the summary:

Animal welfare: Many adverse health effects are reported in cloned animals and their surrogate mothers.[1] Further, higher productivity in farm animals is correlated with shrinking biological diversity, shorter lifespan and higher incidence of damage to health. It is likely that cloning will foster this development.
Transparency and traceability: There is some likelihood that genetic material derived from cloning farm animals (such as semen and embryos) has already reached the European market on the level of farm production. There is a high risk that this material is disseminated throughout the populations without any transparency and traceability.
Farm production: Patents on cloned animals and their offspring will enforce new dependencies for farmers and breeders, and the process of concentration in the animal breeding business will be fostered. This can also have an impact on biological biodiversity in farm animals.
Food production: If the products from cloned animals are introduced into the food market, high costs for labelling and segregation can arise. Consumers will need a high degree of transparency to enable them to make well-founded choices.
Food safety and food market: Further investigations concerning food safety (e.g. different milk composition) are needed. In the light of the variety of factors impacting the outcome of cloning and the broad range of observed effects, health risks cannot be excluded for the time being. Consumers risk being turned into some ‘end of pipe hostage’, not unlike the way that they are already caught by the usage of genetically engineered plants. Opinion polls show subs- tantial consumer rejection[2].
Future developments: Cloning of animals for food production could pave a way to the introduction of further biotechnologies for engineering in livestock.

I’m more interested in what happens behind the scenes. Given the shocking subterfuge often used by governments and corporations concerning GM crops, it’s worth waiting for more information to filter through on the background of the cloned meat industry and the firms involved – even though it’s not the same as GM. The fact that European laws have already been broken doesn’t fill me with hope of this being a transparent enterprise.

Though it isn’t the same industry, my biggest problem with GM foods was not with the technology, which can in theory be applied with many benefits across a broad spectrum of possibilities (sucking up pollutants from contaminated soil, for example). No, it’s the patents – and the fact that corporations could end up owning the foodchain (and a whole host of other technical issues, which I won’t bore you with). It’s worth saying that the “benefits” of cloned meat, if any, are not being forced down our throats (forgive the pun) as intensively as the propaganda surrounding GM crops – perhaps because the story broke in the New York Times. Essentially, this is at the core not the same debate, even though public discussions will share the “Frankenstein foods” tag.

I’m still waiting for a Ecologist vs Monsanto moment (an occasion worthy of a quick Google) to get the full dirt on some of the major firms involved, and now the story is making headlines, I hope it won’t be too long.

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I rather like being Punkadiddled. It’s one of those genre privileges, up there with Thog’s Masterclass. The mighty Adam Roberts has reviewed City of Ruin [warning: contains spoilers], and has gone into some splendid detail. I love his thorough engagement with the text, even if it is not entirely complimentary; it’s reassuringly rigorous.

Now, this novel is better in many ways than the enjoyable though ragbaggy Nights: Newton is more in control of his voice here, more confident in what he’s doing. There’s some efficiently structured storytelling (maybe it takes a little too long getting-going; but once the main plots are in place it moves nicely along), with lots of gnarly, peculiar lifeforms and environments and some thumping set-pieces. I liked the Swiftian floating island especially. Still, the text is not wholly free of Teh Slapdash. I’d still describe Newton as a writer on his way somewhere interesting rather than someone who’s got there yet. Although, by the same token, he has a raw youthful energy that many more mature writers just can’t achieve, and he mixes his soursweet recipe of Fantasy, horror and noir nicely — uniquely, indeed. If you’re enjoying a bit of oral sex, the last thing you want is a vast, malign spider-creature crashing through your window and pouncing upon you. City of Ruin is that last thing you want.

Read the rest.

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Or rather, one has been designed for them:

Quite fitting for the company behind the biggest accidental oil spill in history. (For the curious, this is the league table.)

Here are more examples of where the logo is being used. It’s fascinating to see activism utilising the Internet in increasingly sophisticated campaigns.

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I’m not going to add to the numerous posts that can be found throughout the Internet. I’m not going to review Inception; suffice to say I enjoyed it; I enjoyed the emotionally flat tone, and enjoyed the how-the-fuck-did-they-film-the-hotel-corridor-scene assault on the mind (I don’t want to know the answer to the latter, thanks). And I was impressed by the fact that a cerebral thriller could be mass marketed so effectively. To have dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream plots running simultaneously, and to have it work, was satisfying, of course. But I mostly felt as if I might be part of a cinematic paradigm shift: Dear public, these moving pictures can be rather clever, too.

Each time Hollywood unleashes a major SF film, the SF literary blogosphere – in a fine, good-spirited and sub-conscious manner – lurches above the foliage to begin thumping its chest in any number of ways to symbolise a marking of genre territory – that there is much good to be found in our books. And quite right too, it’s all part of the fun. Here are a few interesting chesty-thumps.

More than I’ve noticed for any prior genre movie blockbuster, each of the reviews I’ve seen – from newspapers to blogs – are almost talking about different films from each other. That is to say, each review has interpreted things in a very different way, or found something else on which to hang itself. The opinions are much more disparate than the collective trouncing of the prog-rock-cover-art-inspired Avatar. Perhaps because of the deliberate ambiguity of Christopher Nolan’s script, perhaps his execution (“It’s clever!”; “No, they’re such cheap tricks!”) or perhaps because of the nature of the subject of the film, dreaming, and what it means to each of us. Though, surprisingly, I found one of the best dissections of the reality/dream debate to be found on Yahoo Answers.

That a piece of art invites such a level of reaction says much about the content. This, then, means Inception is good art.

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For those of you who have been following such updates, the garden keeps on giving. For those of you new to the blog, I apologise, but you’ll see a lot of this.

This was from a quick whip around the blackcurrant bush – not bad for its first ever offering (this is a deceptively deep bowl by the way), and it should produce at least this amount again before August is out – next year, it ought to be producing twice as much again. My girlfriend says she wants to put this particular crop in a crumble – I’m good with this.

The vegetable patch is being extended, and I’ve found that the local recycling centre sells organic compost, or soil conditioner, for £3 a bag. I aim to be growing much more of what I eat over the next few months.

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If you buy SFX Magazine this month you will notice that there is a book club feature written by someone called “Mark Charon Newton” with the interesting and much cooler “o” spelling of Charan.

I don’t know who this chap is, but his write-up on Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock makes me want to read the book.

I mention the term Rural Fantasy in the article. Now it’s in print, the sub-genre is officially real.

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