Just Finished Reading…Peepshow by Leigh Readhead. Sydney: Allen And Unwin, 2004.

 

This is not a newly published book. I bought a copy from the bookseller table at a Sisters In Crime event at my local library the other night. I don’t think it’s in print any more, so the author probably supplied some books from her stash to the bookseller. However, it’s easily available as an ebook on your favourite web sites. 

It’s the first in a series, four so far, which is about Simone Kirsch, aka Vivien Leigh(her work name), a stripper who wants to start her own private detective agency, and has taken a course in this area. In this first novel she is trying to find the killer of a truly nasty man running a strip joint, whose body was found floating off St Kilda beach in the opening scene, because his brother has kidnapped Simone’s best friend Chloe and is threatening to kill her if Simone doesn’t find the murderer within two weeks. She gets a job at a lap dancing joint which was owned by the victim, to see what information she can find before time runs out.

 I think this book fits best into the category of “tart noir”.  There is sex, the mean streets, drinking, smoking, casual use of drugs and much more along those lines. But it’s fun. Simone is a likeable character and the setting is Melbourne, where I live. In fact, it’s set in the part of Melbourne where I live, the seaside suburbs of Elwood and St Kilda, as well as the CBD. Most of the venues are real too, so I had fun following Simone’s travels around town. The Greyhound Hotel, where some of it happens, was pulled down some years ago, but it was within walking distance of my home. There is also the Espy(Esplanade Hotel), a pub and live music venue in St Kilda, where my nephew performed with his band several years ago. 

It’s said you should write about what you know, and apparently the author had some background as a stripper. It doesn’t seem an easy job! 

I read this in a couple of days and have bought the second novel in ebook. 

Well worth a read if you enjoy a bit of whodunnit fun. 

Just Finished Reading… False Value by Ben Aaronovitch. Rivers Of London series. Penguin Putnam: New York, 2021

 I have just read False Value and thoroughly enjoyed it, as I have all the Rivers Of London novels. 

Hero Peter Grant, a member of the very small Special Assessment Unit, London’s magical police, has a new - undercover - job at the Serious Cybernetics Corporation(and yes, it is a deliberate reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy). There is a reason why the police want to know what’s going on. It’s connected with Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who was a mathematical genius and the world’s first computer programmer, and her teacher, mathematician Mary Somerville. In this world, where magic is real and Isaac Newton was a famous mage, there is a physical Mary Engine, instead of just a theory paper. And someone is using it for nasty stuff.

Peter is awaiting the birth of twins with his partner, river goddess Beverley Brook. Interestingly, there isn’t much activity by river gods and goddesses in this novel. They are mentioned, but don’t appear for once, and Bev is too focused on her forthcoming children to get involved.

I would have thought the series would be going downhill by now, but no. Each novel has something new to be enjoyed. 

But you really do have to have read the others to be able to follow this one. It assumes you know who the characters are and what their backgrounds are. Peter, for example, is the son of a woman from Sierra Leone and a (white) jazz musician. Bev is the daughter of Mama Thames, an African woman who arrived in Britain in the 1950s and became a goddess. Nightingale is Peter’s “Governor”, who taught him magic.

If you are a fan, you just need to know that this one is absolutely worth reading. If you haven’t read this series, what are you waiting for?

My copy is in ebook, but your local bookshop or web site will have it.

Just Finished Reading - Three Miles Down: A Novel Of First Contact In The Tumultuous 1970s By Harry Turtledove. New York: Tom Doherty, 2022

The year is 1974. The U.S President is Richard Nixon, who is soon to lose his job. Jerry Stieglitz, a young PhD candidate in marine biology, who also writes science fiction, is approached by the CIA to go on a mysterious voyage. At first he is told they want to raise a Soviet submarine which was destroyed a few years ago. 

But there is much more to it than that. There is a reason the Soviet submarine was sunk. That, not the submarine itself, is why they want him along. And it’s something very exciting - as long as he can keep his mouth shut. If he can’t, he is warned he will be dead soon after.

They have found a spaceship, which probably sank the Soviet craft, but so far nobody on the alien ship is responding. 

This seems to be a first contact novel, but it isn’t, really. It takes a long time for the spaceship to be raised, then for it to be examined. Jerry gets to do that along with another crew member. I won’t give you any more details before you read it. 

The first few chapters are a bit slow. There is a lot of discussion, both political and speculation on what’s in the spaceship and whether their own ship will be wrecked like the Soviet one. There is much detailed description of what they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are also told what science fiction books have just come out, and real people, such as SF authors Ben Bova and Jerry Pournelle, are mentioned before actually appearing later in the book. 

But the characters are good and the pace picks up after the spaceship is raised from the bottom of the sea. And there is some thought about whether it’s fair to have the US keeping all this to itself, or whether it should be sharing. 

It’s interesting to read about the era, before mobile phones, before the internet, before the Soviet Union fell(and after first contact, how different will that be?). Harry Turtledove was around at the time, but he is very good with history, even if it’s not the alternative universe for which he is best known. It took me a while to get into it, but I finished the second half in a couple of days. 

The book is available in all your usual good bookshops and websites, including Amazon, Booktopia and Book Depository. I bought mine in ebook on Apple Books. 

Book Week 2022 - And Complaints!

 It’s the last day of Children’s Book Week 2022, and I confess I haven’t read any of the books this year. I can remember when I at least read all the Older Readers books and organised activities and displays for the celebration. We didn’t have author visits because my tiny library budget didn’t allow for it. But we had displays and a lunchtime book themed trivia quiz and I encouraged kids to read the shortlisted books. One year, when the theme was “Chsmpions Read”, I got some of my Year 8 students to pose in their PE uniforms, reading books, and also photographed three on a dais with medals and books. Those photos were part of the display, and I did it because I couldn’t find photos of sporting heroes reading. It worked.

If you want to know this year’s winners, here is a link to the Reading’s bookshop site, where you can buy them if you want.

https://www.readings.com.au/news/the-winners-of-the-cbca-book-of-the-year-awards-2022

I am glad to see there is a Rebecca Lim book among the winners as I enjoy her work very much. I will get it in ebook. She lives in Melbourne! 

But this post is about something else. 

Book Week is about celebrating excellence in writing for young readers. It hosts about the only major award here for children’s writing - the only judged one, anyway, as there are some for kids to vote for, such as the YABBA Awards in Victoria. There used to be a similar award, the Inkys, run by the State Library’s Centre for Youth Literature, but that was closed down some time ago. 

So, this is it - and even this award was nearly closed down some years ago due to lack of funds. Fortunately, it was sorted out and the awards continued. 

It’s a week for celebration of all things book related. But this year I have read several whining articles and Twitter posts, by parents, about having to put themselves out once a year to make or buy a costume for that stupid costume parade. How dare the school ask them to get creative to help their children have fun! Thing is, even if you agree, it tends to have headings like “Why I’m over Book Week”. 

It’s not about Book Week, it’s about one aspect of Book Week. Personally I think it would be just as much fun, or even more, for bits and bobs to be put in a corner of classrooms for kids to make their own costumes in the weeks leading up to Book Week. I was involved with the children’s program at a Worldcon once and watched kids do just this. It was amazing how creative they got. I still remember helping a young dragon to make her tail. 

But it shouldn’t be about helping parents avoid encouraging their kids to read. And schools give plenty of notice. Waiting till the last  minute and then complaining about the whole thing because you forgot to do it, or your duties at the office kept you too busy is not on as far as I’m concerned. It shouldn’t be about you or your convenience. Even if you do forget, there are plenty of cheap items in discount shops that can be put together to make a basic costume. 

I have no doubt some of you reading this will have a horror story about your child’s school and how it messed up Book Week celebration and made your child cry. These things do happen, yes. It has to be done right or nobody will enjoy it.

Still - how hard is it for parents to support their kids in the one week a year which is about them? 

Some Banned Books In Florida Schools!

 There have been books banned in the US for quite some time. In fact, here is a link to a post I wrote ten years ago and that was the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week. That was the year I got my book clubbers to celebrate it.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2012/09/banned-books-week-2012-september-30-to.html

This year there are quite a few bans in the school system in Florida, where there were even bans of some mathematics textbooks! 

Here are some of the Florida school book bans I found on Twitter. 

I have heard of nearly all of these books and have read eleven(17 if you count the Harry Potter series as seven books, which it is). I have taught several of those.

You might notice that the books are generally classics and have been on school text lists. 

I have read The Handmaid’s Tale, The Catcher In The Rye, Of Mice And Men, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harry Potter 1 to 7, The Hate U Give, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Lord Of The Flies, 1984 and The Lord Of The Rings. I studied The Catcher In The Rye and taught Of Mice And Men and The Grapes Of Wrath. 

The Handmaid’s Tale has been much talked about recently and the red Handmaid’s costume worn in protests, and has been considered especially important with the overturn of Roe Vs Wade. 

The Catcher In The Rye, which I studied in both Year 11 and 12 at school, has been considered the first YA novel. Kids used to read it in bed, using a flashlight. These days, admittedly, the fact that it is taught at school has meant that kids don’t enjoy it as much any more, in fact complain about having to study it. It was written in the 1940s, so it doesn’t mean as much to this generation with their phones and Internet. Still - this doesn’t mean it should be banned, and I doubt it was banned for being boring and out of date! 

Of Mice And Men, by John Steinbeck, is very sad reading, but I think kids today, who have a lot more knowledge about mental illness, would get more out of it than when it first came out, but hey, it’s banned in schools! 

Huckleberry Finn has been banned for a long time as a racist book, which it absolutely isn’t. It’s a powerful piece of writing in which the hero starts off as a regular racist because that’s how it was in the American South of the time when the novel was written and, after travelling with escaped slave Jim comes to see him as a friend and decide that if helping him means he is going to hell, fine, he will go! There is a lot more than that, of course. If Mark Twain was around today he would be considered a left winger. I have read some of his other books and that’s what I concluded. 

I have no idea what the ban is for this time. At some stage I will visit the ALA web site to see if it has been updated.

The Harry Potter series has been banned, in the past, for supposedly promoting witchcraft. These days, there are former fans who have gone as far as to burn their Harry Potter books because they have been angry with the author. You have probably read about this, so I won’t go into detail. I don’t know why the Florida ban is happening, but probably the same reasons as before. 

I read The Lord Of The Flies in Year 9, on a friend’s recommendation. I remember discussing a section of it with my own class, and boys protesting they would never do that. I asked them if they wouldn’t do whatever they could get away with and, thinking about it, they admitted they probably would. Interestingly, there was a true story of a bunch of boys marooned for a while in the 1960s, and, far from killing each other, they looked after each other. 

I taught The Grapes Of Wrath to a Year 12 class in my first year out. It is a very powerful story of a poor family on the way to California during the Depression, in hopes of getting work picking fruit. It’s not going to happen, as all the families whose farms have been destroyed and taken over by the banks find out. Again - why is this banned now? It is a great classic. 

The Hate U Give is the most recent of the books I have read. I reviewed it here.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2018/01/just-finished-readingthe-hate-u-give-by.html

The heroine has to watch her childhood friend, Khalil, be murdered by a police officer and find the courage to bring his death to the public eye. Again - very powerful stuff and, for once, worth the hype. The film was strong too, and is available on streaming - Disney +, I think. 

And now it’s banned in Florida schools. Why? 

Finally, Lord Of The Rings? That classic novel? It’s not only an amazing fantasy, it was written as a mythology for England. It also has Catholic elements. Here is what I wrote about it. 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2016/03/of-march-25-and-tolkien.html

I think I am going to have to visit the ALA website to find out why these books have been snatched from Florida schools, but one thing I know for sure: the sales will go up, as they did for Holocaust graphic novel Maus by Art Spigelman when that was banned in Tennessee recently. 

Maybe kids will even willingly read The Catcher In The Rye again? 

So, have you read any of the books on this list? What did you think? 

Just Finished Reading … The Unbelieved by Vikki Petraitis. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2022

 

Vikki Petraitis is a Melbourne writer, best known for her true crime books, of which I own a few. This is her first novel.

Antigone Pollard is a police detective. She has returned to the small seaside town of Deception Bay, where she spent much of her childhood living with her grandmother, who is now in aged care and has left her the house. 

Antigone left Melbourne because of a rape case which ended with the death of the victim after she was disbelieved by the legal system. Now, she sees that not much is different in Deception Bay, where a couple of girls who have been raped after their drinks were spiked at the pub are unlikely to be believed either and the “good bloke” arrested for attempting the same with Antigone gets bail. She has come to the conclusion that rapists are believed over victims, wherever you live - something that is often true in real life.

Antigone and her police partner, Warren Harvey, better known as Wozza, must find proof of the rapist - and solve a murder that happened several years ago, though it was concluded to have been a murder suicide at the time. 

It’s a very readable story, if one that can’t be pinned down as a type - not a cosy and not a police procedural either, though the heroine is a police officer - one who doesn’t get on with her male  boss, for good reason. The small town, where everybody knows everyone else, is a good place for dreadful things to happen and be dismissed by those with power. 

As for Antigone, she won my heart when she used martial arts on the would-be rapist who attacked her in the pub carpark early in the novel after failing to spike her drink. 

The author knows a lot about crime, and how investigations work, from all her true crime writing. I think she has a great future in fiction and am looking forward to reading her next novel.

The print book is available at all good bookshops and websites, and in ebook format. I bought mine on Apple Books, but it’s available on Kindle as well.

What I’m currently reading!

 As usual, I’m reading multiple books, both new and re-reads. So this isn’t a review, just sharing what I’m reading now.

I have a pile of books I got from my membership of Chicon, this year’s Worldcon. I’m too late to vote for most of them, but hsppy just to have them as part of the deal. A$75 for all those books plus the privilege of a virtual attendance at panels is very reasonable! 

The shortlisted book I am reading now is True Believer: The Rise And Fall Of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman, which is part of the “Related Works” short list. I am finding it a fascinating work, especially since I’m also reading a book about Jack Kirby, the artist who worked with him on comics, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life Of The King Of Comics. Kirby was not a great fan of Lee, claiming to have created a lot of the characters and stories for which Lee claimed credit. Riesman mentions all this, and that Lee was not quite the jolly, likeable character he appeared to the world as. However, he also says that the two of them were arguing over things that we can never be sure of. He gives detailed descriptions of what each of them said and when, and why this or that character might or might not have been created by each of them. Both of them told different stories at different times of their lives.

There is some sadness too, and mention of elder abuse in Lee’s later life, when he would believe all sorts of nonsense told to him.

I’m also reading Harry Turtledove’s newest book, Three Miles Down. It’s not his usual alternative universe, but a science fiction piece set in the 1970s, during the Nixon era. In it, an American FBI ship goes out to sea to raise, if possible, an alien spaceship on the sea bottom, next to a Soviet submarine. One of those aboard the American ship is a young scientist, Jerry, who is terribly excited to be invited to join the expedition.

I have to admit, not his best book so far, in my opinion. I love the idea, but I’m in Chapter 6 already and nothing has really happened. There is a Soviet ship hovering around, but not doing anything much. The characters eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, all described in loving detail, and consider what they might find, when not discussing books and films that were out at that time. I don’t mind the occasional mention of what Jerry is reading or has seen, but it goes on and on. 

Still, I will finish and hopefully the pace will pick up soon.

My audiobook of choice, right now, is Barbara Hambly’s Bride Of The Rat God, which I can’t find in ebook, for some reason. I have read the original print copy, many times, but can’t find it. Maybe it’s out of print, but the audiobook isn’t. It’s narrated by Marguerite Gavin, who is wonderful. She manages to voice all the characters so you are never unsure of who is speaking.

In case you haven’t read it, the novel is set in 1920s silent movie Hollywood and is seen from the viewpoint of Norah, the British widow of an American soldier killed during the Great War, living with her sister in law, a major silent film star. There is a cursed necklace and some gruesome murders. And in between there are some well described filming scenes of a movie called She Devil Of Babylon, when what the director really wants to film is Kafka’s Metamorphosis. And there are three cute little Pekingese dogs which can do more than they might seem to be able to, including protecting their mistress from evil.

Great fun, and well read by Marguerite Gavin.

I’ve recently bought and started reading Death and Hard Cider, Barbara Hambly’s latest Benjamin January murder mystery novel. She has written quite a few of these and they are every bit as good as the first. The quality has never waned.

I’ve also been reading some Marvel comics. The most recent is Loki: The God Who Fell To Earth, by Daniel Kibblesmith and others. It is hilarious! Loki is now the ruler of Jotunheim, while Thor rules Asgard. Everything is going fine, so he is utterly bored and leaves a living snowman, Frosti, in charge while he heads for New York. There, he asks millionaire genius Tony Stark if he can join the Avengers. Tony tells him to get lost. Thor has already rolled around laughing at the idea. So, he uses his brains to defeat a scary creature threatening New York and impresses his brother and Tony. And meanwhile … very funny! 

So…am I the only one who reads masses of books at once?

Just Finished Reading… A-List For Death by Pamela Hart. Sydney: HarperCollins, 2022.

 

If you haven’t read the first book in this series, Digging Up Dirt, reviewed here, it probably won’t matter too much, though you will probably go back and read the first one after reading this. 

Poppy McGowan works for the ABC doing a children’s TV program on various different themes which she then has to research before writing them. As a result, she knows quite a bit about a lot of subjects, such as “People Who Help Us: Police.”. 

She also seems to have a knack for finding dead bodies and solving the crime. In the first book, the body was an unpleasant archaeologist found in Poppy’s own home that was being renovated. In this one, the body is found in the corridor of a retirement village. 

That, however, happens about halfway through the book, after Poppy’s aunt Mary’s best friend Daisy is found bleeding to death in her bathroom. Fortunately she is taken to hospital in time, but Poppy has to deal with Daisy’s family, including her rock star son Jonathan and her stepdaughter and her son Oscar. There are some issues about a family mansion in England, but it’s not the obvious one about a will…

Despite the murder this is very much a cheerful cosy. My favourite scene is when Jonathan has disappeared in the streets of Sydney and his fans are alerted via social media. Suddenly the streets are overflowing with searchers and people taking advantage of the crowds to sell them stuff, including sausages.

Reading the line “Where five or more Australians gather, there shall be a Sausage Sizzle. It may even be a law” I couldn’t stop laughing. It means more to Aussies, of course, because of the famous “democracy sausage” sold at election polling booths as a fundraiser, but if this doesn’t mean anything to you, you might think about Terry Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork, where people do exactly this when a crowd gathers, for whatever reason.

Poppy’s own issue is raising money herself to go on a dig in Jordan with her gorgeous archaeologist boyfriend, Tol - and try solving the mystery, because Tol is a suspect.

If you enjoy Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman novels, this is the series for you.

Both books are now available in all the usual places, including Book Depository.

https://www.bookdepository.com/List-for-Death-Pamela-Hart/9781867201892?ref=grid-view&qid=1655285817955&sr=1-5 

They are also available in ebook, both in Apple Books and Kindle. I’m giving you the Australian link, but it’s available on the US Amazon site as well, and certainly other Amazon sites.

https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=pamela+hart&crid=1FGN4E5NH9NHU&sprefix=%2Caps%2C224&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent 

Celebrating A Biblical Heroine - Ruth!

 

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the Jewish festival of Shavuot. It is traditional to eat dairy products during this time, so I made cheese blintzes for Mum and me, as I was at her place at the time. I made crepes filled with cottage cheese and sultanas, then baked them in the oven. They turned out well, given I hadn’t made them in years.

This festival is about receiving the Torah, but the Biblical book connected with it is the Book Of Ruth, which mostly takes place during the barley harvest in Bethlehem. 

The story is one I’m fond of, and it has been made into a novel and a film. 

The Biblical tale is very short, and goes as follows. Mum and Dad, Elimelech and Naomi, and their two boys, Mahlon and Chilion, migrate from Bethlehem in Judea to the pagan kingdom of Moab, to escape a famine. The boys grow up and marry two lovely local girls, Orpah and Ruth. Unfortunately, Dad and both boys die and Naomi decides to go back to her home town.

“Girls,” she says, “you have been amazing wives who made my sons happy. Go back to your parents and find other husbands and I hope you are happy again, you deserve it.” 

Orpah gives her a kiss and leaves. Ruth refuses. Naomi protests that this is plain silly, she can’t supply Ruth with another husband. But Ruth insists on staying with her ma-in-law and the two women go back to Judea, where they settle in Bethlehem and gossip soon spreads that Naomi is back, with a daughter-in-law. 

The barley harvest is on and, as widows, they are entitled to glean the fields. Ruth gets to work. The land owner Boaz, a relative of Elimelech, comes out to check his fields and is told about Ruth. He has heard about what happened and is only too pleased to look after the young widow during the working day. He leaves orders that she is to be looked after and supplied with lunch and tells Ruth that she absolutely must stay only in his fields.

The harvest is over and the community gets together for the  threshing and a party. Everyone sleeps on the threshing floor afterwards. On Naomi’s instructions Ruth lays herself down at Boaz’s feet when he is asleep. And then, the Bible tells us, he wakes up during the night and sees this woman lying at his feet!

I’m assuming this is a marriage proposal from her. There is a law under which the closest male relative of a dead man must marry the widow if there are no children, and hopefully father an heir to the deceased.

Boaz says he would love to marry her, but there is a closer relative of Elimelech - he will see what he can do.

Next day, he meets the man, who is okay with giving up any claim on her, and hands him a symbolic shoe - no, I have no idea why a shoe! 

So Boaz and Ruth live happily ever after and give Naomi a little cutie called Obed to make her happy. Obed becomes the father of Jesse, the father of King David.

It’s a sweet story, but I don’t think of it so much as a romance as the story of two women of different generations who love and look after each other. Ruth didn’t have to leave her country and family, but she did it - for her mother-in-law! Not mother, mother-in-law. And she makes that famous speech: “Where you go, I will go, where you live, I will live, where you die, I will die and there will I be buried. Your people shall be my people and your God my God.”

The romance is an extra. Boaz has heard what Ruth had done and admires her for it. 

The novel The Song Of Ruth, by Frank G. Slaughter, probably out of print, but worth finding (on ABEBooks, perhaps), focuses on the romance element. In it, Ruth is a Moabite priestess of the god Chemosh, to whom children are sacrificed. She falls in love with young Judean Mahlon and it goes on from there. But Tob, the closer relative, isn’t keen to give her up, so Ruth and Boaz have to think of a way to get him to give up the claim.

Film poster. Fair use.

Slaughter wrote a screenplay for the film version, which came out in 1960 as The Story Of Ruth, but someone else rewrote it. However, it is very recognisable if you have read the book, which I have.

It has an impressive cast. The title role was played by Elana Eden, a young Israeli actress whose first film it was. She didn’t become famous, but was a successful jobbing actress afterwards.

The others are perhaps better known. Stuart Whitman, who played Boaz, did a lot of acting work; apparently he did well enough that he didn’t have to continue acting. He did, anyway. Look him up on IMDB for details of his many other films.

Tom Tryon, who played Mahlon, the first husband, did give up acting for a very successful career as a horror novelist on the lines of Stephen King, except his novel Harvest Home came out when King was just getting started. His first novel, The Other, came out in 1971, after he had been inspired to write horror fiction by the film Rosemary’s Baby. I do recommend Harvest Home, by the way. I’ve read the book and seen the mini series and it is scary! 

You will probably know Peggy Wood, who played Naomi, better as the Mother Abbess in The Sound Of Music.

The King of Moab was played by John Banner, whom you will definitely know best as Sergeant “I know nothing! Nothing!” Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes. 

The film has aged a bit, but the score - by famous film composer Franz Waxman - is lovely, and it’s worth finding a copy if you can, as an example of 1960s Biblical movies(I suspect the budget was a lot smaller than those for the Charlton Heston films of the period!). I found a DVD very cheaply, along with another Bible epic, Esther And The King, starring Joan Collins in one of her few non-bitch roles.

Or you might consider going back to where it started - the Bible!

On Returning To Reading Fan Fiction

 I have done a few posts on fan fiction here, though not recently. I wrote about 150 fan stories in my time, based on series such as Star Trek, Blake’s 7 and Robin Of Sherwood, then stopped when I, a. ran out of ideas, in the middle of a story and b. started getting paid to write. 

What is fan fiction, in case you aren’t familiar with it? It’s using existing films, TV shows, books and even games to write fiction of your own. Some fan stories are very good, others appallingly badly written, but even those have their fans, something I know from comments made on them. 

Not everyone stopped when they started being paid. Jenny Pausacker, an Aussie YA novelist who moved to England, was a big fan of Kerr Avon, one of the protagonists of Blake’s 7, and wrote online fanfic under a pen name(may still be doing it, I never found out what the pen name was). She even wrote an Avon-like character into a novel. Kerry Greenwood(best known for her Phryne Fisher books) said she composes Dr Who fanfic in her head. Not long ago, I told Diane Duane, author of the Young Wizards series, on Twitter, that I had read some of her fan fiction way back when, and her reply was, “What makes you think I have stopped?”

I have several shelves of fanzines, bought in the days when people were publishing them in print. I even edited a few myself! 

But nobody is doing that now. There are fan fiction web sites; the best known one is Fan Fiction Net, which publishes stories from a huge number of universes. I used to read stories on that site, mostly based on books. 

Some were based on the Harry Potter series. Draco Malfoy was a popular hero in those, because everybody loves a bad boy, right? Even Professor Severus Snape had his own Mary Sue tales. In one of them, written before the final book explained why Snape had no love interest in his life, he marries the niece of Auror  Madeye Moody and they move to Sherlock Holmes’ cottage. 

My favourite was a humorous Lord Of The Rings story, “Fellowship Of The Thousands” in which the Fellowship leave Rivendell accompanied by an entire army of Mary Sues - humans, elf maidens, Dwarf girls, etc., more than enough for each of the Fellowship members. The story is told from the viewpoint of Boromir, who is resurrected when his own Mary Sue cries over his dead body. A very funny tale that has great fun sending up the tropes.

By the way, I used to know the fan writer who coined the term Mary Sue to describe the sweet young thing who has a PhD at 16, is related to Spock by adoption and is adored by the entire bridge crew. The author’s name is Paula Smith and she wrote a tongue in cheek piece only a few hundred words long using every trope she could think of in that type of story, with a heroine called Mary Sue; I have lost track of Paula(my pen pal), but I’m betting she never dreamed how far her little story would go.

Another friend, Diane Marchant, unwittingly started slash fiction, ie erotic m/m stories, called slash because it started with Kirk/Spock. She wrote something erotic on the end of a letter to someone big in Trek fandom, as a joke, and next thing she knew it had been published and everyone was doing their own stories about what Kirk and Spock get up to behind the scenes; while people take it very seriously these days, Diane’s preferred pairing was Spock and Nurse Chapel. She has passed away, so no chance to ask her now how she feels. It has moved on to many fandoms, but in those days all we had was Star Trek, and only the original series.

As I said, I used to read the stories on Fan Fiction Net, but I’ve now discovered Archive Of Our Own, which I prefer because you can download stories as e-books and delete them when finished - or when they turn out to be too dreadful to finish. Furthermore, some inspire or commission fan art, taking me right back to the days when I was reading and publishing printed fanzines.

 Many authors write entire sagas, some well over 100,000 words long, publishing a chapter a week. It has got me thinking; if fan writers can do a chapter a week, why can’t I, in my own universes? Something to think about.

Meanwhile, I’m back to reading fan fiction, something I haven’t done for quite a while. I will never write it again, but it’s fun to pick a universe and a genre on the web site and read stories set in that world. Some of them are so good that I want to tell the author it’s time to move on to create their own universes. Of course, I may very well be reading something by Diane Duane or Jenny Pausacker, for all I know…

Others will never sell anything, but they are having fun and even they have their fans. 

So why write stories set in someone else’s world? When I started writing it, it was mostly because our show had been cancelled and we wanted more. Sometimes it was because there was something that didn’t make sense and we wanted to fill in the hole. Other times, we wondered what happened after the episode, or “what if”? 

And then there are those fan writers who create their own characters in someone else’s universe. In a way, Star Trek: Lower Decks, a very funny animated series set on one of Starfleet’s less important ships, about a bunch of Ensigns, reminds me of a series of fan stories written in a fanzine published by my friend Paula Smith. It feels like fan fiction. 

These days, there are even fan videos on YouTube. There is a film about the three Black sisters from Harry Potter, Narcissa, Andromeda and Bellatrix, written, filmed and performed by fans. I found another film set in the Blake’s 7 universe, with original characters. 

Who knew, way back when we were just wanting more Star Trek that it would come so far? 

Anyone willing to admit here to writing fan fiction, or even just reading it?

Happy World Dracula Day!

 

Vlad the Impaler. Public Domain.

So, I am told it’s World Dracula Day! Isn’t it amazing how many things have their own day? 

I remember researching the real Dracula for my very first book, Monsters And Creatures Of The Night. He was called Vlad the Impaler for a charming habit he had of impaling his enemies, but it was not his only fun thing. There is the story of how he treated some diplomats who didn’t remove their hats in his presence. Anyone else would have had his minions snatch the hats off them, but not Vlad - he got those hats nailed to their heads! Another time, when out riding, he spotted a peasant whose wife had clearly not been doing her job at keeping his clothes tidy. The wife was executed and Vlad, in his “kindness”, gave the man a new wife.  

Despite all this and more, he became a national hero in Romania for defending the country in the 15th century. I think the family was still around in the present day, though they had to adopt someone to keep going. 

In the 19th century, an Irish theatre man called Bram Stoker wrote a novel we all know. Dracula was not the only vampire novel around, but it’s the one we all think about when we think vampires, isn’t it? 

The novel is surprisingly easy reading. It’s written in the form of letters and diary entries. I do recommend it if you haven’t read it yet. You should be able to find it on Project Gutenberg. 

A thing you may not know if you haven’t read it is that Dracula doesn’t have to hide out in the dark. In fact, he turns up in daylight in one scene. But being out in daylight weakens his powers, so not his preferred time to be out! 

There is a play based on the novel - I was involved with a production when I was at university - and films were being made from the silent era onwards. The most famous, of course, was the 1931 version with Bela Lugosi, who was buried in his Dracula cloak. There have been so many versions since then that it’s too much to discuss here, but you have probably seen at least one.

But the novel has inspired so many books as well, and influenced the view of vampires in general.

My favourite is Dan Simmons’ novel Children Of The Night. In it, Dracula actually is Vlad the Impaler and he is not undead. The vampirism thing is hereditary; using blood makes the cells of the lucky ones regenerate, keeping them alive and well for centuries. Vlad is still around and he thinks the Stoker novel is dumb. He has replaced a love of conquest with a love of business and done very well. And he is fed up with his family…

Another favourite was Anno Dracula, first of a series by Kim Newman. Dracula has succeeded in wiping out his enemies and married Queen Victoria. Suddenly it’s fashionable to be a vampire! The upper crust all over England are doing it. The other stories are set later, in a world where there is a vampire section on planes. 

Of course, the view of vampires has changed from the time of  Dracula. Twilight anybody? There was a YA novel I read, I wish I could remember the title and author, in which a nerdy teenage boy claims to be a vampire to get girls.

In fact, our students - the girls, anyway - went wild over Twilight. I don’t think I could get any of them interested in a villain vampire like Dracula. 

What do you think? Do you like your vampires villainous or prefer them sexy? 

On Re-Viewing The Day The Earth Stood Still

Movie Poster. Fair Use.

 I have just finished re-viewing the Robert Wise film, The Day The Earth Stood Still, with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal.  It’s an old favourite of mine, comfort viewing from many years ago. I do have the ebook of Farewell To The Master, on which it’s based, but haven’t got around to reading yet. 

It came out in the early 1950s, a time when most SF movies were about alien invasions, with scary beings from other worlds. This one showed sympathy to the alien and made a good point about the people of our world not necessarily being the good guys. 

In case you aren’t familiar with it, Klaatu, the hero, has been sent to Earth with a message. Basically, it’s like neighbours complaining about the noise from next door. He comes from a group of planets which live in complete peace because they have to. Their police force is made up of robots which can wipe out entire worlds that misbehave! He brings one with him, Gort.

 Klaatu finally addresses  a meeting of scientists called because the UN members won’t get together except under their conditions and the Americans want him to talk to their President. He lets them know that the neighbours are worried because space flight is in its way and they really can’t be having with that violence coming their way, so fix it or risk being wiped out.

This is after he has been shot at twice, the second time actually killed, but resurrected by Gort.  

It has religious themes - Klaatu escapes from the hospital where he is being kept, and gets a room under the name of Carpenter. He performs a miracle, stopping all electricity world-wide except for hospitals and planes to show his power. He dies and is resurrected. He even refers to “the almighty being”, the only one who knows when he will die again.

There were things other than the story which I appreciated this time around. There is, of course, the amazing music of Bernard Herrmann - especially that theremin in the main theme. 

I also loved what the director did with it. Apart from the main characters, such as Klaatu, young widow Helen Benson and her son Bobby, there were characters who never spoke at all, but who had their own stories to tell. 

There were individual soldiers, gathered behind officers who did have lines. There was a group of French peasants gathered at an outdoor cafe in their village, listening to the radio announcement of the visiting flying saucer. A woman in a taxi smoked as she listened to the cab’s radio. 

These people all had stories of their own - where was that woman going? What did she and the driver discuss afterwards?

  What about the French group? What did they talk about after the radio announcement? Was it just a relaxed cafe visit that turned into more? 

How about that soldier who shot at Klaatu after he foolishly got out a gift for the US President while surrounded by tanks and guns?  He seemed nervous. Maybe he wondered if he should have waited for orders? Or shot to kill?

Even people in the streets seemed to know where they were going and have emotions about what was happening. 

It says something that we do wonder about people who, in any other film, would have just been extras.

Strange, really, isn’t it? I guess it’s something I have noticed and appreciated more after many viewings.

Do you have a favourite classic movie?