The Scioneer
By Peter Bouvier
2011 Smashwords
Londoner Lek Gorski, a thirty-something chemist living in the middle of this century, develops leisure drugs that are derived from non human genetic material. The side effects include the gradual transformation of users into human/animal chimeras. The commonest of these are human wolves. And so those things, werewolves -- as durable and quotidian as garden weeds -- make yet another appearance in the world of fantastic literature. They just won’t quit, will they?
The world, and especially London, has gone to pot in other ways. The climate has heated up and vegetarianism is rampant. Somehow, this vision of the future feels rather familiar. It’s like it’s almost already happened. Nevertheless, there are also some witty ideas – for instance, Beatlemania has become a political movement and Big Ben has been turned into a speaking clock.
It is the Russian Mafia who traffic Gorski’s drugs. He gets a huge payment for stuff yet to be produced and decides to abscond with the cash. His attempt to escape Britain with the girl and the money is the premise of the plot. This then, is a sort of science fiction thriller. There are pages of back story and future history, which, however, Mr Bouvier makes entertaining – he’s a skilful writer.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys science fiction thrillers. It’s abundantly inventive and well written. However, it lacked a major component one might expect the future to have. Seeing that China looks set to become this century’s biggest superpower, where is the influence of their culture? Wouldn’t it become as extensive as the influence of American culture is now?
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Friday, 22 April 2011
Good Friday Special
A Christian Analysis of Atheism
By Frederick Meekins
Smashwords 2010
What sane person would willfully reject the triumph of good over evil, the resurrection of loved ones and personal immortality? And yet, no matter how much religion offers them, many people (roughly 16% of the world’s population) just don’t buy it. Surely they can’t all be mad. If I were religious, I’d be exercised by this baffling state of affairs. So, what are the possible explanations for rejecting such a good deal?
1. God doesn’t want certain people to know that he exists and refuses to enlighten them.
2. Doubters are simply born incapable of knowing him.
3. They are fools – the Bible’s explanation.
4. They haven’t read the ______ yet. (insert holy book of choice).
5. They are lunatics.
6. They are devils incarnate, born merely to test the faith of the faithful.
7. They are rationalists who do not sense God directly and are not convinced by the words of the _______ (insert prophet of choice). Like any normal human being, they would like life to have intrinsic meaning and for death not to be the end, but they are regretfully unable to honestly accept religion truly offers these possibilities.
Number 7, by the way, is the one Mr Meekins can’t seem to fathom.
Actually, he comes up with a new explanation, which I never saw coming and couldn’t have dreamed up. It may well be all his own.
His analysis, or exposition as he calls it elsewhere, begins by paraphrasing the views of other pro religious writers whose aim seems to be to smear the integrity of non religious intellectuals. He goes on to interpret these misinterpretations in order to construct the argument, of sorts, that atheism is an intellectual conspiracy that arose specifically to undermine religion. In other words, non believers constructed science and mathematical logic in reaction to religion.
But why? What is the motivation for this conspiracy against religion? I quote:
A classic truism teaches that if wishes were horses beggars would ride, and another piece of cherished wisdom reveals wishing for something doesn’t make it so. These same principles apply to the longing for a deity-free universe as expressed by the thinkers profiled throughout this exposition. P7.
That’s right, according to Mr Meekins, atheism is a sort of wishful thinking – a wonderful daydream of personal annihilation within an ultimately meaningless universe. In other words, many of the most brilliant minds throughout human history have just been plain crazy.
Having a penchant for both the folksy and metaphorical, Mr Meekins might like to consider whether, when it comes to craziness, he’s not casting the first stone and calling the kettle black.
By Frederick Meekins
Smashwords 2010
What sane person would willfully reject the triumph of good over evil, the resurrection of loved ones and personal immortality? And yet, no matter how much religion offers them, many people (roughly 16% of the world’s population) just don’t buy it. Surely they can’t all be mad. If I were religious, I’d be exercised by this baffling state of affairs. So, what are the possible explanations for rejecting such a good deal?
1. God doesn’t want certain people to know that he exists and refuses to enlighten them.
2. Doubters are simply born incapable of knowing him.
3. They are fools – the Bible’s explanation.
4. They haven’t read the ______ yet. (insert holy book of choice).
5. They are lunatics.
6. They are devils incarnate, born merely to test the faith of the faithful.
7. They are rationalists who do not sense God directly and are not convinced by the words of the _______ (insert prophet of choice). Like any normal human being, they would like life to have intrinsic meaning and for death not to be the end, but they are regretfully unable to honestly accept religion truly offers these possibilities.
Number 7, by the way, is the one Mr Meekins can’t seem to fathom.
Actually, he comes up with a new explanation, which I never saw coming and couldn’t have dreamed up. It may well be all his own.
His analysis, or exposition as he calls it elsewhere, begins by paraphrasing the views of other pro religious writers whose aim seems to be to smear the integrity of non religious intellectuals. He goes on to interpret these misinterpretations in order to construct the argument, of sorts, that atheism is an intellectual conspiracy that arose specifically to undermine religion. In other words, non believers constructed science and mathematical logic in reaction to religion.
But why? What is the motivation for this conspiracy against religion? I quote:
A classic truism teaches that if wishes were horses beggars would ride, and another piece of cherished wisdom reveals wishing for something doesn’t make it so. These same principles apply to the longing for a deity-free universe as expressed by the thinkers profiled throughout this exposition. P7.
That’s right, according to Mr Meekins, atheism is a sort of wishful thinking – a wonderful daydream of personal annihilation within an ultimately meaningless universe. In other words, many of the most brilliant minds throughout human history have just been plain crazy.
Having a penchant for both the folksy and metaphorical, Mr Meekins might like to consider whether, when it comes to craziness, he’s not casting the first stone and calling the kettle black.
Friday, 15 April 2011
Dressing for Displeasure
Punk Faction
by Marcus Blakeston
2011 Smashwords
There is some box-ticking here. Studded jackets, tartan trousers, pointless belts, soap used as hair gel, the threadbare etiquette of downbeat English pubs, crappy joints where everyone looked around if anyone walked through the door, etc, etc – I remember it all.
The story covers a night out with Colin and Brian, teenagers getting drunk, circa the early 1980s. Somehow though, they seem older than contemporary teenagers. I couldn’t help feeling they were two middle-aged guys. Perhaps this reflects the feeling that kids aged faster back then.
Colin gets beaten up and urinated on in the toilets, they both get thrown out of the pub and trendy kids splatter Brian with tomato sauce. The joke is that this is a typical Wednesday night out in early1980s Manchester. This, lamentably, is far from incredible. The ambience of this story is entirely familiar – an ambience that, as I happen to know, survived till the 1990s, and even later. In the provinces, at least.
I was too young to be a punk, and wouldn’t have been one anyway. I never thought dressing up in a particular way and putting a particular type of music on the record player was going to be any kind of solution to a dim provincial existence. The real solution was obvious – leave for London. Or New York, if you had real gumption.
This story illustrates the reason why at least one person I know finds the idea of getting nostalgic about the punk era frankly incomprehensible. That said, punk was influential of course, and, considering that there were some very good songs, it is strange how rarely the music is played on mainstream radio. It’s too English, perhaps.
There’s more by Marcus here.
by Marcus Blakeston
2011 Smashwords
There is some box-ticking here. Studded jackets, tartan trousers, pointless belts, soap used as hair gel, the threadbare etiquette of downbeat English pubs, crappy joints where everyone looked around if anyone walked through the door, etc, etc – I remember it all.
The story covers a night out with Colin and Brian, teenagers getting drunk, circa the early 1980s. Somehow though, they seem older than contemporary teenagers. I couldn’t help feeling they were two middle-aged guys. Perhaps this reflects the feeling that kids aged faster back then.
Colin gets beaten up and urinated on in the toilets, they both get thrown out of the pub and trendy kids splatter Brian with tomato sauce. The joke is that this is a typical Wednesday night out in early1980s Manchester. This, lamentably, is far from incredible. The ambience of this story is entirely familiar – an ambience that, as I happen to know, survived till the 1990s, and even later. In the provinces, at least.
I was too young to be a punk, and wouldn’t have been one anyway. I never thought dressing up in a particular way and putting a particular type of music on the record player was going to be any kind of solution to a dim provincial existence. The real solution was obvious – leave for London. Or New York, if you had real gumption.
This story illustrates the reason why at least one person I know finds the idea of getting nostalgic about the punk era frankly incomprehensible. That said, punk was influential of course, and, considering that there were some very good songs, it is strange how rarely the music is played on mainstream radio. It’s too English, perhaps.
There’s more by Marcus here.
Monday, 11 April 2011
Keep Taking the Vitamins
Dr. Lucky
by Barry Burnett MD
March 2011 Smashwords
Burnett makes at least one good observation in this story – good luck is very often specific. And so, Dr Lukzewski is lucky for his patients – they never seem to die on his watch, and he is also lucky enough to survive events that would kill anyone else. However, he is an unprepossessing specimen physically, and he’s a dismal failure in love.
He yearns in vain for Barbi, the silicone-enhanced wife of Mr Big, a cancerous member of the world’s super-rich class, who is keeping Dr Lucky in luxuriant confinement on a Carribean island to prevent the progress of the disease.
Tortured by unrequited love and chafing for freedom, Dr Lucky embarks on a voyage aboard an inflatable beach bed. Tossed by waves, ripped by coral, attacked by sharks, he nevertheless finds himself on another shore some days later. He encounters a funeral procession and sees Barbi amongst the mourners. Mr Big has expired without his beneficial presence. In his plight, she either ignores or doesn’t see him.
The procession moves on and Dr Lucky, in a delirium, finds himself being rescued by a couple of guys delivering discarded carcasses to the town dump. Actually, they rob him of his expensive watch and jettison him with the carcasses. Here his luck turns for the better, because somehow being buried in offal rejuvenates him and when the mound of rotting material falls into the sea, Dr Lucky is reborn.
He’s rescued by a fisherman, for whom he works, and gets suntanned and fit. Meanwhile, he gradually recovers from his amnesia, only to find himself looking at Barbi as she leaves Mr Big’s island retreat on a speed boat, having inherited all his wealth. She no longer recognises Dr Lucky – his former self is a shadow of what he is now – and so his peculiar good/bad luck continues.
This story is written with great panache and has some striking tropes. It displayed the inventive, playful style that is characteristic of a young writer testing his strengths and limitations. I was surprised, therefore, to gather from the author’s biography that he is not this year’s spring chicken. There you have it – the vitamins work.
A fun read.
by Barry Burnett MD
March 2011 Smashwords
Burnett makes at least one good observation in this story – good luck is very often specific. And so, Dr Lukzewski is lucky for his patients – they never seem to die on his watch, and he is also lucky enough to survive events that would kill anyone else. However, he is an unprepossessing specimen physically, and he’s a dismal failure in love.
He yearns in vain for Barbi, the silicone-enhanced wife of Mr Big, a cancerous member of the world’s super-rich class, who is keeping Dr Lucky in luxuriant confinement on a Carribean island to prevent the progress of the disease.
Tortured by unrequited love and chafing for freedom, Dr Lucky embarks on a voyage aboard an inflatable beach bed. Tossed by waves, ripped by coral, attacked by sharks, he nevertheless finds himself on another shore some days later. He encounters a funeral procession and sees Barbi amongst the mourners. Mr Big has expired without his beneficial presence. In his plight, she either ignores or doesn’t see him.
The procession moves on and Dr Lucky, in a delirium, finds himself being rescued by a couple of guys delivering discarded carcasses to the town dump. Actually, they rob him of his expensive watch and jettison him with the carcasses. Here his luck turns for the better, because somehow being buried in offal rejuvenates him and when the mound of rotting material falls into the sea, Dr Lucky is reborn.
He’s rescued by a fisherman, for whom he works, and gets suntanned and fit. Meanwhile, he gradually recovers from his amnesia, only to find himself looking at Barbi as she leaves Mr Big’s island retreat on a speed boat, having inherited all his wealth. She no longer recognises Dr Lucky – his former self is a shadow of what he is now – and so his peculiar good/bad luck continues.
This story is written with great panache and has some striking tropes. It displayed the inventive, playful style that is characteristic of a young writer testing his strengths and limitations. I was surprised, therefore, to gather from the author’s biography that he is not this year’s spring chicken. There you have it – the vitamins work.
A fun read.
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