Ashley R Pollard

That moment we all knew would come, has happened. Dr. Stephen Hawking has died. My partner was fortunate enough to see him at his last lecture at Imperial College.

I read his A Brief History of Time when it first came out. The concepts were the stuff that makes for great science fiction.

Others, I know, found his book a hard read, Critics and wags said the book that people bought, but never finished reading. That's funny, but also a little bit sad that people think that it's funny. But there again, it sums up life.

My long-term followers who read this blog will remember that I first mentioned Brian Aldiss during the London SF Worldcon, LonCon 3, here.  Where a  bunch of enthusiastic fans sang happy birthday to him.  A happy memory.

A moments reflection reminds me that this was five years ago to today.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Brian back in 2015 at the British Science Fiction Association and Science Fiction Foundation jointly run day long event, imaginatively called the Mini-Convention, which you can read about here.  What I wrote there, where I said, "...given that he's not getting any younger (none of us are) it seemed like an opportunity we should take."

So, another icon of my youth has died, the by all accounts peacefully in his bed on the 18 of August.  At the age of ninety-two he's had a good run.  It feels a little bit sad to realize that I've not read any of his books in years or reviewed any of them on my blog.  I can see a re-read at some point in the future.

Tanith Lee died last weekend after a long illness, which I understand was cancer.  I was shocked by her passing.  I had the pleasure of having a meal with her many years ago, and she was an interesting woman, quirky, and just a little bit strange.  Like most creative authors I guess.

Very much a sad memento mori.

This week I've been struggling with a chapter in Strike Dog trying to knock it into shape.  Up my game and all that jazz.  The chapter has not been co-operating with me.  So it's still not finished.  It's also been another of those weeks where some days have negative numbers, and checking my diary I see that I wrote 1,402 new words and this brings the running total up to 100,282 words, which makes it the longest draft I've written so far.

Other than we've been on a Superman jag.  Watched the first two Richard Donner movies with Christopher Reeve, which are really lightweight rom-coms when you boil the stories down to their basics.  They've not dated well either, but Margot Kidder was impressive, because she looked like a normal woman.  It's not what we've become accustomed to when watching Hollywood movies today, where the women are so beautiful it's hard to credit how good looking they are.  We're now watching Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which while it has also dated still manages to be rather charming.

I first met Terry Pratchett at a games convention.  I think it was one of the UniCons, probably CamCon in 1986.  I'm not entirely certain, because I didn't write anything down, and this was in the days before the internet, blogging, FaceBook and Twitter.  We had bulletin boards, and dial up modems – if you've never had to dial up to connect to a service using a modem be grateful.  I know I am.

If I remember correctly, usual caveats apply (see above), I cycled to Cambridge from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, which caused a bit of a stir, because who'd be crazy enough to cycle 60 miles to go to a convention, stay overnight and then cycle back 60 miles?  That would've been me.  I was young then, and fitter than a fit thing.

Terry was a fan, you can read my friend Jaine's blog that nicely captures this here.  When I met Terry The Colour of Magic had been out in paperback for a year, and Light Fantastic had just arrived on the scene as a hardback, with the paperback due out later that year.  He'd also had Strata published in 1981 under his belt, and unknown to me at the time The Carpet People.  So not really a big name author, but someone breaking out.

I had been invited to be on a panel by Marcus Rowland and was introduced to Terry.  We talked about role playing games and stuff like the luggage having come from an RPG campaign Terry had been involved in.  I can't recall if he was the GM or a player.  Sorry for my  lack of clarity, but the one thing I want to point out here is that Terry played Dungeons & Dragons, and how cool is that?  Cooler than a cool thing.

Also Terry would talk to fellow RPG players, as recounted here by my friend Kari.  So my piece here is to just tell the world that Sir Terry Pratchett was a game-player, something that seems likely to be overlooked in all the mainstream obituaries.


NB: This is a mirror post from my game blog.

I've been to two funerals this week.  One for my partner's adopted father John Leach, aka Janos Lehar,  a composer who was also well known for playing the cimbalom.  There is a good chance you have heard him play, listen here.  Pretty much anytime a cimbalom is heard in a recording the chances are it is John Leach playing, for example the Alan Parsons Project album Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

The second was the funeral of a long time friend Ken Brown.  Who was the best friend of Andy Robertson, another friend of mine who died a month ago.  Far too many deaths of people I know over the last month.  So it all got a bit emotional for me during the service, especially when singing Amazing Grace and Jerusalem.  A lot of old faces came out of the woodwork to see Ken off, including David Pringle the former editor of Interzone.  All in all, as far as funerals go, it was a lovely day, with a fabulous wake in the pub afterward as Ken wanted.

Another upside, other than supporting his daughter and giving him a send off, was meeting Andy Robertson's daughters Alice and Claire.  I knew their mother Sylvia, who died when they were babies, which was the last time I saw them.  It was therefore both a surprise and a shock to meet them again all these years later.  Their mother would have been so proud to have seen them grown up. 

As I said last week, I read a Cthulhu story, and so inspired I started a short story of my own, only to find Peter Watts had beaten me to the idea of a sequel to The Thing when I was doing some research.  Still, my story takes a different approach to the events, being more mythos based, rather than being just some poor misunderstood alien trying to communicate with the humans.  I'll say no more at this point.  Consider yourselves teased.

I've also submitted a short story to my writers group, which will see which way the wind blows.  I'm not sure they want a genre writer like me in the group, as they seem more focused on fantasy and what are described as slipstream stories.  That or I'm just a terrible writer and they don't like what I've written.  Either way, I'm coming to think I may be too old fashioned, and out of touch with modern reader sensibilities in the SF market.

This has been a busy week what with Thanksgiving on Thursday, going to a friends book launch on Saturday afternoon and then to our first Xmas party in the evening.  

All that and I finished the first draft of Ghost Dog.  So this week I only managed to write 3116 words, to bring the running total for the month up to 27,779 and a first pass word total of 96,910 words that got bumped up today as I did edits from my Alpha reader to 96,993.  Well pleased with my progress this year.  

Permission to cheer loudly all round if you would like to?

Reading this week I've started with Chris Moriarty's Spin State the first book of a trilogy.  I liked this book the first time I read it and have had to wait more years than I care to remember to see the third book arrive.  

Hence the re-reading of the first two books before starting the latest one as it has been a while.  I've felt that this series hasn't had the love it deserves, but there again that might be down to when it first came out, which was around the time Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon series hit the shelves.  

Who knows, I don't.  Expect a bit more on Chris Moriarty's novels over the course of this month.

On the watching front we sat down and took in both of the new V seasons.  

I found myself really enjoying re-watching season one and wondering why we had delayed for so long in getting season two?  I guess we just lost track of it.  It's a good enough show, just not a great show, but it has its moments.  I thought that the story arc development was too slow, which may have been a factor in it not getting renewed for a third season, but there again what do I know about American TV show renewal (not a lot)?  

I was surprised by the online commentary and the feeling that it had an anti Obama message vis-a-vis healthcare.

Being British this undertone completely went over my head and I still don't see it to be quite frank.

We then started watching season one of The Professionals.  A late seventies, early eighties cult TV show featuring Bodie & Doyle that has a great theme tune that worms its way into your head.

A couple days after we started watching this the actor who played Bodie, Lewis Collins, died.  I remember when I originally watched the show I wasn't all that keen on Bodie as a character, much preferring Doyle.  However, on this re-watching of the episodes my opinion has changed.  

I think Lewis Collins really shines in all the scenes he is in and I much prefer his character.

So there is evidence that one's opinions do change over time, because if you had asked me who my favourite character in the show was a couple of weeks ago I would have said Doyle.

So now I have finished my third novel my intention is to go back and use my new found skills and edit my first and get it ready for the Beta readers who I have lined up.  After that I intend to work on my Cthulhu meets the Professional novel a I feel I can now do it justice.  

I also intend to catch up with a lot of books that I've been meaning to read and I will no doubt refer to them en-passant here over the next few weeks until I get back into the saddle writing the next novel.

Finally, apropos this blog you may have noticed that I have been updating things by adding more labels to my entries, and in a few cases expanding titles, and or splitting the odd post into two.  I expect that the format of this blog will continue to evolve as I add more content next year.

As you can see I've gone blond, and I'm not sure whether to stay blond or go back to being a red head.  Neither is my natural colour, that is sort of auburn, or was, but now with a large dose of grey, hence the assistance from my hairdresser.  

So purely in a sense of fun what do my readers think?

This week turned out to be a good week for banging those words out and progressing the third novel. 

Three chapters sent to my alpha reader, the first of which blew her out of the water.  Not literally, but she was at a loss for words.  So the weekly total was 9,693 making the running total 83,564.  Checking back on my previous two works I'm now at plus one week over the time it took to finish the previous novel.

Still reading A Game of Thrones, with 168 pages to go.  I finding it okay, but it drags a bit for my tastes.  Not that it isn't a good read, but it's not my thing; a certain lack of rockets, robots, or ray-guns.

This week we watched Warehouse 13 season 4.  

The start of the season didn't grab me, but it improved, as in it went back to what it did best and so the season ended quite well.  My complaint here is that the show tried to deal with quite serious themes, but the scripts and actors couldn't carry the weight within the format of what is basically a very light hearted family show.

As an addition I see that Doris Lessing has died.  

I had the great honour of being her minder at 45th World Science Fiction Convention held in Brighton, chosen purely on the grounds that I wasn't going to go all fan googly all over her.  I remember her as charming woman who was rather bemused by the idea of being invited to the convention, who enjoyed talking to people.

I had a mad moment when thinking to myself that I should rename my diary and call it my log, for the reason that it is a nod to Star Trek.  I can then delude myself into thinking I'm the Captain of the starship USS Writing a Novel NCC2013 and have those voice overs so beloved of the TV series.  Though of course a ship called Writing a Novel is more of shout out to the late Iain M. Banks Culture series than Gene Roddenberry's work.

I said all that I can think of saying about Iain here, but my friend Jaine Fenn wrote a nice tribute here.  As a result the beginning of the week I was on a bit of a downer, which affected my writing.  I chose to cheer myself up by watching some films.  Dredd, which was excellent, and Southland Tales where we decided to eject the disc at 45 minutes and watch MegaMind instead.  That was a good choice.  It had witty dialogue, good characterization and was funny too.  Last night we watched V for Vendetta again, which in my opinion only gets better each time I watch it.

Over the last few weeks we have also watched season five of True Blood, which sagged a little just before the end, but pulled out all the stops for the finale.  Continuum season one that showed a lot of promise.  Finally, watched the fifth and final season of Fringe, which has been one of my favorite shows, and it hit all the emotional nails on the head with the resolution of story arc.

Now if only I could write dialogue as good as in my favourite shows.

Well wishing ain't going to make it so, only blood, sweat and tears will do that.  So this week I managed to write 7,255 words, which brings the first draft of my second novel up to 56,970 words. I'm just about to enter what can be called the third act, where the shit hits the fan, things get serious, and really bad things happen to the characters.

Just announced here.  Expect link to be down for the near future.  Iain has been diagnosed with late stage gall bladder cancer, which means less time to live than he would like, or expect to have.  I'm feeling quite emotional about this as I write.

I can't say that I knew Iain well, drank at the bar with him at several British SF Eastercons, saw him on panels and giving talks and the like.  I really enjoy his Culture novels and what more is there to say?

BBC news here.  An interview here.