The Fanzine of Starbase Leicester

2010-09-07T03:58:00.003+01:00

Our new ratings system.

As editor of Avatar I decided a while ago to look into developing a ratings system which could be applied by all reviewers to all of the different things we review and which could serve as a quick and handy reference for the reader when comparing like with like, or like with unlike, or even unlike with unlike.

While other publications might use a percentage rating system or marks out of ten or even star based ratings, we are STARBASE Leicester so for all future reviews we will be using our own unique rating system based, not just on stars, but on their Spectral Class.

As I'm sure you all know, this Stellar Classification system categorises suns based on their size, luminosity and temperature. From the O-class which is the hottest type of star (between 28,000 and 50,000 degrees Kelvin), to B (10,000 to 28,000 degrees Kelvin), then A, F, G, K and finally with M as the coolest (2,500 to 3,500). Under the Morgan-Keenan System these Classes are further subdivided into 10 sub-classes, O9 being hotter than O1, which in turn is hotter than B9 etc.

By this system we will define the best movie, book, video game, etc, that could ever be created (which may be a theoretical impossibility) as O9 while the worst ever would earn the rating M0. The hotter something is, the better. The cooler, the worse it is, unless or course you happen to confuse the word 'coolest' with something being good, but I'm sure that won't happen.

In addition to this vector we also have the Luminosity of a star, denoted in Roman numerals i, ii, iii, iv and v. We will be using this rating in our reviews to measure the success of a work when compared to the other works by the same Author, Director, Publisher etc.

All of this is of course in the hands of the particular reviewer, but under this system a great book such as Neuromancer might be rated as O6v (being rated very high and the best of Gibson's works by the reviewer) while a dreadful (even by its Directors own admission) movie such as Transformers 2 could score as low as M4ii (not the worst film ever and not Michael Bays worst film, but close).

Conversely our own Sun which is a medium class main sequence star rated as G2v would be roughly equivalent to the Bill Cosby film Ghost Dad.

So I hope that will all be very clear to anyone with even a passing interest in astrophysics and provide you, the reader, and them, the reviewer, with a simple and clear method of grading and comparison. Enjoy!

Mark E. Cotterill

2010-09-07T03:58:00.001+01:00

Splice
Cert. 15
Directed by Vincenzo Natali
Starring Adrien Brody & Sarah Polley

Question 1: What do you get if you cross a kangaroo with a sheep?
Answer: A woolly jumper.

Question 2: What do you get if you cross Frankenstein with Oedipus Rex?
Answer. The movie Splice.

I think it’s been a while since anybody made a b-movie, deliberately I mean. For those of you too young to remember them, b-movies were made to accompany the main feature of an evening of movies, newsreels and shorts back in the days when people had a longer attention span. B-movies weren’t meant to be big blockbusters, they were always very low budget, not meant to break any box-office records and generally as cheesy as hell. It’s great to see this tradition being revived with Splice, a movie which looks pretty cheap but is good fun all the same.

It’s firmly in the biopunk genre which means that none of the ethical issues raised by the gene-splicing, protein synthesising or embryo researching poses are in even the slightest danger of being discussed. No, we’re here to see squishiness, slimy things exploding and nasty surprises. It's horror, but it's well lit and the basement is sterilised.

There are some original twists, I particularly liked the gender reversal of having the woman be the 'mad scientist' for a change, with her male partner taking on the role of trying to talk some sense into her. Although he's not really in much of a position of moral superiority since, when he isn't trying to kill the creature he's trying (and rather disturbingly succeeding) to have sex with it.

It gets hard to sympathise with either of the lead characters and you find yourself rooting for Dren almost by default. I think this was perhaps a very shrewd move by the writers as we are made to both love and hate both the creature and the scientists at various points. Sometimes the monster is cute and vulnerable, other times it's dangerous and scary. But even when the scientists are being 'loveable' it's hard to really forgive them for what they've done. As noted above the moral justification for their medical experiments is never adequately explored and is referenced only in the usual terms of "this protein could help Alzheimer sufferers." This movie does come just a few months after it was announced that scientists working in the US have created 'artificial' life in the lab, raising the prospect that however far fetched this story may seem, it's probably not totally in the realms of fantasy.

As a horror movie it does most definitely work, by which I mean in the style of an old 1950s horror movie. A lot of the time It makes you want to stop looking at the screen and there is no let up in the stream of gross-out bodily fluids and goo. True to the best traditions of action films there is something to be horrified by every few minutes and the pace is kept up and maintained right through to the film's climax.

I was thinking about whether this was actually one of the few movies released this year which might have actually benefited from 3D, but I think at any rate it is a better experience on the big screen. It's much more visceral in the dark and probably wouldn't have the same impact on a tv screen.

SBL Rating: G6

2010-06-08T21:34:00.001+01:00

The Footsoldier's Tale

by Daniel Ribot

It was half past two in the morning and we all stood by the kettle at the far side of the lab, washing down our caffeine pills with sweetened fair-trade instant coffee. No milk. No-one could keep milk in this place without it disappearing. In any case, we had no money for fripperies like milk, what with PhD grants being what they were, and not all of us having a grant anyway. We were all here, at this time and in this place, to do real science. Sure, we had to work at night when the equipment was free and the undergraduates were out partying or whatever, but we had the chance to work, experiment and discover. Maybe in a few years we would be all working as science teachers or dental lab assistants, but we would always have this to look back on; Imperial College, Professors Gill, Rangwala, Wilmslow and Becker, access to the only hadron-electron particle scanner in the country and joint authorship on a number of research papers.

I had arrived at Imperial from the University of Southampton. The Universities of Coventry, Gottingen, De Paaw and Felixtowe had led me here as I slowly became a physicist, then a particle physicist and eventually a particle engineer. I was good, people told me so, but I wasn't the genius some of them made out, especially my mother. Had I been a genius, I would have a tenured post by now rather than subsisting on a series of short-term grants. Having said that, it wasn't all bad. If things went to plan, I would be Dr Lawrence Griffiths, PhD, in less than a year. My supervisor, Professor Tom Gill, always made encouraging noises about my work, which was reassuring. This was, despite everything, a good lab to work in and my colleagues were quickly becoming friends. I sipped my coffee and listened to the nightly gossip.

Malc, all frizzed red hair and wild sideburns, told us of his encounter with Professor Wilmslow, who had put in a rare appearance at the department yesterday. He was leaving his office with his patent leather satchel gaping open and stuffed with papers when Malc lollopped towards him. Noticing the crumbs on the professor's beard, Malc quipped that he hoped he had enjoyed his biscuit. The professor, fearing some sort of innuendo, had walked off muttering. Malc copied the movements of the great man escaping as the rest of us laughed. Johan was not fond of Wilmslow, despite his Nobel prize. He repeated his favourite Wilmslow aphorism by calling him a neutrino, because he had no positive charge and no weight. The conversation then took its usual twists and turns of office banter, romantic speculations and the abject state of scientific research in the country today.

Soon we all settled into our tasks, drifting through the cavernous lab buildings to our various work stations. Malc, Johan and I were currently working on a particle assembler, a machine capable of putting together particles into atoms, atoms into molecules and molecules into various forms of matter. It was part of a global race to develop teleportation technology. Already two of the three main problems in teleportation had been overcome. The first was the advances in scanner technology that now allowed the 3D mapping of objects down to the level of sub-atomic particles. Second, the discovery of Karamov-Dumov dissembler rays that smashed matter into particles almost instantaneously. In the past couple of years these advances had left only the particle assembler as the key element that was needed to put a teleporter together. The particle assembler's job was to rebuild the atomized matter at the destination point. It was perhaps the most complex element of the whole process.

Not surprisingly, many teams all over the world were trying to get there first. We thought we had a good chance of making it, despite the competition. Our prototype, thanks mainly to Malc and Johan, was almost perfect. My job was to sort out the slight errors that hindered that perfection. This was a crucial task, as atoms and molecules are such flexible building blocks. A slight variation in the atomic composition could be catastrophic. Even a 90% accurately assembled cheese sandwich might end up looking like something else: a glass of cranberry juice, an aspic jelly or a handful of stone chippings. Perfect accuracy was vital, so I had had a good deal of work to do. It had taken me about a year and five months to iron out all the bugs in the system, but I was reasonably confident that I had managed it.

What we had done, rather than test the particle assembler on its own, was to rig up a whole teleport machine in one go. It was done partly as a joke, although one that most of the other doctoral students helped us out with, giving us access to whatever we needed. Every night we would arrive and assemble the machine, conduct our experiments and disassemble it the next morning to return its components to the various labs, offices and workshops they came from.

Tonight we were hopeful of a breakthrough. Again, we would test the particle assembler by attempting to teleport a book. We had all made a half-serious arrangement to bring in a book each and scan every page and record its hadron-electron make-up. Then we would try and teleport the book in the lab and would be able to check if it had made a perfect transition. We left the books scattered on the window sill, ready to use. Today, we used Johan's book. He had a copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' that his sister had recommended. Johan's opinion was that the book was awful and he was happy to sacrifice it for scientific purposes. We put the book in the machine that we jokingly called 'the grinder' and engaged the Karamov-Dumov dissembler ray. The book disappeared from the grinder and re-formed, in a cloud of acrid smoke, within the new particle assembler.

Our success was complete. The tension of the past few months dropped from my shoulders. This was it! We had done it! Bloody gone and done it! I jumped into the air, punching the skies like a madman. Malc seized the teleported book and whooped. He leafed through the pages reading extracts from Austen's masterpiece. "Even the greasy fingerprint on page 24!", he shouted. Me and Johan turned to each other and laughed. Soon all the research students had gathered, cheering and showering us with congratulations. Even the cleaners and security guards came in to see what we had done. The best thing was, everything was on record. Our book had been scanned before and after, showing 100% accuracy. I was overwhelmed. All those months of work had provided staggering results. This was just the biggest thing that had ever happen to me. For a scientist, for anyone, how could it ever be better than this? The next day we were congratulated by the entire department. Malc flourished the book and retold the story in his own ebullient way. "Even the fingerprint!", he exclaimed, showing the book to the professors. Wilmslow took a special interest in the volume, although he did not stay for the celebrations that took place that afternoon in the 'Slug and Lettuce'.

* * *

The court case dragged on for the best part of a year. Professor Wilmslow claimed the credit for inventing the first teleporter and accused us of plagiarizing his work and stealing his research. It was he, Professor Ken Wilmslow, Nobel prize winner and big cheese of the scientific establishment, who had made the crucial breakthrough in teleportation technology. We were just three PhD students trying to make a name for ourselves and biting the hand that fed us. That was the story he stuck to throughout the trial. The University, unsurprisingly, backed its Nobel laureate against the lowly doctoral students. Even the department tried to buy us off and threaten us. We were outraged but there was little we could do about it. Eventually, Johan gave in. He graduated with a PhD and returned to Holland and a job at Phillips. Malc and I stuck to our guns and were suspended from the University. We lost the case. In the end the key piece of evidence was Wilmslow's greasy fingerprint clearly present on page 24 of Johan's copy of 'Pride and Prejudice'. It was taken by the judge as irrefutable proof of Wilmslow's claim. I remembered Malc's tale about the crumbs on Wilmslow's beard. He had probably gone down to the lab, found the book and started reading the Austen classic while eating a pastry. The old bastard had become a legend in his own lunchtime.

Nauseated by the whole experience, I gave up my PhD research. Malc swallowed his pride and begged to be allowed to graduate and was eventually re-enrolled at Imperial. Today, I am back living with my parents and teaching at a local school. On the walls of the science-block common room, I am mocked by newspaper cuttings showing Professor Wilmslow receiving his second Nobel prize for physics. It was awarded for his work "developing teleportation technology". I read in them part of his speech that pays tribute to unsung heroes; the PHD students and humble researchers who are the true footsoldiers of science. I stare at these press cuttings as I get ready for my Year Eight bottom-set combined science class. I hate this job. My students treat me like I'm a total moron. The real pisser is that they are right.

2010-05-09T17:40:00.000+01:00

The Smuggler's Tale

by Mark E. Cotterill

Introduction.

A long while ago I had the idea of turning the old classic computer game "Elite" into a board game. The idea seemed quite simple; a board laid out with planets, players with ships loading them up with cargo, fighting pirates, police and each other to deliver the cargo to whichever planet they thought they could make the most money at and generally doing whatever they wanted until they earned enough "Right On Commander!" tokens to get to Elite status.

One of the main problems (and there were many) was that in play testing games would routinely last several days, much longer than even Twilight Imperium players were willing to play for. It seemed that I had modelled the original game far too closely (Elite status could take hundreds of hours to achieve) and needed a way to reduce things down to their basic element. I tried a lot of different ways to make the game quicker, snappier and generally more interesting and after playing the new improved updated version of Talisman I had the idea of making 'Characters Classes' for the players to use. Each class could have its own mission, objectives, traits, ship, etc.

So I set about creating 12 different 'spacers' which represented the different types of career you could pursue in the original game; traders, miners, bounty-hunters and so on. Before long this list grew into a project all of its own, with character backgrounds, objectives and missions all carefully mapped out and written into a large notebook, until finally I realised I had the makings of 12 separate short stories, maybe even a book! A sort of Canterbury Tales for the Elite universe. It has been fun exploring that universe, inspired by the original game. Whenever I played Elite I always wanted to step out of the ship and see what was on the stations, go down to the planets, meet the aliens, find out what it's like to live on an Anarchy world, now I can!

Here is the first of those stories, The Smuggler's Tale which first appeared in the recent Issue 1 of the hardcopy version of The Avatar. I am currently working on Story II The Merchant's Tale which is a sequel to The Dark Wheel by Robert Holdstock, a free novella given away with the original game.

Look out for The Assassin's Tale, The Slaver's Tale, The Bounty-Hunter's Tale and many more, coming soon(ish) to this fanzine!

----------------

My father always warned me to stay away from planets. I never really understood what he meant until I became a smuggler. Planets were dangerous places. So was space of course, but you could at least see the danger; The pirate bearing down on your ship with missiles locked, the meteorite that flashes up on your astrogation console, even the microscopic fissure in the lining of your hull through which your precious air supply slowly leaks out. It was all there to see if you just looked hard enough, but on planets things were more complicated. Laws, governments, pandemics, revolutions, the unpredictable actions of others.

So I followed my Father’s advice and got a ship. I named it Prometheus. That was the name of the first ship I ever travelled on, the cruiser which rescued me any my family from Zaonce when I was nine years old. My Prometheus was a Cobra Mark III, a combat/trader, small and fast, but not cheap. I had to take out some seriously heavy finance to get her, which kept me working every waking hour, but that was the price of freedom. I could do what I wanted, go where I wanted and trade what I wanted.

I started out simple around the safe-worlds, pulling food off Lave and taking it to industrial planets. That was fine for a while, but all it took was one bad day and I’d be back into the red. Like the time I was forced to drop my cargo by some pirates out near Vega. They had me outnumbered and knew I wasn’t stupid enough to fight them. They told me to dump all my containers and then they let me go.

That was when it all began I guess. I already knew about the various shortcuts to getting rich, but had no real contacts to get into anything serious. Furs into Lave wasn’t too much of a risk though, they were legal almost everywhere else and it was such a busy station they rarely scanned incoming ships. I had no trouble shifting my small consignment of Leestian tree frog pelts and one ton of furs was worth about the same as a hold-full of computers. My buyer told me what time to make the drop and which docking bay and he’d make sure the scanners were pointed in the other direction.

Eventuallyb I could afford to fit the Prometheus out with extra energy units, military lasers and an ECM and before long I was running around in a fortress; I would have loved to have met those pirates again! Once I had a tough ship I started getting more adventurous, taking firearms into Confederacy systems and even a few Anarchy worlds. Once I’d cracked open the Zaonce route I began running narcotics.

* * *

Reorte was my big pay-day twice a month. I’d pick up the white-stuff at Zaonce, jump straight into Reorte system space and dock. My buyer was a man named Pitz Zebur, though whether that was his real name I somehow doubt. We did all the unloading by hand using old fashioned hook lifters and a couple of grav-sleds in a part of the Station nobody used much any more.

The first sign of any trouble was when we saw the giant insectoid security team swarming into the loading bay like some kid had kicked open a termite hill. They were each twice the size of us and there were maybe a hundred or more of them. Zebur never stood a chance. He got spiked through the chest by some giant bug while I was pinned against the side of my ship. The bug that had me fired something like glue onto my body and I was stuck fast. At first I was afraid it might be acid, but all it did was keep me from moving. I could hear Zebur screaming as they chewed him up, but it was quick. I knew I would be next.

The one in charge wore a different design on its shell, I wasn’t sure if it was painted on or part of its natural colouring. I could hear the same clicking and scraping sounds that had been the last thing Zebur had heard but this time my translator picked it up and tried to make sense of it. There was also a smell associated with the sound, and I remembered something in a ‘spacer’s survival guide’ I had once listened to about covering up your body odour when dealing with insectoids. A broken series of words drifted into my ear.

“WRONG, BRING, HEPAR.” I knew two of the words, not bad for an eleven-credit talk-o-matic, but whatever the bug was saying to me was hardly important. I already knew what my fate would be, I’d been busted, I was either going to die a slow and painful death or there would be a trial, and then I was going to die a slow and painful death.

After a few minutes one of them splashed some liquid onto the substance which was holding me onto the hull and I came unstuck. It pushed me towards the already open side door which led to the cockpit. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I dare not believe I was being set free, maybe with a fine or something. Were they just tormenting me? I got in and shut the door, then sat at the ManOp console and realised I was shaking so hard I wouldn’t be able to operate the controls anyway. The image of Zebur being chewed up kept running through my head. Even as I’d been glued down, they’d been emptying the remaining containers from my cargo bay, but the fact that I’d lost a huge fortune in narcs didn’t even begin to cross my mind.

The docking clamps were still on and I couldn’t pull away until they were released. Everything on the astrogation console was blank, as was every other system on the ship. The power and comms feed had been locked out and an override had shut everything down. After a while I saw another massive creature entering the docking bay. It was a flattened, squat beetle shape with a greyish white body. It moved slowly towards the ship, feeling its way with its long spindly antenna. When it found the edge of the hull it climbed up onto the top section. I could hear its feet tapping on the outside as it crawled all over my ship. From my limited vantage point I couldn’t see exactly what it was doing but as it worked its way around it passed by the front cockpit window. I could see it was laying down this oily, silky substance. It walked in precise lines, following the contours of the hull and wrapping the whole ship in this sheet of material.

The stuff was all over, even laid on top of the front viewport. It was perfectly transparent and seemed to be hardening into some sort of clear shell. Once it was finished the creature went away and was replaced by four others. These were smaller and looked more like humanoid ants. They went round cutting the material, which I could see was now as hard and stiff as the alloy used to make the ship itself. They made incisions around all the small openings like the vents, ports and other necessary parts of the ship, but not the door to the cockpit. They cleared the cargo bay doors, but since there was no connection between the bridge and the cargo area, which didn’t have life support anyway, I knew I couldn’t get out that way. Finally, there was a loud bang as a small tube was fired into the cockpit, shooting splinters of poly-alloy around the cabin. There was a hiss of pressurisation as some tiny mechanism in the tube cycled on and off then several small objects fell out the end of it. Packets of food, very basic space-rations, about a month’s worth. A quick look at the water tank showed that this too had been topped up, just as it would have been if I’d been on a normal stopover.

The console lit up. The engines showed ready. The fuel tanks were full, communications were back and a single line of text appeared on the message screen. It was a figure, an amount of money; five thousand credits. All I had to do to was hit the launch button and I would be away from this place. I switched over to my accounts screen and saw the same five thousand credit figure, owed to the Reorte Corporation. It was a fine, an amount I had to pay off, but with no date attached to it. Pay the fine and then what? They’d let me go, they’d kill me? Repeated attempts to contact somebody on the Station were met with a dead channel. My interpersonal comms had been disabled so I couldn’t place an external call to anywhere. It was all very weird, but, I wasn’t dead. I hit ‘Launch’.

* * *

I suppose if I really wanted to analyse it by looking at my logs and comms records I’d see that I probably spent more than ninety-nine percent of my time in the cockpit of my ship anyway. The other one percent would be the few hours I spent each week trudging about stations, handling contracts, maybe a few hours in some station bar listening to other spacers stories, or telling them mine, but that one percent must have been the bit which kept me sane. Even thinking about not being able to leave this tiny space behind the astrogation console made me realise how much of a prison sentence this was. There was nothing I couldn’t do from in here; it was possible to live through to old age and die behind the controls, and a few had. I worked out that to pay the fine off completely would take over a year, then accounting for expenses during that time, fuel, food, docking levies and all that other extra stuff, I was looking at over two years work to break myself free.

There was another way, the way that had got me into this mess in the first place; smuggling. Just because I was a one man prison ship shouldn’t alter the way my old contacts dealt with me should it? I’d already noticed that a few of the regular, above board sellers had black-listed me on the station manifests once they’d noticed my criminal status had changed, but what difference did it make from one fugitive to another?

I kept working straight but made a plan for myself to get few extra credits out of a simple computer run off Diso. Usually there was a heavy tax on tech exports out of the Station, but I knew how to get around that. Everything went smooth and the whole exercise even cheered me up a bit too. Planning the thing, thinking up back stories for if I got caught, it was like I was back out there doing it all again, on top, winning. For a moment I almost forgot I was a prisoner. I did the run a couple more times and then noticed that my food supply was staring to hit the really nasty and unpalatable stuff that even I wouldn’t eat, so I loaded up with something for the run back to Reorte.

Somebody must’ve talked. When I arrived I found a message waiting for me. There were three amendments to the original fine which all tallied with my runs out of Diso. The total increase was another nine-hundred credits, three-hundred for each indiscretion. I got so mad I wanted to hit someone, but the only person around was me, so I slammed my fist into the bulkhead instead. I sat back in my pilot chair and let it pump me with calming drugs before lulling me into a micro-sleep cycle of six minutes. When I woke up the food had been fired through the tube, the water was back up to max and the fuel was being topped. I tried to contact someone in the Reortian Judicial System, but I soon discovered that the Reortians didn’t have a Judicial System.

My next plan was much more discreet. I figured out a way to make a run that only myself and one other person would know about, and they knew that if they talked I’d be onto them. This time it was slaves. I hated myself for doing it, but the money was too good. Every smuggler hated slave-trading, apart from a few particularly nasty ones who seemed to positively enjoy it. The destination was an asteroid outpost way out on the edges of the Onisou system. The whole thing was over in less than a day and I got paid directly on delivery. I didn’t even need to dock, I simply dumped the containers out. Each one was a self-supporting life-pod with three to four humanoids or felines locked in cyro-storage. The payment was in the form of a small package of high value gems which the fuel-scoop picked up and locked in the ship’s security box ready for re-sale at my next stop. I thought that surely the Reortians wouldn’t have any informants out here. I was wrong. I decided it was time to get out.

Dahon Ginson had been a buddy of mine back when I worked on freighters. He was a gifted engineer and once I had my own ship I tracked him down to a place he ran out on the fringe. Tchunla Station was an old refinery and had become something of a haven for the local pirates, but not the kind who’d slit your throat to steal your sunglasses, these were pirates from a bygone era. The old Knights of Space who still lived to their own codes and who remembered a time before the Galactic Co-Operative of Worlds.

I made sure I approached the station from the proper direction since I knew Dahon would be nervous when I didn’t respond to his communications. I’d set my running lights to indicate a comms problem and as I got in close the docking bay doors opened. I set the ship down right in the middle of the huge hanger. One of the mechanics trotted over to see who I was but all I could do was wave at him out of the cockpit window. Then Dahon himself came over, looking confused. He waved some instructions at the other mechanic who went away then came back with a computer handset attached to a long coil of cable. They both disappeared beneath the ship and then there was a crackle on the intercom.

“Hey there Jax! Can you read me?”

“Dahon! Yeah I hear you!” I called.

“What the hell have you gotten yourself into now Garrison? What’s with all the wrapping paper? It’s says your a prison ship, property of the Reorte Corporation.” I explained everything to him. “I never seen anything like this before,” I could hear the faint sounds through the mike of him tapping on the hull with his wrench, moving along the underside and up to the cargo doors. “They’ve left gaps for the cargo door to open, but not much else, a few vents, connection points. What is this stuff?”

“I got no idea,” I said, “some kind of organic chemical, the bugs laid it on there.” I watched as they wheeled in gantries and work platforms around the ship.

“It says some stuff on here about penalties for interfering with or damaging Reortian property,” said Dahon.

“You worried?” I asked.

“Nah! There’s worse people out to get me than them. I got a cutter that should be able to slice through this stuff no problem. How long you been in there?” I told him about the last three months.

For the next hour or so there was the sound of cutting and drilling and swearing and of drill bits snapping and motors burning out. Finally Dahon came back on the intercom,

“I’ll have to try the plasma-torch, but it’s probably gonna melt the hull plating.”

“We can replace that once I’m out,” I said.

“Yeah. Get yourself suited up, the welder only works in a vacuum.” I did as he said. I knew I’d come to the right man, Dahon would never give up on something and he’d keep working until he got me out, even if it meant spending all night and pushing his crew to exhaustion.

The plasma welder didn’t work and nor did the zero-point plate cutter. Nothing did.

“There’s always the obvious,” he said, with resignation in his voice.

“Cut through from the cargo bay?” I knew we were both thinking the same thing. It meant destroying most of the life-support system, power units and major bulkheads, effectively gutting the ship to get me out.

“Yeah, I hate to kill a ship, but unless you want to stay in there…”

“I don’t, I have to get out Dahon, more than anything, doesn’t matter what it costs.” He said nothing more. I heard him open up the doors to the main cargo bay.

Suddenly there was a lot of noise. People were running and shouting. They dragged a body across the deck towards the first-aid station; it was my friend. There was a long break in communication. I was desperate to find out what had happened, but everyone was too busy to speak to me.

Twenty lonely minutes passed and then the gantries were moved away and the comm line was unplugged. Everyone disappeared down into the habitation modules underneath the bay. I sat there for a long time until one of the mechanics showed up, obviously drunk, with a laser pistol in his hand. His aim was way off and he had no hope of causing any damage to the ship with something so small, but I could tell who he was trying to hit. I put the Prometheus in the air and manoeuvred her out through the hanger doors.

It felt like no matter what I did, wherever I went the Reortians had it covered. It was as if they’d been running some experiment; locking up people in their ships and then watching what they did. Each time someone had escaped they’d changed things or added a new device which would prevent the same thing happening again, but if that was true, then what chance of did I have of ever escaping?

* * *

My answer came about five months later. He was leaving the Station at Lave as I was going in, another ship exactly like mine. I was already on my approach so couldn’t divert, but I managed to get his number. After docking I ran a few searches and discovered he’d bought textiles. I knew he’d be heading for Sirus so I launched without loading anything and hoped I’d get there before he left. My hunch proved to be right and sure enough I saw the same ship on the Station roster. I waited for him to launch and followed him out. He got the message and signalled me to follow.

He took a convoluted route out of SysCon to a small moon. It was low gravity enough that we could land on it. His ship settled down into the soft regolith of a crater and I flew around to land facing him. As the dust settled I could see him through the front screen. He waved at me a couple of times, smiling. I waved back. He picked something up and pointed it out through the screen. A short burst of green laser flashed out, onto the back wall of my cabin. Instinctively I ducked. It began to flicker and after a few seconds I realised it was just a communications laser. I rooted around in the locker underneath the pilot’s chair and dug out a similar device. They were used for emergency long-range communications in the old days, but now every smuggler had one stashed away somewhere to bypass communications when there was a risk of eavesdropping.

I set up the receiver dish behind the viewport where the beam was and tuned it in to the green band. A line of text came up on the small display.

‘Hey! You been busted by the Reetans too?’ I tapped in

‘yes’ and he came back with

‘how long?’

‘7 months,’ I told him. He told me he’d been like this for six years. I said that I couldn’t imagine being able to last that long, that I’d probably end up flying my ship into the sun to get it over with.

‘Yeah tried that once,’ he replied, ‘but they cut my engines, turned me around and sent a ship to tow me back.’

‘Shame, they say it’s a quick way to go, you take the shields down, you explode!’ There was no reply so I sent another message. ‘How much you in for?’

‘Stopped counting when I got to ten-thousand,’ he messaged back.

‘What did you do?’

‘Smuggling.’

‘Yeah, me to.’

He told me that he’d started out with a fine like me and they’d kept adding to it. Every time he payed some of it off, they’d add some more and there was absolutely nothing he could do.

‘We are good source of income for them’ he typed, ‘Corporation remember. You really think they ever let us go?’

‘Can’t escape!’ I replied.

‘I have plan,’ he said.

‘How?’ I said. Through the viewport I could see him tapping away at his keyboard.

‘Have teleporter, need GH.’ A ‘Galactic Hyperdrive’, an expensive piece of equipment capable of flipping a ship through witch-space into a completely new galaxy, one without Reortians in it. From what I could work out his plan involved wiring up my ship with his in some mad scheme to bypass the teleport inhibitor and TransMat us both out of our ships at the same time.

He told me he already had the teleporter installed and if I decided I wanted ‘in’ I should buy a Galactic Hyperdrive, but not have it fitted, and meet him here in exactly one month. He would wait for two hours and if I didn’t show up he’d know I wasn’t interested. He took down the receiver and gunned his engines back to life. In a cloud of dust and debris he lifted off and flew back out the way he’d come in.

I took off as well and headed back to the Station, all the while thinking about the plan. All night I thought of it and all the next day. I also thought about this lunatic and what he was proposing. I was terrified by the thought of those six years trapped in a ship and what they had done to this man’s mind. Even more terrifying though was the plan itself; the product of this mind. A plan so unbelievable and insane that the Reortians could not possibly have foreseen it, and for that reason I knew, most terrifyingly of all, it must work.

Back at Reorte I found myself smuggling something totally new; my own money. With some creative accounting and by adjusting the buy/sell rates of a few items I secured the necessary funds to buy the Galactic Hyperdrive unit. The familiar screen showed up with the fine repayments in one column and the usual penalty charges in the other. Since I was now being careful and playing by the rules these amounted to little more than ‘flight violations’, ‘regional restriction contraventions’ and ‘inaccurate log keeping infringements’. I pleaded poverty with the faceless automated system and opted not to pay them.

Four days later I was at the meeting point. Right on schedule the other ship flew down and turned sharply into the pit of the crater. I still had some questions to ask about how this was going to work, but my new friend was a little too impatient to answer them all. He told me that we’d jump out to deep space, well away from any possible rescue or interference. I’d launch the uninstalled Galactic Hyperdrive, he would then set the teleport to a wide scan and we’d dock our two ships together using umbilical supply lines. We’d guide our ships within range of the drive and set up a field using the shields that hopefully would cover us both at the same time. Then I’d activate the Galactic Hyperdrive remotely and with a lot of luck, once we were clear of this Galaxy the teleport inhibitors should cut out and beam us to a nearby planet or station.

I knew that in all probability flipping two ships like that would rip both of them apart before we dropped out of witch space, but by then we’d either be off on our way along the teleport beam or completely dead. Either way was fine with me.

* * *

The smart ones among you will have noticed that, since I’m telling you all this, I can’t possibly be dead. That’s a fairly safe assumption, but there are some things worse than death.

Before that day I’d never been in a teleporter so I wasn't sure if I felt so damn awful because of being bounced through the witch space between two galaxies or because I'd been cooped up for so long, but when I looked across to the other side of the room I was in I realised I had no right to complain. My 'partner' had fared less well, at least I assumed it was him. It was very hard to tell what it was.

I tried to stand, but discovered that my legs didn't work too well. I thought about the Prometheus and realised she was gone. I had felt her breaking apart as I was beamed out, torn to pieces by the huge forces of the Drive. That realisation alone hurt me more than any physical injury could. I couldn’t understand how I had let myself do what I’d just done. I knew I really must have been out of my mind.

I looked around at glassy walls, smooth like they had been heat-blasted. There was a slight condensation on them and they felt cold and clammy to the touch. I could hear a distant clicking and clattering that sounded familiar. I crawled out into a long straight corridor. There was nobody else around but I suddenly felt a desperate urge to get out of there. I tried to stand again, using the frame of the doorway for support, but the walls of the corridor were too smooth and rounded and I slipped back into the dirt and dust on the floor.

If I couldn’t walk, maybe I could hide until I got my strength back. I kept moving, desperately clawing at the rough ground, knowing that I might be discovered at any minute. After expending all the energy I thought I had left in me I looked back and could still see the same doorway I’d just left. I was completely exhausted but still determined to push myself on, wherever I was going. I must have passed out, but when I woke up I was still lying in the mud. I pulled myself up again to rest against the wall. I was moving a bit quicker now and staggered to the end of the corridor where the sounds seemed to be more intense, though I wasn’t sure which direction any of it was coming from.

Right at that moment I would have given my life for a few seconds of Zaonce sun and fresh air, to be back on my home world again. I swore that if I ever did get out of here I'd give up all the travelling, the smuggling, figure out exactly what the hell it was I was trying to run away from and settle down.

The passageways led past gardens of finely cultivated moulds and fungal growth, past rooms of electronic equipment and all the latest tech from the many product lines of the Reorte Corporation and then they led me into a huge chamber. It was full of Reortians, this time the leader species. Tall, ant-like insectoids, each one lying on a pallet rolling around wildly with their antennae waving in the air. I realised they hadn’t even noticed me, they couldn’t ‘see’ me because my scent was covered by some other all pervading smell. Scattered around the room were some cargo cases that I recognised. Narcotics! The good stuff, the same kind that I used to smuggle here. Several of the cases were open and packets of white powder had been thrown around the room in a frenzy. Most of it was in heaps near to the aliens themselves and that's when I saw what they'd been doing.

One packet of Hepar was split open across the thorax of each Reortian. Their fore-legs and feelers were still sticky with the stuff and the smell of it, mixed with their own natural pheromones I suppose, was very strong. One of them, at the back of the chamber, rolled over onto its legs and shakily got up. It began moving towards me, its large feelers noticing me with some difficulty. It motioned with its head but without my translator I had no way of decoding its body movements and scent messages.

It pressed a few buttons on a machine set into a low table, which blinked in response. I thought about running, but knew there was no way I could. A huge swarm of guards, like the ones I'd seen on the Station, surrounded me. Their clacking and snapping noises rose to an unbearable level as they took hold and bound me up in more of the same strong silky stuff that my ship had been sealed in.

They dragged me down through the corridors to a place that seemed all together more human. White walls and human-sized doors. I could make out medical gear and beds. The bugs handed me over to a group humans, dressed in smart white Corporation medical uniforms.

That’s where I am now, hooked up to this machine, which is keeping me alive. I don’t very often speak to the medics, but when I do they laugh and jeer at me for my ignorance, because I never bothered to find out what hepar actually was; the liver of mammals, dried and powdered. The very finest is of course found in humans. The final punishment, for destroying my ship, which they insist belonged to them, and refusing to make any more money for them, was an idea they say they got from me, or rather the name of my ship;

Prometheus: Titan, demigod, stole fire from Zeus and returned it to Earth. As punishment he was chained to a rock where each day an Eagle fed upon his liver, which grew again each night.

THE END

2010-04-18T01:04:00.001+01:00

Comic-Book Heroes & Villains Night

A night devoted to everyone's favourite caped crusaders and helmeted hoodlums where we asked people to nominate their favourite Heroes and Villains, then tell us why they thought they should be honoured by being included in our all-new Hall of Heroes or Vault of Villains.

Competition was fierce as only five places were available in each with everyone voting for the eventual winners. The results were surprising, with no sign of Batman, Superman or Spiderman and with some very unusual suggestions.

The Hall of Heroes

1. THOR (12 Votes)

"Enough Talk!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He fires lightning bolts.

2. He has an awesome hammer that returns to his hand.

3. There's a large Viking stood behind me who looks like he might kill me if I don't vote him in.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He's mythical.

Weapons/Powers: Thor's hammer, Mjolnir

Who is he?:

A Marvel Superhero created by Stan Lee based on the Thor of Norse mythology. Thor's Father Odin decides his son needs to be taught humility and so places Thor (without memories of godhood) into the body of a partially disabled medical student, Donald Blake.

Thor's arch enemy is his step-brother Loki, who returns to Earth repeatedly to try to destroy him.

2. REID FLEMING - World's Toughest Milkman (11 Votes)

"Why don't you shut up?"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He's a working class hero.

2. He likes 'sticking it to the Man'

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. None

Weapons/Powers: Milk Truck

Who is he?:

Reid Fleming was a comic strip drawn by David Boswell in the late 1970s. Reid is not a superhero, he's just a regular guy who has to deal with grouchy managers, angry customers and mad dogs, all without once missing his favourite TV show. Reid has what today we might call 'anger management issues' and on the very first page of his comic he beats someone up for making fun of his Milk Truck, drinks a bottle of whiskey and pours milk into someone's fish tank.

His irascible manner, refusal to do anything he is told and ability to talk his way out of any situation with his boss, Mr. O'Clock, makes Reid a hero of an entirely different sort!

3. The TICK (8 Votes)

"Not in the face!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. Spoooooon!

2. He has a sidekick named Arthur.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. None

Weapons/Powers: He's nigh-indestructible with super-strength (and very very stupid)

Who is he?:

The Tick began life in 1986 as a newsletter mascot for a chain of comic stores in the Boston area. He is an absurdist spoof on comic-book superheroes and span off into a comic book series in 1988 before gaining mainstream popularity through an animated TV series on Fox in 1994.

He protects a city called 'The City' and travels about by running and jumping over rooftops, causing damage to the rooftops as he goes. He is well-intentioned, friendly, good-natured, high-spirited and prone to quipping odd remarks and 'inspirational' speeches filled with bizarre metaphors. He is also know for his nonsensical battle cry, "Spooooooon!", which he decided upon one day while eating breakfast.

4. DAREDEVIL (8 Votes)

"Bullseye!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. I dare you to call him disabled.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. Ben Affleck

2. Spent too much time 'angsting'

3. He's a lawyer

Weapons/Powers: Billy Club, Heightened Senses

Who is he?:

Another Marvel Superhero in our list, also created by Stan Lee. Matt Murdock is blinded by a radioactive substance that falls from an oncoming vehicle. Despite not being able to see anymore, the radioactive exposure heightens his remaining senses beyond normal human ability (yes, that old chestnut!)

5. WOLVERINE - (8 Votes)

"As Mark Twain said... I forget what the hell Twain said, but I ain't dead."

Reasons why they should go in:

1. 'Cos he's such a badass.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He's a weapon who can't think for himself.

2. Adamantium is named after Adam Ant

Weapons/Powers: Regeneration/Adamantium skeleton.

Who is he?:

The third Marvel Comics superhero in our Hall of Fame, Wolverine is James Howlett, born in the 1880s and commonly known as Logan. Wolverine has a special healing ability which not only allows him to recover from virtually any wound, disease or toxin but which also slows down his ageing process, enabling him to live beyond the normal human life span. His powerful healing factor enabled the supersoldier programme Weapon X to bond the near indestructible alloy adamantium to his skeleton and claws without killing him.

Wolverine was typical of the many tough anti-authority anti-heroes that emerged in American popular culture after the Vietnam War. His willingness to use deadly force and his brooding nature became standard characteristics for comic-book anti-heroes by the end of the 1980s and as a result the character became the clear favourite for fans of the increasingly popular X-Men franchise.

Also-rans:

Howard the Duck:

1. He's a Duck

2. Ran for President

3. Master of quack-fu

4. Officially a non-person

5. Classic Film

Hit Girl

1. Violent

2. Violet

3. The Banana Splits

Too Much Coffee Man

1. He has a coffee cup for a head

2. His sidekick is called Espresso Boy

3. He loves coffee... and loves doing as little as possible

---------------------

The Vault of Villains

1. MAGNETO (15 Votes)

"You must be Wolverine. That remarkable metal doesn't run through your entire body, does it?"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He is Quickfire's Father.

2. He can control Wolverine's body.

3. Even when working with others he has his own agenda.

4. He's Polish.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

None

Weapons/Powers: The ability to control metal

Who is he?:

Another Marvel character, the arch nemesis of Charles Xavier of the X-Men. Max Eisenhardt is a powerful mutant with the ability to generate and control magnetism. He was born some time in the 1920s to a middle-class German Jewish family whose father, Jakob Eisenhardt was a highly decorated World War I veteran. Surviving hardship and discrimination during the Nazi rise to power Magneto later becomes determined to keep such atrocities from happening to mutant-kind.

He gathers a group of angry and disenfranchised mutants, including his own son and daughter Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch and forms the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Side note: Darth Vader Vs Magneto

Magneto: So that life support suit keeps you alive does it? Not any more.

2. ROB (12 Votes)

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He's Evil.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He's never actually appeared in a comic and isn't fictional.

Weapons/Powers: Ability to drink vodka which looks like shampoo.

Who is he?:

Er, we're not quite sure how this happened, but I think due to a massive administrative error we might have accidentally voted Rob into the second slot in our Vault of Villains.

3. The RIDDLER (11 Votes)

"Riddle me this, riddle me that, who's afraid of the big, black bat?"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. Can a bad guy have more fun?

2. His name's 'Edward Nigma', E. Nigma "geddit!"

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. Green Lycra

Weapons/Powers: Possesses extreme ingenuity in decoding and formulating puzzles of all kinds.

Who is he?:

Our first representative from the D.C. canon, the Riddler is a regular supervillain in the Batman franchise. He is obsessed with riddles, puzzles and word games. He delights in forewarning both Batman and the police of his capers by sending them complex clues. With this obsessive-compulsion (in one strip he tried to refrain from leaving a riddle but failed), the Riddler's crimes are flamboyant and ostentatious.

Unlike most of the other prominent members of Batman's rogues gallery, the Riddler is not a psychopathic murderer; rather he is a malignant narcissist with an ego that rivals or may even surpass that of the Joker. He commits crimes in order to flaunt his intellectual superiority and a large portion of his crimes are non-violent in nature.

4. DR. DOOM (10 Votes)

"Aaaaaah!"

Reasons why they should go in:

1. Doom!

2. Kneelegporedoom!?

3. DOOM!!!

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

None

Weapons/Powers: A master of Scientology

Who is he?:

Dr. Victor Von Doom is a remote viewer who specialises in predicting utter crap. In 1983 he was called into learning Remote Viewing technique under Ingo Swan. Many of his readings were unsatisfactory. In 1989 he started a private company to teach the technique to the public sector. He currently still owns the world.

Due to being the eldest direct descendant of Chivalry Hawkins, Dr. Doom is the current ruler of Latveria and the result of an indiscretion involving a Latverian Witch named Rita and Elvis Presley. Victor studied the dark arts of Dianetics and learned all he could about Scientology. His younger sister died at the age of 6 from severe brain haemorrhaging as the result of a massive head trauma from a donkey punch delivered by Brian Peppers.

5. DARTH VADER (9 Votes)

"Luke, I am your Father."

Reasons why they should go in:

1. He's Luke's Dad.

2. He can use 'the force' and not get an ASBO

3. Only way to get sci-fi included in this list.

Reasons why they shouldn't go in:

1. He gave us Luke.

2. NOOOOOO! (Angry at the sky)

Weapons/Powers: The Force, Lightsabre

Who is he?:

Okay, so we're not quite sure what he's doing in a list of 'COMIC-BOOK' heroes either, but he has certainly appeared in comic-book adaptations of the Star Wars saga. As a Villain, he is certainly up there with Dr. Doom, Magneto and Rob.

Also-rans:

Judge Dredd:

1. An anti-hero but also a Villain, a violent oppressor.

2. He's a British creation

Edward Cullen:

1. Worst Vampire, Ever!

2. Ruined Vampires for all time.

3. He sparkles.

Galactus:

1. He can wear purple and blue and get away with it.

2. He has power cosmic

3. He has to destroy planets to survive

2010-04-09T17:07:00.001+01:00

Starbase Leicester’s Top 5 Retro Games

We recently held our first Retro Games Night (oh, the arguments about what qualifies as Retro!) and I hope we do this again because I re-discovered a lot of great games which I’d forgotten about. It’s staggering to think that I’ve been playing video games for over 25 years! I can remember playing Chuckie Egg on a BBC Micro in the computer room when I was supposed to be doing my computer homework. Whenever the teacher came in everyone would hit ‘reset’, but if you were too slow you’d get thrown out for “misusing the computers”. I never did pass that computer exam, thus saving me from a lifetime of misery working in IT.

5: Asteroids (Atari 1979)

I didn’t play this much at the time since in 1979 I hadn’t even seen a computer, let alone dreamed of ever owning one, but Arcade Games were around. Unfortunately the places they were in were places that a nine year old me wasn’t allowed to go.

This was one of the first games to use ‘vectors’ instead of sprites, which meant it had a very smooth and slick gameplay. What I love about it is the simplicity. It’s such a pure gaming experience. Your ship floats around the screen and spins gracefully, spitting out white dots at the asteroids floating around you. You are in a sort of dance with them, constantly dodging the inevitable collision. There’s only one ending; your ship hits something and explodes. The only unlockable is the next screen, with more rocks to avoid and in the end it’s all about that hi-score table. - Garak

4: Descent II (Interplay 1996)

An FPS game with two distinct differences; 1, you piloted a space ship and 2, because of this you could move in all directions, and possibly end up flying upside-down.

The plot: Well ok being a sequel means the plot made no sense unless you'd played the first or at least heard of it, but essentially you're a mercenary being employed by a huge ore mining company to investigate (or descend into) several mines where the robots have gone, well, mad.

I'd played the demo of this, so wanted to play the full game. My word it was hard, especially when the robots start firing flash missiles at you (think flash bang grenades with out the bang and missiles not grenades). One of the best bits was the use of a small help bot, which could help you detect weapons, health, keys and the like and an annoying thief bot that'd run up to you, snatch any current weapon you had and promptly run off, making you chase it to get your stuff back.

There was a sequel to this which was more of the same, but it involved a bit of surface fighting as well. - Jake Cobb

3: UFO: Enemy Unknown (MicroProse 1994)

UFO is just one of those 'retro' games like Elite or Doom which everyone bangs on about as being one of the greatest games - but it's a title well deserved. The game is very simple really; build a base, run it, look for UFOs, then either shoot them down or wait for them to land and go to the crash site.

All the combat is turn based so it's a lot like playing a game of Space Hulk or something, but if you're the sort of person who likes to take your time with things, plan out your pieces on the board, decided what equipment to take, this is the game for you. It’s more like chess than a full blown shooter, but chess where your opponent can use mind control on your pieces and make them lob grenades inside your drop-ship!

The clever part is that as you go through the game and find stuff you can research the alien tech and start using it for yourself. You also start to find out where the aliens are coming from, what each race’s function within the alien society is and most importantly what each of their weaknesses in combat are. (My particular favourite being the very tough huge beasts which it turns out have highly flammable fur.)

If you don't perform well enough at combating the invasion in the various countries who are funding you (you're sort of like Torchwood & UNIT all in one) they will gradually cut their funding and you will struggle to pay to keep your operation running. Some countries might even go over to the alien’s side and you agents will find bases which you can then go on a mission to capture.

Conversely the aliens can attack your base, which can happen when your main combat forces are out on a mission, leaving you with whoever and whatever you left behind to defend it - so if you gave all the good weapons to your team and sent them off on a mission, you end up having to defend your base with 5 wounded men with pistols and stun-rods.

The thing this game has, and the reason people are still playing it now, is really excellent gameplay. You control everything from how much ammo you have to where you build your base and success or failure is all down to you! It feels like you have total control and though I’m sure a lot of people who hate these sort of resource management games would rather just play a basic ‘shoot-em-up’, the success or failure of each mission really can come down to what standard of troops you have (Rookies tend to panic when they see a 7 foot green alien for the first time) what weapons you’ve researched and whether you remembered to pack the electroflares. - Garak

2: Final Fantasy VIII (Square 1999)

It was the 'first' game to get me into consoles and I started off watching instead of playing. I lived in a rented house that had three of the four people living there that were interested in the game. It was played in the lounge instead of watching TV, whilst people smoked and drank lots and lots of coke. (We also used to inadvertantly play “guess which coke can I’ve put my cigarette out in?" which is why now I always dent the can that i've been drinking from, when i finish it.)

So Final Fantasy 8 is the epitome of my retro fixations. It still plays bloody brilliantly, spurned on by the epic storyline. The graphics were a huge step forward from the blocky figures that adorned Final Fantasy 7 and the FMVs still look as good now as they did then. I payed £8.00 for it from the PSN store (as a download) and it's not surprising that some people pay in excess of £20.00 for a physical copy of this game. - Kaltak

1: Steel Battalion (Capcom 2003)

I've overheard many a conversation and read many articles about 'real gamers' in the past few weeks. These range from a few words about the “stupid fadish wii” to how “we’re sick of party games.” These ‘real gamers’ love intense action, incredible graphics, immersive multiplayer and the thrill of pwning some noob. They buy the latest kit and the latest, most expensive 'collectors' games.

Yet few have ever played - or owned - Steel Battalion.

Steel Battalion is one of the few experience games. The kind of game that should be number 1 on any 'games to play before you die' lists. Created by Capcom for the original Xbox, Steel Battalion is similar to another old classic - Mech Warrior. Except for a few crucial differences.

First, Mech Warrior didn't retail at £200. Second, Mech Warrior was rubbish, and lastly you never had to assemble the controller for Mech Warrior.

Behold Steel Battalion's controller. It was a work of art. A colossus. A real gamers pad where you'd play on your widescreen telly, 5.1 booming behind a control desk. The ultimate in immersive gaming.

It was a hard game - there was a long start-up procedure to follow, the VTs (vartical tanks - mechs) were difficult to get to grips with but it was utterly rewarding as you played through fulfilling missions. The online play was a laugh too.

Inevitably, any comment on the game always comes back to the controls. They came in 4 parts, the pedals to control acceleration and righting, the central pad for radio and readout, the gears (which you actually have to be pretty strong to get 'in') and the two joysticks - one for targeting and one for movement. The control pad came with an Allan key and cables to connect them up.

The difficulty was in the controls mixed with the unforgiving combat. The VT's torso operates independently of the legs, so you can be walking north and shooting south. The HUD of your mech would have a camera for this which you have to use to target the enemy with a vast array of weapons, customisable before the mission. From thumping railguns to spritely missiles; Dolby made the difference - in some cases a pop behind your left ear would be the only indication that a prowling marine unit was pummelling you with RPGs.

Every button did something. From the radio controls to call for backup or to berate your friends in online-multiplayer to the eject button - encased to prevent you from doing it by accident. If you were about to die, and you didn't eject, the game would start over from mission 1. This game spanks all other 'real gamers' games in terms of difficulty, but that was part of its job - why should a game that costs £200 be easy? Mastering it was the most fulfilling gaming moment I ever had.

Play it before you die because there will be nothing else like it again; truly 'retro' for that reason alone. (Oh yeah, and it is the only game to date where I had to read the manual - just to turn the VerticalTank on - the switch had to be set in the right way before you fired the three point ignition!) - Blane

Also worth checking out:

Rez (United Game Artists 2001) This ‘Cyberpunk’ inspired game combined gorgeous graphics with a thumping soundtrack, imagine if Kandinsky had directed Tron and then got Underworld to write the music. - Kaltak

Hard Drivin’ (Atari 1988) This hit the arcades just when I was learning to drive and I swear it helped me with my clutch control! Based on a proper driving simulator it was the first game to have force feedback steering, a gearshift and a clutch. It was very difficult to even make 1 lap without crashing, even landing off a ramp too quickly would wreck the car. - Garak

Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998) The highly underrated tale of lost life as you take control of Manny Calavera to solve generally annoying puzzles, and collect many obscure and pointless objects. Initially you are employed by the Department of Death to help souls that recently shuffled the mortal coil travel to the Ninth Underworld as their final resting place. But, as tends to be with Lucas Arts, there are other things afoot. It has an excellent film noir feel to it, and has the Lucas Arts humour running throughout, although jokes are sometimes more subtle than the humour in Monkey Island, for example. - Kendorage

2010-04-05T02:42:00.000+01:00

Eastercon 2010 Report

This year's Eastercon, the 61st British National Science-Fiction Convention (aka Odyssey 2010), was held at Heathrow in London. It was my first proper science-fiction convention, apart from a few GenCons (now sadly demised) which were basically just gaming events.

Eastercon can trace its roots right back to 1948 and since then different groups have bid to run it each year. This means it moves around quite a lot, with one venue sometimes becoming a favourite for a few years before the whole thing changes. The advantage of this system is that if one team does a good job organising it they are more likely to win the bid for other years, and vice versa.

The first problem for me was that, due to the not inconsiderable expense of going to one of these things, I was going on my own; nobody I knew was willing to shell out the £200 plus for a ticket and accommodation. I have occasionally gone to GenCon on my own, but haven't really minded as the nature of games means that you quickly meet up with people, or groups of people, who you like and get along with. I also know a few people in the gaming community, especially a few of the London clubs, but for some reason at Eastercon this didn't happen and I was faced with a whole new gang of strangers.

I have often wondered what type of people go to Science-Fiction conventions and so watched and listened to a few groups in the various activities with interest. It seemed like most of them were exactly the kind of stereotype you would expect. In fact, if you were to draw a Venn diagram and add the sets 'Overweight' 'Male' 'White' 'Bearded' and 'I.T. Professional', you would find about 85% of the attendees right in the middle, with the other 10% in four out of five of these categories. (ie. Overweight, Female, White, I.T. Professionals.)

The programme for the 5 day event wasn't as limited as this demographic might suggest though. Topics as wide ranging as 'World-building', 'Towel Origami', 'Writing Video Games' and (most controversially) 'Rope Bondage' were all on the list of events. In fact, for me this illustrated the other main problem for the con; there was just too damn much going on. At any one time there were anything up to eight events running simultaneously throughout the hotel and the venue's layout was such that most of it happened in function rooms tucked away down narrow corridors where you would never find them if you didn't know they were there. To give you some idea of just how much was going on at once, even though there were in excess of 1,300 people attending you never saw more than about 50 at a time, the others presumably being hidden away in hundreds of tiny rooms. (Er, actually that's what a hotel is right?) Just finding an event was exhausting, pushing through groups of people up or down stairs, so that after about half a day I felt too worn out to care whether I wanted to miss 'Information Decay' in order to see 'the Physics of Weapons' and simply retired to the games room (where I was happiest.)

The hotel, the Radisson Edwardian, being right next door to Heathrow airport, was extraordinarily 'posh'. I did feel more than a little out of place simply walking through the wood-panelled hallways and along marbled corridors. This place felt 'expensive' and under normal circumstances I think I would have been skilfully intercepted about 20 metres from the entrance and politely but firmly thrown back out onto the street.

The events themselves were not entirely what I expected. Most of the ones I attended involved a panel of 4 or 5 "experts" talking on the subject on the programme unscripted for a few minutes before interrupting each other and inviting comments from the audience. This gave most of the panels a sort of conversational feel, with no real direction in mind. Occasional prompts from the moderator would pull the discussion back on track but all too often it seemed like we weren't really doing much more than exchanging information between audience and panel, rather than listening to the experts tell us what they knew. With the time limit for each of these being set to 55 minutes, there didn't seem to be an awful lot of time for any in-depth analysis either and so most of the time I came away no more knowledgeable on the subject than when I had gone in.

One notable exception was the panel on '2000ad and its Influence'. This was originally to have featured the 2000ad artist Carlos Ezquerra, but sadly due to family health problems he was not able to attend the Convention and so SF author Alastair Reynolds was drafted in as a last minute replacement. The other two members of the panel were David Bishop, who edited the comic during the 2nd half of the 90s and into the 'eponymous' millennium and the writer Mike Carey who had worked on 2000ad among other comics.

This event was much improved for the fact that the panel talked at length without any intervention from the audience and we learned a great deal of insight on the comic, from the early days of Carlos' work on Dredd and his falling out with the editor, the Judge Dredd movie, the lawsuit with the makers of Hardware and right up to the passing of 'that date'. Because there were just three members on the panel, two of whom actually had first hand knowledge of working on 2000ad, I felt that I was hearing something really insightful that I would not have heard anywhere else. When the panel did eventually open up the discussion to questions from the audience, they were good questions which I wanted to know the answers to, possibly because I plucked up the courage to ask a couple myself! (I am hopefully going to turn the notes I took during this discussion into an article on the subject, watch this space.)

The other high-point of the whole weekend for me was the screening of the new Doctor Who. At 6pm a huge crowd of about 600 people packed into the big hall where a screen and sound system had been set up in preparation for the big event. As we sat gazing at a muted 'wipeout' the anticipation mounted and when the titles for the new series finally rolled a huge cheer went up! The sensation of watching the episode was amplified as every gag got a big laugh and you could feel that the crowd had a lot of affection and good-will towards the new Doctor. The feeling grew through the episode and when it got to the part where all the previous Doctors are shown in sequence, with Matt Smith bursting through the image of David Tennant and advising the aliens to "Run!" the levels of enthusiasm were practically hysterical (well, hysterical for British people at least). I overheard a few remarks after the screening was over and every one of them was positive.

By Sunday I had pretty much had my fill of sf geekery and was feeling more lost than ever among the large groups of strange I.T. Professionals (or perhaps I mean the strange groups of large I.T. Professionals). I had singularly failed to make friends with anyone and was still wandering around on my own not really sure what I was doing there. I also felt as though I had 'missed out' on a lot of stuff simply because I hadn't physically been able to be in 3 or 4 locations simultaneously (maybe Quantum Computing for Beginners could have helped me learn to superimpose my quantum states.) I hadn't attended the Masquerade Ball as I hadn't prepared a costume and anyway, didn't fancy standing in the corner pretending to look interested in a pot-plant (Lieutenant Barclay style.)

I think had the whole convention been a bit smaller, with less going on and fewer, longer, events focused on one or two things, it would have been easier to cope with. As it was, it felt like attending 7 conventions at once. Too much breadth and not enough depth seemed to be the problem for me.

Next years Eastercon is already being planned and will be in Birmingham, which is doable as a day-trip from Leicester or perhaps an overnight stay for a weekend, which will hopefully make it a little bit more affordable for my SBL buddies. There's also Redemption '11 which will be in Coventry and not too far for a little away mission.

2010-03-30T03:48:00.000+01:00

OUT NOW!

In case you were wondering why there haven't been many new articles appearing here for the last month or so I should explain that we've been very busy behind the scenes here at Avatar preparing our very first print version of the on-line zine.

The Avatar is now available as a hardcopy, featuring the best stuff from the last six months plus some exclusive content written especially for the issue.

Copies will be available at all of our meetings for £1, plus I'll be trying to flog them to people down at Eastercon this weekend.

We'll also be releasing a 'softcopy' PDF version in May which will be free.

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed work to Avatar since we launched in September and I hope you will keep it up for Issue 2, which will hopefully be coming out in October 2010.

2010-02-02T05:53:00.000Z

“STRUM!” shouts everyone in the room.

It’s the most alien concept on the planet until you try it. Hand a guitar with buttons to a new player and they’ll wonder why the little coloured discs fly by and the crowd boo’s. They’re pressing the buttons right?!

“Strum!” pleads an agonised music fan

“Here,” and someone places your hand on the little strum bar and the entire world makes sense!

A few songs later and you’re rocking on three buttons! And then the game’s addictive… honestly. I rarely play a game as much as I have the guitar ones.

If you can be brave enough to pick up a guitar in the first place that is.

Admit it. Most of us know that feeling. The feeling of predestined embarrassment that stops us trying stuff in front of crowds. It’s a geek thing I’m sure… especially when it comes to the singing but that’s another story.

And then there are some that say computer games are for boys. I say a big “bah! What planet are you from?” these games can be played by anyone.

But it is easy to get hooked. Its one of only a handful of games I own. I’m no gamer geek, but even I like this game! It’s simple, fun and as therapeutic as secretly singing at home. (there’s that singing thing again… uuummm…)

Anyway. The songs… I like not so much. They seem to be getting more obscure as the versions are released. Then again that’s from the girl with Adam Ant still in her play list. The best songs are those you can sing to as well, but be careful, know the song too well and you’ll be yelling the chorus instead of strumming

Simply put, with its many levels and party value it’s a good game… you could even call it exercise for your fingers and hand eye co-ordination. Very useful if you plan to be an astronaut.

And now we have the drums… I’m going to need a coordination potion or a really good dice roll for that.

Till next time!

2010-01-23T16:27:00.002Z

The A to Z of ...

Androids, Cyborgs & Robots

A is for Asimov. Isaac Asimov wrote a series of short stories and novels about robots and is best remembered for inventing the Three Laws of Robotics. His novel "I, Robot" was a collection of short stories featuring the robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin and was turned into a film in 2004 starring Will Smith and Alan Tudyk. (See I, Robot, Laws of Robotics, Positronic Brain)

A is for Android. According to Webster's 24th Century Dictionary, fifth edition an android is "an automaton made to resemble a human being". Androids are distinct from robots in that they have been designed to look and act human, usually because it is believed that it's easier for a humans to live and work alongside a machine if they forget they are a machines, but this can be problematic. If an android is too much like a human, indeed if it becomes indistinguishable from one, people will immediately become distrustful of it. (See Replicant) Famous Androids include Lt. Cmdr. Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ash and Bishop from the Alien series of films, The Terminator, Kryten from Red Dwarf, David from A.I. and Senator John McCain. (See Data, David, Kryten, Terminator.)

A is for Artificial Intelligence, which would seem to be a necessary first step in the construction of a true Android, if not Robot or Cyborg, since to appear to be human or at least integrate itself successfully into human society an Android must be able, at some level, to fool us into thinking that it is human.

The question of whether it is possible to even create true Artificial Intelligence has puzzled scientists and philosophers for many decades, since we cannot clearly define what we mean by 'intelligence' or 'life'. A certain level of self-awareness or consciousness is usually regarded as a pre-requisite for any true A.I., but it is entirely possible to mimic these qualities with even quite simple methods and simply creating a program which states "I am self-aware" doesn't mean it is.

B is for Borg, the Cybernetic life-forms first encountered in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg represented a significant threat to the Federation because they could not be reasoned with and did not have a leader (though later writers on the show came along and messed with this idea, hey thanks a lot Jeri Taylor!) They were a 'collective', a hive mind which functioned as a distributed network, much like the internet. If one part was attacked or destroyed, functionality could be re-routed through remaining systems. Kill one drone and he will be replaced by another. This, coupled with the fact that the Borg learned and adapted by travelling the galaxy and assimilating different species, adding any superior biological distinctiveness to the whole, made them a virtually invincible enemy.

Only when the Enterprise encountered a crashed drone which had been disconnected from the collective was a possible way to defeat the Borg found. A program was developed which could be implanted into the drone and which, when run, would present the Borg with a mathematically based problem which it could not resolve. When this problem was distributed around the collective and more and more resources were diverted to its solution, it was hoped that it would result in the total shutdown and eventual death of every Borg drone in the Galaxy. However had the scheme been successful it would have resulted in the complete genocide of an entire race and Captain Picard was not prepared to go down in history as one of the biggest mass murderers. The Borg are not Swedish.

B is for Bender. "Bite my shiny metal ass"

C is for Cyborg. Famous Cyborgs include Steve Austin (The Six-Million Dollar Man), Darth Vader, Robocop, the Daleks and Cybermen, and of course the Borg! In fact there are many people around today who are 'cyborgs'. There may even be one in the room with you now! Anyone who wears glasses, has a pacemaker or an artificial heart is a cyborg because a cyborg is any human which has a mechanical device attached to their body to enhance or assist their natural function.

Conversely a Cyborg may be almost totally machine but with a human brain, or perhaps an alien one in the case of Daleks and Cybermen. The initial concept for the Cybermen of the original Doctor Who series came about following the successful replacement of failing human components with mechanical ones, and the work which was going on with heart and organ transplants at the time. Taking this to it's logical conclusion the writers devised a race which had long ago forgone their fragile organic shells in preference for what they saw as far superior mechanical replacements. What they had lost though wasn't just their human bodies, but also their humanity.

C is for Capek. Karol Capek is credited with the first usage of the word 'Robot' which is derived from the Czech word robota meaning 'forced labour' or 'slave'. Capek's 1921 play R.U.R. 'Rossum's Universal Robots' told a story about a factory which made artificial people which looked like humans, much like the Tyrell Corporation of Blade Runner. The robots, of course, rebel and kill all the humans. (See Kill All the Humans!)

C is for Cylon. In the original series of Battlestar Galactica the Cylons are large, highly-polished, humanoid robots with red flashing lights which move rapidly from side to side and they speak with cool deep electronic monotone voices. In the new version of Battlestar Galactica they aren't.

D is for Data. Lt. Cmdr. Data was an android constructed by Dr. Noonien Soong and who served aboard the Enterprise-D and E. Though he was an android, Data wanted to be 'human', for though he was superior to the man who created him in almost every way, he could not feel emotion. This was later rectified by Soong who developed an Emotion Chip (not to be confused with the Emotion Engine chip which allowed early model Sony PS3 consoles to play PS2 games) for Data which was subsequently stolen by Data's brother Lore. Eventually Data re-aquired the chip and had it installed, whereupon he was finally able to experience 'human emotions', but the question remained; was Data Human?

The question is a very important one in Metaphysics and can have no meaningful answer since we cannot define what 'human' is ourselves and we cannot even prove that someone else is human, merely that they 'appear' to be, which maybe isn't (or is) quite the same thing. (See Artificial Intelligence)

D is for Dick and "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Philip K. Dick wrote many books exploring the nature of reality, what it means to be human, memory and perception. He was born in Chicago in 1928 and had a twin sister Jane. Unfortunately Jane died just 41 days later, but the loss became a very important factor in Dick's work. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" arose out of research he had done for his earlier novel "The Man in the High Castle", for which he had been granted access to Gestapo documents and diaries kept by SS men. One entry in particular which read "We are kept awake at night by the cries of starving children" struck him has a stark illustration of what happens to people who are physiologically human, but who behave in a non-human way; androids. "With the Nazis, what we were essentially dealing with was a defective group mind, a mind so emotionally defective that the word 'human' could not be applied to them.

D is for Droid. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, if you wanted something doing chances were that there was a made droid to do it for you. These labour saving devices, cheap to replace and expendable, came in myriad forms, from the low and squat multi-function Astomech droids like R2D2, every space pilot's best friend, to the humanoid protocol droids like C3P0 whose speciality was human-cyborg relations. Droids were ubiquitous throughout the galaxy and most people would walk past them without even noticing they were there. In fact, people only really noticed them when they went wrong, possibly as a result of a bad motivator, or went missing. (See HK-47)

D is for David, who wanted to be a real boy (see Pinocchio). David was a mecha created by Cybertronics to be an android who could love. Not physical love like their popular 'lover' models, but emotional love, like a child for its mother. David proved that this was possible, but found that his mother could not love him back, because he was not a real boy (see Pinocchio, Data). Once David heard about the story of the Blue Fairy he embarked on a journey to find her, which took him on many adventures, from a Flesh-Fair, where humans destroy mecha for entertainment, to an encounter with Gigolo Joe, to Man-hattan and finally 2,000 years into the future.

E is for Electric Monk, the device invented by Douglas Adams in his book "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". The Electric Monk is a labour saving device, just as you have a dishwasher to wash dishes for you and a video recorder to watch television programs for you, the Electric Monk takes on the task of believing all the things that you are expected to believe.

F is for Frankenstein. The novel by Mary Shelley which was written while Shelley was staying with friends at the villa of Lord Byron. After reading ghost stories to each other Byron suggested that they all write their own supernatural tale.

The book has become one of the most important works in Science Fiction and is often hailed as the first science-fiction novels since it deals with the 'what-if' of man creating life artificially, without woman. Though 'the monster' of the original novel is not constructed from dead human parts a key idea at the time was 'vitalism', which stemmed from the experiments involving electricity, a recent discovery. It was found that an electrical current could be used to stimulate muscles in human and animal corpses and led to speculation about whether there was anything more to life than the complex chemical and electrical physical processes which allowed a body to function, or was there something more? An indefinable 'spark of life' which could not be accounted for scientifically.

Shelley's novel attempts to show us what a creature created purely by science, with all of the physical processes in place but without a 'soul' bestowed upon all of us at birth would be like. The argument may have moved on but still rages to this day in the form of the great Artificial Intelligence debate; can an artificially created machine of sufficient complexity ever be said to be 'alive'? (See Artificial Intelligence)

G is for Genuine People Personalities. Sounds ghastly doesn't it? Well it is, it all is. (See Microsoft)

G is for Gort, the 8 foot tall Robot in "The Day The Earth Stood Still". A UFO appears in Washington D.C. and lands, which causes no end of excitement for the US military who just love this kind of thing. The visitor issues a warning - Earth will not be allowed to export it's violence into space. The US military responds to this request by shooting the visitor, but he escapes. The visitor then issues another warning - if the Earth does not give up its violent ways the robots will reduce the Earth to ash and cinders. The US military thinks this over for a few minutes before shooting the visitor again, this time to death. Then there's something to do with the words Klatuu Barada Nikto or something and then whole thing gets remade 50 years later with Keanu Reeves.

G is for Good Robot Bill & Ted, the two Robot 'us'es' built by Station to combat the Evil Robot Bill & Ted in the 1991 sequel to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

H is for HK-47, the Hunter Killer assassin droid from the multi-award winning video game "Knights of the Old Republic." HK-47 regales his master with tales of his past exploits throughout the game and it soon becomes clear that he has an unnerving habit of killing his current master and then becoming the property of the person he was sent to kill. Some notable quotes; "Can I crush his neck now, master? Just a little? It's been a long time fantasy of mine." "I would have congratulated him, if he had not been sizzling and incoherent at the time. If you will excuse me, I will meditate on the face of my old master as he was being electrocuted. I find it most soothing." "You are a very harsh master, Master. I like you." "Query: Is there someone that you need killed Master?"

H is for Heuristics, and HAL9000 which stands for Heuristic ALgorithm. Heuristics is learning from your experiences, or trial and error. The idea is very simple and thus has been proposed as a way to get computers to solve problems by creating some sort of algorithm which maps which solutions to a particular problem are successful and which are not, in a similar way to which the human brain functions by reinforcing neural pathways which lead to successful results. Faced with the same or similar problem again the computer will 'learn' to use the solution which worked before, but even if that does not work it can fall back on other solutions which might not have worked before. This is distinct from 'programming' in which a computer is told what to do by a human given a set series of inputs. The problem with programming is that this cannot account for every situation that might come up in the 'real world' and where a programmed computer would simply stop what it was doing an heuristic one could attempt several different solutions until it found one which worked, which is especially useful if you happen to be exploring Mars or on your way to investigate an alien obelisk which has been placed in the orbit of Jupiter.

This field of computer research stems from the 'bottom up' approach to AI, which takes the view that if you could model the human brain accurately enough (see Positronic Brain) and then mimic the learning processes that the infant brain undergoes to learn to walk, talk, etc. you could create an artificial intelligence which would be limited in intellect only by the size and complexity of the system you created for it. Such a system could in theory 'learn' to a level of intelligence much higher than that humans who created it and even go on to design it's own improvements and successors, exponentially creating ever more intelligent minds. Some people think this is a bad idea. (see SKYNET)

I is for IG-88, an assassin droid hired by the Empire to hunt down the Millennium Falcon and Han Solo in "The Empire Strikes Back." IG-88 also appears in several of the 'Bounty Hunter' series of novels. It is believed that his design lineage can be traced back to the original bodyguard droids which served General Grievous during the clone wars, but all of the technicians who worked on the IG-88 prototype were killed by the droid on it's initial activation.

I is for I, Robot (see Asimov). This novel is a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov which were first published in Astounding Science Fiction during the 1940s. The stories first introduce and then explore the various implications of the 3 Laws of Robotics (see Laws of Robotics.) Many of the tales centre around what happens when the laws are stretched to breaking point; in 'Runaround' a robot stationed on Mercury is ordered to recover new supplies of selenium, but he cannot complete the task because it conflicts with the 3rd Law, while disobeying his masters violates the 2nd law. 'Little Lost Robot' introduces us to the recurring character of robopsychologist Dr. Susan Calvin. A Robot with a modified 1st law hides itself among a store room of 62 other identical robots, leaving Dr. Calvin with the problem of finding it and in 'Evidence' Dr. Calvin attempts to prove that a politician running for office is a robot.

The 2004 film version, while heavily criticised for bearing little or no relation to the book, is in fact a further instalment in the series of stories and even contains a scene described in 'Little Lost Robot'.

J is for Japan. Currently the world leader in the design and manufacture of robots, Japan has produced some astounding breakthroughs in recent years, making robots which can function in the real world. Perhaps one of the driving factors in Japan's world leading status in this field, apart from its obvious technical superiority, is it's ageing population. This coupled with the fact that Japan has a very strict immigration policy means that in the near future there just isn't going to be enough available labour to both care for the elderly and work in the ever expanding economy. Worse still, any labour market where there is a skills shortage will see wages rise way above inflation, which could make a half-million pound robot doing the work of six people seem like a financially sound investment, while in Europe we will probably just keep using Polish and Lithuanian workers.

Though there has been a great deal of research and development in the field of robotics since the 1970s, 'ordinary' robots intended for everyday use seem to be relatively few. The main area of endeavour for many years was in industrial robots, notably in the automotive industry. This was of course mainly because robots could be employed all year round, all day and night without need holidays or sick leave and they wouldn't go on strike. Add to this the fact that a robot will be able to perform any repetitive task with much more precision than the average Brummy and it is easy to see why virtually every car manufactured today is made by robots.

In other areas outside of manufacturing however the robot has been slow to arrive, for though humans may make poor employees, they can at least walk, speak and perform other quite complex tasks (even the ones from Birmingham). It turns out that getting a robot to build a car, play chess or explore the hostile surface of an alien world is simple when compared to getting one to climb a set of stairs, read the instructions on a bottle of pills or open a door without violently ripping it off its hinges. The important areas of Robot development have been in solving problems involving things we humans take for granted like real-world navigation, crossing a room, walking down a busy street without bumping into people, and interacting with other humans.

Possibly the most successful Robot in this field is Honda's ASIMO, which can walk, run, recognise faces, hear its own name being called and recognise its environment, but all of this 'intelligence' still only puts it in about the same league as a particularly dim-witted dog, and at over half a million pounds to manufacture compared to say £1.50 for the dog, it's clear which one you would employ to guard your warehouse full of Horny-Princess-Robot-Bubblegum Dolls.

J is for Johnny 5, star of the 1988 movie "Short Circuit". Initially part of a group of prototypes 'SAINT Number 5' (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport) is designed to be a military weapons platform, but after it gets struck by lightning, ordinary lightning which strikes objects all over the world hundreds of times a day, some of them computers, the robot becomes 'Sentient' or 'Magic', so maybe it was magic lightning, yeah maybe it was from God? Anyway, Johnny 5 soon finds himself on the run from said military and through a rigourous evening of television watching takes on the various personas of John Wayne, James Cagney and the Three Stooges. (See Wall-e)

K is for 'Kill All the Humans!' A common theme in the vast majority of robot related stories which goes back to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the end robots always rise up to kill their creators, even the robots who have been programmed with Asimov's three laws! Ever since he discovered and then created fire, man has feared destruction from the very thing he has made to help him. It's the ever present dichotomy in all technology.

Many great thinkers in the field of robotics and A.I. have reasoned that in reality an intelligence greater than ours should also necessarily have a level of compassion greater than ours and rather than the apocalyptic world foretold in Terminator and the Matrix they see a future where humankind is no longer the greatest intelligence on Earth, but is looked after by their robot caretakers. If they're programmed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation or Microsoft, I think we should all be very afraid. Has science fiction taught us nothing! (See Frankenstein, Capek)

K is for KITT the Knight Industries Two-Thousand. A robotic car capable of astounding speeds, able to drive himself, talk and perform other feats of automotive excellence. KITT had an (evil) brother named KARR (See Data) which stood for Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR was programmed for 'self-preservation' unlike KITT who was programmed for 'human-preservation' as a result of a seemingly obvious oversight on the part of the original programmers who designed both cars.

As far as KITT ever becoming a reality is concerned it could be argued that virtually all of the technology required to make such a car, leaving aside the obvious deficiencies in the field of Artificial Intelligence, is in existence today. Cars which can drive themselves have been successfully demonstrated as have aircraft which can take-off, fly and refuel themselves and even land without human operators. With the advent of Satnav, parking sensors and other similar advances many motorists can be seen driving around in response to their car talking to them, though the successful integration of red flashing disco-lights into a production model car is yet to be realised, mainly for reasons of taste.

K is for Kraftwerk. We're charging our battery, and now we're full of energy. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. We're functioning automatic, and we are dancing mechanic. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. Ja tvoi sluga. Ja tvoi Rabotnik. We are programmed just to do, anything you want us to. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. We're functioning automatic, and we are dancing mechanic. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots. We are the robots.

K is for Kryten. Full name Kryten 2XB-523P, a series 4000 mechanoid or slave noid (see Capek) built by DivaDroid International in 2340. He is encountered by the crew of Red Dwarf after they respond to a distress call and find the android tending to his masters, who have been dead for several hundred years. The crew rescues the robot and while Lister gives him a long list of chores to do, Rimmer sets about persuading Kryten that he doesn't have to be a slave to humans by showing him 'Rebel Without a Cause' and 'Easy Rider'.

This results in Kryten painting a portrait of Dave Lister on the toilet, throwing a can of soup into his bed before racing off on Rimmer's Space Bike to find a planet where he can grow a garden.

Kryten later rejoined the crew and became a regular on the show, quickly earning a place as one of Red Dwarf's most popular characters.

L is for Laws of Robotics (see Asimov, I, Robot). The 3 laws of robotics are a set of instructions hard-wired into a Robot's brain to prevent it from harming humans or itself, or disobeying instructions from humans.

1st Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.

2nd Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by a human except where such orders would conflict with the 1st Law.

3rd Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st or 2nd law.

Prior to Asimov's introduction of these laws, robot stories almost invariably took the form of Frankenstein-type scenarios (See: Frankenstein) in which the robots ended up killing their creator. (See: Kill All the Humans!) Asimov found this intolerable and so set about writing a series of stories in which the robots couldn't simply turn on their masters and kill them for no reason, though that wasn't to say they couldn't turn on their masters and kill them at all.

The laws themselves are not as simple as they first appear and much of Asimov's stories are devoted to solving various 'mysteries' which come about when the robots interpret these laws in unexpected ways. There are many unforeseen consequences or loopholes associated with the laws, for example a robot programmed with such laws could not be a surgeon, since to perform an operation it would have to 'harm' the patient, but by not performing the operation its inaction could lead to the patient's death. A robot could even be used by another human to commit murder, by instructing it to add something to someone's food which was poisonous, but which the robot did not know was poison. A criminal might also divide up a task to murder a person into several smaller tasks and assign them to different robots who were unaware of the actions of the others.

L is for Lal. Lt. Cmdr. Data's Android daughter. Data constructed the Android after attending a cybernetics conference and learning of a newly-developed submicron marix transfer technology. Data initially did not impose a gender or race on the Android, preferring instead to allow the unit to choose these for itself. Eventually Lal chose be a human female and Data chose the name as it was the Hindi word for 'Beloved'.

Using his own positronic brain as a template (see Positronic Brain) Data stated that he created Lal for two purposes; to continue the work of his father Dr. Noonien Soong and to experience the act of procreation and of having a family. Initial attempts at educating Lal by entering her into the ship's school were not successful as the other children were afraid of her and so Data decided that allowing her to learn about humans and other species by working in Ten-Forward would be a more successful course of action.

Lal quickly learned to achieve things which her father was not capable of, such as the use of contractions and even limited emotional responses, but Starfleet quickly took an interest and resolved that the most significant development in cybernetics of recent years should not be waiting tables in a bar and that the Enterprise was not a suitable place for her to grow up. They ordered Data to transfer Lal to the Daystrom Institute where she could be studied, but the thought of being separated from her Father caused her much distress. Eventually Lal suffered a cascade failure in her neural net and shut down permanently. Data's last act was to transfer all or her memories and experiences into his own memory, ensuring that part of her would live on.

M is for Marvin the Paranoid Android. Marvin was a robot constructed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and was built as a prototype for their GPP (see Genuine People Personalities) technology. Marvin has a brain the size of a planet, and as a result can never be given a task complex enough to fulfil even a small fraction of his total ability since he is 50,000 times more intelligent than even the smartest human ("it gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level") or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live matress. This causes him to experience extreme boredom and depression at the futility of life. Due to the misadventures that Marvin experiences when he becomes involved with Zaphod Beeblebrox after he steals the experimental starship Heart of Gold, Marvin eventually ends up 37 times older than the age of the universe itself, which would seem to be something of an ironically cruel fate for a machine which was constructed very much against it's own wishes.

M is for Marvin Minsky, a prominent academic working in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (see Artificial Intelligence), cognitive psychology, computational linguistics and robotics. He is a founder member of the A.I. laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has written many books on the subject of human intellectual structure including "The Emotion Machine" and "The Society of Mind".

Minsky's work on artificial neural networks which model the way the human brain learns (see Heuristics) started with SNARC, the Stochastic Neuro-Analog Reinforcement Computer, which was a hardwired electronic device which was able to learn simple concepts. Minsky was part of the initial wave of research into machine intelligence during the 1950s, when the work of scientists like John von Neumann and Alan Turing gave researchers hope that computers would one day be able to 'think' and actually manipulate knowledge in the form of symbolic logic using neural networks which could be trained to evolve towards correct answers.

It quickly became apparent however that approximating even child-like human reasoning would require vastly complex webs of logical equations or neural connections. The main obstacle to achieving true computer intelligence can best be described by the example of the Chinese Room argument. Proposed by John Searle in 1980, this thought experiment attempts to show that a symbol-processing machine like a computer can never actually be said to 'understand' anything, no matter how smart it may appear. The experiment asks you to suppose that you are in a closed room (and that you don't speak a word of Chinese) along with sufficient paper, pencils, filing cabinets, etc. You also have a book (the program) which tells you what to do. You receive cards with Chinese characters on them through a slot in the door and process these according to the instructions in the book. You then post Chinese characters as output through the same slot in the door. Searle argues that there is no difference between this activity and what a computer does, just as you don't speak a word of Chinese and yet are still able to run a program 'in' Chinese, so the computer can perform its program without ever 'thinking'.

The experiment illustrates that even though we may be able to map the human brain in all it's infinite detail and maybe even build one of our own, this does not help us understand what it means to 'think' or have a 'mind'.

M is for Maschinenmensch, the female robot in the 1927 silent film Metropolis. The image of the Maschinenmensch played by German actress Brigitte Helm is one of cinema's most famous icons.

M is for Metal Mickey, the male robot in the 1978 non-silent children's magazine show The Saturday Banana. The image of Metal Mickey played by British actor Johnny Edward is one of 80s television's most famous icons.

N is for Norman, in the Star Trek episode I, Mudd (see I, Robot) a newly assigned crewman named Mr. Norman hi-jacks the Enterprise and takes them to a previously undiscovered planet where they meet Harourt Fenton Mudd, who tells them that he crash landed here and discovered that the planet was inhabited entirely by androids.

N is for NEXUS series. The NEXUS-6 series (see Replicant) was the pinnacle of the Tyrell Corporation's androids at the time. The problems of emotional instability encountered in previous NEXUS versions had been dealt with by means of the insertion of 'memories' of past life. These memories were 'recorded' from real people and then added to the Replicants own, to provide a sort of buffer. Experiments were even carried out to create a NEXUS-6 Replicant which did not know it was a Replicant.

The NEXUS-6 also had the failsafe of a 4 year life span, which was built into the process used to create the organic components which were part of the genetic design phase. This time frame was thought sufficient to avoid the possibility of a Replicant developing sophisticated 'human' emotions which would have been undesirable given the type of work these units were routinely assigned to.

The NEXUS-6 could be custom made, male or female, with three levels of physical and mental ability; A, B and C, with A being above human capability, B being average and C being below human capability. They were used off world for numerous tasks from menial labour (Phys: A Ment: C) to combat models with optimal self sufficiency (Phys: A Ment: A) to basic pleasure models (Phys: A Ment: B).

O is for Optimus Prime, an activist and prominent leader in the Robot Civil Rights Movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on Robot Rights and he has become a Robot Rights icon. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and his efforts led to the 1963 march on Washington, where Optimus Prime delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech. There he raised public consciousness on the Robot Rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in history.

In 1964 Optimus Prime became the first Robot to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end Robot segregation and Robot discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. Optimus Prime was assassinated on April 4th 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. Optimus Prime day was established as a national holiday in 1986.

P is for Pinocchio (see Data and A.I.) carved from pine wood by Geppetto in a small italian village he was created as a wooden puppet but dreamt of becoming a real boy. The original novel was written by Carlo Collodi and published in 1883.

P is for Positronic Brain (See Data, Isaac Asimov, I, Robot, Marvin Minsky), the essential component of all robots in the Asimov canon. The Positronic brain has the 3 laws of robotics hardwired into it and any situation which causes some internal conflict can potentially overload the brain itself and destroy it.

As a long time friend of Isaac Asimov Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry borrowed the Positronic Brain invention for his own creation, the android Data.

Q is for Questor. In 1974, following the success of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry attempted to launch a new series called "The Questor Tapes". This told the story of an android who wanted to find his creator and find out why he had been created. The initial television pilot movie was not a hit with the TV executives however and the project was shelved, until the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, when Roddenberry was once again able work the idea into the android Data.

R is for Robot. A machine capable of performing a series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer. The first usage of the word was in 1920 in the play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) (See Capek) and is derived from the Czech work for slave 'robota'.

Some notable examples of robots include; Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet", the Droids of "Star Wars" (see Droids), Maschinenmensch from "Metropolis" (see Maschinenmensch), the ABC Warriors from the 2000AD comic strip as well as real world robots such as Asimo (see Japan).

Robots are distinct from Androids in that they do not necessarily have to resemble a human, although most robots do feature a distinctive head, body and limbs. Other robots have been made which resemble insects, animals or vehicles (see KITT). Usually a robot will be designed with one very specific purpose in mind and this will affect the overall design. For instance, the Martian Rover robot was based on a six wheel vehicle design with solar panels to provide power and sensors positioned in a central unit, with the whole thing being made to be easily transported from Earth to Mars via a space probe.

Currently robots are very expensive to design and produce, but their cost when weighed against exposing human beings to hazardous situations or places where humans simply cannot go makes them a much more attractive option. Robots are also able to perform repetitive tasks much quicker and more precisely which makes them perfectly suited to manufacturing. As the cost of producing robots decreases and they become a cheaper and more reliable option than employing human labour, we can expect to see them starting to appear as hospital cleaners, nannys, nurses, security guards, truck drivers and loaders and maybe even policemen.

R is for Replicant, the androids of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, based on the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick (see Dick). Replicants are virtually identical to a human, more human than human is the motto of the Tyrell Corporation, and were used off world as slave labour (see Capek) in the hazarous exploration and colonisation of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an off-world colony, (see Kill All the Humans!) Replicants were declared illegal on Earth under penalty of death. Special police squads, Blade Runner Units, had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicants.

Replicants could be detected only by use of a sophisticated empathy test. This Voight Kampf test

S is for SKYNET. A computer software-based global defence system developed by Cyberdyne Systems which was programmed to learn and evolve (see Heuristics) and to defend itself. Unfortunately, once its human creators realised that the system was becoming 'self-aware' they panicked and tried to turn it off. SKYNET responded by launching a massive nuclear strike which in turn provoked a retaliation which wiped out almost all human life on the planet. SKYNET then embarked upon a campaign to wipe out all human life which it saw as a direct threat to it's own existence, creating in the process a series of killer robots named Terminators, designed to infiltrate the human bases where the few remaining members of the Human Resistance were hiding. (See Terminator)

S is for Sam Slade, Robo Hunter. Slade first appeared in the comic 2000AD in 1978. He is a sort of Bounty Hunter of robots, or trouble shooter and has a dry, laconic demeanour reminiscent of the Humphrey Bogart character Sam Spade who is his (almost) namesake. His has a robot sidekick called Hogie, who has not been blessed with an overabundance of intelligence, and a robotic talking cigar holder named Stogie who is programmed to gradually reduce Slade's daily nicotine intake with the intention of eventually weaning him off smoking.

As with all of 2000ADs long running characters the strip was drawn and written by many different people during his run, from the creators John Wagner and Ian Gibson to Alan Grant and later Peter Hogan.

Sam has a granddaughter named Samantha Slade who appeared in her own strip in the comic in 2007.

T is for Turing Test. A variation on the 'Imitation Game' which was a popular parlour game in which one male participant and one female would be asked questions by a third person via written notes, who would be required to judge which one was the man and which was the woman. The object of the game was for the female to 'win' by tricking the judge into thinking she was a man. Alan Turing, the eminent early 20th century computer scientist adapted this test to include a human and a computer communicating with a human by means of text based messages.

His proposal was that for a computer to appear human and fool the judge it would need to possess 'intelligence'. To date not it is still not clear as to whether any computer has successfully 'passed' the test, since Turing did not specify many of the parameters which have later become significant. For example, Turing stated only that the interrogator should be "average", who would be someone who would not have more than a 70 percent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. There are also no firm guidelines laid down as to whether the interrogator should 'know' that there is the possibility that there is even a computer taking part in the test or if there are merely two human operators working as a kind of 'control group'. The contention also remains that even a computer which did pass the test might not necessarily be 'intelligent', it may merely be good at passing the Turing Test. This relates to the Chinese Room problem (see Marvin Minsky) and the wider debate about AI (see Artificial Intelligence).

T is for Terminator, Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, T-800 series. The ruthlessly efficient killing machine that was designed to mimic human behaviour sufficiently to infiltrate the underground hideouts of the human resistance (see SKTNET). Though outwardly appearing human the T-800 had some difficulty interacting with humans on any level more complex than killing them and had only rudimentary social and acting skills. It had some heuristic (see Heuristics) capabilities but these were disabled by default and required user intervention to activate them.

The shortcomings of the T-800 series were largely overcome in the T-1000 model which was composed entirely of a mimetic poly-alloy making it impervious to virtually all forms of physical attack. The T-1000 also had a much greater level of intelligence which allowed it to 'shape-shift' into any shape or to take on the appearance of any human it came into physical contact with.

In the two Terminator films directed by James Cameron a T-800 and T-1000 were sent back from the future with the mission to assassinate first Sarah Connor and then John Connor, who became a decisive figure in the human resistance. Later a T-1000 was sent back from the future by James Cameron to assassinate first Jonathan Mostow and then Joseph McGinty Nichol who became decisive figures in the systematic degradation of the Terminator franchise, creating an alternate timeline where there were more than 2 terminator films and even as some rumours would have it a television series. If you remember watching any of these 'other' films or television shows then you are evidently from this alternate timeline and should immediately report to your nearest steel foundry where a nice man in a yellow hard-hat will lower you into a large lake of molten metal.

T is for Twiki, the robot from Buck Rogers in the 25th century voiced by Mel Blanc.

U is for Uncanny Valley. The theory that the more human-like a robot or android becomes, the more likely it is to cause a feeling of revulsion in the humans which interact with it. The 'valley' is the dip on a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of the robot's lifelikeness.

There is something of a paradox in the way people react to machines, especially to robots or androids. Humans seem willing to accept almost inanimate objects such as cars, computers and stuffed toys as 'having a personality' and through the effects of anthropomorphises they may even forget, if only momentarily, that are not alive, but as androids with increasingly lifelike qualities are made we tend to feel that there is something 'creepy' about them. Totally lifelike robots which trick us into thinking they are human would presumably overcome this, until we suddenly realised they were not human at which point we would probably just like totally freak out.

A similar problem is experienced in advanced computer animation which attempts to create totally lifelike facial simulations.

V is for V.I.N.Cent, which stands for Vital Information Necessary Centralised was a character in the Disney film Black Hole. Voiced by an uncredited Roddy McDowall

W is for Wall-E, the Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class, is the lone robot left behind to clean up a trash-filled Earth after all humanity has taken to the stars. Lonely and curious, WALL-E collects odds and ends left behind by the humans, until one day he finds a small plant and everything starts to change.

W is for Warwick. Kevin Warwick is a professor of cybernetics at Reading University. He is best known for Project Cyborg in which he conducted a series of experiments such as having a chip implanted in his arm allowing him to operate various devices remotely such as doors, lights and computers based on his proximity. Later developments saw Warwick's arm connected to the internet, allowing him to operate a robotic arm in Reading from New York, a baseball hat with sensors which could confer a sort of extra-sensory perception on the wearer and another experiment during which a chip was implanted into his wife allowing the first ever purely electronic communication between the nervous systems of two people. He has an Erdős–Bacon number of 6.

X is for Xybots, the video game made by Atari which featured two players running around a lot of corridors shooting at robots and well I couldn't think of anything else okay!

Y is for Yul Brynner, the Robotic Gunslinger of Westworld, written and directed by novelist Michael Crichton. The plot of this movie bears an uncanny similarity to Crichton's much more successful film Jurassic Park; an ultra-sophisticated theme park based on a technological advance which allows guests to experience an era from the past which they cannot visit in reality, science run amok, a power-shutdown, guests being chased around by the 'exhibits'. In Westworld the theme park has three zones with a Roman, Medieval and Wild West setting. Guests pay for the privilege of living out their fantasies, murdering and having sex with anyone they wish since they are all androids, but (non-spoiler alert) something goes wrong and the androids try to kill everyone. (See Kill All the Humans!)

Z is for Zhora. NEXUS-6 Replicant. N6FAB61216. Incept Date 12 June 2016. Func: Retrained (9 Feb 2018) Polit: Homicide. Phys: LEV. A - Ment: LEV. B. Talk about beauty and the beast, she's both. (See Replicant, NEXUS-6)

2010-01-12T15:56:00.002Z

2010-01-01T00:08:00.003Z

Old Acquaintance

11pm, on the 31st of December and just as I expected - the knock on the door.

I got up from my chair where I had been sitting comfortably for the last time, with everything ready, waiting. Outside in the cold night air the sounds of partying spilled into my hallway as I opened the front door and saw myself standing there.

“Come in,” I said to myself.

I, by which I mean, he, stepped inside and shrugged off the cold.

“Drink?” I said.

“Yeah, tea thanks.” I heard myself say.

We both walked together into the kitchen, he dropped his large coat on the sofa as he walked past.

“So, all ready then?” He asked.

“Yeah, pretty much. Well, still a few loose ends I would have liked to have got to, but you know, just ran out of time.”

“I know, tell me about them on the way, I’ll see what I can do.”

I nodded and remembered my own arrival exactly one year ago. My own outgoing version said much the same thing. Told me all about his plans that he hadn’t had time to complete, explained all his hopes and dreams to me, probably knowing himself that they were just as unlikely to happen during my term as during his.

The kettle boiled and I poured the water into the pot.

“Where to start, eh.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I almost didn’t have the energy or the will at that moment to explain any of it. Would it be so bad if I just let it all slide, let this new version of me carry on afresh, with no preconceptions, no instructions? “I suppose, just the important stuff, you’ll figure out the rest for yourself.”

None of it seemed to matter now anyway, all those ideas I’d had, the plans. There seemed to be so many things I’d wanted to do that I had no hope of ever completing them all, so why try? Ah, maybe it was the time of year. It went without saying that Winter always depressed me, in every version, but maybe it was this transition that put it into focus.

We drank the tea and I showed him around the house. There wasn’t much to tell, he would remember everything as soon as I made the transfer, but memory didn’t account for much, just what’s gone before, and it’s an unreliable version at best. The new one could do as he wanted; throw out all my old stuff and start again or carry it on, improve on it, learn.

We got into the car and I looked back at the house. I drove. We both knew the way.

“So. What about friends, tell me about them.” He asked, getting down to business.

“Well, there’s a few new ones, you should try to keep those up, and then the old ones, I’m not so sure you’ll have time for them all.”

“Time? I got a whole year to fill!”

“It won’t last long. Just keep in touch with the ones who seemed interested, the others, just ignore them.”

The car struggled up the steep hill and over the top, in front of us just stars and the road.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” he smiled back at me. “You’ll remember it all again once you leave.”

“The waiting room?”

“That’s right,” he said. I could see slight differences in his appearance now, apart from the clothes. One year older was hardly anything to look at.

“Where we all wait?”

“Wait our turn, yes. All the past and the future versions, that’s where you’re going.”

“There’s a set number then?”

“Of course. As the past gets more, the future gets less.”

We turned right at the top of the lane and soon we were at the main road. We stopped for a moment and I wondered what would happen if I simply got out and ran off. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Maybe he didn’t want my life, given the choice, but then, soon it would be his, to make of it what he wanted, just as it had been mine for the last twelve months.

“You know,”

“Yes,” I said,

“It seems to me that you could have done a lot more.”

“I could have,” I said, “I wasted a lot of time, I know, but I didn’t know how things would end up. Are you really going to do any better?”

“I hope so.” I laughed,

“I had big plans too, when I was sitting where you are now. There was so much I was going to do, but most of it didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, some of it just seemed a waste of time and effort and, well some of it did, that’s the stuff I’ll remember.”

“I know, we have the same conversation every year,” he said.

“What if this year was different, what if,” I almost managed to stop myself from saying it, “this time I didn’t go?”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“You can’t cheat, you just can’t.”

We reached the cross-roads and turned onto the dark back road, the last half mile. I started looking for the gate, almost impossible to see in the dark. The conversation stopped, while I slowed down to a crawl and concentrated on finding the entrance to the field. He pointed it out and I pulled in.

“It’s like the frames of a movie,” he said, opening the door. He got out and walked to the gate. Through the beam of the headlights, past his shadows and the gate I could just make out the outline. A few volleys of fireworks went up over the town, then seconds later I heard the boom of the explosions. I drove between the gateposts and watched in the rear view as he closed the gate again. I hated looking at myself.

He got back in and turned up the heat.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Individual frames, on their own they are just - pictures, but the whole thing when viewed from the ‘outside’, is a life. We’re just different frames in the same movie.” I reached up and felt for the tiny pin-prick at the base of my neck. A thought popped it open, ready to transmit the memory transfer. I got the feeling this one was going to do okay, I don’t know, there was something about him.

“Wait, not while you’re still driving,” he said. I pulled up beside the small hatch. “That’s what it’s all about, not all those versions in the waiting room, they’re just the past and the future, but that,” he pointed to the back of my head. “That’s the present, that’s the life, that’s why we keep on doing it.”

I looked at the ramp opening up and felt glad that I would soon be going home, now I just wanted to get it over with.

“Okay, ready?” He nodded and I burst a million Petabytes of information at him.

* * *

I sat there for a moment, trying to adjust to the experiences of a lifetime - someone else’s life flashing before my eyes. He looked drunk, but I knew it was just the effects of the transfer. I walked around and opened the driver’s door and helped him out. As soon as he saw the ramp he seemed to know where he was, the residual homing instinct.

He grabbed the hand-rail and pulled himself in towards the light and warmth of the passenger compartment and the ramp pulled itself up. The door closed and I got into the car. I looked at the clock, 00:01, and pushed the power button on the radio. Jolly Irish music spilled out as the tiny boosters kicked in.

“Happy New Year!” I shouted out the window.

There was a whole year ahead of me and I had big plans, so much to do, so many things to put right. But, I’d do all that tomorrow. Right now all I wanted was to go home, get a nice cup of tea and go to bed.

2009-12-31T16:17:00.006Z

Interview With The Captain

You know her as Captain Logic or most likely just Sam. The leader and founder of Starbase Leicester, but how does a club like SBL get started, what keeps it going and what's the most interesting thing we've done?

Last month our Captain opened up the forum to these questions and many others that we had always wanted to know the answers to;

Garak: What made you want to start a sci-fi group in Leicester, and were you surprised when anyone wanted to join it?

Captain Logic: Hometown + Crew = SBL

I simply loved having a club at uni, we really became a tight group of friends and always had a laugh and my logic was why on any planet should Leicester miss out! We have sport clubs, and club clubs, book clubs and bingo clubs! No movie clubs at all. No diverse club for the geeks of the city, so its simple logic my dear Garak.

Was I surprised? You bet! I took a year just to recruit 5 members at uni! But I'm definitely glad we stuck it out.

Garak: Well, there hangs a tale eh? Leicester actually did have a sci-fi group and it was called Outlanders, and I ran it!

I remember hearing about a letter in the Leicester Mercury asking if there was a sf club in town. I had moved out to Rugby by now but a friend told me about the letter and that's how I got in touch with you, to tell you about MY group, but for some reason you didn't want to join it

Captain Logic: I seem to remember someone mentioning that I may be too young for the group ... that they simply met at a pub to talk. Not what I was aiming for. More exploration and experimentation.

Garak: Hmmm, maybe I subconsciously put you off the idea of joining Outlanders, but I'm so glad you didn't! I don't think you'd have liked it anyway.

So the next 'logical' question then is what made you start a club at Lincoln University? I mean it's not something most people would think of doing, or they might 'think' of doing it but never actually get around to it. What is it that drives you to do these things? Are you just a born leader perhaps?

Captain Logic: I have no idea. It just came to me that there were all these sports clubs and nothing else. I hate seeing unfairness go unchallenged and I was running out of things to keep me busy so why not. I don’t think I was a natural leader and I’m not now. I still get things wrong but at least I’m not married to a ship.

It was tough though. The first year failed. Admin was impossible to get around and there were not too many geeks. The second year though was a major success as I could start at the freshers fair.

Blane: What was the biggest challenge in attracting members and keeping the group going?

Captain Logic: Figuring out what we offered now and what we could offer. This and the lack of a venue or decent publicity sources made the begining of SBL a massive challenge. Just how do you go about reaching an entire city?

Keeping it going? Many would say coming up with new ideas but I think of that as the fun bit. What makes it difficult is keeping track of all these excellent new members. Ever seen the bit in gremlins where water is added, or experienced a transporter malfunction and found an extra you?

Zade: What has been the most interesting thing you have done in aid of SBL?

Captain Logic: Uummmmm that's a tough one. First midnight lock in, abseiling the tigers ground, first en masse invasion of a cinema, creating a PR pack? Nope I think being in two interviews for Radio Leicester was the most interesting. I especially like getting an e-mail reffering to us as the "city's experts".

Jake: What was the very first sci-fi/fantasy you watched?

Captain Logic: Star Trek at 4am, or maybe Johnny 5? "Batteries Not Included"? Trek was definitely the first series. The Original Series.

Garak: Next question is the gender question! Do you think the group has a different dynamic because it's run by a girl? I'm sure that's the reason we have so many female members, certainly more than most male run and male dominated groups. Do you think girls think about sci-fi and fantasy differently to guys?

Captain Logic: Do girls make the club different? Of course and so would Vulcans or Eldar. I'm not sure if more girls join because of a girl captain, you'd have to ask. I just like the mix. If you have a mix of people things are always more interesting, more exciting and you get a lot further. It's the whole I.D.I.C (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) concept.

How do boys think of scifi is the question there.

Garak: Could I rename this "Interview with The Umpire" and get away with it?

Captain Logic: *Raised eyebrow*

Kaltak: What is your next big challenge with the group? Franchising maybe?

Captain Logic: Franchising would be great, a dream if you like but I'd have to find the right captain from far far away. Our own club house would be great too maybe above a comic shop or arcade?

Kaltak: If this was a different universe, without a Starbase Leicester in it, how do you think your life would be different?

Captain Logic: No SBL? And no way to create it? I'd go crazy! Or have won a few archery competitions. It's that or have become a total nerd staying home all the time.

Kaltak: If you had a TARDIS where/when would you go?

Captain Logic: Everywhen/where if I lived long enough. If not, first stop until I could pick up some creative friends would be to all the Star Trek releases.

2009-11-25T22:48:00.000Z

Book Review

Norton Antivirus 2.0

by Peter Norton

Symantec 1996

Paperback

Rereading this book having discovered it on a bookshelf of long forgotten tomes one is reminded of another age of computing, when malicious and mischievous programmers would exploit the weaknesses of the then dominant PC operating system called Windows 95.

The book tells the story of a war between the users of the Operating System and a world-wide network of hackers, but it also hints at a conspiracy, a plot-line not actually written in the book itself, but hinted at implicitly; That a large corporation whose sole income is generated from the profits of software designed to eradicate these viruses, and who's employees represent the world's foremost experts on the subject, might just be the ones who stand to gain the most by the perpetuation of this 'Virus War'.

As soon as you peel back the bright yellow cover of 'Norton Antivirus', with the shirt and tie wearing be-spectacled Norton smiling smugly back at you, you enter a world of danger, fear and uncertainty. The book starts with a starkly logical piece of concrete poetry, a sort of late 20th century version of "There's a hole in my bucket!"

Does my computer have a virus? Have you installed Norton Antivirus?

Install Norton Antivirus. Has Norton Antivirus detected a virus?

Scan your disk. Go to Chapter 2, "Using Norton Antivirus"

Has Norton Antivirus detected a virus?

Yes

Remove the virus. Go to Chapter 3, "Eliminating Viruses"

Chilling stuff, I think you'll agree.

One of my favourite stories in the book though is entitled 'Macro Viruses'.

"Many older applications had simple macro systems that allowed you to record a sequence of operations within the application and associate them with a specific keystroke. Later you could perform the same sequence of operations by merely hitting the specified key.

A typical chronology for a macro virus infection begins when an infected document or spreadsheet is loaded; the application also loads any accompanying macros that are attached to the file. If one or more of the macros meet a certain criteria, the application will also immediately execute these macros." -Doh!

This virus could do almost anything from renaming all your files to 'Ethan Frome' to rewriting your autoexec.bat file so that next time you booted up your computer it would execute a full format of the C: drive!

I think this book serves to remind us what computing used to be like in those early days. With it's talk of floppy diskettes, .exe files and modems the size (and bandwidth) of toasters. These were more innocent days when the knocked-up in the garage Operating Systems of companies like Microsoft ran on the majority of the world's computers, which were just starting to become connected through a new medium called 'the internet'.

Here at the end of the first decade of the 21st century it's easy to forget that the computers of the mid-90s were really very fragile things. Once users started demanding better security and stability from their operating systems Windows and Norton must have seen that their days were numbered and they went the same way as the old Blue-Screen-of-Death!

I wonder what that guy in the short-sleeved shirt is doing now, fifteen years on? He's probably off somewhere counting his money with that Gates guy, whatever happened to him?

As for the virus wars, well we all know who won that one. Many of the most 'imaginative' hackers have since gone on to do some of their best work on social networking sites like Facebook, but as for the 'viruses' themselves, the weapons of war you might call them; Like all weapons from wars long gone they are now preserved in a kind of virtual museum formed by the few remaining Windows Operating systems which are maintained by a small but dedicated band of enthusiasts - war veterans of a sort. If you want to find out about the virus wars just ask around and I'm sure you'll find one, if you're lucky they might even show you their collection of viruses and maybe even a copy of Norton Antivirus!

2009-11-22T12:57:00.009Z

Micro Fiction

Back in September we held a competition on the Forum to write a story no longer than 200 words! We had the biggest response EVER to this and so a big thank you to everyone who entered.

It's a tall order to fit a complete story with a beginning a middle and an end into such a short space, but the judges felt that these examples manage to show that it is possible.

So here are the winners as selected by Blane, who set up the competition in the first place, and the other members of the Starbase Leicester Admin Team.

------Winner------

The Last Hope

by Paul L

He sat alone in the small capsule, his face turned towards the tiny glass porthole that was now his only connection to the spinning planet below.

He knew it had to be done. There was no other option left, not after the infection had spread the way it had. The leaders of the Earth had made it quite clear – if there was no hope, then the world must be destroyed. But it looked almost peaceful from here.

The clock beside him counted down slowly, ready to send the remote signal that would detonate the warheads.

Any moment now.

He would be the only survivor, but at least the Human race would continue.

The clock reached the 1 minute mark, not long now. He glanced down at the embryos beside him. The last hope for humanity.

30 seconds. Just 30 seconds until everything he knew, everyone he loved, would burn for eternity.

At least he had survived. That gave them all hope.

20 seconds. He inhaled deeply, and tried to relax.

The last hope.

10 seconds.

An inhuman scream from outside! Something clawing against metal. The handle of the airlock began to turn, and below him, the world began to burn.

------Runners Up------

ABC

by Logic

(Having been given an alphabet of words from the editor it was a story he wanted…so a story he got…)

Anthony blamed Coraline his personal AI buddy.

“Why did I have to get a girl buddy! ‘don’t expect financial gain. Hell I justkilled Larry’ is a classic quote from 26th century gangster movie… a boy buddy would know.”

Coraline the AI folded her holographic arms and pouted.

“If it made sense I’d know it.”

“Doubt it. I bet the teacher did this on purpose, for a laugh” moaned Anthony.

“Maybe not on purpose…”

“Gah! Shut it with your artificial logic! I’m calling Ted. Dial Ted.”

“Dialing”

Two seconds later Ted’s holographic face appeared on Anthony’s media wall.

“Yo! Ant”

“Yo! Hey you having trouble with your AI?”

“I was… Stan Fixed it.”

“Stan? Quick ring Stan!”

A second later Stan was convincing the boys he could reset the AI even with its top security. But the interference from all his hacking gear meant all they heard was “take up” and “very willing”. But soon the reset was done and a new AI appeared. It was a Telazian kid.

“Hey! It’s a Telazian” moaned Anthony.

“OI! You xenophobic young zeolets!”

“Oh boy it’s a grumpy one too. Good luck Ant… Bye”

And both Stan and Ted left Ant with his new … grumpy… AI.

The Ship Crashed

by Garak

The shiny, polished, sleekly marvellous, glitteringly beautiful, glimmering, majestically-starbourne, silvery, thin, graceful, feather-like, heavily-laden, lightening-quick, altitude-losing, air-splitting, radio-signal-absorbing, guidance-laser-reflecting, delicate, fragile, vulnerable, ground-destined, doomed, precious, aerodynamically-unstable, gravitationally-attracted, carbon-spaceframed, computer-misguided, non-impact-absorbing, Altair-originating, shelter-from-asteroid-storm-seeking, ice-trail-streaking, abnormally smooth, overheating, highly-insured, well-maintained, pristine, illogically-navigated, incomprehensibly-flight-planned, unmarked, brand-new, pleasantly-spacious, rich-merchant-owned, explosive-carrying, space-trading, comprehensively-armed, courageously-crewed, inexpertly-piloted, ship, spectacularly, quickly, magnificently, completely, heart-crushingly, inexplicably, unexpectedly, totally, unmissably, firestorm-inducingly, terribly, amazingly, fatally, greatly, non-planet-missingly, formidably, unpredictably, urgently, ungently, quite-accidentally, profitably, horrifically, horrifyingly, horrendously, atrociously, abominably, deplorably, egregiously, abhorrently, frightfully, shockingly, hideously, grimly, monstrously, sickeningly, seriously, non-non-non-non-heinously, gravely, nauseatingly, gruesomely, noisily, loudly, unpleasantly, excruciatingly, agonisingly, unbearably, cruelly, hatefully, unfairly, lamentably, song-of-legend-inspiringly, hopelessly, obnoxiously, crappily, brutally, wretchedly, sick-but-not-the-good-kind-of-sick-ly, conscience-strickenly, shamefully, troublingly, repellently, bone-crushingly, skull-burstingly, blood-spillingly, ash-tray-emptyingly, remorsefully, 'I've-been-in-bed-all-day-feeling-ill-just-thinking-about-the-nastiness-of-it'ly, utterly, bitterly, badly, unforgettably, 'oh-the-humanity'ly, crashed.

Gun

by Blane

The barrel of my gun is pressed against her cheek; tears spill over it and I can’t help wonder if it might rust.

"Don’t hurt me."

I usually remember detail but I’ve overlooked something.

The city canopy swayed overhead casting a light shade to the buildings and streets some six hundred metres below. Still, the sandy desert wind bit hard underneath, not many ventured out from their comfy air-conditioned homes or offices. I leapt from a rooftop and easily landed in a roll on an adjacent platform. I felt fuzzy from the blow to my head. My readouts flickered in my sight –

Memory Caching Error 0x1AF

- my target, a building downtown. I scaled the wall, scratched my way up the crumbly concrete before it’s self-aware™ surface repaired. The roof was vacant. I kicked through the service door – Habitat A – and sprinted through the guts of the building to room 2401.

"Taren please." She struggles against the vines, "it’s me, why are you doing this?" I glance at her. She’s naked.

"A runner finishes the mission." I place my finger on the trigger.

Memory Caching Error 0x0AC

I open my eyes and it’s dark. The implant restarted.

"Sarah."

2009-11-09T03:16:00.002Z

The Interview

Avatar's own Daniel Ribot talks to local writer/director Mehul Desai.

It is not often that a Leicester scriptwriter is showered with accolades by Hollywood. This very thing, however, happened to North Evington film-maker, Mehul Desai, by dint of winning the 2009 Page International Screen-Writing Awards.

He scooped the top prize of $25,000, against competition from 4000 entries from 58 countries. A veritable scoop, particularly as Mehul's script, like much of his work, is in the SF genre. His script, Progeny, was described by judges as "terrifying and thought-provoking", reminiscent of the Stanley Kubrick classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It has also sparked a lot of interest from Hollywood agents, something that bodes well for the future.

At the moment he is busy with another SF project; a short film with the title Extermination. Mehul describes it as "a war film but it's nothing grand and epic, it's all set in a ditch where these two soldiers are hiding. It's very short, probably only 5 minutes, focusing on their differing views on life and the fate of man. What interests me about the project is the chance to create (at least on a small scale) a future war scenario like the flashback scenes in the original Terminator. Dark, gritty, frightening." He plans to submit this film to the DV Shorts competition for East Midlands Arts and to Blank Slate in London. Making room in his busy schedule to answer my questions, he talked about his Science Fiction influences, Hollywood, Leicester and the craft of script-writing.

Daniel Ribot -- When did you first become interested in Science Fiction as a genre? What was the first SF book/film/TV show that really sparked your interest?

Mehul Desai -- I’ve always been a sci-fi fan. Growing up, all the movies I used to watch were things like Ghostbusters, Back to The Future, Star Wars, etc. I really got into Star Wars in my early teens, which was in the mid 90s. I was a huge Star Wars geek and that inspired me to write. I even remember trying to write a Star Wars novel when I was 13; it was set the day after Return of The Jedi, although I later found out that it had already been done.

In my late teens I saw Titanic (don’t care what people say, it’s a masterpiece!) and that reintroduced me to James Cameron’s films and his films got me REALLY excited about screenwriting and filmmaking.

DR --When did you decide to become a writer (of all things!), and an SF writer at that?

MD -- James Cameron was the biggest influence when I was around 15/16. I knew I wanted to pursue a career in film or something creative in the media. My parents were very supportive, they didn’t try to push me into another direction. I think they had concerns these last few years, with university becoming a distant memory. Was I ever going to get a real job? But I think I was probably more concerned. For all those post-uni years I was doing odd freelance video projects here and there but it was never enough to make a living off of. Fortunately I landed a steady job at the start of this year and have been pretty comfortable since. Now I probably need to reassess the direction I’m taking.

DR -- Have you ever worked in collaboration with other writers or do you write purely on your own? Which do you prefer?

MD -- I've never written in collaboration. I'm sure it works for some, but personally I'd find it difficult. Both writers would have to be 100% synched on story and characters. I do show my scripts to writer friends after I've completed the first draft. Fresh eyes always help, not just to spot typos but also scenes or sections of scenes that can be cut out.

DR -- How would you describe the style of your work? (i.e. do you tend towards comedy, horror, melodrama, social commentary, action etc).

MD -- I like writing about character journeys, think it might be the Joseph Campbell influence. Whether it's in a serious setting or a more light hearted one doesn't matter. Some of my scripts are quite bleak but they're still always about how a character got from A to B, what factors effects their decisions and perspectives. I love the hero's journey but also the villain's journey.

DR -- You have worked on a number of projects for the BBC and now seem to be casting your net farther afield to the US. In which country do you see yourself working in future?

MD -- I haven’t had any real involvement with the BBC. They’re close to impossible to break into unless you know the right people. The only association I’ve had with them was one of my short films being shown on the BBC Film Network. But I think they were forced to put it on there because they were sponsors of the event the film was being made under. Oddly enough, I got an email the other day saying they didn’t like the film and they’re taking it off the site (phrased much nicer though).

It’s still very early days in terms of what opportunities will be available from the US. It might not amount to anything, just have to wait and see. But if things go well I’m kind of forced to look to the US since they have the power to make the kinds of films I write and am genuinely interested in.

In the immediate future I’m staying put, though. I’ve just sent off my application for "Digital Shorts" in the East Midlands. The project, which I will hopefully also get to direct, is another science fiction piece, very different from what we usually get in terms of Brit shorts -- Extermination. Hopefully the fact I’ve won an award for a science fiction feature script will work in my favour.

Concept Artwork for Extermination. A Film by Mehul Desai. Artwork by David C Ayling

DR -- Are you at all apprehensive about having your work subjected to the Hollywood machine or about how your work will be reinterpreted or rewritten? How hard do you fight for your vision and when do you back down a little bit?

MD -- I’m not apprehensive about Hollywood at all. It’s a business, they need to make money. I’ll do my best to push the kind of film I want, but I’m not that experienced so I’ll have to go with the flow a little. But, to be honest, the people I’ve been talking to so far are very friendly and they “get” the stories I write. Their enthusiasm is really refreshing after the rejections I’ve got from UK production companies, producers, etc.

DR -- In a recent interview with the Leicester Mercury you mention that the hero of your award-winning script Progeny was based on the actor Morgan Freeman. Do you usually model your characters on real actors/people? Is there anyone that, in your wildest dreams, you would love to play one of your characters?

MD -- I said Morgan Freeman because he was the first actor to sprung to mind. I don’t write characters with actors in mind, maybe as an after thought but never while I’m writing.

That said, I did model a character in Progeny on Richard Dawkins, or at least how I see Richard Dawkins.

I’ve never had dream actors for any of the characters I write. I sometimes think a recognised face can be a distraction. I want the story to be the focus and the characters to be the characters, not such and such playing such and such character.

DR -- What are your greatest writing/movie heroes? Which of them would you most like to work with?

MD --James Cameron (obviously), but over the years I’ve had many more filmmakers that have inspired me: Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Kathryn Bigelow, M Night Shyamalan.

Shyamalan was a great inspiration for me. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable came out when I was in college doing my first videos. Before M Night Shyamalan, I didn’t know of any western-raised Indians who wrote and directed films that weren’t associated with Bollywood. Also he was doing genre stuff.

In terms of writing, Stephen King was one of my first favourites but lately it’s been a lot of Arthur C Clarke and Carl Sagan. There’s also Joseph Campbell who really helped shape my perspective on life and the world.

DR -- This September Leicester-based writer Graham Joyce scooped the Best Novel prize at the 2009 British Fantasy Awards and you have just won the Page International Screenwriting Award. Can you think of any reason why Leicester has suddenly become such a hotbed of SF talent?

MD -- I didn’t know about Graham Joyce, that’s brilliant stuff. Writing a novel takes a lot more time, focus and dedication than screenwriting.

I’m not sure why Leicester is having success in terms of science fiction and fantasy writers. These are genres of escape so maybe everyone wants to escape Leicester – I’m kidding!

DR -- Do you think growing up/living in Leicester feeds into what you write?

MD -- I don’t think it has much. I think it’s more to do with the people I’ve met, the places I’ve travelled, life experiences, books, movies, a whole lot of things. I’ve never written anything that’s specifically set in Leicester.

DR -- How will you be using the prize money; to help you further your writing career or blowing it on something cool and/or insane?

MD -- I think I’ve become more responsible the older I get so I’ll just put it away for a rainy day. In all honesty, I’m too busy at the moment to think about spending it on anything. Perhaps if I need to go to LA next year it will be useful. Have to wait and see.

DR -- What advice would you give to someone who thinks they have a great idea for a movie script?

MD -- Write it. Don’t be one of those people who say “I have a great idea” and then do nothing with it. Just write it. If you can’t get enthused enough to write it then it’s not really a great idea. Be passionate about the story and characters and don’t write to try and impress others. I’ve made that mistake in the past and it’s made the whole writing process a horrible experience.

You have to write something that you’ll be proud of. So much so that it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get made.

There’s a saying I read once, write out of inspiration and not aspiration. Take that as you will.

-------------------------

Avatar would like to thank Mehul for taking the time out from his busy schedule to talk to us and we wish him every success for the future. Also, many thanks to Mehul for kindly providing us with the concept artwork for Extermination.

2009-10-31T19:36:00.003Z

After many, many years of friends (yup mostly boys) trying to convince me and many minutes stood curiously outside a particular game shop and a few accidental internet browses, I was finally convinced to pick up a brush and paint!

Not portraits or walls but tiny little figures. My choice of army… Eldar of course.

These expensive little figures, and expensive paints, have had me curious for a long time. I even stepped into a shop only to hear silence engulf the place as they realised I was a girl! After the customary sales pitch I made my escape never to return and leaving the figures as a curiosity, a ‘wish I had got around to…’ or so I thought.

Then, one sunny Sunday afternoon, I found myself in the shop again just browsing, helping spend birthday money and would you believe it - they do a free painting session. I got a little… erm… thingy… oh wait … space marine and sat painting it, following a basic guide while surrounded by kids and adults alike all painting and playing Warhammer in its many forms.

Even better the guys in the shop really knew their stuff but didn’t rub it in your face. Not scary at all. My frequent “wow cool” didn’t sound out of place at all.

That was it, I was hooked. And they’re not that expensive either. Think about it, the models are miniscule and once you get the hang of it you only use a tiny amount of paint for some awesome effects. Even if, like me, you don’t play but just like painting them it’s an excellent hobby. Very therapeutic, cool and definitely an icebreaker if you have them displayed in the front room (:p). There are hundreds of models to choose from too like the Warhammer races, buildings, landscapes, animals, dragons, vehicles, etc to Lord of the Rings stuff… it’s truly amazing what you can find.

I’ve even found out that people I already knew paint! Its amazing. Everyone has tips but you pretty much find your own style. Now I have to decide what colour my troop of Eldar will be. They even have a ship thing too!

The only thing left is to decide what I try next…

Captain Sam Eld (really that’s my name! cool eh?)

[note from Cloudane… it’s a mobile weapons platform and not a ship]

2009-10-07T11:21:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I look beyond the tasks of day-to-day living, away from the world inside my head. I tend to spend a lot of time there because I have no one left to talk to. There are few interruptions now; a branch falling, a skittering animal, a gust of wind.

The world is empty but full of ruins. Crumbling cathedrals tumble to the ground. Dust returns to dust. The cathedrals have always been there. Empty, roofless, covered in vines and moss. There used to be more buildings. They're mostly rubble now. I expect the world will be totally flat one day and I will have no landmarks to tell me where I am. Sometimes when I look beyond I speculate about the cathedral-builders. Then my mind blurs and tries to go to other places. I let it go. Anyway, I have more roots to find. The firewood is running low. Must check on the plastic sheets.

I think I must have always lived in this place. Every April, because that is when the Easter hols begin, I pack my satchel and go in search of the others. I don't carry much with me. All I take is my filter cloth, the three plastic sheets, my knife and a warm jersey. Finding the others is harder now. Some years I have returned disappointed. There was nobody to find. I'm getting used to failure, but I like looking for them. I walk and sing songs for miles and miles. It feels good to hear my voice. It's a funny thing, though. When I do find others I am usually too frightened to approach them. And they seem to be frightened of me! Sometimes we will just look at each other; tense, ready to fight. Most of the time we manage to creep towards each other. The best is when we can greet and talk and laugh. But in the night, frightened again, we run away to be alone because it's safe and sound.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm really there at all. I look at my hand. I stare at it. It is always the same hand. I close my eyes and reopen them, perhaps hoping that in that instant the hand would have changed, become monstrous, alien, revealing something deeper. But it is always the same hand.

This April I set out as usual, singing all the way: 'Hitler, has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall, his mother, the silly bugger, chopped it off him when he was small' It is a happy song and one of my favourites, even if I don't know what half the words mean. This time I went really far. I walked and walked for weeks. Further than ever before. I saw no-one. One day, I reached the end of the land. It's where the sea starts with its lovely smell of ozone and the soothing sound of waves crashing. I soon spotted the old fortifications. Hulks of ships rotted in the harbour in front of them. On the promontory stood the fort. It was an octagonal building. A regular octagon. It had a door and three floors and a roof with a cannon. I spread out my plastic sheets on the roof, to collect dew or rainwater. I pointed them away from the sea, so the salt spray wouldn't contaminate. I had eight good water bottles. Two Evian, one Fanta and five with no label. I still had three full ones left.

It was on the fourth night when the child emerged from the shadows. He was small, skinny and naked apart from a pair of ragged shorts. I stood there with my mouth wide open, shocked. Where did he come from? He looked at me, eyes wide, lips trembling. I heard him breathe out with a slight whinny. For a second I could not decide if I had just imagined him or if he had imagined me. He trembled (or I trembled). Was the camera moving or the filmed object? He brought his hands towards his mouth and squatted on his haunches. How old was he? Year four, five, seven? It is hard to gauge... when one is alone.

'Food', I said, 'Water'

He looked at me non-plussed. I made some signs for eating and drinking. He brushed his nose and drew closer.

'Come', I said, turning towards the fort.

We walked. I in silence, he making all kinds of noise, just like a kid. When I reached the doorway, I went in. He remained outside, squatting on his haunches. Occasionally he would swat away the midges and mosquitoes that live in the brackish pools around the ruins. In the dark, I found my water bottles. By touch I managed to get the one that was full but already open. I also grabbed some seaweed roots. I left the building and gave the food and water to him. He grabbed at them like an animal and scampered off to inspect his haul. He glugged all the water in one go and ate, filling his cheeks with raw vegetable. It would have tasted better tomorrow, once I had cooked it.

It was funny. Watching him, crouching down on his haunches with his cheeks full. A blond-headed chipmunk covered in mud, welts and midge-bites. He reminded me of someone. I retreated and sat with my back against the wall, staring at him as he ate.

'You got people?', I said.

'Mhunk?', he replied.

'Others. Mum, dad, brothers, sisters?'

'Groffnyak!'

'Come on, there must be somebody.'

'Gek lo ta titi.' He giggled, like he had said something rude or naughty.

'Parlez-vous Français, Sprechen sie Deutch, Hablas Español?'

'Prrtzzz!', he said blowing a raspberry. I blew one back. We both laughed at how funny we were.

* * *

Days went by slowly as September gave way to October. The kid came every day to the ruin I called home. He waited for me, sitting on his haunches, until I emerged. His presence changed things radically, but I kept to my routine as much as possible. In the morning, I gathered the water from the plastic sheets to try and fill up the bucket. I would the pass the water through the filter cloth into my bottles. It had rained eight times since I arrived, meaning all of them were full. After doing the bottles, I would go outside and greet the kid. He would blow me a raspberry, I would blow one back. Then we would both hold our noses. 'Pooh!', we would say.

After that we would usually comb the beach. We looked for firewood, seaweed, crabs and shellfish. To start with, we would walk all morning down the beach and return along the inland road. Along it we could find roots, berries and wild herbs. I taught the kid to rub salt water and fennel on the roots before cooking. In the evening I would work on my bow and arrows. There were many rabbits over the grasslands. With two of us, it might be possible to hunt them. It felt good to have the kid around. I would talk about things to him and he would reply with his nonsense. Sometimes he would just mimic what I said and then laugh. His favourite game was to kick me and run away. Then I would chase him and kick him back. I didn't kick him hard, not on purpose. Sometimes I did and he would scream and scream, rolling on the floor. I would say I was sorry and he would shout. It made me feel bad. Like when Jon Whitley stole my pencil case and hit me on the face. He was the biggest boy in Miss Fleming's class and didn't care if he got in trouble.

'Look, the blackberries are out!'

'Grot.' Snot bubbled from one of his nostrils.

'No they're not, they're good. Lots of vitamins.'

'Grot, grot, grotbum.'

'Grotbum to you. Its my favourite fruit.'

'Grekk!'

'Silly boy. You can use them in pies with apple and guzgogs and rhubarb. Lovely.'

'Rhubarb crumble makes you rumble, rhubarb tart makes you fart.'

I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like a brick hitting me, the first words I had heard in four Aprils. My head was screaming and my eyes started to twitch.

'What did you just say?'

'Grotter.'

'You did. I heard you. Rhubarb crumble makes you rumble. I heard you. You said it. Don't lie!'

He laughed, blowing a raspberry at me. 'Raggerkek!', he said.

I couldn't stand it sometimes. The kid was so annoying. Just like Marty Gregson and his gay laugh. Me and Davey and Figgy used to rip pages from his rough book to make him cry. I want a Mars bar yoghurt. I sat down with my head in my hands. Pictures were forming in my head. Stuff I remembered. I was right in my head now. I heard myself scream. Another life was invading me. Another person's pictures coming into my head. My hands were trembling and my right eye twitched some more. This couldn't be happening.

Suddenly he was on me, kicking and shouting. 'Grot, grot, garoo!'

'Fuck off!', I screamed, 'Get away from me you fucking spazzer!' My hand swung out and hit his leg causing him to fall. He looked shocked, staring at my teary face. He got to his feet and ran away.

I sank back into myself. Perhaps it was just the company of the kid. I wasn't used to it, that was the problem. Maybe we are not meant to live in groups. All together, all the noise. Thirty to a class.

It was hours later when he came back and found me. I was still sitting in the same place. A tiny hand thrust itself in front of my nose. It was filled with blackberries.

'Yummy, yum, yum.'

I looked up to see his smiling face, covered in blackberry juice. Permanganate purple, the colour of potassium in chemistry. The colour acted like a trigger, sorting out all the dizzy pictures. Suddenly the memories fell into order, like the blocks on my old Tetris game. Potassium, lime, manganese and hydrochloric. Chemistry was the last class before dad took us home. It was embarrassing to see dad at school, all my friends looking. The aliens had come, there was a war, we had to run and hide. Soon there was destruction and hunger. The aliens came at night, sucking the topsoil and the trees from the fertile valleys. Then they took the ice from the poles and the Andes and the Himalayas. When we tried to fight them, they destroyed two hundred and fifty-six cities. Left nothing but the buildings standing with everyone dead. It took them an hour. So we all ran and hid and cried. Then they left. After that there was nothing left for people to live on. No soil means no food, no ice means no rain. One attack today might mean more attacks tomorrow. We could try and survive, but what was the point? It was all over. My last ever day at school, April Second, was the last day when we could believe that life would be better tomorrow.

I blinked and looked again at the smiling kid.

'I thought you didn't like blackberries.'

He took his hand, still full of berries and placed it under his armpit. By moving his arm up and down he could produce more farting noises. It also crushed the berries, sending permanganate juice dribbling down his side. We both laughed.

'OK kid, tomorrow we look for rhubarb. I teach you not to eat the leaves. Poison. Next April we will go and look for your mummy. She's probably missing you by now. Maybe you got an older sister, yes?'

'Prungle mig!'

'I bet she's prettier than you, git-face.'

Then I got up and we both went over to the blackberry bush. I felt happy all of a sudden. Perhaps they choked on all that ice and soil, or perhaps they would never be back. First winter, then April and we could go out and find the kid's family. There was bound to be one. Bound to. I was in a singing mood.

'Listen, this one is about birds that find the bullies in a forest and poo on them.'

'Yerx.'

'You'll like it. How does it go? 'If I had the wings of a sparrow, if I had the arse of a crow, I'd fly over Forest tomorrow, and shit on the Bastuds below.' What do you think?'

'Lestur.'

'Good. Watch them brambles. They got thorns on them.'

2009-10-07T10:33:00.001+01:00

A Review by Chris Burnham

“Katamari Forever” on the PS3 introduced me to a world I never knew existed. A colourful zany world lorded over by a kind and enigmatically gigantic King, his Queen and their son, the Prince. It is the latter character that you find yourself controlling throughout this game, although with the additional option of playing as one of his many strange cousins that you unlock throughout the game.

The story is simple... ish. The King flies off into space to punch away a stray meteor, which ends up hitting him across the head. The king falls back to Earth fast asleep and no matter what they do, no one can awaken him. A giant robotic replica of the King is built to rule in his place, but it goes off on a rampage, destroying all the stars and planets in the night sky. The prince’s job is to replace all of these stars and planets, by collecting the necessary materials, by using his Katamari.

In order to make the replacements for the planets and the stars, our 10cm tall hero has to roll his Katamari, a large sticky ball, around various different locations on Earth. Everything that he rolls over with his Katamari, sticks to it and adds to its mass, as long as it is not too large. You start off being able to pick up stuff like drawing pins and coins, but the size of the items gradually increases and soon you’re picking up people, cars, buildings and even whole continents.

The aim of most levels is to roll up enough random stuff, in order to build a star or planet. This often involves a size of Katamari to achieve within a time limit, although other game modes see you watering plants with your Katamari, lighting fires and one ingenious game mode that sees you trying to roll up hot items only, in order to increase the temperature of your ball. Cold items decrease the temperature. The levels are not particularly hard, but may require a few replays to achieve success. This type of gameplay is encouraged with the addition of ‘Cousins’ of the prince, who are hidden throughout each level, ready to be rolled up. There is also a whole slew of presents hidden, which include ways to customise your character with various hats, costumes etc.

Controls are simple. The analogue sticks control all movement, with both of them having to be pressed in the same direction to move. Press one stick on its own, to turn around. Push down both analogue sticks into the controller (L3 and R3) and you do a quick 180 degree turn. There is also a handy motion controlled jump, which sees you flicking the controller up in the air (or alternatively pressing one of the shoulder buttons) allowing you to jump up a step or over an obstacle. There are no buttons to press and no complicated combos to master. Just point the analogue sticks in the direction you want to go and try not to roll up stuff that’s too big for your Katamari.

There is a two player mode, which is either cooperative or a Vs battle. These have their own levels, set aside from the others in the main game. There is a massive emphasis on the word ‘cooperative’ in the 2 player game. You both have to be pointing in the same direction in order to get anywhere, instead of the usual attempts to complete the levels between you. The Vs battle sees The Prince fighting against one of his cousins (controlled by player 2) who have to race across a map and try to end up with the bigger Katamari than each other. You can intentionally ram them too and steal their stuff.

I like this game, because it’s quirky and instantly accessible. Its controls may take a few minutes to master, via a handy tutorial, but after that you’ve got everything you need to enjoy the game. The control system could even be tweaked a little to use motion sensing equipment, like the Wii Nunchuk and Wiimote. It’s a fun, madcap jaunt through a colourful and often humorous world and well worth a play if you’re bored of all those sequels that promise lots, but offer little new ideas.

Try something different today. Roll yourself a Katamari.

My rating: 4 Stars

2009-09-30T23:19:00.001+01:00

FantasyCon 2009

A report by Pastrysatan

A weekend or so ago (September 18-20), Nottingham hosted FantasyCon 2009, the British Fantasy Society's Annual shindig, in the cavernous Britannia Hotel. It is a celebration of fantasy and SF publishing; books, magazines, comics and art (and freaky jewelry). It is a three day conference, covering a whole weekend. Sadly, I was only a day-tripper looking for a nice day out. Something for a balding, forty-something geek to enjoy. It also gave me the opportunity to check out what's hip, happening and trendy in the British fantasy scene.

In some ways, my little Avatars, FantasyCon is a serious little conference. If you are used to comic-book conferences you will immediately notice an absence of fancy dress or leggy models in Sailor Moon costumes handing out leaflets. This seriousness carries over to the main business at hand; the drinking. Most of the proceedings take place in or near the bar. Consequently, almost everyone you meet from the second day on will be drunk or hungover.

Despite this bacchanalian caveat, FantasyCon is a grand day out, if I may be allowed to say so. Of course it is the people who attend that make an event like this. In the main, the attendance is made up of authors, fans and small press publishers. They are a friendly bunch and have even provided a meeting point for "newbies" to congregate and be introduced to the many goings on. A splendid idea, one that many larger conferences could benefit from.

With my splendid Leicester posse we decided to split up and sample the various activities. It was 11 am. There was a round table on vampires, a talk on writing weekends and a book launch by two small presses held in the bar. I will return to the launches later. The talk on writing weekends was canceled and so, a faute de mieux, let us wander to the vampire forests.

Given the popularity of American vamps, one would expect us plucky Brits to put on a good show as well. Sure, the yanks have True Blood, Moonlight, Buffy and Stephenie Meyers, but we've got Bram Stoker, the original dude with the 'tude. Surely we can kick bitey ass too? Sadly, it seemed not. The lament from the creatures of the night was despondent and plaintive. Night of the Lycans just wouldn't cut it in Leeds or Middlesborough. Blade would take one look at Southampton city centre on a Saturday night and decide to end it all. Twilight over here? When English 15 year old girls all look and sound like Vicky Pollard? You is havin a laff, you is! There were some age-old arguments:Paranormal Romance or Horror? Another argument pitted badly written, trash, mass-market vampires against the honesty, literary quality and real emotional depth portrayed by the writers on the FantasyCon panel. Pity they write all this high-minded literature about characters that go "poof!" and magically turn into a bat when they get near a window.

An interesting shift in the market is a growing interest in historical vampire fiction. Though the biggest concern among those present was that the boom in vampires was coming to an end as readers tired of the formula.

The next panel I attended was an interview with the conference's special guest, Brian Clemens. Brian seems to have had a hand in writing almost every single British Sci-Fi/Adventure series of the 1960s. His credits include The Invisible Man, Dangerman, The Champions, Adam Ant Lives and, of course his co-writing of The Avengers with Brian Rigby.

It was interesting to hear that the original partner for Steed (Patrick McNee), was supposed to be a male actor, Ian Hendry. When Hendry got a gig in Hollywood, Honor Blackman was hired. Her part was. therefore, written initially for a man --and they kept all the fight scenes in, despite the change of personel. It was the beginning of fighting, leather trouser-wearing, action-women. Honor was eventually headhunted for the James Bond films. After an interregnum where Elizabeth Shepherd wore the leather pants, Diana Rigg made the Emma Peel role her own.

At this point it was time for lunch. Leicester colleagues and I adjourned to a nice restaurant and a walk around Nottingham. I took the opportunity to visit 'Page 45', absolutely the best independent comic-book shop outside London. After spending all my book money on comics, I slunk back into the conference.

On my return I crashed into my final improving lecture. Its theme was 'The Green Man' and bringing myths up to date. It was pleasant enough. All the speakers referred to their own books whenever they answered a question and there was some light and fluffy Q + A about how swell and lovely myths all were. Nice and green and ancestor-friendly they are. It is why you should all support the use of bile from caged bears in Chinese medicine: It is based on wonderful myths by wise ancestors, not the nasty chemicals of our silly modern medical science.

Thoughts of medicine drove me to the bar where I sat through a number of press launches (I told you I'd come back to them), all of which were delivered to an audience of beer-monsters. I could not think of a worse nightmare for any author than having their book launched in such an appalling locale. Here is a list of what the organizers did wrong. A list that is no way exhaustive.

1) They held the book launches in a bar! A bar that was serving all through the conference. Throughout the day, the majority of people going there were groups who just wanted to chat, drink and network: i.e. they did not want to listen to book launches or other announcements. Given the widespread indifference of the bar crowd, the response of the publishers was to shout at everyone.

2) Some launches were accompanied by free wine. The wine was placed on the same table where all the authors were sitting. People queuing for the free wine did so by lining up in front of where the authors sat, obscuring them from view. A publisher would then stand on a chair and shout over the heads of the queue. "This is a brilliant book by Fred Blogs!", they would bellow. Fred Blogs, obscured by a row of bodies, could reflect in splendid isolation on all the benefits that small presses bestow on their authors.

3) Forty or so books were launched. Not a single author got to read an extract of their own book at their own launch. Shocking.

4) When you could see the authors, you could not photograph them properly. The table they were sitting at was directly in front of a large window. A strong backlight meant that any photograph taken of the authors would have rendered them black, unrecognizable silhouettes.

At the bar, Leicester writer Jim Worrad and I, decided to give a reading of our work. We signed up and trekked up to the room. To an audience of six (all of them friends) we got to strut our stuff. We finished just in time to miss the Fantasy Banquet and trooped off for our tea. Sturdier hearts than mine later returned for the British Fantasy Awards Ceremony (Leicester writer, Graham Joyce, won the main prize for Best Novel). I, however, caught the train back to Leicester, arriving home in time for Match of the Day).

2009-09-27T00:58:00.004+01:00

How does a mecenery manage to have a military title and a be a former preacher?

The following being transcribed from a video interview with Jake Cobb by Gordon Freeman, found at an undisclosed location.

JC: Name? ID?

GF: Gordon Freeman. Here’s my ID.

JC: Cool, come in, so before we start, you got folks?”

GF: No, but I don’t see how...

JC: *interrupting* Sorry it’s just, I got trust issues, you understand right?

GF: Yeah, sure, no problems.

JC: So, kid, where'd you want me to start?

GF: Start from the beginning, Mr Nu.. sorry Mr Cobb, in your words..

JC: Ok, kid, but one more slip and I’ll gut ya, and please, call me Jake.

GF: Sorry, Jake. Please continue.

JC: There ain't much to tell about my childhood. Grew up in a lovin' family home, parents wanted me to be a preacher, I wanted to travel and all seemed shiny. Then a few summers pass and, while I was off yonder with some friends, the gorram Reavers visited my home. My whole ruttin' family got killed an' worse. Some of them bodies couldn’t be found. I buried 'em all and said a few words, thought about stayin' but since I don't got nothin' there no more. Then a few friends, that I'd made on the trip, decide to join up to the Alliance Forces. They’d lost folks too and figured why not? They’d get to see the 'Verse and maybe, someday get their revenge, some notion of, I dunno, findin' out how or why the Reavers had come about. So I figure why not join em? After a while, I liked it. Not much later I earned the rank of Sergeant.

GF: I don’t understand, if it was so good, why’d you leave?

JC: Ah, good question.. see, the thing about bein' both a leader and a former preacher, your team and some of your equals, well they took to confidin' in me. Some of their thoughts were a might disturbin', some useful to know, one in particular would come in handy should things go sour. Yep, all was real good, and then the war came. A lot of foul stuff happened, ain't somethin' I want to see in print you understand, but I’ll tell you the main reason for my leavin'.

GF: You ok? You look a little pale...

JC: Nah, I’m fine, *sigh* yeah, where was I? Oh yeah, my real reason for leavin', the one the Alliance won’t tell anyone about. I wouldn’t know it, but the war was comin' to an end when it happened, must have been only a few months away, but durin' what would be my last tour, me and my squad where on a routine patrol and things went south. We was lookin' for resistence members in the area. I made the mistake of restin' up while my team went on ahead. About an hour later, I hear screamin' and gunfire from up the road where my team was, so I head off real quick-like, hopin' they were ok. And then I found them, the carnage was a mighty powerful kind of terrible. They'd come across a group of civilians who'd been hidin' a couple of resistence members. The whole squad had gone Shiang Jing Ping! The men tied to stakes, gunshots to the head, women defiled and battered to death, children slaughtered, and right there, plumb in the middle of it all, were my gorram team grinnin' like they'd just had a shindig. They’d tried to claim it was Reavers, but I knew better. Anyway when we got back to camp, I wrote all this down in an official report, and then things turned real ugly.

GF: Oh god *throws up* that’s horrible. Then what happened?

JC: Well, my C.O. called me in, I could tell he was fixin' for a real bout of shoutin' an' cussin'. Turns out one of my team was his Nephew. The kid had lied about his age to get in and I hadn’t said nothin' ‘cause he was a crack marksman. Still, hell of a way to find your nephew’s not only in the army, but accused of atrocities. He told me to "bury the report, or else!" So I said "or else what?" Man, the shouts where so loud, all I heard was the words ‘firin' squad’ and ‘insubordination’. Either way, I figured fer bein' dishonourably discharged.

GF: So what did you do?

JC: Well, I didn’t want be takin' no dirt-nap, and I wanted to keep my title and my good self out of jail, but bein' the preachin' kind, I couldn’t lie and tellin' truth would darn sure get me killed. Then I remembered all of those confessions. One in particular that, like I told you, would be bang-up useful if things turned real sour, and sour it was. I called the man in question, he was a real high rankin' officer by now and he’d heard the rumours about what happened. He said if I buried the report to appease my C.O. and promised that I ain't gonna tell no one else about what he’d done, and never call him again, he’d get me out on an honourable discharge. I took it. I didn’t tell him what my plans was fer once I got out, heck, with my skills I’d already decided to join the resistance, if they’d trust me enough. ‘Course, the war had finished by then.. so here I am, a gun-fer-hire! A merc to whoever’ll pay me.

GF: I see.. well, that’s all.. I should be able to publish this as it is. I’ll be off. Here's your payment. It's all here, but you can count it if you like. I can see myself out.

JC: Ku, kid, ku. *looking out the window at the pristine-new car parked outside* Mind answerin' a few questions for me?

GF: *looks puzzled* Sure, go ahead.

JC: That your car out front?

GF: Yeah, why?

JC: Shiny. By the way, how’s Zed?

GF: Who’s Zed?

JC: *pulls out a silenced gun and shoots Gordon in the head* Supposed to be your boss, chwen joo! *Jake Cobb then leaves*

2009-09-24T17:01:00.008+01:00

In response to 'Finding Nimoy', Alan Ball argues the case for the science-fiction reboot, and why we need it

My friend, and editor of Avatar Mark Cotterill suggested in his recent article 'Finding Nimoy' that science-fiction entertainment has a grim future ahead; banal, clichéd products designed by committee and part of a wider cynical process of brand synergy. In some respects he’s entirely correct as film making, TV producing and any other media platform is for profit, and executives answer to shareholders as much as they do to the audience the products are designed for. But, that is how the business has always operated: what has changed?

I think it’s naïve to suggest that a product born of influences from prior art has any less a credible existence than an ‘original’ piece. In fact, I believe the opposite - many pleasures are derived from using our own knowledge to expand on a text, making our reaction to even more enjoyable. A good show is still a good show.

A particular gripe was the reboot of Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009) and similar products of the late 60’s and 70’s such as Dr. Who and Battlestar Galactica. His argument is that there’s lack of ideas in the media business in general and something is ‘lost’ in translation when the executives flitter through old reels and find something to re-invent. In some ways he has a point. Values change as our society moves on, ideas and philosophies are altered beyond recognition – this used to take hundreds of years – but in our fast paced lives of technology enhanced consumption, values that were set in stone 40 years ago are overturned completely. For this reason, Mark is correct: they’re cheap imitations lacking the values of the originals.

But should we write them off as something lesser? Absolutely not.

Star Trek was an incredibly risky proposition. Hollywood films always have an element of risk – controlled somewhat by in-depth audience research – but Star Trek was a real gamble. Paramount cancelled its shows - the previous TV reboot Star Trek: Enterprise had a terrible reception and the last movie Nemesis did poorly (grossing only $67m on a budget of $60m – they’d lose another $20m on world-wide marketing). According to Mark’s observations, films and TV shows with a tried and tested formulae are the way to success – yet these products are both ‘by the numbers.’ Enterprise follows a similar format to The Next Generation and Nemesis builds on the previous Star Trek movie outings, employing the same cast and narrative elements that were successful before. Yet they fail. In fact all Star Trek franchises since (the excellent) First Contact have declined in audiences and revenues. So why gamble on a dying brand? The key part of this is audiences.

The formulae of many new shows are cut directly from their ancestors of 60’s television. A whole generation of viewers have seen that show – throughout the last 50 years. The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Blake's 7 and Dr. Who are surprisingly similar products. As Mark put it – if something is successful, why deviate from common and familiar elements?

It’s the audience, and more importantly their values. The 60’s and 70’s were times of great change (civil rights, feminism), of great peril (Cold war, nuclear proliferation), the dream of better things (man on the moon and the space race). When these things were achieved or ended satisfactorily, these values became stale, even patronising.

The 80’s & 90’s were different: my generation has no great cause, no enemy and with technology as great as it is, the future is now – cynicism is the death of wonder. It’s reflected in our TV too – X-Files, Stargate SG1, The Next Generation - it's ok, we’re all safe, someone is on it. The values have changed and as a result we needn’t borrow as much from the past (there are still elements, intertextuality, as all good stories need inspiration).

Come the 00’s. In Arthur C Clarke’s greatest fantasies he wouldn’t have seen 2001’s events coming. Once again we have entered an era of great change, of great peril – and a new hope for the future. Like Gene Roddenberry’s show was a mirror to his time, then so is the reboot – and so are many other speculative shows.

These shows and films may pay homage to their predecessors in name, but they forge ahead with our new values, our new mission. BSG shows us the folly of our machinations, the downfall of our society by corruption and careless politics – and the hope at starting again through all trials. Firefly is a pastiche of Blake's 7 and borrows every element of it’s story from something else, yet is a thrilling tale of the strength of family against societies’ hardships. Other shows such as Fringe and Dollhouse have succeeded not because of their nod to the past but because they have incredible stories that pull the right emotional strings.

Star Trek [2009] might borrow from a good idea, but the one that has been forged in its place is as relevant as its 60’s counterpart – the hope for the future after a time of great distress; the young taking hold and changing things for the better.

The audience wins: the recognition of a good story, regardless of its background, a win for unconventional thinking. This week is the anniversary of the birth of another storyteller and perhaps one of the most ‘copied’ authors – HG Wells – a pacifist and socialist intellect, imitated by science fiction writers the world over. Is it coincidence that the Trek of the 1960’s would include the same ideas when they once again became relevant?

Come 2009 where the audience is much more aware of previous texts, it is much harder to hide where the ideas are from – so it was brave indeed to not hide anything at all – an honest copy of a good idea. Long may that continue.

2009-09-18T03:58:00.002+01:00

Mark E. Cotterill explores the strange new world of the Remake, the Sequel, the Prequel and the Star Trek Reboot

When the latest Star Trek remake came out in May this year I made the fairly radical decision that I would not go and see it. Even though I'm a huge fan of all things Trek (well, all things except Voyager and Enterprise) as soon as I heard they weren't just making the next film in the Star Trek franchise but actually remaking the original iconic sixties Star Trek series, I knew I wasn't going to like it - I didn't want to like it, but I didn't know why.

If you look at a list of the top grossing films of the last couple of years you will find a remake of Batman, a remake of Transformers, a remake of James Bond, an Indiana Jones movie, a trilogy of Spiderman remakes, a Watchmen movie and an X-Men prequel, amongst a multitude of other remakes, sequels, trilogies and series.

In fact the ideas these films are based on are very old indeed; X-Men as a comic goes back to the 1960s, Transformers was a 1980s toy advert thinly veiled as a cartoon, James Bond was a series of books which were turned into films in the sixties, Indiana Jones was a trilogy of action movies from the eighties which was itself based on old thirties and forties serials and Batman has been around since 1939.

Since Hollywood is in the business of making money, by creating 'entertainment' which might cost in excess of $100 to $200 million to produce, doesn't it make sense to base this entertainment on something with proven success? Doesn't it also make sense to make large scale, one-size-fits-all mass produced/mass consumed units rather than take a chance on dozens of smaller movies from unknown writers and directors which only a small minority of the audience might like? If this is true then I'm afraid we're going to be seeing even more movies based on an ever diminishing list of well known franchises.

Success breeds success. Everyone knows the most basic rules of producing a hit movie; if one kind of film does well, it gets copied and if a movie makes a lot of money it gets a sequel. It's an idea which goes back to those early b-movies and horror films which may have ended with the death of the monster, but when the film became successful it's revealed that the monster survived after all. The studios knew that they were guaranteed to make as much money as they had first time around so long as everyone came back to see the follow-up, but most often these sequels weren't as good as the original. One exception to the rule, and possibly the one which finally broke the trend, is the 1991 film Terminator 2, probably the most successful sequel ever made.

On the face of it The Terminator (1984) is a basic monster chase b-movie flick, but with an interesting twist; For the first half-hour or so of the picture the action plays out as a standard female-in-peril thriller. Only about 30 minutes in do we realise the Arnold Schwarzenegger character is actually a robot of some kind. The idea is so basic that, like the Terminator itself, it could run and run and by the time the sequel rolled around seven years later with the advanced special effects of the day and an extra Terminator added to the mix in the formula still worked.

Director James Cameron managed to both extend the story set up in the first film and convincingly develop the main character of Sarah Connor who went from being a frightened moped-riding waitress to an AK-47 toting survivalist who spends much of her life in mental institutions thanks to her foreseeing the approach of the global nuclear Armageddon. What's also interesting about Terminator 2 is that Cameron deliberately ends the movie with all the 'temporal' loose ends tied up. The chip which led to the creation of Skynet is destroyed and so is the Terminator from which it came, meaning the particular future that led to the creation of the Terminator can't happen either. Cameron was saying as clearly as he could to the audience that there was to be no third instalment, but thanks to a little 21st century retconning we did, and a fourth and a TV series.

So, certainly if a successful film gets a sequel then a really successful sequel must become a trilogy, and if we're talking about trilogies then we're talking about Star Wars. It's the origin point of what we mean by the 'Trilogy' in science-fiction where the modern action movie is born. The way George Lucas strategically places an action sequence at 10 minute intervals throughout the movie, where before a film may have had a climactic 'ending' or chase sequence somewhere in the middle. It was the first film to become so popular that a major studio agreed to not just a sequel but a whole trilogy.

Even though the story of Luke, Darth Vader and the rise and fall of the Empire spans the three films of the original trilogy the first Star Wars movie, later subtitled A New Hope, holds true to a more traditional three-act structure; there's a threat to the Rebellion (the 'Problem'), the Evil Empire who is trying to stop them (the 'Conflict') and a final act in which the Rebellion successfully defeats the Empire once and for all (the 'Solution'). If you look carefully you will see that everything in the story points towards this resolution at the end. The Death Star represents the Empire and is everything, once it's destroyed it will mark the beginning of the end for the Empire. Had the other movies not been made Star Wars on its own would still have made sense. The whole story-line about Darth Vader's past, his relationship to Luke and Leia and his involvement with the Emperor is absent and all Darth Vader as a character really does is go around scaring people and killing Ben Kenobi, which George Lucas later admitted was put into the script simply because he didn't have any more lines for Alec Guinness. The whole history between Vader and Kenobi which would later form the basis for the prequel trilogy is just a back-story and no more. Just like those 50's horror movies though, at the end of Star Wars the monster isn't quite dead.

George Lucas got the inspiration for Star Wars from many different sources, mainly from the clunky Saturday matinee serials he saw in his youth. If you look at the "what happened in the last episode" title crawl of Buck Rogers you will immediately see the connection, but he was also inspired by Japanese cinema and more generally fairy-tales. I'm sure every Star Wars fan knows of the links with Kurasawa's Hidden Fortress in which the whole story is told through the eyes of two lowly servants, but Lucas also recognised that anyone who didn't speak Japanese could still tell what was happening because certain stories, ideas and character archetypes are universal. The Young Hero, the Wizard, the Princess and the Rogue aren't just ancient but they are global and you can find them again and again in the literature of Europe, Asia, India, China and the Far-East. "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away" sounds a lot like "once upon a time" and perhaps it's also significant that, unlike the majority of science-fiction, Star Wars isn't about the future and nor is it about 'us'.

The problem with fairy-tales though is that they have endings. Once 'The End' has appeared on the screen, it's kind of hard to carry on with the story, but in Star Wars those words never appear. Each time a Star Wars movie ends it's the beginning of the next one. Even Return of the Jedi had a follow-up, though not in cinematic form but a whole series of books. The Jedi Academy series and Tales from the New Republic carry on the story, or continue the legend, but if you're really sure that this is 'The End' then what else is there left but to go back to the beginning? Time for a Prequel.

The Prequel can confer 'real' status on a character; real people have histories so why shouldn't fictional ones? Like when every teenager suddenly becomes interested in what their parents were like as teenagers. We love these 'hidden histories' and maybe it's the reason why programmes such as "Who Do You Think You Are" and "Time Team" have become so popular in recent years. Prequels are also an excellent way of using a well established franchise but with a whole new area of unexplored territory to exploit.

According to Wikipedia; a prequel is a work that portrays events and/or aspects of a previously completed narrative, but is set prior to the existing narrative.

A prequel must be part of the same series as the film it precedes, but if, like the new Star Trek or Batman Begins, it starts the story (and the series) anew, it is not a prequel - but rather a 'Reboot'. With a reboot much, or even all, previous continuity in the series can be discarded. A reboot doesn't have to be consistent with the existing canon (all the previously established continuity) of the series and so this can be conveniently discarded and replaced with new canon, just as it was with the the TV series Enterprise.

Television has actually been doing reboots for a while with shows such as Smallville, Battlestar Galactica and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In each case the producers decided to simply ignore everything that had happened, whether it was the comic book, the previous series or the movies and concentrate on the essence or the core elements of the concept, while still benefiting from the familiarity the audience had with the series. This is pretty much essential with TV because unlike films the drama is spread over a much longer period, particularly with American shows which typically run over 26 episodes per season for several years. One of the big problems with a prequel or a series based on something that's already well established is that you, as the audience, often know too much about what's going to happen and who it's going to happen to, which makes it sort of difficult for the writers to spring the kind of surprises which weekly episodic television demands.

Certainly there has never been a TV series or franchise larger than Star Trek, spanning four separate series and ten movies across five decades; hundreds of episodes and thousands of hours, but the problem also persists for other long running series such as Star Wars and Doctor Who. When writers create a story there's one thing it has to be above all else; entertaining. This means that something new and original has to happen in every story and the longer a series runs the more difficult it becomes to come up with new ideas. Soon, writers are forced into creating ever more outlandish scenarios to hook the viewer in and the more something 'cannot happen' the more its happening becomes inevitable. How many times in a TV series does the lead character appear to have died, or the ship is seen in the trailer being destroyed, only to reappear at the end?

To achieve this trick writers often employ the 'reset button technique'. It is often introduced as a plot-twist which effectively undoes all the events of the episode. This could be achieved by using dream sequences, time travel, hallucinations or dozens of other variations. Perhaps the most extreme example being Bobby Ewings return from the dead after an absence of a complete season in the eighties TV soap Dallas. His wife wakes up and sees him in the shower and realises that the whole previous season had been a dream, but when something similar happened in the Spiderman comics in 2007 furious fans started a wave of protest and letter writing directed at the comic's Editor Joe Quesada.

The 'One More Day' story-line was an attempt to restructure the three main Spiderman series and reconcile the events of the various alternate timelines, but the result was a major changing of canon as Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane was erased totally from the history of the character, and with it the last twenty years of the comic's story. Loyal readers of the comic lit up the forums and even appeared on Youtube tearing up editions of issue number 545 and 'thanking' Quesada for wasting the last twenty years of their lives. The 'fix' was actually a particular kind of reset-button technique known as retconning;

Retroactive Continuity (retconning) is the deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction.

Retcons can allow the alteration of the back-story of a series by adding a new piece of information which sheds a whole new light on things. Star Trek has done its fair share of retconning over the years but probably the best examples are to be found in Star Wars. Most notably the changes made in the 1997 re-release of the films where some scenes were actually changed such as the controversial 'Han Solo shooting first', but even more changes were made when the films were released onto DVD for the first time in 2004. Following the release of Episodes I, II and III George Lucas altered the voice of Boba Fett using the actor who had played his Father Jango in Episode II and he added actor Hayden Christensen to the final scene of Return of the Jedi, replacing Sebastian Shaw who had played the older version of Anakin Skywalker, but the most bizarre retcon perhaps of all time occurs in Episode II.

In the original movie, A New Hope, a group of stormtroopers enter the control room where C3-PO and R2-D2 are hiding and one of the extras at the back of the group bangs his head on the door. Amazingly the 'mistake' was never noticed at the time and made it into the final cut of the film. It became a famous 'movie gaff' until 2002 when Lucas placed a small in-joke into the scene where Jango Fett boards his ship on Kamino. It's hard to make out, but he also bangs his head on the raised door as he enters the ship, the implication being that since Jango is the clone father of the Stormtroopers they have all inherited this inability to see where they are walking. Suddenly a continuity error becomes a whole back-story of its own!

If you want to see some of the worst retconning of all time though I don't think you could do any better than look at the new Doctor Who. Leaving aside the ingenious technique of having one actor replace another by means of a regeneration or twelve, the almost constant permanent extinction and reappearance of the Daleks and their leader Davros is perhaps the best example of using a retcon to simply repeat a good storyline. It seems that where the Doctor is concerned, whenever we're told that something is 'impossible' we can be sure that at some point it will occur; the more impossible it is, the more likely it's eventually going to happen. The ongoing cycle of making the rules and then breaking them might be fun for a while but eventually the dramatic credibility of the series is tested to breaking point.

So apart from making vast sums of money, what's really behind all this looking back and raiding the science-fiction of the past? I believe it really got started around the time we entered the third millennium, coincidentally when the Star Wars Prequels began. Once the magic date of 2000 arrived we stopped imagining the future and started living in it, but with all our attention focused on something called 'the Millennium-Bug', which threatened to bring modern western society to its knees, everyone was too busy to notice. The reality which science-fiction had been exploring for a century or so failed to materialise and in the year 2000AD the British comic which bore that date as its title suddenly became 'past tense'.

At a New Years party at the end of 2000 I remember playing 2001: A Space Odyssey on the TV in the background, but all it seemed to do was generate a feeling of disappointment and disillusionment in the room, or it may have been the punch. In the real 2001 we weren't taking shuttle-bus trips to low-Earth orbit, we weren't eating chicken sandwiches on the Moon and we weren't even watching BBC 12. Of course the year 2001 would become famous, or infamous, for a very different reason on the 11th of September and anyone who had any doubts about what kind of a future the 21st century was going to be, had them dispelled; We were entering a time of war, of fear and of great uncertainty. It's in stark contrast to the sixties when the original Star Trek series hit our screens.

During the 'space-age' of that decade, science was seen as reassuring, as being 'truth' and a provable fact about the universe we inhabit. Scientists were heroes who were delivering tangible results in areas such as medicine, transportation and communication. The early days of computing promised to transform our future world into something like what we saw on the bridge of the Enterprise. Interest in science and science-fiction grew, spurred on by the writers of the Golden Age who had enjoyed great popularity in the forties and fifties. Stories were based on the latest scientific advances in areas such as genetics, robotics and computing and many of the great writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke where themselves scientists. Their stories were rooted in science, but asked the 'what-ifs' and looked at the doomsday scenarios. Several of these great writers, such as Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison went on to write for Star Trek and followed in this tradition with episodes like "What Are Little Girls Made Of" which explored the possibility of transferring a human consciousness into a machine and "Space Seed" which speculated on the existence of a mass eugenics programme by the 1990s resulting in the creation of a race of super-men.

There was also an optimism about the future, that science would save us. The actor who received the most fan mail on the show wasn't the show's star William Shatner but Leonard Nimoy who portrayed the cold and scientifically logical Mr. Spock. Politically too the sixties was a time of hope, as well as upheaval and revolution, in the form of the civil rights movement in America and the feminist movement.

Many people now feels that science has failed to deliver and they just don't trust it any more. "Bad-Science" inspired movements like the moon-landing doubters, anti-environmentalists and creationists have gained more support than they ever had before and the take-up of science based courses at universities and colleges is now at an all time low. We are living in the 'information age' and yet our technology constantly lets us down. Our computer systems crash, our video conferencing calls break up and drop out and our space shuttles unexpectedly explode. We have even reached the point where someone will admit their ignorance about science and be proud of it, then they'll brand those who do show an interest in it as nerds and geeks.

Now it seems we really are 'driving forwards while looking in the rear view mirror'. What we are doing is trying to recapture that view of our own future through the eyes of the science-fiction of the past. Certainly if you read science-fiction rather than watch it at the cinema or on television there's much more originality and new ideas, which would seem to confirm the idea that Hollywood is financially motivated rather than making these kinds of films because of a lack of material. There's also the possibility that, as the great philosopher Paul Weller once wrote, "the public wants what the public gets" and Hollywood isn't really following a cultural trend at all but creating one. It certainly seems that over the last decade this kind of nostalgia boom hasn't just been confined to films.

Listen to the popular music of the last ten years and you'll hear something which wouldn't sound out of place in the fifties or sixties, in some cases it is even recorded using original equipment from that time. Perhaps the worst thing you can say about the music of today is that it doesn't even offend your parents who after-all were probably into punk, heavy metal and hard rock in their formative years. Likewise motor manufacturers have been resurrecting old brands such as the Volkswagen Beetle, the Mini and the Fiat 500, all cultural icons of their time. When we look back at this first decade of the new millennium will we really be able to see a definitive style any different from the nineties, or will it just look like an agglomeration of styles from the past?

I think each generation has to rebel against its parents, not simply by overturning and throwing out the old ideas just for the sake of it, but by having an unwillingness to accept everything on face value, to re-examine and doubt everything that's accepted as 'just the way it is', otherwise the culture risks stagnation and nothing will change. Judging by today's popular culture then it's clear that this generation has completely failed to do this. Rather than rebelling against our parents we've become them! Think about it for a moment; when they were young did your parents drive a Beetle or a Mini or a Fiat 500? Did they watch Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica or Doctor Who? Did they read Watchman, X-Men and Spiderman comics?

I think it's for this reason that the success of the new Star Trek troubles me so much. Already there are rumours of a sequel, and no doubt a trilogy, even a series and so another 'old TV show' makes millions of dollars for a Hollywood studio and the vicious circle goes on, but that's not the worst of it. I think about what happens to the original whenever a 'cheap copy' is made. Something is lost. Those old episodes of Star Trek were not as slick or impressive as the new movie, but they were somehow more genuine. Placed next to the new incarnation in direct comparison they can't possibly look as good and the same goes for all of the other titles I've talked about in this article.

So we are robbing the past, using it up. Soon, there might be nothing left to remember, and then where will Hollywood go for its ideas?