Author: piersb

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#solcomms

Last night, 15,000 civilians tried to save the world from an alien invasion.

We failed.

If you’ve been following gaming news at all, you may be aware that Mass Effect 3 came out out in the US today. Here’s a trailer to bring you up to speed on the background for the game.

So a couple of weeks ago, this Twitter feed starts up.

Delayed Collider Now Online #AllianceNewsHeadline

— AllianceNewsNetwork (@AllianceNewsNet) February 21, 2012

It’s not obvious what it’s there for at first, but as time goes on, tweets like the following start to appear.

Buoys at batarian homeworld still down. Governor of Camala colony: “We know the Alliance has stealth vessels. This is obviously an attack.”

— AllianceNewsNetwork (@AllianceNewsNet) March 1, 2012

And then yesterday:

Thank you for bearing with us. Earth is currently experiencing a comm buoy outage.#solcomms

— AllianceNewsNetwork (@AllianceNewsNet) March 5, 2012

Emily Wong, a reporter and minor character from the first two games, is filing copy via a Quantum Entanglement Communicator. All of Earth’s comm buoys have gone down, you see, so she’s reduced to a text-only feed of only a hundred and forty characters.

Over the next few hours, in realtime, Emily livetweets the invasion of Earth. And she’s using the hashtag #solcomms.

A twitter hashtag is formed by adding a # followed by a word in your tweet. It’s then easy to pull any tweets out which have that hashtag in them, and display them all together.

Which means that anyone else on Twitter who wanted to tell their stories about the invasion could too.

I started following Emily’s story – the aliens had landed in Los Angeles and were destroying everything in their path. Then other people started joining in. Cities across the world, all under attack not because the writers at BioWare had demanded it be so, but because it was interesting and fun.

People started uploading photographs of the alien attacks. I even took a photo of one myself.

(You’ll notice the huge Mass Effect field from the alien starship as it fires its deadly main gun causing a flare that makes it look like a quick photoshop job. Look, I was there, all right? I know what I saw!)

We created our own stories last night. We took pieces of other people’s stories and made them our own. I exchanged tweets with people talking about the best places to try and escape from London. Someone tweeted that the last bridge across the Thames had been destroyed, and I built that into my own world.

I asked my (real-life) housemates if they wanted to try to run with me. Nick told me where he’d like to spend his last hour of life.

Housemates wouldn’t evac. Nick’s in the garden with gin and tonic, flames reflecting in his eyes. I don’t think he’ll even run. #solcomms

— Piers Beckley (@piersb) March 5, 2012

I tweeted about my run across the deserted streets to Brixton, and then built someone into my story – a biotic (someone with psychic powers) who saved my life, but then slipped in and out of consciousness. And I didn’t know how to treat her.

Except I-the-writer did. But I-the-character didn’t know the lore about biotics (when they use their powers, they exhaust their stores of energy, and need lots of energy intake quickly to avoid collapsing.)

Three of those… things… came at us. I’d managed to get her half-way out the rubble, and they just crawled from the ground. #solcomms.

— Piers Beckley (@piersb) March 5, 2012

I think they were human. Once. And she just picked them up and threw them against the wall with her mind. And they broke. #solcomms

— Piers Beckley (@piersb) March 5, 2012

She’s slipping in and out of consciousness. Whatever it was she did, it took it out of her. Anyone know anything about biotics? #solcomms

— Piers Beckley (@piersb) March 5, 2012

I’ve got a biotic who’s just saved my life three times over. And she needs something but I don’t know the fuck what it is. #solcomms.

— Piers Beckley (@piersb) March 5, 2012

And there’s no medi-gel and if I can’t figure out what she needs we’re both going to die here. And I don’t. Want. To. Die. #solcomms

— Piers Beckley (@piersb) March 5, 2012

And I-the-writer decided that unless someone was able to respond to my cries for help within 15 minutes, the monsters would come back and we’d both die there.

And I sat back, nervously, and waited.

And five minutes later, Heidi T Ewing (swiftly followed by several more people) saved my life.

@piersb Can you get her any food/IV nourishment? Hear biotics mess your system up. #solcomms

— Heidi T Ewing (@htewing) March 5, 2012

It was a visceral experience.

And it wasn’t just me. Thousands of people were telling their stories of the invasion, in real time, across the world. An improvisational drama with no guiding force other than the fact that we all knew the world in which we were playing, and the fact that many millions of people were going to die that day.

I saw stories of heroism, and of fear last night. All created in the moments they were told.

Emily Wong’s story came to an end too. To the best of my knowledge the only “official” character of the 15,000 or so playing, she used the only weapon she had left – the skyvan she was flying – to take down one of the invaders.

You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed. #solcomms

— AllianceNewsNetwork (@AllianceNewsNet) March 6, 2012

Millions of people died last night.

We all killed them.

We sent aliens into their houses to kidnap them and impale them while they were still alive.

And this week, most of those responsible will fire up our new games, and take revenge for the destruction that we wrought.

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Workfare: Stupid or Evil?

There’s a saying in which I believe and attempt to live my life by: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

With that in mind, let’s run a little thought experiment.

You are the manager of a company, and your objective is to maximise the profit for the company.

You employ two people. Let’s call them shelf-stackers. For each hour that one of these shelf-stackers works, you earn £9.

You pay each of your shelf-stackers £8 per hour. You therefore earn £2 per hour profit.

Sadly, one of them dies in a tragic accident involving a sewing machine and the collected works of L Ron Hubbard, and you now require a replacement.

Many people apply for this role as there is a shortage of jobs in the current economy, and so there are many applicants for each job. However, there is a new government scheme: For the first five weeks of hiring a new employee who has been unemployed for more than 13 weeks, you can pay them nothing. You may then, if they’re suitable, take them on.

Your profit for those five weeks now increases from £80 to £400. That’s, ooh, a 500% increase in profit for helping get people off benefits? You win, the person on benefits gets valuable work experience which may help them in the future. What’s not to love?

So, assuming your aim is to maximise profit:

If someone dies or leaves and you pay their replacement minimum wage instead of taking a workfare replacement, you are an idiot.

And this is why workfare is evil. Because it makes forcing people to work for you and paying them nothing the sensible thing to do.

You used to have two paid jobs. Now you have one paid, and the other unpaid. The work still gets done, but you aren’t actually paying someone to do it any more. Instead, you’re taking the money that you would have paid someone with and using it to line your own pockets.

Worse yet: if you are the unscrupulous sort, there’s nothing to stop you saying that they weren’t suitable for the job, and then taking someone else on under the same scheme. Repeat as necessary.

And it doesn’t even work for the country. Instead of two people paying taxes for 52 weeks of the year, the scheme has resulted in the loss of five weeks worth of tax revenue. More, if the turnover in these jobs is high or the management unscrupulous.

So as far as I can see, the introduction of this scheme by the government requires both malice and stupidity.

It doesn’t solve the problem of unemployment; it loses the government money; and businesses have an incentive to use it rather than hiring people at a reasonable wage.

The Boycott Workfare site has more information about the companies involved.

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Gender Equality and the Nuclear Option

So, Paul Cornell has done an interesting thing.

A little bit of background: I’ve met Paul at several conventions, and we’ve been on several panels together. That men and women are and should be treated as equal, and that in today’s society (both in general and in the particular subculture of SF Fandom) they are not yet always treated as such, is not anything that we disagree on.

So in brief, here’s what Paul has said:

If he finds himself on a convention panel which does not have a 50/50 balance of men and women (rounding is fine in the case of odd-numbered panels), he will immediately step down from that panel and invite a qualified (ie knowledgeable about the subject) female volunteer from the floor to take his place.

If no qualified female volunteers are available on the floor, he will replace himself with an unqualified female volunteer.

My basic problem with this approach isn’t Paul stepping down from a panel. Each of us has things up with which we will not put. Those points of ethics and morality are different for each of us. Withdrawal of labour when all other options have failed has a long and glorious history and is an action which I fully support.

My problem with this strategy is not in Paul stepping down from a panel, which he is perfectly justified in doing; rather it’s in his intention to replace himself on the panel.

I don’t believe that he has the right to make that call.

If I’ve shown up as an audience member to a panel, I know (pending sickness or other unforeseeable circumstances) who will be on that panel. I know, hopefully, why they will bring something useful to the panel, or at the least am confident that the convention committee (oft abbreviated to concom, language fans!) have filled that panel with people who will have something interesting to say about the subject.

Now, if I’ve gone to a panel with this in mind, and instead of the person I’ve come to see speak I get someone that they have unilaterally imposed on the panel, and then especially if that replacement does not have anything useful or interesting to say, I would take this amiss. If they actually bring the quality of the panel down, I’d be even more annoyed.

And if I was on the panel myself, I’d be livid.

If the replacement has been OKd by the panel, or the moderator thereof, then I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. But the current option on the table is a unilateral I-will-replace-myself. Which I feel is unacceptable, and I rather suspect many other people will too.

And were I a panellist on a panel where such a thing happened, I think it likely that I would have to withdraw from the panel myself in protest. Especially if it was a panel in which Paul was more competent than I to speak.

While I feel that Paul, as does anyone, has the right to withdraw from a panel for whatever reason he chooses, I do not feel he has the right to choose his replacement.

So. Given that he plans to do just this, effectively what we have here is a nuclear option with a defined trigger point. You do this, and I’ll do this. Your move.

Now, we’ve had nuclear weapons for, what, 65-odd years now, and they’ve only been used twice. So it’s perfectly possible to come to an arrangement with someone with a nuclear capability without anyone blowing anyone into a cloud of radioactive dust.

What is likely to happen here is that concoms ensure that either Paul’s panels are gender-balanced, or he isn’t on them. Because every concom will want to avoid the nightmare that I expect to happen if he does go ahead and invite people from the audience to replace him.

So if I know that I’m going to be on a panel with Paul again at any convention in the future, then I’m going to have to ensure it’s gender-balanced. Given that I know what he’ll do if it isn’t, and then what I’ll do if he does that, and then there’s a whole smoking mess to clear up, which is what exactly none of us want.

And I’m sure many other people will do the same. And this process will result in more gender-balanced panels. Which I think is a good thing.

But I have a problem with the means.

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Rocket Science (Fiction)

Well, if you haven’t seen me for the last four or five months, it wasn’t because I don’t love you any more. It’s because I’ve been working on a magazine called “Spaceships of Science Fiction”.

My copies arrived on Thursday.

(Technically speaking it’s a bookazine, yes. Hush there at the back.)

It costs £7.95, is published by Ian Allan and is available in shops exclusively at WHSmith in the UK. It’s also going to be on sale in the United States soon, but I don’t yet know exactly when.

Since my copies have arrived, I think we can safely say it’s in the distribution chain now, so should be showing up at some point in the next few weeks on shelves in a bookstore near you.

So: Yay! Spaceships!

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Happy Birthday, Chuck

This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.

Now I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Charles. As well as being an absolutely brilliant writer, he helped me to get my start in the business.

The first theatre play I wrote that was professionally performed was an adaptation of A Christmas Carol at the Lion & Unicorn theatre in Kentish Town, directed by the wonderful Mr Ray Shell.

It did well. Lots of lovely reviews, including a four-star in Time Out. So. Not too shabby then.

The year after, I adapted Oliver Twist, which Ray also directed. (And while I’m on the subject of Oliver Twist: Nancy is not a prostitute.) Again, great reviews, an extended run.

And one or the other of them has been performed in London every year since I started writing professionally.

So anyhow, I got to thinking. And what I thought was this:

It’s the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth this year. A centenary, no less. Some of you out there might want to do something to celebrate that and not have the wherewithal to pay for a script, or know anyone local who wants to write one.

Mr Dickens has done well for me over the last few years. I’d like to return the favour. So firstly, here are the scripts.

Oliver Twist
A Christmas Carol

Have a read.

If you like them, and you’d like to put them on in the centenary year, then I’ll waive my fees. So any performances in 2012 will be completely free, no matter how large or small the production. (Well, apart from the cost of putting on the show. But that’s your own problem, and one that I’m certain that you’ll be able to cope with magnificently.)

You’ll still need to obtain a licence to perform the play (email me for more details about this) but if you put one of these two plays on in 2012 there’ll be no writer’s fee.

And I’d love the chance to see it if I can.

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

So I’m just after reading the introduction to the complete Works of Shakespeare (published 1623), and what’s this I find in the front?

An introduction written by the editors asking people to please stop reading it in the bookshop and just buy the damn thing already.

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Nanna

I said goodbye to my Nanna this evening.

For a significant part of the evening she thought I was called Bill, but that’s neither here nor there. Bill, I told her, was a perfectly good name, and would be just fine for tonight.

Mostly, though, we just sat companionably watching the Christmas television. She was a bit concerned for a while about EastEnders, but after we’d confirmed in response to her questioning that it was definitely fiction, she was just fine with that.

Most of the time I just sat down by the side of her wheelchair and held her hand.

Mum and Dad were there too. We ate leftovers from yesterday’s dinner in front of the television, and watched the soaps, and had a drink or two. A pretty standard Christmas all told.

Occasionally Nanna would look down, and be surprised that I was there. Because there you are, sitting in your wheelchair, dozing off mostly and occasionally seeing something interesting on the telly, and you’d suddenly realise that there was someone holding your hand and who was it?

But it was all right. Because she’d look down at me, and I’d smile up at her and say “I love you, Nanna,” and she’d smile back at me, a huge great smile that meant more to me than anything and say “Love you,” and that would be fine.

Because that’s all you need, really. To know that someone in this world loves you, even if you’re not really sure who they are any more.

She’s not eating much. A couple of pieces of cheese, each smaller than a die. A quarter of a slice of bread, with a little bit of butter on it. Tried a little bit of Southern Comfort, which was her favourite Christmas tipple once upon a time, but didn’t fancy that much – too sweet – so we settled on a brandy and ginger ale, perhaps a shot glass’s worth. And that was mostly ginger ale.

But it was nice to have a Christmas drink with her again.

I don’t think Nanna and I will be able to spend another Christmas together, and that makes me sad. But all things have their end, and we sat together today and watched Morecambe and Wise. “I like them,” she told me. And so do I. So we had a lovely Boxing Day, the four of us, and I can’t think of a better way to have spent it.

I love you, Nanna.

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Our First Broadsheet Review

And it’s a good’un, too.

Today’s Times has a short review in the Arts section for Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales.

“My three-year-old […] also enjoyed the low-theatre approach of Red Table Theatre’s retelling of some of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (three stars, at the Pleasance, N1 – and strictly speaking for ages four and over). With some changes in costume, the odd bit of puppetry and a few bursts into Danish song, the cast of four make these tales come to life.”

If you have a subscription you can read the review on the Times website – or failing that you could, you know, go out and buy a paper. That would work too.

The show runs until New Year’s Eve, and you can buy tickets from the Pleasance website.

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A Christmas that’s Just So

And the last theatrical Christmas announcement this year (unless someone is putting on a production of mine in secret somewhere and hasn’t told me about it) is that Red Table’s production of The Just So Stories, as seen at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, is going to be touring to St Albans this Christmas.

Here are some reviews of the production from Edinburgh.

The show is playing at the Trestle Arts Base in St Albans from Sunday 18 December to Tuesday 20 December, and tickets are £10 for adults, £8 for children, and £32 for a family ticket.

Find out more and book tickets at the Trestle Theatre website.

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A Dickens of a Christmas

I’m pleased to be able to say that my adaptation of A Christmas Carol will be on again this year, this time in a production by the City Lit Rep Company.

This is the third production of A Christmas Carol in four years, so I must’ve done something right. Oh, and you can buy the script from the sidebar to the right, should you be so inclined.

There are four performances – three evening shows on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd December 2011 at 7:30pm, together with a 2:30pm matinee on December 3rd – and tickets cost £8, a pound of which goes towards the student scholarship fund.

Book tickets here.