Posts

Posted on

If you have any sort of interest in sex and data (and which of us doesn’t, really?), read this.

OkCupid is a dating site.

It organises matches based around self-selecting data. So you’re given a bunch of questions to answer.

What do I think of such-and-such? How important is the answer a potential partner gives to that question to whether I might date them? And so on and so forth.

I know one couple who met and got married via it. No names, no pack drill, but if they want to out themselves in the comments you know who you are.

So far, so lovely.

But as well as matching people by this data, they analyse it. And that’s some pretty funky shit.

OkTrends, which is their irregular blog about Stuff, can give you useful information about things like how the camera that your photo was taken on can improve your attractiveness.

Science. In sexy action.

Posted on

Films I watch again and again

Tagged by Steve Turnbull, who recently made a list on his blog of films he keeps coming back to again and again. And tagged me to do the same.

My list isn’t particularly deep, or clever, and isn’t even necessarily a list of films I consider great. The Third Man is missing, as are Aliens, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and many other films I think are essential viewing.

But this isn’t a list of amazing films. It’s a list of films that I just keep going back to and watching again.

There’s no particular order to it; it’s just the order that I happened to think of them in. You may wish to read some significance into this, but I don’t personally.

Pitch Black
Star Wars: A New Hope
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
Die Hard
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
Frankenstein (1931)
The Bride of Frankenstein
The Princess Bride
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Terminator
Hard Boiled
The Thing
The Quiet Earth
Metropolis (usually the Moroder version, but with the sound off)

I shan’t perform any particular analysis on why I keep coming back to these above all others, but I will say I would consider every single one of these films, if you haven’t seen them, to be well worth your time.

Now, let’s see if I can remember how these meme things work. Oh, yes.

1. Provide a non-exhaustive list of films you’ll happily watch again and again;
2. There is no rule 2.
3. Reprint the rules.
4. Tag three others and ask them to do the same.

Tagged: Stephen Gallagher, Danny Stack, and Jason Arnopp

Posted on

The McGrath Point

Contains spoilers for the first few episodes of Lost and Firefly.

Denis McGrath is off to Los Angeles. Possibly for good. And his blog, in its current format at least, is going into the long archive.

So as we bid him farewell or au revoir, I want to share something that he brought to my attention many years ago. He called it the commit moment. I think the McGrath Point is catchier.

And, hey, my blog.

It’s the moment when you’re watching a TV show, and you sit up, and you think: I have never seen that before. The moment when you think, I’m in. I’m committed. I’m going to watch the rest of this now.

I work with people who read unsolicited scripts. A lot of unsolicited scripts. And, when asked what it is that makes a script stand out, makes it irresistible, makes them want to meet the writer and find out more about them and their craft, they all say the same thing:

Show me something I’ve never seen before.

Might be a character. Might be a world. Might be a moment. But always, it’s something new.

Which brings us to the McGrath Point.

In his original post on the matter, Denis talks about Walkabout, the fourth episode of Lost, and the moment at the end where we realise that Locke, in his previous life, was in a wheelchair.

The title itself hides the mystery in plain view. It’s a twist that not only puts an entirely new spin on every scene in the episode, it reveals new facts about the island, and the rules of the world.

One moment in the script that makes you think: I’ve never seen that before.

Joss Whedon does this magnificently in both of the pilots for Firefly.

Towards the end of the first episode, our heroes have been betrayed by their allies. Meanwhile on the ship, a hostage situation has developed. A bad guy has River at gunpoint. She’s dead unless the captain does what he says, gives him a ticket out.

And we know how this goes, we’ve seen it a dozen times before. The hero walks in. There’s a negotiation. Bad guy uses his hostage to get away, then does something foolish (usually breaking a promise) resulting in his downfall.

Not here. Mal walks in, shoots the bad guy in the face without breaking stride and the still-warm corpse is unceremoniously dumped out the back of the ship in a well-rehearsed manoeuvre.

Right there. Something I’d never seen before. Something that made me certain I was going to watch the rest of this series.

And he does absolutely the same in the next episode, The Train Job. Big Evil Henchman has been defeated, is captured. And Mal offers to set him free. And he does the Big Evil Henchman speech, the I-will-track-you-down-and-kill-you-all one.

So Mal kicks him into the (running) engine of the spaceship. The next henchman is much more reasonable.

It just takes one moment that you haven’t seen before to make a script great.

Posted on

A long-standing mystery, solved at last

Back in the day, there was a phenomenon known as “The Curse of the Odd-Numbered Star Trek Films”.

It was first noticed in the eighties for films starring Jim Kirk and his buddies and labelled so, because fan-opinion (and I concur in this) is that the odd-numbered films were… well, let’s charitably say not as good as the others.

Others would instead go for the words “rubbish” or “terrible” or “so bad I wanted to poke my own eyes out so I would never have to see any more of this”. John Montgomery has even helpfully analysed the IMDb scores, and it does seem to be a valid phenomenon.

So I got to wondering, what could possibly correlate?

Well, let’s look at the first six films.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – not written by Nicholas Meyer
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan – uncredited rewrite by Nicholas Meyer
Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock – not written by Nicholas Meyer
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home – co-written by Nicholas Meyer
Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier – not written by Nicholas Meyer
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country – co-written by Nicholas Meyer

Whaddayaknow? It turns out that for all that time, by looking at the films that weren’t so good, we missed the fact that it wasn’t that the odd films were bad that was the important point – it was that the even ones were good.

And they were all written by Nicholas Meyer.

(Sadly, this analysis falls apart on looking at the Next Generation films. Ah well.)

Posted on

A short primer on the British Constitution as it pertains to the current situation

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the current hung parliament. Unfortunately there’s been a lot of misinformation, even from political commentators, about the Constitution of the UK, and how that should resolve.

So here’s a quick guide to the situation.

You vote for a Member of Parliament

You don’t vote for a party. You don’t vote for the leader of a party. In a general election in the UK, you vote for a single person to represent you in that parliament.

Most MPs belong to a party, which funds their campaign, and expects them to vote along party lines.

If your MP is a member of the Cabinet, they are obliged to vote with the government according to the doctrine of collective responsibility. Otherwise they are free to vote their conscience until the next election – though most tend to vote along party lines, as to do otherwise can invite deselection from the party. And few these days can afford to stand for parliament without party backing.

The sovereign appoints and dismisses the Prime Minister

Her Majesty the Queen is the person who gets to choose the next Prime Minister of the UK.

Not you. Not the press. Not the political commentators on the TV. It’s the Queen, and no-one else.

Having said that, she is bound by one particular convention – that the selected Prime Minister must be able to command the confidence of the House of Commons.

In normal times, this means appointing the leader of the party which has an overall majority of seats in the Commons.

There is currently no majority party in the House of Commons

No party won 326 seats or more in the recent election, and therefore we have what’s currently known as a hung parliament.

The parties are currently negotiating to see if they can form a coalition. For example, if two or more parties can, together, command 326 or more seats between them, the Queen could call upon the person designated to be the leader of this coalition to form a parliament.

If no agreement can be reached, we will have a minority government

If a successful coalition cannot be negotiated, the Queen will choose the person that she believes would be most likely able to command the confidence of the house. This would most likely be the person whose party commands the greatest number of seats, ie David Cameron. However, without a clear majority, every vote would have to be negotiated with people from outside the ruling party.

Many would claim that this would not be a bad thing.

There is no such thing as an unelected Prime Minister

The person the Queen invites to form her government must be a Member of Parliament. And every Member of Parliament is elected.

The role of Prime Minister is not elected directly in the United Kingdom.

This is all perfectly normal

There have been hung parliaments before. There is no vacuum of power; the current government continues until the Queen invites someone to form a new government and he or she accepts.

It’s exciting, especially if you love politics.

But it’s not unusual, groundbreaking, market-destroying, terrifying, or any kind of Constitutional crisis.

Posted on

Letters From America: Dining by Candlelight

an occasional series of emails sent from los angeles in the past
originally posted 10 May 2004
—

I generally eat at table.

Apparently that’s quite unusual these days.

I was raised to have dinner with the family. We would sit down and eat together at the end of the day, and talk about things. My day at school, mum’s day at work, the state of the world. Anything and everything.

We’d often have candles on the table.

I think that candlelight is something special. It lights a room differently to electricity, no matter how low or cunningly designed the electric light. Candlelight makes a dinner special. It helps you to talk and think about anything and everything.

In a way, this is because it *is* so different to electric light.

Eating by candlelight sets dinner aside as a special time. It puts you in a different place. Gives you a time to think, and put yourself aside from the day-to-day world.

Changing the illumination changes the feel of a room. Allows some types of thought and discourages others. The conversation you have under a neon tube is different to that under moonlight.

In our culture at large, it seems that candlelight stands for romance. A couple of times I’ve cooked for male friends of mine and lit candles for dinner. They said “Are you trying to seduce me?”

(Interestingly, none of the female friends that I’ve cooked for have said this. Perhaps they just assumed that I was.)

In the US, I’m dining on my own most days. And sometimes I’ll eat an easy meal in front of the television. Eating rubbish in front of the television is fun. I thoroughly enjoy it.

But most of the time I eat at table, and light a candle for myself.

Posted on

Eastercon Panels

This year’s Eastercon is almost upon us. Hoorah!

My panels this year are:

Saturday 5pm “Tales From the White Hart”

In homage to Arthur C Clarke’s short stories, panellists will be telling their own scientific tall tales. Although it’s in the programme as two hours long, I suspect it’s only going to last an hour, given that Doctor Who starts at 6:20pm.

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do mine in the first half. If not, then you can look forward to an impromptu reading in the bar later.

Obviously when I say “look forward to” I mean “fear”.

Monday 12noon “How to Send Your Script to the LMC”

I’ll be speaking about what a certain British Large Media Corporation are looking for when they receive unsolicited scripts, and how you can improve your chances as a writer.

If I said who they were on this blog, I’d have to put a disclaimer at the top saying my opinions weren’t theirs.

I know, it’s a bit complicated, but we don’t want anyone thinking my witterings are official LMC policy now.

Whoever they might be.

Monday 2pm “Icons, Symbolism and Archetypes – Moving Between Faith & Fiction”

Religious imagery in SF. There’s a lot of interesting things here ranging from James Blish through to Battlestar Galactica. Should be a good’un.

There are still tickets available, and if you take the opportunity to book online today or tomorrow rather than buying them at the door, you’ll save yourself a tenner.

It’s going to be great fun – hope to see you there!

Posted on

It’s not a given…

So, there’s this TV show, right? About a character called Doctor Who.

You can tell it’s about a character called “Doctor Who” because the show is called “Doctor Who” and in the credits for the first eighteen years or so, the character is called “Doctor Who”. (Or sometimes Dr. Who. But I think we can safely put that in the same conceptual space.)

Some people think he’s called The Doctor, and calling him Doctor Who is incorrect.

These people are wrong.

Analogy:

There’s this character called Robin Hood.

He’s had many stories told about him, over hundreds of years.

And yet, somehow, relatively few people manage to get their knickers in a twist that his given name is Robin of Loxley. (Or, occasionally, Robert, Earl of Huntingdon.)

And no-one feels obliged to point out that his last name is not “Hood” and that therefore calling him that is somehow wrong, or silly, or incorrect.

So. Doctor Who it is then.

Because it’s his name.

Posted on

Letters From America: Typical

originally posted 6th May 2004
—

First, the good news:

I’ve got a read.

An agent has agreed to read my spec scripts.

From a cold call.

To say this is extremely lucky is to understate things by at least an order of magnitude. You don’t get reads from cold calls. You get reads from friends-of-friends, from calling in favours, from knowing people, from living in this town for several years. And now a WGA-registered agent has agreed to read my scripts.

This is quite extraordinary. People with much better industry contacts than I are unable to get agents to read their work.

So I sent the scripts off. They stand on their own now. It’s all down to whether the writing is good enough. I think it is, but I don’t know. I can’t be sure. Until this agent gets back to me and says whether she likes it or not.

So.

I’ve emailed her the scripts – I’d already put them in the post, but that wasn’t soon enough, she wanted to read them Right Now, and who am I to disappoint her? – and after hitting send I happened to glance across my local copy.

Page One.

And somehow – somehow, despite checking this a hundred times – I’ve managed in my final revision to put the wrong location in THE VERY FIRST SLUGLINE.

So the crew of the Enterprise start their adventure in COMPLETELY THE WRONG FUCKING PLACE.

So the question is, which makes me look more like a total idiot – calling up and saying “Don’t read my script, PAGE ONE IS FUCKED UP,” or hoping that she’s so caught up in the story that she doesn’t notice?

I’m keeping quiet.

Wish me luck.