FOR REAL

What’s your favourite story?

Are you a fan of Lord of the Rings?

Harry Potter?

Maybe you prefer the stories of George Orwell?

Roald Dahl?

What about Carl Sagan or Brian Cox?

Stories are great things and have been pivotal to the way the human race has evolved over time, bringing shared understanding and bonding through the recounting and sharing of tales. We are who we are down to the way that we’ve been able to spread knowledge amongst ourselves and our stories are exactly that, from the tales of imagined gods to moral pronouncements.

But stories aren’t just works of fiction which may or may not hold some deeper meaning? Sometimes the best stories are true.

Now we’re all familiar with the works of Agatha Christie and the idea of the whodunnit but that very thing takes place in the real world and those investigations of how vicious criminals are brought to justice can be just as entertaining as fiction. True crime books and TV shows are devoured all over the world because they have at the very core, a compelling story where the understanding develops over time and in many cases, the villain of the piece gets their comeuppance at the end.

Now consider the whole field of science.

Just sticking to the purest facts in the imparting of knowledge will cause a great deal of looking out of windows by the people being taught. Trying to understand the way that the universe works is tough enough without there being no storytelling power to go with it to stitch things together. The best teachers are the ones who are able to bring their words to life in the minds of the class before them and can create the story of what is taking place in the most accessible way.

I’ve recently discovered a few story telling YouTube channels where events of the real world are recounted back by a reader. Crime tales, accidents, the supernatural, missing people, are all fair game. The best ones out there are the ones who make these stories creep under your skin and grip your heart by taking the details and delivering them in the best possible way.

Storytelling is a wonderful thing that means that we can link ourselves together and learn so many things to make life better, rather than just reading tales of make believe. We can see stories of far off lands and amazing characters but storytelling at it’s heart allows us to share everything so much easier.

Stay safe all.

A SPRINKLE OF MAGIC

I enjoy science.

I enjoy learning facts about the universe, the solar system, the planet, that we all inhabit and the scientific method is a hugely powerful tool to the exploration of anything and everything.

We all reap the rewards of the powers of science every day and at the moment, as we sail the choppy waters of the global pandemic, the power of science is clear for all to see. Mobile phones, internet, TV’s, bridges, roads, and billions of other things that we all take for granted on a daily basis have allowed us to live longer and more comfortable lives than each generation before us.

This doesn’t apply for everyone all over the planet as there’s still huge wealth inequality everywhere but the scientific method is how we as a species were able to advance ourselves as we first picked up tools and then perfect them to get the best results of their use.

So why do we enjoy the lands of make believe of stories which go far beyond the realms of reality?

Early stories were there as a way for people to make sense of the world that surrounded them. Thunder was a monstrously immense force that came from the sky and it’s easy to see that describing it as the acts or powers of a God or Gods would be easily assumed due to our ignorance. That greater power than us that existed in the realm that we couldn’t access.

Over time, the scientific method was applied as humans attempted to communicate and curry favour with the powers that be, as offerings of different kinds were presented for a particular outcome. If the offering didn’t bring the desired result, a different offering would be put forward. Rain dances, prayer, animal or human sacrifice, are all attempts to affect our environment and as we still do, if we get a positive outcome from a particular action or gift, we keep doing it to repeat the outcome. We’ve all encountered at some point, the wonderful phrase of “I don’t know what I did but it worked”, when someone’s been attempting to fix something.

As we’ve advanced as a species, our understanding of the natural world all around us has grown and the space where our earlier ideas existed is pushed aside as a newer and better idea takes its place. This drive for improved understanding and better ideas comes from the scientific method being applied as we test thoughts, make amendments to our hypothesis and constantly evaluate the results. Without that desire to constantly understand and improve, well, think how mobile phones have evolved over the last thirty-odd years. They used to be a receiver attached to a power pack the size of a car battery!

But.

We all cling to just a small spark in our minds which longs for the fantastical and the unreal to actually be out there.

I’m an author of books dealing with Dragons and other magical creatures existing in the real world where magic is real and there’s so much more going on than we actually understand but despite my fondness for such tales, I’m under no illusion that these things are real.

Stories are a way for the human race to continue that scientific method, testing ideas, but also to explore just who we all are as a species. We need to maintain an ordered exploration of reality but that should never mean that we utterly expunge the fantastical from our lives, we need that imagination to flavour exactly how we keep the testing moving.

Stay safe everyone and when you have the chance to get the vaccine, take it, the scientific method has done the business and will always continue.

SCI-FI IDEOLOGIES

The two biggest sci-fi universes are those of Star Wars and Star Trek and they are two really different places to see life unfold.

Star Trek is based around the crew of a star ship who are out there to explore the universe to expand the sum total of the knowledge of the whole collective federation that they all belong to. There are different ranks and the characters on the ships are in place like a modern day navel vessel and the ships are all armed with an amazingly powerful array of armaments yet the whole premise of the stories that come along are sat squarely on top of the idea that everyone is equal and should be treated the same. The crews of the ships are all explorers first and the ships are filled with families.

Star Wars has a monolithic power exerting influence over the galaxy while those people on the outside struggle against the totalitarian life of the Empire. An ancient religion becomes the core strength of the fight to push back and there is a clear marking of the light and dark, the good and bad.

Star Trek sees religion as a right but the characters always explore ways to make things happen themselves. Star Wars has the characters trusting in the Force as the guiding light to show them the way.

Both of these universes are filled with such possibility that anything and everything outside of those central ideologies can take place and the spaces where this bumps up against the core theme is often where the stories take place. Star Trek with the different races and ideologies which appear against the Federation, Star Wars with Han Solo, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt existing in a world that falls between the cracks of the Empire and those fighting against them, dealing with both sides of the fight.

As in the real world, these universes have very different ways of crafting the way the world fits together. Star Trek is built on the relative realities of what can be faced and explored, Star Wars has magic and laser swords and space battles.

We see every day that the way that people view the world and the way that they go about solving the conundrums that are thrown in their way differ due to an ideology. The starting point will have a powerful effect on the choices that you make after you begin the journey. If I trust that the Force will ultimately guide me to where I have to be, whatever happens becomes the will of the Force rather than me making active choices. If I just expect that my own ingenuity and understanding of the world is what’s going to get me to where I have to go, would that mean that I was going to ignore the input of others who may have a different view?

Both worlds have at their core, a drive for individual freedoms and for everyone to live their best life, but take us on very different routes to explore the meanings of freedom and what it is that we’d be expecting.

Some would see freedom within the Federation as stifling, not wanting to be a part of a much larger whole in the same way that living by your own rules and existing on the very edges of society could be viewed as a massive danger.

And I think that understanding where someone would be starting their journey from can allow us all to break down the misunderstandings between us.

PROVE IT

I watch Supervet on Channel 4 and marvel at the ingenuity of the procedures and the tenacity of the animals as they fight against all manner of conditions and injuries.

But the hardest parts to watch are the rare occasions when, after all of the work, all of the attempts, all of the love, the list of available options has been exhausted and the family are forced to confront the truth that the furry member of their number can’t be saved.

Time and again, Noel Fitzpatrick pushes the limits of what can be achieved with the science that he has at his disposal and it can become almost mundane when yet another animal is patched up and sent on their way, such is his and his teams skill. But that doesn’t happen all of the time.

The family have to deal with the fact they’re losing a member but Noel has to deal with the explanation. And he does so with the compassion and empathy you’d hope was on display from every person who has to shoulder the burden of such news.

He talks of the efforts that have been made, the science, the care the animal has received and that there just isn’t anything left that can be done. But then he makes the most important point. He talks about the animals pain.

If the animal were to be left to live until their systems were eventually too weak to sustain life, they could be dragged through months of never ending agony where they have no quality of life. Every second of every day would be a tortuous hell as they’re forced to continue without there being even the slightest respite or chance for recovery.

And it’s at this point that humanity takes over,

The consideration for the quality of the life the pet could have comes into play. It wouldn’t be humane to let the animal suffer through the sorrow and pain when there’s no chance of improvement. To prevent that horror, it’s more humane to end that suffering by bringing the animals life to an end.

We recognise the need for that humanity for the animals of the world because we see that humans have the power to make the agony stop, that it really has to be quality over quantity when dealing with the life being led, and that trying to imagine how we would feel if we were in the same position as the dog or cat.

Wonder why we don’t behave the same way with people.

NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOURS

Do you ever think about the possibilities of alternate realities?

Have you ever considered the idea that your life could have been a very different proposition save for a different choice at a critical junction?

A very popular genre of storytelling, the thought of parallel universes existing out there just beyond the edges can present any number of ways that themes and ideas can be explored and examined.

The Phillip K Dick novel, The Man in the High Castle, looks at a version of what could have happened had the Second World War been won by the Axis powers, China Mieville’s The City and the City has two cities existing next to each other but never the twain should meet, and the TV show Sliders has people jumping between any number of possible alternative realities.

In each case, the story that’s told can examine so very many things but at it’s very core, that which keeps the whole thing moving, is the idea of the road not travelled.

Look back at your life and there’s something that you regret missing out doing. Were you laying in bed after a company do and the hot girl from work in the room next to you knocks on the wall but you weren’t sure so you wait, thinking if she knocks again, you’ll swing by her room and see what happens. She doesn’t, so neither do you and, just like that, gone. That time you were offered the chance to stay after a gig to attend an aftershow party, but there it was, the rational mind that said ‘You’ve got to be in work early tomorrow’ and again, the evening takes a very different turn.

Now imagine that on that particular day, when whatever it was that you chose to walk away from the first time, you turn towards it. Rather than laying in bed thinking, ‘Did she really knock on the wall?’ you have the chance to find out. That night could have been the start f the greatest relationship in your life. The aftershow party could have led you to meeting people that could have ended up with your life heading in a very different direction – maybe even working with the band – and the greys of the old job become the bright colours of the new.

Alternate realities could mean the choices we made could be undone and re-examined allowing us to reach out to what could have been.

But we could also have gotten it right the first time.

You go into the room of the hot girl from work, have an evening of the wild enthusiasm, only for the truth of your deed meaning that she has to divorce her husband and because of that, you both have to leave the company and she blames you for everything. You go to the after party and have a blast but get fired because you weren’t paying attention at work the next day and a mistake leads to the loss of millions of pounds from the company value. No job, means no money, means you lose your house and you end up living under a bridge.

Any choice that we make along the road of our lives could spawn any number of alternatives. No doubt there are versions out there where we’re doing amazingly well in everything that we do, being the very best version of who we are, but that will always mean that there’s a version that always took the wrong path.

So how would you know that the life you have isn’t the perfect one? Could you put your life at risk for the chance that there’s a better version?

As with all storytelling, the idea of alternative universes can let your mind explore all the different ways things could play out but the thought of being able to walk into another version of the world can give us wish fulfilment as well as warnings.

All the choices that we make mean that we end up who we are. By changing any single point and moving to a different version of the world, we aren’t going to end up as us any more.

The idea of walking into a different world can be appealing but doing all we can to make the best of the one universe we’re in is surely more important.

IF

Powerful little word, if.

You don’t have to add much to it to find yourself staring at the sheer rock face of possibilities. You see, with a little effort, that lonely little word can become, ‘What if?’ but also, ‘If only’ and without even having to really do anything, deep thought awaits.

In both of these examples, the little word ‘if’ teases us with the thoughts of that which didn’t come to pass. How often do we hear people saying ‘If only’ they’d done, or indeed not done, something which had brought them to a particular unhappy position. They lament having turned left rather than right, they shouldn’t have gone to bed angry or not had that last drink.

These and so many other examples all appear when we regret. We look at the world that we’re in and can identify that a single event was the one that made this specific timeline switch tracks. We regret and, thanks to the horrifying perfection of hindsight, can see exactly where we went wrong and long for the chance to just take that one thing back.

I’ve had an element of this in mind for some bits and pieces I’ve been working on but I’m able to cast a new view as my own life experiences grow.

The other example I gave of the power of ‘if’ was ‘What if?’ and it’s very similar in terms of the view of what could have been but this time, rather than just focusing on the event, now we’re trying to extrapolate from an event, what would have happened following the right rather than left turn. The easiest and possibly largest ‘What if’ is ‘What if the Nazi’s had won WWII?’ Stories have been told starting from this very ‘What if?’ and minds can wander in any and all directions playing with the ideas of the ‘What if’.

Now it’s the ‘What if’ that grabbed me recently.

I’ve been working on some short story ideas with a view to eventually putting together another collection of stories but I realised that the ‘What if’ would be the perfect place to start from. What if humans had evolved from lizards rather than mammals? What if the meteor impact that made the dinosaurs extinct carried a form of alien life which became humans? What if we are alone in the universe?

Now I appreciate that these ideas listed here float around a similar point but the possibilities are almost endless. I’m plonking away on a collection of ideas but I’m also reaching out to the world for other ideas.

Is there a ‘What if’ you’d like to see examined in a short story? Please comment if you have something you’d like to have me work with.

It could be amazing.

If Only!

NEAR OR FAR?

I watched Chappie over the weekend.

If you haven’t seen it yet I’d recommend it. I found it to be a compelling story about what goes into being human and how artificial intelligence would be treated. There were classic images which looked to be an almost direct copy from Robocop and the robot itself carried a very odd similarity to the droid army in The Phantom Menace but all in all I enjoyed it a great deal.

The film deals with issues of societal sub-cultures and battles for power but it does it in the very near future.

As with Neil Blomkamp’s earlier film, District 9, the human race is placed in a position of relative power over another species. Aliens or sentient robots are the ones that are marginalised and distrusted and the stories happily hold up a mirror to what the behaviour of the bully in a society looks like, but, it wasn’t the overt steps that made the story more powerful.

The narrative of the under class of people/aliens/robots has been explored in many stories in the past with Star Trek being a great example of a ‘property’ looking at how these things could play out but action is very often set in the far off future. Almost as a way to take a look at the details of how a race of people can be marginalised but without the need to look too close to home. What stories like Chappie do is take a single step rather than a mighty leap into the future. Rather than these things happening in a completely alien locale all of the horrible things are taking place in all of the environments we’re far too familiar with.

It’s by putting the horror of these stories in a world that’s only just beyond the reach of now, in a world that looks, feels and smells like the world outside our window, that so often makes the discomfort even more unsettling. We know the story is fiction but there’s so much that we can recognise that maybe, just maybe, there could be more to it.

The near future allows the far off stories to be told in a much more recognisable setting. There’s no chance to write off the actions as just being about aliens when everything is going on in the very world we can see out of the window.

All of the stories find their way much closer to you and if you stand still long enough, I’m sure that you’ll feel them breathing down your neck.

ALMOST OVER

For this post I only have a single point to make.

I feel that after the 2016 we’ve all witnessed, where division and anger seem to have exposed the gruesome heart of the human race to the light, I open my arms to everyone out there, regardless of all those defining characteristics we all cling so very tightly to, and which seem to be always pulling us apart, and say to each and every one of you,

“Let’s celebrate our humanity and do what we can to make the lives we touch every day a little bit better. Let’s make sure 2017 is the perfect antidote to what we’ll soon be leaving behind us.”

Have a good ‘un all.

LEAVING IT ALL BEHIND

David Attenborough is a hero

I’m one of the millions who’ve watched any number of the TV shows which he’s been involved with and the majesty and wonder that exists at all corners of our planet is so far beyond just looking at animals etc.

In the latest series so many different environments all over the globe come under the spotlight and the lives of all kinds of creatures are shown in all of their beauty and horror. If you haven’t been watching Planet Earth II I’d absolutely recommend hunting it out and taking a look. So much sheer life to marvel at as it just takes place regardless of the people with the cameras, it brings to the attention of all of us that the human race makes up a tiny, tiny part of what’s happening every day.

Now my mind started to meander at the understanding of how very much is happening all over the place that it made me wonder about the story telling idea of leaving the planet behind and heading off into the great unknown of outer space.

Very often there is a storyline of the human race having done something steadily or indeed cataclysmic, which has caused us to have to flee the home we’ve all known. Sometimes there are outside forces which come in and force us to leave the Earth behind but very often it’s something that we’ve done to our own home. We have to make choices that send the human race into the stars, leaving the planet behind and to do that, the planet is so easily shown as a burned out cinder which can no longer sustain the life which remains. It becomes a no brainer that we as a race would jump ship when it was sinking.

The problem becomes the reality of what we’d be leaving behind.

The understanding is inherent that we could be technologically advanced enough to transport at least some of the population from the planet and in many cases there’s the addition of the idea that we would be leaving with a collection of the Earth’s wildlife in an attempt to colonise another planet somewhere and restart the life we had. So often the point is the struggle of doing all that can be done to save the few and as many of the creatures which surround us that the fact that the same technology which is being used to offer salvation has been that which has driven us to our downfall.

We’re quick to accept the thought that we as a species would not only destroy the planet we live on but that we’d then be more than willing to leave the mess behind and head off to another spot in the universe to just start it all over again.

Why is it we’re happy to accept that?

We focus on the fact that we’re amazing in how we can escape the horror we’ve created but why would we not be concerned that it’s likely we’d just be doing exactly the same thing at our next stop? How can we be content with the thought of upsetting the possible natural evolution of another planet just because we trashed our own home?

I don’t have the first idea about the logistics which would have to be employed to collect together samples of all of the life on Earth and then to be able to transport all of that off into space but I’d suspect that we’re some way away from being able to do all of the amazing things we see in the movies.

We have a story already which deals with the destruction of almost everything on the planet because of the actions of the human race and the efforts made to preserve everything do nothing but show that we have a need to endure and that we can. It doesn’t matter what mistakes we’ve made along the way, we can just pick up and start again but as the story of Noah’s Arc is a myth meant to show the importance of adherence to a supreme being, what this story says to me is that there’s an almost extreme complacency that no matter what happens, the human race will go on.

We assume that we’re the absolute pinnacle of life and we have the power to do whatever we want but watching the constant struggles which are taking place all over the world with every form of life imaginable on planet Earth puts us into perspective.

We have an amazing intellect and that intelligence is what’s allowed us to advance in the ways that we have but we have to accept that there is so vastly more to life on Earth than just us. We’re happy to consider the fact that we can leave but we’ve all got to understand that we can’t just leave all the other life on Earth behind.

I watched the wildlife programing and there were so many amazing images which fired my mind in terms of action set pieces all the way through to inter-relationships within groups but it really concreted in my head that the need to all come together and work together spreads beyond just the human race. We have to consider so many more things to be able to always achieve the best we can for all of the life on the planet.

David Attenborough knows.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

I’ve been working on my latest book recently and can present you with the cover for my soon to be released anthology of short stories.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the cover for “Tall Tales for Dark Nights”.

I’m really pleased with the book and I’m looking forward eagerly to the release.

Watch this space for the date.