Authors Electric

Don't panic... I haven't heard any horrible new rumour that Lockdown is going last quite  that long! But it's interesting to see how science fiction writers often get things uncannily right, sometimes hundreds of years before the actual events become part of our history. So here are three classic reads - one from each of the past three centuries - which are reflected in some way by current events. If you have your own favourites, feel free to add them to the comments below. War of the Worlds by H G Wells (1897) " Yet across the gulf of space intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us..." A tale of Martian invasion that was so realistic when first broadcast over the radio it caused many people to panic, thinking aliens were indeed attacking the Earth. These 19th century Martians land in individual pods and set about building themselves giant metal fighting machines...

My strawberry pot. And I have flowers already!   Hands up who thought a pandemic would be like this. None of us, I reckon. I’ve been reading dystopian novels ever since I was a teenager, and it was John Wyndham who wrote the most believable ones. The Midwich Cuckoos , in particular. Take a sleepy little English village, and turn it upside down by making every woman of childbearing age pregnant with an alien. Or The Day of the Triffids . It only takes two things to go really wrong for chaos to ensue.             What I hadn’t anticipated was the attention paid to the economy, although perhaps I should. All those books were written before the advent of the internet, and worldwide stats became available at the touch of a key. Nor did I ever envisage a narcissistic American president who gave such stupid advice, because he only cared about himself and his image. I’ve been leaving writing this until the last minute, an...

Amazon has just suggested my next read should be The Handmaid’s Tale . I feel like a recalcitrant schoolchild, who’s up till now avoided reading the class book and been found out. Nothing in my buying history – Walter Kempowski’s All For Nothing , Susan Cooper’s King of Shadows  - can have pointed Amazon to this. No. It’s as if the super giant just knows what I’ve been up to and is holding me to account.      Or not up to. Because I haven’t watched a single episode of the TV version and have no intention of reading the widely widely widely publicised sequel, The Testaments . In other words, I am a complete Handmaid’s Tale refusenik. I can already see myself in the Bateman cartoon of The Woman in Waterstones Who Does Not Know The Handmaid’s Tale.    Except that I feel I do know it. Inside out, back to front, top to bottom, from here to eternity. Pretty hard not to when discussions of it fill every magazine, newspaper, even becoming, good grie...

Dystopias have become a major part of fiction over the last few decades, and with our current awareness of the state of the planet are unlikely to go out of fashion. It is, of course, much easier to write a dystopia than it is to write a utopia, because we all have such different ideas about what, exactly, constitutes a perfect world. Imperfect worlds are all around us, and scientific predictions about what the next century will bring are terrifying. An abbreviated definition from Wikipedia reads: A  dystopia  is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is translated as “not-good place” and is an antonym of  utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, Utopia, published 1516, a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty. Dystopias are often characterised by dehumanisation, tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associa...

Although I had a Science Fiction play broadcast on Radio 4 many years ago, I’ve not really ventured there since. I’m so much more at home in fantasy – problem with the plot? Invent something magical to circumvent it. For one of the Divide books, the US politically correct police objected to Agrimony, a teenage female elf, going off for the day with Squill, a middle-aged male pixie, so I had to invent something – and quickly! This is what I came up with: “Well,” said Squill, “I came to Tiratattle for an interview, and I’m delighted to say that I am now in charge of an advertising department. I’ve been looking for a face to launch our latest products, and Agrimony fits admirably. She’ll be famous, and she’ll earn a lot of money.” Agrimony had gone quite dewy-eyed. “She’ll need to be kitted out differently, of course – jade is the green of the moment in Tiratattle, and I can just see her – jade tunic, jade trousers – maybe even a touch of lime here and there.” Tansy scowled...

Are you sure it's only a figment of the imagination? A gorgeous botanical drawing of a Triffid by Bryan Poole for the Science Fiction Classics (1998) Dr Seuss allegedly invented the word ‘nerd’. Lewis Carroll gave us Jabberwocks, slithy toves and vorpal blades.  And no dinner service is complete without a runcible spoon, courtesy of Edward Lear. Everyone has heard of robots - a word popularized by Karel Capek in 1920, although he credited his brother Josef with actually inventing it. Following the discovery of a newly discovered particle called a positron, Isaac Asimov provided his robots with ‘positronic’ brains to help give the stories a more scientific feel, even though he admitted himself that it was a bit of spoofery. It was catchy, sounded right, and stuck, and has been used ever since by other writers - not to mention being incorporated into the names of any number of companies: even non-nerds will have come across the word. Personally, my fa...

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and a damn good book to read ... Early yesterday morning TH White dropped in to share his overwhelming grief at the loss of his beloved dog Brownie: after pouring out his sorrow he lingered a little longer to help with a bit of research on dogs for a book I'm currently working on. With a bit of work done, I felt justified in taking a little time off to enjoy a picnic lunch with Ray Bradbury, who was joined halfway through by Isaac Asimov; regretfully I had to send them away far sooner than I would have wished in order to get back to work. In the evening my dinner guest was John Wyndham, who cared not at all that the grub was on a tray rather than the dining room table (which is too covered with reference materials at the moment for formal dining). He kept me up rather later than intended, but when I finally got to bed, I shared a mug of cocoa with Terry Pratchett before drifting off to sleep. Yes, you're never alone when you've got a ...