Hey you!

It's Stewart Lee on BBC2 tonight so I've got a deadline. Would you believe I spend hours writing one of these things? I know, you really wouldn't think. Hey weirdly enough there was a Diane Fossey song in Year of the Flood today, when she'd been a major thread in the Adam Curtis documentary on Monday. I must admit I didn't quite get exactly what he was getting at with that really. People began to believe that they were no different from animals. Really? Well that's not really new or controversial. Therefore people believe that we are programmed organic machines and therefore have no control over our destinies, being merely vehicles for immortal genes. Well even if they're totally right it doesn't preclude the possibility of re-programming ourselves and over-riding the wee little fuckers. Hell I've been doing it for years, in my own secret way. Smiley Emoticon.
Maybe a wink.
Nah just write the words.
So anyway I've been immensely satisfied with the progress I've made on Year of the Flood since last we spoke. Its really coming on. Ren and Amanda are back together but poor Toby's been reduced to eating maggots. There was a very interesting bit where the slightly enigmatic but nonetheless likable computer-geek Glenn remerges in Ren's past. Now he has to be significant as he's sympathetic to the Gardeners and is intersted in finding scientific solutions to the problem of humanity, plus he and his new 'plank' call each extinct animal pet-names Crake and Oryx, which is apparently another Margaret Atwood novel. Well that's just shot up my to-read list. Or to listen to. They're both good formats.

There was something on woman's hour the other week about why science-fiction is a male preserve. Sadly I missed it and I hope to god it provoked the response I will give here (to myself). Whaaaaaaat?! Margaret Atwood and Ursula K Leguin are among my favourite SF writers. OK Atwood doesn't actually want to be an SF writer ( like the IRA didn't actually want to be British). Also....Rachel Swirsky just won a Hugo award or a Nebula or whichever one it was for one of her short stories....oh go look it up on Escape Pod, they're all good and I'm sure the M/F writers ratio is fairly even. That last one by Mary Robinette Kowal was good, it was like a horsey-girl story. It was a wee lassie called Kameron Hurley who wrote the most disturbing story on the site called Wonder, Maul, Doll. She must be a well sick lady. It pretty much gave even me nightmares. Anyway I've linked it before. http://escapepod.org/ I should also mention Pamala Zoline's The Heat Death of the Universe which is actually online somewhere. I did have a link on 'Empire of Crackers' so I'll see if I can dig it out.

If I thought there was one weakness in Year of the Flood, I've pretty much persuaded myself that it's actually a strength. Ren's first boyfriend Jimmy becomes Glenn's best friend when she first encounters him in the Healthwiser Compound, then he's Bernice's disgusting roomate at the campus, then after that he turn's up as Amanda's boyfriend. He is inexplicably drawn to Ren's former friends. But then life's unfair like that, because poor Ren loves Jimmy he'll just keep showing up in various ways. I really enjoyed the way Ren describes her love for this douchbag of a character:

"It was like being haunted. Maybe I've imprinted on Jimmy, I thought. Like a duck hatching out of an egg and the first thing it sees is a Weasel, so that's what it follows around for the rest of its life, which is likely to be short".

"I tried to forget all about him but somehow I couldn't. Beating myself up over Jimmy had become a bad habit with me like biting your nails. Every once in a while I'd see him drifting past in the distance, which was just like having just one cigarette when you're trying to quit. It starts you off again. Not that I was ever a smoker."

Aw. Hope she gets over it. Now me I'm in love with Nanette Greenblatt who is the female vocal on the following track from AND THE NATIVE HIPSTERS. You'll soon see why. She's terrific and manic and cute and strange and scary and confusing. Just the way I likes 'em. The male vocal is Clem Curtis of the wonderful THE FOUNDATIONS who's original track has been greatly enhanced by Blatt's deeply rational narrative and what seems to be the death march played on a toy saxaphone. Yes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4pqUe-AnE