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2025-04-22 03:27 pm

The Heights of Sleep

A story that feels too close to be comfortable, too wonderful to be ignored. And it is from a collection I urge everyone to read. ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2025/04/22/the-heights-of-sleep/
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2025-04-16 05:37 pm

Eastercon

So tomorrow I fly out to Belfast. I don't mind going on trips, but I hate preparing for them. Right now everything is packed and ready, and I still feel on edge. Oh well, soon be over. I'm back home on Monday, so I probably won't be online again until then. Will I see some of you over the weekend?
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2025-04-13 09:08 am

A Granite Silence

It is still early, but I have a feeling that A Granite Silence by Nina Allan is easily going to be the best book of the year. My review: https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/04/11/shattering-the-illusion-of-normality-review-of-nina-allans-a-granite-silence/
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2025-03-29 10:57 am

Micros**t

I'm frankly getting pissed off with Microsoft. I have a perfectly good computer, but MS tells me that it is not suitable for an upgrade to Windows 11. Okay, so what are my options? Buy a new computer: that's the only advice MS can give. What if I can't afford a new computer? I can't, at the moment. What if I am perfectly satisfied with my computer as is? Hard luck, MS only wants to know you if you buy an expensive new computer.
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2025-03-29 09:52 am

Academese

A few weeks ago I wrote a review in which I spent a fair bit of time criticising the author for his excessive use of academic jargon at the expense of clarity. I now read a lot of academic criticism, and familiarity breeds at least a measure of content: I know what they are saying, or trying to say, but invariably I think there are simpler, clearer, and more precise ways of saying it. The jargon often comes across as being intended to confuse the issue rather than clarify it. This is something that has long annoyed me, it crops up several times in COLOURFIELDS also. Today I came across a piece by Perry Anderson in which he attacked the academic Left for the "baneful effects" of "peer-group fixation, index-of-citations mania, gratuitous apparatuses, pretentious jargons, guild conceit." (This is from a 2000 editorial for the New Left Review) I am not alone: I feel seen!
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2025-03-26 02:48 pm

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky

The other day I was walking back from Hythe along the coast. As you come to the edge of the town there is a stretch where the promenade runs between the sea and a small golf course. As I reached this stretch I became aware that there was a brightly coloured helicopter hovering just overhead. I watched it run back and forth a couple of times, then it circled and came in to land on the golf course. Since from where I was standing I couldn't see anything else, I continued walking. That's when I became aware of a group of half a dozen people about a hundred yards ahead of me. Then they stopped, started peering up into the empty sky, one of them pointed, and they all turned slowly as if they were watching something. It was eerily as though they were following the helicopter I had seen land just a minute before.
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2025-03-23 05:09 pm

Photograph

Still trying to work out Dreamwidth. Today I wanted to post a photograph to mark what would have been Maureen's 66th birthday, but I can't work out how to do it. The "Insert Image" tag only seems to work if you are inserting an image from the web and so have an html address for it, I can't seem to just copy one of the photographs stored on my hard drive. I tried Help, and it was no help whatsoever. Any ideas?
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2025-03-23 10:46 am

A little colourless

Here is Adam Roberts with a long, detailed, and wonderfully engaged discussion of my new book: Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction. I don't agree with everything he says, but he wouldn't expect me to. But in the main points - good and bad - I can only agree. The review is here: https://profadamroberts.substack.com/p/paul-kincaid-colourfields-writing
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2025-03-20 03:26 pm

Mythical America

When I am out for a walk I have my music on shuffle so what music I am listening to is quite random. But today, through one of those odd coincidences, the two great songs about the Kent State shootings came up one after the other. First there was Pete Atkins with "Driving Through Mythical America", followed immediately by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with "Ohio". And it struck me, hearing them together like this, how much they have to tell us about the state of America today.

I remember when the Kent State shootings happened; everyone of my generation was, of course, appalled. How could such a thing happen in what was supposed to be a modern, civilised state? But we forget, with time, that that wasn't the most common response. When Neil Young puts in the line: "Should have been done long ago", he is giving voice to most Americans of my parent's generation. These long-haired, draft-dodging hippies had it coming to them. And when something similar happens in Trump's America - and I have no doubt it will - that will be the majority response again.

Why? Well, that's where Clive James's lyrics for "Driving Through Mythical America" come in. Because James equates the inevitability of what faces those four students with the myth of America inculcated through Hollywood film. When Elon said the other day that empathy was a bad thing he was only saying something that American film had insisted on over and over again. The hero is the loner, the one detached from society. The hero is the one who can shoot faster and with greater brutality than the villain. The hero is the one who ignores the rules for some greater good, and is always justified in the end. If that is your model for how America is supposed to work, how can your response to the Kent State shootings, or to any modern day equivalent, be anything other than "Should have been done long ago"?

America's myth of itself justified the Kent State shootings, and it created Trump. And that's why, whatever happens in the next year or two, we know that most people in America will shrug and carry on looking after themselves. Empathy, as Elon told us, is unAmerican.
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2025-03-20 11:25 am

In Colour

To announce that my book on Keith Roberts's Pavane has been shortlisted for the BSFA Long Non-Fiction Award, and in preparation for the launch of Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, I put up this post on my blog: ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2025/03/20/in-colour/
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2025-03-15 11:00 am

National story

Reading Stefan Collini's review of a 2005 biography of the very conservative historian Sir Arthur Bryant, and Collini notes Bryant's repeated claims that "an 'intellectual elite' was attempting to undermine 'ordinary people's' inherited religious and moral beliefs in order to impose a 'progressive agenda' that was alien to English traditions." Bryant would go on to argue that "(conservative) beliefs were natural and timeless, whereas his opponents' (radical) beliefs were the programmatic outcomes of 'system' and 'theory'." Consequently, Bryant's history "told 'the national story', which in turn revealed adherence to these traditional values to be the core of patriotism."

You can see exactly that process in the Brexit arguments of a few years ago ("we don't need no stinking experts"), and again in the Reform programme today. But it is not confined to England (Bryant tended to write about England rather than Britain), you see the same thing recurring across the world. The story has a familiar structure: emphasis on the great and noble past, particularly military heroics; the mythologising of defeats that somehow became a cause for celebration (Dunkirk, Valley Forge); the concentration on "Great Men" who of course just happened to look the same as us. You see this today in Netanyahu's Israel, in Orban's Hungary, and particularly vividly in Trump's America (though I suspect they might struggle with words like "programmatic"). Surely we on the left need to find a new way of telling the national story, but one that is still as vivid and attractive as the conservative version.
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2025-03-13 10:22 am

Two Stones

While Maureen was ill, I lost a lot of weight through stress. Once she died, that weight went right back on, and increased. So around the middle of last year I started to think about losing weight, mostly through walking. It didn't work: if I lost a pound one week it went back on the following week. Then, in November, I was diagnosed with Meniere's Disease. Suddenly I had to watch my diet, mostly to avoid salt, and since there is an astonishing amount of salt in processed food I had to start cooking more. I'm not a great cook, but when needs must, you learn. And I began walking more, an evening walk around the park became longer, and then longer again. Two weeks later I learned I was pre-diabetic and I had even more reason to watch my diet, even more reason to walk. As the daily walks got longer - two, three, eight miles - so the weight started to come off, and stay off. This morning, when I weighed myself, I was exactly two stones lighter than I had been the week I learned I had Meniere's. And I've just had to buy a new pair of trousers that are smaller around the waist than any I have worn this century.
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2025-03-09 10:13 am

Mountain

Yesterday I went over to Hastings for lunch with Leigh and Dev and others, a lovely day. But my train from Ashford to Hastings was cancelled. So I ended up having to catch a replacement bus service (not a very adequate one, the bus was stuffed and there were still around a dozen people who couldn't get on). The first stop after Ashford is a village called Hamstreet, which is just on the edge of the Romney Marsh, so the land round about is absolutely flat. And as we left the village I noticed a sign: "Mountain Farm". Well yes, the farmhouse was on raised ground, but the top of the rise was probably no higher above the surrounding flatness than the top of my head. I've never been called a mountain before.
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-03-06 07:44 am

(no subject)

Somewhat surprised to discover that a science fiction anthology for which I wrote the introduction is now available for pre-order. Honestly, I did think it would be later in the year or even next year before it appeared. Anyway, the book is called One Million Times edited by Rogelio Fojo and R. James Doyle, and was sparked by a Christopher Priest story, which is how come I was invited to write the introduction. It is available through Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Million-Times-Science-Anthology/dp/1915304806/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ASAYLH1VV0J7&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6a_PFoZm20O5numlgzcQ48OwrYJW_NacfVcvIudwb20c1ODsRyXo72C414l-vtjGaxVIsT4rc65XkrY-Msuuf9AncoFyTwejcOKd8uKeOK0j0dQ50IuXtK9G-javTg3CglozsRK9B-OcBu_UAlJj3euJccoGZtVAEwQYjWbswyIxkHOQqg8JkUa3lQohgMeslCYUr_AHOyWW-RuEKzrnEF78nEBtJJ4QdBp-bL6b_3M.gOJJXcJoW1kKCfyB6KVR0UJOehGqykdtFzdLESQMU3o&dib_tag=se&keywords=one+million+times&qid=1741247115&s=books&sprefix=one+million+times%2Cstripbooks%2C98&sr=1-1

And while I was checking this out I noticed that my own new book, Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, which comes out at almost exactly the same time as the anthology, is also on Amazon. Ridiculously I hadn't thought to check beforehand.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Colourfields-Writing-About-Science-Fiction/dp/1738561739/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1JRIM8874M6CF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Upb0sFRAGK1rP2yaP0WN_YcQsDzj2okxuagegMkT4blHbqnrY-0E-YR95IeiCDwKBGQjIkv-plbEjdY07LWF0HU4nvp95ziU3oynB_lImq6nIffpKm0R3EIz7l9MZ8C7ktzQoSvWmOJYPUEL_b-S59H4mV6mIHRMoglJm0VMapYVUfXYj1qdvDqkS7vjZbW8dsSLuhsynjh1hQ57JcrC2rL3xBWOBQq_W1mmPHN9Stw.mM5aWMOjz370JP9EO3JwtqWXAQmns-aFA7TV0tW4Z-c&dib_tag=se&keywords=paul+kincaid&qid=1741247444&s=books&sprefix=paul+kincaid%2Cstripbooks%2C87&sr=1-4
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-03-03 09:54 am

Outing

I am planning a trip to Hastings this coming Saturday, so I was checking the train times. I first went to the Southeastern web site, put in my departure station, Folkestone Central, and my destination, Hastings, and the site wouldn't accept it. It kept telling me I couldn't have the same place for departure and destination. I hadn't realised Folkestone and Hastings were the same place, I'd have visited more often if I'd known.

So I went instead to the Trainline site. This, at least, realised that Folkestone and Hastings are two different places. Then I decided to check returns. If I specify the times I want to travel it was £6.10 each way, but I don't know exactly when I'll be leaving so how about a one-day return. Ah, this is £25. What?
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-03-01 11:19 am

Wilson

I am currently reading Stefan Collini's Common Reading, and in an essay on Edmund Wilson I came across a lovely line. In later life, Wilson was holed up in the family home on Cape Cod, "blinds drawn against the light, Scotch opened against the dark." I would love to come up with lines like that.
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-02-25 01:15 pm

Catfood

Just had a delivery of catfood, five very heavy boxes that should keep the little monsters in food for the next three months. Except that the delivery driver thoughtfully piled them right outside my front door. For those who haven't been here, the front door opens outwards. So I couldn't actually get out in order to get the boxes inside. It took over five very strenuous minutes of pushing and pushing at the door until I managed to open a very narrow gap that proved to be just enough for me to squeeze through. All I can say is thank heavens I've been losing weight recently.
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-02-25 11:23 am

Brave New World

I'm reading a collection of essays and reviews by Stefan Collini, and in a review of a biography of Aldous Huxley I came across this reference to Huxley's time in Hollywood around 1940: "His later letters are full of references to unused scripts and unrealized projects. High on the list of the latter was the musical comedy version of Brave New World: the rights were sold, but, as Murray drily notes, 'the musical remains unmade'."

I am trying to imagine Brave New World as a Hollywood musical.
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-02-22 07:54 am

To work

Just dispatched my second review of the year, with two more books waiting in the wings. Suddenly feeling rather busy.

I won't name the book I've just reviewed because I honestly cannot recommend it. It took me a long time to read because it is written in the most impenetrable academese that I have encountered in years. More long words per inch, less clarity per page. Then you get words like "obsolete" used as a verb (I would really love to obsolete that practice), and Anthropocene acquires an adjective, "Anthroposcenic", with an interpellated "s" that makes it sound like a tourist guide. Why do so many academics seem to believe that clear, accessible prose devalues their academic status?

Anyway, on to a more straightforward and hopefully better written book.
paulkincaid: (Default)
2025-02-20 12:33 pm

Mirror Mirror

I'm trying to work out how to habituate myself to using Dreamwidth, since what usually happens is that I post entries haphazardly, don't get into the habit, and so all too readily just forget about the whole thing. Facebook is the one exception to that and I'm not exactly sure why except that there is one characteristic it shares with Dreamwidth, the ability to write at length. I don't always want to write at length, but I don't like the constrictions of a maximum number of characters. So I suppose it is probable that the reason I lose interest in so many social media platforms is that I don't want to be tied to how much I am allowed to say. It is this relative generosity on length that makes me think Dreamwidth might (just might) prove a viable alternative to Zuckerberg's Trump-worshipping, no-fact-checking, despicable little regime. So, I thought for a while I would mirror my posts to both platforms just to see how it goes. If Dreamwidth does prove appealing, then in time it will be easy to just start running down the Facebook posts.

One last question to those who have been here longer than me: is there a Dreamwidth app? It would be much more convenient to call it up on my phone or tablet if I didn't have to keep logging in every time.