>>Nostalgia For Infinity

In the near future, ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) get big. Some – such as those produced by Dagmar, lead writer and planner for Great Big Idea and fondly nicknamed “the puppetmaster” – are so big that they are played by hundreds of thousands of people across the world. As the book opens she is in Jakarta for the climax of one such game. She is trapped when Indonesia’s currency abruptly collapses; the government soon follows leading to widespread civil disorder.

Dagmar’s story is at the heart of this novel but is also interwoven with the tales of her college acquaintances, friends who bonded over pen and paper role-playing games. Foremost among them is Charlie, a self-made billionaire who funds Great Big Idea. The first act describes Dagmar’s escape from Jakarta, a story in which Charlie’s limitless funds and a professional mercenary group are pitted against the contacts and ingenuity of Great Big Idea’s thousands of players. It’s a tense thriller with a well-envisioned setting, juxtaposing the precarious luxury of the Royal Jakarta Hotel with the poverty and violence outside. The hotel soon becomes a prison and Dagmar is forced to choose whether she should follow the instructions of a military professional, or put her life in the hands of individuals who may believe her plight is only a game.

The book has an interesting premise and it’s pleasing to see a thriller engaging with relatively new technologies and concepts like ARGs, social networking and cloudsourced knowledge. This also represents its Achille’s Heel: technology enthusiasts and players of ARGs may not find some aspects of Williams’s novel wholly convincing, exacerbated by the fact the novel is self-consciously imprecise about when it is set. For example, the first chapter describes laptop “turbines” which supply power and extend battery life; this sits anachronistically alongside a custom-made PDA that sounds less impressive than the latest iPhone.

Similarly the design of the ARG that is entwined with the novel’s other narratives feels dated and claustrophobic. Aspects of this game, supposedly played by hundreds of thousands, operate on a first come, first served basis. Thus only one player gets to participate, under the assumption that they will then share what they have learned with other players. It’s understandable that the game design is structured this way in order to work within the book, but it doesn’t convince as a game that would be played by more than a few hundred devotees. Williams does attempt to justify this by stating that many of the ‘players’ are observers rather than active participants, but compared to ARG projects like Superstruct the fictional game design feels lacking in imagination.

This Is Not A Game is a novel that is somewhat let down by its lack of intimate familiarity with the concepts that underpin it and this will be obvious to readers who are drawn to it by way of these concepts. However, it remains a highly entertaining speculative thriller that attempts to engage with the modern world, rather than ignoring the aspects of it that are inconvenient to plotting.

[This review originally published in Vector #264, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. This version of the review was edited by Martin Lewis.]

There is an argument to be made that it is a difficult time to be writing action-packed fiction with a pulpish bent: more modern forms of entertainment media continue to grow in popularity, and whilst videogame narratives struggle to claw their way out of the ghetto of barely-coherent melodrama and machismo it seems probable that it will be the game, not the film or the novel, that will retrospectively define the youth of this generation.

There is also an argument to be made that this trend need not be relevant: there will always be space for novels that build themselves around action and adventure, and there will always be readers. The young are not the only demographic worth pursuing, and nor are they the only demographic who, to put it hyperbolically, enjoy having their adrenaline raced.

John Trevillian’s first novel, and the first of a trilogy, is what I would consider pulp fiction for the modern SF reader. It’s full of ideas, many of them – as is inevitably the case in a culture saturated with media production – familiar. It picks and chooses from sub-genres; the decadent megalopolises and megacorps of cyberpunk, the iconic villains and heroes of the more light-hearted end of post-apocalyptic fiction (an oxymoron, yes, but a highly entertaining sub-genre), the gun-porn and gung-ho attitude of MilSF, plus a smattering of satire.

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Hey, it’s a while since I posted one of these, right? Not since April ’09. Damn, how has it been so long.

So I was invited to submit a piece of flash fiction for a Christmas-themed issue of a dark fiction e-zine. The only real requirement was that it have a “ghostly” theme and the SF piece that crawled out of my brain doesn’t meet that requirement by most definitions of ghostly. This may be why the piece wasn’t accepted for publication. Regardless, I enjoyed writing it as I’ve written so little fiction in the past few years. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Merry Winterval, and fuck you Eric Pickles!

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Apparently I’ve never written about Interzone here on Nostalgia For Infinity, which honestly surprises me a bit as it’s the magazine I’ve been subscribed to longest (about six years now, since Andy Cox took over as editor). It’s the only SF magazine I read regularly, thanks to a mix of factors: its persistently cool design and artwork makes it something I’m rarely ashamed to be seen reading (unlike, say, fishboobs), its fiction tends to be an alluring mix of strange, characterful, thought-provoking and oddball whether the stories themselves are brilliant and mediocre, and it has some great non-fiction writers (Nick Lowe and David Langford contributing since the early days). There are issues I care less for, but it’s not for lack of effort of the part of IZ’s writers, editors, artists and other contributors.

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Back at the outset of August I promised to post one of my book reviews for Vector every Saturday, and then repeatedly forgot to queue up the reviews for the rest of the month. Duh. Here’s the first of the two, of an understated and clever space opera by Paul McAuley.

The Overturn, a period of catastrophic political and climatic change which saw the deaths of hundreds of millions throughout the solar system, lies several centuries passed, yet its shadow still hangs over humanity. Earth’s old nations have conglomerated into three international super-states under authoritarian and militaristic systems of rule, pursuing ecological doctrines and endeavouring to restore their planet to some of its former natural glories. Elsewhere in the solar system the loosely affiliated networks of democratic Outer colonies pursue their own agendas, be they posthumanism, scientific research, or the simple pursuit of pleasure.

The conflict and atrocities of the Overturn left many tensions between Earth and the Outers, but tensions also lie between their internal factions. On Earth, the super-states still squabble for power at every level. The most established players uneasily eye the Outer colonies, afraid that as the Outers continue to evolve and expand Earth will lose any ability to exert influence over them. Among the Outers the older and younger generations disagree about their future: the old are conservative, desiring controlled populations on already established colonies, whereas the young argue for change and expansion further out into the unknown.

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I’ve never been particularly fond of following award ceremonies or prize schemes, usually happy to instead meander along my own exploratory routes through culture old and new. By which I mean I tend to have rarely read more than one book on any given shortlist before voting season rolls up, and thus don’t feel particularly qualified to choose what I think is best. Nonetheless I’ve found the nominations and winners of various past awards interesting, and sometimes I’ve even gotten involved despite myself.

I sat in on the 2007 and 2008 British Science Fiction Association award ceremonies, having voted, and watched genre luminaries win endearingly DIY trophies. I have the blurred photos of Ian McDonald to prove it. Sometimes I’ve experienced the momentary flush of anger when it turned out that the views of the majority didn’t correspond with my own. The Interzone readers poll is one that I’ve sometimes participated in since I’m a subscriber who reads every story. Of course I’m also absent-minded with a poor long-term memory, so sometimes I opt not to vote as it would involve re-reading a half-dozen magazines.

It’s great to see friends do well with polls and awards – such as Gareth Powell’s excellent ‘Ack Ack Macaque’ topping last year’s readers’ poll – and the one time a short story of mine was nominated for an award’s longlist ranks among my warmest and fuzziest of writerly memories.

But for the most part I’ve not gotten involved and stood instead on the sidelines, as an observer. There are a lot of anecdotal reasons to be cynical about awards. » Read the rest of this entry «

I suspect that this week’s celebration of one year of Friday Flash Fiction will be slightly overshadowed by Post a Rejection Letter Friday. But hey! Righteousness is right on, right?

I’m afraid that this week’s submission is another last-minute piece of fiction, as today has proven to be a lengthy work day fraught with some personal issues, but a promise is a promise. Rather than rush through a fresh idea I’ve decided to return to a concept I’ve tried to write in the past: a story written from the perspective of a faceless videogame enemy.

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