Our Future…

What does our future hold for us? Could it be this –

Or might we be luckier and end up like this -

The choice is yours – what do you think?

Thought for the day

“Isn’t it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?”

Kelvin Throop III

Without a word of farewell…

What popular writer could create a story from the saying ‘Clothes maketh the man’, transforming it into a full length novel about a specially tailored suit?

This, I might hastily add, is a suit that apparently tailors itself to the contours of the individual who wears it, creating a mood, an ambience in and about the wearer…such a story not only holds the attention of the reader, but dazzles with its originality. Does the name Barrington J Bayley mean anything to you? Mr. Bayley was author of the incredible “The Garments of Caen”, a story about just such a suit of clothes…created by the artist tailors of Caen, no less.

Barrington J Bayley was one of the “great” Science Fiction writers – he recognised that SF was his natural field as an author, even as a youngster, and produced works brimming with unique ideas and concepts. He should have been well known as an author, but, sad to relate, his death last year went largely unnoticed.

The obvious criteria for a unique and original talent is to think “WOW…that’s bloody good,” when you encounter their work. Like reading a line of poetry that sticks in your head, starts a resonance that brings you back to read and reread that poem over and over. Reading Barrington J Bayley for the first time some years ago, I was so delighted, so surprised – hell, so intrigued by the vision and imagination of this man! To my mind it’s the sign of a great talent, a unique talent, when a writer can keep on managing that effect on a reader, over and over, and Barrington J Bayley certainly did that throughout his writing life!

I recently reread “The Pillars of Eternity”, one of Barrington’s best, in which clones develop murder in to a stunningly new sexual experience; a man’s skeleton is rebuilt in such a way as to make him the most sensitive and powerful man in the Universe; a deck of cards is developed and programmed to foretell the future (Barrington was fascinated by the Tarot); while treasure hunters seek out Meirjain, a wandering, semi-mythical planet, wherein lie hidden the time jewels – which are needed to unhinge the Universe, and break the continuing circle of time. It’s also a love story…the love between “a suicidal hedonist and a hypersensitive man who denies pleasure”. What a package! And one only Barrington could have given us!

Writer Rhys Hughes had this to say about Barrington: “Taking scissors to fiction, the tailor cuts and sews, patching up a worn genre … Undeterred by lack of commercial success and critical acclaim, Barrington Bayley quietly continues his work, creating a wardrobe as impressive as any in imaginative writing. He is the most underrated SF British writer since David Masson.”

See HERE.

He began publishing science-fiction stories in 1954, and met Michael Moorcock in 1957. The two collaborated prolifically on stories and other work during that decade. Bayley became a central contributor to Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine in the 1960s, and his stories seemed simultaneously estranged and metropolitan, appearing instinctively to confirm that journal’s aggressive disregard of the local or the provincial.

Bayley never became as well-known outside Britain as New Worlds writers like Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, or Thomas M. Disch – but he shared their intense early devotion to certain literary models, for example William Burroughs, Borges, Albert Jarry and the later French Surrealists. Bayley never abandoned this heritage. By the opening of the 21st century he had published nearly 100 tales whose deadpan playfulness with the most abstruse of scientific speculations, and whose surreal adventurousness about time and place, made him seem almost more European than English.

His later novels like “Collision with Chronos” or “The Fall of Chronopolis” played deliriously with the time theories of J. W. Dunne – who believed that past, present and future exist simultaneously. These novels combine intellectual joy with a redoubtable grimness about the ability of his human protagonists fully to benefit from the worlds of his imagination.

If you’ve never read any of Bayley’s works you’ve missed out on something really special. So I’d urge you go read his work yourself.

See HERE.

“Indigo Child” will “take the human civilization to a higher level of development”.

“A Russian schoolgirl has wowed the crowds at an exhibition of youthful scientific inventions by rolling out a high-tech Venus rover, Pravda reports.

Anna Shvetsova, of Noginsk, near Moscow, used “A Step to the Future” to demonstrate her “silvery disk, reminiscent to either a UFO or two bowls glued together” which apparently uses an engine based on Tolchin’s inertioid.

As Pravda notes, Shvetsova still has to tackle the matter of Venus’s surface temperature – which can reach 480°C and which has made short work of previous probes to the planet – but she says her rover is designed to endure 50 days.

The sceptical among you might question the viability of Shvetsova’s vehicle, but you should note that she may be blessed with insights and abilities not enjoyed by mere mortals.

As Pravda explains, Shvetsova is an “Indigo Child” – one of a group of youths who will “take the human civilization to a higher level of development”.

The term comes from the hue of the children’s auras, as classified by psychic Nancy Ann Tappe in her seminal 1982 work Understanding Your Life Through Color. She wrote: “The Indigo phenomenon has been recognized as one of the most exciting changes in human nature ever documented in society.

“The Indigo label describes the energy pattern of human behavior which exists in over 95 per cent of the children born in the last 10 years … This phenomena is happening globally and eventually the Indigos will replace all other colors.”

In case you can’t see people’s auras, and are wondering if your sprog is Indigo and might one day knock up an intergalactic anti-grav drive or cold fusion generator on the kitchen table, here are the tell-tale signs:

As small children, Indigo’s [sic] are easy to recognize by their unusually large, clear eyes. Extremely bright, precocious children with an amazing memory and a strong desire to live instinctively, these children of the next millennium are sensitive, gifted souls with an evolved consciousness who have come here to help change the vibrations of our lives and create one land, one globe and one species. They are our bridge to the future.

So now you know. Next stop: Venus.”

See HERE.

Shape of things to come…?

Could this be the future for mankind? What do you think?

Speech for accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature

I was once a Boy Scout. The motto of the Boy Scouts, as you know, is ”Be Prepared” So, several years ago I wrote a speech to be delivered in the event that I won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It was only eight words long. I think I had better use it here. “Use it or lose it:” as the saying goes.

This is it: ”You have made me an old, old man”

Kurt Vonnegut

Metropolis

“Metropolis – one of the best films ever made – remixed to “Chase the Manhattan” by Black Dog.”

The First Dr Who