Wednesday 29 May 2013

Can we create anymore?

Can we create anymore?

The Glass Bead Game
The Glass Bead Game (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of my favorite books is “The Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse.  I can only really describe it as cultural science fiction. The people in the future don’t really create culture anymore, they just manipulate it put it together using the bead game. It’s not a terrible future, but there is something sad about it.  In many ways it seems like this the way that things are going.

I was looking for a film to watch the other day and all I could really find were remakes of older films. It’s not even just remakes, now it’s remakes of remakes.”Spiderman” is good example. Having just finishing remaking the film with Toby Maguire, they’ve started again remaking the remakes with a new actor.

It’s not just straight remakes either. There are plenty of books and stories that are little more than retellings of the same tale with a different name.  I think I remember Steven King pointing out that authors like Terry Brooks are not really making their own new work, they’re just trying to rewrite the works of Tolkien that they love.

It does make me wonder, are we gradually losing the ability to create? Will we be left with only the glass bead game?

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Blurb – Help needed!

So I'm re-releasing Bardo and I'm also putting out a book of short stories. I think they're not too bad. However, I really need help with the blurbs. They're a big part of selling a book and I think it's a skill in itself to write them - a skill I just don't have.  Here's what I've got so far, any suggestions would be a big help:



The PM
The PMIt should have been the Prime Minister's first day in office. He should have been leading the country out of environmental disaster, but he’s not the only one who thinks he’s in charge.
The PM is a collection of short sci-fi and fantasy stories. It’s an eclectic mix of engaging fiction, inspiring ideas, humorous tales and daring adventure. In these fourteen stories, find out who’s really in charge in “The PM”, learn about the secret life of teaching in “Teacher without portfolio” and discover what dangers await in the depths, in the powder fantasy “Hold the line.”




Bardo
BardoNikki finds herself in a world between realms, the Bardo, and time is running out. Soon her essence will be scattered forever. Can she pull herself together?
Bardo, follows Nikki, a young schoolgirl who has an unfortunate accident and finds herself trapped in the Bardo. It won’t be long before she'll be scattered across the realms. With only a dog to guide her, can she re-unite herself in time to escape? Fun, fast and humorous, Bardo asks questions about some deep issues, including who we really are, the nature of life and death and why schools insist on students wearing school uniforms when there are much more fashionable options available.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

The oddity of a five day week.


Hamster wheel
Hamster wheel (Photo credit: sualk61)
This post might just be me being a lazy bugger, but is a five day working week really necessary?
I enjoy many things. For example, on the weekend I often go cycling and last night I went a run. I even manage to write some stuff now and again. However, if you asked me to do any of those things – note, things that I enjoy – a regimented eight hours a day five days a week, I would almost certainly start to dislike them. So why do we expect work to be any different?
I’m probably romanticising, but I’m guessing things wouldn’t have been like that back in the good old days when we lived in the forest and had a high chance of being eaten by something with big pointy teeth or dying horribly from a common cold. I guess in those times we worked when we had to, ie when we were hungry, and the rest of the time was pretty much up to us, leaving us to sit about grunting or poking the mysterious fire to our heart’s content. So why do we think that sitting in an office for forty hours a week is sensible?
And what is it we are working for exactly?
‘Well if we don’t work hard the economy will go into recession and that would be terrible!’ said a made up Tory politician (I’m pretty sure they say that kind of thing all time.)
But don’t they get it? The economy, money, recessions, they’re all made up! They don’t really exist. It’s just some convention that we’ve all agreed to work by and could just as easily stop working by and do sometime else instead. It would be like going to another planet and finding out that they worked only because if they didn’t the giant bunny rabbit of death would come and eat them. On further questioning we find that they are all perfectly sensible people and know that the bunny thing is… well… nonsense. ‘But that’s just the way we’ve all ways done things on this planet, so no point in changing that.’ So what it we are working for? I can understand a scientist, doctor or someone talking about the advancement of the human race etc, but for most of us our jobs are not like that and what we do is simply production for the sake of production with no real benefit to mankind what so ever. In fact with the way the environment is going we’re probably doing harm.
Another of those fallacies is that if we stopped forcing people to work, then nothing would get done, but again that is total nonsense. Just look at the internet and be proved wrong. A five minute search and you’ll find load of free programs, stories,games and music that people have spent a lot of time and effort making, not for financial gain, but because they wanted to. People are not lazy, we just think we are because we are so tired from working on stuff we don’t like all the time, but give people a month off and once they’ve spent a some time recovering, suddenly the urge to work will come and it wort be work :-(   it will be work :-) .
So here’s a not really thought out idea to consider. How about we take the jobs that people don’t really like doing (making shoes and cleaning sewers stuff like that) and divided them up between everyone in the country. Hopefully that works out as about three or four days a week for most. The rest of the days are then ours to work on doing whatever we want. You want to be a teacher, teach. You want to be a writer, write.  Okay so we might be a little less productive, but we’d certainly be a lot more happy.

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Time to stop debating


I helped out with a little debate thing that was happening in the school recently. It was a bit of fun for the most part and reminded me of when I used to do debate with my university students in China, but I did kind of wonder if debates are actually a good idea.

One thing I’ve been trying to work on recently is changing as I get new information. It sounds really obvious, but so few people do it. Most of us just take the ideas that we have all ready and when something comes along to challenge that, we throw up a whole bunch of fortifications built with supporting evidence and gut feelings and argue it out as battle to be won, when we really should be listening to the other side and trying to find out what the truth of things is.

Politics is where you see it most. You’ll have some poor politician stuff towing the party line despite all the evidence going against them, but I’ve noticed it a lot of facebook and other social media recently as well.

Okay so I’m not saying we stop debating in school, but maybe we need to balance it out with a good deal  of tough arguments where students have to work together to come to a compromise based on evidence rather than just fighting for their side. Maybe that would be a lot more useful.