Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

No, this is not about the 1967 Sidney Poitier film, nor the 2005 remake. A week or so ago, I was struck by a very random, whimsical urge to poke around this old forum I was a part of in my youth. In fact, around the 2005 mark would have been one of the heights of my participation in this online community dedicated to the fandom of 24. If you’re looking for some strange duality between the title, its relation to a movie made in the year 2005, blah, blah. Looking at some of the things I wrote/said back then...well, I was a bit of a monumental prat in those days. I’m more a statuesque prat now, smaller than a monument but still pretty dull.

Anyway, I stumbled upon a thread started by a user known as Yil. He was quite the erudite, intelligent young chap. Quite on the ball as I remember it, astute observations...the kind of fellow you invite over for tea and cake, end up debating the merits of Nietzsche and Voltaire. Then retire for whiskey and cigars in the smoking room, with your high-backed, winged chairs and smoking jackets in front of a crackling fire.

In this particular thread, Yil asked who people would invite to their ideal dinner party. Six guests, living or dead. Back in 2004, when the question was posed, I had no answer. It was something that I didn’t even think about. Dinner party? What the frak was a dinner party?

Eleven years later, I have found myself contemplating which six guests would constitute my ideal dinner party:

1. Richard Feynman

Nobel Laureate in Physics, noted for his work on quantum electrodynamics, the Feynman Lectures and the Feynman Diagrams. A scientific genius, oft overshadowed in popular culture by Albert Einstein but every bit his equal, if not on some occasions his better. But more than anything, Feynman is a genuinely brilliant and fun human being. A series of YouTube videos posted by Reid Gower can attest to this. I’ve provided a link to one called “The Key to Science”. When Feynman explains what the key to science is...just brilliant. An amazing dinner guest.

2. Douglas Adams

One of the funniest writers in all existence. Let’s face it, all my guests after Feynman have been influenced by his placement on the guest list. Who work with Feynman? Well, having read The Salmon of Doubt and seeing just how deeply funny a man Douglas Adams was, I can only imagine the hilarity and good conversation that would ensue at the dinner table to have such a talented humorist as Adams and an irreverent scientist as Feynman...it would be beautiful.

3. Sir Terry Pratchett

The other funniest writer in all existence. Such a gifted and talented man whose worked has touched a generation and the effect of which will ripple onwards through time, a legacy to match the previous guest. The combination of wit and wisdoms from Feynman, Adams and Pratchett...I would have to keep a team of trauma surgeons on standby to repair the guts busted from laughter.

4. William Gibson

One of my all time favourite writers. As evidenced by a video I saw the other day, itself from 1994, quite the funny chap too. Although his writing is not outwardly intended to be funny, they are laced with fun little moments (my favourite in Zero History, where an American in London calls a Belgian with the name Bigend “Mr Bellend”. I maintain it was a nod to the British readers who know exactly when to use the term “Bellend”). Also, when conversational matters turned to more serious matters of science, Feynman and Gibson would be two very formidable visionary minds I think.

5. Sonya Belousova

Not all my guests would be writers and scientists. As much entertainment as they would bring through conversation, a good dinner party needs something else. Some music. And Sonya Belousova is an incredibly talented pianist. She does spectacularly awesome piano arrangements of theme tunes from TV, movies, video games. They’re amazing. I am also just a tiny bit love with her and would also use the dinner party as an opportunity to woo her. Undoubtedly. Check out her YouTube channel and tell me you wouldn’t too.

6. Bear McCreary

While my guests are gathered around the arbitrarily placed grand piano to hear some music and I want to impress Sonya rather than have her make me melt with her musical talents, I have a back-up plan. My other favourite composer and quite awesome pianist, Bear McCreary. For evidence of his piano talents, this video of my favourite song from Battlestar Galactica, “Something Dark is Coming”. Also I would have to pick his brains about Battlestar and all of the things. And make him play all of my favourite songs. Then have Sonya do the same, whilst settling down for whiskey and cigars with Feynman, Adams, Pratchett and Gibson.

There are, of course, many, many more awesome people I would love have at a dinner party. These guys are just the first round. Perhaps I should have monthly dinner parties, with different guests each time...hmmmm...well, anyway, those are my six ideal dinner party guests. What about you, dear readers? Who would your six be?

The Obligatory 2014 Retrospective

In the two years I’ve been writing this blog, I have made a tiny habit of doing a little retrospective post about the year that has just been. Reading through some of my old posts searching for some inspiration on the subject, I apparently succumb to my obligation to retrospection after New Year’s Eve. However, since I already cheated and didn’t write a blog post last week (my logic for this being it was Christmas Eve, surely that’s worthy of a break and that there wasn’t anything I could think to write about), I didn’t feel I could really wait until next week to talk about 2014. Especially as by the time this is posted, there’s barely anything left of 2014 for anything of significant note to happen.

So, on with the blabbering.

It occurs to me that a retrospective on 2014 is more than likely to be a summation of everything you dear readers have already read about. Of course, there has been a significant chunk of time not rambled about, that period of silence between May and October, itself preceded by a lengthy silence going back to January. Regardless, I’m going to soldier on. If I can even remember half of the stuff that happened this year...

The first part of the year was spent recuperating from an unprecedented surge in writing. Upon the completion of the first draft of my novel, I decided to kick back and leave it in the hands of my proofreaders. I did just that. It’s probably about here that my addiction to XCOM: Enemy Within came around. And watching all of the TV shows I had neglected in the latter quarter of 2013 in order to finish the novel.

One thing I neglected to mention in any of my blog posts was one of the highlights of my year – 8th April 2014. On that day, I saw my favourite band, Halestorm, performing live in Bristol. It was only the second time I had been to a live gig – the first time being 20th October 2013 in Cardiff. An Alter Bridge gig, with Shinedown and Halestorm supporting. However, because of the need to eat first (I was rather hungry), accidentally missed Halestorm. But did later see Lzzy Hale on stage. Which kind of made my night. But then April. When I got to see them in their full glory in Bristol. It was awesome. And I obtained my very first band t-shirt. Currently the only band t-shirt I have. But it’s Halestorm, it’s my favourite, so right now I don’t feel like I need any others...yet...

The rest of the year is pretty much a matter of me ambling through from one point to another. Well, I say that. There were some highlights in-between, chance meetings with people who just came in for a coffee and ended up writing their number on my arm (I say meetings with people, this last bit only happened once) and let’s not forget some pretty cool movies. The immense highlights of these being Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And in the latter half of 2014, we were given the first trailers for Avengers Assemble: Age of Ultron.

Perhaps the biggest, most momentous highlight of 2014 came in November. 25th November 2014 to be precise. I’ve talked about it once already, so I won’t go into massive details, but yes, it was the day I met one of my literary heroes, William Gibson.

Now from skimming my previous retrospectives, there appears to be a tradition of looking ahead at the year to come. Probably something to do with that old Roman curmudgeon, Janus. You know, two-faced fella (literally, had a whole other face on the back of his head), god of beginnings and transitions, no equivalent in Greek mythology? Well, thanks to him this pivotal point of years, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, is not only a time of getting wasted and partying hard, but also a time of reflection on time past and aspirations towards time to come. In my own form of “tradition”, I tend towards looking ahead at all the awesome movies that will be coming out.

2015 is shaping up to be a good movie year. Avengers Assemble: Age of Ultron. Minions. A new Neill Blomkamp movie, CHAPPIE. They all look awesome. This is just to name but a few.

I’m sure I should be saying more on this subject, more about things I hope for in 2015, but, well...how about we just let things unfold. Gives me more to talk about as I attempt to continue my trend of writing a blog post once a week. But if you really want some teasers...I hope to see the Heroes of Canton more and learn more about tea. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity to meet my other literary hero, China Miéville. More than anything though, here’s hoping it will be a year of productive writing. Some good news with my novel maybe, or perhaps just that I will also be regularly contributing to Boston Tea Party’s emerging blog.

Whatever happens, here’s hoping for a great 2015. After all, 2014’s been pretty good to me thus far. I’ve had some pretty damn good times with old friends, made some pretty damn cool new ones and generally, it’s been a year of continued growth and development into more of a well-rounded, if slightly dysfunctional in an amusing fashion, human being. Cheers, 2014. It’s been nice knowing you.

In the presence of the Prophet

Two weeks ago, I talked about the thirtieth anniversary of William Gibson’s debut novel Neuromancer, the importance of it and his subsequent works on modern science-fiction literature. I also mentioned that on November 25th, 2014, I was going to get to meet the man himself. That was yesterday. I was tempted to write this blog straight away last night, but decided I needed a day to chill and let the giddy fan-boy squealing bleed off first.

To my somewhat credit, I did manage to contain a lot of my squealing. I only tripped over once sentence when I met the man himself, when I expressed a strange sense of joy and affinity with a fellow left-handed writer as Gibson signed the pile of books I brought out of my Chatsubo Bar messenger bag. At the sight of the stack he said, “I don’t remember writing all of those.”

When I first heard words escape his mouth, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know he’s American, residing in Canada, but the accent threw me for a second. Before I realised that the ever-so-slight twang was from his native South Carolina. The realisation was swiftly swept away by the awe of hearing the man speak. I was in a room with one of my absolute heroes. I may have to make that point two or three times before I shut up.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one in the room star-struck in the presence of the Noir Prophet himself. I’m fairly certain everyone was. The young chap from Topping and Company who introduced him expressed similar feelings of awe during the introduction. During the Q&A session after he read an extract from his new novel, The Peripheral, the audience quizzed him on matters of the future. Here was our oracle, the prophet of the future gods, and we mere mortals dared to ply him for predictions of what will happen next. He answered with clarity and grace, with the ease of one used to being tapped for perceived prescient knowledge as so many of his novels have hooked onto trends in our society before they even emerged.

A year ago, I had the pleasure of meeting fantasy authorPeter V. Brett. I hold in him in very high regard, giving him the title “DUDE”. In capital letters because that’s how much of an awesome DUDE he is. Last night, William Gibson proved himself to a quieter, but no less utterly awesome DUDE. Once again though, this is not my story, but a story of a friend.

Last night, I attended the William Gibson event with my friend Jester, who has a good few years worth of experience on me and has read further and wider than I have. But it all started when one of his friends lent him a copy of Neuromancer. That was the first sci-fi that Jester read and was the beginning of a long and voracious love affair that remains passionate to this day. Jester had Gibson dedicate the book to his friend and explained that this friend introduced him to not only Gibson, but sci-fi literature. And Gibson said, “The next time you speak to your friend, tell him thank you.”

Such a subtle, small phrase, but boy does it carry weight. When Jester told me the story...I was in further awe. William Gibson says thank you. If a friend of mine called me and told me that, I would no doubt squeal so loud the Martians would be yelling at us to keep the noise down. Holy frak, what a dude.

Now I say that I managed to contain most of my giddy fan-boy squealing (something Jester was VERY glad about), but I did have a moment of what I would characterise as total fan-boy-ness. When Gibson had finished signing all twelve books I brought with me, I sheepishly produced one last item. The essay, “Wisdom of the Noir Prophet: Arguing for the inclusion of William Gibson in the literary canon”. I explained that I wrote in my final year of university and asked if he would sign it. He did. I then scooped up my pile of books and scurried on so other people could have their moment with one of the greatest minds in modern science-fiction.

Last night, I basked in the presence of the Prophet. My life is the richer for it and this world richer for containing his works.

The Wisdom of the Noir Prophet

My affection for sci-fi has infected nearly every aspect of my life. In the space of a few days, maybe weeks, of conversations with my regular customers at work, they will discover how obsessed I am. Some share my affinity, others are bemused by it, and others share my kinship with the genre in certain mediums. One such case is one of my die-hard regulars, who I’ve been serving for as long as I’ve been working at Boston Tea Party Bath. He’s a recently retired English teacher. Naturally, we’ve bonded over a shared love of books.

The other day, he came in and presented me with an article from The Guardian – a short piece about William Gibson’s seminal work of sci-fi literature, Neuromancer. That was published thirty years. To my shame, I had failed to remember that it was thirty years since. Ask me what great things happened in 1984, I can say that Ghostbusters was released and Neuromancer was published. I’ll rave about Ghostbusters being an awesome movie, then I will go on about how much of a game-changer Neuromancer was.

Four years ago, the halcyon days of 2010, I was in my final year of my creative writing degree. My final deadline was an essay for a module called “Reading as a Writer”. In this module we picked a writer we loved, someone who inspired us, then using academic sources and their own text, argue for why they are significant and should be included in the literary canon. Naturally, I chose William Gibson. I re-read all his books, piling through the Sprawl and Bridge trilogies in a matter of weeks. I had my core argument ready and waiting to go – William Gibson created cyberpunk and gave voice to a generation of science-fiction authors, television shows and movies.

I was around fifteen when I truly found my calling, settled into a genre and wrote with confidence and bravado that only a fifteen year old boy can muster when he has decided his life’s dream. I was a cyberpunk, though I would not realise it until years later. My defining piece of writing was a fifteen page short story about an assassin who was double-crossed and sought revenge on her employers. Hardly an original tale, one that has been examined in many forms from many angles. My angle – the story was set on a terraformed Mars in 2207.

In 2007, prior to escaping my home in Wales to live in Bath, I realised that I needed to expand my reading and most importantly, read some frakkin’ sci-fi! I settled on I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (I had watched the Will Smith movie and loved it. Yes, yes, I know, book is INFINITELY different and I love and respect that about it) and this curious novel Neuromancer. I had heard that it and its author were quite important in sci-fi circles. Upon reading this book, being mesmerised and disorientated by the world cannibalised by war and cybernetic augmentation, I realised that the sci-fi I truly loved and that felt most at home writing was this. Cyberpunk. To coin a theological analogy, I was a pilgrim who had just discovered his god.

Tracking back to 2010 and tying in the title of this blog. The essay I wrote was entitled “The Wisdom of the Noir Prophet: Arguing for the Inclusion of William Gibson in the Literary Canon”. I am damn proud of this essay. My last piece of academic work and it netted me a mark of 72. Sure, it didn’t push my overall grade from a 2:1 to a First, but by gods I was mighty happy with that. My last official piece of coursework and one of my favourite authors helped me to get a First for it.

Now, I should probably tell you all why Neuromancer is so important and how it changed the landscape. I’ve skirted the idea briefly earlier, but here’s some big red letters on the side of Mount Everest exposition. In 1984, Neuromancer introduced the world to the very concept of cyberpunk. It had been slowly building, fragments of the code drifting together and forming the ghost in the machine (to borrow and paraphrase from James Cromwell’s portrayal of Doctor Alfred Lanning in the aforementioned Will Smith movie), in the form of short stories written by Gibson and his cohorts Bruce Sterling and Tom Maddox (to name but a few).

But it was Neuromancer that came crashing through sci-fi’s bubble, trashing the place, then piling it all up into a corner of the genre and saying “This is our spot. We’re here to stay.” From the early movie example of RoboCop (a defining piece of cyberpunk cinema in my opinion) and the later TV example of James Cameron’s short-lived Dark Angel, cyberpunk’s mark was made, it stayed and people have taken up its mantle. It has even become a sub-culture, characterised by lots of shiny metal (be it implanted or just studded upon one’s clothing) and bright neon tubes in your hair, just to name the most obvious traits.

One of the most important aspects of Neuromancer and its wider cultural impact is the cultural imagery Gibson helped to define. Tron, admittedly pre-dating Neuromancer by two years in 1982, can be seen as one of the progenitors of this too – the perception of the Internet as this ethereal plane, vast flows of neon data pulsing up and down grid-lines, huge blocks of colour, geometric shapes, representing locations, websites, the targets of the hacker. While you can argue Tron created the visual, it was Neuromancer that gave it the name that has infiltrated its way into our common vernacular – cyberspace.

There is further significance to my raving about the brilliance of William Gibson. In honour of the publication of his new book, The Peripheral, he’s doing that funny odd thing that authors do – a book tour. And on November 25th, 2014, he is going to be in Bath. I am going to get to meet one of my literary heroes. I must struggle to contain the urge to squeal like a giddy little fan-boy.