Colin Harvey's Blog
Posted by Colin Harvey
Although Ballard is best known as a sort of SF writer, to include his life-story as SF would be stretching the realms of genre, somewhat, so I'll talk about it here, instead, which also frees me from the constraints of writing a proper review.
Ballard's early life will be familiar to anyone who has either read the book or seen the film of Empire of the Sun, so apart from noting that between a third and a half of the book is spent on his formative years, first in glittering pre-war Shanghai, then in the camp, I'll skip onto the second half.
Some of that will be familiar to the readers of The Kindness of Women, such as Ballard's time in Sasketchewan. but where the autobiography really comes into its own is in Ballard's time as husband to Mary, who died far too young, leaving him to raise three children on his own, and his time as a writer from 1956 to 1967, when he began to compose what would become The Atrocity Exhibition.
Ballard writes with candour and dry wit of how the president of his publisher read Ballard's most controversial work, and being a close personal friend of the then Governor of California, ordered the entire production run pulped.
It's a wry yet humane look at a man who could easily have become dysfunctional, given his early life, yet found salvation in ordinary family life.
Posted by Colin Harvey
Christmas is significant for many things. One telling detail is that December 25th was the first day of 2008 that I've spent at home without switching on either my laptop or PC.
Partly because we had house guests, and it would have been rude.
But mainly it was because I'd set myself a deadline of the 18th to finish Winter Song, to give myself a week off to enjoy Christmas.
Instead I kept finding things that would make it just that little bit better, to the point where as my mother-in-law walked through the door on Christmas Eve, I looked up and said, "I'm still trying to finish this bloody novel."
And it is. At last.
So to celebrate, I gave myself the day off.
Yesterday morning we walked the dogs (Alice has been joined by Meggy, Kate's parent's black cocker) through the fields and up to the community forest, which --as always-- resembled the Somme.
Kate put the goose in at 1pm, and we opened our presents.
Off-topic, one sister-in-law gave me Snow Patrol's excellent new CD, and another 'Stephen Fry's America.' On-topic -just- my parents gave me JG Ballard's autobigraphy, which should give a fascinating insight into this most cerebral of the New Wave writers, and Kate gave me The Writer's Tale, which I've lusted after since I saw it. Oh God, I'm even starting to write like Russell T. Davies...
The goose finally pitched up onto the table at 4pm on a vast china platter framed by roast parsnips and potatoes. That a) skips over Kate and I shouting at one another over the location of the matches, which was a symptom, not the actual subject of the row, and b) makes us sound as if we live the high life -- but scrimping and saving for Christmas is part of the reason we've been stretched thin enough to row at all.
Post-dinner we collapsed into chairs to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which was the best yet.
And by this afternoon --the 26th-- I could feel the siren call of the laptop. Enough torpor. Enough laziness. Back to work, Harvey!
Posted by Colin Harvey
I should be revising the last chapter of Winter Song, but it's turnng out to be hard work today.
I have labyrinthitis, a disorder of the inner ear, which makes it hard both to stand and walk, but it also affects the thought processes.
On a happier note, Kate and I started putting up Christmas decorations yesterday, and it's a large enough job to continue into today. Kate's long been a collector of small Christmas items from around the world, so baubles from Austria, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand hang alongside those from Australia, Iceland and the USA. We're a little late starting, as the first Icelandic Yule Lad should go on the 12th, but instead the first three of the thirteen went out this morning.
But the biggest distraction of all has been signing contracts with an agent, and the miscellaneous correspondence that it's sparked.
Jenny Rappaport also represents John Joseph Adams, anthologist and assistant editor of F & SF, and Douglas Cohen, who performs a similar function for Realms of Fantasy. And by a happy coincidence, she also represents Ted Kosmatka, of whom I've written before. I'm delighted to find myself in such fine company.
Maybe I should just accept that I've lost a day, and give up the battle.....
Posted by Colin Harvey
Earlier this year I published Blind Faith, set against the backdrop of the London bombings of 2005.
That's a public event, and when I implied the Sussex police are less than perfect, so far, so good -- I could a) highlight their real ineptitude over the last decade on several cases, and b) point out that it's a work of fiction. But my novel features a missing schoolgirl, and in the course of writing it, I learned that a schoolgirl really had gone missing in Sussex at about that time.
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Posted by Colin Harvey
This was recently posted on a discussion group (the source was unattributed) under the guise of censorship:
"The legal world is buzzing at the announcement last week of the prosecution of 35-year-old civil servant Darryn Walker for the online publication of material that Police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)
believe obscene.
This is the first such prosecution for written material in nearly two decades - and a guilty verdict could have a significant impact on the future regulation of the internet in the UK.
The case originated in summer 2007, when Mr Walker allegedly posted a work of fantasy - titled Girls (Scream) Aloud - about pop group Girls Aloud.
The story describes in detail the kidnap, rape, mutilation and murder of band members Cheryl Cole, Nadine Coyle, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh, and ends with the sale of various body parts on eBay."
Apparently, the latest craze is Real Person Slash (I'll leave it you to decide what 'slash' stands for...)
and this cropped up as an example of an RPS writer being prosecuted.
As a writer, it was perhaps inevitable that when I first saw this post, my initial thoughts were "bloody government, reining in our civil liberties." But the more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became, for a variety of reasons, which I'll post about next time.
