The Golden Age

By John C. Wright.

A good old science fiction novel. Its been a while since I read any sci fi as the good books are getting harder to find. Long gone are the days when I'd read ten sci fi books back to back!

This one is fairly good. I feel a bit annoyed with it, because it doesn't say any where on the cover that its the first book in a trilogy, but it is and I have grown to loath the modern fetish for trilogy's. First because they take longer to read and this is a problem because they are often as not, tediously fleshed out with soap opera style story lines and second because they cost much more. I can understand why a trilogy would be desirable to the author, they get to wallow in their creation at ease and they get more money for doing so. They don't have to be nearly as creative either, because extrapolating existing idea's is far easier than generating new ones. For me, the reader though, its a bummer to be faced with three brick sized books, the actual content of which cannot compete with slim, back-pocket-sized novels like 'Rendezvous with Rama' by Arthur C Clarke or 'The Drought' by JG Ballard.

'The Golden Age' takes place in the distant future in a world which is utterly taken over by multiple layered artificial realities. The hero, Phaethon finds his memory has been redacted and the book follows his struggle to find out why. It reads okay, and is fairly understandable. Wright seems to know what he's talking about, which is fine, but he does have a tendency towards using big made up words, not all of which make sense (to me). Having discovered this is part of a trilogy, I've ordered book 2.
3/5



A Farewell to Arms

By Ernest Hemingway.

Maybe its just me, but I just don't seem to be able to read 'serious' American literature without getting thoroughly depressed, and disapointed. It happened with Steinbeck, Whitmann, Kerouac and now Hemingway. What the hell was wrong with these men!? They start off okay, with decent characters, entertaining prose and a few interesting idea's, then (usually about two thirds of the way through the narrative) they nose dive into nazel gazing oblivion before ending on as low a point as possible. Its as if they feel that in order to make a valid comment on life, they have to cut out any notion of humour and make the ending as depressing as possible!
2/5

Yikes!

A whole week went by and I didn't write anything on my blog! ...mostly this is because I started a whole new blog at a 'secret location'. The purpose of this new blog is not to replace this one, but rather to focus various idea's and inspirations I've had for a skirmish role playing game, which, with some luck I may get around to running with my friends before I croak. This game will require a lot of models of buildings so I've resumed various old projects which never got finished as well as starting on a brand new model; The Cthulhu House! I'll post images as I progress, but right now, only the frame of the ground and first floors exist.


I've also got to get back to building on my model inn. This is the biggest of all my building projects and has stood idle on my shelf for 18 months. EVE has a lot to answer for.

In the mean time, the summer weather is all over the place with torrential down pours one day followed by blistering sunlight and sweltering humidty the next. Each day has alternated between opposing extremes until it feels like time has been speeded up and a year is passing every 48 hours.

My health has cracked again and my insides started bleeding about three or four weeks ago, around the time my Mother was diagnosed with cancer. All my other traditional ailments have also resurfaced too so I'm a barrell of laughs these days. The summer means my friends are all off 'being vikings', so I don't even have the distraction of our Thursday gaming sessions. (It sounds more serious to say 'gaming' as opposed to 'playing games')

Freja will be two years old in just a few weeks time...

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Arrival!

Havhingsten arrived in the Orkney islands late last night after a disapointing turn of events. The winds failed the ship and instead of turning back and waiting in Norway, Captain Hvid accepted to be towed two thirds of the way across the sea. The latest reports indicate the voyage went very well and the crew slept last night in the local sailing club after having completed the last stage of the voyage under sail, but its surely a bitter disapointment that the voyage needed to be carried out this way in order to 'meet a deadline'. Ah well.
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“As a consequence of the decision of towing the Sea Stallion across the North Sea, this part of the passage has now been cancelled in the research plan for 2007. Primarily, this affects the of the research program dealing with the trial voyage itself – the possibility of estimating the travel speed across the North Sea, and the possibility of evaluating the functions and the logistics on board during a long crossing. These aspects will be reassumed during the voyage from Ireland to Denmark in 2008”, says director of the Viking Ship Museum, Tinna Damgård-Sørensen.

“It is frustrating that we can’t cross the North Sea as planned. But it hasn’t any vital consequences for the research plan, and we will have the opportunity again next year. In this situation we have to give highest priority to the experimental sailing north of Scotland and in the Irish Sea. Here the ship will be tested in some of the most difficult and important waters in the western Viking World” continues Tinna Damgård-Sørensen. Link.

So far there have been no reports on the TV news, but I'm ever hopeful to see some footage today.
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Havhingsten fra Glendalough update

They're approaching Orkney now.
Here are two video compliations of shots taken on the ships first day at sea. Some of the shots from the chase ship are really cool. I love how the whole long ship drops beneath the tall waves and all you can see is the sail and prow!





Here is a video of the ship during the time spenting waiting in Norway for the wind to change so the crossing of the North Sea could be attempted ...Cruising a Norwegian fjord.... to bad they didn't indulge in a little rape & pillage whilst they were there. Hee hee hee...

Danish summer sky

They promised thunder today but it never happened. Maybe tomorrow. I love a good thunderstorm. The weathers been all over the place in the last few days. The meteorologists warned that the UV was exceptionally bad today. As high as 7 which is the highest I've ever heard of in Denmark, fortunately I never went outdoors. I've been extra wary of the sun light since I had the 'heat rash'.

The image is from last nights sunset (slightly PS'd)

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Havhingsten fra Glendalough update

The wind must be good, for the ship is already well under way and above shows their progress at 13:40 local Danish time. ETA in Scotland is in four days time.

Update.
Midnight Danish time and Havhingsten is already half way across the North Sea!
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Second update.
11:00 Danish time and the ship has almost crossed the North Sea. I've not seen any images or read any news yet , but I expect it will make the evening TV news.

Havhingsten fra Glendalough update

The ship has spent the last ten days or so waiting in Norway for the wind to shift and now it has so in the last 24 hours Havhingsten moved up the Norwegian coast in preperation for the long haul across the North Sea. Along the way, a leather strap which helps control the stearing oar gave way and the sail came down. The crew were shown on DR TV news and appeared to have enjoyed the drama.

A welcome relief...

The Snoos is at her grandparents again and for the first time since her birth, Mette and I are alone, and both at home and we have the whole week end to ourselves... Now, I wonder what we can do to pass the time...

Imperium

By Robert Harris.

As usual with Harris, I finished this book too fast and was left with a feeling of hunger. I hate when that happens and I might have to placate myself by reading one of his other books again. The news that this is the first book in a trilogy only makes me feel worse. Harris is not a prolific writer and it may be a year or two before I get to read the next one (I refuse to buy them in hard back).

The novel is about Cicero, the famous Roman orator, and related by his secretary slave, Tiro. Its in two parts, describing two seperate periods in Cicero's rise to power and is, as said, the first book in a planned trilogy.
The novel is interesting both as a work of historical fiction (Harris maintains he has kept as close to history as posssible) and as a commentary on modern politics. Robert Harris is a journalist and said to be close to some of the members of Tony Blairs circle. His book reflects many aspects of the current 'War on Terror', not least with the rise to power of Pompey the Great who uses Cicero's talents and a dubious 'Pirate menace' to get supreme power, there after going off to fight an obscure war.

If, as Harris has claimed, the book is true to history then it draws an ironic parrallel between then and now. The Roman republic was brought down by various factors, but cheif amongst them seems to have been the amassed power of conflicting individuals overriding the founding principles of the republic. Harris drops us right into the heart of this, describing the run up to Cicero's election to consul.

Freja: Danish summer

The Snoos has had a pretty uneventful summer thus far. The weather has not cooperated at all, though we've largely avoided the floods which have been on the news a lot recently, the rain has been near constant for the last three or four weeks and the shop in the basement of our building did get a bit flooded about a week or so ago. The sun has certainly been obscured and I've not been out to Moesgaard for several weeks now. I've also had a flare up of my 'condition' so I've been house bound for the last fortnight as well. Thus, I stayed at home whilst Mette, Freja and Mette's parents spent a few days out at a summer house on the coast. It was a really FUBAR to be left behind, but the alternative was to sulk so much that no one went and that just was not an option. Thus, Mette and Freja spent most of the last week on the Mette's new bike cycling about and enjoying the countryside whilst I stayed at home playing EVE. Freja really likes her grandaparents, Mette's Mom and Dad are called 'Mor-mor' and 'Moofah', and she enjoyed herself immensly. She doesn't care one jot about rain and runs about from puddle to puddle as happy as a puppy. Its a pleasure to behold, though with the mess she makes, she is gradually destroying our apartment

...not least with her new found mania for drawing. Maybe its my genes, but my daughter appears to have a thing for drawing. On Everything. Floors, walls, TV remote, keyboards, pots n pans, her clothes, her skin, anything and everything. I got up the other morning to find my desk had been vandalized.

Freja is coming along nicely. She'll be two years old soon and she seems to be 100% average in all respects but one: Language. Growing up in a dual language home she's a bit behind on speaking, but now showing a real understanding of what is said to her. Her vocabulary still leaves a lot to be desired though and she makes up a lot of words. Her passifier is called a 'Shoona'. Her boots are called 'Doona' and a dog is called a 'Fhoona'. I spy a pattern.

Today we made a den in the front room and played 'house'. I couldn't really fit inside, but Freja insisted I do so, so I pretended to sleep with my bum sticking out of the opening and Freja grinning at me happily (she does a lot of smiling these days, I'm saving up the memories for when she becomes a teenager). We still watch a lot of Pingu and Wallace and Gromit. It seems she will never tire of these but I'm glad; Hours of Wallace and Gromit is not a bad childhood memory!

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Artist of the Month: Pernille Brethvad

I've noted in myself a recurring theme with regards to the gender of my favourite artists and the mediums they tend to employ. Most of the sculptors whose work I prefer, though not all, are female, where as the vast majority of the illustrators whose work I like, are male. Whether or not this is just because of me, or some obscure trend which I've tuned in to, I don't know, but one thing is for certain. I've come across some great female sculptors in my time (including Mette who has an unpolished and sadly neglected ability to form art in three dimensions) and amongst my favourites is a Danish artist called Pernille Brethvad who has a successful gallery in a fashionable part of Copenhagen, not far from where Mette and I used to live.

Another thing about me (some my friends have probably noted) is a tendency to be attracted to plump and even fat women. I know exactly why this is. Its because I am in love with Mette and everything about her seems to have become hard wired into my brain.
This manifest appreciation of voluptuous female beauty found an expression one day as we walked down the street in Copenhagen and came across Brethvad's gallery. Alas, my economy does not extend to buying sculptures, but if it did, I would be a regular patron.

Its not simply a question of sexual titilation however. Although ones sense of the aesthetic must surely include a strong portion of sexuality, there are also other factors which play in, and amongst these, I include a love of the human form as an expression of the human condition. Brethvad's figures, exploding with form, cater to this notion by virtue of their physical presence, though to be honest, I find them a wee bit small in that she seems to be aiming for the coffee table or window ledge as the ultimate destination for her work. Personally I'd like to see her working on a larger scale, in the manner of Gustav Vigeland (more on him later) but I guess her work is confined to the smaller as a result of market forces. Danes are wealthy, but few have the means to purchase five ton statues of plump women.

So, instead, Brethvad confines herself to statuettes, and she is very good at it. Obviously she also has some deeper meaning behind her work, some obscure narrative; the smaller heads hint at some deeper meaning, but frankly it means nothing to me. Its the phyiscal presence of the figures that appeals to me. Their form and texture. Crude and extravagant like the Venus of Willendorf figures which are either elements of the earliest known religion, or stone age pornography... or maybe both?

Brethvad's work and her successful gallery demonstrate to the meanest understanding that there is no originality in art. That art is and always will be an outward expression of humanity and its base instincts.

The only eternity

Inspired by Cyan's audio file 'Albatross' and the desire to reach across the sea....
The image is from this site.

Carrying the seeds of care,
she spins for ever and a day,
dancing like the milky way.
turning and spinning, trailing her hair
With wind in her eyes and grass at her feet,
she sings with the birds,
songs without words,
smiles at all she meets.
Can you hear her distant call?
the fishermen lament,
the farmers pause, and raise their eyes
at the saddest songs of all.
Why are you crying little one, don’t you know?
All that breathes is doomed to die
Whether on land, in sea or sky
Onwards life will go.
Your memory will fade, your visions pass
into the maelstrom of light,
beyond our sight
the only eternity
the weight of love, and memories aglow

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Havhingsten fra Glendalough update

I haven't seen any news from the ship yet, but the satelite map shows the ship has reached the southern most edge of Norway. If they follow the usual route, they'll now move up along the coast until they reach the crossing point. This is usually parallel to the Shetland Islands. So far the weather in Denmark has been wet and hard and I've been thinking about the crew out there all night in the driving rain. I hope every one remembered to wear lots of layers!

edited to add:
Four members of the crew were moved onto the chase ship during the night for minor aches and pains, but all returned to the ship by morning. The wind has been kind to the ship though the weather was pretty dismal. Havhingsten having been at sea from roughly 36 hours is currently at Christiansand in Norway. Below is an image of the ship taken around 5pm today and below that is another from on board taken around 3pm yesterday (2nd July).

The Cure: Never Enough

Not for any particular reason.... I just love this song

Havhingsten fra Glendalough update

And so they're off! Today, the first Viking mission from Denmark to Ireland in a thousand years departed from Roskilde Fjord to the sounds of drums, horns and cheers. Viking re-enactors and sight seers gathered from all over Denmark to witness the departure, at 4pm this afternoon. The above image is an older one as I'm stil waiting for Roskilde Viking ship museum to update their news page, that or either DR who are supposed to be covering the event. I'll add more info as I get it and hopefully some good images from on board the vessel.

According to TV2 (Denmarks commercial TV network) the Irish minister of culture was present at the departure and joked "Please don't burn the place down!"

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The Gormenghast trilogy

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By Mervyn Peake
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The scale to Peake's impact was obvious to me even before I read the first page, for on the back of the book, the blurb was written by none other than Anthony Burgess! The idea that this book was praised by the author of a 'A Clockwork Orange', whilst most other fantasy novels are talked up by non-entities from various news papers did not fail to impress me. Anything recommended by Burgess had to be worth reading and it was!
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Here is a book (for my trilogy is in a single volume) so satisfying to read, so dense with words and so rich with mental illumination, that I was obliged to slow down my reading and savour each sentence as though it were a mouthful, consumed over the course of a vast and splendid banquet. Here is indeed a seminal work of imaginative literature if ever I came across one! Almost every other page revealed a chain of connections to other, modern and contemporary works of fiction which have subsequerntly dilluted Gormenghast and reworked it. Not least amongst these are French film makers Caro and Jeunet whose collaborations seem to have rested upon a foundation of characters and idea's lifted straight out of Peake's novels. Other authors are even more blatently inspired by Peake, the most obvious being China Mieville.
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That Caro and Jeunet have been inspired by Peake is pretty obvious once one compares the characters from their films 'Delicatessen' and 'La cité des enfants perdus' and I wonder at how many other films and books have borrowed from Peake. I also wonder at where Peake got his inspiration. There was a distinct Victorian/Doréan atmosphere to be found and time and again I found myself reminded of various old illustrations I'd seen by such personal favourites as Dulac, Heath Robinson and Rackham (see below image). Even old Bosch seemed to be lurking in the background!
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Of the three books, the first two were by far the stronger. They were without remorse and dove deep into their own universe. By comparison the third, written by Peake whilst he was seriously ill and deeply affected by the experience of witnessing Belsen as a war artist, was harder to read, appearing almost disjointed to me, more demanding whilst not giving as much in return. Had I not read the first two, I doubt I would have appreciated the third, though its highly doubtful I would have read it in reverse order....
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The first two were utterly seductive. Almost erotic in their prose and certainly sensual in the depths of their descriptions. I found myself drawn to the characters almost as though I were caressing their hair, fondling their clothing and exploring the textures of their minds. Its been a long while since any book affected me at that level of my imagination and the sensation was so pleasant that I lingered over many a paragraph or sentence, repeating the words to myself simply for the treasure of their flavour. By the time I reached the character of Juno, I was leering at the pages in anticipation as though I were the one upon she had turned her charms.
I wish I could write with even a fraction of the descriptive wealth Peake had, but it would be impossible for me to turn so neat phrase or invent so telling a description as I was met, page after page in the dark corridors of Gormenghast.
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Book One: Titus Groan.
5/5

Book Two: Gormenghast.
5/5

Book Three: Titus Alone.
4/5


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Of course the Brits have attempted to bring this treasure of their language to life. Who else makes such good TV as the British do? No one as far as I am aware. They may not have the resources to reign on the big screen, but they are unsurpassed on the smaller screen. Naturally, Gormenghast has been adapted and made into a series of four short TV films spanning as far as I can make out the first two books. So far I've only watched the first two of these, but I can see already that these works are but a pale reflection of the books, bravely disguised with garish colours and some excellent acting, but lacking nonetheless.
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The BBC adaptation:
5/5

-ROCKETMAN III- Concluding thoughts.

RM3 was designed with two thoughts in mind. The first was to accomidate my friends desire to have a game based around Bolsheviks, and the second was to trial run our home grown skirmish rules' with heavier weapons than one might normally expect in a pulp literature based campaign. (Its highly annoying that Tarantino stole the phrase pulp fiction). The latter has led to a revamping of the rules to address many of the flaws the games exposed, and hopefully these new rules, which span from the Boer war to circa 1939, will give us more flexibility and ease of flow in subsequent games.

I was quite pleased with RM3, even though I'd been horribly distracted by EVE in the middle of my preperations and many of the models I'd intended to build, never got built. I was lucky to have painted the bulk of my figures prior to discovering EVE or else the games would have been played with unpainted figures, and thats always aesthetically displeasing. I'm hoping the next RM campaign will not suffer my EVE addiction!

The other three players appeared to have a good time and were more at ease with the genre now. Certain characters have begun to take on a life of their own (Mitchell and George in particular) and I may have to include them both in the next campaign to capitalize on this. Originally I was not going to do this, but looking back at Mitchell's popularity, I think I have to.

When I planned the games, Tracey (player 2) seemed to be the least likely player to succeed. This may have been my own sexist assumption or it may have been something less simple, but for what ever reason I assumed this, I quickly found myself mistaken. I'd seen Oleg (player 3) and Palle (player 1) as being the more dangerous players, and I made Palle slightly weaker to compensate. Usually I strive for a neutral balance, but given the interests of the players, I made assumptions which reality didn't bear. Tracey was by far and away the most effective player, using her superiority in numbers to full effect and giving Oleg and I a hard time in all but the first game.
For my own part, I think I did fairly well. I'd given myself pretty weak forces and they dropped like flies as a consequence. I enjoyed using the light tank in chapters 3 and 4, even though it proved horribly ineffective. I failed to develop my officer, Olga as a character, mostly because I hadn't really given her much thought. She was a 'Chinese Helga clone', and as such had no 'personality' at all. Her only skill was hand to hand, and that never got used until the last five minutes of the last game where she took on Mitchell and got decked. Game Over.

I've already begun RM4 and I have the whole scenario worked out. All I have to do now is prepare the models and write up the stats and if the wind holds fair, we may play thenext campain before christmas...