A postcard sent to me from Millgrove showing the Methodist Church; the High Street; the Green; and the silos.
HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY!
I am SO excited. Human.4 came out today in paperback. And a truly lovely paperback it is too. But don’t take my word for it – I fib for a living – buy a copy and find out for yourself.
You won’t regret it.
And as luck would have it, I just discovered another couple of short extracts from future academic papers regarding the narrative that unfolds within that very book.
I hope that they are useful in your studies of Human.4.
Edie Calhoun: Final Secrets of the Straker Tapes: Myth and Metaphor
Much has been made of the Straker Tapes’ reliance on metaphors, as if understanding them will give us deeper insights into the levels of meaning at play within the text; as a result, tired literary tropes are being passed off as revelatory moments that allow us access to the heart of Kyle’s story.
The problem with this is that most of the literary tropes that Straker uses are, to put it bluntly, remarkably poor in their execution. His choices of similes and his poor grasp of metaphor show an adolescent’s grasp of imagery that is far below the level of sophistication of the narrative itself. Someone as inept a stylist as Straker would, surely, be incapable of holding together a narrative as complex and profound as this one. His organisation of the material is below average, his insights are shallow, and his function within the story is almost irrelevant.
In short: as a literary stylist, Kyle Straker was poor, so it seems unlikely that he could have fabricated such a narrative.
The conclusion that follows from that is simple: it really happened.
He just wasn’t very good at telling us about it.
* * * *
Jeannette Scoth: Idiom, Metaphor, and Mr Peebles: He Do the Village in Different Voices.
“To call Mr Peterson a ‘ventriloquist’ is to insult the profession because there was no art to what he did. It implies that his lips didn’t move and that there was at least an illusion that it was the dummy doing the talking.
Not Mr Peterson.
Mr Peterson’s lips always moved.”
The ventriloquist Kyle describes here is pure metaphor, a summation of the writer’s inability to give the characters in his story distinctive voices: which is to say that Kyle’s story is a total fiction, and the demands of making each character sound different gives rise to this image of a ventriloquist, speaking in another voice, but not succeeding particularly well. It provides us with nothing but a heavy handed self portrait of the artist.
The characters in the Straker tapes have identical speech patterns and identical vocabularies. A ventriloquist making a mess of his craft is exactly how Kyle sees himself.
Human.4 on the Cover of Booklist!
Booklist Cover 5/15/2012
So . . . like . . . I just . . . just . . .
. . . just wow!
Sometimes speechlessness is the only response to things that are just so darned cool.
Front. Cover. Of. Booklist.
And in the Booklist Top 10 of Sf/Fantasy books for youth:
Now, how do I order myself some copies of that magazine . . .?
Human.4, in trade paperback 5/22/2012 from Egmont.
Human.4: Academic Extracts
The publication date for Human.4 draws ever nearer, and here are two extracts from academic papers FROM THE FUTURE that seek to shed light on the Straker Tapes. They are drawn from the first Straker symposium at Dawkins College, New Cambridge.
Extract from: The Straker Tapes: Sense and Insensitivity, by Herman Bruckwood.
. . . the question that we keep coming back to is not about the truth of The Straker Tapes, but rather their meaning. These are, of course, completely separate issues. Fictional stories can have meaning without being true, and truth can often be revealed as having little real meaning.
The Straker Tapes can be read on many different levels: as a true account of a moment in history; as a metaphor for technological overreliance; as a quest for meaning in a world that no longer makes sense; as a cheap fiction that uses age-old tropes to scare and excite. All of these are valid interpretations, but none of them serve as complete meanings.
In his instructive work The Limits of Knowledge in The Kyle Straker Tapes, Gordon MacCready notes:
(T)here is an inclination to append a single meaning to the story of Kyle Straker, but the search for that definitive interpretation is a search for a chimaera – a mythical beast. Kyle Straker’s story requires a less exclusive search: the shifting meanings within the text demand that we, as readers, consider all aspects of the narrative – open and closed – to truly understand the events that occurred in Millgrove on that fateful day.
MacCready argues that our reliance on a single meaning for the tapes holds us back from a true understanding as to their multitude of meanings. As soon as we tie ourselves down to one interpretation, we our robbed of our ability to see others. It is, he states, like looking in a mirror and choosing to see only the parts we find attractive, and disregarding the parts we are not so fond of.
* * * * *
Extract from: Kyle Straker, Hanging From a Tree: Evolution as Metaphor in The Straker Tapes, by Edwina Hamley.
When Kyle is climbing from the bedroom window of the house in Millgrove, and makes the leap onto the tree outside, he says:
A few breaths to calm myself, and to get my heart beating at a more normal rate, then I inched myself down the branch, towards the trunk. Evolution was all well and good, but a monkey would have done a far better job of this than me.
Whilst Corrigan finds cause for suspicion in monkey/evolution references in this part of the story, arguing that: ‘the only reason for their inclusion is purely thematic’, Andy Cakeman disagrees: ‘He’s hanging from a tree. Hello! What else is he going to think about?’
Edelman argues that the whole tree episode, which is long in comparison to some other, more vital, parts of the narrative, is merely a way to interrogate the very notion of evolution, and serves only as symbolic imagery. It is, he asserts, ‘the moment where allegory overtakes narrative’. Simon Radzivik, however, argues that the tree episode is ‘the first, actual, instance of threat in the tapes’, and the length it is afforded, therefore, ‘merely underscores the sense of true danger that Kyle experienced’.
Louise Mantle, in Quantum Reading: Dual Meaning, finds a midway path between these two opinions: ‘(I)t is both allegory AND accurate description. It is only when the reader imposes their own interpretation upon it that the narrative settles into either state’.
Later, when Kyle is reunited with Lilly, the narrative returns to evolution.
Lilly saw me standing there and her face registered both surprise and relief. She sprinted towards me and shouted, “RUN!” with such urgency that I did just that.
Turned around and ran.
Gave into a stampede instinct inherited from an earlier model of Humanity, when saber-toothed tigers stalked the landscape.
Corrigan is suspicious again:
Themes that repeat throughout texts are always deliberate, always functional. Here evolution returns, and we can now see that it is following a logical progression. We’ve left behind our primate forebears and have reached primitive man. Thematically we are talking about a journey that Kyle is making, from ignorance to wisdom, and evolutionary imagery plays out behind it. Not exactly subtle, is it?
Once again, Andy Cakeman disagrees:
Evolution is very much on Kyle Straker’s mind, so it bleeds through into the narrative . . . (That’s what) happens when you’re talking about events that happened earlier: you add literary tropes that seem appropriate to the experiences you are describing. Far from making the text ‘dishonest’, it serves to make them MORE honest.
>New Data Retrieval Option for Human.4<
Human.4 is about to undergo a significant upgrade, and will be appearing soon as a softcover data retrieval unit. This will be a regionalized update affecting products purchased in the Unified States of America.
Previous users of Human.4 will find the process to be almost identical to the hardcover units; but people who have yet to experience the product may be in need of a little preparation.
Human.4 is being ‘published’ in the archaic format once referred to as a book (there are reasons for this format, which will become apparent as the book is consumed).
Each book is an analogue storage medium that requires its ‘pages’ to be scanned, manually, with the user’s eyes. This process was once called ‘reading’, and is a primitive means of absorbing data. Each copy of Human.4 will reprogram the user’s brain, allowing the information contained within to be assimilated. The process is painless – a simple adjustment that will have no long term effects.
Once ‘reading’ commences there may be a momentary disorientation, but with practice the process can become second nature.
As with all wetware upgrades, it is recommended that terms and conditions are studied before brain reprogramming begins.
Data storage upgrade commences 5-22-12.
Product information: http://bit.ly/IQdBip.
Happy Birthday 1.4
Release day for my latest book.
It’s out in the world now, and there’s really no reason for NOT picking it up.
But here are some great reasons to get it:
1) That cover art. I mean that is SERIOUSLY cool. Reading it in public will say: ‘I’m edgy, sensitive, intellectual, in touch with technology, clever, wise and I can read.’
2) The lovingly-crafted story. No cookie cutters were used in the creation of this entertainment product. It is, quite simply, a perfect storm of (slightly demented) inspiration and (slightly demented) execution.
3) Bees. Everyone loves bees. Unless they carry an EpiPen, then they probably have a healthy dislike of them. But here’s the thing! They’re ROBOT BEES. So even if you DO carry an EpiPen, these bees are clinically proven to have no anaphylactic reactions. Oh, and they’re fictional.
4) Technology. Want to know what the must-have gadgets of the far-flung future will be? Then look no further than new improved 1.4. Want to know about future fashions? Check. The future of the interwebs? Check. The top video-games a thousand years hence? We got ‘em. Start your Amazon wishlist for the new age now. Remember, you heard ‘em here first!
5) Backwards compatibility with 0.4. Yep, you heard it right. 1.4 is 100% backwards compatible with previous software versions. 1.4 isn’t going to suddenly make 0.4 redundant, in fact it makes it cooler! In bench-tests 1.4 is seen to provide a 179% increase in the entertainment value of 0.4. It literally makes 0.4 operate better under laboratory conditions. And front room/bedroom/on the bus/train conditions.
6) The Lancaster kitemark of quality. Each copy of 1.4 is tested for thrills-per-page; plot twist efficiency; character development; and a general improvement in a reader’s mental well-being. It has been written to exhaustively high standards, and tested under gruelling editorial conditions.
7) Bees. Did I mention it had ROBOT BEES? Oh, I already did, huh? Well, they’re still in it.
8) Answers to some of the BIG questions. Ever wonder about the meaning of life? Whether ghosts were real? What the difference is between the world as we perceive it, and how it ACTUALLY is? How easy it is to download clothing from the internet of the future? All these – AND MORE – will be answered in 1.4.
9) What you need another reason? Are you INSANE? Go get it. Now. I’ll wait. You’re still here – oh, wait, you ordered it off Amazon? A good choice. Did you get 0.4 while you were there? Oh, you already have it. Hang on, I’m having an imaginary conversation with myself. You already knew that? Smart ass.
Blood From a Stone
I was mucking about this weekend and suddenly I had this:
Blood From A Stone
By Mike Lancaster
It’s raining on Mars.
From the window of the observation platform I can see it falling from the blackness of space. Torrents of water are streaking the surface of the planet as they hit; cutting furrows into the dust, quickly becoming rivulets.
The rain strikes the observation platform’s dome and echoes around, filling the ersatz air inside with its sounds of fury.
Enderby is calling it ‘impossible’. He says it again and again as if repetition alone will make suddenly his statement true, and the rain less true. He is standing in the centre of the room, looking at the metal floor beneath his feet. He refuses to look out of the windows. He refuses to acknowledge the pounding of water on the metal dome overhead. He is like a child trying to not to hear it’s his bedtime by jamming his fingers in his ears and going ‘la-la-la-la-la’.
‘Impossible!’ He shouts.
Again.
Laurent and McKinley are less resistant to the phenomenon. They are busy; reprogramming the remote rover to collect samples for further study. They have an air of excitement about them that borders on the childlike.
‘It’s ironic, ain’t it?’ McKinley asks in his Texas drawl. ‘We came to Terra Meridiani because we thought that there was once water here and we wanted to study it . . .’
‘. . .and then it started raining.’ Laurent finishes the thought for him. ‘I ought to try the uplink again, tell the people back home.’
He moves towards the communications equipment but Enderby suddenly lets out a roar and throws himself at Laurent. He grabs him by the front of his suit.
‘There. Is. No. Rain. On. Mars.’ Enderby shouts, staccato words that make spittle fly from his mouth.
His eyes look lost and afraid.
‘Take your hands off me.’ Laurent orders. ‘NOW.’
I turn back to the windows and watch the rain fall. It is getting stronger. Falling harder. Rivulets becoming rivers.
I guess that Enderby does as he is told because I hear Laurent trying to reach Earth.
Again.
‘Diviner to base.’ He says. ‘Come in base.’
Project Diviner came to Terra Meridiani on Mars to search for the history of its water; to study its soil and geology for evidence that water that must once have existed here. It was never supposed to encounter actual water.
Ask Enderby.
To him this is like looking for dinosaur fossils in Utah and encountering a live T-Rex.
Terra Meridiani – in English: Meridian Land – was a place that previous unmanned expeditions had found to be high in hematite, an oxide of iron, and a pretty fair indicator of water. Hence the ‘oxide’ part of its description. For an oxide to form it needs either air or water to take its anions of oxygen from. Project Diviner was sent to Mars to prove, once and for all, that water had once been plentiful in the dry crust of the Red Planet.
‘Diviner to base.’ Laurent persists.
‘Maybe it’s magnetic interference from all that hematite.’ McKinley says to Laurent. ‘You’d have thought that one of the boffins would have figured out the effect it would have on transmissions.’
Enderby starts laughing.
‘He won’t let you phone home.’ He says between dry chortles.
McKinley looks up from the rover and looks at Enderby as if seeing him for the very first time.
‘Who won’t let us?’ He asks. ‘I’ve told you, I don’t believe in god, and have no idea how a bible-basher got picked for this mission.’
‘That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:’ Enderby preaches, ‘for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’
‘Condensation.’ McKinley says, angrily. ‘Air temperature and water vapour. God is irrelevant to the equation.’
‘Yet god is here.’ Enderby says.
I hear the room go quiet.
McKinley says something under his breath.
I turn from the window, from the rain, from the life pouring into the dryness of the planet underfoot.
The three men are staring at me.
Enderby is pointing at me.
I can taste their thoughts in the air, feel their shock, horror and awe.
I look at them in infra-red and ultra-violet, my Martian eyes fluctuating through the visible bands of light. I can see their hearts pounding in their chests; their veins and arteries circulating blood around their strange, fragile bodies.
I see myself as they see me: a multifaceted red crystal vibrating in the air before them.
It is time to leave these odd creatures of skin and bone and blood and muscle.
I have what I needed: the images I plucked from their heads; the thing we had lost; the thing we had forgotten; the thing we retired deep into the planet to await its return.
Rain.
Once I read it from their minds it was simple to pull it down from the sky.
Soon my brothers and sisters will awaken.
I fade from the observation deck and journey into the heart of the planet.
Soon we will rise.
It’s raining on Mars.
1.4 Winners
It was hard to judge (my wife was called in to help) but the winners are: Franky, Rachael and Iain.
Thank you for everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! Hope you enjoy your books!
UK Readers! Upgrade to 1.4! Book Giveaway
Okay, I just got some hot-off-the-presses, advance copies of 1.4 and I have three (3) of them to give away to UK readers. Heck, if you want I’ll even scribble my name in them. That means you can upgrade your old 0.4 to the newer, shinier version 1.4, complete with programmer’s signature, just for a couple of minutes work.
All you have to do to be in with a shot of winning one of them is to answer a simple two-stage question in the comments section and I will pick my favourite three and send you each a book :
Q: If you were Kyle or Lilly, would you have gone into the silos at the end of 0.4? And why/why not?
There. Couldn’t be simpler. (Well, it could, but it isn’t.)
Remember, the competition is only open to UK residents, (I’m sorry, I haven’t forgotten about non-UK residents and will organise another giveaway at a later date for you).
I’ll keep the competition open until Easter Weekend and then announce the winners.
Happy upgrade!
