I am the guest writer at the next BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) meeting on Wednesday 22nd August in London. I will be reading from The Modern World and John Berlyne (of SFRevu fame) will be interviewing me.

The event is at: The Star Tavern, 6 Belgrave Mews West, London, SW1X 8HT

These events are usually good fun and you'll have plenty of chance to chat to me after the interview finishes. Entrance is free and all welcome. So, if you're in the area, please come along!

Meet downstairs from 5:30, upstairs from 6, interview starts around 7pm.

For those who can't make it, I am hoping to be make an .mp4 (video) of the interview available on this site after the event.

Flying insects have been a theme for the past month. In my garden at the end of June stag beetles flew every night at dusk between 9:30 and 10:00, trying to find mates. They fly upright, their ‘antlers’ pointing vertically, their great glossy black wing cases held open like car doors and all their legs splayed out - as if they’re uncertain and need to brace themselves. They look like gothic shuttlecocks. Their deep, heavy buzz suits them and I heard their wings rattling together as they zigzagged overhead, bouncing off walls and crashing into foliage. They’re lousy fliers - they’d be comical if they weren’t so big. They look out of place in an English garden: more reminiscent of the weirdness of ancient Egypt and as large as a rainforest bug.

Although stag beetles are becoming rarer, they were quite numerous in our garden because we have piled up rotting railway sleepers for the grubs to live in. I counted ten and one ‘lesser stag beetle’ - which doesn’t have long mandibles. They live inside old wood for five years before emerging as adults. If you pick them up you can feel the sheer arthropod strength of their legs pushing against your fingers and the joints of their thickly-armoured bodies bending. They are shockingly powerful. I pity the warriors of the Fourlands - if stag beetle strength was scaled up to horse-size or man-sized Insects imagine the courage it would take to stand against them in a shield wall.

Last week a shower of rain brought out another breathtaking insect phenomenon. All the black garden ants in the town swarmed at once. All the colonies: in patios and in the pavement cracks came to the surface simultaneously - as if the rain was a signal. The street was black with them scurrying in all directions, but along definite chemical paths, so many I couldn’t see the flagstones. The queens started climbing plant stalks and posts to take off and the alate males, four times smaller, followed. How many citizens of Wokingham were aware their town was playing host to an orgy? For two hours ants were all over the cars, people’s clothes and in the air. Afterwards I saw queens on their own, throwing off their wings and looking for hideaways where in time they could start new colonies. I also saw workers clustered around dead or injured queens but I don’t know whether they were trying to save them, just attracted to them, or if they were intended as food. One can’t anthropomorphise too much, but I’ve watched so much ant behaviour I know they are often surprising. Once, watching a battle between red and black ants, I saw black ants new to the battlefield rescuing exhausted ones by feeding them and carrying them away.

Dragonfly emerging: click for full size

The best, though, are the dragonflies. Living helicopters. Honed by a long evolution, the larvae are supreme hunters underwater and the adults are perfect hunting machines in the air. They look prehistoric - they haven’t changed much since the Devonian and my friend’s garden pond seems too genteel for them. But they have decimated the tadpole population and I don’t much fancy the sticklebacks’ or smooth newts’ chances, either. Dragonfly larvae move camouflaged through the pondweed like stalking tigers. Their jaws shoot out and they grab prey with such force the recoil sends them backwards. Fantastic things. I have just spent a happy hour watching them climb reeds to just under the surface, where they wait to check the coast is clear and then emerge from the water. The larva then clings to the stalk and halts, seemingly dead but the adult is visible pressing against the inside. The back of its thorax splits open, and the adult arches out. It pulls its head free and hangs upside-down, rests for a while, then with a mighty effort swings back, grabs the empty larva shell and pulls its long abdomen out. It stands on the shell, shaking its head vigorously (god knows why) and expanding its limp wings. In a few hours they dry, harden and darken - then it takes off without warning and flies away. It goes some distance from water to avoid falling prey to mature dragonflies returning to the pond to mate. In The Modern World I have adult Insects moving away from the ravenous larvae so they don’t fall prey to their own offspring.

Imagine if we grew up like that, from one form into a completely different one with new abilities. Would we be able to remember our previous forms? Would we have the urge to keep the old shells or give them decent funerals?

Time for a poem. This one is the second in my 'Motorway Poems' sequence:

II: DISTANCE DRIVER

stars
fast cars
a lass too far
at the coming of night
and the dawn of day
a roofless flight
along the motorway
amber strobe light
and white street lines
to the vanishing point
in parallel times
the flat horizon
can’t check our speed
or slow our haste
an oil slicked greed
a lust for waste
a taste of grace
and chromed-up steel
do you feel alarmed?
charmed
by fast cars
and stars

I’ve just recovered from an arse-kicking bout of ‘flu which laid me low for ten days. Flu and suchlike are quite serious for me because I suffer from chronic back pain and if I don't keep up my physio exercises it gets worse. It was caused by a car crash in 2002 that was, of course, entirely my fault.

Saturday August 17th, 2002 – and it is coming up to the fifth anniversary of the crash, a split second that changed my life more than anything I ever worked for, any plans I ever intentionally made. I remember one of the doctors saying that it would take me five years to recover – and yes, I am getting better quickly now – but he didn’t tell me that was because I would need five years to find people, treatments and ergonomic furniture that would help.

There are quacks and cons aplenty, but real help is difficult to find.

I’ve just been out to the DIY shop and bought two 5 cm blocks of wood, shoved them under my desk which brings it up to 80cm high. Only people who suffer chronic pain will realise what an epiphany that is, and why it is worth blogging about. For the first time in five years I can write without being in pain!

During that time I had to borrow many thousands of pounds to spend on treatment and furniture; far more than the bloody car was actually worth. I have been through two beds, four mattresses, three office chairs, three mice and three keyboards, two gyms, three specialist physios, acupuncture, X-ray, ENM and codeine – and if anybody else says I should try yoga I will punch them in the mouth. Back pain became the central factor of my life: clothes, transport, everything is based around it (I have to wear jogging pants - yum :-( ). Now these blocks of wood raising my desk cost £2.89: and that is the price of happiness. If I had tried them 5 years ago my life would have been very different. Note to everyone out there: don’t be as ignorant as I was about ergonomics.

Saturday August 17th, 2002. About half past ten in the morning. Heading clockwise on the M25, Heathrow junction and dialling on a mobile I ploughed straight into the back of a queue of stationary traffic in the fast lane. Using a mobile while driving is illegal now. Good. It wasn’t then but it should have been. I was rushing to go house hunting which just shows what the pressures of the modern world do to the human body.

If you hit a stationary car at just under 60mph your arse leaves the seat. As far as I can calculate there is a pressure of about 6 tons on the body.

If you are driving a new-ish car you’ll mostly be OK. I was flying along in a beloved 1.0 litre H-Reg Polo equipped with zero safety gear. The seatbelt cutting into my shoulder but especially my hips caused soft tissue damage which I eventually found a term for: ‘sacroiliac joint dysfunction.’ Please don’t drive while using a mobile. It’s not big and it’s not clever. Thankfully I didn’t hurt anybody else.

The motorway ground to a halt, letting us limp to the hard shoulder. My car was a lot shorter, but still running. I wired up its front and tore off the bits hanging loose. Although it lacked coolant, radiator and lights it takes more than that to stop a VW. I drove it home. The worst thing about that day was the reaction of male drivers passing by a girl in a miniskirt and crop top, sitting on the verge by an absolute wreck. I was beeped and whistled at, leered and mooned at; more insult was added to injury that day than I care to remember. The next day I couldn’t move at all. By the end of the week I was able to walk to the end of the street… after 10 days I could manage two streets… and after a fortnight I had discovered codeine and went out and made off with my sister’s car.

I had just moved to a new town and started a new job, so as you can imagine those were interesting times. The MOD employers and my peers were wonderful and very understanding, but I couldn’t even get the civil service system to yield an adequate chair. Also, the codeine created problems of its own, but that’s another story.

I’m glad to say I don’t drive as maniacally as I used to. The way I used to carry on, I escaped any number of much more severe accidents, from Sutherland to the Breckland; from the Breckland to the Brecon Beacons. There you go: those who live by the car die by the car. I used to be a speed freak, yes; but these days I’m only a demon some of the time. I’m on my fifth car and I intend it to last. I have been sobered by realising how much I could have achieved if I’d been well.

So, from my own experience I can recommend:

1. Back in Action: an Aladdin’s showcave of wonderful furniture. They will look at your home office/workstation and suggest ergonomic improvements from expensive chairs to cheap blocks of wood. If you make an unusual order make sure you detail it in writing as the chain of Chinese whispers between them and their suppliers can lead to mistakes.
2. Remedi UK sell an 'ENM machine'– a non-invasive TENS machine that worked for me.
3. Dr. Stephen Motto of London Bridge Hospital did a wonderful job with diagnosis, acupuncture and cortisone injections
4. Sports and Spinal Clinics gave me very effective physio exercises.

I’m getting better. I can see the end of the tunnel and, by god, the light is good.

Today is the summer solstice, and in the Fourlands they’re celebrating Godsloss Day. Many Fourlanders – but not all – believe that god chose the Emperor to look after the world it created while it is away on holiday. God then packed its bags and left. That was two thousand years ago and it hasn’t come back since.

Godsloss Day is the second biggest festival of the year, a holiday throughout Morenzia, Awia and especially the Plainslands. Everybody comes together to celebrate getting along without any god to help them. They’ve been planning it for weeks and now they’re enjoying feasts outdoors, with bonfires, music and dancing. The romantic Awians have many traditions they’re fond of making up and then pretending they have deep historical roots. Godsloss Day, the longest day of the year – as calculated by the Castle’s Starglass – is one long party well into the night.

The one larger festival, though, is New Year’s Eve, held on the midwinter solstice. It is the last day of their year, so December is a shorter month and January is a few days longer than in our world. The Awians go all out for this one, decking their houses and halls with greenery and ribbons – and they have a few odd customs I’ll describe in my next book.

The other main holidays in the Fourlands are quarter days; the Fyrdsrest Days, when soldiers get one day off every couple of months. They’re like bank holidays. But right now it’s Godsloss Day and a time for drinking the last of the spring beer, eating barbecues and watching plays. They hold archery tournaments in Awia, tugs of war in Morenzia and play a lethal game of football in the Plainslands. After all, if god can bugger off on holiday, why shouldn’t everyone else?