Science Fiction, the long and short of it

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I read a passingly large quantity of science fiction, and was musing about some of the books I’ve been reading recently. One of the things that they have had in common is that they’ve been long. This seems to be a trend with present-day sci-fi, and I’ve been wondering what that’s about.

My current read, Michael Cobley’s Orphaned Worlds is over 600 pages in paperback, slightly shorter than Iain M. Banks’s Surface Detail. Alastair Reynolds’ Terminal World is a relative lightweight, at just under 500 pages, while Stephen King’s Under the Dome (arguably more sci-fi than horror) weighs in at nearly 900. Much of recent fantasy literature is even longer.

It may be that this is what publishers are commissioning, either in the belief that the reading public measure value-for-money in pounds per inch, or because this is what they have been told in focus groups. Perhaps the authors are being paid piecework, by the word. Or, it could be that this is an attempt to be taken more seriously, to imitate “proper” (non-genre) fiction (though this this year’s Booker Prize shortlist is is quite varied in length).

I am not convinced by the trend. Surface Detail is multi-threaded, like many of Banks’ novels. But in this case, it was taken so far that it became rambling. While I found two of the threads compelling, others struck me as, frankly, boring. Cobley, on the other hand, falls for the temptation to over-explain things. Orphaned Worlds is the second in a trilogy, and (perhaps in fear of alienating the new reader) features long summaries of what happened previously.

And I realise that I like short books. It’s not that I have an aversion to length as such, but many long books could have been improved by the craft of a good editor. My favourite writing is stripped down, with all the inessentials removed, prose tending towards poetry. “The challenge is always to capture that essence in the fewest possible words.” (Mary Ryan).

The most memorable science fiction I have read include Arthur C. Clarke’s classics Rendevous with Rama and Childhood’s End at less than 300 pages, while Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants comes in below 200. When it comes to Banks, even, the work that I rate most highly is The Player of Games, at 309 pages, 10 shorter than Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. In fact, I cannot think of a single science fiction work of more than 400 pages, which would make it near my top 10, and some writers (e.g. Philip K. Dick) have done their best work as short stories.

Certainly, shortness is neither a sufficient nor necessary criterion for quality. Superb long fiction does, of course, exist, while I found Feersum Endjinn (also among Banks’ shorter tomes) close to unreadable. However, I’d like to make the case that, frequently, small is beautiful. And a lot easier to carry in your pocket.

More on epetitions…

UPDATE: The Keep Our NHS Public petition is now live. Please sign and publicise it.

A week ago, I posted some comments on the government’s new epetitions system. Among other things, I reflected that no progressive petitions had yet been allowed that reflect what I perceive to be the feelings of the general public about the NHS. I had put forward “Keep our NHS Public” petition, but had yet heard nothing about it. Since then a few progressive petitions have been raised (Free Dental Care on NHS, Abolish NHS prescription charges and End Private Sector Involvement in Health and Social Care)

Having still heard nothing back, I have now re-submitted my original petition under the title of Keep our NHS public:

The NHS is in crisis, but it is a crisis that has been created by successive governments over the last 30 years. The ideology of privatisation – Internal markets and PFI schemes – have imposed unnecessary costs on the organisation and swallowed up much of the extra funding that has been pumped in. Outsourcing of services such as cleaning have resulted in dirtier hospitals and a poorer service for patients.

We call on the government to:
* Scrap the current Health and Social Care bill, as called for by the annual representative meeting of the British Medical Association.
* Commit to a comprehensive, publicly funded and publicly provided National Health Service, free at the point of use.
* Ensure best value for the tax payer by funding all new projects directly, rather than via PFI schemes.
* Recognise that promoting, or removing barriers to, competition, is not a valid part of the role of body regulating health services.

This time, I have received an acknowledgement by email, so hopefully I will be hearing something within the next 7 days. It may be that it is disallowed, being similar in several ways to the latter petition I linked to above, so in the meantime, let’s see if we can get that one to 100,000 signatures as quickly as the rather less progressive one to stop the benefits of people convicted of rioting.

Democracy, petitions and agendas

Last Thursday, the British government launched a new e-petitions site to replace the one that used to live at number10.gov.uk. The Guardian‘s report of this was headlined Death penalty could be debated in Commons after e-petition calls, and a surprisingly similar story was later printed in The Metro. At least the latter story had been printed after the launch of the site, and the journalist had done a little checking. The article made reference to the number of signatures on the petitions, which were failing to support the suggestion that “a groundswell of voters” support the return of capital punishment.

The Guardian story, by contrast, gave every appearance of being that laziest form of journalism, the recycling of press releases (often dubbed churnalism). I visited the site as soon as I read the story, to find that it was not yet live. A notice on the front page informed me that it was to be launched that day. Just a little endeavour on the part of The Guardian might have have led them to conclude (as I did) that there was no substance behind the headline. Since the site has been live, the most prominent Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment has had significantly more signatures than the top three petitions to restore it. As I type, the figures stand at 15,780 signatures against vs. 10,743 for. We shouldn’t be complacent about this, and I would encourage everybody to add their e-signatures to Martin Shapland’s petition, but as it is the hopes of “Guido Fawkes” seem to be fading.

A more interesting aspect of the story, though, are the words of the leader of the Commons:

Sir George Young warned that it would damage democracy to ignore strong opinions among members of the public “or pretend that their views do not exist”.

The government has, apparently, set a threshold of 100,000 signatures. Any petition passing this figure will go forward to the Backbench Business Committee, who will consider whether it gets debated in parliament. Clearly, George Young was hoping for a stream of reactionary petitions, that would give the government legitimacy to push through measures that are a Monday Club member’s wet dream. Here, they may have shot themselves in the foot.

On March 26th this year, between 250,000 and 500,000 people marched through London to protest against the government’s savage cuts to jobs and public services. If the trade union movement can get such numbers to travel from across the country, to make their voices heard, it should be an easy matter to get less than half that number to sign a petition online. Prominent petitions in defence of the NHS, against cuts, against tax avoidance could be propaganda victories against the Tories. Even if the petitions never get debated, business committee papers should be available, where they will have to give a reason.

However, all that assumes that the system is administered fairly. Will those (potentially embarrassing) petitions ever make it onto the site? It is instructive to look at those petitions that have been created on the NHS. It beggars belief that these petitions represent the true feeling of the British public on our health service:

• NHS should not be free to all (19 signatures)
• NHS Priority for Workers (8 signatures)
• NHS Rules for eligability for free healthcare. (14 signatures)
• Stop suing the NHS – an alternative petition with a solution (71 signatures)
• STOP THE NHS’S DISCRIMINATION AGAINST ALZHEIMERS SUFFERERS! (45 signatures)
• Opt-Out Organ Donor System (55 signatures)
• Fine patients who fail to attend hospital/gp appointments without giving prior notice. (35 signatures)

(four petitions that were not really about the NHS have been omitted from this list)

I am sure there must have been petitions created on the site, calling on the government to withdraw the current Health and Social Care bill, and reverse the process of creeping privatisation that has led the NHS to its current crisis. In fact, I know there has, because I created one titled “Keep Our NHS Public”, yet I am still waiting for the promised email about this.

My petition may simply be stuck in a queue, alongside tens of thousands of others. Maybe the bias in the current petitions can be easily explained by the government inviting a few of their mates to create petitions for the launch day. Or maybe not. I’ll keep you informed…

What is open culture?

It was around this time, a year ago, that my period of employment with a small Midlands-based software company came to an end.

This company prided itself on its “open culture”. And it was open, for a certain value of openness… In other ways it was very closed, amounting to what felt, at times, more like a cult than a culture.

Where this company excelled in the openness stakes, was in encouraging employees to blog, tweet and otherwise discuss the interesting projects they were working on. There certainly was some interesting work going on, particularly in developments around open data and the semantic web.

However, the openness only appeared to extend to expressing enthusiasm about what was exciting at the company. When it came to the deep misgivings about the direction in which the company was being taken, the quality of leadership, or the treatment of the workforce, the culture was closed. If someone fitted in with the culture, they would get on well. If not, they would quietly disappear.

And this is what happened to me in the end. The job I was offered was at a higher technical level than the one for which I had applied. I found I was being relied on to resolve support issues where more experience colleagues were flummoxed. More than this, I was moving into system builds and upgrades, with barely adequate documentation or personal development time. The first time I used each new skill, would be on a live customer system. I was learning rapidly, and I was succeeding in the work I was doing, though not without difficulty and stress. But every time I succeeded at one level, I would be handed a task at the next.

I admit, I should have called halt much earlier, and challenged my manager to actually manage. But, this wasn’t a company that recognised individual needs. My downfall came in two ways – firstly, I told my manager that I needed either to be in the support team (doing the work of a Technical Support Analyst), or to be doing the semi-consultancy work that my immediate colleagues were doing, but that I couldn’t manage both at the same time. Secondly, I was struggling with an upcoming system migration.

At that point, I hadn’t yet completed my first system migration. This second one would have required me to project-manage as well as completing the technical work. It also had a number of non-standard requirements. When I raised my concerns with my manager, he sent me to the consultancy manager. The consultancy manager said that the non-standard parts should be a separate project, but sent me to the sales manager. The sales manager said the non-standard requirements were part of the same project and sent me back to my manager.

Shortly after this, and after taking a day off due to stress, I was called in to a meeting with my manager and the HR officer. There I was told that things were not working out, and offered a deal to leave. I was given no opportunity to complete the piece of work that I was on at that point, or to give any form of handover to colleagues. I was out. Several months later, I got a phone call from a former colleague, asking me if I could remember the passwords for one of the new systems I had been working on.

Before working for this company, I had had spent many years in Local Government. There was little rhetoric about an open culture, but in many ways it was present. I encountered management that acknowledged that different people have different styles of working and different management needs. I attended meetings with senior management, where there was opportunity to speak frankly about the needs of the service, the issues we were facing, and suggest changes. Sometimes, these suggestions were even accepted. And, except in cases of gross misconduct, a member of staff would be given the opportunity to improve their performance rather than facing summary dismissal.

A year later, I have finally found a job again that suits me, and I am leaving the bitterness behind. And of all the lessons I learned in that time, the most important probably was not to be taken in by a company’s glossy sales pitch or self-delusions.

The cute of Cthulhu

Recently, for the first time, I read some of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Many writers have been influenced by him, and thought I should give the original a go. If you’re looking for visceral horror of the modern sort, they will probably disappoint. However, I found them to be very well written and intelligent, particularly in the treatment of the Elder Things and their city in At the Mountains of Madness.

At more or less the same time, I decided to give crochet another go. I was taught to knit by my aunt, over 25 years ago, and then taught myself to crochet. I was pleased, therefore, to find a way of combining geeky interests and needlecraft, when I stumbled across the Cthulhu Crochet blog. This site has a number of excellent and free patterns, including several versions of amigurumi Cthulhus, as well as the Bone cousins from Jeff Smith’s comic series of the same name.

So, here is my first attempt at a crocheted homage to the High Priest of the Elder Ones and master of the dark city of R’lyeh: