I’m not much of a pottymouth, but some things…well, put it this way: there is the occasional situation when it would be stupid not to swear. Here’s one: killing bosses in video games.

“Hahaha, fuck you ogre!”

I shouted this at my computer screen yesterday, in a moment of ecstatic, gleeful fantasy bloodlust. He had me on the ropes. He’d had me on the ropes for a good five minutes. My warrior was down; my expendable, temporary soldier minion had been pummeled to a pulp; my mage had been stripped of his vestments. Now it was coming for me: a little skinny elf. Imagine a David/Goliath situation. Except one where Goliath is an ogre. And David is an elf (sorry Samuel).

This thing was huge. I mean, you can see it in the picture up there, but today’s graphics really allow you to be beautifully/nerdily immersed in the game. It wasn’t a polygonal poltergeist: this thing was a real, massive hulk of purple meat, flinging stones at me and trying to grasp at my ickle elfin booty in a raging, King-Kong esque rampage (without the love interest). I had this thing going where I was just running in circles with Mr Ogre esq trying desperately to keep up. I’d wheel around and fire off a few fire arrows, only to find his horned visage burping gooey flecks of ogre spit immediately in front of me. I had been downing health poultices with the fanaticism of George Best. But now they were all gone.

Then I had an idea. In a moment of anti-altruistic genius, I revived my poor batterd warrior and commanded him to distract the beast. Bait, Alistair. You are bait. Sorry. You’ll thank me later, maybe. The ogre spun around and began to pummel him. I ran far, far away and started a disgusting, cowardly volley of bolts. He killed Alastair ( ), but I had him now. Just a few more shots!

Ogre Face had a little gristly nibble on the warrior’s guts, then started sprinting towards me. I chuckled to myself. My double chin wobbled with the vibration. Now, I’ll just get some more fire ar-

“Shit”

No arrows. I was going to have to get dirty with this killer (ironic, you see, because I just killed Alistair by extension). I switched to my trusty two-handed greatsword. Pommel strike. Sunder arms. Mighty blow. He was on low health. I was on low health. But I swung my pixel piece with artistic beauty, and the beast fell.

And then I swore. It felt so good.

For a Friend/Growing Grass

Roots that rend the wicker bend.
Sheep that tend the grass between
boughs of apple, larch and elm
all draw life from bones and skin.

Remember that each breath I took
now shimmers in a laughing stream
and blackened thoughts, now lost in dream
are etched to joy in silver bark.

Keep me in mind.
I am a friend.
I am the snow.
I am the wind.

When breezes blow across the land
to wave the blades and swing the shoots,
the leaves that were my living roof
are sheltered by my earthen hand.

There are no words to describe

how awesome this man is.

This is the lead singer of Metsatöll, an Estonian metal band. I saw them last night. Note the rock-n-roll BCG scar.

Sci-fi. Being adventurous, I see. Hmm

I’m going to try and finish this short story by the end of my two-week October break. Here’s the opener:
______
“I’d like to say I love spaceflight. But I don’t – it’s a monotonous nightmare. Every day the same: wake up, look out the window. Same old stars, Earth lost somewhere between them. How you finding it so far, rookie?”

“I guess it’s ok, Sir.”

“Don’t be polite. It’s fucking horrible”

Captain Marr eyed the young private discerningly. No background, no future. A pile of bones in a sack of skin. Maybe some muscle, but by the looks of this pubic rat I’d even doubt that. This guy doesn’t stand a chance. He shovelled a rubbery forkful of eggs into a grizzled mouth. A few specks lodged in his beard – he rubbed them off briskly with a rough backhand.

“Why did you even enlist? No, wait, don’t answer. I know why: because it looks glamorous, right?” He snorted. “Get shot up into the starry night on a giant silver bullet, whistle past the moon, then land on Mars and bang a chick with eyes on fucking stalks. Look around you, kid. If glamour exists anywhere on this ship, where is it?” The rookie glanced around and shrugged. “Because it aint in the canteen.” The sound of some sort of slop being ladled into a well in a plastic tray pierced the gap in conversation.

“To be honest, Sir, it wasn’t that. Well, there was some romantic stuff in there, but I joined up to get away from it all: away from skyscrapers, balled-up newspapers and crowded subways. A strange mess hall beats a disgustingly familiar bus stop.”

“Jesus, kid. That’s a lot of words for a private. Don’t spill your fruity dreams to the other boys, or we’ll find you tomorrow, strung up by your panties in the ball court.”

The captain got up with his greasy plate and walked towards the metal dishwashing rack in the wall. He slapped the plate down and threw his fork into a soapy bucket. Not a fancy, space-age, self-cleaning metallic receptacle. A bucket with soapy water in it. He kicked the tub, and the grey-brown suds swilled around, then splashed onto his boot. He grunted and left the hall.

A screen down the corridor was broadcasting news from Earth. Irrelevant. I’m not there anymore. Garbage, political garbage. Sordid, boring news about celebrities I don’t care for. He reached behind the display and pulled out the power cord. Silence. Marr smiled and continued to his office. An office in a space ship. When did they think that one up? Wish I could go back to my kid self and tell him to stop fantasising. He stopped on the corridor carpet and his door glided open to reveal some chairs, a desk and a huge, square porthole. He rested himself in the chair at his workspace and felt the cool metal of its arms. He patted them up and down in a gesture of boredom. He made a raspberry noise with his lips.

“Computer on,” said Marr, as if this was the thousandth time. It was. The desk top flickered into a map of the solar system. He put his hand on an empty patch of space and lifted it towards the ceiling. The flat display turned into a three-dimensional model. A tiny Sun spat out flares; Mercury crept around its plate-sized orbit; Venus had minute volcanoes erupting into even more miniscule canyons. And there was Earth. Corrupt, terrestrial Earth. He clenched his fist around the projection, and dragged it into a small icon named ‘Trash’. The computer made a realistic scrumpling-up noise. Bye-bye, Earth.

Marr reached down to the lowest drawer on his desk and took out a small cylindrical tin. He unscrewed the lid and took out a small, matted pearl. Mmm…dessert. He placed it on his tongue and took a swig of stale water from a flask at his waist. It would take half an hour or so to take effect. Until then I’ll just have to amuse myself. He stared at the hologram blankly. From where the little Earth had been there came a fine red ribbon, marking the ship’s previous course. The only function the ribbon served was as a clock to watch. A little arrow at the end of the line pointed to the direction they were headed. Into nothing, it seemed, at the moment. Past the far reaches of the Kuiper belt, never to see home again. That’d be nice. He touched a little fast-forward icon and the microcosm accelerated like a spinning top. The ribbon extended as it did so, slowly but surely, towards an unknown target. Marr knew what it was, but he liked playing with his toy. Just as the mini solar system seemed unable to whirl any faster, it stopped abruptly. The ribbon was touching a little grey orb. Europa. Only a year to go.

He suddenly felt vertiginous. The system in front of him expanded, engulfing his field of vision. He gripped the seat arms tightly, knuckles whitening. He sat, transfixed, then started to relax. He was melting. Marr grinned, waved his arms in the air, and span around on the seat’s spindle, an infant in a hallucinogenic cradle. What are they going to do, court-marshal me halfway to Neptune?

The Sun Sailors

Your smoking towns are new to us:
each breathing home, each burning hearth.
We come from astral flame and fire.
We are voyeurs to death and birth.

We touch the cheeks of sleeping boys
and pass our friends who fly on by.
We lose ourselves in nooks and holes
and penetrate your winking eye.

We sink into the waters dark -
the crystal deep of foreign hue.
We visit crabs and sharks and eels
and are swallowed by demonic blue.

Then rising up from ocean peaks,
we settle on the grassy moors.
Brothers lost to leaves and thorns,
thrown from rowan tree to gorse.

From here we fly to daffodils,
canaries, butter, bumblebees.
We bounce around your breakfast eggs,
assault your face from blocks of cheese.

We’re packaged into wooden crates,
from China, Florida, Italy, Spain.
Then flee from fruity orange globes
and are reflected back again.

Then when you bleed, and beads of life
drip to the sink, towards the drain,
you only really know at all
because we tell your wincing brain.

And then we die, or so you’re told.
But we go on; we give and take.
We soar beyond the human realm
and swoop below to speak with snakes.

All We Care For

Protected by a shield of tenements
a garden grows
a jungle of reverence.
And residents,
they all look from their doors and panes
to see the leaves adorned with rain,
a wild mess of grassy lanes.

And this is where the children come to play
when their parents look away.
Throw down your fork
and burn your book
for we are dancing in the brook
and shaking off the lifeless grey -
the forced religion of the day.

Acacia and hyacinth
and chirping mudfrogs on a plinth
of knotted roots and spinning shoots,
dew and petals on your boots.
Stomping gruel and maths to shreds,
forgetting baths, forgetting beds.

There comes a time when fun must end
but this is not tonight,
no brick walls in sight.
Imaginations bend and we all fall down
at Cedar’s spring
and laugh and sing,
wound up minds unravelling.

Tiny hands make tiny boats.
They float, and eddy, and sink, and are washed
to the silt and sand.
Water to land.
Pebbles to soil.
Peasants to royals.
Backs to branches.
Branches to earth.
Earth to cushions.
Wolves to sheep.
and then we sleep.

Opening in Vegas

Bleary battles with the crust,
too warm under sheets, frigid on the out.
A shadow flits before the eyes
of ache, confusion, drought.
Weather wants us to wake,
we fight her, tooth and nail;
pallid, proud and pale,
trying not to break.
A mortal desire to sleep on and on,
a disgusting thirst to slake.
We give in, we lose
to the factors forcing us to rise,
and we rise
to a dry mouth and a painful brain,
and a hatred for The Sandman.

An introduction to ‘Horns and Ribbons’

“I don’t quite know how the masks first appeared. They could have simply dissolved out from thin air, for all people seem to want to care. My father, a policeman, says he can’t remember – he heard rumours at school, fantastical stories, but they were soon quashed or wiped away in a sweep of conditioning, as all rebellions are eventually. His father, my grandfather, was a miner.  He was leathery and flaking, black as coal: a dim lamp shone on his head, softly illuminating the gloom of his ancient, worn home. His hands were the colour of my hands, though – a soft pinkish brown. He would take me up to the loft and show me all his old ones, and my grandma’s, the one she used before she passed away. He had quite a collection: a grimy face of spinning, faded colours and split sequins; black and grey ones made of rough twill, all in contrasting patterns; and a more recent miner’s mask, scattered with diamonds and finely-threaded drillbit weaves. He liked to wear the ceremonial pitch-hued one with the spotlight, though. I liked it too.

I remember Grandpa saying something about the masks originally being like a trend, or a fad. Like the flared trousers and ridiculous, white rolled wigs we see in History videos. The fashion spread, and I guess we liked them, because they stuck. Stuck to the whole country. Stuck to our faces for, what, 400 years? Nobody talks about it, but that’s how far back the photos go. That’s when they appeared, whatever the story is. I tried searching for information on it, but even comms about it seemed to be sparse, and when I’d go back to read them minutes later, they’d be gone.

Dad’s is fantastic. I think it’s made by the government, because I can’t even work out what it’s made of. Some kind of silvery, matted metal. There are regular strips of blue lights that shimmer just underneath the outer plate. They move around, and usually follow common paths, but I’ve seen them display strange signs when Dad reaches back to tinker with it behind his head, or when he sits in certain places in the house. Little shivers go down my spine when I look at it sometimes, when it seems to be watching me. But I know, at least I’m pretty sure, that it’s not the mask that’s watching me, it’s Dad. Even though I don’t know what that feels like, to feel real eyes on me. But I know there’s a face under there, because there’s a face under mine. I’ve just never seen it.”

Mask image copyright ~Puzzels, deviantart.

On Morphology

‒It is not like us.
+Indeed. It is not.

A horror show was played out in front of the two individuals: a horror show that did not frighten, confuse, nor alienate them. In fact, it was a show so gratuitously unique that the only being on this entire planet who would have found this particular scene terrifying at all was the human that lay spread-eagled, embedded in jelly, sliced into micrometre-thin slices and suspended in the air before them. Computed scans of the organic wafers were displayed to the two anatomists, shimmering slightly on the thin, flexible screens around the laboratory. One monitor was cycling through the images rapidly, sole to crown and back again, exhibiting a whistle-stop tour through the male body. An X-ray’s eye-view. A stump became a tube, which then became a stump again – a femur. The tortuous gut snaked between slices, somehow slithering in death. In fact, the misfortune of dying aside, the personality who belonged to the dissected body was remarkably privileged. Not only was he the first human to set foot on another inhabited world, but he was also the first man ever to say “Oh fuc-” to the American president over interstellar airwaves.

Loss of brainstem function was instantaneous – the man hadn’t suffered physically. All he had felt was a strange bubbling feeling in his belly that had sharply (before he could get out a simple letter k, in fact) erupted into a systemic effect. Nothing sinister: there wasn’t any mess. He had simply shut down, like a computer. His nerves and brain cells had ceased to operate. That was it. His body was recovered by a strange contraption, and transported to the local scientists.

The man was from Earth. His name was Ben Filmore. He had been working on his speech for a long time. He had thought back to pioneers before him. The first man on the moon. The first man on Mars. The first man to spiral, slowly, into The Sun. All relaying back their rehearsed verses, echoing across the wavelengths back on their home planet. But he never got to use it. Those words were now protein in jelly.

=Its body is hilariously crude.
+True. It looks like your mother.
‒Negative.

The creatures left their stations, and the lights in the sectioning room dimmed.

Review: ‘The Player of Games’ by Iain M. Banks

I’ve always been a big fan of science fiction: those of you that know me will attest to this. Seeing Star Wars as a kid ignited my passion for the mysterious future: the idea that someday we may able to do things that seem impossible now. Visit life on other worlds, travel across the galaxy within a lifetime, eliminate disease, or ultimately cheat death.

Banks’ ‘Culture’ novels are set in a utopian future society, where humans symbiotically exist with like-minded robots. The society is described as being ‘post-scarcity’, where the need for fuel and energy is virtually arbitrary: technology has become so advanced that there is no longer a struggle for survival or resources. This brings the Culture, as it it known to its citizens, to a kind of world where expense and value become meaningless: currency does not exist, and people simply live for the purpose of living. Certainly an exciting, or terribly boring, prospect, depending on how you look at it.

The Player of Games is the second book in the Culture series, and often described as the best book to start with if one wants to dip into the series. So I was thrown into the fictional universe head-first with the introduction of the protagonist: Gurgeh Jernau, the best game-player in the Culture. Gurgeh is blackmailed into working for the Culture’s secret service, and infiltrates a distant Empire, one which is completely based around a game. This game, Azad, forms the cornerstone of society. It is played so much, and has grown up with the Empire, that it is essentially a condensed form of the Empire’s ethos. So much so, that the best players of the game get offered the best jobs.

What I found interesting about the book. besides the fantastic ending (the majority of the book was so-so, up until the climax), was Banks’ silent mocking of his own creation, the Culture. The Empire is described by Culture denizens as barbaric, base and abhorrent. It would seem so to us as well: they rape and pillage any other societies they come across; the upper echelons of society enjoy a disgusting hedonism of horrible mixes of sexual and violent entertainment; and they are completely opposed to and offended by any other society that thinks in contrary to them. However horrendous they may seem, however, the Empire of Azad has a lot to compare with our Western civilization on Earth. We pride ourselves in being tolerant and diplomatic, yet deep down, as individuals, we are all terribly primal (think about Lord of the Flies).

The Culture is seen by the Empire as this boring, benign entity that lacks the passions of battle and crimes against nature, and in that respect I think they are right. I, for one, would loathe to be part of a sterile world where death plays no part, and events during life become ultimately useless with a lost sense of time and importance. Part of the excitement of life for a lot of people comes from recognising one’s own mortality, and grinning at it, mocking. I definitely subscribe to this, at least in part.

If you don’t like sci-fi, don’t read this book, and if you think you might like sci-fi, don’t read this book. Read 2001 or something equally as immersive. If you like sci-fi, you’ve probably read this book. If you like sci-fi and haven’t read this book, consider it if you want a good yarn and a chance to be disgusted at yourself.