8mm planetary approach

I've always been into visual effects in the movies. I have whole shelves full of ''Making Of' books and a pile of Cinefex magazines that may soon collapse under its own gravity. What better place to recall some of my own humble efforts at emulating the FX masters than this blog?

I made my first SF spectacular as a teenager – along with my good friends Phil and Andy. Called Matt Line Tidies Up The Universe, it was filmed using the miracle of plasticene animation in glorious Super-8mm. The opening shot of Matt Line shows our hero's spaceship (constructed by yours truly out of left-over Airfix kit parts) approaching the planet on which the beautiful Princess Arriflex is being held prisoner by the Evil Lord Multiplane.

In true Cinefex style, I'll tell you how the shot was achieved. We waited until after dark to get a true blackout, then hung the ship on black cotton out in Phil's back yard. We lit it with a single 200W bulb and shot it in the top half of the frame with a slow, steady zoom out. We then (a terrifying process this) took the film cassette out of the camera and wound it back using a temperamental cranking device. Next step was to point the camera at a previously-prepared photo of the Earth from an astronomy book, only we put a red gel over the lens to make it look all alien and, well, red. By positioning the planet in the bottom half of the shot, we made sure it didn't overlap with the ship.

So there you go. A simple double exposure. Stationary planet, judicious use of zoom to give the ship the illusion of movement. Bingo!

I don't visit YouTube much but when I do I'm amazed at the technical skill of some of the amateur film-makers out there. However, nostalgia dictates that I should call the old 8mm generation to arms and celebrate the good old days. Don't get me wrong, I've done my share of animation using CGI software and non-linear editing. I love the new ways. The joke is that half the rigs I've built in 3DSMax are virtual replicas of the kind of string-and-sealing-wax affairs we used to build in the old days.

More 8mm FX memories to come include the Demonic Dressing Gown, Tyrell Corp Homage and What Bleach Does To Kodachrome. If you're lucky, I'll dig out some stills!

Sharp TV SF

I finally watched Battlestar Galactica Razor last night. Just got Season 4 to go now. Yes, I know I'm hopelessly behind - get over it. It was retro-cool to see the old-style Cylons and Raiders brought out of mothballs in Razor. Greating casting of the young Bill Adama too. What I enjoyed most was the full-frontal tackling of the 'you have to make tough decisions in wartime' theme. Sharp stuff.

Writing like a loom

Yes loom, not loon (although the second also applies). Two weeks now until I'm due to submit a manuscript for the middle book of a fantasy trilogy. This particular contract (a kind of ghost-writing gig for a book packager) puts me on a tight schedule, which means I should finish the first draft at the end of August, leaving me a bare week to edit before submission. A week's not long – writing is rewriting, after all. I will have a chance to tinker further after the packagers have made their editorial comments, but it's tight. Which means I have to make sure the first draft comes out as fully formed as possible. Like carpet coming off a loom.

Masquerade remembered

For all of you who, like me, once tried to fathom the secrets of a book called Masquerade by Kit Williams, check out this story on the Guardian website. Masquerade contained elaborate picture puzzles with a trail of clues leading to buried treasure. Apparently, Kit's finally been reunited with the golden hare that captured the world's imagination thirty years ago.

For trivia fans, a few years ago I had the pleasure of working with an extraordinarily talented artist called Steve Pearce, who was the winner of Kit's second book-based competition. This time the challenge was not only to find out what the title of the book was (the cover had a blank space where the title should have been), but to represent it in as creative a way as possible. Steve built a beautiful mechanical contraption to do just that and walked away with the prize. There's a picture of it here.

Yes, I'm blogging about Avatar

Since everyone else is talking about James Cameron's forthcoming film, I don't see why I shouldn't. Along with the rest of the wired world, I watched the HD teaser trailer for Avatar yesterday. Judging by this morning's reports, it's enjoyed a mixed reception. Astonishing how a simple movie trailer can generate so much heated debate. Time to remember John Brosnan's old Starburst column and tell ourselves, 'It's only a movie.'

But it isn't, is it? It's a Cameron movie. It's a Cameron science-fiction movie. Which does make it rather special. I'll nail up my colours right away and tell you I'm a huge Cameron fan. It was the window display in Tower Records that started it.

Picture the scene. I'm a scruffy art student schlepping through London's West End. My favourite film is Ridley Scott's Alien. I know someone's made a sequel, and Scott's not involved. The guy who's made it has got something to do with Rambo. The new movie's all about big guns and explosions. No way am I going to see it. As I pass the front of Tower Records on Piccadilly Circus, I stop in my tracks. There's a big model of a spaceship in the window. It's called the Sulaco. It looks pretty cool. There's a big gun. Actually, that looks pretty cool too. And there's something else. A gigantic alien ... thing. Sort of like the head of the alien from Scott's movie, but ... pumped up. Really pumped up. It's what my daughter would call mahoosive. I didn't know it at the time, but I'd just got my first view of Cameron's queen.

So I go to see the movie. I'm still sceptical. It kicks off okay, but then the marines start doing their macho thing and I start to worry. Oh dear, I think – here comes Rambo. Then the movie turns. It turns on one shot: the one where Hudson informs everyone they're on an express elevator to hell and the dropship leaves the Sulaco and plummets towards the planet. You know the shot. After that I'm hooked. Not because the movie looks cool – which it does – or Sigourney looks great – which she does – but because the story and characters take over. And that's Cameron's real gift. He delivers spectacle and coolness and eye candy, sure, but first and foremost he's a storyteller. A damn fine one.

So does Avatar cut the mustard? How do I know? I only saw a two-minute tease. But I do think the story sounds clean and engaging and the trailer does what all good trailers should: it makes me hungry to see the movie. And I just love the art direction. Some folk are carping about blue aliens and fairy lights, but what I see is a world that reminds me of all the science fiction book covers I grew up with. Dazzling art by Peter Jones and Chris Foss and Frank Frazetta. I blogged recently about A Princess of Mars, and it strikes me there's something of Edgar Rice Burroughs here. A truly alien world that starts off jolting you with its strangeness and ends up drawing you in. That's something I trust Cameron to do: draw me in.

I see Avatar's got big guns and explosions too. But I've mellowed over the years so, Jim, if you're reading this, leave them in. Just for me.

Proof of horror

Just had the pleasure of checking a PDF proof for The Best Horror of the Year Volume One – well, my own small part of it at least. Great to see my story Girl in Pieces back in print again, and also to see I've been positioned cheek by jowl with the great Joe Lansdale. Publication date for the anthology is October 2009, so get your order in now!

Eddie reboots

Andy may have come up trumps with a lead about the Theatre Clwyd stage version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (see previous post if you want to know what the hell I'm talking about).

Hitchhiker memory bank failure

Years ago I saw a stage production of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What a fun topic to write a nostalgic blog about, thought I yesterday. But, as I tried to pull a few memories together, I realised something shocking: my own interior version of Eddie the Shipboard Computer seems to have had its hard drive all but wiped clean!

So this post has become something of a plea. Who can remember a low-budget UK touring production of HHG2G from somewhere around 1980? Andy Wicks and I saw it at the Poole Arts Centre (now known as The Lighthouse). We've pooled our failing memories of what was actually a great night out and come up with the following:

– Northen accents were apparent in the cast. There's a vague connection in my head with the Hull Truck Theatre Company, but that could be erroneous, especially as there's nothing on their website about them ever staging HHG2G. I also suspect Ken Campbell's name may have appeared somewhere on the programme, but I'm not sure he ever staged the showoutside London's West End, so again that could be a red herring.
– Free 'space sweets' were handed out before the performance.
– During the poetry appreciation scene, Arthur and Ford ran out to sit in the audience (right next to me in fact) to scream at the Vogon verse.
– The show may have started with a Deep Thought scene
– The falling whale scene was visuallised with animation and voiced by a man on a ladder!
– There was lots of smoke.
– It was a whole heap of hoopiness!

It's appalling how little I remember about this show. So I've no choice but to send this request out across the world – if you know what the hell I'm talking about, please comment on this post! In the meantime, I'm off to defragment my frontal lobe in the hope of undeleting a few critical files.

Reconnected, fishing

Ah, the joy of disconnection. I've just spent a week on a boat, completely out of touch with pretty much everything except, well, water. No news, no net (except the fishing kind), no nothing. Plenty of reading matter mind you, including Joe Abercrombie's entertaining The Blade Itself. Now I'm back on this net, catching up with all things speculative and literary, not least the various hooks I've got dangling in the editorial waters, including two novelettes hoping for a bite - fingers crossed on those little babies. Out in the trawling water, my fantasy detective novel String City is in the safe hands of my fabulous agent Dorothy Lumley, and there's an outline for another fantasy novel bobbing around on the water somewhere. Writing, like fishing, is a game of patience. To keep me busy while I'm waiting for the next bite, I'm due to deliver an 80,000 word manuscript in three weeks, so no time for slacking now the holiday's over!

Goodbye Jim Baen's Universe

Another sad day in the short fiction field – Jim Baen's Universe is to close after its April 2010 issue. About the closure, editor Eric Flint says, 'In a nutshell, we were simply never able to get and retain enough subscribers to put us on a sales plateau that would allow us to continue publishing.' It's a real shame to see this great online magazine fold after four years, not least for Eric and Mike and all the other staff. Sorry to hear about it guys.

I was fortunate enough to have a story published in this online staple. It was called Riding the Drop and it's still available to read online for free here, courtesy of Jim Baen's Universe.

Dig the independent shadow ...

... in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (how much attribution do you need in just one title?). Yes, Gary Oldman's got a wacky hairdo but don't you just love the way his shadow's got a life of its own?