Dig the forced perspective ...

... in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. How can you not be charmed by the simple trick of putting actors at different distances from the camera in order to make one look bigger than the other? By combining this age-old technique with artful set and prop design and cunning camera moves, Jackson and his crew overcame what could have been a major stumbling block by keeping everything in-camera and avoiding (mostly) tricky post-production effects.

Samurai fantasies

I just watched the DVD of Ran, Akira Kurosawa's epic reimagining of King Lear. What's that got to do with genre fiction, I hear you cry? Well, it occured to me (between marvelling at Kurosawa's crystal-clear storytelling, epic staging, beautifully defined characters and jaw-dropping art direction and cinematography) that for the average western audience, the Orient is pretty close to being an fantasy environment. No coincidence, then, that so many western science fiction and fantasy movies have plundered Asian culture for their production design. You can see Samurai motifs in Lucas's stormtrooper costumes, for instance, and even the spacesuits worn by the crew of the Nostromo in Alien. And Joss Whedon's American/Chinese cultural mash-up lends his Firefly universe just the right touch of otherworldly charm.

Watching Ran, I found myself enjoying it on the same level I might enjoy a good fantasy story. The parallels are many: it's set in a simplified feudal society of warlords, where family and honour are top of the agenda. Archetypal characters struggle against the whims of fate in a stylised world of castles and hostile landscapes. There are big battles between huge armies waving colour-coded banners to denote their allegiance. On top of that, because I'm a simple boy from Somerset, medieval Japan looks simultaneously foreign and familiar, and as seductive as all hell.

Reading and standing still

In a few days I'll be getting back the manuscript for the latest ghosting project. A couple of weeks of rewrites and edits and that'll be another book put to bed. I counted up the other day and that brings my total output to twelve novels (including two unpublished) with the thirteenth due for delivery in February.

During the lull I know I should be working on any number of other things, like the proposals for the steampunk and horror novels, the zombie short story I need to finish and the urban fantasy I need to start ... Instead I've got my head firmly inserted in other people's books, namely Stephen Baxter's Flood, which I've just finished. Highly recommended this one – smart, accurate prose, an engaging set of characters driven by the narrative to explore all corners of a drowning world, devastatingly detailed accounts of one flooding scenario after another. Roland Emmerich's new film 2012 promises to be an entertaing slice of goofy Hollywood hokum – Baxter delivers the real deal.

Having put Baxter down I'm on to Alastair Reynolds's The Prefect. It's a while since I've read a good space opera so looking forward to this one. Although that reminds me about the 60,000 words of my own space opera I've got tucked away on a laptop hard drive. It's the first half of a novel called "Unsuitable Worlds" and it was going pretty well until the story flaked out on me. But there's something good in there – time to dust it off perhaps. So there's another thing to add to the list ...

Short and undead

For another of my occasional pieces of flash fiction, check out my latest zombie blink-and-you-miss-it story at Six Word Stories.

Fantasycon this weekend

I can't believe it's nearly time for the British Fantasy Society's annual Fantasycon. It's in Nottingham again this year, at the Britannia Hotel. It runs from 18–20 September – check out their website here for all the details. If you're around on the Saturday you stand a good chance of running into me. Hell, if you wave a book in my face I'll even sign it for you. See you there!

Money or love?

Most writers aren't rich. Most writers struggle through with day jobs and spend their nights doing what they love in the hope it might buy a can or two of soup. Not even reputation can guarantee a publishing deal – as in Hollywood, you're only as good as your last project. And economic downturns hit writers too. If you doubt me, check out this article on The Bookseller website.

Am I sounding gloomy? I don't mean to. Take note of what I just said. Writers spend their nights doing what they love. The words just turn up, you see. What are you going to do – close the door on them?

District 9

I've read reviews of District 9 that praise its edgy first half and complain that it all goes a bit Hollywood towards the end. Well, I think they're missing the point. I saw this movie last night and didn't once take my eyes off the screen, or my attention off the tale. It's precisely because the first few reels are so fresh and pacy and challenging that director Neill Blomkamp earns the right to crank up the action as the film progresses. The documentary edginess never goes away but Blomkamp's not scared to please the crowd too. There's the odd missed beat – most notably when the mismatched human and alien buddies escape a little too abruptly from a high-security research centre – but for the most part this is pitch-perfect.

In the lead role, Sharlto Copley is utterly convincing as the tank-topped, moustachioed pen-pusher whose life takes an unexpected turn while he's evicting a bunch of alien interlopers from a Johannesburg shanty town. Somehow Copley manages to take this unlikeable character from bigoted nerd to unlikely hero ... and a guy you genuinely root for. The aliens (or prawns) are seamlessly integrated into the restless hand-held footage, as is their giant mothership hovering over the city. It all romps along at a fair old lick, never flagging, always demanding your attention, whether through its grimy eye-candy or the affecting and naturalistic performances.

Prawns rule. I'll never look at seafood the same way again.