More of wot I have seen...

In The Flesh

A short romzomcom (3 episodes) drama has just finished on TV and I wanted to share it with you. Set in a post zombie apocalypse Britain where the humans have successfully subdued the undead horde we find the remaining PDS (Partial Dead Syndrome) suffers being treated and re-introduced into an understandably wary and shell shocked community and having to deal with a situation not of their making, of actions they had no control over and of the sometimes overwhelming return of humanity. The very human themes of love, loss, fear, hate, guilt and mortality are tackled sensitively and with more than a hint of irony where required to make this a very enjoyable short series. 

Check out the Government Announcements on the BBC website on how to survive a zombie rising.

Who are the monsters?

Wiki

Imdb

BBC

More of wot I have read…

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

This was one of the books I got for my birthday by an author that I had not read before and taking the Amazon recommendation. I enjoyed the first one (Windup Girl) very much and this one was very different from the start.

The feel of this story was in keeping with the subject matter, outsiders, criminals and dropouts, characters with their own way of talking, with different morals and values and a pragmatic approach to problems that befall them. Some of the references were lost on me being unfamiliar with the use of South African slang or tribal cultures, but still it was an exciting and exotic world that was brought to life and the Animaled concept was fresh and interesting.

This was a fascinating read.

‘Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job – missing persons.
Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow.
Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives – including her own’.

Vurt by Jeff Noon

 

Another unknown for me this author has a unique voice and I was quickly immersed into his strange and twisted world. The story played heavily on the drug induced virtual (vurt) reality and gang culture in a disturbing and psychedelic roller coaster ride that made you feel you were tripping along with the characters.

Some of the twisted mutation imagery and shocking character attitudes jarred and highlighted the dystopian aspects of this world. A world that was left mostly unexplained as the main characters concentrated on struggling to survive on the fringes of society leaving us to wonder on how it all came to be.

A baffling and exciting read.

‘Take a trip in a stranger’s head. Travel rain-shot streets with a gang of hip malcontents, hooked on the most powerful drug you can imagine. Yet Vurt feathers are not for the weak. As the mysterious Game Cat says, ‘Be careful, be very careful’. But Scribble isn’t listening. He has to find his lost love. His journey is a mission to find Curious Yellow, the ultimate, perhaps even mythical Vurt feather. As the most powerful narcotic of all, Scribble must be prepared to leave his current reality behind.’

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

Different again I hadn’t realised until I started to write this review that this author was also responsible for the satirical The Soddit a parody of the Hobbit that I read many years before. This is much different and although it has satirical and humorous passages all through it there is a more sophisticated story and intriguing idea carrying this work along.

I like the more measured pace of this story that plays well with the elderly main character, an anti-heroic ‘ironist’ who is taken from his quiet and drab life that he has resigned himself to and thrust into a strange new world where his preconceptions are constantly challenged as are the reader’s as we are drawn ever deeper into the bizarre.

This book has some wonderful twists and turns to it and the Russian flavour to the dialogue, the superbly stylised characters and the way the author lures you into believing in the unbelievable makes this well worth the read.

‘Russia, 1946, the Nazis recently defeated. Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside somewhere. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away, and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together, to give it purpose and direction, he tells the writers: 'I want you to concoct a story about aliens poised to invade earth…  I want it to be massively detailed, and completely believable. If you need props and evidence to back it up, then we can create them. But when America is defeated, your story must be so convincing that the whole population of Soviet Russia believes in it - the population of the whole world!' The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working on it.
But then new orders come from Moscow: they are told to drop the project; Stalin has changed his mind; forget everything about it. So they do. They get on with their lives in their various ways; some of them survive the remainder of Stalin's rule, the changes of the 50s and 60s. And then, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has started to happen. The story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true…’

More of wot I have seen…

Recently Sue was invited out with her Aunt’s birthday treat with several of the ‘girls’ from the family. They were going off into London to see A Chorus Line before coming back to have a meal in an Italian restaurant where I was going to join them. Overall the ladies were not impressed with the show and Sue found it quite boring so I was quite pleased that I had gone off to see the Life of Pi at the movies. I did enjoy the film very much and I found it was quite faithful to the book (though like most interpretations from the written word to visual media there is often a difference between what you imagined something to be like and what the film maker has).

Auditions…

This year’s birthday is a significant one for Sue and so as well as a dream holiday we are planning a party for friends and family at the newly refurbished local pub that is now branded as a Bar / Deli and is called Bertram Bees. This place has become a favourite location for us to go for a drink in the village as our bank statement can attest.

As part of the celebrations we would like to have a live band playing to our guests and it just so happens that the bar has been putting on music to attract patrons. So naturally we need to audition the various groups and if it necessities having a couple of drinks at the same time then so be it.

All of the groups so far have been good but one, a skiffle band that played well know hits in a foot stomping vintage style were fabulous but unfortunately they were booked at a beer festival on the date we wanted them, so the search goes on.

More of wot I have read…

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

This was one of the books I got for my birthday and I absolutely devoured to so engaging was the story. I fell in love with this book from the first page and was fascinated with the dystopian world conjured up by the author and found the characters believable and human. The narrative was nicely paced and the drama built good tension throughout the book. The twists and turns were well hidden and the conclusion was very satisfying. I liked the bio-punk sci-fi style of the setting and the environmental / political stance of the author was interesting. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it is worth a read if only for the quality of the writing alone.

‘Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s calorie representative in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, he combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs long thought to be extinct. There he meets the Windup Girl – the beautiful and enigmatic Emiko – now abandoned to the slums. She is one of the New People, bred to suit the whims of the rich. Engineered as slaves, soldiers and toys, they are the new underclass in a chilling near future where oil has run out, calorie companies dominate nations and bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

And as Lake becomes increasingly obsessed with Emiko, conspiracies breed in the heat and political tensions threaten to spiral out of control. Businessmen and military officials, wealthy foreigners and landless refugees all have their own agendas. But no one anticipates the devastating influence of the Windup Girl.’

The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams

This book was given to me by Jamie and it had sat on my shelf for a while as I was not enthusiastic about the teaser on the back (see below), but I was short of something to read so I gave it a go. It took a while to get going and I struggled to accept the concept of the book, but slowly it grew on me and at the end I was quite enjoying it and could appreciate the details that the author had sprinkled through the narrative. It is light and fluffy and naturally fantastical but fans of magical mythology might well enjoy this book.

‘In the great city, in the dimly office of a mighty tower, two deadly creatures meet. A dark bargain is struck, and the master of the House of Hellebore gives on order: “War is coming. The child must die.”

In our own world, a young man discovers a manuscript written by his great uncle. It seems to be a novel – a strange fairy tale of fantastic creatures and a journey to a magical realm. But it is written as a diary…as if the events were real…as if his uncle had sought and found another world.

Or as if another world had found him…’