"At just a little under a dollar a word, becoming fluent in Na'vi is a very expensive investment."

Re: the implausibility of humankind ever actually visiting another inhabited plane... Avatar!

Commenting on the previous post, @tealin wonders if our hopes of encountering higher intelligences might be as much about a kind of "looking-glass colonialism" as they are about angelic conversations, and of course she's right. But the success of "Avatar" suggests a third and opposite fantasy – the desire to re-encounter the "Noble Savage". Were that ever to happen, the video below may be as accurate a prediction of that meeting as we'll get. Some of my happiest recent viewing has come from discovering, and then bingeing upon, the work of youtubers who share my fascination with theme parks. And if that sounds niche, let me inform you that Lindsay Ellis's piece on Hobbiton was just nominated for a Hugo, so keep up, old-timers! I'll share more of Ellis's stuff in another post, but what we're here to enjoy today is the work of Jenny Nicholson – specifically, her hilarious, fifty-nine-minute-long account of a visit to the newly opened Avatar theme park in Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Why not search for images of "Avatar theme park", and see if you can immediately distinguish the concept illustrations from photographs of the finished park?

Now, I appreciate this might not sound like everyone's cup of tea – an hour-long monologue about a theme park based on a nine-year-old movie – but the sustained simplicity of the presentation is part of Nicholson's genius. My favourite detail is the Jordan Peele-y ambience of dread she notices pervading the park, as a result of its invented backstory: the world's indigenous Na'vi have welcomed this second human invasion, we're told. There's statues and framed photographs everywhere, celebrating human and Na'vi cooperation. But no Na'vi. Nicholson can also just describe rides, and I like just descriptions of rides, but they too add to a portrait of an idea that has over-reached itself just enough to be ceaselessly entertaining. Enjoy...

What I REALLY think about Space

Happy Saint Earth's Day!

(Africa's actually much bigger in real life. How many more mistakes can you spot?)

Below is a terribly on-brand TED talk (painful intro, but good meat) delivering a potted literary history of some of the lunar fantasies that might have inspired space flight. Namechecked are Cyrano De Bergerac, and the Baltimore Gun Club, both of whom can be seen above toasting a cosmonaut alongside Baron Munchausen in one of my favourite films of all time. I'm a sucker for this kind of cataloguing. I love finding out where ideas come from – especially if the results involve illustrations of Jacobeans borne over a pointy island by a rig of geese – and, as long term readers of this blog will know, the historical symbiosis of stark pottiness and scientific innovation was a big influence on me finally rolling up my sleeves and writing a whole two episodes of "Time Spanner".

 But...

 There must have been a reason I made the narrator of that show a dead dog, and located its traditional alien planet tropes not in outer space, but "Heaven" – a dimension of things that don't exist – and with Extinction Rebellion taking so well to the streets, I've been growing more honest with myself about exactly what I expect humanity to be able to pull off, reconsidering just how very big space is, and I reckon Alex McDonald's talk misses something very big, which is that Carl Sagan, who was right about so much, might not have been right about this. Guys... I don't think we're going into Space. 

 Sorry, but even if we survive for another million years I just don't think there's anything out there worth the intergalactic faff. I mean, it's really far away, and those tales we told ourselves of other worlds were hangovers from sea-faring days, the hopes of encountering higher intelligences a hangover from angels. So the idea that these exciting space adventures might have inspired billions upon billions' worth of scientific research seems more hilarious to me now than wonderful. Wasn't "flight" once synonymous with fleeing – hence "fight or flight"?* But we're never leaving home, not really. Earth is that home, and what's out there isn't Heaven. It's, at best, a well. And however deep we lower into it, if there is such a thing as human destiny, I'm pretty convinced now it will be played out on this pale blue dot. We need something else to explore, then. Which is good news, I think. I don't know what NASA should be doing in the meantime though – apart from splashing out on a few more lady space suits. Drugs?

 You're welcome.

Actual size of Africa (from back when BBC1 was the whole world.)

* I also found out recently that "cope" comes from the French "coup", so it's not a synonym for bearing at all, in fact, but for fighting. Like I say, I love finding out where ideas come from.

help (noun)

I thought this was ten years ago. Actually the fire happened on the 8th. Huh. It was painted by Morgan, the next door neighbour who heard Dan's cries for help while I was unconscious from smoke inhalation on the ground floor. That's Dan in the window. Residents of South London, from Brixton to Waterloo to London Bridge to One Tree Hill, might recognise from this some of Morgan's other great works, on shop fronts, shutters, electricity boxes, bins, murals, the Imperial War Museum, and the totem pole on Peckham Rye. And friends and blog readers with excellent memory will know that I moved into his house and found a lot to be very happy about. I started writing "Time Spanner" there, and imagined Martin and Graham living somewhere similar. It's the only home Morgan's ever known, and then last November, on my birthday in fact - the anniversary of Laika's first and only flight into space - I learnt that Lambeth Council were evicting him from it after forty years. It was his mother's council house, and his mother didn't live there any more. That's why I mention it. There was a fund to help him, a legal fund, and the legal fight may now be lost, but Morgan might be homeless this Winter is my point, and he helped save my life what I thought but now realise having checked wasn't ten years ago, and he took in everyone, and I love him, and money might still be useful. If you'd like to donate, go here.

In other words, this call to donate to an "artist's resistance fund" was posted too late. But there's a lot of bad news going round and I couldn't bring myself to add to anyone's fat upload of online grief at the time. So, sorry if that's all this news has done. But Morgan makes me happy, and an introduction to his work is always, I hope, a little like a chink of light. Heavens know we all deserve better, but Morgan most. Here.

And, you know, everywhere. That's a bin.

TIMESPANNER INITIAL MATERIAL

... in other words: whatever the opposite of bonus material is... in other words: the shows! This is a post to provide links to both episodes of Time Spanner now that they're off the Radio 4 site, with sneaky thanks to whoever put them up - long may they hang around - and extrovert, obvious and unending thanks to producer Gareth Edwards, narrator John Finnemore, baddie David Mitchell, goodie London Hughes, angels Belinda Stewart-Wilson and Sally Phillips, and cast of thousands Jeremy Limb. Share and, as ever, enjoy.

Part 1 - "Welcome to Heaven, Mr. Sorry" (broadcast January 7th, 2017) - can be heard HERE.
Part 2 - "The Dan in the High Castle" (broadcast December 21st, 2018) - is HERE.

TIMESPANNER BONUS MATERIAL: How not to recap.

 Happy Boxing Day! I hope everyone's been letting nothing them dismay. Heart-shaped thanks to all who've said nice things thus far about the new Spanner. "VonBlade" expresses hope that in "the next one" (if that ever happens) I might "spend less-time setting the scene for those who foolishly missed ep1." and while you may have a point, VB, I thought I'd put up the following exchange from the very first draft written back in March, to show just how much worse things could have been:

GABBIE                           Cool. But get some shoes. And not dinner lady shoes like you had.

MARTIN                          Brilliant! Yes! See you at six.

GABBIE                            (Cautiously) Cool. (Departing) Happy Birthday! Aww, thanks for stopping…

MARTIN                          This is a good idea.

ANGEL                            The shoes?

MARTIN                          Well I need shoes ideally, but – I mean if it starts raining, say – No, buck up, Martin! I need shoes.

ANGEL                            What happened to your shoes?

MARTIN                           Okay, retrace my steps: I definitely had them on when I brought my boss his tea, then he forced me through a magic mirror at gunpoint to find out how to bring back the dead and I was in Heaven – although I don’t really believe in Heaven – and I met you and we stole the Time Spanner because you said I needed to bring stuff back from the Future because my world was dying and you gave me a robot helper which I didn’t really want, sorry, but apparently Heaven’s full of robots, oh and there was something about how you once gave the Spanner to Hitler –

ANGEL                             Yes! Specifically that it wasn’t Hitler!

MARTIN                           Or if it was, that it was an accident –

ANGEL                              No! It was that it wasn’t Hitler.

MARTIN                           Sure, but that came a bit out of nowhere. Anyway! Then you stuck the spanner up my nose, into my brain, which is how you’re talking to me now, sent me back to Earth –

ANGEL                             The physical plane.

MARTIN                          “Plane” yes, the plane, but then I used the Spanner to go round the Universe back in time, just to check… not change anything, just check Gabbie hadn’t heard me say… nice things about her, which she didn’t, so that all seems fine, and everything seems great!

ANGEL                             And the shoes?

                                         Pause.

MARTIN                         Oh, I took them off to go through the mirror! That's it.

   

 I still like the joke. Ultimately though, it was decided that this first draft was a bit... well Gareth used the word "glib", but I prefer "easy to write". 

 While I'm posting bonus material, here from that same draft is a fuller description of the Cat-In-The-Bag, which I knew would almost definitely have to be cut down, but sometimes writing's just fun:

 

LAIKA                              The Cat in the Bag: Found furniture, peeling leather seating banks, fish-finger sandwiches, Connect 4, Buckaroo, a single chandelier rescued from a Streatham bordello, “Crash Test Dummies” on the jukebox by the Speak-Your-Weight machine, actual crash test dummies propping up the specials, a bowl of pens in the toilet, and – on the wall behind the stuffed lynx – a seven foot high monochrome mural of Ariana Grande in a hazmat suit.

(While it's an obvious stand-in for the Dogstar on Coldharbour Lane, the real inspiration for the Cat was the short-lived "The Rest Is Noise" which is now a TK Maxx, and – more recently– "the Hob" in Forest Hill, which recently reopened as the crushingly inorganic "Signal" a couple of years ago without a thought for... Christ, listen to me.)

Wanna feel old? Today was two years ago!

That's just Vauxhall.

I won't keep you long, this is just to confirm that "The Dan In the High Castle" - THE SECOND TIME SPANNER - is finally available to listen to here! And the first one's still listenable to here! (Thanks Kate, whoever you are.) Why not fill your ears with both and feel lush?
A bigger write-up about the new one to follow, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy it, I hope it's the one you wanted, you know, I hope 2018 hasn't completely killed you, and I hope that everyone reading this has a merry, merry VERY CHRISTMAS!

Thanks this Kate too!

Post something, you idiot, it's nearly May!

Well, this picture's nice and will brighten up the place. It's by Rhianna Evans – thanks, Rhianna – and bears an astonishing resemblance to the thing in my head. I love the oven gloves on Mr. Mergatroid (who I guess is the... matriarch?... which makes sense, as both Kraken and the Voice are patriarchs. And Mergatroid does move from one to the other. So, then I don't know, Gabbie's the craftsman, Martin's the clown? Does any of this work?) Sorry you've been out of the loop, blog, but there is to be a SECOND WHOLE EPISODE of "Time Spanner" to be recorded and broadcast later this year. Hazard a whoop! Not a whole series, mind, just another standalone, so if this story – very clearly begun on November the 3rd 2016 – is ever to be finished, it will have a pretty interesting shape (and will at least "span time"). John Finnemore hosted a read-through of a draft I wrote last week, and it turns out we won't be using that... Well, it could be better. And needs to be the best. Let's put it like that. Watch this – if you'll pardon the pun – space. Oh also, a Time Spanner fan blog has been set up which is absolutely full of tangential goodies, and is providing, for this writer at least, an incredibly useful resource/spur.

 Also, the show was repeated on the actual radio waves! But I'm too late to post a link to that. Sorry. Speaking of continued evidence of my existence, however: Series 4 of "That Mitchell and Webb Sound" was also repeated, for which I wrote some sketches that I'm very fond of, none of which appear in episode 6, however, which is the only episode still up on iplayer. Also, Series 3 of "John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme" is still mostly up, and still incredible. I can see that now unambiguously, this far on. Lucky for me.

 Finally, one more regurgitation: "Nightmare on Deskteeth Street", the surreal short about red boots that appears in my showreel, and whose filming I mentioned here, is now entirely visible on vimeo. Or below.

 

 

Anything else? Oh flip! Yes! WE'RE STILL GOING ON TOUR! As you were.