End of the Month Report: January 2013

Submissions: 7
Rejections: 3
Acceptances: 0
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild: 14
New stories completed: 1 (but it's pretty rough)
Mood: Not sure really. I'm too busy getting stuff done to worry about how the cards are falling. I was disappointed about one of the rejections - it was held until the final call and then didn't get in, and I really wanted that sale because the story has been out and about quite a few times and it was a cool publication that showed an interest in it - but otherwise, well, onwards and upwards. But then there was that matter of that Prime antho TOC sending me into the happiness stratosphere, which decidedly tips January into a big win month, so, all in all I'll go with a couple of great big :-) :-) s.

Virginia Chook

The Occasional Chook turned up rather late today at around 16.30. I was having an indoor nap, but immediately went out to say hallo. We had a joyous reunion, as I haven't seen her since last Wednesday.

These days, since she abandoned us after eighteen months of house sharing to sign up with the chickens two doors up (I'm still not bitter about it, honestly), we normally catch up with each other 3-4 times a week, usually Wednesdays and Sundays and then randomly whenever. I know she swings by most days - there's plenty of evidence of the poopy kind on the patio that I have to sweep up and wash away - but our busy schedules often clash. I have the Arvo Job and other commitments, she has whatever onerous duties she must perform as part of her new flock. Often, I hear demanding clucks outside the kitchen and barely have time to toss a handful of sunflower seeds out the window before I have to run for the train, and sometimes we can miss each other for long stretches of time and I wonder whether she'll keep popping by. So far, despite the uncertainty of treats and opportunities to run around the kitchen, she still turns up.

Initially, after she'd finally decided to move out, whenever she came back she was obviously agitated and most eager to be away again ASAP once she scrounged her favourite treats and had a quick dirt bath. I was almost going to rechristen her the Ungrateful Chook. I suspect she was worried she might lose her spot in her new flock if she went AWOL for too long. Chicken flocks are notoriously tough on newcomers, and demand much submissiveness and compliance from accepted members. A lot like humans, eh? Oh, all right, I'll back off - a lot like some humans. However, as time passed, and she obviously settled into her new digs and felt more confident about her place in the chook hierarchy there, she became visibly more relaxed about sneaking off to spend time here, and started to hang around for longer and longer. Now food is savoured, cats are followed about, the garden is patrolled and checked, and many many dirt baths are taken *sigh*. Last Wednesday, as I napped in the backyard on the Xmas Swing, she even settled down close by for a companionable snooze. It was very cute.

Personally, as a chicken of great individuality, I think she needs our place the way Virginia Woolf regarded a room of one's own as an absolute necessity for the stretching of one's creative spirit in the pursuit of writing. I myself regard my beloved Writing Room as the place where I most feel like my true self. But, quickly, back to the Occasional Chook before I ramble on about me. Here, away from the conformity of the flock, the Occasional Chook can indulge in her fondness for felines, checking out human abodes, running around on tops of houses and being bossy. She can basically strut about, let down her feathers and just be her own wild thing for a while before her need for the companionship of her own kind overwhelms her again and she heads back to once more submit to the totalitarianism of the flock. She needs them to be happy, can't live without them in fact, but she obviously really needs her own space away from the flock too.



Well, that's my rather read-the-obvious-writerly-subtext theory about the Occasional Chook's behaviour :)

The Nazis Win

Remember the Nazis Who Cheered Me Up post I wrote back in May last year? Probably not. Anyway, I do, because that was the day I got the bad news that things were seriously out of whack with my health, but a trip to the cinema afterwards to see the Finnish-German-Australian comic sci-fi movie Iron Sky helped lift my spirits. I've always been grateful for the many chuckles Iron Sky gave me then. Sometimes art helps us to see further and to understand more. Sometimes it simply makes us feel better on a bad day, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.


The reason I bring this up now? Simple. The movie has just won the AACTA Award for Best Visual Effects. Go team, and congratulations.

Now, I must hobble off to the Arvo Job (still sore from horse riding)

Pale Horses Pushing Envelopes

And lo, because you can never push a theme too far, I did ride not just one, but two pale horses yesterday, and behold, today I do feel like Death warmed over, but verily in a good way.

On the short morning ride with just my sister and myself, I rode my old friend M, who was feeling particularly full of oats and up for anything. All went well. The wildlife in the Wombat Forest was abundant, with butterflies everywhere, rabbits popping out and scampering off underfoot at inopportune moments, and little flocks of colourful parrots constantly erupting from bushes to startle the horses, all of which made for a fun, keep-your-wits-about-you time.

Then came the afternoon ride with my sister, myself on a very zippy buckskin I hadn't ridden before, and an experienced guide we knew well so we could gallop and wend amongst the trees without getting lost. This ride was longer and harder and faster, as always, and the one that I fully knew would push me from the fun zone into the when-will-this-agony-be-over place because I hadn't done an all-dayer since April 2012, before my medical woes began.

And so it did pass. The swift pace had me huffing and puffing, sweat was pouring from under my helmet and running down my face, and muscles everywhere soon began to play up. My calves right from the start hurt like heck, and got worse as the ride progressed, clenching into tight knots of excruciation. For the last hour and a half, my ankles turned to jelly. Every time we finished a fast bit of riding, I quickly slipped my feet from the stirrups to stretch my lower legs and rotate my ankles to ease the pain, luxuriating in the relief. All in all, I did not make for a pretty picture towards the end as more and more muscles gave out, so I rode at the rear to spare the others the sight of my legs swishing all over the place and my less than impressive seat. This unsteadiness was almost the undoing of me when a kangaroo bounded onto the trail and spooked the horses, but I did not fall off! And when I finally slipped from my horse and hit the ground again, my sympathy for beginners knew no bounds as I was reminded of how agonising it feels to be a riderly neophyte.

But I did it! Sookiness was not an option. I clenched my teeth and got through it, mostly because I knew I needed to get myself back into shape for a weekend of mountain riding my sister and I and one other plan to do in about two months. So today, with that goal still firmly in my mind, I must graciously pay the riding piper his dues and suffer soreness, stiffness, and screaming ankles that have me hobbling around the house in a most undignified manner until they warm up. All of this was expected, which was why a long weekend was chosen for the pushing of this particular envelope. And it was good to find out that I had energy enough to get through such a day and make it home again (I was carefully measuring my reserves as we went) though I did collapse into bed quite early last night, and slept in to a positively decadent hour this morning. But I did it!

Usually, on the train on the way home, given that I'm wearing joddies, schlepping gear and, no doubt, have more than a whiff of the barnyard about me, I get into many conversations with fellow horse lovers. Yesterday, as a nice addendum, I met two horse-and-book mad young girls. We talked about rides, ponies and what they were reading, and they showed me their My Horse games on their smartphones and bragged about their points. Lucky kids - I would have absolutely adored something like that at their age.

Behold How I Knew He'd Pick The Pale Horse

It's the Australia Day long weekend, so there's plenty to do out and about the countryside. Today we went nice and early to the 38th Fryerstown Antique Fair and rummaged around amongst goodies of both the genuinely collectible and the horrifically rubbishy sort, though, of course, one person's trash is...

Mostly at these affairs, it's just fun to wander around and look at all the lost stuff that used to have a place in other people's lives, stuff that used to belong somewhere before it was cast out into the cruel world to drift about for years in search of another safe haven. It's all a bit sad, really. One is practically assaulted by stories. And then there's the weird experience of suddenly coming across some overly cute nic-nac from your childhood but completely out of context on a stall table, and it's just a thing, not the amazing, almost living object you remember it being. Without the personal relationship, statues of donkeys pulling carts and dolls in glitzy dresses are just inanimate junk.

After that, we caught an afternoon session of Django Unchained. It's like watching Hamlet in that you know for sure there's going to be an awful bloodbath at the end. Anyway, enough has been written about this movie. The only new thing I can offer - and be warned this is a very mild and very silly spoiler - might not be a genuine observation at all, but the product of a horse-skewed mind desperately self-referencing. It comes from my being something of a palomino aficionado (just ask my sister). I notice all the horses in movies, but I especially sigh with joy when a particularly fine palomino trots across the screen.

 Anyway, after a certain scene put me firmly in a Blazing Saddles frame of mind, when we got to a later scene where there was a choice of horses for Django to take so he could ride back to reap his ultimate revenge, I anticipated for a good couple of minutes that he would take the palomino, because a golden horse is what Cleavon Little's sherriff very dapperly rides in Blazing Saddles. However, as said, this may be an entirely fanciful connection wrought by personal experiences in the palomino-obsessed hinterlands of my mind. But that wasn't my only reason for my betting on the palomino. Parallel processing an otherwise simple act, a pale horse, not a white horse, is also what Death, the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse rides. The fact that Django then rides the palomino without a bridle or saddle also has mythical resonance. Besides, any Western fan knows that the nameless stranger (again, Mr Death in disguise) usually rides into town on a pale horse. If he's called Bart or Bruce, he usually rides a dark horse. So lo, when Django did indeed take the palomino, I felt quite smug. Ah, the things that go through one's head at the movies.

And on that horsey note, I must go get some sleep soon. All the beautiful horse riding scenes in Django Unchained made me glad that I'm off on an all day ride tomorrow. Perhaps I'll even score my favourite pale horse for the morning ride. Crossing fingers.

I Would So Go To A Convention In Frontierland

Around the traps, assorted speculative fiction folk are starting to make plans for heading off to Conflux 9 - the 52nd National Science Fiction Convention, but would they, I wonder, be so keen to hit the road if it were being held in Aryan City rather than Canberra? Would you want to set foot in a town called Aryan City? On the other hand, I'd be quite excited about loading up the car and driving to Frontierland.

What has brought this on this apparent nonsense? Well, yesterday, on the way home, I read a version of this article, about the suggestions sent 100 years ago to the Federal Department for Home Affairs in the lead-up to Canberra's naming in the olden days of 1913.

So how about actually living in a place with over-the-Aussie-top and mighty cringe-worthy names like Kangaemu or Eucalypta or Boomerang City? Or ever so twee Harmony or Paradise?

Then there are the truly original but what-were-they-drinking-when-they-pulled-these-out-of-a-hat-and-stuck-them-together suggestions like Wheatwoolgold and, my favourite, Sydmeladperbriso (try saying that quickly), though I want to know why the heck Sydney gets to be the first part of that name! Unfair, Sydney-centric favouritism as per usual right from the very start!

I really must track down the entire list. I can see from the cut out featured in the article that there's even an Atlantis. How would that have gone down at international meetings, I wonder, no pun intended - the Hon. Representative for Atlantis, Australia. Would our politicians have had to wear special robes covered in symbols and mysterious looking space-wizard hats? If you come from Atlantis, you're almost obliged to be theatrical.

However, I do find the suggestion Australia extremely boring. Australia, the capital of Australia? What a waste of breath. Who was the drongo who came up with that one, I wonder.

Whale of a Week

Some weeks are dull affairs, just a matter of ploughing onwards through Real World crap and waiting for things to improve. Other weeks are so full of writerly good stuff that you want to frame them and hang them on the wall so they can cheer you up when you're having one of the aforementioned weeks.

Anyway, close on the heels of the stunning TOC bulletin of a few days ago comes the news (thank you, Steve, for pointing it out) that the 2012 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot has been posted here by the Horror Writers Association, and if you scroll down to the anthology section, you'll see a certain book that includes a certain short story of mine.

I'll say no more for now, except "Go, you good book, go!". Let's wait patiently for the Final Ballot to be announced on February 23.

Still, it's pretty exciting.

Have Moon, Will Travel

Over at The Book View Cafe, Steven Popkes has written an interesting and inspiring piece about private enterprise and space travel, using Heinlein's book The Man Who Sold The Moon as his launching pad.

On getting to the Moon, he writes:

I'm tired of one shots to places. Exploration is fine and I love it. Science is fine and I love it. But we need a space traveling culture. A space based industry. And we're not going to get that as long as long as we have to crawl out of the earth gravity well every time we turn around. Until that happy day we carve a hole in Vesta and use it to move around, the next best place to work is the Moon.

As per usual when I read such stuff, I wonder if I'll get to see us as a species heading in the right direction (upwards) before I shuffle off this very earthly plane.

I'd Like To Thank My Cats, My Chook, My Computer.

I'd like to send very big, individual thank yous to everyone who, by one means of communication or another, sent lovely congratses about my getting into Aliens:Recent Encounters. They're much appreciated. I feel like a rock/pop/movie star :) Well, almost.

And a HUGE thank you to Steve Cameron for posting about my good fortune on his blog.

I have to say that personally it's been an inspiring thing. I've been typing away for many hours this weekend - confidence tends to oil the writing machinery - and I almost feel brave enough to send my shiny new SF story off to one of the Big Three. Well, maybe after another edit or two.

Still, one must always bear in mind that like any of the arts, writing is an wilful and unpredictable business. Who knows when the next sale will occur, if at all, and whether one will be able to keep up with the market's zeitgeist, or even defy it and turn the world in a new direction! One that it didn't even know it wanted to go in before! Or not :) Underscoring the uncertainty of an artistic life, we went to see the movie Hitchcock yesterday, and I couldn't help but be amazed that a such an iconic director with so many hits under his belt still had such a hard time raising funds for a movie just because he wanted to do something different. Where is the trust, people? Conformity, alas, is the default setting of most money-people, be they filmmakers, gallery owners or publishers. That Psycho eventually became a classic is neither here nor there - it only hit the big screen because Hitch believed in it so much he financed it himself. Self publishing anyone?

And by the by, I read this morning that Sense and Sensibility was published at the author's own expense, so the late, great Jane Austen actually forked out all of her savings to get her first book published. I didn't know that. Or I'd forgotten. Anyway, it was only after sales of S&S went well (read by royalty etc) that a publisher finally, after many years (from 1797 until 1811 as far as I can ascertain from the article) of the manuscript sitting in the bottom drawer of an elegant escritoire, purchased the copyright to Pride and Prejudice for a scandalously small amount and, thanks entirely to her own belief in her own work, Jane Austen was well on her way to literary immortality.

So, the more things change...

Alien Encounters of the Thrilling Kind

I'll admit it - I've been popping over to Prime Books about twice a day ever since my story Nullipara was accepted for one of their upcoming anthologies just to see if they'd announced the TOC for Aliens: Recent Encounters yet. I was, naturally enough, curious about the company I would be keeping. Tonight I came home to an email from Thoraiya Dyer kindly pointing me towards editor Alex Dally MacFarlane's announcement of said TOC and cover reveal.

OMG. WOW. Unbelievable! Just feast your eyes upon the following very cool cover :

 And the TOC, just look at it!!!!:

An Owomoyela - Frozen Voice
Ken Liu - The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species
Catherynne M. Valente - Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy
Zen Cho - The Four Generations of Chang E
Vandana Singh - The Tetrahedon
Paul McAuley - The Man
Ursula K. Le Guin - Seasons of the Ansarac
Molly Gloss - Lambing Season
Desirina Boskovich - Celadon
Genevieve Valentine - Carthago Delenda Est
Caitlín R. Kiernan - I Am the Abyss and I Am the Light
Jamie Barras - The Beekeeper
Robert Reed - Noumenon
Elizabeth Bear - The Death of Terrestial Radio
Sofia Samatar - Honey Bear
Karin Lowachee - The Forgotten Ones
Jeremiah Tolbert - The Godfall's Chemsong
Alastair Reynolds - For the Ages
Brooke Bolander - Sun Dogs
Nisi Shawl - Honorary Earthling
Samantha Henderson - Shallot
Sonya Taaffe - The Boy Who Learned How to Shudder
Eleanor Arnason - Knacksack Poems
Gitte Christensen - Nullipara
Indrapramit Das - muo-ka's Child
Jeffrey Ford - The Dismantled Invention of Fate
Karin Tidbeck - Jagannath
Pervin Saket - Test of Fire
Nancy Kress - My Mother, Dancing
Greg van Eekhout - Native Aliens
Lavie Tidhar - Covenant
Yoon Ha Lee - A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel

Now I have to go sit down and fan myself. I mean, I'm going to be in an anthology with Ursula K. Le Guin! And all those other fantastic and prominent and clever writers I've read and admired for years. This is heady stuff for me. Looking at this list, I'm wondering how the heck I snuck in. Not that Nullipara isn't a good story, mind you... :)

OMG. WOW. Unbelievable!

Blog, Ho!

I've been "busy" easing into a new schedule that sets aside regular blocks of time for writing to whip my story producing output back into shape, and more hours of exercising my poor battered body to get it back into close-to-Olympic-athlete shape :), as well as getting to and through the Arvo Job (reduced hours help) and getting out and about for films and social stuff because those areas of life are important too, all without pushing myself into any fatigue zones that might hinder recovery. Stress is a no no too, so rushing about is verboten, as is siphoning off designated sleeping hours to do other things.

It's early days yet, but it seems to be going well (I just have to accept I can't fit in quite as many writing hours as I'd like, so I'm making the ones I scrounge really count!) except for the blogging component. But I'm on it. Once I work out how to slip the odd online natterfest back into my routine, she'll be apples.

Best Intentions Scuppered

My plans to set the tone for a productive 2013 by getting the first draft of a new SF story finished by the end of this week might have been foiled by an uncooperative train system. All this week, they've been doing track work. I no sooner get into my story than we're all bundled off the train, herded into a cramped, crowded bus (not good for writing) and driven the rest of the way. This also adds enough time to my commuting to make the work day feel unbelievably loooooong (*yawn* one more day to go).

Still, it's a goal I'd like to accomplish. And the story really wants to be written. Therefore, I shall try to scrape enough time together on the weekend to get the job done so that both I and the story are happy.

That Was That

Back to the Real World tomorrow, so I'd better start getting my head in the Arvo Job zone again. And think about getting to bed. Still, I'm wonderfully rested and it's been a good two weeks off. The first week involved a lot of socialising and some writing, and the second week involved less socialising and lot more writing. The upshot of this is that I have a shiny, new, spacey, potentially Hugo-winning ( hey, let's throw in a Ditmar too) SF story that I'm very pleased with weighing in at 8714 words (editing should bring it down to something more sellable)  and a lightweight fantasy with two demons and a gargoyle that'll sneak into the 3-4k category once it's polished. I almost finished a third (the ending is proving troublesome), and also tinkered with a few, half-done oldies, so all in all, not a bad effort.

And tomorrow, probably on the train, I'll start on a new story for an antho (not due for months yet) that I wasn't going to chase unless I got the beginning, middle and end of a story before attempting it, which happened today while I was washing the floors. I immediately downed tools and excitedly hurried into my office to jot down notes, then reluctantly returned to my way overdue chores. As much as I view cleaning as a necessary time-waster, strangely enough, I do often come up with ideas whilst wielding the paraphernalia of scrubbing. It's affirmation of the bored brain desperately seeking stimulation theory, I think. So yeah, this week's mission is to finish the first draft of a post-Singularity tale that as yet only exists in my head. Here's hoping that the nuts and bolts of it smoothly flow from my brain into my computer.

Ah holidays - so good for the soul.

Tiger Terrifies Tots

Warning: mildish spoilers.

Read the book and loved it, so yes, I was dubious about Life of Pi the movie for a long time, mostly because all the trailers just showed Pi and the tiger together in the lifeboat. If there were no other animals, what was the point? And the trailer also seemed so beautiful. Too beautiful. And maybe a bit too soft and feel-goody. I was thinking about not seeing this movie because I didn't want to go to that not as good as the book place, or launch into a how dare they (bloody Hollywood!) change the whole point of the story tirade.

Then I read reviews which mentioned other animals in the lifeboat and praised the way Ang Lee kept the core of Yann Martel's book intact, so off I went to the movies to make up my own mind about it.

I wasn't, it soon became apparent, the only one who'd been deceived by the trailers. It all started well enough with Pi's idyllic childhood and all those gorgeous shots of the adorable zoo animals they showed in the trailer. Lots of oohs and aahs and squeals filled the theatre because, well, there were children at the session. Small children of the just-past-your-knees age group that gets seriously frightened when tigers start doing, well you know, the sorts of things you expect tigers to do. Sensitive souls who acutely feel the pain of distressed animals on a movie screen. Protected tots who are not yet hardened to the realities of what being a carnivore entails. Parents began casting worried glances at each other. A couple in the row in front of us were constantly comforting their little, little, little girl, covering her eyes or explaining that it would all be fine (which was rather annoying for the rest of us). Why they didn't just leave when it became obvious this was not your average Disney boy-and-wild-animal-pal film, I'm not sure.

It was easy to tell that I, having read the book, was viewing the film differently than a good 95% of today's audience. If that sounds a bit condescending, what I mean is that this time round, I knew how the story was going to end while most of the people in the cinema were obviously expecting something else and accepting the film on face value, so they were in fact having the experience I had when I first read the book.

So really, I suppose the lovely trailer full of cute animals served a function in that it brought people who had not read the book to the film in the state of innocence/ignorance necessary to go with the unfolding of Pi's tale.

Pity about the traumatised kiddies though.

*Drats, my pictures for this post won't upload and I haven't got time to muck around. I'll try again later.
**13/1-13 - I still can't upload pictures from my computer (I hope this gets fixed soon), but I found a way to circumvent the system, he he he.

They Burst My Bubble, But I Fixed It

I was in the zone, writing, writing, writing, and then a letter arrived from the hospital saying that I had to head off to the city for a scan tomorrow. Tomorrow! Since I knew that I'm not due back there until March, this was either Bad News or a load of hooey. I was guessing it was the latter because I figured (hoped) someone would have informed me if it was the former.

Anyway, this is not a good time of the year for dealing with hospitals - everyone who possibly can is on holidays (usually the competent people the hospital want to keep happy) and rosters are up the creek - but I bravely embarked upon the endeavour. I won't bore you with the details, but simply say it involved a lot of toing and froing between staff who either didn't have a clue or didn't give a flying fig. Finally, I left a message with my usual medicos and then sat around waiting for a response. When they did get back to me, I was informed that my hooey theory was entirely correct. Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out.

When you get swallowed up by any sort of human system or institution, you really have to question what's going on. I worked in hospitals for over 12 years, and I can tell you that a passive patient can end up a dead patient. Anomalies left unchallenged can have big knock-on effects. Not because of evil intent or gross incompetence, but because some people are good at their jobs, but many are not, and others simply don't care. If you're a people-watcher, hospitals are both fascinating with their life-and-death dramas involving people of great dedication, smartness and superhuman efficiency, but also terrifying in that you can end up on dysfunctional wards where the either staff can't leave their personal lives at the door on the way in and the patient is viewed as the least important and most annoying part of the daily routine, or the place is a war zone full of bickering workers. Good material for soap operas, not so good if you're the one flat on your back in bed with tubes coming out of all your orifices. Neglect, passivity, fear of authority, back-stabbing teams, laziness, incompetence, miscommunication, all the usual interpersonal relationship problems that you get in any badly managed office also apply to badly run hospitals, but unfortunately their mistakes involve flesh and blood humans and can result in unnecessary funerals. So if you end up in hospital, question, question, question. Be a nuisance and live.

Ah well, it's done now. I can get back into my writing head space and keep on holidaying tomorrow. Yay! I did get to look over and  submit another 3 stories whilst waiting for my callbacks, so the morning hasn't been a complete waste. Now I'll hit the keyboard for a few hours of catchups. Big SF story, here I come.

My New Day Job (I Wish)

I worked hard at my writing all day, with the requisite breaks to make sure I don't get RSI or a bad back, had my dinner, am now updating my blog, and plan to go for a long evening stroll once I'm finished. By the time I get back from my walk, because I've done my full quota of writing for the day, and then some, there'll still be plenty of time for me to read, or visit or phone folk, or watch TV, or take a ride if I had a pony close at hand out in the backyard, or even join a sports club and kick goals if I so felt inclined.

So this is what it would be like to just have one job?

Every day.

Wow.

Bits and Bobs, Sense and Dollars.

The best thing about having holidays is that one has time for movies and long leisurely reads. Here are three things that recently caught my attention:

It was all about the money when Germaine Greer went after the publishing industry in her article Writers wonder if it's worth putting pen to paper :

Australian publishers are not doing their job, which is to manage the market. Their most obvious failure is in organising the merchandising of electronic texts. Online publishing is the most exciting development since the invention of printing. Properly orchestrated, it would make possible the publication of all kinds of books in all kinds of formats at reduced cost and hence with higher profit margins.

Australians have always paid over the odds for books and they have bought as many books per capita as any other English-speaking nation, so it is not readers' fault Australian writers cannot make a living. And it's not the writers' fault, either. Even the best Australian writers find that, given the escalating cost of living typical of a mining boom, they cannot keep up their mortgage payments unless they work their ticket around the literary festivals, teaching creative writing or even how to be a professional author.

Writers getting paid properly for creating the primary product that keeps afloat the mammoth industry that is publishing? What an outrageous idea. She's such a trouble-maker, that Germaine.

But writers aren't the only ones getting dudded, and the matter of money popped up again in the December 2012 issue of Cosmos in this quote from physicist and author Brian Cox, which had me going 'What? Can this be true? Well, that's outrageous. Get your priorities straight, World!':

When you look at the cost of sending a manned mission to Mars, it's less than the cost of the current financial crisis. You can contrast the amount of money paid: we spent more money bailing out the banks in Britain in one year than we've spent on science since Jesus.

Just once, I'd like to read about CEOs and financial barons fully bearing the consequences of their greed-fuelled actions and doing it tough. Seems to me it's all fun, excuses and superior attitudes about their perception of what makes the world go round, but no accountability.

Finally, at the movies last week, watching Wreck-It Ralph (which had me worried half way through because it seemed to me the film was preaching that we should be happy with our miserable lot even if other people are mean and nasty to us because upsetting the status quo will inevitably upset the social order and make those other thoughtless people miserable too, which I found offensively feudal. Fortunately, a more inclusive message that condoned a little shaking up of society to right such injustices ultimately prevailed), this now often quoted line excusing the gruff behaviour of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a highly armoured and beweaponed and certainly troubled female soldier from a sci-fi, high action, space bug-hunting video game was also the standout for me and made me laugh:

It's not her fault - she was programmed with the most tragic back story ever.

And boy, her back story as it unfolded was heartbreaking indeed. Every old chestnut in the tragic hero/heroine journey was presented with a comic SF twist.

Funny.