chrisbutler

I've been doing some googling, trying to find out more about the photo/painting of 'Cousin John' who was a Battle of Britain pilot. And in my meanderings on the net, I stumbled across The Battle of Britain Campaign Diary. It's a very comprehensive RAF web-site which has all the detail you'd ever want about the campaign and how it was fought. It's a fantastic tribute to the people involved.

Most fascinating is the section entitled Daily Reports. I started browsing, thinking of a couple of incidents from my parents' memories which I might just stumble across - RAF Ford being bombed while my father was stationed there and my mother's account of an RAF pilot staying in his damaged aircraft to steer it clear of the school she attended (Bolton, Lancs).

The Daily Reports contain all the statistics of a 24 hour period: numbers of aircraft in the air, numbers shot down, casualties, squadrons involved, aircraft movements, but most striking are the Home Security reports. These detail the consequences of the attacks and ... words fail me.

Here's a link to the page which lists the information collected for 6th September 1940.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/september6.html

The Home Security 'Detailed Summary' is just mind-boggling in its matter-of-fact listing of the results of just one night of what was months of this level of activity. I'm trying to take on board just how much of the country was affected by this - I've seen other reports of bombs being dropped at Burnham-on-Sea and Axbridge, and I think this was just dropping the bombs that hadn't been released on target, wherever they could on the way back. But still, the iconic pictures are of city streets in ruin and of the London skyline outlined by fire, not small country towns. Axbridge may have had its reservoir at the time, but Burnham is a small seaside town (with the shortest pier in the UK) http://www.burnham-on-sea.com/webcam/ which just happens to be on the coast of the Bristol Channel opposite Cardiff (for aircraft on their way back to the English Channel).

I'm also impressed by the amount and detail of information that was gathered. Given how sparse information can be about modern events, this is extremely impressive. As is the thought that every day, people just picked themselves up and got on with their lives.

I am in awe of my parents' generation.

... and a positive post-script. In 1970 my parents took us abroad with the caravan and we drove through to northern Italy to a gliding club where we made casual contact with a German family, who had slightly more english than we had german, but their children were of a similar age to me and my brother and we all liked the swimming pool. And in broken english, the german father explained that he had been a messerschmidt pilot during the war. As my father has always been mad-keen on aircraft (why he joined the RAF at 16) this actually made them instant friends and several very enjoyable days were spent with my father sharing his home-made wine and swapping tales of the war with his new friend. :)

Very sad news indeed.

Robert Holdstock was one of the finest British fantasy writers, author of the seminal Mythago Wood amongst several other notable novels.

More at: http://news.ansible.co.uk/ansilink.html

Finished reading Patricia McKillip's Solstice Wood. While it was a slight McKillip novel, it gave me some structure ideas about the longer piece I'm current working on. Plus, one of the characters is named Iris.

Saw the movie The Road. The spareness McCarthy's prose doesn't translate well to the screen. The imagery is stunning, the performances are moving. The score, by Nick Cave, is surprisingly sentimental and undercuts the darkness of the source material.

I am looking forward to seeing/hearing Imogen Heap live tomorrow. Heap is an electronic artist that smashes together Jane Siberry like lyrics with music the references bubblegum pop, avant garde Laurie Anderson sounds and glitch pop.

From Ansible:

Robert Holdstock (1948-2009) died at 4am in the morning of Sunday 29 November, having been in intensive care since his collapse with E. coli infection on the 18th . He was only 61 and will be much missed. All sympathy to Sarah and the rest of the family.

*

Rob was a good friend of mine. He was very supportive throughout Charles' illness and death (we were with Rob at a convention in Nantes when I first started to suspect that C was seriously ill), and continued to be supportive when T had cancer. He was, moreover, a lovely man and a very good writer - I first read one of Rob's novels when I was in my early teens and it had a major effect on me. I am, frankly, gutted.

Please read this and sign the petition. Please pass it on, too.

http://www.fourwaystospeakout.com/

I am SO not allowed to watch nature documentaries anymore.

Yesterday morning, Patrick took out MrD to give me a chance to rest after an awful night of interrupted sleep. I looked on the BBC iPlayer and saw that there was an episode of Natural World available called "Bringing Up Baby". It was all about mothers and babies in the wild.

Oh good, I thought. I should find that interesting.

When Patrick got home an hour later, I was sobbing uncontrollably.

"...and the mother lion was roaring and fighting to protect them, but then he killed her babies in front of her and she was in so much agony as she had to watch...and then the penguin mother couldn't get back with food fast enough, and her baby was dead!...and then...and then..."

Patrick finally managed to interrupt. "Why in God's name would you watch that documentary?"

I blew my nose. "Well, David Attenborough was narrating, so I knew it would be good...and I thought that episode would be the most topical one for me, since I'm bringing up a baby right now..."

It was a bit too topical for either me or my hormones to cope with, it turns out. On the plus side, I feel very grateful to have been born human, after watching that film. But I'm going to feel emotionally shattered for a long time whenever anyone mentions lions...or penguins...or fur seals...or lemurs...or far too many other kinds of animals!

Those wildlife documentaries are NOT a good idea for mothers of babies to watch. They really ought to come with warning labels.

***
In completely more uplifting news, though, there are still two days left to enter my Thanksgiving giveaway! And Joan Bauer's Squashed has only ever made me laugh, even after watching traumatizing documentaries. ;)

• 09:48 Pie for breakfast--an annual tradition. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Words written: 1074
First line of the day: He squatted at the side of the stream, dipping his hands into the water.
Today's theme: musings on dreams, and the introduction of a key character (Cadog).
Diversions: 10 minutes spent scouring my academic shelves for WATU (Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units), one of those reference books you need maybe once a decade, but then *really* need. But which no-one every reads (it's a list. With some maps).

Skirt of the day: black flouncey

Question of the day: Why do I like Raja Hindustani so much (other than the music. The music is splendid and obviously likable)? But the film: I mean, I really shouldn't. The level of violence towards women is worrying and the hero's uncontrolled temper is scary. And yet I love it dearly.

And yay, our boiler is fixed and no longer leaking and the house is less freezing that it has been. (The two may well, I feel, be connected.)

Hadley Rille Books was born four years ago.

The first three who reply and wish HRB "happy birthday" get a free signed copy of Origins, to be released in early December.

And remember, books make great gifts.

Several years ago, our first title, Golden Age SF: Tales of a Bygone Future, got several nibbles from publishers and one alomst picked it up, but after a year and a half of pitching it with no takers, I decided it needed to be published (I mean, geez, Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote the foreword for me) and so began Hadley Rille Books. (Edit: Amazon just discounted the price on this to $11.64, not bad for a trade paperback.)

Warning: Bragging Ahead...

Since then we have published 16 titles and our 17th, Origins, will be released next week.

We have published almost 200 authors from all over the world: New Zealand, Australia, France, Greece, Switzerland, Netherlands, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, Canada, Argentina, United States, and Kansas (which my college friend from Connecticut said wasn't part of the USA).

Our titles have earned critical acclaim and recognition from many including Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, Locus, the Fix, SFSITE, Gardner Dozois, David G. Hartwell, Kate Forsyth, Rich Horton, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert J Sawyer, Ian Randal Strock, Chris Gerrib, Nick Gevers, Eugie Foster, Steven H Silver, Richard Chwedyk, Jack Dann, Dean Wesley Smith, and many others.

I've edited most of the books, but I've worked with other great editors including Wendy S. Delmater, Jude-Marie Green, George Zebrowski, Z.S. Adani, Gerri Leen, Jay Lake, Adam Nakama, Gregory Benford, Kim Vandervort, Rob Darnell, Chris Fletcher, Brandon Bell.

The most satisfying thing at Hadley Rille Books is that we get to be the first to publish some authors who then gain recognition for their work, and who go on to be published elsewhere (including by large publishing houses), some of them becoming prolific writers. Ask any editor and she/he will tell you that is a most gratifying feeling.

Special thanks to all the authors and editors I've worked with and to all those who have submitted work to us, in which you've put so much effort. That is very much recognized here. Let's keep it going!

Soon I'll post about new projects for 2010.

Read often and go carefully...

Hadley Rille Books

I've just found out another one of my stupid captions has made the front page of ihasahotdog.com. (That's the second one this week.)

I thought I'd posted that particular picture here before, but on looking back over previous entries, it seems I didn't.

So here it is (with a bit missing off the bottom of the picture, thanks to my continuing problems with embedding, but it doesn't matter too much this time as the caption is across the top).



FWIW, it's the companion piece to this one, which I posted here a few weeks ago. (I did the two of them at the same time as a kind of mini soap opera.)

The Aether Age anthology

Hadley Rille Books will publish The Aether Age, edited by m-brane sf's Chris Fletcher, and author Brandon Bell, to be released in 2010.

Guidelines.

Suppose that the course of human history had been different. Suppose that over five thousand years ago, something happened in the Mediterranean basin, and perhaps all over the planet, that took all of human progress on a radically different path. Suppose, also, that something was different with nature itself and the Earth moved through space, shrouded in a vast life-sustaining cloud of unknown origin. This is a world where the printing press was used to propagate the philosophies of ancient Greece, where Pharaohs sailed in airships as Egyptian imperial grandeur reached its height, where mechanized armies clashed on the battlefields of Mesopotamia, and where interplanetary space itself came within the reach of brilliant, struggling humans all those centuries ago.

m-brane sf
Hadley Rille Books | ericreynolds

For those who haven't already heard through the grapevine, the results of the Match-That-Artwork Contest are in.

I was, as always, fascinated to see how divergent the opinions of different readers were. No two judges had the same favorite story, and in some instances one judge's least favorite was another judge's top runner. Which all goes to show that writing is about matching up your story with the right audience, and that just because five top-tier markets have rejected your manuscript doesn't necessarily mean that the sixth one will.

We'll have the two winning stories up and accessible on AnthologyBuilder as soon as cyborgly possible. In the meantime, have a happy Thanksgiving!

• 22:13 @rajanyk I am sorry to hear that. I wish you and your family the best during this holiday season. It's tough... #
• 09:54 The autumn mists of Hona Lee have enveloped the silent city. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter