Tag Archives: travel

Sacrificing the alien

I was going to post this last week but I was too excited by the Artemis launch…

The first time I went to Spain it seemed so alien.

It was the first place I’d ever flown to. Stepping off the plane I was hit by a wave of heat: I didn’t release that the climate would change so much in just three hours travel (in those days it took a lot more than three hours to travel by train to London from my home).

I didn’t know anything about Spain. Beyond such basics as adios and gracias, I didn’t know the language. I didn’t even know everyday words like salida, cerveza and chorizo.

The food was unfamiliar, the meals were lacking warming carbs, they didn’t come with potatoes, two vegetables and gravy. You didn’t order your drinks at the bar; you sat at a table and waited for a waiter to take your order.

But it was the heat that I remember above all else. The way the day was turned around, so you stayed inside at midday and went out at night, you closed the curtains against the sun and opened them to the stars. My three thick jumpers stayed in the suitcase for all ten days.

But that was a long time ago.

I’ve just got back from a week in Tenerife. You might have seen on the news that the island was lashed by storms. We were on the south of the island so we didn’t get anything like the trouble up north, mainly just a lot of rain and the occasional lightning storm.

But now the tables were turned, my Spanish friends.

As you stood in doorways holding out your hands to feel the raindrops, we happily strode out in our raincoats. As you shivered in the night we put on the jumpers that we still bring with us as we’ve never managed to break that habit.

We were feeling quite smug until the sea flung a bunch of jellyfish at us as we walked along the front. I took a picture of one (you can see it attached to this post) and sent it to my friend. He said it was actually a Portuguese man o war and very dangerous. Bearing in mind they now seem to be engaging in aerial attacks I’d say he had a point.

Things were quite light hearted to begin with. But then there were the power cuts, the loss of water. Roads and schools were closed, emergency shelters were set up for the homeless… Whilst we were on holiday eating salted sea bass, the locals were adapting to extreme events.

At the end of the week we flew back to England. It seems a bit heartless to say it, but we had a good time despite all the troubles the locals suffered. Essentially, we did our best to make what was happening around us normal, we related it all to our everyday experience. We sacrificed the alien for the sake of comfort.

Don’t judge us. You would have done the same.

Newton Aycliffe: The Town of the Future!

There’s an article in the Guardian about my home town, Newton Aycliffe. The shopping centre is owned by a billionaire businessman. Over half the units are empty, the ones remaining are mainly owned by the big chains. Local shops are left to die.

This wasn’t really news to those of us who came from Aycliffe. When I was growing up it was often said that the rents for shops in the town were higher than those in Oxford Street, London.

I wrote about Newton Aycliffe in Midway. The ownership of the town centre wasn’t the only example of a monopoly. You can read in that book how television aerials weren’t we allowed on roofs and so we had to rent televisions from the same company. That company owned a huge TV mast at one end of the town, it funnelled BBC and ITV to homes via cable. The picture quality was poor, but if this was your first television, how were you to know that?

This was the 1970s. There was no internet, many people didn’t have cars. Our closest big towns were Darlington and Newcastle. All we knew of the world came from newspapers, television and the radio. And books of course. My mother was the town librarian. All we knew was what was all around us, and so that seemed the natural order of things.

Looking back on my childhood it seems like I grew up in one of those towns you get in SF movies. At first, a seemingly idyllic place, but things aren’t what they seem. There are dark forces at work, hidden in the background. Walk by an open door and you get the occasional glimpse of something strange lurking in a room. You see mysterious trucks rolling along the railway at night, there are lights in the sky…

Newton Aycliffe was supposed to be the town of the future. Quite an appropriate place for an SF writer to grow up in, I suppose. When I was a child I imagined aliens and evil supervillains everywhere. But as you’ll see from the article the truth is both far more mundane and ultimately depressing.

As is so often the case, something built with the best intentions ends up being exploited by those whose only motivation is profit.

‘You’d be ashamed to bring someone here’: The struggling billionaire-owned high street that shows Reform’s road to No 10 | Communities | The Guardian

The Arctic-Alpine Pea Mussel

I heard the Arctic-Alpine pea mussel mentioned on Radio 4 earlier this week when they were discussing the three thousand species in Wales that now exist in five places or fewer. I don’t want to diminish the struggles of the pea mussel but I couldn’t help but think it might not be so endangered if it weren’t quite so picky about its choice of ecosystem.

Or maybe not. Thinking about it, I suppose there are lots of cold streams in high up places. The name tells you something about the creature.

Rather like the glutinous snail, which I heard mentioned on the same program. At first, I thought I’d misheard this one so I looked it up. It wasn’t mentioned in the accompanying article, but after a little more googling I found an article about the snail here.

Reading about creatures like these doesn’t make me wonder why writers bother to invent aliens and fantasy creatures. There are very good reasons for this which I’ve talked about elsewhere, and I’m sure I’ll talk about in the future.

But it does make me wonder yet again why writers make up names.

If a group of glutinous snails have just slithered down the ramp of their flying saucer and demanded to be taken to our leader, why would they confidently announce that they were the K’Kzzlia?

They’re snails. They don’t have tongues and teeth. They wouldn’t have the ability to make K and Z sounds. They do, however, have the ability to build a machine that can translate their language into English (assuming they’ve landed in an English speaking country). So why doesn’t that machine just introduce them as the Glutinous Snail People of Betelgeuse 5?

I hate made up names. They’re overused by beginner writers to lend an air of exoticism to their world building. They end up just confusing people. Worse, they muffle the drama.

I quickly become bored reading stories where Oolma rides a Vlurp through the gates of Mlzra in search of the stolen Glevar of the Throom. Wouldn’t it be far more exciting to say that Emma rides a horse through the gates of the dungeon in search of the stolen daughter of the King? Call your smeerp a rabbit and have done with it.

The thing about most exotic names is that they aren’t actually very exotic. I thought that Suidobashi in Tokyo sounded enchantingly strange when I stayed there. It turns out that Suidobashi just means aqueduct bridge.

And as every expectant parent poring over lists of baby names knows, everyday names can have some rather exotic meanings.

For example, Tony means “priceless one” or “highly praiseworthy”.

That seems about right to me.