Wednesday, February 23, 2011

On approach

"Full speed ahead, Anton. Let's see if we can outrun those storm clouds."

"Aye, aye, Skipper."


And here she is, the Storm Brother. I've been wanting to do a sketch of the airship for a while now, to help with my visualisation of Nathaniel's ship. I'm not entirely happy with the gondola, but it does the job.

You can see the detail of the armour-plating on the underside of the gasbag - I rather like the idea of airships as warships, but cloth gives way a little too easily. The Storm Brother started life as an Elburzian Condor-class airship bomber, but the line was discontinued years ago and the surplus ships sold off. As an ex-warship, her gasbag is covered in 2-inch thick steel plating. Yes, despite all that extra weight, she can still fly! That's what a lightmass engine's for.

Phillip J. Johns

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Happy Valentines!

I had a lovely day on Monday.

We'd planned to go out for a meal, but the reality of expenses curtailed that idea, possibly not helped by the amount I spent on flowers - worth it though, just for the look on Heather's face when i gave them to her.

Still, despite things not quite going to plan, we ate a nice meal, drank a rather nice bottle of white wine, and watched Letters to Juliet on blu-ray.

Now, I'll admit that romantic comedies are one of my guilty pleasures, but I didn't think I'd enjoy this film when we first saw it. It seemed a little bit too ... gooey. But Amanda Seyfried is eminently watchable, Vanessa Redgrave is fantastic, and as for the setting, Italy in HD is utterly gorgeous. definitely a place to visit. Amusingly though, we kept expecting to see a white-clothed assassin scaling the towers. Damn you Assassin's Creed!

All in all, a lovely night.

I'm working on some sketches of the airship from my book, Liberator's Ruin at the moment. I've got the shape planned, so I might get round to doing a 3d drawing over the weekend. I'm not quite as good at drawing as I am at writing, but if I like it, it might make an appearance in my next post!

Note of interest this month: High Inquisitor armour is impervious to almost all forms of attack.
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Monday, February 14, 2011

Human Maintenance

I started this blog to talk about, among (many) other things, my writing. Which I've not done so far!

Anyway, after thinking about the effect of cybernetic replacements on a person's mentality, I came up with this little piece:

           "‘Adam, how are you feeling today?’
            Adam glanced up at the speaker, but stayed where he was, slumped on his sofa, glass of brandy on the small glass coffee table beside him. It was a woman, dressed in a smart navy business suit, her hands covered in leather gloves, and her blond hair tied in a loose ponytail. He ignored her and returned to gazing out the window. The sun was beginning to rise, bathing Leicester in an amber glow. Traffic along the London road into the city centre was building up, but it was still dark enough that all he could make out were the bright headlights zipping along the road.
            His apartment was on the eighteenth floor of Theston Towers, an apartment complex towering over the railway line. It afforded a commanding view over the city, but to be honest, Adam couldn’t really care less. It was still better looking out the window than talking to his clinic-appointed psychiatric engineer. It was annoying that the clinic had given her access to his apartment, a damned infringement on his privacy. Not that they cared, not after the level of surgery he’d been through. It was bad enough that he’d signed himself out three weeks early, but they’d only agreed as long as he would allow home visits. And he did. Anything, just as long as he could get out of that place.
            The door clicked shut behind her, and the woman strode across the apartment lounge, heels tapping out a rhythm on the laminate sheet floor. She stared down at him, one eyebrow raised in appraisal. He hadn’t moved from the sofa since last night, still dressed in a pair of loose trousers, fastened at the waist with a knotted cord. The knot was crude, but the best he could manage these days.
            She glanced at the windows. Abruptly, the glass opacity index increased until the view disappeared. Adam blinked as the apartment’s lights came on at the same time.
            ‘My name is Evelyn Sathwood, Adam. I’ve come to see how you’re doing.’
            ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said, curtly. ‘You’re here to do maintenance. Well go right ahead.’
            ‘That’s a funny way of putting it. Is that how you see yourself? As a machine?’
            Finally, he looked at her. ‘What else am I? Seventy-five percent of me replaced. Seventy-five. That means that only twenty-five is still human. I don’t even have my own heart anymore, just some lump of biotech. You could say I’m a little bit heartless.’ He laughed at his own joke before he sank back into his morose mood.
            Evelyn frowned at him. The accident had caused a lot of damage to his body, leaving a big, angry scar across the left side of his torso, and weals up his face as if he’d been badly whipped. His left leg had been replaced from the knee down, the prosthesis covered in a shiny black carapace. His arms had come off the worst; she’d read the reports, and he’d tried to shield himself from the explosion with them. When they finally dragged him from the ruins, there wasn’t much left of them except ruined stumps. Both had required amputation as the shoulder. Their replacements were clad in the same black carapace, between which she could see the carbon-titanium nanotube musculature. They had even replaced several internal organs, and before he’d checked himself out, he’d been in line for dermal enhancement.
            ‘You’re still a man, Adam, even if you don’t see it.’
            He snorted. ‘Whatever. You know I get drunk quicker these days? Less meat to soak up the alcohol, even with an artificial liver.’
            Adam reached for his glass. There was a faint whirr as his fingers closed around the glass. He had it halfway to his mouth when a loud crack­ rang through the air and the glass shattered, spilling its contents across his chest.
            ‘Great, another glass gone,’ he said, brushing the debris onto the floor.
            Accessing the apartment’s management routines, Evelyn detailed a pair of cleaning bots to deal with the glass. The little machines zipped out of their storage bays to hoover up the fragments and mop up brandy.
            While they worked, Evelyn pulled over one of the dining chairs and sat down in front of Adam.
            ‘You’re still having trouble with fine motor control.’
            ‘Oh wow, I can see why they sent you to see me. You’re really observant.’
            ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Adam.’
            ‘So they tell me. Do I look like I give a fuck?’
            ‘Obviously not. I’m here because I want to help you. Do you have to be so rude?’
            He looked at her sullenly. After a few moments, he finally relented. It wasn’t fair on her. She was just doing her job. ‘I didn’t ask for this,’ he said, gesturing at his prosthetics.
            ‘No one does,’ Evelyn replied. She tugged off her left glove, revealing an artificial hand. Unlike his, the surface was covered in bronze-coloured patterns, like henna-tattoos.
            ‘Oh.’
            ‘That’s why they sent me, Adam. They thought that you might react better to someone who understands your … condition.’
            ‘Got me all figured out, huh?’
            Evelyn smiled. ‘They do have your psyche record.’
            ‘Touché.’"

Well, that's all I have for now, but I'm seeing the glimmer of a story forming
           

I can see clearly now

Out my window, I can see perfectly clear blue sky, and the big tree outside my office window is illuminated by golden sunlight, as are the roofs beyond, the sun low enough that shadows cast from the individual tiles stretch across the rooftop. All in all, it looks lovely outside my window, and even though I know it's still cold, I'd much rather be outside. Except for this little thing called work. Oh well.

More pertinently today, Heather and I are off to view our first house/flat together! Well, to be fair, we've been living together now for 8 months, but as I'm a senior sub warden in university halls, the flat we have isn't technically ours, and quite honestly could do with a massive make-over. We're moving out in August, so looking now is a little premature, but it means we can get a good idea of what we'll get for our money. As long as it means we don't have students who sound like a heard of elephants living above us, I'll be happy.

I've not been writing much lately. The edit is still going strong, and should hopefully have that fully completed in a couple of weeks. I'm only picking out small faults now, so I'm going to leave the document alone when it's done. If I don't, I'll probably keep editing until it's completely different, and to be honest, I miss writing, so I'm quite looking forward to getting back to that. It'll be a bit of a change too - Liberator's Ruin is a science fantasy (I find that more interesting than straight fantasy, mixing magic and technology), whilst my next story, Serial Psyence, is a sci-fi thriller.

Watched some of the trailers for Deus Ex Human Revolution at the weekend. The music is definitely channelling a Tron: Legacy/ Daft Punk vibe, which I love, and unlike so very many sci-fi shooters, it's not grey! Admittedly, seen very little of the gameplay, so it's still up in the air as to whether it'll be any good or not, but I shall be keeping my fingers crossed.

Monday, February 7, 2011

An educated follower of gadgets

Let's get this out of the way now: I'm a technophile.

There, I said it. I love technology. There just seems to be something about those little oblong, flat, square, carved-out-of-a-single-block-of-aluminium, inside which is a vastly complex bundle of wires and chips, that fascinates me.

Even the idea of some next-gen kit gives me a nerdgasm. Recently, I read about this arm-mounted PDA with a flexible OLED screen for use by armed forces. And what was the first thing I thought of? How awesome that would be as part of a spacesuit's gauntlet, showing his/her telemetry readouts, or maybe combined with a wrist-mounted scanner, so the screen displays the results from a mineral survey.

See what I mean? I could wax lyrical about something like that for ages. But then, out of little things are born big ideas. Imagine a mining ship, holding station above a potentially mineral-rich asteroid. The survey team jet down to get a closer look with geo-scan arrays, looking for the perfect spot to set up their drill.

Hmmm, I feel a story coming on ...

What I'm listening to: Sherlock Holmes soundtrack (still - it's the perfect music to listen to whilst I'm editing)

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

In space, no one can hear you curl up into a little ball


Been playing Dead Space 2 for the past few days (with the headphones on – my girlfriend doesn’t like the sound of necromorphs and corpses being squooshed). Bizarrely, turns out I talk to the undead, misshapen, mutated corpses that are trying to kill me. How odd.

I’m really enjoying it, though bizarrely, I’ve not been finding it that scary so far. Well, at least until Isaac reached a certain old ship. The sudden lack of necromorphs, or any sign of people is really getting to me. I’m expecting an attack any moment, and that freaks me out far more than the actual enemies. Had to switch back to Red Dead Redemption before I went to bed to calm down.

Yeesh, what a wuss.

Also been spending quite a bit of time working on the website, trying to get all the bits and pieces together – should be published in the next few days. Quite looking forward to that, actually. I’m rubbish with html and coding of any sort, so thank Fate for point and click online web builders.

Final edit of my book is going well, though I did discover a stupid little error in an early chapter. One of the early chapters that has been sent to agents. D’oh!

Ce’st la vie.

I’m listening to the Sherlock Holmes soundtrack a lot at the moment. I guess it has something to do with the style of music, but it really feels just right for the style of my world. That and I really like string music.

Right, back to fighting those blasted necromorphs!

Phillip J. Johns