Just spent a couple of days climbing here – my first outing on real rock for about four months, my first bout of serious climbing indoors or out for at least three. At my age you pay a price for that – I am sunburnt, tender at the fingertips and toes, a mass of tightly aching muscles and minor cuts and bruises, and it feels fucking great!!! Never realised just how much I missed those small, judicious doses of pain and being scared shitless.
Also feeling great about:
1) Pete Holmstrom of the Dandy Warhols got in touch and asked if I’d like to reprise my fictional biogs for the band on their new album, This Machine, which comes out next month. Slightly trickier work for me this time around, since there was no SF theme to the new stuff. But working off one of the stand-out tracks from the album, some fresh publicity shots of the band, and chasing my recent penchant for Implication rather than Spell Out, I came up with this. Enjoy.
2) The Cold Commands gets nominated for yet another award it cannot possibly hope to win – but please vote anyway 
3) Y’know, the whole fatherhood thing – just gets deeper, more intense, more wonderful with every passing week. Getting back into Ringil Eskiath’s grim, murderous shoes is harder work these days, definitely……..
What would happen if Ringil was directly responsible for the life of a baby for … let’s not say a day. That would be pushing it. An hour? Five minutes? Could he cope? Would he?
Having a child, you feel like you’d unknowingly been living in a 2-D world, and suddenly the world has become 3-D.
Where you are in Spain, are there millions and millions of stars that you can see?
Maybe you can make a whole book out of the blurb you wrote for the Dandy’s…
I didn’t know that you climbed, although I had wondered, what with Ringil bridging and foot-jamming his way into that temple. What routes and grades? The first outside climb of the year was postponed in Derbyshire last weekend. 13C on Friday, snow on the Sunday.
Yeah, been an addict since 2003, but I’m very much a recreational sport climber Living in Scotland has meant climbing mostly indoors where the best grades I’ve ever hit have been 6b+ and a couple of very debatably graded 6cs. My indoor comfort zone tops out at 6a+. Out on real rock the best I ever managed was also a 6a+ (Ben-y-Beg, Perthshire), but the grading in El Chorro is savage by comparison and I was on 5s most of the time. Tried one 6a but failed on it dismally. There again, I’m pitifully out of condition at the moment – will have to go back when I’m a bit better prepared for the challenge. It’s beautiful rock, in an equally beautiful setting – you could spend months there and not run out of routes.
“I am sunburnt, tender at the fingertips and toes, a mass of tightly aching muscles and minor cuts and bruises, and it feels fucking great!!! Never realised just how much I missed those small, judicious doses of pain and being scared shitless.” ..
I guess there’s a little Ringil in all of us …
Yeah, regarding the climbing, with some of the Kovacs scenes I had wondered about that.
I did a bit as a teen. I remember that coming back to it after a break, the first week or so really blows, getting your arms and hands back into shape. Looks like a sweet climb out there!
Well you’re burning me off! Not surprised it’s so tough in Spain though, they do seem to produce some strong men and women (Dani Andrada etc).
My indoor wall (Nottingham) grades its routes using UK technical grades for some reason. I boulder at around 5b/5c but can’t lead anything inside harder than 5a. I’m lucky enough to live near the Peak so I can get onto ‘proper’ rock most weekends, weather permitting. All the low end (below 6a) sports routes are polished to hell and tend to be in grotty quarries so I usually huff and puff my way up grit where at least you have the consolation of glorious views, short walk-ins and ice cream vans! I’ve set myself the target of becoming a solid VS leader and of seconding HVS and E1 by the end of the summer. This is the fifth year in a row that I’ve set this target so I’m pretty consistent. If you’re in the area give me a shout. I could rustle up some good partners if I’m not free myself.
I did manage ‘Brown’s Eliminate’ at Froggatt (E2, 5b) on top rope a couple of years ago. Great route but no gear after half way – Paul Williams, the Welsh climber and guidebook author died soloing it in the 80′s. The hardest leads last year were a bunch of HS 4b routes on grit and limestone and I dogged my way up some horrid VS 5a at Stanage.
In retrospect, I should have known from your writing that you had personal experience rock climbing. Are you capable of any of the overhang shenanigans performed by Ringil and Takeshi’s geckobody? (Obviously, I will not hold it against you if it turns out that you are not matching the feats of fictional heroic protagonists.)
Have done a few fairly savage overhangs indoors at the Glasgow Climbing Centre, and a few outdoor climbs where the rock bellies out the way it’s described in Woken Furies and The Cold Commands (though on a far smaller, less dramatic scale) – but nothing anywhere near as sustained as the books describe. Oh yeah, and I always had a rope and extenders and was on pre-bolted routes in broad daylight (or halogen overheads). By rather awesome contrast, Gil and Kovacs both have to free-climb and in the dark – and Gil has to do it with a fucking great broadsword on his back!! No comparison, I’m afraid
Well its a long time since I was dragged up anything by my brother – but I do have fond memories of 1980 of the Cioch Slab in the Cullins when a thunderstorm started.
But I certainly wasnt up for this technical stuff.
Glad to see Cold Commands is also being published by Subterranean – I shall just have to get a copy to match Steel Remains. Thats a nasty looking knife on the cover!
Has anyone seen the new full trailer for Prometheus?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHcHYisZFLU&feature=player_embedded
The artistically superior sensibility of a European cast/director backed by the financial muscle of the American studio system. This film could be something special.
Man, I was sure you were a climber! Take it from me, a father of two and a rock climber (plus scifi aficionado): pretty soon you’re gonna have to work out a deal with your wife about when it’s and it’s not a suitable moment to take a day off to climb. I don’t go beyond 6a on sight, and I’m scared shitless most of the time. If you happen to drob by Turin, Italy, sometime, be sure to email me, I’d be happy to take you for a climb together…
By the way, I’m a churchgoing Roman Catholic and I love every single book you wrote… What do you tink of that?
“By the way, I’m a churchgoing Roman Catholic and I love every single book you wrote… What do you tink of that?”
Never had reason or occasion to mention this before, but ditto here. Roman Catholic, huge fan. Hope that means we all can still be cool and hang out!
@ Francesco & James
“By the way, I’m a churchgoing Roman Catholic and I love every single book you wrote… What do you tink of that?”
I think it’s weird, to be honest. But thanks
Then again, Catholicism is such a monolithic faith that I think adherents (in the developed world, at least) are forced to seek an intelligent personal re-interpretation of doctrine in order to live in anything like a modern context. Whereas the Protestant model is predicated on “Fuck you and all these Immutable Holy Laws I don’t agree with. I’m out of here – gonna start my OWN church (and draft my own Immutable Holy Laws to go with it!)”
@ John
Yeah, I’m stoked too – killer cast, killer director and production crew. Could be something really special indeed.
But……
I confess to a couple of niggling worries:
First, is it just me, or does all the buzz about Massive Archetypal Themes, the Very Origins of the Human Race etc etc…. seem a bit overblown?
I mean, the original Alien was so humanly small-scale and scruffy – a tired, grumpy, half-assed freighter crew get tossed into a maelstrom of corporate betrayal and environmental hazard. All they want is to get home in one piece and get paid. Then all they want is to get home in one piece. Then all they want is not to die. Powerful thematic narrative ensues, embedded in these very mundane concerns.
I worry that Prometheus, in shooting for Massively Meaningful, is going to run the risk of coming off bombastic.
Secondly (and related, I think), is it just me, or does explaining the derelict, the space jockey and the eggs rob them of a lot of their power?
I know, I know we all want to know – but therein lies the power of the original movie; it’s an unrequited desire. We never do find out what that shit was all about, and that’s what makes it sublimely creepy and mysterious. Maybe the space jockey was the last remnant of just another grumpy half-assed freighter crew just trying to get home and get paid – a million years ago. Or a thousand, who knows? Maybe his kind are gone, maybe they’re not; maybe we’ll meet them round the next corner. Maybe the eggs were a random hazardous cargo, maybe an infestation, or okay, yeah, maybe a weapon and the space jockey some kind of biological warfare bomber pilot. Or maybe the xenomorphs and eggs are some part of the space jockey race’s own lifecycle that somehow got out of hand. It’s all maybes, and that’s what lends it power: We Will Never Know. The universe is ancient and infinite and strange – feel its cold breath on the nape of your neck.
By offering an explanation, by actually solving the mystery, you undercut the chill of Not Knowing – AND you run the risk of your explanation being nowhere near as cool or scary as the audience’s own various speculations on the subject. So your explanation needs to be Pretty Fucking Chilling and Cool, if it’s going to deliver over and above those risks it runs. I worry that it won’t be, that in fact it’ll be trite and Scy Fy channel dumbed down.
Truly hope I’m wrong, on both counts.
Wow, you’ve clearly put a lot more thought into this than I have. If Prometheus was being directed by some random hollywood hack then I would be in total agreement with you but Ridley Scott? Returning to the movie and genre that made his name? I have to believe the man is smarter than that.
I like the idea of the new movie because they are taking a property that has been abused and raped to death by the worst kind of cynical hollywood hackery (Alien vs Predator – SHIIIIIIIIIIIT) and they are restoring it to its rightful place in the sci-fi pantheon. At least that seems to be the intention. From the look of the trailer they have certainly created some very arresting imagery. Now if the story can just measure up then as I said we could have something special here.
From the interviews I’ve seen with Ridley he appears genuinely confident that the script is an absolute crackerjack. Intelligent, original and not at all what people will be expecting. I gotta say the guy has me convinced. At the very least I think the movie will be good, hopefully great.
I also like the fact that the original will apparently only serve as a jumping off point for Prometheus. Although it will be set in the same universe it will (so they say) be very much be its own movie, go its own way and stand on its own feet. Great idea and exactly what more prequels/sequels should be doing instead of just retreading the same tired old tits every time.
“Charles Stross writes like an internet puppy: energetically, egotistically, sometimes amusingly, sometimes affectingly, but always irritatingly, and goes on being energetic and egotistical and amusing for far too long,” he continued. “You wait nervously for the unattractive exhaustion which will lead to a piss-soaked carpet.”
Christopher Priest.
Mr Priest is very VERY unhappy about the shortlist for this years Arthur C Clarke Award:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/29/arthur-c-clarke-award-christopher-priest
You have to admire his bracing honesty.
Mr Morgan, as a writer who is not afraid to court controversy and a former winner of said prize do you think Mr Priest is to be congratulated for telling it like it is or dismissed as suffering from a bad case of grumpy old man syndrome?
It seems Mr Morgan has gone rock-climbing again.
In other sci-fi news the full length trailer for the rebootmakequel of Total Recall has just been released:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GljhR5rk5eY
Looks interesting enough. With a price tag of $200 million no doubt it will be toned/dumbed down from the original but it should still be worth a look if only as a mindless popcorn flick.
Mr. Morgan, gracias por sus libros. El primero (Altered Carbon)lo leí estando destinado en Kirguistán en una base aérea americana durante los comienzos de la guerra en Afganistán. Estaba aburrido en la biblioteca americana y encontré ese libro(hará ya muchos años) por casualidad. Me enganché. Literalmente.
Con el tiempo, tuve oportunidad de comprar y leer todos sus libros. A pesar de ser un lector compulsivo y tener muchos (demasiados) libros en mi biblioteca particular, posiblemente los suyos hayan sido los más leídos en mi vida.
Con el tiempo, y al volver a leer varias veces sigo viendo matices nuevos. quizá sea porque al ser español y leerlos siempre en inglés necesite varias pasadas para coger el significado completo. su manera de escribir es, cuando menos, intrincada. Quizá la palabra adecuada sea retorcida. Y a un extranjero, le cuesta entenderla.
Por lo demás, gracias de nuevo, y una petición. Puede que sea “old school”, pero por favor, después de leer “Cold commands”, (excelente libro, mejor que Steel”), y ver que no ha olvidado a cierto ex-envoy….Cuando acabe la trilogía….¿por qué no volver a las aventuras de la única persona de la que es más ventajoso ser enemigo que amigo? (sus amigos mueren más que los que no lo son)….
Por favor, necesitamos a TAKESHI KOVACS de nuevo…es como una droga de la que no me puedo desenganchar…
Hasta entonces, espero con ansias las nuevas aventuras de Ringil, y de cierto “Salt lord”…
..y de nuevo…..Gracias por el tiempo que me ha hecho pasar..Lo envidio por lo que es y lo admiro por lo que será.
Hi Richard,
Great to see that all is well and you’re back to doing your blog again. Your son looks delightful! Glad to see that you’re having fun as a dad!
best
Ravi.
Priest is a little right. Stross to me always seems like that clumsy & smart kid, who is fiercely independent, yet at the same time yearns to be liked.
The reason for the tone, which Priest dislikes IMO is that Stross really likes ideas and their implications, so gets carried away, even if novel needs a more somber, measured tone.
AS to him desiring admiration..
It’d explain his political correctness fetish, and the way he goes out of his way not to step on anyone’s toes.
And why he tolerates sycophants on his blog, but people who say point out flaws in his reasoning (such as that bicycles are a far more useful form of transport than Segways) in a not completely polite and obsesquious manner… get banned.
He is also a coward, that is, someone who says he would be ‘deeply’ uneasy if he could legally buy and carry a gun.
(no matter that places where that is common place needn’t be violent. Finland, Czech Republic, Switzerland.
Murder rate doesn’t depend on weapon availability, but on social conditions. A brief check of relevant statistics will reveal that for example, Switzerland, where every adult male has an assault rifle and IIRC 200 rounds of ammunition at home has lower murder rate than Britain..
…where a 50 year old war trophy(a pocket pistol) which police found in possession of a widow of a naval veteran resulted in the widow (65+) going to prison. For five years, I believe.
Mandatory sentencing
Also, as Americans maintain, a lot of weaponry among civilians makes oppressing them a whole lot more expensive.
In blood and money.
Lot of examples from history, from Japanese sword and gun ‘hunts’ , to ruthless Bolshevik disarmament of peasants (they did not like selling grains at unjust prices to the cities) to Nazis disarming Jews..
Besides, if governments fear their citizens a little, they are less likey to develop God complexes and act totally out of line.
Belated congrats on your ‘finest achievement’. Even the best engineers at Khumalo couldn’t come close to designing a construct as lovely as that. Will dad share any newer pix of the gorgeous baby–or video, now that the tyke is motoring?
Oddly, I stumbled upon your blogsite while searching to see if Hollywood has made any serious attempts at adapting your work.
With regards to John’s take on the ‘Prometheus’ film. The broader question is whether Ridley Scott will ever get over the chronic mid-life crisis that compels him to keep remaking the past. Of course the ‘Alien’ theme is fair game since it has, already, been sequelled beyond recognition (this newest may answer the burning question of “how do aliens die in old age?”). There is, however, a far more serious consequence concerning Ridley’s ailment. Do either of you have thoughts on the upcoming “Blade Runner” sequel? I am dubious. Heck, I’m downright terrified. The defilement of sacred relics–even your own–has always disturbed me…”Blade Runner goes to Vegas”?…”Bride of Blade Runner”?…”Rocky vs. Blade Runner”? One should not mess with perfection, especially perfection that has perfect closure. Just look at the casualty list of directors who have, in the past, entertained such folly.
In any case, Richard, it was nice talking at you. You are truly one of my favorite writers and I’m thankful that you breathed new life into such an asthmatic sci-fi/fantasy genre. I wish you continued success in all of your courageous endeavors. (I, myself, prefer freshly changed babies and driving to the top of steep cliffsides.) Just always remember to keep your grav harness close by–Bernie.
Just saw the trailer for new Joseph Gordon Levitt sci-fi movie Looper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCNKahG1ksg
“In a futuristic gangland, a killer (Gordon-Levitt) works for a mob in the year 2042 and kills people who are sent from the year 2072. He recognizes one victim (Willis) as himself and hesitates, resulting in the escape of his older self”
Richard, I just wanted to offer belated congratualtions on Crysis 2 being so damn fantastic. Not to mention that Syndicate, without your input, would have been ‘just another shooter’. That’s two fantastic games under your belt!
Now that it has been officially announced, will Crysis 3 make it a hatrick?
Everyone must watch the new viral trailer for Prometheus now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOOJl5lWNfM
Michael Fassbender as David. Will this be the first ever on-screen portrayal of an android to be nominated for an Oscar?
Sorry didn’t know where else to post this. Quellcrist falconer anyone?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiu_Jin#section_3
Awesome books Richard!
I love El Chorro… one of the finest places to climb in a country full of fine places to climb.
I’m facing a similar experience – getting my climb on in a week (though in Chattanooga, Tennessee, nowhere near as exotic) for the first time in months. I’m looking forward to the blood, sweat, and tears, lol.