The Last Interview

I’m returning, once again, to the subject of Iain (M.) Banks and his all-too-soon departure from the world. The reason is this interview – perhaps the last he gave before his death.

Let it be noted that I stand in awe of this man. His humanity, his wit, his clear-sightedness and his self-deprecation are something that I would wish to emulate, but know that I would fall far short of.

It’s a good interview of a good man. Go and read it. Some key passages:

His political zeal burns equally ardently. He confesses that “for half a second”, as he and Adele travelled across the Alps from Venice to Paris on honeymoon, he was “elated” when he heard that Thatcher had died. “Then I realised I was celebrating the death of a human being, no matter how vile she was. And there was nothing symbolic about her death, because her baleful influence on British politics remains undiminished. Squeeze practically any Tory, any Blairite and any Lib Dem of the Orange Book persuasion, and it’s the same poisonous Thatcherite pus that comes oozing out of all of them.”

We reminisce about other significant turning points. Blair entering Downing Street: “Watching the helicopter shots of his car journeying from Islington to Buck House was like witnessing the liberation of a city … yet almost immediately he was having tea with Thatcher. My injured self-respect can at least fall back on the fact that I never voted for New Labour – Labour yes, and nothing but Labour for as long as it existed and I could vote, but not for a party that embraced privatisation and refused to scrap nuclear weapons; not for a party slightly to the right of Ted Heath’s government.” As for the war on terror, there is palpable fury when he discusses “the great lie that our boys are fighting, killing and dying in Afghanistan to keep us safe. It’s 180 degrees off the truth. They’re dying worse than needlessly; they’re dying to save political face, and for every grieving or just aggrieved Afghan family we create the conditions for further atrocities to be visited on us.”

I won’t miss waiting for the next financial disaster because we haven’t dealt with the underlying causes of the last one. Nor will I be disappointed not to experience the results of the proto-fascism that’s rearing its grisly head right now. It’s the utter idiocy, the sheer wrong-headedness of the response that beggars belief. I mean, your society’s broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No let’s blame the people with no power and no money and these immigrants who don’t even have the vote, yeah it must be their fucking fault.

Good and Bad Shorts

I occasionally peruse the io9 web site. Occasionally, because, quite frankly, I find it a bit tiresome. It just seems a bit over the top and too much in love with itself.

Here, for example, is the piece on R’ha, which exhorts us to watch the short film. Well, I did, and it struck me as the sort of thing a male teenager in the grip of his hormones might do. Portentous, limited, and ultimately something that I would not want to engage with. Technically well-realised; but intellectually, a single note plucked on a well-worn string.

Then again there’s Mama. This has more meat on its bones. But whether it can be stretched out into a full length feature, I have my doubts. I’ll wait and see.

Thank You, Iain Menzies Banks

There’s been a slight disturbance in the Force (otherwise known as the internet) the past couple of days.

A Scottish author, beloved by many – and me – has recently died. Far too soon, and with too many stories yet untold.

I’ve been reading the many tributes left to him by fans and fellow-writers alike.

I find it strange and intriguing how much his death has affected me. I never knew the man, never met him, and yet somehow his death has caused tears to spring unbidden to my eyes. God forbid that I’m having a Princess Di moment. I would like to think that my sorrow is caused simply by the fact that he was, by all accounts, a good man, and his voice has been stilled far too early.

He wrote in both major and minor keys. For the snobs, the major keys were his “mainstream” literary works; such as The Wasp Factory and Complicity.

But, great though they were, for the rest of us, his so-called “minor”works – his SF novels – were the real thing. He wove an entire civilisation – The Culture – spanning multiple worlds and thousands of years. And he made it real. As Ken MacLeod wrote:

He likened writing literary fiction to playing a piano, and writing SF to playing a vast church organ. Squandering the “unlimited effects budget” of his imagination on the vast scale of SF was always, by a small edge, the greater joy.

It’s difficult to choose one passage from all his work that stands for him and what he said to me. But I think it has to be this, from Against A Dark Background:

Sorrow be damned and all your plans. Fuck the faithful, fuck the committed, the dedicated, the true believers; fuck all the sure and certain people prepared to maim and kill whoever got in their way; fuck every cause that ended in murder and a child screaming.

Amen.

Damn

Another inspiration is stilled.

18 Arguments Against Gay Marriage

The New Statesman’s Caroline Crampton lists 18 arguments voiced today in the UK’s House of Lords against same-sex marriage.

All the usual suspects are there, including the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I can’t say that I’m surprised by his stance. Religion poisons pretty much everything.

I suspect that very similar arguments were once made against the abolition of slavery.

The Swapper

That’s the title of a new game for Windows. It’s a series of puzzles woven around the story of an astronaut who comes into possession of a cloning device.

It has beautiful visuals, literally hand-crafted from clay and everyday objects, and an intriguing storyline. The idea of cloning, and transference of consciousness between clones, has a long and deep philosophical history. Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, with Daniel Dennett’s and Douglas Hofstadter’s The Mind’s I are excellent places to continue the exploration of self and consciousness.

Forget first person shooter games, this is the sort of thing that I can engage with. Highly recommended.

Photo Metadata

The BBC’s News web site has a video report on photo metadata. It’s a fairly good introduction to the topic, and worth five minutes of your time.

The reporter, Ian Hardy, makes the point that your grandfather’s photos often had some explanatory text written on the back of them – and that’s the metadata. In today’s digital world, the vast majority of images are being created with technical metadata (camera type, shutter speed, etc.) but often without any information on who is in the picture. The situation is not being helped by the new generation of social media web sites or mobile Apps for smartphones, Tablets or iPads that do not support management of metadata, or even worse, strip it out.

I’m a firm believer in the value of metadata. Unfortunately, at the moment, it’s a minefield, with competing and conflicting standards and poor, faulty, or non-existent support in applications and online services. Things can only get better, but there’s no guarantee that they will.