Shoulda left it to the robots

You might find this review of Interstellar a bit spoilery. But at least it's over faster than the movie...

So, the Earth is dying because they can't figure out to use hydroponics. And Cowboy Farmer finds mysterious symbols in his ramshackle old house (= Signs, Close Encounters). And he says, "It's not a ghost. It's gravity." Though why shouldn't a ghost use symbols? Maybe it's the ghost of a mathematician. And he looks at a bunch of numbers in binary and he doesn't say, "WTF are these numbers?" Oh no. Instead he goes, "They're coordinates!" And they are the coordinates for a secret base within driving distance of his house. And he gets there and they say, "Oh yes, those are mysterious gravity things sent by these aliens who put this wormhole near Saturn" (2001). And nobody says, "Hang on, you're our best pilot and the gravity fairies told you the coordinates of NASA? So let's think about that for five seconds."

But you soon realize why nobody tries to have conversations like that, because one guy would say, "Could the arrival of the wormhole have anything to do with Earth's climate getting messed up?" but then another guy would say, "Faith is about reaching your hand up and knowing there will be something there to hold onto." And then they'll all nod and the first guy will be secretly thinking, "I'm locked in here with the crazy people." So they get into the ship and even though the robots seem to be the only intelligent ones, nobody pays any attention to them, probably because whenever you go, "I have a cold, maybe homeopathy and love and peace will cure it," they would say, "Are you absolutely sure you're the species that created us?"

OK, so off into space and more running about like a bunch of teenagers forced to go on a survival weekend (this crew could get a job on Prometheus, no trouble) and when they come back after 23 years in a gravity well, and Lady Scientist says, "Let's go to planet A" and Cowboy Pilot says, "Hang on, planet B is better but your boyfriend is on planet A, right?" she doesn't say, "Ya got me," she starts coming out with asinine twaddle about maybe that's the best criterion for judging stuff, and love is energy, like, innit, and it's the only thing that transcends time. (And also hate, lust, fart jokes, etc, in that case.) And the others don't say, "Oh, stop wriggling. We caught you out and you know it." No, they listen to her whole critically-failed Fast Talk roll as if it was a valid point. And then Dr Man (geddit?) turns out to be yet another famous actor, and he is mad and evil and tries to kill them, saying that nobody would go on risking their necks to save the whole human species, they'd only do it to specifically save their own family - even though history is full of examples of people putting the group first, and that is kind of the whole USP of homo sapiens. Obviously not a regular churchgoer, Man tries to kill everybody and take over the mission for HAL-like reasons, but everyone is saved thanks to the robots (what did I say about them?). This doesn't stop Cowboy Pilot from telling the robots they have to be sacrificed in a black hole. Lady Scientist doesn't come out with one of her love-is-energy speeches there, but she does at least query whether you should tell an intelligent, loyal being to sacrifice itself for your sake. Luckily Cowboy Pilot has an answer: "They have to do anything we tell them." (Hah, you fool, Aristotle, why did you waste all that time on that Ethics book, ya booby?) Anyway, Cowpoke sacrifices himself too, and he falls through the event horizon into Inception, where he gets a view of his daughter's bedroom as she's growing up and he can send her messages by pushing books and making the dust spell out binary messages. This would all be very confusing, but luckily one of the robots is on hand to explain absolutely everything to us (ya see? ya see?) and it turns out not to be God doing all this, but the gravity fairies are are, like, 5-dimensional people from the future. And they have just enough vestigial interest in the fate of the entire species (from which they evolved, let's not forget that) to give Cowboy Pilot limited access to one room on his farm over a 30-year peiod. Contacting humanity and giving us the answer to climate control, terraforming, wheat blight and wormhole tech would have been just too easy. And you can see the discussion (imagine this in 5 dimensions): "Shall we explain what they need to do to survive?" "Explanations are a bit too sciencey. Love is energy, dude." "Oh yeah. Just give this one guy a mystic experience, then. After all, we already know he must succeed or we wouldn't be here." "Point. Also, without the woo there's no movie. And we're shooting for M Night Shyamalan to direct."

No good points? Oh sure. I liked the explanation of why wormholes are spherical, the black hole FX, and the robots.

Wunderbar!

So far, the only person who's read the Winter story from start to finish and given us feedback is Leo's son (and my godson) Inigo. Overall he seems to have enjoyed it, which warms the cockles, I can tell you - though it is possible that he's biased in our favour. What has been really interesting and helpful has been hearing his impressions of the characters - which ones he warmed to, which he found less engaging. Characters take on a life of their own once you've created them, and it's not always easy to tell right away which of them are going to click with your readers.

Inigo particularly liked the Iron Turk, who ended up playing a big part in Winter and, if there is ever a Spring book, he'll no doubt appear in that too. I dug out these early drawings by Martin to show how the character evolved. The ears were added at my insistence, though Martin didn't feel they fitted with the rest of the design. I can't remember now why I thought they were so important. Maybe to humanize him a bit?

Adopt a robot

Here's something I found over on John Welding's blog. It's a good ol' point-n-click adventure game called Machinarium developed by Czech studio Amanita Design. You guide a cute little robot through a strange junkheap world of urban decay in his quest for love and a nice place to live.

The story is told in occasional fragments of memory and the puzzles are all logical (not always the case in point-&-click adventures, it must be said). There's a brilliant, wobbly, handmade sort of look to things which evokes Jan Švankmajer - and after all, if Czechs don't know robots then who does?

You can buy it here. If I have any criticism it's that the price is quite steep at $20. If it were half that I'd be recommending it without reservation. Anyway, you get to play a decent chunk of the game for free before you have to decide, so next time you need a bit of creative distraction, pop over and give it a whirl.

Hiss clank whirr

I have said before that Mirabilis is not steampunk. Not least because 1901 isn't really the Age of Steam any longer, but also because steampunk has kind of been done to death. I don't think we'd have had much to add to it. (A steampunk story set in the late 1700s, on the other hand - that could be interesting.)
Having said that, Mirabilis is the story of our world when all of fantasy - everything that the human mind has ever dreamed of - gets poured into the vessel of reality. And steampunk is undeniably part of fantasy, so it wouldn't be right if a few of those tropes didn't get a look in.

Anyway, we love airships and robots and big clanking machines just like anybody else. All we need is an excuse...

What’s it all about, "Alpha"?

When I was about six or seven, my Dad and I would have pillow fights with special Hogwarts (or rather Greyfriars) style rules. You could keep throwing pillows as long as you knew the next letter. But if you zeta-ed when you should've theta-ed, it was the other fellow's turn. To this day I know the Greek alphabet off by heart. I can reel it off quicker than the English alphabet, as a matter of fact.

That alphabet was one of about a million facts and look-up tables in a book my Dad got for his thirteenth birthday. I still have it: The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book. It's a big old door-stop of a thing that would do 1d6+3 damage in any role-playing game you can name. And my favourite item in the whole book is this photograph. The caption reads:

THE ROBOT "ALPHA"
On the word of command it will stand, raise both arms above its head, and reply to questions. It weighs half a ton and was created by "Astra".

(You see what I did there? The Greek alphabet segue? Can't say you don't get your money's worth.)

Well, well - enigmas within enigmas. When exactly was this magnificently odd mechanical man built? The book was published in 1933. But we'd already had Metropolis in 1927, after which wouldn't a big chunky robot like this seem a bit outmoded? Though, having said that, Alpha undoubtedly wins hands down in the elegant design stakes against Elektro, the blocky robot exhibited at the Westinghouse stand at the 1939 World's Fair.

And then there's the most intriguing mystery of all: who was "Astra"? A Randian visionary artist? An electrical engineer with a sense of mischief? A would-be super-villain who gave it all up through lack of venture capital? Or just an especially imaginative music hall entertainer?

Stylistically, Alpha is not at all right for the Belle Époque fantasy of Mirabilis, but something about him keeps nagging at me. I want to use him somewhere, somehow, someday. With ears like that, he can't be left to languish in obscurity.

The Factory of the Future

These images are from Fangleworths, a project that Leo and I spent a couple of years developing for television. I hope we might return to it one day, probably in comic book form.

The concept was of a factory run by robots. Not your modern hi-tech variety, but the sort of bumbling retro-future robots you'd expect in an Aardman movie.

The story in a nutshell:

Boomer is boss robot at Fangleworth’s and he runs a tight ship. At least he tries to, even though his crew aren’t the brightest tools in the box.

Nothing scares Boomer more than the thought of disappointing his boss, reclusive billionaire Hiram Fangleworth. So he’s all in a tizzy when Fangleworth sends a new addition to the workforce. And it's a girl!

Reluctantly Boomer accepts the inevitable. He and Nettie have a sparky relationship but they learn to get along. And for a while it looks like everything might be hunky-dory.

Then they discover the truth. Hiram Fangleworth has frittered away his fortune. Now he’s planning to sell out to his arch-rival, who intends to close the factory, flood the valley, and sweep our plucky band of motorized heroes onto the junk pile.

Boomer and Nettie set aside their squabbling to join forces. Will their combination of valve-powered determination and microchip sassiness be enough to save the day?

The flavour were were going for was Ealing comedy by way of Pixar. We came up with an interesting bunch of characters and I am still convinced they would get a lot of affection from fans.

I love the 3D models Leo created for this project. Especially the view of Boomer in his office here, which takes me back to the cherished TV shows of my childhood: Fireball XL5 and Torchy the Battery Boy!