ayeahmur

Last night, in the legendary football city of Glasgow, the draw was made for the official TTA Euro2008 Sweepstake. In a lavish ceremony, Presiding Officer Ian Hunter and Secretary Craig Marnoch of the officiating body, GSFWC, drew the competing countries and the numbers of the contestants.

The Draw in full:

1  Andy Cox  France
2  Neil Willamson  Croatia
3  Andy Hedgecock  Switzerland
4  Max Hedgecock  Russia
5  Vaughn Stanger  Italy
6  Jetse De Vries  Germany
7  Foxie  Greece
8  Mike Alexander  Sweden
9  Jim Steel  Romania
10  Andrew Humphrey  Czech Republic
11  Gary Fry  Netherlands
12  Andrew Hook  Austria
13  Stephen Pirie  Portugal
14  James Pirie  Poland
15  Des  Lewis  Turkey
16  Bob Lock  Spain

Good luck to all.

So, the Mundane SF issue of Interzone has come and gone. In case you’ve not been aware, there was a whole bunch of foohfarah about the Mundane manifesto, because I don’t know, the rhetoric rubbed people up the wrong way or something. And that was rekindled when IZ announced they were handing over the reins to Geoff Ryman and co for one issue. I’ve not seen any bloggings of seething vindication on either side since the issue came out, but that doesn’t mean the war ain’t raging somewhere.

Anyway. *Yawn*. Doesn’t matter.

My overall reaction to the seven stories that Ryman and friends have selected to exemplify their point is 1/ they are uniformly good, and 2/ this is the sort of stuff Interzone used to publish more regularly than it does now. I felt nostalgic. Nostalgic for the time when a copy of Interzone would throw you a flight of fancy and then on the next page tie you right back down to earth with a gritty, near-future piece that really made you think. Take a galaxy spanning Stephen Baxter or a baroque Richard Calder and follow it up with Greg Egan’s “Learning To Be Me” or Iain McLeod’s “Well Loved” or Chris Beckett’s “Welfare Man” stories. Really stretch your mind. I’m not saying that IZ doesn’t still strive to do this - David Mace’s “This Happens” still lives fresh in my memory - but it’s not as frequent as I remember it being.

So, if the Mundanistas are complaining that people generally aren’t writing enough of this kind of carefully considered, predictive SF; if it’s a spice, a flavour we’ve lost, then maybe they’re right. Especially if they’re as well written as Lavie Tidhar’s “How To Make Paper Aeroplanes”, or Elizabeth Vonarburg’s “The Invisibles”, or Geoff Ryman’s wholly thought-provoking “Talk Is Cheap”, which rounds off the fiction offering of the issue perfectly.

So, Mundane SF. Do I like it? Yes, when it’s done as well as this.

Will I write it? Probably, sometimes, but like most genre writers, not all the time.

Put it this way, if I were a chef I wouldn’t cook with it exclusively, but it’d be a flavour I’d be wanting to use more often in my restaurant.

Thanks to IZ for reminding us what it tastes like.

It used to be that when you had one of those moments of memory where something from your childhood bobs to the surface of the mental rummage pile you’d perhaps have to resign yourself to the fact that it would most likely only be glimpse,  you’d never get to experience it again.

Of course the internet, and specifically youtube, has changed all that.

I tell you, the number of hours I’ve spent in pubs trying to recall this routine and the name of the film it was in!

(It’s Danny Kaye in The Court Jester, by the way,)

Well, the photo blogging kinda worked and kinda didn’t. I was attempting to upload photos in batches of three or four but it’s only taken the first one for some reason. I’ll try and get the remaining photos up there later on, but to be honest there were just too many people for any kind of decent photo opportunity, and I kept forgetting too. So, yeah, there aren’t that many, and they’re not that good, but they are a sort of record of what Manchester was like…

Warm, jolly, good-natured, good fun, bumping into people you’ve not seen for years…then hot, sweaty, overcrowded, a bit drunken, nervous…then disappointed, fractious, bad-tempered…then cold, bored, frustrated, unable to find a way to get back to the hotel. For hours.

To sum up: A nice day spoiled. Too many people. We broke Manchester’s infrastructure.

The football itself: We weren’t good enough. The best team won.

The other stuff that happened: I’ve never seen anything like that connected with Rangers fans. As far as I’m concerned those people were neds who have little or nothing to do with the club other than the colours they wore on the day. I’m sickened and angry by what they did.

Thanks to my brother for his craic which is always of the highest quality.

Strength, power and a chocolate slipper got us through to the end.