Alternative history – Lights In The Sky

Back to the future

By C Stevens | 30th June 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

I’m cutting it fine even by my recent standards with this month’s blog, writing it on the very last day of June. Apologies also for using a rather obvious SF film reference for the title, however it is appropriate because I’ve actually started a completely new literary project by reaching back into my past. However this doesn’t mean that Lights in the Sky has been abandoned; I’m roughly halfway through the eighth novel, and I’m enjoying writing my allegory of the Spanish Civil War, but finding the title that fits is still proving tricky.

But back to my new project; a very long time ago I spent two years living in Liverpool, not the smart tourist destination of today, but the crumbling remains of a once great port that featured levels of deprivation not seen elsewhere in the country, whose people had become the butt of national humour. I loved living in the city, even though I knew there was nothing there for me long term, and out of the experience came a song, Saturday night in another Western town, written in 1985, and the first really good song I wrote (for a long time it was the only good song!).

Looking back, the title was far too good to be wasted on a simple song, and after an inordinately long gestation period it’s finally become a story, set in ’pool at the time I was living there and featuring a protagonist who’s an amalgam of me and a friend of mine (now dearly-departed). The story is set in the world of local bands and the longing for fame and occasional brushes with success that characterise this milieu. It features (and will feature) incidents that actually happened, but being fiction, will take a turn into the might-have-beens of life. There will also be a time travel element to the story, as SF always lurks in my fictional universe, sometimes dead centre, but here more on the periphery.

At the moment, I have the basis for a good short story, or the first chapter of another long novel. It will be interesting to see how this one turns out…

The Author June 2021

Languorous times

By C Stevens | 28th May 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

Apologies for just getting in under the wire, and finally blogging just as this miserable washout of a May breathes its last.

The English Government (I say English because it doesn’t even pretend to govern in the interests of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) increasingly comes to resemble a comic opera, possibly some hitherto-undiscovered work by Gilbert and Sullivan, Trial by Tabloid, perhaps! Or possibly Princess Carrie, maybe even The Pirates of PPE Procurement!

Other commentators have compared Johnson’s administration to a Carry on film, Carry on lying would appear to be most apposite.

The overall effect of this blizzard of misrepresentation, graft and incompetence, very much like a similar exercise on the other side of the Atlantic, has been to ensure that a weary electorate ceases to care, and will welcome any good news.

Opposition to the Tory Ascendancy is not helped by a colourless Labour leader, who always seems to have fear in his eyes when he faces the cameras, and an opposition that’s fatally divided, allowing the Conservatives to rack up huge majorities on minority votes. The time for Labour to press for proportional representation in General Elections is clearly now, but will they realise this?

I recently read an article (which I cannot now find) which argued that Languorousness, as opposed to Anxiety or outright Depression, is the default psychological state of our times. One of the online dictionaries that appeared when I searched listed sixteen different synonyms for languor, including lethargy, apathy and weariness, inertia, ennui, lassitude and listlessness. Any of these would appear appropriate descriptions of the public mood as we complete the fourteenth month of the pandemic.

My private literary universe has never appeared a more welcome refuge than now. However, in the world of Lights in the sky, divisions are emerging within the Camposetta movement, even as it consolidates its grip on most of Brazil. Splits between the hard-line Evangelical Christians that make up the majority of the movement’s foot soldiers, and the Environmentalists, Socialists, Trade Unionists and Libertarians who also opposed the Federal Government. Self-interest, graft and authoritarianism are also on the rise, leading many of the original idealists to try and get out while they still can.

The historically-aware amongst you will probably have spotted the parallels with the Spanish Civil War in my tale of a Revolution gone wrong. As has often been said, all revolutions have a tendency to eat their children.

The Author May 2021

A new and terrible world

By C. E. Stevens | 8th May 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

A few days ago a friend of mine sent me an image of a notice in a bookshop which had (presumably) been altered to read, Please note: the post apocalyptical [sic] fiction section has been moved to Current Affairs. I replied to her as follows: Unfortunately, my literary output has been somewhat prescient, sorry…
This brought home to me how much our lives and our country has been transformed in the month since my last post. I don’t recall the exact death toll as of April 6th, but consulting a linear graph of total deaths online reveals it to have been roughly 5,000. This is bad enough, but I’m sure that nobody (least of all the UK Government) anticipated that it would be more than 30,000 at the start of May, and that we would have the highest total in Europe, and second only to the United States worldwide. An article I read in today’s Guardian described the death of so many elderly care home residents as ‘a harvest’, and argued it was the result of Government’s short-lived policy of seeking herd immunity, which was undertaken (and then abandoned) without the necessary safeguarding measures being implemented to protect this vulnerable group. All of which suggests, if not actual callousness, a cavalier disregard for public safety, and will ensure that the Public Enquiry which is bound to follow will be keenly anticipated, if not by ministers in the present government.
It is not a comfortable experience to find that events and consequences that you had fondly imagined were confined to the pages of your latest novel have now turned up on the front pages of the newspapers and are suffusing daily life. All of which makes me more wary about actively seeking publication for this series, given that there are probably enough lunatics out there for whom the boundary between fiction and real life is sufficiently blurred for them to want to seek revenge against those who they somehow deem guilty of bringing the apocalypse about by anticipating it. If people can attack mobile phone masts, then what price a poor old novelist.
And while I did not reference infectious disease as one of the drivers of my literary apocalypse, preferring the rather more visual combination of fire, flood and civil disorder, neither did Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
In my defence, I will say that my breakdown of civilization does eventually lead to a kinder and more rational world, not that this would be of any consolation to the paper billions I consign to a brutal and premature death.
Anyway, it is what it is…
My speculations were based on future threats to our biosphere and our civilization set out by a whole host of scientists and cultural commentators, and set within a long literary tradition. It’s rather unfortunate that at least one of them has chosen to arrive rather sooner than anyone anticipated.
Lights in the sky continues to take shape, blissfully unaware that life has now decided to imitate art. I’ve decided to just write until I finish the story, which may mean a final novel approaching eight hundred pages, which I would then divide into two volumes.
Which all leads to the inevitable question; which comes first? The end of the series or the end of the world?
On that cheery note…
The Author May 2020

The strange death of Liberal Democracy

By C. E. Stevens | 1st March 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

It occurs to me that there are a couple of possible criticisms of the Lights in the sky series, if we consider it purely as futurology. The most pertinent currently, is the lack of any evidence of (or reference to) infectious disease during the breakdown of civilisation to which (in the novels) I give the name ‘The Collapse’. I talk about fire and flood, I reference civil war, species extinction and resource depletion, and I describe mass migration, the breakdown of law and order and war between States. I also depict whole countries being lost to the waves, and I do say (or rather Marta Camacho does in the sixth novel, Maya) that the human population of the Earth drops to a third of pre-Collapse levels. But nowhere do I mention the role pandemics play in this process. Nor do I specifically mention famine.
I’m not alone in this, at least as far as disease is concerned. Neil Gaiman, in his television adaptation of the Good Omens (the novel he wrote with the late Terry Pratchett) has bumped Pestilence from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and replaced him with Pollution, a more ‘up-to-date’ Horsewoman. Recent events should now be persuading him of the error of his ways.
My abiding impression viewing this series was that even though it was set in 2018, it now appears to be part of the more distant past. In fact, a lot of contemporary culture is beginning to look distinctly like it’s on borrowed time. It all has a fin de siecle feel about it twenty years too late), with everyone desperately trying to have their fun, make their point, push their interest group, consume to the nth degree, before it all gets too late. Before our globalised world economy and related global culture start to come apart at the seams as nation states retreat behind their borders, trading blocs break up, political alliances fracture.
The pressures bringing this change about are many and various. Some are progressive, some are reactionary, but all speak to a truth that our current way of doing things is unsustainable. We cannot (physically at any rate) be citizens of the world for much longer, the environmental costs of the mass transport of people around the world are becoming too high. The idea that your food should be grown on the far side of the globe and your clothes made there also, is now palpably absurd. There is (I think) a curious sort of unanimity across political divides, with people who loathe, despise and refuse to debate with each other reaching startling similar conclusions by completely different routes.
The populist right appears to dismiss the notion that an environmental crisis is upon us. However, if you examine much of the content of right-leaning social media and the reactionary populist press, so much of the talk is about looming catastrophe, expressed in terms of out of control weather, imminent asteroid strikes, super volcanoes erupting etc etc. To me this all has the appearance of metaphor, a bizarre process of transference whereby the truth they all know in their hearts but dare not admit (i.e. that our civilisation is headed for a fall) cannot be completely suppressed and comes out in an attachment to fringe catastrophe theories.
Opposing shades of political opinion appear to be moving inexorably towards the notion of smaller political units and a less integrated global economy, with the liberal democracy that promoted globalisation in danger of being sidelined somewhere in the middle.
I mentioned that there were two possible criticisms; the second relates to timescale, as I have my Collapse happening near the end of the century, far enough away in time to not be immediately threatening. As I concluded earlier in this blog, I am (in the great tradition of English science fiction) basically writing a ‘cosy’ catastrophe.
However, it looks like Armageddon isn’t prepared to wait, and, unlike the world of Lights in the sky, there doesn’t appear to be a benign deus ex-machina waiting in the wings to save us…

The Author March 2020

Life imitating art

By C. E. Stevens | 6th February 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

The fourth episode of Neil Gaiman’s television adaptation of the novel he wrote with the late Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. is appropriate, if hardly welcome, given that Good Omens is about the events leading up to the End of Days. It’s important to point out that not having seen the remainder of the series, nor read the book, I have no idea of the fictional outcome.
The form that Armageddon would take is only to be guessed at, but given that we face a whole suite of potential threats; everything from runaway climate change, pandemics, potential asteroids strikes, to the re-awakening of dormant super volcanoes (plus the old standby of nuclear annihilation), there would appear to be a lot of potential candidates.
Gaiman and Pratchett’s decision to replace one of Four Horseman, Pestilence, with Pollution, now comes across as complacent in current circumstances, an unnecessary nod to currently fashionable preoccupations, and lacking apocalyptic poetry of the original. There is also an element of Hubris, infectious diseases never really go away, they bide their time, waiting for an opportunity. The ease of travel in our interconnected world provides them with the opportunity to spread with frightening rapidity, and any form of social breakdown weakens the capacity of a population to resist.
Now, it’s important to point out that (unsurprisingly) I do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible. However, I do regard it as an important work of literature which can be seen as a series of metaphors and parables.
Whether metaphor in this case is a form of prophecy, I leave it for you to decide…
The Author February 2020

Housekeeping

By C. E. Stevens | 29th August 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Housekeeping
Lights in the sky is many things: it’s a vast sprawling meta-novel of ideas and scientific, philosophical, societal, economic and theological speculations; its a series of picaresques; it’s a postmodernist tribute to my sources and influences; it’s a romance, an adventure story, a coming of age novel; it’s a mystery story with the author as detective; it’s all these things and more…
It’s also now finished…
Perhaps I should qualify this; the main narrative is complete, on both on Earth and on Alpha 5, we now know what happens to all of the protagonists, and have a fair idea of what comes next. We have followed our characters (for the most part) from birth to death, and the central enigma behind the world of the series has been laid bare.
However there are a number of other stories within this vast concept (six novels, 2314 pages, and nearly seven hundred thousand words) referenced or alluded to in passing, that I feel deserve to be told, either in short story form, or in additional novels. I’ve already started this process and written a number of short stories, which I intend to collect together at some point, perhaps under the title Tales from the Collapse.
But one or two of these stories would appear to merit a longer treatment. An obvious candidate is the story of the original Marta, Miss da Guia, from her strange conception as part of the breeding programme undertaken by the Alpha Mission, through her unusual childhood in Sao Paulo, her short-lived media stardom, and her brutal and untimely death…
I’ve just remembered that I have title for this putative novel, ‘When You Wish upon a Star’, which plays with various layers of meaning; The Journey to the Stars undertaken by the Alpha Mission carries the hopes of millions marooned on an apparently-dying world, Miss da Guia is a media star worshipped by those millions, and she is following her own star…
Given that the title I have arrived at neatly pitches the novel, I think it’s now highly likely that I will write it.
The other candidate a further volume is the fate of Clara and all the other automatons unlucky enough to have remained on Earth after the departure of the Probe in 2048. The leftover girl hints at the likely fate of such entities towards the end of the novel; Clara has been rejected by her creator Dr Helen Choi, who now sees the robot as the product of her pursuit of false scientific gods, of literally being in error, in Christian terms. By definition Clara is thus demonic, and shares the fate of the Creature rejected by his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley’s famous novel.
We have also been given a glimpse of the forces of reaction ranged against the Alpha Mission and all its works in the person of the ‘Mayor of Ibara City’, the formidable Ester Almeida, and we know things aren’t going to end well.
I often think that the dichotomy within the series between ‘the scientific vision’ as exemplified by the Alpha Mission, and ‘the spiritual vision’ personified by the Camposettas and their adherents (including eventually Dr Choi), is essentially a dramatisation of a battle that I’ve fought within myself my whole life. A struggle between a belief in science (and its delinquent offspring, technology), and a countervailing attachment to the natural world, primitive socialism, and a non-specific form of spirituality, most akin to Buddhism.
Seen in these terms, Lights in the sky becomes an actualization of this inner debate…
The Author August 2019

Conspiracy theory

By C. E. Stevens | 5th March 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental twenty four: Conspiracy theory
The final part of Lights in the sky ( and hence of the whole series) centres around a conspiracy theory; the biggest conspiracy theory of all, in fact, that the world, and by extension the whole Universe may not be as we imagine it. That the whole world is actually much younger than we imagine it (in direct opposition to Rupert Giles’ theory that it is, in fact, much older!). That it was actually created by unknown beings for unknown purposes and that consequently we are all property and experimental subjects. If you are thinking so far, so Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it’s important to realise that Douglas Adams was drawing on an older tradition within SF. This is also a serious book rather than a lighthearted satirical comedy, and my intention is to explore the nature of faith (obviously I’m riffing on Creationism here!), and the psychology of believers.
To the vanishingly small number of people who have read the original Lights in the sky trilogy, this development comes as no surprise as it was already revealed to the Children on Alpha 5.
I started to think (dangerous, I know, in these times!) what if the old stories were actually in some sense true? Not literally, as they have been subject to imperfect transmission, distortion and reinterpretation over the centuries. But that they contain essential truths about the nature of existence that science has been missing.
Now I’m aware that there’s a danger that putative readers will also take what I have written literally, employing the same mindset that takes the Bible (essentially a series of creation myths, parables, and folk tales) literally.
If you think that’s unlikely you’re right, mainly because it’s unlikely that my stories will ever reach a wide enough audience. However the history of the twentieth century teaches us that the most bizarre and far-fetched of notions can become the subject and focus of fanatical belief.
So readers should remember that this is a work of fiction, set in an imaginary world, for the purposes of entertainment and to provoke philosophical debate.
The Author 5th March 2019

The midway point

By C Stevens | 5th April 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental eighteen: The midway point
I’m now roughly halfway through writing The Great Flood, having completed eleven chapters and one hundred and fifty pages. Following the convention I’ve established, each of my novels has twenty two chapters, although the actual length of each book has varied! Twenty two is the typical number of episodes in a season of US television drama (science fiction or otherwise), which is the source of the convention. All of my books are written in a format that would facilitate adaptation for this medium.

My general conclusion having reached this point is that I haven’t paid sufficient attention in my fictional future society to the virtual world and the tendency of a growing number of people to want to take refuge within it, pace Ready Player One and similar works. This is something I will need to address in part two of the book.

I have already identified which of the characters will be missing their virtual existence the most. Through her story I’ll explore the phenomenon, its seductions and its limitations, which (not unnaturally) have been brought home to her by the disaster.

At this point I would normally be banging on about the march of authoritarianism in modern politics, but I’ve decided to give it a rest for the moment. Of far more interest is the extremely partisan nature of modern identity politics, something which social media have exacerbated. This divides us as a species and is not good!

That social media is a two-edged sword is becoming more apparent by the day; as well dividing us into (mutually antagonistic!) tribes, it concedes far too much power and control over our lives to very rich men and they are usually men!) and unaccountable corporations! The Robber Barons of the late-nineteenth century would have envied the nabobs of Silicon Valley! Large tech corporations have gained (by a combination of stealth and flattery!) access to all of our lives and could use it against us, if they saw fit. They already exploit it for personal and corporate gain, something which has become apparent over the past few days!

Even more worrying is the extreme subjectivity inherent in social media’s hold over the dissemination of ‘news’ to huge numbers of people; this destabilises the very notion of objectivity, and thus of responsible independent journalism. That this is an existential threat to the notion of liberal democracy is also self-evident!

Rather naively, I had thought that future authoritarian regimes would make use of CGI (once it had become indistinguishable from real life!), and literally rewrite history! But the actual use of modern technology by authoritarian groups has been far more subtle.

These developments would appear to pose almost as much of a threat to our way of life (and possibly our continued existence as a species) as climate change, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, the threats I have previously identified and highlighted in my fictional world. My current novel needs to address this, and will do so in part two.

But it’s not just social media; the pioneers of our online world were by and large idealists, Tim Berners-Lee literally gave his idea of a world-wide web to all of us, free of charge, and this idealism is also reflected in things like Wikipedia and Linux! But the downside of all this had been the ready availability of so much information and free content! This has had profound economic, political, social, and psychological results, the consequences of which are only just beginning to become apparent!

If I wanted to sum up all of the above in one pithy phrase I would say that irrationality has become a contagion and it spreads via the internet!

Stephen Clare April 2018

More ‘interesting times!’

By C Stevens | 17th March 2018 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental seventeen: More ‘interesting times!’
I’m now more than one hundred pages into writing The Great Flood, or roughly a third of the way through. I feel like I’m occupying two time zones simultaneously, experiencing the present while feeling it feed into my fictional future. Make that presumably and hopefully fictional! But I’m not so sure about this; from the standpoint of March 2018, the abiding feeling is of racing towards an unseen precipice.

I am reading the news online obsessively. To the point where I acknowledge that it’s no longer healthy. But this is a malign addiction (shared by many of us!) that I can’t shake! You know it’s only going to upset, enrage and alarm you, but you can’t stop!

I can’t remember the precise stories, but reading Google news last week I came to the conclusion that the world had actually gone mad! That irrationality has finally triumphed and reason has reluctantly left the battlefield! Not a difficult conclusion to come to when Russian exiles are being murdered on the streets of the United Kingdom with apparent impunity, and the so-called ‘Government’ appears powerless to do anything!

Over the pond Trump boasts openly about the lies he tells to other world leaders (for Christ’s sake!), adding these to the ones he tells routinely to the American people! Now I wasn’t a great fan of Ronald Reagan or either President Bush, but I thought at least that they were men of honour! We’ll draw a veil over Richard Nixon…

Even more worryingly the insidious rise of the far-right continues around the globe!

The Great Flood is set in the world that has been produced by these tendencies. So far the story has focussed on climate change and the dramatic consequences of this, but I feel that in the rest of the novel I need to up my game and dramatise the political, social, economic, and cultural changes more forcefully than I have thus far. The first draft is really about getting the story down (…the framework, if you like!), introducing and developing the characters by writing effective dialogue…

The next task is introduce depth into the prose by developing and manifesting the underlying themes, using symbolism, metaphor et al!

My themes are written out (although new ones may emerge!), I now need to weave them more fully into the fabric of the novel…

On that note…

Goodbye and good riddance!

By C Stevens | 31st December 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental fifteen: Goodbye and good riddance!
I find it difficult to remember a year that I’ve wanted to see the back of more than 2017, although 2018’s not looking too promising!

This year we’ve had the full horror of Donald Trump’s populism unleashed on the world, and the full implications of Brexit (as well as the sheer ineptitude of the current government!), have become clearer by the day…

Add to that the now widely accepted belief that the environmental cataclysm and the accompanying mass extinction event are underway and that there’s nothing we can do about it! Apologists are even now saying that this the way of the world and we should embrace the natural order of thing;, I would like to point out to these people that the species likely to disappear includes our own! Oh and President Trump thinks that some good old Global Warming would be good for his country! Maybe he should tell that to Californians…

Signs of optimism for next year include the possibility of a Democrat majority after the US midterms followed in short order by Trump’s impeachment, and a snap General Election that sweeps away the Maybot, and leads (at the very least) to more rational variety of Brexit… But I’m not convinced!

But hey, Birmingham’s got the 2022 Commonwealth Games!

My response to all this has been to take refuge once more in my fictional futures; Lights in the sky is finished, but Tales of the Collapse is well under way…

So far this consists of four short stories, with another one, The Great Flood, well underway!

Worrying, this last piece seems to want to grow beyond a mere short story and is threatening to become a novella (or maybe even a novel!)…

Happy New Year

C.E. Stevens December 2017

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