Reality Television – Lights In The Sky

The real enemy

By C Stevens | 17th July 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

The actual result of the Euro 2020 final on Sunday turned out to be the least of our worries; of far more concern is the ticketless thugs forcing their way into Wembley (fer Christ’s sake!) during the final of the European Soccer Championship. These ‘England supporters’ also punched stewards, terrorised legitimate ticket holders and caused damage to the stadium. Others (presumably legitimate ticket holders) booed the Italian National Anthem, while an attention-seeking reality tv star invaded the pitch.

Monday’s papers brought the news that a British Grand Prix racing driver was attacked and relieved of his £40,000 watch (a gift from his team) in a supposedly-secure stadium car park. In purely-footballing terms this and other incidents has probably put paid to any chance Britain and Ireland had of staging the 2030 FIFA World Cup, but that’s not really the issue.

Away from the stadium, the West End is trashed, England players are savagely attacked by racists on social media, drunk and stoned thugs parade around our town and city centres, threatening people for dining in Italian restaurants (or even just eating pizza!), without a police officer in sight. I personally witnessed this in Birmingham’s New Street on the day after the final.

What this tells us is that criminality and public disorder in this country is getting out of hand, and the real enemy isn’t the Italian soccer team, nor is it the European Union, it’s actually a violent and social media-organised minority who appear to be taking over our streets.

And we know where the blame for all this lies, don’t we?

The man who has cut the budget for policing, decimated youth services, attacked and undermined the judiciary, and subverted Parliament. The man whose vacillations would even alarm the protagonist in a Wood Allen movie! Hiding behind the door so recently and opportunistically plastered with England flags (those vanished pretty smartish, didn’t they? presumably as soon as the winning Italian penalty hit the back of the net!). The same gleaming black door that will soon be issuing excuses and announcing abrupt policy U-turns, as COVID 19 explodes once more and we’re all back in lockdown.

The problem with Johnson is that, on the surface, he’s plausible. Unlike his role-models around the globe, our Prime Minister is not obviously-deranged, nor is he on first name terms with genocidal dictators. Johnson says the right things (even if he doesn’t mean them), while coincidentally giving out messages of encouragement to the extremists and nutters who form much of his core support.

I referenced in the past the notion of the Antichrist as a metaphor for the various difficulties that threaten us. The problem would appear to be that rather than just the one promised in Revelations, we are beset by a multitude of them. The aforementioned genocidal dictators now being joined by a new wave of megalomaniacal billionaires from Silicon Valley, who have the gall to pretend they’re actually saving us!

All of these people share one obvious character trait with ‘the Father of Lies’, and together with their legions of supporters they constitute the real enemy…

The Author July 2021

Escaping unpleasant realities

By C. E. Stevens | 4th September 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

This strangest of years continues its tortured course, and we all remain in limbo, asking ourselves when the grownups in the room are going to step up and start running things again…
And this question is getting quite pressing; I personally don’t think the United States will survive another four years of the current administration without serious political violence, and the only parties who will benefit from this are China and Russia.
Europe will survive our departure, but I don’t think we’ll be so lucky; mass unemployment and national bankruptcy are looking likely, the break-up of the United Kingdom and the collapse of our political institutions are both outside possibilities.
And the pandemic looms over everything, putting all of our futures on hold…
Unsurprisingly, I spend as much time as possible in my fictional world, the real world being so unutterably bleak.
In the world of Lights in the sky, Marta, with the help of her allies João Azevedo and Globo Television and the support of her agent cum manager, Salvador Perez, has been able to take control of her life and continue her process of self-actualisation.
By buying her estate in Minas Gerais, she is also able for the first time to build a life separate from São Paulo, the Show and the Alpha Mission. She also accepts Salvador as her new lover.
At the same time, she fulfills her long-term ambition of becoming the anchor of the Alpha Mission Hour and effectively becoming the Earthly representative of the Children on Alpha. Ironically, it is an unintended consequence of the death of her friend and companion, Sophie Valente, that facilitates this.
All this comes at a price as she becomes distanced from those who formerly were her friends.
The Author September 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

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…

Blog entry supplemental nine: the wheel is turning

By C Stevens | 27th June 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Apologies for not blogging for a while; but I’ve been away, in America, in fact! This was a road trip I took with my mate, Rob… We both play music and we’ve played together in various bands for the past twenty years; so this was a musical odyssey!

We flew to Chicago and proceeded south, mainly (but not exclusively) following the path of the Mississippi… I did the driving (to St Louis, Missouri, Nashville, Memphis, Natchez, Mississippi, ending up in New Orleans); the total distance is not far short of 1500 miles and I did that in nine days, driving on alternate days…

So what’s this got to do with SF and the Lights in the sky series, I hear you ask? Well, I’m getting to that!

The trip was a chance not only to visit and pay homage to old musical heroes and discover new ones (Rhiannon Giddens and Gary Clark jr. at the Chicago Blues Festival were particularly memorable!), but also a chance to get away from my life; away from the writing and away from my claustrophobic little island!

I completed part two of The Leftover Girl, just prior to leaving and I’m thus between two thirds and the three-quarters of the way through the book. The first two sections are called The Road, and …to Hell, and the final part will be called …paved with good intentions, so you probably get the drift…

Time away from a work-in-progress is important because it helps give you perspective, vital for a writer. I re-read the section I’d just completed on my return in preparation for starting on the final leg of the literary journey; and I realised something that, although obvious, just hadn’t occurred to me in the rush to complete part two of the book before my departure. The revelation is that the second character in my novel, Dr (later Professor) Helen Choi, ends her life in despair; concluding that she has been in error, pursuing false scientific goals and denying her essential nature. She has lived her life in maya, the world of illusion, effectively denying her own spirituality… She dies hoping that when she meets her husband (‘…in whichever version of the afterlife she is bound’), he will find it in his heart to forgive her…

The second conclusion I came to (the start of this came while watching the aforementioned artists in Millennium Park, Chicago), was that after three terrible years things are finally moving in our favour once more… Chicago Blues was important because I was disillusioned with music (which for a songwriter is my own version of despair!).

A bit of context is needed here! For those of you unfamiliar with the form, blues festivals in the UK consist of a few hundred (mostly) blokes my age or older, standing ‘round drinking real ale and watching acts even more ancient than they are!

Chicago was different; the first thing we saw (the Blues Village stage), was just like UK blues festivals, and we nearly left at this point! But I looked at the flyer and saw that Rhiannon Giddens (for Christ’s sake!), was performing on the main stage and she was just about to start! For those of you who don’t about her she’s immensely talented as a writer and performer, utterly beautiful, from North Carolina (my favourite out of the twenty seven states of the Union I have visited!), and the possessor of the best voice God ever gave a woman!

We moved to the fantastic open-air auditorium in Millennium Park (think Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao!), and were presented with at least twenty thousand people in the open air-bowl that forms the arena! And these people weren’t old gits like me and Rob, they were young people, of all races, who love music that most young people in my country wouldn’t be seen dead grooving to… The reaction to Rhiannon Giddens was ecstatic enough, but that was nothing compared to the welcome they gave to Gary Clark jr, the new Jimi Hendrix, and someone I hadn’t even heard of !

Not only did this restore my faith in music, but I realised that things in general are changing! It’s not just music; Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity with young people in the UK (as evidenced by his reception at Glastonbury!), the totally unexpected election result, the retreat of Fascistic populism everywhere etc etc

The wheel is indeed turning; favouring authenticity rather than artifice; art rather than commerce; individual expression rather than Simon Cowell-mentored posing; idealism rather than self-interest!

Finally, we seem to be throwing off the twin dead hands of Postmodernist ‘irony’ and neoclassical economics, and discarding the appalling cynicism they engendered…and it occurs to me that this can only be good for me personally, because the type of fiction I write may even come back into fashion…

I talked about the zeitgeist in a previous post; well, I think its just shifted…

C.E. Stevens June 2017

Blog entry twelve: The Truman Show

By C Stevens | 19th August 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry twelve: The Truman Show
In chapter twelve of A Children’s Crusade, entitled the Truman Show, we’re back on Earth; specifically the Earth of 2106!
The Earth we’re presented with is in stark contrast to the claustrophobic world of the Alpha Mission, with its nine human crew members; rather its a world of countless billions, each individual scrabbling for their place in the sun…
We get our first inkling as to the status back home of the Mission and the Children, with Marta da Guia’s rather jaundiced description of Marta Fernandes as a ‘…[Brazilian] national hero…’
There are other references later in the chapter (to the craze for all things crusty, and the cult of the Star Children), which confirm this first impression.
We are also told (indirectly) that the relationship between Marta on Alpha and her ‘Earthsister’ might be something more than interstellar pen pals, but the precise nature of the relationship eludes us. Eludes us, that is, until the crucial moment when Marta da Guia, fleeing civil disorder (and the implied threat to her privileged existence), says a prayer for her sister at the roadside shrine…
But how can this be?
Elsewhere in the chapter more detail is sketched in, of a world previously only dimly glimpsed. We begin to appreciate the hold the Networks have over the Mission, and we learn how this came about. And crucially, how the lives of the expedition crew members have been repackaged as cheap entertainment for a mass television and online audience…
We learn more about interface technology and the advantages it gives to the elite who use it; also learning about the downside…
And finally, we are vouchsafed a glimpse of a society in crisis…of a world descending into chaos…
On that cheery note…

Blog entry supplemental: …it’s about time

By C Stevens | 17th August 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

The series is now complete; I put the finishing touches to The Lost Colony (the final book in the trilogy) just over a week ago, bringing a three year plus writing project to an end.
I’m not sure how I feel…!
Clearly, I’m satisfied that I’ve done it, that I’ve completed a coherent piece of writing, more than one thousand pages (and nearly 300,000 words) long, but feeling slightly bereft that my story is now complete. Of course, I can re-visit the world I’ve created any time I want, but never again will I go there not knowing how it all ends, with the delicious thrill you get from the realisation that you’re still writing the story (or possibly the story is writing itself, using you as the medium?), that your fictional world is still evolving, and everything is still up for grabs! I have viewed the series as a detective story, with me in the role of detective…but now the case is closed…
My intention when I embarked on Lights in the Sky more than three years ago, was to write a post-modernist SF series, and I feel I have largely succeeded…
But how is it postmodernist?
Well, it incorporates a number of the features which have characterised postmodernist literature. Specifically, pastiche and a rather wholesale mixing of genres: including detective fiction, YA, fairy tales, the adventure story, SF (obviously), future history, coming of age, family saga etc…
Thinking I’d only ever write one science fiction work, I decided to chuck everything in! But, as often happens, the process of writing changes your intentions along the way, so there will be a fourth book, a companion volume, set on Earth, and (depending on your relativistic standpoint), either a prequel or a sequel to the Alpha 5 narrative…
Magic realism is also present, through the use of fairy tales and dream sequences; also fabulation, through the incorporation of fantastic elements; temporal distortions, and altered states that turn out to have objective reality, although this cannot be because it would violate relativity! My text also incorporates characters with similar names who are in fact doppelgangers! (there are three in the text!) A scientific explanation is advanced for both of the above (in the case of the relativistic paradoxes, this is based on my rather imperfect knowledge of the phenomenon of quantum tunneling!). This one of the advantage of SF as a form, one can always reach for science (real or imaginary) to provide explanations!
As SF, the text features technology heavily, but also hyperreality; specifically through the game show that features the Children as unwilling actors in a scripted narrative, produced and stage-managed by the robots, acting as agents for the shadowy Mission…
In addition we have paranoia; ‘…the belief in an ordering system behind the chaos of the world’. In Lights in the sky, this system has three distinct agents acting for it; the Mission (of course), the Alphanians, and behind them all, the Divine Architects, who we never actually meet…
My use of genre tropes is obviously self conscious, but not consciously ironic! I have no desire to distance myself from or deconstruct these genre elements which I love, and have loved, in many cases since childhood…
Clearly, I’m a fan of narrative form experimentation (which is in itself postmodern), but this is not an absurdist Universe, and the tale does come to a final resolution, which is less so…
You may become aware that the narrative is intended to work on a number of levels, however it’s not necessary to fully understand all of them to gain enjoyment from reading it…
We have paradigm shifts at the end of each book, and, oh yes…! It’s about time…

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Blog entry supplemental nine: the wheel is turning

By C Stevens | 27th June 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental: …it’s about time

By C Stevens | 17th August 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

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