Mark Bloody Lawson

I turned the radio on on Monday night to KaleidoscopeFront Row to hear the unmistakeable tones of Mark Lawson asking Mark Billingham how much of something was true and how much was made up.


Argh!

Last night it was going to be Mark Lawson interviews J.G. Ballard "who has sifted the truth from the fiction in a new autobiography."

Argh!

Why shouldn't the made up be the truth?

"It's the truth even if it didn't happen."


[And Ballard was interviewed by James Naughtie on the Toady Programme last week, an interview uninforming even by Ballard's standards, not giving him a chance even to trot out the same lines he always uses:

JN: "So, you wrote a book about your experiences in Shanghai?"

JGB: "Yes, I did."

JN: "And Spielberg film it, in a most remarkable movie."

JGB: "Yes, he did."

No mention of sf, naturally, no indication that Naughtie had even read the books.]

So which bits of this post are the truth and which bits made up?

The Light Dawns

Yesterday a student cautiously asked me if we were going to be looking at any unsuitable material in the lecture. Since it was partly on slash, it was perhaps a reasonable fear. Certificate 15, I'd say.

Afterwards he asked me if I'd read The Making of Lt. Ripley since I'd been teaching feminism with Joanne. I'm not entirely sure, but the subtext felt as if he'd assumed she'd introduced me to feminism. About bloody time we met... Let's see, been doing sessions on it since 1992 or 1993, with my favourite being those to female Open University students who didn't see the need for it. What with working and studying and being mothers.

(Mind you, what I've been reading this week about third wave feminism looks awfully like old fashioned sexism. Being objectified is empowering. Or something.)

Actually I've not read the book, but I've met the authors who delivered a paper on how all sfnal space ships are penises (rockets, zeppelins, cigars) or vaginas (saucers, spheres, teapots). Whilst pondering that perceptions of something being aerodynamic might have something to do with it, I asked whether the TARDIS was a vagina or a penis.

They haven't got back to me.

Let's see, it's always boasted that it's bigger on the inside...