Why This Is Hell

136600 / 120000 words. 114% done!

New version of Chapter Two - Chapter Three is a maze of black ink.

So close... I reckon I have 200 word to add to end the project and I was going to keep going; but my bulb has gone ping, and I need to read some Ballard stories before I write those 200 words. I could adjurn to a room with a light bulb but I think that's my cue to get the fuck to bed. It being gone 1.40. I am unlikely to have time tomorrow (today) as it is a day off, and the day after tomorrow (tomorrow) I anticipate a hangover. Maybe the 30th will be the day.

Parker, L.D. (1997) ‘Practitioner Perspectives on Personal Conduct: Images
from the World of Poetry, 1900-55’, in T. E. Cooke and C. W. Nobes (eds)
The Development of Poetry in an International Context, pp. 68-89. London:
Routledge.

So spaced initials for editors but closed up for authors.

It feels a bit odd for journal titles to be single quote marks when actual quotations are double quote marks.

Today has ended up more or less where it needed to be.

The grand plan was to head to the academic library on the hill around nine, but this was scuppered by a) needing to buy, write and post a birthday card to my big bother, b) needing to fill the prescriptions, c) needed to take advantage of the 3 for the price of 1 Jaffa Cakes offer and d) sleeping in until 8.40.

Naturally then it was not until 11.20 that I was on the Unibus - and 11.30 when it left, after the two buses parked either side had long gone. A diversion to buy a notepad - Tesco not stocking anything appropriate - I was in the Library for noon. I did about three hours - which is more than I've managed there since the start of the academic year - and then went to the Carbuncle to buy a ticket for the Ross Noble interview (one packet of Jaffa cakes later).

Thence via charity shops (and a surprise present for two Midlands parties) to Caffe Nerd and more notetaking.

Back to pick up the prescription and home to finish the index I've been working on. I can now go to the pub with no poof raeding. Two packets down.


Off to Lewes tomorrow. Is there really an 8am train?

After One of Those Weekends - a botched meet for coffee with a mate and a screwed up Secret Santa, neither my fault - I've battled through the death march of the copy edit to complete Science Fiction: 50 Key Figures.

The stats:

Words: 106,000, pre-index
Pages: 548 double spaced with 4 cm margins.

My co-editors and I will do another skim through over Christmas and new year and aim to submit around 3 January.

I've just copy-edited the fiftieth file in the current co-edited volume; there are massages that need to be done, especially on earlier chapters, and authorial corrections to make, and I have to do the preliminaries, and it has more stages to go but -

- as the book has 50 Key Figures in its title, this is a milestone.

Let it be recorded: Today has been a good day.

I've been feeling a bit trapped, and the endless coypu-editing, camp or otherwise, is getting to me (do experts not know the titles of the books they are discussing? can no one follow Routledge NuStyle?). A jolly, an expotition was in order.

There are various exhibitions in London I am failing to see. My therapist recommended an exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion, and there's a bookshop in Bexhill-on-Sea which requires more exploration. Various days turned out to be free, and Saturday was a wash out, and the shop would be shut on a Sunday, and I was working on Monday. So Wednesday was the day I finally was free - and note this is the day the dvd shop shuts. I renewed the railcard, caught the train and was in a bookshop was 11.30. I found a pile of seventies books which in some cases stretched the two pound rule, and a Leigh Brackett crime novel, and the shop keeper said he'd call it two quid a book plus a quid for the cheap one. Eight books for £15. Result.

Then a trudge around the various charity shops - with nothing leaping off the shelves that I could justify buying - I think the quality of the books is improving, but that means fewer battered paperback sf books. No waistcoats (vests), no jackets, no interesting bric-a-brac - although I paused on a purse disguised as a glitterball (or a glitterball disguised as a purse) with the notion of it being a birthday present. I found something that will do, but not, yet, what I wanted. I proofraed the dvd shop and went to find some Fried Chicken for lunch, which I ate near the Pavilion, kicking the gulls out the way (gulls like chicken. Who knew?)

I sort of resented having to pay for the exhibition - but I will say more about mid-period Ben Nicholson later, as it was rather interesting to see landscape and geometric abstraction mesh so closely together. There were some nice photos in the overflow of the Brighton Photo Biennial (it's over now, and it wasn't in Brighton). A wander around the building, a coffee, a reader of the Grauniad and then to Sainsbury's* via a rather worrying cakeshop.

I popped into Sainsbury's, to picked up some pitta bread (had it been a bit later then I would have bought sustenance for the journey home), but as it was I bought a blue cherry yoghurt and two six packs of pittas for the price of one at 70p. Naturally, they come up at 75p each. I query it. Someone is despatched to the shelf - and the sign was in the wrong place (it does not cover organic ones, which these were, and neither of the two signs were that close to any pittas. But - get this - i could have them for 70p. That's better than Tescos would behave.

I lost the card from the bookshop on the way to the pub - but found it on my way back.


* I remember it as a Waitrose. I remember green signage. Has it become Ramsgate in my head?

Ok - that's it.

We've read the proofs.

We've screamed.

We've proof read the proofs.

I've made a list of corrections and restorations.

We've wibbled about missing magazine dates.

I've asked my coeditors to research magazine dates.

I've researched magazine dates.

I've rewritten sections of the book for those dates.

I've spotted an error in a date we already had.

I've conflated all of this into one easy file and put line breaks for each chapter.

That's it.

That's the lot.

Oh, we haven't proofraed the index. We haven't seen the index. I claim no responsibility for the index.

I laugh in the face of a January 30 2009 publication date. A paperback is rumoured for March.

Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, (eds) The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction [Import] (Hardcover)

HISTORY 1. The Copernican Revolution – Adam Roberts 2. Nineteenth-Century Sf – Arthur B. Evans 3. Fiction, 1895–1926 – John Rieder 4. Sf Tourism – Brooks Landon 5. Film, 1895–1950 – J.P. Telotte 6. Fiction, 1926–49 – Farah Mendlesohn 7. Golden Age Comics – Marek Wasielewski 8. Film and Television, the 1950s – Mark Jancovich and Derek Johnston 9. Fiction, 1950–63 – Rob Latham 10. Film and Television, 1960–80 – Peter Wright 11. Fiction, 1964–79 – Helen Merrick 12. Manga and Anime – Sharalyn Orbaugh 13. Silver Age Comics – Jim Casey 14. Film since 1980 – Sean Redmond 15. Television since 1980 – Lincoln Geraghty 16. Fiction, 1980–92 – Michael Levy 17. Comics since the Silver Age – Abraham Kawa 18. Fiction since 1992 – Paul Kincaid

THEORY 19. Critical Race Theory – Isiah Lavender III 20. Cultural History – Lisa Yaszek 21. Fan Studies – Robin Anne Reid 22. Feminisms – Jane Donawerth 23. Language and Linguistics – Mark Bould 24. Marxism – William J. Burling 25. Nuclear Criticism – Paul G. Williams 26. Postcolonialism – Michelle Reid 27. Posthumanism and Cyborg Theory – Veronica Hollinger 28. Postmodernism – Darren Jorgensen 29. Psychoanalysis – Andrew M. Butler 30. Queer Theory – Wendy Gay Pearson 31. Utopian Studies – Alcena M.D. Rogan 32. Virtuality – Thomas Foster

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES 33. Animal Studies – Joan Gordon 34. Design for Screen Sf – Piers Britton 35. Digital Games – Tanya Krzywinska and Esther McCallum–Stewart 36. Empire – Istvan Csicsery–Ronay Jr 37. Environmentalism – Patrick D. Murphy 38. Ethics and Alterity – Neil Easterbrook 39. Music – Ken McLeod 40. Pseudoscience – Roger Luckhurst 41. Science Studies – Sherryl Vint 42. Space – James Kneale 43. Time, Possible Worlds, and Counterfactuals – Matt Hills 44. Young Adult Sf – Joe Sutliff Sanders

SUBGENRES 45. Alternative History – Karen Hellekson 46. Apocalyptic Sf – Aris Mousoutzanis 47. Arthouse Sf Film – Stacey Abbott 48. Blockbuster Sf Film – Stacey Abbott 49. Dystopia – Graham J. Murphy 50. Eutopia – Graham J. Murphy 51. Feminist Sf – Gwyneth Jones 52. Future History – Andy Sawyer 53. Hard Sf – David N. Samuelson 54. Slipstream – Victoria de Zwaan 55. Space Opera – Andy Sawyer 56. Weird Fiction – China Miéville


I'm not sure how many years I've been working on this. Time to stop, methinks

I think copy editors should be forced to swear an Hypocritic Oaf: "First do no harm."


Just saying.