He asks why is the world so clearly going wrong and why can’t anyone fix it. His proposal is that the problem can be laid at the door of corporations, which are hive organisms “constructed out of teeming workers who join or leave the collective: those who participate within it subordinate their goals to that of the collective, which pursues the three corporate objectives of growth, profitability, and pain avoidance. (The sources of pain a corporate organism seeks to avoid are lawsuits, prosecution, and a drop in shareholder value.)”

Potentially immortal, they exist mainly in the present, with little regard for the past or the long-term future, and are essentially sociopathic forms, he says. Utilising Governments and the media to achieve their ends, they have spread across the globe. And he concludes: “We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals… In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion.”

Which certainly captures a huge part of the depersonalisation of the 21C world. There is another side, though, which concerns the defence of the human race against the alien invaders. The only people who can stop these conquerors are not eggheads with whiteboards or staunch, plucky workers, but politicians.

One of the central beliefs of politics is that politicians always fight the campaign of two elections ago – eight to ten years. They’re looking back to what worked and what didn’t. Their beliefs are shaped during their formative years and rarely change. But with the rapid and accelerating social and technological change of the last decade, eight years ago might as well be fifty. We essentially have 20th century people trying to fight 21st century problems.

The other issue is the decline of the political party system. Before the 1980s, political parties were mass membership organisations, numbering in some cases well over a million members. Now the main parties claim a tiny fraction of that number – and this is true across the west.

In the UK (and in many other countries), candidates are chosen from the party membership. As numbers decline, so does the talent base. Most parties are now down to a rump of unrepresentative activists, who may be decent-hearted and fuelled by a belief in their principles, but are not a deep source of the kinds of talent we need in the 21C.

So the aliens have indeed taken over, and our defenders simply aren’t up to the job of organising the resistance. Meanwhile, we face some of the worst problems ever to afflict the human race. As Charlie points out, that’s not the end of the debate, it’s the beginning…

I only have praise for the staff and academics at the Tate who treated both myself, and the genre, with a great deal of respect. Before the lecture, the audience toured the gallery to see Dadd’s work and many took the opportunity to ask me about my opinions on the artist and his work. After that I gave the lecture, touching on not only my interest in Dadd and my novella about his most famous painting, ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’, but also about other authors influenced by Dadd – Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Angela Carter, Robert Rankin and more. We followed this with an at times intense debate with an art historian about the meaning of Dadd’s work, and a couple of readings from The Fairy Feller novella.

The novella has gone from strength-to-strength since it won the British Fantasy Award four years ago. The limited edition by PS Publishing has nearly sold out, and the added attention from this Tate event has created interest from across the world. Now I need to find a mainstream publisher interested in reprinting it as part of a collection so it can reach a wider audience.

[cross-posted]

Old gods never die. They wait for the right time to regain their grip on humanity.

In Egypt, in Greece, China, frozen northern Europe, America, ancient forces are awakening. Only a handful of heroes know the truth and stand ready to defend our modern world from powers rooted in a more brutal, terrifying time.

But behind it all lurks something even worse. The god of gods.

The Burning Man is coming…

For a while now, my editor has always asked me for detailed cover briefs – probably because she thinks it saves months of authorial moaning, whinging and foot-stamping once the cover process has begun. And that’s just how I like it. I have a clear vision for my novels – so why shouldn’t I have one for the illustration?

My personal tastes run to a more designery style. I find the representational style of too many genre covers tired and dated.

The Burning Man is scheduled for February 2008 and you can get a first look at the cover here.

And if you don’t like it, you now know who should be blamed…

Like everyone I planned to leave work behind.  The trouble with work in the imaginative sphere is that the more relaxed you get, the more the imagination goes into overdrive.  There is no escape.

And so I came back with an outline for a new book.  It’s not fantasy (or SF) and it probably won’t be published under my real name.  It hasn’t got a publisher yet (because my current one only deals in F/SF/H).  But it’s one of the most commercial and stimulating stories I’ve ever created.  I reckon it could give the Da Vinci Code a run for its money (though it’s not in that strange sub-sub-genre of ancient mysteries, which has seen lots of activity in recent months - the Code and that particular area of story-telling is sooo two years ago…)

It’s not going to get in the way of The Kingdom of the Serpent, which is planned, structured and nearly two-thirds done.  One of the advantages of being highly disciplined (the old journalistic background of never missing a deadline) is I can quite comfortably do two books a year if necessary.

Of course, this means I can now justify to myself even more holidays a year.  It’s work, you see.

But what many people don’t know is that I also earn a crust as a screenwriter.  Today I’ve just finished the second episode of a new science fiction series I’m developing with the BBC.  It’s still a long way from appearing on your TV screen, and, in fact, may never do so.  It’s a long, exhausting and arduous task to get a series from idea to commission, with numerous, increasingly higher hurdles to jump over.  And even if you’ve finally shaped the best idea in the world, it can still fall at the last because there’s not a free slot in the schedule.

Yet to a novelist, used to toiling away in a lonely room, it’s a fascinating, invigorating process.  You get to work with other committed, creative individuals who take your idea in a surprising direction, and then you get to do the same with their ideas.  (Whether I would enjoy it so much if I didn’t have the singular visions and sole authorship of my novels to fall back on, is a different matter – you can’t beat being in complete control).

I’ve also got another supernatural series in the early stages of development, and a movie project.  And there’s been some initial movie interest in World’s End.

It’s all wait-and-see, but that’s part of the excitement.  You never know what’s going to be around the corner.