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“Dimensions Unknown 2020: Warriors of Olympia” – John Paul Catton – Interview

John Paul Catton is a recognised force to be reckoned with in the field of Japan-based urban fantasy. I first came into contact with him some years back as a fellow-member of SWET, the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators in Japan, and I helped produce an early edition of his alternative history, Moonlight, Murder & Machinery.

Since then, he and his imprint, Excalibur Books, have gone from strength to strength, with the next major planned release being a collection of Olympics-themed stories by a number of authors. The series was originally entitled Tales from the Unknown (as in the earlier version of a cover from the series here), but has been retitled as Dimensions Unknown.

The idea of an Olympics-themed anthology, to be published in a year when Tokyo is preparing to host the world’s athletes (though at the time of writing, this remains in some doubt) is an intriguing one, so I decided to ask a few questions about it:

Q: What’s the working title for your new Olympics anthology? How many stories and how many authors do you expect it will end up being?

A: The official title is Dimensions Unknown 2020: Warriors of Olympia. This is Volume 3 of the Dimensions Unknown series, and it will have twenty stories from eighteen talented authors, both veteran and new.

Q: How Japan-centric do you expect the collection to be?

A: About half and half. There are some stories focusing on Japan the host country, and its society and culture. Settings include both the samurai and swordplay of the Edo period, and the bizarre technology of the nation’s near future. The other stories are Alternative History stories set in previous Olympic years, such as Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984, Sydney 2000, and of course the first Tokyo Games in 1964.

Q: Do you expect the stories to have any links with each other than Olympics (characters in common, or from your other books)?

A: This is a kind of Excalibur Books Crossover event, so there will be links to other stories and characters in the “Dimensions Unknown” series and the “Sword, Mirror, Jewel” trilogy. Simon Grey from Charles Kowalski’s novel “Simon Grey and the March of a Hundred Ghosts” and Hina Takamachi from Cody L Martin’s “Zero Sum Game” will be reappearing. I must stress, however, that this is designed as a stand-alone volume of short stories and novelettes that can be enjoyed without having read any other releases from Excalibur Books.

Q: Since Japan has been in Olympic hysteria mode for about six years now, there’s no need to ask about the inspiration for an Olympic anthology. But what about some “alternative Olympics”? Will there be a Yōkai Olympics, for example?

A: Not an Olympics exclusively for Yōkai, but Japan’s supernatural critters do make an appearance in Reiko Furukawa Bergman’s story. The “Sword, Mirror, Jewel” trilogy features a huge number of Yōkai as both protagonists and antagonists.

Q: Japan’s had bad luck with Olympics – the 1940 games which never were, and now there are serious doubts about the 2020 games. Almost a story in itself?

A: I wouldn’t say Japan has had bad luck, because the Tokyo 1964 Olympics was a tremendous success. It announced Japan’s return to the world as a modern, high-tech nation with an invigorated pop culture. In a wider sense, it encapsulated the “Golden Age of Modernist Science Fact and Fiction” optimism that, a few years later, was to transform into a Post-Modern pessimistic dread of approaching Apocalypse. That’s not a reflection on the Tokyo Games; it was a result of the inevitable gravitational pull of global technology and culture.

Q: And how do people submit their stories? Or are they all picked already? If any have been picked, would you like to say something about them, and a teaser about their story?

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A: We promoted the anthology guidelines for two years on social media, and the deadline closed at the end of 2019. The content is now finalized, and includes Alternative History versions of the previous Olympics mentioned. For example, there’s a Steampunk story where the modern Olympics started not in Athens 1896, but London 1860; there’s a Low-Gravity Olympics set on the Moon, in 1966; and we have a story set in 1964 Japan, which is a blend of two of the nation’s greatest film franchises – a kind of “Tora-san meets Godzilla”. Last and not least, there’s a non-fiction account of the original 1964 games, in an excerpt of J-Boys, by Shogo Oketani.

Excalibur Books has set up a Patreon to attract interest and to help pay for formatting and book cover costs. There are stories, both excerpts and full, going up on the Patreon on a weekly basis along with all kinds of bonus content, so if anyone likes the sound of this anthology then I ask them to join us on the Patreon. Let’s be positive! Whatever happens to the real-time Olympic games, we promise that this collection will be an awesome souvenir of 2020! Who wants to be part of it?

 

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

The Aeronauts – REVIEW

This is a novelty for me – I tend not to watch many films, let alone review them, but this popped up on my radar, and I decided to watch it. I spend a lot of time in the 19th century with Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and I’m fascinated by lighter-than-air flight (once went up in the Goodyear airship, and wrote a book about a fictional Zeppelin), so a story about both sounded interesting.

And so it proved to be. The special effects were very well done – there were some genuinely suspenseful moments, and some moments of sheer beauty and wonder. I know a little about these things, though, so there was something that I considered to be an inaccuracy – that the balloon didn’t inflate as it climbed and the external pressure decreased. The film said the balloon was constructed of a non-elastic material – silk – so perhaps that had something to do with it, but it didn’t seem right to me that it maintained the same shape as it climbed upwards.

project-loon-israel-internet
These high altitude balloons expand at high altitude with lower ambient air pressure.

As other reviews have stated, the scenes in the balloon kept getting interrupted by flashbacks – would a linear storyline have worked better? Quite possibly, actually.

Was the acting good? Yes, it was. I don’t follow actors, but these (Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones) worked well together. But the casting! Yes, I appreciate diversity in casting, but… Were there ever any Indian members of the Royal Society in the mid-19th century? I think not. Black faces in the crowd, OK? Eminent Indian scientist (and yes, I know of Ramanujam), not.

But the script!!! Ouch. As I mentioned earlier, I spend a lot of time in the 19th century – I am somewhat familiar with the way in which people, especially the middle classes, behaved towards each other. Even in moments of extreme peril, would the two characters have addressed each other by their Christian names? What would be a Victorian man’s reaction be to being asked to unlace a lady’s corset? And there was a lot of (forced unintentional) physical intimacy, which would have caused considerable embarrassment on both sides, even to someone as unconventional as Ms Jones’s character.

Basically, the lack of realistic characterisation spoiled the film for me. While I enjoyed the premise and the cinematography, the dialogue and characterisation spoiled it for me. Maybe I’m just fussy, but this worked for me on the same level as the RDJ films which use the name of “Sherlock Holmes” – an entertaining romp set in a fictional past, while pretending to be historical.

Four stars (out of five) for entertainment, one for period feel.

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

Audiobook available now!

My story of the Holloway Ghosts – a Sherlock Holmes adventure, brought to life by Steevin White​ – who voices all the parts. I originally wrote this as a story, but adapted it as a radio play with no narration – simply voices and sound effects. Steve and I had great fun casting the characters – and I hope you will enjoy the results. I’m delighted!

There was a lot of fun creating this from the original story, stripping out descriptive passages, and replacing them with dialogue and/or sound effects. We had to make sure that the characters had sufficiently different ways of expressing themselves for them not to be confused in listeners’ minds, and I think on the whole, we ended up doing a good job.

I have to confess that I don’t know Bookmate, but there are far more five-star than one-star reviews of the app and the service on the App Store, despite the fact that the three featured reviews seem to be one-star. Sounds worth a go, anyway.

AppStore GooglePlus

 

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

Fracture – REVIEW


Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom

A slightly sideways look at history between 1918 and 1939 – taking in some of the principal social and political events of that time. Blom seems to be one of those historians who sees this period as a time of relative calm in the Second European Thirty Years’ War (1914-1945), given the conflicts in most Continental European countries.

I learned a lot, for example, about the political violence in Austria post-1918, and about this history of Italy, particularly the influence of d’Annunzio’s style and tactics had on Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. The social structure of Prohibition, and the pernicious racism in the USA which ironically coexisted with the rise of African-American culture in the form of jazz also play a part in the story, as does the decadence of the Berlin of Christopher Isherwood and Sally Bowles.

However, the conclusion may seem particularly shocking to many, especially those right-wing libertarians who worship the god of Mammon. Blom pours scorn on what he sees as the myth of the neoliberal free market, which he blames for many of today’s ills and insecurity, and which he dismisses, saying “the gospel of the free market is just as ideological as fascism or communism. The belief in the seemingly unideological power of the market has helped only a small minority, creating for the rest a world in which hundreds of millions of people live less well and more precariously than their parents.”

He builds a convincing case for this view in the previous chapters, and to me, there is much to be said for it. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the book is worth reading, whether or not it agrees with your views, if only for the stories it tells.

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Posted on by Hugh Ashton

The woman who fooled the world – REVIEW

The Woman Who Fooled The World: Belle Gibson’s Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness IndustryThe Woman Who Fooled The World: Belle Gibson’s Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry by Beau Donelly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very frightening expose of how easy it is to fool many people by telling them what they want to believe. This book deals with the “wellness” business, but the same principles can be applied to financial and political scammers as well.

“Woo” and political “woo” (Brexit, Trumpism, etc.) have many things in common – an audience who are desperate for some good news, believing the existing system has failed them, and welcome any kind of relief from what is troubling them, however ludicrous and outrageous the claims and methods may seem to be.
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Posted on by Hugh Ashton

Lend me your ears…

There’s a very interesting development coming up soon. One of my Sherlock Holmes stories for the MX Collections, “The Holloway Ghosts” was written not in my usual first-person Watson narrative style, but as an audio play.

Steve Emecz, the publisher behind MX, had been quietly asking for some time for me to make my works available as audiobooks, a field in which MX Publishing has quietly been making significant progress.

Accordingly, the Holloway Ghosts made their way over to MX, where they have been recorded and produced by another Steve (White), and Steve W and I worked out some of the production issues (including some of my stupid errors in the script) by email until we were both happy with it.

Audio is more than just the words

As we processed the script, I discovered that there is much more to making a successful audio drama than merely the right words. It helps to have a little atmosphere in there – a ticking clock and a crackling fire summon up the atmosphere of the rooms in 221B Baker Street. The clip-clop of horses’ hoofs brings us outside into a Victorian street, and a little reverberation added to the effects and dialogue places us with Holmes and Watson in a deserted empty room.

And then there’s the voice in which the accents are spoken. Steve, without going into a ludicrous falsetto, can portray the female characters in my story. However, I had envisaged one of my characters as being much more strident, and probably not a Londoner, than Steve made her. So we changed her to be a Midlander with an attitude, and I think we’re much happier with her now.

Steve surprised me with his Lestrade, who seemed to be from Norfolk. However, once I had got over the surprise, it worked, and made a great foil to the stolid Cockney PCs who play a role in the story.

And we also had fun with Otto Sussbinder – a German character who is not all that he appears.

And next…

This is one of the problems I encountered with regard to a voice play – transitions. I could have taken the easy way out, and had Watson do a voice-over.

We left Baker Street and made our way to Holloway by cab. During the journey, Holmes informed Lestrade of his conclusions regarding the recent theft from Westmereland House.

But I felt that was cheating. Accordingly, I wrote these scenes either as dialogue, or as a spoken cue by one of the characters:

Come, let us take a cab to Holloway, and we may usefully pass the time by my informing you, Lestrade, of the conclusions I have reached regarding the Westmereland rubies.

I also found, in scenes where more than one character is present, that I needed to throw in names in order to indicate who is being addressed:

Lestrade, if you would be good enough to call one of your constables, and Watson, follow me to the rear of the house.

All very technical, but necessary to the ultimate success of the production.

So… Keep a lookout for the Holloway Ghosts – appearing soon in a little over 30 minutes of glorious  audio. And at least two more of my longer stories are on the stocks, being adapted in the same way – no descriptions – simply dialogue. It’s an exciting venture.

I’ll be writing more later, when these hit the “shelves”.

 

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

I’ve been away from here for a while…

The reason is that some pesky person down in London went and called a General Election, and my writing skills, such as they are, together with a reasonable amount of my time, have been harnessed to a political cart.

It’s been quite an adventure – the first General Election in which I have known “my” candidate (and one of the other candidates) personally – and I’m seeing many of the aspects of an election from the inside.

It’s been educational standing on street corners, handing out leaflets, and engaging with people whose political views differ from mine. Very little in the way of actual arguments, and most of my conversations have ended with a handshake and a “take care” from both sides.

But… it has eaten into my writing time. I make no apologies. The future of the country in which I live and hold citizenship is more important to me than my scribblings. Normal service will be resumed soon after December 12.

 

 

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

If Only They Didn’t Speak English (Jon Sopel) – REVIEW

A book that looks at America and Americans – the premise of the title is that the USA is a very foreign country indeed – very far away from the UK in many deeply fundamental ways, but because they speak English, we think of them as slightly eccentric siblings, rather than distant relatives with very different  worldviews to those we have in Britain.

Continue reading “If Only They Didn’t Speak English (Jon Sopel) – REVIEW” →

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

Halloween is coming

Unknown Quantities is now available for pre-order and will be on sale from Halloween (the paperback will also be available on that date ). However, I will be happy to send a free ebook copy (EPUB or MOBI) to the first ten people to contact me, in exchange for a review somewhere.Unknownback@1.5x

  • Bee-bee – a rag doll who helps her owner cope with life’s ups and downs
  • What you find in a skip – it can be surprising
  • Babysitter – something nasty in the Coopers’ woodshed
  • Time thieves – they steal time and dreams and energy
  • Ships in the night – “as night turned to day, he started to understand the truth”
  • Carnacki at Bunscombe Abbey – a sincere tribute to William Hope Hodgson’s classic ghost-finder
  • The story that wrote itself – sometimes an author gets help from an unexpected source
  • Gianni Two-Pricks – be careful what you take from others – even when they’re dead
  • Lady of the Dance – movement as message
  • Me and my Shadow – or is it really my shadow?
  • What Happens Afterwards? – when you die on the operating table, what’s next?
Posted on by Hugh Ashton

Another day, another genre…

I’ve written books in a variety of genres, but one I’ve shied away from, for no good reason, is the horror/weird genre.

However, in the Lichfield Writers, I found that quite a few of my pieces actually were at least moving in the direction of that genre, and could be put together to make a small collection. I was encouraged in this by John Linwood Grant, who has much more experience in this field, and am going ahead with the project.

UnknownbackI’ve picked out ten stories, and the 96-page book will be on sale soon. I’ve produced it as the same pocket size (4″ x 6″ or 101mm x 152mm) as the Untime paperback. It’s cute and it’s rather friendly.

The cover is still a little provisional, but I’m pretty certain that Unknown Quantities will end up looking a little like this.

The price it will go for on Amazon is £5.99 (US $6.99). I should be able to do it for much less (including p&p). If you are interested in a signed copy, please let me know, and I’ll be able to order copies for resale.

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

You win, Mr Bezos

Despite my books selling tolerably well on Amazon, Kobo, and Apple, it seems that very few people were interested in saving money by buying my titles directly from this site.

I have therefore taken away the ability to buy my books directly from here. You’ll have to look elsewhere.

However, you can still download the free books (Balance of Powers and First Contact) from here, as well as the (payable by PayPal or CC) recording of Sherlock Ferret and the Phantom Photographer.

Posted on by Hugh Ashton