Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.”—Alasdair Gray.
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
I have two events at the Glasgow literary festival AyeWrite!. The first, on Friday 4 April, is a panel in memory of Iain Banks, with reminiscences and readings by me, Ron Butlin, and other friends of Iain.
4 Apr 2014 6:00 P.M - 7:00 P.M at the Mitchell Library
The second, on Thursday 10 April, is a conversation between me and Robert Shearman (Dr Who writer, horror writer, former Writer in Residence on the MA Creative Writing course, and all-round good guy) on what the future holds and the present conceals.
10 Apr 2014 6:00 P.M - 7:00 P.M at the Mitchell Library
A global
industrial civilization has never existed before, and while highly
interdependent it seems to contain enough redundant links to make it resilient.
A lot of horrible things could happen, but it would go on. Some civilizations
do go on for thousands of years. China and Egypt spring to mind, but even
Europeans could just about get away with claiming that the Roman Empire is
still around, and they're living in it. That said, there are imaginable if
unlikely events that could knock over civilization across a wide area or even
the world without necessarily wiping everyone out. A limited nuclear war or an
unstoppable plague or an asteroid impact or a big coronal mass ejection could kill billions and still
leave millions of survivors struggling to cope.
Most of them
wouldn't have a clue what to do. A precondition of an advanced industrial
civilization is a very fine-grained division of labour. This makes astonishing
achievements routine, but necessarily leaves everyone involved a little vague
about the details of what everyone else does. The premise of Lewis Dartnell’s
new book, The Knowledge, is that it’s a manual for the survivors of a disaster
that wiped out 90% of humanity but left the infrastructure basically intact.
What would they need to know in order to survive and start again?
Dartnell starts
his thought experiment with ‘the grace period’ in which there are still useful
supplies to be got from the cities, and goes on through rebooting agriculture,
food and clothing, medicine, mining, manufacturing, transport, electricity,
communications, chemistry … and so on, all the way to ‘the greatest invention’:
science itself. At each step, he uses his attention-grabbing premise to make
the mundane details of how to make everything from bread to soap to cement to
steel interesting and interconnected. I didn’t know that a lathe is a sort of
von Neumann machine, or that retrieving at least one long-threaded screw from the ruins
is crucial. The conclusion is inspiring, the guide to further reading gives due
recognition to post-apocalyptic SF, and the bibliography can keep you reading
until the asteroid comes.
I can see this
book becoming a manual for writers of post-apocalyptic SF and historical
fiction, steampunk and the like, but far more important is its relevance to the
rest of us in understanding how the world we live in actually works.
I was sent an
advance proof for comment, and I’ve just received a fine hardback with my quote
on the back: ‘This is the book we all wish we’d been given at school: the
knowledge that makes everything else make sense.’ True to my word, that copy’s
going to the nearest high school library. But I’ll buy the paperback and keep
it in easy reach, and in a safe place.
Here's a Scottish Book Trust podcast in which I talk with Ryan Van Winkle about Descent. Kirsty Logan and Tim Sinclair are on before me, also talking about their new books.
I have a review of The Science Fiction Handbook, edited by Nick Hubble and Aris Mousoutzanis (Bloomsbury, 2013) in the Morning Star. Basically I outline the history of SF criticism as I understand it and then heartily recommend the book, which I have read and have already started lending to students.
My novel Descent (UK/ANZ/Amazon UK/ sample here) is being launched at Edinburgh's fine bookshop Blackwell's on Thursday 6 March.
Details:
Date: Thursday 6th March
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Blackwell’s Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1YS
I'll be reading from the novel and answering questions and generally talking about it. I've describedDescent as being 'about flying saucers, hidden races, and Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution, all set in a tale of Scottish middle class family life in and after the Great Depression of the 21st Century. Almost mainstream fiction, really.'
The event finishes at 8 pm, and no doubt discussion will continue in one or more of the local pubs.
This event is ticketed, but tickets are FREE. Tickets are available from the front desk at Blackwell’s Bookshop or by phoning 0131 622 8218
For more information or if you would like a signed copy please contact Ellie Wixon on 0131 622 8222 or ellie.wixon@blackwell.co.uk