Now, before I start with my views, I think it important to clarify my particular stance on the subject of the BNP.

First of all, I despise everything the bunch of nasty little shits stand for. Secondly, I’d not lose a minute of sleep if they boarded a plane that mysteriously disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle. I’m not that bothered about their welfare. Thirdly, I think it’s important that I’m allowed to call them a “bunch of nasty little shits” without fear of reprisal.

We kid ourselves that we live in a free society, and we – quite naturally – get very upset when something happens to upset the status quo, particularly when we’ve been relatively content with how quo the status has been.

When the BNP (I can’t bring myself to type out the party’s full name more than once in this entry – I find it offensive that they use the word “British” in their title, as if they represent those of us born or nationalised here)… I’ll start again, as that was far too much of an aside to be easily read: when the BNP won two European Parliamentary seats earlier on this year, I felt ashamed. Not only to be living in the general area where they were elected (“the north”) but also ashamed that nearly a million people in the UK felt that this group of fascist idiots offered more than the other parties running for election. Seriously – how low must the public opinion be of the Tories and Labour, if they’d prefer to allow this bunch of cretinous bigots to represent us in the European parliament!

Now there is outrage that the BNP have been invited to appear on Question Time on the BBC. It is the opinion of many (including a number of close friends of mine) that they should be banned from the programme, as to appear would lend them the appearance of respectability and implied acceptance.

There is a lot of truth in this argument, but the fact remains that the party are a democratically elected body, and if the BBC were to ignore them, just because their policies are offensive to many (not to all, of course – they were elected, after all), or because the BBC has been pressured by other political parties, then this would be tantamount to censorship. It would be the Comics Code all over again – “we don’t mind what you say, as long as we agree with it”. And yes – it’s not art, it’s politics, and it’s an over-simplification, perhaps, but there is truth there.

I hate the BNP with a passion, but if a line is drawn, and they are not allowed the right of free speech, how long before the line is drawn a little closer, and a little closer, until our own opinions are subject to approval before we are allowed to express them? Or we’re not allowed to express them at all?

The BNP are fascists of the lowest order, but as legally, democratically elected members of a legitimate political body, they have a right to express their opinions on the same stage as their competitor parties. I abhor what they say, but as long as no laws are broken, I’ll defend their right to say it.

Tonight I saw the last episode of season 1, and it is still my favourite TV series. This is what TV was invented for!

Fantastic characters, great performances, amazing writing.

But, uhhh… that Mandy character… is there, you know, a point?

Right at the start of the series a huge deal was made of the fact that she’s pretty much the best political PR person in the country. Why, then, do all of the other characters dismiss pretty much everything she says? And why do the writers feel embarrassed that she’s there? She’s had about half a storyline in the whole of season 1 (she’d written something dismissive about the president before she started working for him and everyone said “boo, sucks”, then the president said “give her a break” – which doesn’t happen in real life, believe me!)

So, all you West Wing gurus – spoiler-free, please… does the (slightly odd-looking, but you still would) Moira Kelly get any screen time worth a damn?

Someone responded and asked – well, what is “genre enough, then”?

A good question, and one which you can see my answer to over at www.AngryRobotBooks.com if you can be bothered…

It’s the story of three flatmates – one is a ghost, one a vampire, and one a werewolf – and of how they cope with the loss of the humanity, or their struggle to maintain/regain it.

It was shown on BBC3 on Sunday night (25th January) and I watched it with Gina last night.

About 20 minutes in I asked G what she thought. “It’s alright.” she said.

Russell Tovey as the werewolf (and the only actor to return from the pilot) was good, but helped by a few decent lines and situations. The guy who played the vampire (I’m sorry, I just can’t be arsed to look him up at the moment) was about as brooding a vampire as you could imagine, and the actress who played the ghost was ok. Just ok.

We do “ok” well in Britain, and we tend to count ourselves lucky for it. If this was a big budget US production I’d have given up, but as it’s a British show I’ll probably watch next week to see if it has improved. If not, I might watch the following week, just in case. ‘Cause that’s what we do. We expect UK genre shows to be a bit shit, and if they’re a bit better than a bit shit we’re happy.

We really should demand higher standards of ourselves – not just as producers of genre TV, but as viewers.

So, yeah – Being Human? It’s a bit shit, but that’s ok, ’cause it’s our shit.

Well, I’ve been an angry robot for 3 weeks, now, and this is my first post (expect a lot more in future) about it. Things have been extraordinarily busy over the last few weeks.

It already feels like I’ve been here for months, but in a good way. Setting up a new publishing division was always going to be hard work. Luckily, Marco has been beavering away behind the scenes for the last few months, so I was able to walk into a role that straight away had plenty of work for me. Also, of course, as part of Harper Collins we have many back-end systems in place so we don’t need to invent everything from scratch.

I’ve been diligently working my way through the substantial submissions pile, and I’ve been struck by how high the overall quality of the writing is. There are very few novels rejected because the quality of writing isn’t good enough (though, inevitably there are some). Many of our rejections are due to the fact that the manuscripts (or proposals) just aren’t quite what we’re looking for. Indeed, two of the novels that we had to reject (for not being genre-enough) are of such high quality that I’ll be actively looking out for them when they do find a publisher, and buying a copy for myself.

It’s a sobering thought to think that sometimes, being excellent just isn’t enough.

Anyway.

I first became interested in the concept of electronic books and ePublishing about 7 years ago. When preparing for holiday, my wife (Gina) and I would pack 5 or 6 books each (we didn’t pack more, as we knew some of our individual selections could be read by the other, and there was usually a book exchange somewhere if you looked hard enough). The situation suited Gina perfectly well – largely because I was the one in charge of handling the luggage. I am man, see me roar! Rawwwrrrr!

One day whilst surfing the ‘net I came across a site that sold electronic books.

Books. In an electronic format. Eh?

The geek in me was aroused from its delicate slumber, and I investigated a little more. The site had a quite good selection of novels from which to choose, and a superb selection of short stories, and you could download them in a number of different formats. After checking to see if my phone/PDA could display them (it could) I decided to give it a try. The site had a special offer on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – it could be mine for just $7 (or about £4 in those pre-credit crunch days or yore). I entered my credit card details, and within minutes I was the proud owner of a novel I had been looking forward to for ages.

And I didn’t have to travel the 40-odd miles to the nearest bookshop to get it.

What I didn’t know at the time, was whether I would be able to read a whole novel on a screen half the size of a KitKat without getting eyestrain, or without getting seriously annoyed with the whole unnatural experience. However, I was willing to give it a shot for the sake of science and art – I mean, 4 quid is not much to invest in a potentially exciting new enterprise, is it?

The process of scrolling through the text instead of turning a page came pretty naturally, and it wasn’t long before I was so immersed in the text that the actual medium of text distribution became not only unimportant, but irrelevant. It was the words that mattered, not the format.

Of course, it was entirely possible that it was Gaiman’s superior prose that was responsible for my total immersion in the e-reading experience, so I tried other novels, short stories, novellas.

The same.

It got to the stage where my eBook purchases started to outnumber my dead tree book purchases.

Of course, all the books I purchased were protected by various DRM methodologies (more on that topic of evil publishing manipulation at a later date, probably) and I made it a rule never to buy a book if it was being sold at full price.

A huge percentage of eBooks are sold online as if they were physical copies. Hardback price £17.99, eBook price £17.99. It is also quite common to find eBooks priced higher than their physical counterparts, too – especially when you figure in bookshops’ 3 for 2 offers, or similar.

Paying more for an eBook than a physical book? Madness. The publication and distribution costs are vastly reduced – especially if buying direct from the publisher (if the publisher sells from their site at all, which surprisingly few do, at the moment).

So why aren’t we yet living in the future where all books and periodicals are read on portable electronic devices?

The answer, I think, is 3-fold.

Firstly, the head-in-the-sand attitude of publishers is delaying the process. Most of them, while acknowledging that eBooks exist, would rather pretend that they don’t. eBooks are the inbred bastard cousin, who you have to invite to the party for fear of upsetting Aunty Mabel, but you’re secretly relieved when they don’t turn up. Sooner or later, though, the cousin turns up and brings all his friends, and you’re going to have to deal then, yessirree bob!

This attitude has caused a lot of major businesses a lot of headache in the past, and it’s astounding to see it still prevalent in modern commerce.

Two closely-related examples: Book chains ignored – nay, dismissed – the opportunities that the internet presented for major national and international distribution of the physical books they sold, leaving the door wide open for a new type of bookshop. Amazon was born from nothing, and remains the most successful online bookseller in the world, having grabbed market share from every established brand in the game. To this day, none of the big book chains can come close to Amazon’s online dominance in the book trade. When Apple launched the iPod, legitimate, paid music downloads were scoffed at by worldy-wise muso types, who knew that the CD reigned supreme, and people would never stop buying music in physical format. Apple became reasonably successful, though, don’t you think?

If publishers don’t get into the game soon, and with a genuine passion for electronic publishing (rather than tentative toe-in-the-water steps) then someone else will come along and clean up. It’s no use believing that it couldn’t happen in publishing. It’s still early days, it’s true, but early days soon turn into late nights. In order to become successful, then, it will take either a big publisher with balls to grab the bull by the horn and innovate, else a third-party with little experience in the book trade will come along, and apply a bit of common sense to the situation, and steal the publishers’ thunder, and market share.

The second reason for the comparative rarity of the eBook as leisure item is the current cost of buying an eBook reader. The current market leaders in terms of eBook hardware both cost a couple of hundred pounds (the Sony PRS505 and the Amazon Kindle), which is a lot of money for the man in the street. When the cost drops, however, sales will increase, so the cost will drop further, etc, etc, until we get to the stage where a decent eBook reader is an almost disposable item.

Yes, there are free alternatives to dedicated eBook readers, but none of these are entirely satisfactory – at least, not for the mass market. Reading anything longer than a short story in PDF format on a PC or Mac is hard work. When reading for pleasure you want to curl up and hold your (e)Book in your hand. Reading on an iPod or mobile phone is fine (I’ve been doing it for years) but you really don’t want to drop that contract phone if you’re having a read in the bath…

So, cheaper readers (and waterproof, please!) are a must for the medium to expand.

And the third reason we’ve not all ditched the printed word? Because books are nice. There’s something satisfying about curling up in front of a roaring fire with a glass of something warming and a favourite book. I love eBooks, but I pray with a passion that they won’t kill the printed book – at least not within my lifetime. What’s likely is that eBooks will get more and more popular, while printed editions are made available through anonymous p.o.d. technologies, or as limited edition collectibles.

And that’s fine by me.

I’m writing this, sat at my PC at 6.25 a.m., having been awake since 4.00. This is starting to become a habit, and I’m not entirely sure why. It may be that I’m getting older, and need less sleep. Of course, it could just be this bloody cold. Time will tell, I guess.

I’m on The Weakest Link tonight on BBC1 at 5.15, and I thought I’d be more interested in this, but I’m not. It was filmed about 4 months ago, and the most interesting thing about the whole experience, is how excruciatingly dull the whole experience is. I may post more on it later.

And for those of you who simply can’t wait for the result: I didn’t win. Statistically, however, I was the strongest link throughout the entire game, which is something to cling onto.

Two weeks tomorrow sees my last day with my current employer. My dayjob at the moment is in M.I. (Management Information) and the preparation of quite large sums for billing to a government department. I almost fell asleep while typing that! On January 5th, however, I join Angry Robot as Assistant Editor. Angry Robot is the new sci-fi/horror/fantasy publishing business from Harper Collins, and I couldn’t be more excited. We have some really interesting plans, and it’s going to be an interesting journey. Again, I’ll be posting more on this, anon.

For now, while I still have an hour before I have to leave for work, I’m going to head upstairs for a relaxing soak in the bath with a good book.