No not a statement of Morloks vs Eloi, but in case you've not seen them two TV shows currently airing in the UK (and apparently both now cancelled by their US networks after one series/season).

Almost Human pairs Karl Urban's John Kennex as an embittered injured cop with a robot partner. The current range of standard issue bots aren't to his tastes as the logic of one got his pal killed and he lost a leg in a shoot out with the criminal group The Syndicate. Since it's the law that all cops need a robo-buddy his boss contrives to give him one of the older models, Dorian, which has a supposedly faulty emotion chip and has the role of a mobile, physical search engine. It's all a bit Bladerunner, and might be really funny if John turned out to be a bot too. Despite a gleaming future run by robots people still get to drive their own cars.

Intelligence is set in the present day and has one of America's most highly decorated veterans, Gabriel Black, played by Lost's Josh Holloway, have a weird genetic anomaly that allows a chip to be put in his head that lets him wirelessly access all networks, hack into them and dig through databases while a side effect is he can intuitively walk through crime scenes recreated in his minds eye. Kind of like a holodeck only he can see. He's teamed up with a female Secret Service agent, Riley O'Neil, to act as his bodyguard in the field. She's so attractive looking she enters an uncanny valley of not looking real that many actors seem to be falling into these days.

I've only seen one episode of Almost Human so not sure how that pans out storywise. Intelligence has put all the show's money into the visualisations of Gabriel's data-searches and VR experiences as otherwise it's quite a cheap show. Iraq looks like the same Hollywood backlot they filmed Star Trek on. Both shows have the male lead pursuing/ pining for a mysterious female who they were in a relationship with but now seems to have been into something shifty.

What is interesting for me is the comparison of the two approaches to robotics and advancing technology. In Almost Human the technology is very much external, in the future we'll have fully humanoid artificial beings. In Intelligence we'll all be directly connected to information without Google goggles or smartphones using tiny computers inside use, hell lets call them nano-bots.

The more plausible is the world of Intelligence. If recent history has told us anything it's that we're getting better at user interfaces and in fact removing that interface where possible. Hence the move into touchscreens, voice activated assistants, spectacles projecting augmented reality into our eyes. Those devices will collapse further and disappear inside us.

An actual physical robot is a user interface for the whole world. It's going to the opposite end of the scale. We start with the machine and introduce the humanity. How soon before we replace ourselves entirely with an artificially body and remove that interface completely?

What do we need robots for anyway? To do hard work we don't want to, or can't do. In some cases they're even substitutes for emotional work, companions to the elderly and the young, no doubt the loveless too. They're a retreat from all dangers. They don't really make the problem go away, they mitigate it. If we go tiny with our robots we might not need to worry about the problems at all. Aging bodies replenished by tiny machines, our other needs that lead us into danger - food, resources, may not be so necessary. If we lose our emotions though we're probably not human anymore anyway.


But what about, dare we say it, our souls? If we replace ourselves with machines from the outside in (the macro model) do we lose our souls quicker than from the inside out (the nano model)? It seems either way the future is the same, one is just more blatant than the other.

I thought you might like this short story I wrote. It's set in one possible Scotland, the day after the Referendum.

The Boys from Banff

He looks out the train window. In some streets Saltires are burning.
He opens the envelope and takes out the instructions. He will be met in Aberdeen by a car. It will take him the rest of the way.
A can of McEwans might just wash away the edge of his hangover, but the trolley is nowhere in sight. The rocking of the train makes him seasick and the bright September sunlight strobes through the windows.
One of the free papers has been slung into the luggage compartment overhead. He opens it out on the table. 80% Say No. News of the Party Leader’s death must have come too late. It would only have given them something else to crow about. He ignores the political commentary and goes to the celebrity news. There’s a soft vibration in his pocket.
Nick Edwards @LionOBar: Ha Ha You lost. No one wants to live on a rock without power #worldsbiggestparty
Wanker. He can’t be arsed rising to the bait. His head hurts too much. It’s going to be a long journey. He wads up his jacket and uses it as a pillow.

The driver looks like he can handle himself, even in the grey suit and peaked cap. The sign has his name on it. He follows to a silver Merc.
They drift through the streets. Aberdeen is calm and cool, like a Sunday morning. Leaving the city behind, they head into the countryside driving along obscure roads for over an hour. Coming round a bend they can see the sea. They cross an old bridge and pass a massive new supermarket as they enter the town of Banff. The town shares its DNA with the East coast – squat buildings made from grey stone. Out past the harbour is a terrace of low cottages at the sea’s edge.
He gets out of the car. The light is bright and he feels surrounded by too much space. He feels delicate and alone. Is this mourning or the stains of his hangover?
The door opens after his second knock. The woman leads him into the front room where the gas fire is on full burn. They do look very similar to the Leader. He can see the resemblance. He didn’t even know it was possible. After the sheep in Roslin it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.

“Who’re you?” Xander says.
“I’ve come to take you on a journey.”
“We should be in school,” Eck says.
What are they? 10? 11? “It’s okay, no one is in school today. It’s a holiday.”
“Is it Independence Day?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Where are we going?” Xander says.
“Over the sea.”
“To Skye?” Eck says. “Will Mrs MacDonald come with us?”
“Maybe to France,” he says. “But more likely to North America.”
“Will we be coming back?” Xander says.
“One day.” He smiles. “I’m sure of it.”

My first novel, Enoch's Vault is now available for the Kindle: www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.com

A breakthrough in an investigation leads Alex McEwan to find the address of an old flame carved into the flesh of a dead murderer. He realises the woman he loves is in danger. 

While researching a book on Scottish Masonic buildings, Kate Harlow, McEwan's lost love, has become involved with the occult underground. She has transformed herself into a Nephilim, a human mind fused with an angelic soul. 

Robert Saint Claire, Kate's occult mentor, is planning to free the fallen angels, to breed a new race of Divine Kings...and to him Kate is just a tool. 

Other shadowy figures of Scotland’s occult underground have their own plans. The Mistress broods in her castle moving people like pawns. Kether has guided Glasgow unseen for centuries; he also wants to free the fallen angels...to kill them. 

The lost Name of God. 

A secret vault built by the patriarch Enoch. 

Together Alex and Kate must prevent the fallen angels returning from the Abyss, from fathering another generation of monstrous Nephilim, and from heralding the Apocalypse itself. 

I'm pleased to say that my story Starfire has been selected by Andrew Hook for inclusion in his punkPunk! anthology, forthcoming from Doghorn Publishing. More news closer to publication.

The Panopticon is a building, a prison, in which the inmates believe they are being watched by many jailors, but is so constructed that it really only requires one. But the belief that the inmates behaviour is being seen is thought to be enough to control them.

Now we are "swimming in sensors and drowning in data" these days. But what if, just maybe, the recent revelations by Edward Snowden are part of the best psy-op conceived so far? What if the NSA isn't really reading everything we email or say on the phone? What if all they need to do is make us think that they can?

This isn't to say that the technology isn't there, or won't be soon. I was at a recent conference meeting where a Clinical Psychologist, free from all irony, asked us technologists if we could devise a way to make a machine to tell if patients are taking their tablets, and as they may be being treated because they think machines and computers are watching them, to make this new device unseen and unobtrusive.

But for now, maybe this is more like the race to have the biggest atom bomb. Instead of megatonnes of explosive material we should be thinking in megatonnes of explosive information. Maybe the NSA/USA needs to be seen to know all, know more, than the opposition.

The first thing I saw on the silver screen was the opening 20 minutes of Star Wars. It must have been a kid's Christmas party at my mum's work. I got a cap rifle too. But I couldn't understand why we couldn't see more of the robots in the desert. Given we didn't have VCRs in those days it was a while before I caught up. But the next two films, like many kids my age, were a bolt from the blue, each one a coming-of-age milestone. Fast forward to the first prequel and my work hired out the cinema so staff and family could see it; we were all so excited at new Star Wars ( I was working in a software/web company).

Nowadays it's no longer weird to like SF and superheroes. It's weirder not to. But this post isn't a lament about the mainstream adoption of these things. (The future arrived and no-one is creating any compelling new ones). Although it may be a consequence of it. You see Star Wars is part of the everyday. There are jokes on Friends about it, it's in the coffee, it's in the air. Jedi have infiltrated the Census. Star Wars is part of the consensus. Almost every weekend, if you haven't succumbed to buying the latest HD version, one of the films is showing on ITV2. You can buy related tat of any kind from HMV. It matters little to me if Disney now owns the new future of the franchise.

And that's the rub. I'm just not interested any more. I don't want to watch the films, again. Maybe the sequels quality was poor, or I was an adult. But I think it comes down to the fact the myth, the story, has become worn down through repetition. The symbols have lost their meaning. Just like vampires aren't scary threats now, they're just para-humans who have a particular diet which can be easily substituted. Star Wars has figuratively and literally been airbrushed into a empty spectacle. The Greek myths still have resonance after millennia. Star Wars lost its in less than 40 years. Star Wars is dead and the other franchises are next.

Bitter Curaçao appears in Hellfire Crossroads, Issue 1, which is now available from Amazon for only 77p! Also you can download the PDF for free from the Hellfire Crossroads website. (Go on put something in the tip jar while you're there).

Welcome to the new site. Hope you like it.