The FFXIII story revolves around two things – the Fal’cie and the L’cie, although I’m not sure what the difference is between the two, nor exactly what they are. Basically, infected people are getting “deported” which is a fancy word for “taken away to die”.  One such person is the pink haired Lightning, a welcome break to Final Fantasy’s regular brooding male protagonists.

Ms Lightning, possibly a descendant of Cloud Strife?

Of course, Lightning doesn’t want to die, and as we find out, she’s an ex-soldier. Which is the first of many similarities between Ms Lightning and Cloud Strife. The second is their jpop hair.

The game begins in a world highly reminiscent of FFVII’s Migar, green lights, big machines and lots of train tracks. As always, the graphics are impressive, stunning on a HD TV. The cut scenes and action are closer than ever in quality, seamlessly blending film style graphics into the battle sequences. Final Fantasy has always been glorious to look at and XIII is no exception.

Hasn't he heard of Pantene? No need to hide bad hair days under a bandanna!

As the story progresses, you join Snow and a group of rebels fighting for freedom (I just want to hear one of the soldiers yell “Rebel scum!”). Snow’s the guy with the bandanna and greasy blonde hair, who talks much differently to what I expected; I thought that he would be more of a charming rogue character, instead he’s an uber-noble freedom fighter that talks way too much. Mr Greasy promotes his group NOVA suspiciously like FFVII’s AVALANCHE. Yet another ‘This worked before so let’s do it again moment’.

Then comes mom.

Now, when Square Enix did their budget, visual effects was a big one, then programming, maybe sound etc. Script revisions were on the bottom of that list, towards the basement, maybe even lower, heading towards hell. The FF crew obviously have never animated a HD ‘mom’ before and probably could have given her a few more wrinkles, ‘cause tired ol’ mom looks like a 16 year old with grey hair. Given that it’s pretty hard to raise children in this time of war, she’s looking as fine as an ad for Chanel. So, Snow goes up to a group of scared victims and says something like “Who wants to fight for freedom, blah, blah, blah.”

And Mom steps up. Snow asks “You sure?” And here comes the most awkward line in the history of video gaming.

“Moms are tough.”

It has all the delivery of a young Anakin Skywalker asking Padme “Are you an angel?” It made me laugh out loud and cringe with embarrassment… But searching on the internet has made it apparent that at least one person cried at this moment… Ahem. Of course, after she’s uttered these words we know she’s destined for the clichéd dead mom, orphan child plot basket.

Sigh.

The evolution of Final Fantasy perkiness: From left Vanille, Penelo, Rikku and Selphie

As for the other characters, well there’s your typical perky Rikku/Penelo/Selphie clone called Vanille, played by Australian Georgia Van Cuylenburg. And she bugs me. It’s not the accent (actually I rather like hearing an Australian in a video game). Nor is it the acting. It’s the callous way she’s so damn perky in a war zone, particularly towards said orphan whose mom just died. To paraphrase: “Oh your mom just died so sorry, let’s skip around and explore this zany temple/machine/thing. Oh you need a hug? Super. Ciao!”

The character I really enjoy is Sazh, the fast-talking, chocobo wearing, afroed man, who’s not quite sure how he ended up in this mess, or this video game. He’s a departure from typical Final Fantasy character stereotypes (the perky girl, the brooding hero with a sword, the kind hearted sidekick, the hot gothic chick). And the chocobo in his hair is so cute that it’s hard not to like him. The other characters include Hope, said orphan child, whose hair is as grey as Mom’s (obviously from bearing the burden of the world on his shoulders) and Serah, Lightning’s sister and Snow’s fiancée, who quickly becomes a npc, but I won’t give that exciting plot point away.

In case of an emergency, just press X.

Now that I’ve had my whinge about unbelievable characters, I’ll move onto gameplay, which is… alright. Square Enix have moved away from the real-time battle system in XII, which was at times a bit too much like autopilot (for an example of this, some people were able to leave the game overnight and level up). They’ve returned to interactive battles, in that you must come into contact with the monsters to engage the battle screen. It’s an interesting decision and for me it sometimes feels like a step backwards. While the system in FFXII wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t a bad idea and could have simply been improved.

However, the action is definitely more involving and face-paced than its turn based predecessors. FFVIII lacks the static camera of past games, so that every move feels like a different animation. Even if you fight the same monsters (as inevitably you will), the battles do not feel as repetitive as past games. And you can do some pretty cool moves while laying up your ATB gauge. It’s a little bit easy given that there’s a button which says “Auto-battle” which chooses the most effective attacks for you. Also, you magically heal after every battle with no penalty, so there’s no more running to the next save point to heal everyone up. Which is good and bad, I got a little irritated when I’d go through a hard part of FFXII and then the save point would turn into a bloody monster, but then it’s not so challenging.

Oooh... crystals... pretty... but strikingly linear.

You don’t really level up in this game, but use a pretty little system that’s called the Crystalarium which could have been drawn as a straight line in terms of linearity. You don’t get much choice in what roles your characters do, and even during battle you can only control the “commander”, normally Lightning or Snow. You can, however, assign the roles the other characters take during battle, such as a medic, ravager or synergist.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIII is like the pretty girl at school. She’s popular and good looking, but she’s also a little vacuous and shallow. Despite this, I’m going to play it through. Call me shallow, but the graphics are so pretty it’s hard to notice the flaws.

That’s it for my first observations. I’d love to see where this story goes, and if it makes any more sense with a few more hours gameplay (author’s note: after 6 hours and watching the Good Game review it’s starting to make sense!). I’ll write another post when I’m later through the game, although given that most Final Fantasy games take around 100 hours to complete, I have another 98 to go.

Have you played Final Fantasy XIII yet? What do you think? Is the script bad or are moms really tough?

Hammertime! Now strike a pose. The original visitors...

During my formative years, my dad made us work through the complete science fiction VHS section of Cambridge Park Video Store (which strangely was positioned right next to the porn section, and I would forever wonder through my childhood what those weird films were). From the shop came the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Wars, War of the Worlds and the original Battlestar Galactica. V was one of my favourites and the most memorable series after Star Trek. I remember watching in eager anticipation as the humanoid aliens that came in peace gradually became more suspicious, until the horrid truth was revealed. So it stole a few ideas from great sci-fi novels… So what! Their badly animated machine guns, bright red outfits and guinea pig eating enthralled me. When they peeled back of their faces to reveal… Well I won’t tell you what, but if you’ve seen the original I’m sure you’ll remember.

The new V is an interesting remake, in that the context for the series actually seems more appropriate to a 2010 setting. I would suggest that there is now potential for a much deeper exploration of what the arrival of “peaceful” aliens means for humankind, than in the 1980s. An FBI agent investigating terrorist cells that as we find out at the end of episode one, are linked to the aliens, has a much greater impact in a post 9/11 world. As do the notions of surveillance, media control and censorship that the aliens begin to enforce.

Who is stupid enough to trust an alien that looks like Katie Holmes?

The Visitors themselves have more currency today, given their somewhat suspicious likeness to scientologists. I mean, who would trust an alien that looks like Katie Holmes? That resemblance alone would send me running to the hills. The tension builds simply by a very effective and creepy performance by Morena Baccarin as the High Commander. You know you can’t trust her, but her cult of personality still leads people astray. Also, Scott Wolf’s in it. Remember Scott Wolf? He hasn’t changed a bit since Party of Five.

Trust us...

While I know the ending, I will be interested to see how the V remake plays out for someone who hasn’t seen the original (or read Make Room! Make Room!). My husband is very much against science-fiction; he loves Star Wars and Independence Day, but to suggest to watch a sci-fi TV show is met with as much resistance as a Gerard Depardieu war film. Reluctantly he allowed me to watch it, so when the visitors first arrived, and the US plane came down, dead parachutist following, I was surprised when he said “Ok, that was cool”. By the end of the show, he meekly admitted, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad.”

Just wait until the end, when all is revealed. I’m sure I’ll hear a resounding “Wow”.

Alternatively you can see Monkey Island on Google Maps, so wherever you live, you can get directions there. Saves trying to navigate the Monkey Head lava puzzle.
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In the middle of the south island near Lake Ohau is a fantastic antiques shop called the Totar Peak Gallery. What’s so great about this shop is not so much the antiques (they’re fine) but the owners have converted half their shop into a Hercules, Xena and Cleopatra 2525 museum. You must remember Xena, right? Lucy Lawless? Anyway, the place is full of kitchy goodness. Here are some photos for your personal delight.

A centurion amongst the piles of books.

Cleopatra 2525 costumes

Every man needs one of these.

Costumes from the musical episode of Hercules

The piece de resistance: Xena costume

Happy draft swappers in the sun. Margo Lanagan is the one on the left. I'm in the hat with my back to the camera. HP Lovecraft casts a benevolent cosmic glow in the centre.

We all met up in an enchanting old terrace in Petersham, with green walls and red doors and a giant Geoffrey Smart painting on the wall, to talk about our novels, get some feedback and eventually swap manuscripts with other people to read over the holidays. Margo was guest of honour, bringing along two of her most recent awards, the Printz award and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, which she won this year for Tender Morsels. If you’ve never seen a World Fantasy Award (and really, how many of us have?) they’re actually quite funny – a pewter statue of H.P. Lovecraft looking like one of the Easter Island statues. He has big saucer eyes, so that the overall effect leaves you a bit creeped out, but wanting to touch his head nonetheless. Margo is so down to earth about all the awards; she is one of those people who really deserve the success they experience.

I haven’t read Tender Morsels yet but I’ve read Black Juice, her collection of short stories. It’s an excellent read. One thing that strikes me about how different her writing style is (and what marks it above other more traditional writing) is that she is not caught up in action speech (I did this, I said this), but rather evoking an emotion of experience through train of consciousness writing. It’s something to remember as an aspiring writer, and one of the things that I often notice about first time writers, that they begin every sentence with I did, he said, we went, rather than varying the sentence structure and allowing the fullness of description to enter their writing.

Some more advice I learnt for aspiring novelists is don’t quit your day job! Margo still needs to work on a regular basis, and this is a woman with three world fantasy awards under her belt. Which is a bit of depressing realism; we live in a society where even talented people can’t focus entirely on what they’re good at because of the money factor. She read some of her new book (a racy sex scene!) which is about selkies, the half seal, half humans found in Scotland.

In the afternoon we had a visit from another lovely published writer, Margaret Wilcox, author of Gone. Her book is a gripping memoir of tracking down her kidnapped daughter over fourteen years. Looking at Margaret, a well-dressed, polite older lady, she doesn’t seem like the type to be breaking and entering and dealing with dodgy lawers and cops, but we sat on the edge of our seats as she recollected some of the events of the book and the process of writing. She originally wanted it to write the book as a love letter to her found daughter Tanya, but was encouraged to send it to a publisher. The book has now been translated into several languages and distributed around the world.

Finally it came time to draft swap. We each read a segment of our novel and the synopsis and then paired up with someone else to swap manuscripts over the Christmas holidays. I swapped my novel, The Memory of Blood, with a couple who were co-writing a book set in London and Africa. What was great is that everyone was completely different; there were a few memoirs and literary fiction, travelling from India to Indonesia. And one rewrite of Dracula… mine. Personally, I found it really helpful to share with a group of people I had never met, after suffering a bit of writer’s anxiety, it’s good to get out and talk with other people going through a similar thing. Even published authors have been through the terror of the first book.

If you’re interested in Jan’s workshops (sorry, they’re in Sydney for all you awesome North American readers), you can check out her website: www.writersjourney.com.au

Margo Lanagan also has a good blog over at http://amongamidwhile.blogspot.com/

Delicious reading: Dead Until Dark

The first book in the series is called Dead Until Dark, and all the proceeding novels include ‘dead’ somewhere in the title. Sookie Stackhouse is a southern bartender with a disability – she can read minds. So when Bon Temps gets their first vampire, she is more than happy, because vamps don’t project their thoughts. But with the arrival of Vampire Bill also comes a series of murders. Someone is targeting women who have sex with vampires. And let me add, there’s a lot of vampire sex.

The books follow Sookie’s investigations in the vampire world, with her ability to read minds making her a valuable asset to the supernatural community. There’s a great sense of humour throughout the novels, with a little something for everyone. The books are often labeled as ‘Paranormal Romance’, but oscillate between mystery, comedy and romance in a balanced way.

It’s interesting to see how Charlaine Harris has interwoven ancient mythology into the modern South. Vampires have come ‘out of the coffin’, after the Japanese developed synthetic blood (you can order a drink of blood in a bar). But not everyone is happy about the outing of the vamps. Other supernatural creatures, shape-shifters, telepaths and even a maenid, want to stay unnoticed. For better and for much worse, Sookie becomes a bridge between the two worlds.

There’s lots of blood and titillating sex scenes, in case some of you felt a bit ripped off by Twilight’s ‘no touching’ policy. After all, vampires are notorious for their wanton lust for women, men and anything in between. I don’t recommend you buying this for your teenage daughters if they’re looking for the next Edward Cullen – there’s possibly a little too much naughtiness here. Orgies… Murders… Sex outside of marriage… You get the picture.

CHARLAAIIINE! Then and now. Love the hair.

One glance across Charlaine Harris’ website has introduced me to a whole new genre of writing. I really want to read Must Love Hellhounds, which has a great cover. Harris looks exactly as she should, your typical Southern woman with a toff of big hair. Don’t be put off by the notion of reading a romance novel, they’re a lot of light fun with a bit of intrigue to boot. For those people who thought Twilight was too wussy and Dracula was too stiff, I totally  recommend the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries.

13. Halloween: Well, if you didn’t watch it last week, I guess you can watch it this week. The winning formula includes Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh (Psycho), a slasher called Michael Myers and John Carpenter (god of film awesomeness).

12. The Orphanage: The Spaniards certainly know their horror. Plugged by Guillermo del Toro, it has all the classic elements: haunted house, creepy kid, paranormal detectives. I guarantee you will jump in this movie! The boy with a sack on his head is a particularly freaky, if low budget, costume.

11. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: If you like chainsaws and Texas cannibals, why not watch this bloodbath? Would you believe the director originally aimed for a PG rating? Tell him he’s dreaming!

10. Shawn of the Dead: For those of you with girlfriends/boyfriends who can’t handle true horror. A romantic comedy with zombies, Shaun of the Dead is a great satire on the zombie genre. Is it funny because Simon Pegg does most of this with a hangover, or because it takes them half the morning to realise that there are zombies in town?

9. The Omen: Creepy kid = The Devil, but they just can’t quite believe it. Didn’t anyone tell them that the devil always takes the form of creepy children? Just check the your kids for any discriminating birthmarks before you release them into the world. Great shot with a goldfish bowl BTW.

8. The Birds: An oldie but a goodie. It might not be as scary as some of the films on this list but when the guy gets his eyes pecked out in the phone booth… Filmmaking genius.

7. Nightmare on Elm St: A young Johnny Depp is not all that is appealing about this horror classic. Just don’t go to sleep… he’s waiting for you. Gotta love that tagline: “If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming she won’t wake up at all.”

6. Saw I (et al.): I say et al because they just keep getting scarier. I couldn’t watch the third one. Eep. Watch out for the scene with the camera flash. And if you’re really rich, go and see Saw VI at the movies.

5. The Ring: If you watch the video, you die! ‘But I’m watching the video,’ you say. ‘Hang on… I’m going to die!’ This film brilliantly manipulates the process of watching into the horror of the film. Naomi Watts adds a convincing performance to an otherwise supernatural setting.

4. The Shining: Never has there been a more brilliantly shot horror film, as we watch the young boy pedal along endless corridors, filled with labyrinthine carpet. A film that sparked many great likes such as “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” or “No beer and no TV make Homer go… crazy? Don’t mind if I do!”

3. Psycho: We’re talking the original here, not the remake. Make sure you’ve showered before watching the film. Critics loved and loathed the film equally, but it didn’t stop it from becoming one of the most highly regarded horror films of all time. One of the main concerns for the censors was the flushing toilet in the opening scene, as this was unheard of in the 1960s. True story.

2. The Exorcist: One of the spookiest films of all time. Creepy kid + The Devil = Freaky head-turning body-twisting terror. ‘Nuff said.

1. Friday 13th: Well it was bound to be obvious. The classic tale of naughty camp counsellors being punished for their frivolities which sparked the splatter genre. You might start wondering why all these teens are so dumb, but at you get to see an early Kevin Bacon killed in a very creative manner. The perfect Friday 13th movie.

What’s your favourite Friday 13th movie? Do you disagree with this list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Both games' launches featured plenty of ugliness

First to the fucking around. Apologies for the expression, but some sequences of events are just too tragic for civilised language to describe. Here’s what happened, in point form:

1. Left 4 Dead 2 is banned in it’s original form, thanks to Australia’s pathetic game rating system. They appeal, the appeal fails, and eventually it is announced that an edited game will be released here, sans decapitations and dismemberment. This is obviously unacceptable, so after much research into solutions (thanks bro!), we finally decided to get a UK friend to buy our Steam copies (yes, it works! no, I don’t take responsibility if you’re breaking local laws).

2. Borderlands is set to release on Tuesday of last week. We have pre-purchased, and there is a countdown timer of Steam. With one hour to go, suddenly the time jumps up to three days to go. Right. Turns out only Americans get it Tuesday. Oh well, fine, the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is due out the following day at 6:30am, my local time.

3. In the meantime, we discover through my brother’s constant research, that the wrong version of Borderlands has been pre-loaded on our computers. Even though (unlike L4D2) Borderlands was cleared for sale in Australia in it’s original form (decapitations and dismemberments intact), somehow the developers or the distributors have managed to send us the low violence edited version. What? Does everyone just assume we’re children now?

4. Anyway, just before 6:30am the next day, Valve announce that the L4D2 demo has been delayed until 4:30pm. Okay, no problems– my brother will be at work until then anyway. Several delays later, and it’s finally released sometime around 11am Thursday. Whew! We play it.

5. Borderlands arrives on Friday, and after some initial doubts, it seems that they’ve managed to patch the violence back in. So only three days and eighteen headaches later, I have both games.

Oh, you want to hear what they’re like? Unfortunately, I’ve already written far too much on the launch problems, so I’ll have to summarise quickly:

Borderlands: pretty, but hard on the eyes; has a decent sense of humour; inventive and fast-paced but grindy as hell; millions of weapons that are conceptually fun, but get old quickly; interface issues out the wazoo; co-op hectic and wacky but unbalanced and seems tacked on– two players worked much better than four.

Left 4 Dead 2 demo: takes the solid formula and makes it feel new; variety of new weapons, items and special infected mean loads more variety; new running climax events are much more thrilling than the stationary ones of the first game; you can decapitate zombies with an electric guitar!; even after only two levels, I’m in love again.

Borderlands: 3 stars

Left 4 Dead 2 demo: 5 stars (bring on November 17th!)

Launch for both games: EPIC FAIL!

You can check out his book and zine at www.jerseydevilpress.com

Kat: When did you first begin writing?

Eirik: I can’t really say for sure, but I do have pretty solid memories of typing up short stories on the old, blue-screened Word Perfect, back in 7^th or 8^th grade, if not earlier.  I can’t say I gave writing a whole lot of thought until college, when I finally decided to major in English, concentrating in Creative Writing.  Prior to that, any writing I did was, in my mind, the equivalent of doodling in the margins of a notebook.  Just something to kill the time, not to be taken seriously.  But then I started bouncing around from university to university, changing majors constantly, starting with engineering and ending up at art, never really enjoying, or even necessarily understanding, what I was doing.  Eventually I sat down and really reflected on those couple of years, trying to pinpoint the parts I had liked and the things I had been good at.  And that’s when I realized I could write.  All my best grades had come from English classes and composition-based assignments; given the choice between building a bridge or describing it, I’d choose the latter.  So I switched to the English program, started taking classes, and started having fun, making up characters and telling stories and all that.  I’ve been writing pretty constantly ever since.

Kat: Where did the inspiration for Exponential Apocalypse come from?

Eirik: It was a story idea that had been floating around for a while.  I’d tried, at least twice, to write a story about a guy going to a diner and complaining about the waitress, the last line being something like, “the service had really taken a dive after the apocalypse.”  Basically a world still going about its regular day-to-day even though it had been decimated; a counter to all the survivalist, Road Warrior takes on the post-apocalypse that are out there.  But I could never get it to work.  It kept coming out far more dire than I’d cared for.  After a bunch of false starts and attempted re-writes, the files eventually just got lost in the dumping ground that is my hard drive and I more or less forgot about it.

Then, about a year ago, I started another story, more as a free-writing exercise than anything, and started just randomly throwing things together—the Secaucus Holiday Inn is next to my office, my co-worker’s name is Catrina—just to see where they’d go.  Somehow Thor became the guy on the phone at the front desk and I started thinking, “Well, why would he be working there?  I don’t know, I guess an apocalypse could probably do it, right?”  And all of a sudden that first idea came back to me and I had finally figured out how to make it work.

Kat: You have a lot of mythological references in your story. Are myths something that influence you? And how much do you enjoy satirising them?

Eirik: Yeah, I’d say so, to some extent.  I read tons of mythology as a kid—Norse and Celtic especially, but really whatever I could get my hands on.  Thor was always a favorite, in no small part because of all the Marvel comics my uncle gave me.  There was a whole string of issues in the 70s where they just straight-up illustrated Norse myths with their version of Thor and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

There’s always been something engaging about these pantheons of gods and demigods just kind of living soap opera lives up in the clouds.  The way they’re revered even though a lot of them are pretty much assholes.  And I’ve always been fascinated by how many different versions exist of what are ultimately the same stories.  Which is probably where the satire comes from.  Everyone takes their gods so seriously, but, if you just look, they’re all basically the same.  Pointing that out, having them interact, that’s always fun.  And, if nothing else, I’m always looking for an excuse to dive into more research about any kind of mythology.

Kat: Why did you decide to self publish?

Eirik: Well, a lot of things, but mostly impatience, and because I didn’t think Exponential Apocalypse would be published otherwise.

When I started it, I was putting a lot of the individual chapters up on an old Xanga site I had, writing one a day for about six months, just for my friends and internet friends—which is why the chapters are so short.  Technically, though, at least for some publishers, that Xanga site constituted a form of self-publishing already, which could have been a huge hurdle had I chose to go a more corporate route.

Beyond that, I’ve worked for two publishers—one smaller and one massive, with various global offices—and I’ve seen the red tape and the second-guessing and all the bullshit that goes on behind the scenes.  Not to mention, any kind of editorial selection is completely subjective.  While I believe in EA, and I think it’s funny as hell, I’ll admit it isn’t the easiest sell to corporate publishers.

The way I saw it, at best, I’d have to wait a really, really long time to see EA in print, and it would probably be a very small print run anyway.  I wasn’t looking to make millions; I’d just written a book I was proud of and I wanted to get it out there.  So I figured why not just do it myself?  The technology’s there, so why not use it?

Kat: Tell me a bit about Jersey Devil Press? What is it, what do you guys do?

Eirik: Jersey Devil Press is a combination small press and online magazine, run by myself and my co-conspirator, Monica Rodriguez.  It’s a way for us to spotlight some authors that otherwise might not get the exposure, whether it’s because of a lack of previous publications or simply because the content isn’t exactly mainstream enough for other publishers.

On the press side of it—aside from Exponential Apocalypse—we’re releasing the short story collection, Perhaps, by Stephen Schwegler, this winter, in both hard and digital copies.  His stories are absolutely absurd, in the best way possible.  I’m pretty excited that we get to be the ones to publish it.

We’ve also just started a new online endeavor, a monthly fiction magazine—essentially a literary journal, except, you know, not as pretentious.  About six or so stories a month, listed on the Jersey Devil Press website and available for free download in a .pdf.  We’re really looking for more offbeat, humorous short stories.  Stories you’d actually want to read and tell people about.  Next summer we’re going to collect the best of those into an anthology and release that in a more traditional book format.  We’ll be doing that every year.

Kat: What authors inspire you?

Eirik: Douglas Adams, for one, absolutely.  The Hitchhiker’s books are amazing.  They’re hysterical, from start to finish.  Adams has this completely insane story, with so much imagination, juxtaposed against the most boring, real protagonist he could think of.  I’ve nearly worn out my copies, between re-reading them and letting everyone I know borrow them.

Kurt Vonnegut, too.  What I love are his narrators.  His narrators really, truly TELL a story.  Vonnegut comes up with this guy, and then this guy is going to repeat to you this story in his own way, with all the tangents and blemishes intact, the way a story would actually get recounted.  And Vonnegut’s stories were so defiantly his own, as far as content and plot and all that.  Him and Adams, both, really.  Imagine being their editor.  How do you even pretend to tell either of them what they should be doing with their stories?

Kat: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Eirik: Keep writing, keep reading.  You’ll only get better.  And always do it for yourself first; don’t worry about the endgame.  If your work’s good, people will find it.  And if they don’t, who cares?  You got it out, it exists.  As long as you’re happy with it, you’re alright.

More specifically—and, you know, usefully—keep submitting stories.  Don’t let rejection notices discourage you.  There’s a whole community of online magazines and journals now.  You’ll find a market that appreciates you sooner or later.  And you’ll find some great stories along the way.

Kat: If you were in an apocalypse would you survive, and if so, what is the key to your survival?

Eirik: I’d like to think I’d make it, but it’s really all going to depend on the kind of apocalypse.  I mean, if we’re talking a zombie uprising, I’m pretty screwed, regardless of my efforts.  I live in the New York City metropolitan area, one of the most heavily populated areas of the world.  Even my best zombie plan will only keep me alive for so long against those numbers.

Outside of that, I’d say luck determines your initial survival.  There’s no real way to defend against a random meteor strike or, you know, Godzilla.  If I make it past that, yeah, I think I’d be OK.  I’d like to think I’d be pretty calm in the face of the end of the world.  And I honed some pretty fierce scavenging skills in college.  I think those would be the two clutch traits to have: composure and scavenging prowess.

So I thought I’d hark back to the world’s number one detective, the marvellously arrogant Sherlock Holmes. The famous detective was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was first published in 1887, appearing in more than fifty stories up until 1914. His death caused such an uproar that the circulation of the Strand magazine dropped by 20, 000 readers. Never before has a fictional character had such an influence on society and the development of detection.

I just finished reading A Study in Scarlet, Mr Holmes’ first adventure, in which he meets Mr Watson and embarks on an investigation of an apparently unsolvable murder, where the words RAICHE have been written on the wall in blood. Sherlock outwits not only the criminals but also Inspector Lestrade’s bumbling investigations that go in all the wrong directions. I had never realised how much fun Sherlock Holmes is. The delight in following Holmes solve mysteries is partly due to his snobbish arrogance, his bad violin playing and the use of words like ‘dunderheads’ to describe the bumbling Scotland Yarders that can’t grasp his higher intellect.

A Study in Scarlet was the first Sherlock Holmes story

I must admit, I too was perplexed by some of the Holmesian logic. Conan Doyle does a great job of explaining this away by simply writing that it would take too long to explain the logic and by that time the bad guy would have got away. I personally can’t wait to encounter that notorious nasty of the nineteen hundreds, Professor Moriaty. Because in this first installment, it all seems a little too easy for Holmes; I can understand why he would need to meet his equal.

The stories read well, even a hundred years after their conception. It’s easy to see the impact that a fictional character has had on the real world; his process of methodical deduction influenced today’s forensic science. Those guys on CSI owe their jobs to the consulting detective. The tales have hugely influenced the way detective stories are written, assuring us that an interesting character can be just as compelling as crime.

There’s a new movie coming out, and despite the fact that it’s directed by Guy Ritchie, one of the most overrated directors of all time (I don’t care if you liked Lock Stock, I fell asleep in it), it does have fantastic casting, featuring Robert Downey Jr. as said detective. Not so sure about Jude Law as Watson but I guess that’s to get the ladies in. I always thought of him as a pudgy guy with a handlebar moustache. Mmmm… Jude Law with a handlebar moustache. Nevermind. Go and read the original instead.