I didn't save anything for the swim back...

There was an interesting discussion on the forums recently about Blade Runner: The Final Cut. I love Blade Runner. That whole Rutger Hauer speech at the end about teardrops in the rain? Brilliant. And from the Final Cut DVD documentary, I discovered that Rutger Hauer came up with that line himself - my favourite line in the film. Oh, and for the record, I am also a massive Philip K. Dick fan, too (though I was alarmed recently to find a speech by him in which he suggested that we are all really living in Judea 2000 years ago - although I'm not sure why I'm surprised by this). And actually, I quite like Total Recall, too, which may be pertinent information when you consider my next opinion...

So: yes, Blade Runner is brilliant. But I actually think there is another sci-fi film from the last decade that is on a par with Blade Runner both in depth and style. Okay, so it doesn't quite delve into what it is to be human, as Blade Runner and PKD do, but still... I love this film. And if you have seen it, you will have guessed what film I am talking about from the title of this post: Gattaca (for GTCA, the initials of the four DNA nucleotides, guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine).

I just watched Gattaca for - what? The tenth time, maybe. And as always, I had tears in my eyes as the credits rolled. Jude Law manages not to be annoying (because the film was released just before he became annoying; actually, he's fantastic in it, reminiscent of Richard E. Grant in Withnail And I in the way he plays his role). And the ever-reliable Ethan Hawke is great (okay, so he only ever plays the same character, but I like the character he plays; and don't even start me off on the bit in Before Sunset where they're in the car towards the end, because I at least want to pretend I'm all manly and stuff and don't sob at just anything. And he has a decent future writing novels ahead of him after his looks give out, the talented bastard - The Hottest State is a damn good novel and by better half informs me the follow-up is good, too, which I have yet to read. Better get out of these parentheses now). The whole film is  - well, just perfect. Blade Runner uses replicants to ask: what is it to be human? Gattaca uses a very simple metaphor, which reminds me, in a way, of the beloved children's book, Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish: A man looked at a star. All he thought about, dreamed about, was that star. In Gattaca, rockets leave the earth for space and the main character just wants to be on one. It's a simple metaphor for something better. Everything from Vincent's swimming race with his brother leading to his poignant revelation that implies he will probably never be coming back, to the doctor's revelation about his own son... Gattaca is a masterpiece in structure and a true SF cinema classic. There's no real action - no shoot outs, laser guns, fights or anything like that. It's just about someone striving to go beyond their expected limitations, and the sci-fi setting provides the necessary metaphors.

To me, Gattaca - like Blade Runner - is what good sci-fi is all about: saying something about being human now, using a futuristic mythos to put into action what otherwise would have had to be put into words.

Gattaca: if you've never seen it, go watch it NOW. And if you don't like it, don't post here! (Because your opinion is in-valid.)

Whatever happened to...

Like most of the readers of this forum/blog, I read a lot. Duh. Obviously. That's what got us would-be writers (if you are actually a real writer please don't boast here) going in the first place. But in my twenties, I read voraciously. (These days I toss books aside if they don't grab me within a chapter or tell me anything new or interesting - I'm halfway to being a septuagenarian this year, after all!) In my early twenties, I had a temp job which had long periods of doing pretty much nothing, mainly because my employers were of an older generation and had no idea how long it took to do basic administrative tasks on MS Excel or Access. Thus they gave me jobs that they thought would take me weeks which in fact only took days and then kept me on regardless. For a whole year I was given the job of scanning in old engineering blueprints. Any normal person would have run a mile; me, I was the longest serving temporary worker there. The reason I stayed so long was that no one bothered me - and in all that empty time I usually managed to read sneakily. Whilst scanning in blueprints, I would feed paper, press a button and then return to my book as the paper whirred through the feeder.

I wonder at the state those scans must be in; but I doubt anyone has ever looked at them since.

I lived in a shared house near Ealing in West London and Ealing was brilliant - it had a Waterstone's and a big library (note to anybody who works at Ealing Library: I am a better person now; I am sincerely sorry that I never returned the Rachel Ingalls books, but honestly, according to the borrowing slip stuck in the cover, I was the only one who borrowed them in years, and they have a good home with me...). Even better, the local church had a book sale every two weeks in a portacabin around the back. It was absolutely brilliant; exciting. Every fortnight I would wander around the stalls of secondhand booksellers who travelled from different parts of London, and spend twenty (or about five hours of work) on ten books, carrying them out in old Sainsbury's and M&S bags that had been stashed by the booksellers. I bought whatever took my fancy, because it was cheap: classics, authors I'd never heard of but liked the first line, books with covers that took my fancy. And then I'd walk the three miles to work with my nose between the covers and sneakily read whenever I could during the day.

Brilliant.

At the same time, I'd pilgrim over to Waterstone's for anything that caught my eye in the Sunday Times Books section (now part of the Culture section, sob) or the Saturday Guardian Review.

This is going somewhere, trust me. Going there self-indulgently, yes, but somewhere nonetheless.

Anyway, my point is this:

During that time, I came across a number of books by new writers that I was convinced were going to be BIG. Books that I absolutely loved; writers with real style and something to say. Some of them were novels, others short story collections. Some were brilliant in and of themselves, some blew me away with their style but I felt sure there was better to come.

And then I never heard of them again.

So, I thought I'd put together a list of kind of "one-hit wonders" in literature. Except that term is too derogatory; the term, in its pop music sense, implies novelty without substance. These books aren't like that. These books are - in my opinion - good. Most of them are from that period in my twenties when I read about twice as many books in a year as I manage now. Some are more recent. So, I decided to put my internet addiction to good use and look up all of these authors on Amazon to see what they've done since, if anything. Here is my list.

Edit: Since composing this list, I've updated it as, it turns out, some of these authors didn't disappear at all (sorry for my ignorance!). Thank you to the posters who replied to put me right (and especial apologies to Susannah Waters, one of the authors in the list who was kind enough to reply). It is heartening to know that not all of these talented writers disappeared, though.

Jenny Offill - Last Things
Brilliant. The writing is touching without being mawkish. The narrator's mother - really the main character - is infuriating but fascinating. How could Offill not have written another novel since? How?

Thomas Beller - Seduction Theory
Hmm, he does have some other stuff out there, just nothing that seems to fit with what I expected from this superb collection.

Bo Fowler - Scepticism, Inc
A complete Vonnegut rip-off; he had one other novel published then disappeared. But despite his huge debt to Vonnegut, there was still something fresh here, and I thought he'd shake the influence and go onto some really cool stuff... Oh well.

Sandra Newman - The Only Good Thing That Anyone Has Ever Done
Actually, Amazon reveals she did write another book recently, Cake, so I'll have to order that.

Maria Amparo Escandon - Esperanza's Box of Saints
Amazon tells me that this was made into a film in Spain and that she did have one book published later, in 2005. I can only hope she has more waiting to be translated into English.

Tibor Fischer - The Thought Gang
Oh, wait. Scratch this one. I read this, the Collector Collector and, uh, something else by him, too, but he's had lots published since so I guess I just wasn't paying attention.

Brian McCabe - In a Dark Room with a Stranger
This was a short story collection published in the early 90s, which was brilliant. He had a novel published before that, but it was already impossible to find when the story collection came out. Since then, he has published two more short story collections. Why no more novels? Why isn't he better known?

Carsten Jensen - Earth in the Mouth
Beautiful, lyrical travel novel. Short, too, which I tend to like. Turns out he did write something else that was published in 2002, but that seems to be it. Why not more?

Kate Pullinger - Forcibly Betwitched
This was a very small short story collection that was published as a Penguin 60s edition a few years back. The Penguin 60s were fantastic - in the year that Penguin celebrated their 60th year of publishing, they produced these small, pared down special edition books that would fit in the palm of your hand and cost 60p each. They were generally excerpts of larger works - so, I bought Orpheus in the Underworld taken from a larger new translation of Ovid; a small collection of the Buddha's teachings and aphorisms; and among the others, Kate Pullinger's short stories, which I bought entirely on the basis of the attractive, thoughtful girl in the photograph on the front cover. The stories were very short, concise and beautiful, but I could never find the collection from which the Penguin 60s edition was culled. And now I see she has had quite a lot published (though I am alarmed to discover that she co-wrote the novelisation of The Piano), so I need to buy something by her soon. (My personal favourite story is The Wardrobe. I have re-read that dozens of times.)

Junot Diaz - Drown
This was a beautiful and brutal short story collection set in South America, and it was rightly critically acclaimed when it was published. I've looked for something else by him intermittently ever since. Bizarrely, now that I am writing this, I see that he has a new book being published in 2008 - the first since Drown was published 11 years ago. I hope it's as good.

Edited to add: Apparently Junot Diaz's new book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is receiving rave reviews in America (it still isn't published here), so he has anything but disappeared. (Still, I wonder where he went for ten years!)

Alan Spence - Stone Garden and Other Stories
Huh. Seems he's had a fair bit published both before and since, too.

Christopher Kennedy - No Christmas, No Kafka / Susannah Waters - Funerals
These were two superb short stories that appeared in Stand magazine a few years ago. I always looked out for other works by these writers, but never found any, much to my regret.

Edited to add: I did indeed look out for these writers, but I guess in the wrong places. Susannah Waters has had two novels published since that short story, Long Gone Anybody and Cold Comfort, both of which are available via Amazon. Apologies! (And I look forward to reading them.)

There are more, but that's enough for now.

Actually, this has been quite heartening. A lot of the authors I thought had disappeared are actually still around, still writing and still getting published. Anyone who says the internet is killing reading or books should take stock: I haven't seen the some of the above authors in a bookshop in years, but I can get their books from Amazon or Amazon market place. I just wish I'd heard a bit more about them in the review pages in the interim.

I have no idea whether this says more about what happens to promising authors or about my own ignorance. Probably both. Or probably just the latter.

Edited to add: It seems that this does, partly, say something about my ignorance. It also, I think, says something about review space and the fact that a few big names get all of the attention whilst there is some other real talent out there getting published without much fuss. In the end I think this leaves me somewhat optimistic.

If anybody has ever wondered what happened to a writer they thought was going to be something special but who then disappeared, please share, either here or on the forums.

Spooks + Scrivener

I just have to boast about this.* I've been enjoying the excellent sixth series of Spooks on BBC1 (Tuesdays - MI5 in the US) - I've been a big fan of the show since the second series, and would get around to renting the first season on DVD were it not for the thought of seeing Lisa Faulkner getting her face burned off with boiling oil. It's a great spy show with interesting characters (though Adam has got to be the most obvious spy ever - his "disguises" as a gardener, builder, phone company man or whatever tend to be somewhat undermined by his perfect hair, cut-glass accent and the giant microphone protruding from his collar), a healthy dose of cynicism, 24-style split-screen shots and more tension than the Humber bridge.

All in all, Spooks has consistently been one of the best home-grown BBC programmes over the past few years, and you never know who they're going to kill off next.

But I've been getting an extra thrill from series 6 because the over-arching story was drafted in Scrivener and some of the episodes were scripted in Scrivener, too, by author Neil Cross (whose new novel, Natural History - which was also mostly composed in Scrivener! - has been getting some great reviews).

Now, if Neil has used Scrivener to kill of Zaf, I am going to be most upset - talk about turning your tools against you...

* Yes, I know: technically I have nothing to boast about, as it's a bit like saying, "I have to boast that I loaned this bestselling author my pen and he used it!" But it still gives me a warm feeling inside (and it's not the wine, this time).

Scrivener + Leopard

I've been getting a number of concerned e-mails recently from Scrivener users who fear that I may have abandoned development of Scrivener because my last blog post here is rather old and was slagging off Apple, and because there is no mention of Leopard on the Scrivener product page...

I would just like to make it very clear that Scrivener is very much alive and in active development. Scrivener 1.1 is Leopard-ready, with a more "Leopard-esque" interface and a large number of tweaks for Leopard. As a paid-up member of the Apple developer program, I have been building Scrivener on Leopard for the past six months or so. I had hoped to get Scrivener 1.1 out yesterday, to coincide with Leopard's release, but there are a couple of things that have caused a delay (not the least of which being that my partner had to go in for an operation on her jaw yesterday; oh, and Tomb Raider Anniversary came out for the Xbox 360, too...). For a start, the release change list is so long that I need to simplify it, and I also need to update the project templates that come with Scrivener 1.1. Scrivener itself is ready and has gone through extensive beta-testing over the past few months.

If you are concerned or need the Leopard-ready version right now (although 1.03 should work fine on Leopard for now anyway), please go to the Beta Testing section of the forum. There you can download the latest Scrivener 1.1 beta (1.095), which runs fine on Leopard (note that there is a minor bug related to script editing and Edit Scrivenings that has been fixed for 1.1). Note that you will be prompted to update your project, and you must get rid of older versions of Scrivener.

At the same time as 1.1 is released as an official (and free) update, the website will also be updated. I have been working hard on that over the past week, as the old product page does not reflect the new look of Scrivener. I've also created a webcast for the page. Also note that as of 1.1, Scrivener's price will be increasing from $34.99 to $39.95 (except for students). The update will, of course, be free to registered users, though.

I'll post again soon about Leopard. Leopard is a great update, and Scrivener 1.1 looks and works great on it. Please be patient as I get the release version ready. It will be with you very soon, and I apologise for the fact that it was not out on time for Leopard. I just wanted to make sure it was perfect...

Oh, and Tiger users, rest assured that Scrivener will continue to work beautifully on both Leopard and Tiger for the foreseeable future.

Apple is not your friend

Well, if you've been reading my previous posts about Apple's tardiness in posting the 9a466 (or whatever it is) Leopard beta to developers who paid for ADC Select or Premiere membership, you'll know I'm not a happy bunny. WWDC attendees received that beta nearly three weeks ago now. And you know what? That beta is now available on torrent sites. Meaning that pirates out there are running a version of Leopard for which they have not paid, whilst legitimate law-abiding ADC Select members such as myself still have no access to that version of Leopard despite having paid Apple for the "latest" Leopard releases - in other words, we have paid for exactly that copy.

Do Apple care?

No, they do not.

I have written to them several times, with no reply. All developers received a general "you will receive the WWDC beta soon via ADC download" e-mail a few days ago. And when I e-mailed them to remind them that they had not replied to my earlier e-mails, they repeated the "soon" message to me.

Well, you know what? I've lost interest. I won't pay for a Select ADC membership again, and I strongly advise other indie developers to think seriously before wasting money on it. Yes, you get hardware discounts, but the main impetus for coughing up for a paid ADC account is pre-release OS X versions. Given that Apple don't honour what you pay for, I strongly recommend not buying into this scam. Sadly, it will mean that users of my software lose out a little in future, in that if I do not pay for pre-release versions of the OS, then I can't guarantee that my software will run on the first release of any new OS upgrade. But if Apple don't make available the new releases of their OS to those of us who have paid for exactly that, then what is the point? The really sad thing in all of this is that I have got so p***ed off at Apple that I have not touched Scrivener development for three weeks now. When I finally get access to the new beta I will hopefully get my enthusiasm back, but as an indie developer, with Apple treating me as though I am worthless, it makes it really hard for me to get enthusiastic about updating a help file or adding a small tweak here or there.

There really are times when I wish I had chosen to develop for Windows. Surely Microsoft cannot treat developers as poorly as Apple do? Apple is not your friend. They make lovely machines and a great OS, but they care very little for users or developers, it seems.

In fact, it seems that the Apple developer model works something like this: 1) Pay hundreds of dollars for ADC membership and an "Early Start Kit" that gives access to latest OS versions; 2) Once you've paid, the latest versions will actually be withheld unless you pay thousands of dollars for a WWDC ticket and travel across the world to attend.

Oh, and if you can't attend, it's not just the beta that is held back, but also any knowledge shared by engineers.

I don't why I'm so surprised - I guess it's just years of Macheads telling me that Microsoft were evil and Apple were Good. When you finally switch to a Mac and develop for the platform for a few years, you soon realise that Apple are just as bad as MS - they just happen to be much smaller and less popular.

So: really, really poor. Please do think twice before paying for ADC membership.

Are Apple taking the proverbial?

No, but really, are they?

A couple of days ago I posted moaning about how Apple have not bothered to seed the latest beta of Leopard to paying ADC Select and Premier members who did not attend WWDC (despite the advertising on the Leopard Early Start Kit web page making it very clear that paying for membership entitles you to the latest versions of Leopard).

I am a very conscientious developer, I like to think. Whenever I come across a bug in the OS, I post it over at bugreport.apple.com. I have posted a number of bugs related to developer seeds of Leopard. Well, today I received an e-mail from the Apple bug reporting team telling me that they believe that in the latest - WWDC - seed of Leopard they have fixed one of the bugs I reported. They asked me to test it and get back to them on whether it is, indeed, fixed.

So I repeat my question: are they taking the ****? Because they haven't released the WWDC beta of Leopard to anyone who did not attend WWDC, so how on earth can I test this? I replied with a very terse e-mail asking them to keep the bug report open given that there was no way I could test until I received what I had already paid for - namely, the latest developer seed.

What really worries me more than anything in all of this is that I can find no evidence of other developers getting really riled by what I see as seriously questionable behaviour on the part of Apple. Surely there must be other developers out there who feel that Apple are behaving immorally in all of this? Apparently not. At most, other developers are sighing, "Oh, I've been through the release cycle before, it always takes them a month or two to get this sort of thing up on ADC," as though that makes it all okay. Oh well. I guess I just have an overdeveloped sense of justice / desire for Leopard / desire to receive from a company what I have rightfully paid for (delete as appropriate, I just don't know any more).

Leopard beta for the rest of us?

As you may or may not know (and whether you care is a different matter entirely), today is the last day of Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developers' Conference) in San Francisco. If you're an Apple buff, you've probably seen the keynote, showing off Leopard. Yes, the keynote was a little underwhelming. Leopard looks fantastic, but it does seem odd that after being told that it has 300 new features, of the ten that His Jobsness previewed, 8 had already been revealed at last year's conference. Still, it looks like the biggest release for a while, and unifying the interface is a Good Thing.

You may also have heard that developers attending the conference were given the brand spanking new Leopard Beta to take home with them. Now, this has me mightily - well, vexed. I paid $500 this year for the Apple Developer Connection Select membership, which includes Leopard seeds. I run the latest developer seed and the developer tools upon which I rely for Scrivener crash constantly. As a developer and a paid-up member of the Apple developer program, I am outraged that they have used the beta as a carrot for attending their developers' conference. It annoys me doubly because I would have really liked to attend WWDC this year, but it was just not possible. I live in the UK, which means that - for a start - on top of the ticket price I have to pay a small fortune for a flight and a hotel. But more of an issue is that, as a shareware developer, I also have a day job. I can just see the look on my headteacher's face when I tell her that she needs to book a supply teacher for a week because I am attending a conference in the US...

WWDC tickets, incidentally, cost just under $1,600. I have seen comments from developers on the web saying that, having paid this money, they are entitled to a feeling of smugness about getting their hands on the new beta. But are they? If the conference is not worth $1,600 without the beta carrot (hmm) then what is the implication? Of course, it is worth it. I would have loved to go not because of the idea of getting the beta into my hands first (that would just have been an added bonus). No, the main reason would be for the sheer number of useful sessions, to be able to talk to Apple engineers and get tips on developing for Leopard, or really harnessing the power of OS X. I could have cornered an engineer and got them to help me start adding AppleScript support to Scrivener. That would have been worth more than a Leopard beta, and I am gutted that Apple don't provide some smaller conferences with engineers available in the UK or Europe.

But... the beta. I need the Leopard beta to ensure that Scrivener works perfectly on Leopard. I need it to continue development without continual crashes. (And yes, seeing the new dock and menu bar for myself would be nice too, I don't deny it.) But more importantly, I have *paid* for the Leopard Early Start kit. Leopard have my cash, and now they penalise me for not attending a conference in another country that I just could not possibly have made.

Who knows? Maybe the new beta will be available for download for ADC members on Monday. If so, I will be happy and not to aggrieved that the release wasn't simultaneous. But based on previous WWDC seeds a lot of speculators have been suggesting that it could be nearer a month or two before the beta is made available to non-attendees. Should that be the case, I won't be signing up for ADC next year, that's for sure.

ADDENDUM: As the obsessive-compulsive I am, I signed into the Leopard Dev Center (available to paying ADC Premier and Select members) today in the vain hope that the beta may have been posted. I normally sign in a different route, so I hadn't noticed this before, but right at the top of the Leopard Dev Center is the title "Leopard Seeds" with this text beneath it:

Download the latest pre-release versions of the Mac OS X Leopard and Xcode 3.0 as soon as they become available.

Are they taking the proverbial? Because beneath that is still the old Leopard seed from a couple of months ago, and no sign of the actual latest pre-release version, the WWDC beta. What's even worse is that Apple are selling the Leopard Early Start Kit on the promise that those who buy it will get the very latest seed. Check out the Leopard Early Start Kit page, where you will see this promise:

Fast track your Mac OS X Leopard development by downloading the latest pre-release versions of Mac OS X Leopard and Xcode 3.0

Which is, of course, exactly why I purchased my Select membership in the first place. Note the key words here: latest pre-release versions, as they become available. Yeah, yeah, I know - I should get a life. When (if?) they finally do seed the beta to the rest of us, I'll be happy as a pig in mud and forget all this anger (which leads to fear which leads to hate etc). But that's not really the point. The point is that Apple seems more interested in penalising developers for not attending an expensive conference than in providing them with the tools they need to make excellent Leopard-ready applications as soon as possible; and this mindset indicates that Apple cares very little for independent shareware developers who live overseas. Like, oh, say - just for example - me.