A2Z Challenge 2021

Exploring and Evaluating Generative AI Number Four – Working with AI and the Women’s Issue…

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During the month of April this year, whilst participating in the A to Z Challenge, I was privileged to encounter the work of Misky whose blog It’s Still Life, showcases two distinct things, poetry written by Misky and illustrated using Generative Artwork created by Misky using the Midjourney AI app. So amazing were these images to someone who is in part, a visual artist, that it inspired me to make an exploration of Generative AI for myself. At the same time, AI has been hitting the headlines big time and mainly for its use in text generation and the impact it might have on jobs and since writing is another thing that I do in my day job, I was also intrigued to see whether AI might be of any use in a company such as I work for. (I am the gradually retiring General Manager of a food manufacturing company). It has been a fascinating voyage of discovery and to cap it all, lying awake at 4 o’clock this morning, I found myself listening to “The Conversation” on the BBC World Service and what should be the topic, but AI with special reference to the involvement of women. So – mind on fire, I am going to draw this series together, although I freely acknowledge I have but dipped my toe in the waters of AI and I may return to the topic in the future…

To recap the three articles I have already written:- In the first one, I tried out ChatGPT to see what it research and write about one of the topics from my A to Z and immediately encountered the phenomena of AI hallucination – the ability, in fact tendency of AI to make things up. I also “showcased” my first attempts at visual collaboration with the Midjourney bot .
In the second report, I compared ChatGPT to Writesonic which produces more lengthy articles – testing them against a typical (for me) work assignment.
In the third report, I looked at the most controversial assertion about AI – that AI might in the future, eliminate human beings – Terminator-style and referenced articles that thoroughly refute the need to worry about that particular outcome – go re-assure yourselves! However, there are many things about our present and future use of AI that do bear looking at and these were raised in the episode of “The Conversation” that woke me up this morning. The programme, presented by a woman, featured two women working in the field of AI, one a philosopher and one an expert in data analysis and as well as the general concerns that need addressing about AI, they highlighted the general lack of representation of women in the field of AI – only one CEO, qualifying women failing to get jobs in the industry and so on. They did however point out that one of the changes to AI itself in recent times, has been the accessibility of use – no longer do you need to have a degree in computer programming – you could make your first interaction with ChatGPT in the same time it would take you to query something on Google. Which brings me back to Misky…

Misky was not only the inspiration for my (deepish?) dive into AI, but was extremely helpful and encouraging to me at the outset, itself a reflection of how women tend to be more collaborative, good team players – a fact which the contributors to “The Conversation” suggested is a good reason for women to me more involved in AI companies, in reviewing the implications and in forming the regulation which is undoubtedly necessary around AI. A few days ago, I was delighted to meet Misky face-to-face on a Zoom call after many text interactions online and one of the things that she shared in our too-brief call, was that she had had some push-back from certain readers of her blog, about the use of AI images. I would like to talk to her more about these issues, but the participants in “The Conversation” raised the issue of how artists, whose work has been studied by AI to create new images “in the style of”, are being short-changed. You may have been wondering about the image at the top of this post – I created in Midjourney by prompting it to “imagine” Knaresborough railway viaduct “in the style of Hokusai” – a master of Japanese woodblock prints. I have used this subject as my test piece for exploring what Midjourney can do as you will see in the previous post. Now Hokusai is long dead and so the issue of compensation is hardly an issue, but another group of more recent artists might object. I am working on a spoof post – “How to Make a Body” a tale of human reproduction in the style of an Internet recipe ad although, like Misky, the writing is all my own, I wanted an illustration to fit with the tone of the piece and prompted Midjourney to “imagine” a woman in a hospital bed, holding her newborn baby and with her husband leaning in “in the style of a Ladybird book cover”. For those of you who may not be familiar with Ladybird books, they were written for children starting in the 1940’s and running until the 1980’s and they feature a distinct style of illustration.

A typical Ladybird book cover

In recent years, a series of spoof books in the Ladybird style and aimed at those who had grown up with the original series, have been vert successful, for example…

A cracking spoof…

I had no idea whether Midjourney would be able to fulfil my prompt, there are lists of artists’ styles you can use with Midjourney but I hadn’t seen this one – I was not disappointed!

I am keeping my powder dry as to the final image I chose but this first set of four (Midjourney shows off by producing not one, but four attempts in under sixty seconds) – which was done to the prompt of “A new mother in a hospital bed with her husband leaning in as she holds their new baby in the style of a Ladybird Book Cover” has misunderstood my intention and the mother is holding a magazine rather than a baby – though the graphic style is very Ladybird book-like. I acknowledge that I am still only a beginner in my use of prompts with all the forms of AI I have tried so far and there is undoubtedly an “art” to getting it right which is why I said “I created in Midjourney”. Although I am a competent watercolourist, screen-printer and other forms of illustrative art, I could not produce images such as the above and certainly not in sixty seconds. So, how much of this creation is my prompt, how much is the brilliant programming behind Midjourney and how much is owed to the various artists who could produce the illustrations of the Ladybird books? I cannot begin to answer that question but it does raise an issue which needs considering in formulating regulation around the use of AI. Meanwhile, like Misky and I, jump in and have a go and get a feel for yourself of the answer to the god-like feeling of creating with an AI tool…

Much of the debate around the consequences of the rise of AI, is around its impact on jobs and the potential losses and gains. As I described in my first report, the development of computer spreadsheets swept away the lowly positions in Accountancy but opened up many more jobs at the high end of the profession and although this might be the hope for AI, that it liberates us from the menial and allows us to create new roles – roles which might be beyond the capability of AI to imagine, at present, it is not just the menial tasks that are being threatened by bots like ChatGPT, but some roles higher up in various industries. Having said that, given the tendency of AI’s to hallucinate, I wouldn’t trust an AI’s writing without an experienced human checking the output of any writing before sending it out! Also, when you are a creative individual yourself, then trying to get AIs to produce exactly what you have in mind is tricky. In my 2021 A to Z challenge, I was trying to complete a science-fiction novel and the exercise gave me enough momentum to indeed finish it a few months later. Then I set about creating a book cover for it – to feature the final denouement – a tense scene set in a space-elevator on the edge of space. I prepared the background view by Photoshopping some NASA photographs looking the length of the Red Sea towards Palestine, painted in a great river estuary as per my planet, and then superimposed some 3D elements which I drew up in AutoCAD and finally added the title and my name. You can see this below, however, I felt that the result was not quite up to the standard of artwork commissioned by big sci-fi publishers and imagined that in the unlikely event of the novel being published, an improved version of the cover would be substituted for my “sketch”.

© Andrew Wilson 2022

Back to today, and naturally, I thought it would be a good test of Midjourney to see whether it could be used to produce a better version of my cover. Well, the first attempts were brilliant style-wise, but nothing like the image I wanted and many attempts followed to no avail…

My prompt read “space lift arriving at 300 miles above Earth like planet over Sahara like region array of cargo containers spread out in one layer small spaceship approaching“Midjourney couldn’t understand Space lift and I had to change lift to elevator, it couldn’t understand “array of cargo containers” but it did have all the sci-fi style I wanted. So then I decided to create a space view background without the lift and substitute it into my own cover illustration. Bingo!

© Andrew Wilson 2023

Still I hanker for the crisply detailed images of the elevator that Midjourney is capable of if only I could prompt it correctly – so a work in progress… What this exercise does show, is that it is possible to use AI for the things it can do better in combination with human talent.

In Conclusion…

This exploration of AI has felt like a marathon and it is just one person’s experience and I am really only at the beginning of my exploration, I’m sure I will find both text and image-generative bots to be of use in my future work and play. I urge you all to experiment for yourselves, form your own judgements (and please share your results by linking in the comments), join the debate over the regulation of AI, and explore other artists, in particular, Misky, who began this journey…

Ideal Inspiration Blogger Award

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Thank you Jamie of uniquely maladjusted but fun for this nomination – I “met” Jamie through the 2021 A2Z Challenge this year where she wrote an intriguing story in instalments following a double date with a twist at the end – give it a whirl… Challenging questions Jamie!

https://uniquelymaladjustedbutfun.blogspot.com/

Rules for the Award

  • 1. Thank the person who has nominated you and provide a link back to their blog.
  • 2. Answer their questions.
  • 3. Nominate up to 9 other bloggers and ask them 5 new questions.
  • 4. Notify the nominees through their blog by visiting and commenting on their blog.
  • 5. List the rules and display the “Ideal Inspiration Blogger Award” logo.

Jamie’s Questions…

  • 1. If an employee under extreme stress says (verbally or written) something that is construed as insensitive to a group of people (age, gender, religion, orientation, etc), should that employee be terminated/ not have their contract renewed, or should they be given one more chance if they agree to some sort of approved sensitivity training reeducation program? 
    • There are two issues to be addressed here – “If an employee (were) under extreme stress…” such that it is implicated in anti-social behaviour, then the nature of that stress needs to be examined and if it is in the remit or ability of the employer to ameliorate that stress then that should be done anyways. As for the insenstive comments, then certainly a second chance should be given but surely subject to that person satifactorily undertaking ” approved sensitivity training reeducation program”. It’s not just a “give a second chance” principle but with the exception of a few gross misdemeanors, employment rights – certainly here in the UK – mean there are a whole progression of warnings which have to be applied before you can fire someone.
  • 2. At what age is it no longer appropriate to Trick-or-Treat for yourself? (Meaning exceptions are in place if accompanying a younger child, such as taking a younger sibling ToT so parents can stay at the house and give out candy.)
    • I think that the age at which children stop believing in Father Christmas should be the guide here! After that you only get to Trick or Treat when you have children of your own (below the age of Santa disbelief) then again when you become a Grandparent you get another bite of the cherry. Stealing other people’s children (Kidnapping – Ho! Ho! Ho!) to go Trick or Treating is not to be recommended!
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  • 3. Would you support or oppose a mandate that 75% of the human population be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2 including variants and mutations)? Would your answer change if this mandate were global, your country only, or your local area only? Is there a number or percent of deaths that would influence your support or opposition of such as mandate?
    • I would consider myself to be Libertarian, but the thing which which many objectors to vaccination (and certainly mandatory vaccination) forget, is that Libertarian means you should be allowed to do whatever you want but only if it doesn’t hurt other people! If we didn’t have vaccinations, we would still have Smallpox. The anti-vaxxers have been responsible for an unwelcome return of measles and mumps – diseases which some doctors had never encountered, so successful had immunisation become and these are serious diseases for pregnant women and for causing infertility respectively. I blame Trump and the unrestrained spreading of misinformation on social media, but I also think we have missed an opportunity during Covid, to spread some positive social behaviour. In China and Japan, wearing a mask whenever you have the “Common” Cold (which can be another form of coronavirus) – is quite normal behaviour so that you don’t spread it to your fellow human beings – that’s just the kind of societies they are! People who think they haven’t got Covid 19 don’t know – that is the whole reason why it has inevitably become a pandemic – and wearing a mask to protect others (and hoping they do the same) is at one end of the scale and at the other is an even better example of the “selfish” benfits of altruism. The UK government crows about how successful it’s vaccination programme has been, but until they, and all the other first world countries make sure the whole world is vaccinated, then variants will multiply and we shall never be free of the disease. So I am happy to have 100% mandatory vaccination but few governments will go there let alone the right wing idiots who tout it as an issue of right-to-choose…
  • 4. Should celebrities be given exceptions to laws, rules, and terms of service? If so, how famous does one have to be to get that exception?
    • Get away! If anything – celebrities should be held to a higher standard of account since what they do influences lots of other people so – its tough love, or just say no to being made into a celebrity…
  • 5. What is your favorite recipe to use with leftover cooked turkey? Or, what is your favorite summer pasta salad recipe?
    • I love to make a good stock from the carcass and then make a Christmas Dinner Soup with all the tiny bits of tukey but also leftover potatoes, gravy, sprouts, stuffing – Yayyy!!! 

Nominations

All of my nominees commented on my blog during the April A to Z Challenge 2021. So in no particular order and many nationalities…

  1. Tamara – https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/
  2. Anne M Bray – https://www.anne-m-bray.com/blog
  3. Sara Zama – https://theoldshelter.com/
  4. Frédérique – https://quiltingpatch.blogspot.com/
  5. Zalka Csenge Virág – http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com/
  6. Sharon E. Cathcart – https://sharonecathcart.wordpress.com/
  7. Pooja Priyamvada – Second Thoughts First

My five questions to my nominees:

  1. Have you ever met anyone online (blogs, dating sites – whatever) and then taken it from the virtual to the “Real” World and what happened?
  2. If you could meet anyone – Historical or Present Day – who would it be and why?
  3. Who would you want as a Creative Writing Coach?
  4. What is the Blog Post of which you were most proud but which got less of a response than you hoped – (please link to the post)?
  5. Do you agree with the idea that we make a choice as to how we are going to die at quite an early age and do you think that choice influences whether that death will come to pass oh, and if you have made such a choice – care to share?

PLEASE let me know if you make a post with your answers! I don’t want to miss reading it.

Roadtrip 5 AtoZ 2021 Challenge

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A trip round some of the blogs I didn’t manage to visit during the Challenge in April!

Time and again in the Blogosphere as viewed through the lense of the AtoZ Challenge, I encounter writers who demonstrate the maxim “A Writer is someone who Writes!” Given that it used to be said (before print on demand made self publishing so easy) that for every novel published, another 4000 were written but not published – the prospects of success as a writer are slim, is it then the case that many of us write simply as a hobby? I have two novels on the go and one seems to be trying to birth a sub-plot into a novel in its own right. I have, in the past been to a real-world writing group and being quite sanguine about making any sort of income from writing, I guess I can answer that question for myself – I write as a hobby! There are so many writing prompts in circulation – not least of all – the AtoZ Challenge and how many bloggers in its ranks can say that they are as prolific the rest of the year as they are in April. To be fair, there are certainly some that I am subscribed to who daily fill my social inbox with one if not more – often prompt inspired- pieces which certainly makes them writers who write daily. Myself, I really enjoy writing and other things being equal I could write all day – my novels for sure, but blogging too – and enjoy the socialising that blogging brings with it. When you are in either a real-world writing group or an online one, and Covid has certainly favoured the latter – then its not just the quality of the writing of your fellow travellers but their personalities, companionship and even friendship that are on offer. All of which musings were inspired by the first of this post’s mini reviews…

Star Trek’s “Data”

hdhstory.net is the home of a storyteller and in his “C” entry for AtoZ 2021, “A Computerised Mind” we have personal revelations aplenty. First a wish to have a mind like “Data” from Star Trek, whose positronic brain allowed for so many skills even though our writer would only wish for such a brain providing he could keep all the emotional attributes of a human being which “Data” lacked… Secondly, and bravely for a writer, he admits to being a slow reader though I think ruminative would be my choice rather than slow. And thus, through such revelations do we come to know the writer a little and if we like and we choose to interact, maybe friendship will follow…

Welcome to My Magick Theatre is the home of a prolific writer, novels abound as do blogs – truly she must be glued to her desk… The link I have chosen is to her “Z” post which was on the subject of Zealots since Carrie-Ann Brownian is a writer of historical fiction amongst other things and Zealots is a fascinating insight into feuding families in Florence (see what I did there? Who doesn’t love a bit of alliteration!) Reading the About page, Carrie-Anne endears herself to me by her choice of typeface – as a graphic designer (among many things), whose roots go back to hand-setting type at school, I love anybody who goes beyond accepting the default offerings of their computer. This is an author, and a blogger that one can, metaphorically speaking, get your teeth into! Unsurprisingly, of the six bloggers who Liked this post, three are known to me and two of those are also novelists. If novels are not your bag, then Carrie-Anne also has a page on which she lists all the music in her collection alphabetically, and giving the medium she possesses – shades of “High Fidelity”…

Ha! Not saying it’s greedy but here is Carrie-Anne Brownian again! Any relation to the eponymous discover of Brownian Motion – ‘cos this gal just cannot keep her fingers still and has two blogs in the AtoZ 2021 Challenge.

“This was my eighth year doing the A to Z Challenge with this blog, my tenth with two blogs. Much to my disappointment, for the fourth year in a row I had to suffice with a fairly simple theme, one I didn’t need to do a huge amount of research for. I remain hopeful I can return to more research-intensive themes in the coming years.”

Reflections page – https://onomasticsoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/2021/05/07/a-to-z-reflections-2021/

Given that the theme of Carrie-Anne’s blog Onomastics Outside the Box was Medieval Tuscan and Italian (plus a few other nationalities) Names – I tremble to think what a “research-intensive” subject might be. I realise now that here is an author who loves lists so the quip about “High Fidelity” might be nearer the mark than I thought. You have to admire the perspicacity of this blogger and if you love names, international versions of names, are a novelist or another list addict this is the blog for you…

Roadtrip 4 AtoZ 2021 Challenge

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A trip round some of the blogs I didn’t manage to visit during the Challenge in April!

Farida at Chapters From my Life, writes about her struggle with cancer. But she also writes poems, campaigns against child abuse and about her own family. Her reflections will resonate not just with others who are struggling with the big C, but the thoughts will inspire anyone who is struggling with Life in general. This will not be everyone’s idea of a blog they want to read, but blogging is a broad church and you never know the day when you will be struck down by something, and if you are, having bookmarked this blog might be the best thing you do today…

Big Wheel…

Lisa – Musings of a Middle-Aged Mom writes about American Recipes and I know not whether you would call these “Classic” American Recipes or not but I can tell you – if you want an insight into the nature and flavours of American cooking – Lisa fits the bill. The link I have made, is to W is for Wheel – Big Wheel and big is the word – a compound sandwich made from a whole loaf of bread and baked in the oven (pictured at right).

Another recipe leaves me pondering ingredients such as Oyster Crackers, Cheez-its, Goldfish Crackers and Hidden Valley Dry Ranch Mix – it’s another language! But Lisa will be your guide if you step her way…










Beth at Through my Looking Glass reflects (see what I did there) on what she has learned from participating in the 2021 challenge – and has come to the conclusion that its the photographs rather than the travels that should have been her theme. The selection provided in her reflections piece are just that – pictures of reflections and they show a definite style. Now I know photography, like all art, is subject to personal taste but I have seen blogs with very poor photographs and these are quite the opposite!

Beth also writes a Dog Blog…

Road Trip 3 A2Z 2021 Challenge…

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A trip round some of the blogs I didn’t manage to visit during the Challenge in April!

Janet’s Smiles – subtitle Life is One Big Adventure, made San Francisco and some of its more favourite landmarks. It is great when someone who lives in or near an iconic city acknowledges that they haven’t seen it all as they might and sets out to rectify it! And Janet takes us around a city we all know bits of from the many films that have been made here – in fact, I sometimes wonder whether a trip to America might not find one constantly beset by deja vu… Anyway, Janet gives us an entertaining and well-illustrated account of her journey!

HSD (Home School Dad) gives us in the post I dipped into, a post about Racial Recognition through the stories (and picture) of Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks. A great way to imbibe history…

The eponymous Cathy of Curious as a Cathy was someone I got hooked on during the 2020 Challenge and although she has popped up in my inbox all year, I didn’t manage to visit her this year when she chose Looney Tunes characters to reproduce in her own inimitable style. As well as her pictures, Cathy writes a lot – taking up various challenges…

Roadtrip One – A2Z Challenge 2021

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A brief video through the car windscreen in the Morrocan village of Ifraden…

This is my second year n the A2Z Challenge (2021) and this year I am determined to go on the Road Trip in which participants visit some of the blogs they haven’t managed to see during April – the month of itself. If you want to make your own exploration of this year’s Challenge, here is the Masterlist.
I wanted to start with an image of a road trip that I had taken myself rather than one plucked from the ether – since you can hear my partner and I chatting as she films and I drive, it may amuse…

First up is The Sound of One Hand Typing, where John Holton treated us to Top Ten charts from various US and Canadian radio stations since radio is unique in its ephemeral nature and although there are not many sources of recorded airplay, there are lists of playlists and top tens – great for music buffs and radio aficionados…

More than Words took book reviews as it’s theme for the A2Z and the thing which makes book reviews interesting, is what they tell you about the reviewer as much as the books themselves, both through the selections they make, and the things they write about them. Pooja Jagtiaani is, as far as I can tell from her site, Indian and some of the books she has chosen for the A2Z Challenge are definitely from an India heritage but many are very cosmopolitan – they are well written reviews and if you want to add to your TBR list – try this blog out and see whether you like Pooja’s taste…

hdhstory is a writer’s blog – Harvey Heilbrun is a retired school teacher who the input of ideas from his former charges. He goes to writing groups and generates flash fiction from them and writing at home. I found the pieces I looked at intriguing but reading is such a subjective thing – you must make up your own mind.

Reflections on the A2Z Challenge 2021

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On April 1st, my partner and I were travelling back to England having spent the winter hiding from Covid 19 in Crete, next door to her sister. Naturally, I had prepared my first post of the challenge so that I had only to press the button before we set off a 3.30 in the morning! I didn’t realise, until the next day when we were hunkering down for ten days quarantine, that although I was on the Masterlist for Theme Reveal, I had not signed up again for the A2Z itself, so quick action needed to be on track!

My aim this year was to try and finish a science or speculative fiction novel that I had started some years ago and which had been languishing for lack of writing. I intended to publish a post around the novel and its themes each data, followed by a chapter of the book. I had 13.5 chapters finished at the outset and some six or seven post pieces. I vainly thought that this head start might allow me to achieve more chapters and to be fair I have 15 completed, but I hadn’t counted on pressure from the day job and also, writing the majority of the posts on the fly is a feat in itself.

I awoke anywhere between 5.30am and 7am and wrote, published and publicised until 9 am before turning to other work and although it didn’t leave time to complete the novel, many ideas were developed, encouragement received and other writers’ ideas investigated and so, overall, I feel that the whole exercise was very worthwhile! More than that, it was every bit as enjoyable, if pressured, as last year’s – my first A2Z Challenge.

Old friends like Frederique, Anne M Bray, Tamara, and Deborah Weber were around and new friends like Iain Kelly, Pooja Priyamvada, and Josna. I have to say that because of the aforementioned pressure from the day job, I did not read as many new blogs, or keep up with all the posts from ones I already followed, as I would like to but Hey! there is no need to limit that lovely feeling of discovering new ideas, new ways of looking at things, new friends, just to April – there is more than enough material in the A2Z Challenge from 2021 and even past years, to keep one going all year – especially since authors keep on writing new posts as well. So expect comments on a blog belonging to you sometime…

There were some friends MIA – Sharon Cathcart comes to mind but A2Z is not compulsory and many people say they have taken a break for a year and so we will hope to see them again another year…

A thought that I had when I posted a comment to the A2Z main blog, each morning (thanks for the games by the way, found time to play a few) was that many of the people who had already posted comments, were the same ones each day. Apart from this, in itself, engendering a sense of community, I imagined the dateline sweeping around the world, brushing the Indian contributors, moving on to Europe (where Frederique either gets up very early or is in an earlier time zone) before garnering the comments of the Americas later in the day. It made me wonder at what time and from where, the A2Z team posted each day?

Some thoughts on individual blogs:-

  • Thanks to Anne M Bray, I had to visit the Fluevog website and now get ads for Fluevog shoes popping up lol

  • Iain Kelly’s catalogue of characters and themes from his trilogy “The State” was enough to persuade me to buy the first book, which I am enjoying greatly although I then stopped reading the blog to prevent spoilers (not that he gives them) but may return to when I have finished the books…

  • Jamie over on Uniquely Maladjusted but Fun was writing a Young Adult story that came to a dramatic and unexpected ending…

  • Pooja Priyamvada introduced us to some wonderful words – some from languages which many of us would be unfamiliar with and she expounded their meaning beautifully in the form of a poem.

  • Another internationalist is Gunilla Redelius, a Swedish jewellery maker who now lives in the Netherlands and wrote fascinatingly about Metal meets Textile  – knitting or crocheting with wire for example…

  • Although my mind wasn’t so much on fabric crafts, I did manage to visit Frederique’s APPLIQUE PATCHWORK QUILTING where her breadth of ideas and depth of research were, as ever, a stimulus to get crafty when all this April madness settles down…

  • Deepa Gopal at Hues n Shades gave us a painted image, a poem and a writing prompt since she was ambitiously doing Napowrimo simultaneously – with such beautiful efforts, no wonder she has won blogging awards…
  • On every different tack, Eli of Just a Dad, is another writer whose eclectic posts I really enjoyed – for example –  L is for Life of Pi, largeness, and whether I like Britney Spears

  • Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom was the author of my favourite blog last year with her comprehensive guide to Swissair and I loved her theme this year which was the origin of words and phrases and I have to say, not so much Part Time Working Hockey Mom but Really Great Blog Writer!

  • Genealogy blogs (usually too personal to one family) and travelog blogs (make you too jealous) are not normally my thing but I did enjoy Linda May Curry’s account of a year in the England 0f 2004, was a little time capsule and the perspective of an Antipodean visitor made for a novel viewpoint over at THE CURRY APPLE ORCHARD .

  • Lastly but by no means least, Sarah Zama who gave us an in-depth study of The 20’s last year, gave us an equally deep account of aspects of the First World War at The Old Shelter. Not surprisingly, we learn from her reflections post that she has spent nearly a year pre-writing these posts and it shows. You might imagine that there is little that has not been said about WW1 but you would be wrong…

Finally, on the mechanics of the A2Z itself, thanks to the Team for their unstinting efforts and an idea that might simplify things next year… Could we not just have one Masterlist with ticks for the different stages Reveal, A2Z posts, Reflections and Road Trip. Maybe there is a technical reason and maybe it wouldn’t save participants from registering at each stage…

The Challenge is massive each year but I am going to keep the impetus going both in my novel and in visiting the prodigious output from the participants throughout the year. I would like to think I might pre-prepare posts for next year but actually I think I love “pantsing”. If anyone wants to read further chapters of “Train Wreck” please let me know…

Z is for Zeppelin flyers of the future…

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 My original aim for this year’s A2Z Challenge was to use the month of posting to complete a science fiction novel and post both an adjunct to the novel-writing process and a chapter a day. Unfortunately, April saw a big blip in my day job so writing these posts was as much as I could do  – but I have built up momentum, developed some key ideas and received some helpful comments from You – Dear Readers! If anyone wants to receive the balance of chapters when written, please leave an email address in the comments. Meanwhile, Hawaii 2, having all its difficulties with jet flight, has revived the slow form of transport popularly known as Zeppelins.

War has so often been a driver for technology and scarcely less than in the field of aviation, Germany first developed the serious use of airships and deployed them as bombers against Britain during the First World War due to the fact that they could carry heavy loads, and travel long distances with great fuel efficiency. Their size and slowness made them easy targets and their use of hydrogen as the lifting gas made them vulnerable to fire. The destruction of the Hindenberg as it came in to land after a trans-Atlantic flightare iconic – a bolt of lightning is thought to have ignited the aluminium-painted skin of the airship and the comparatively slow burning (rather than explosive) hydrogen allowed a few survivors to escape.


By this stage, between the world wars, Britain had built a larger and even more ambitious airship – the R101 which also crashed and burned on its inaugural flight  – my mother was at school when the airship passed overhead on its doomed flight.

Sister ship of the ill-fated R101 showing the size compared to a modern airliner…

Airships made a return to the world with the use of Helium instead of Hydrogen, though not with anything like the scale of the great hydrogen airliners and only for commercial no-passenger activities – (although the vehicles continue to proliferate and diversify). Aeroplanes took over the niche of mass passenger air-transport but now, the environmental cost of flying needs to be factored in as we struggle to achieve zero-carbon targets…

The problem with helium is that it is officially a rare element – not in the universe where it is the second most common element, but here on Earth where only limited supplies exist. Furthermore, once you put helium into your birthday balloon and it eventually leaks out, the atmosphere will carry it away and it will eventually float off into space to be lost forever. Helium is a finite and non-renewable resource that now turns out to have many important uses such as cooling superconductors so throwing it away in birthday balloons is a great waste…

As the author of “Train Wreck”, I hereby generously endow Hawaii 2 with large reserves of helium making the use of airships possible and desirable. They may be slow, but like the canal boats in the 19th Century, once a flow of freight traffic was established, the slow speed did not matter. On Hawaii 2, the issue of jet engines not being feasible, quite aside from their polluting potential – something strictly guarded against on Hawaii 2 – airships are ideal. Electric, hydrogen cells, solar panels – all of these could be employed to power the slow but curiously graceful airships of the future…




Y is for Youthful Idealism…

humanist55

   If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, more speculations as we reach the penultimate letter…

I had to resort to the dictionary for inspiration for today’s letter “Y”. Nothing from my book “Train Wreck” had leapt to mind. So Youth it is – and first I thought about two minor characters in one of Shakespeare’s plays (can’t remember which one), who are lamenting the fact that by the time they are old enough to have acquired wealth, they will be too old to enjoy it so why can’t money be given to the young and work left to the older generation? Or words to that effect – if I could remember the play, and the characters, I would check it out…

In the utopia that is Hawaii 2, Shakespeare’s characters would have found their dreams met – people of all ages, none of whom are richer (in money terms) than anyone else, are all provided with a Universal Income which allows them to spend their youth doing – well, whatever they want, or nothing at all, whilst still keeping body and soul together. (Should I, as a Humanist, use the word soul, without heavily qualifying it? That’s another story…) True, no one can have flashy cars or other trappings of a “rich” lifestyle, but you don’t miss what you don’t know and on Hawaii 2, no one has those trappings to be jealous of.

Given that many great ideas and work are achieved by people in their Youth, this is perhaps a very good idea although it is equally arguable that adversity -struggling to make one’s way in the world, both financially and intellectually – is the mother of invention. Will the youth of Hawaii 2 waste their young lives experimenting with drugs and bohemian living in Lowtown (Chapter 9) or will they throw themselves into whatever line of work has captured their imagination? Some will do one, some the other and who is to say either route is better or worse for achieving youthful brilliance…

The other thing which is associated with Youth, is Idealism. Here on Earth, we are well on the way towards the climate disaster which is the precursor to my book – the cataclysm that forces mankind to flee to the stars. And why are we headed in that direction? Because a small number of very rich people want to get richer at any cost and damn the consequence!. And because a great many other people, who I shall call Middle Class, are still bamboozled by the desire to attain wealth themselves, that they too are unwilling to face the hard choices which need to be made in order to avert the looming crisis. It is perhaps, a human trait that leads, politicians, in particular, to fail to deal with problems that are only going to manifest to the next generation when they will no longer be around to take the blame. The picture at the top is taken from an article pointing out that “Climate strike is not youthful idealism. It’s survivalist.” Greta Thunberg is not sweetly idealistic but deadly serious in pointing out what we are many of us failing to regognise.

Inequality, such as exists on many levels from the world economy down to individuals, is a great driver of idealism and Idealism tends to view the world in black and white, but as we grow older, trying to put idealism into practice, we become aware of shades of grey – things are more complicated than we youthfully imagine which is not to say that idealism is wrong and realism an excuse for doing nothing – rather that once the heady genius of youth is past, then the experience of later life should and can, be employed to tackle the things which are difficult, nitty-gritty rather than broad strokes…

As well as Realism, Idealism can also give way to Fanaticism which can be either good or bad, depending on the subject and form it takes. But for most of us, I feel, we find a balance, if we are driven beyond our youthful idealism into tempered realism and a life of service to our causes – a balance between living life for ourselves and living for what we can contribute to the world. As individuals, we come to recognise it is a relay race, not an individual sprint, and we must both receive and pass on the baton of our life’s work, be it practical, intellectual or emotional (not necessarily in that order). That can be difficult – as a teenager, I became fascinated by the idea of Bonsai – trees not only kept miniature, but sculpted into extraordinary shapes emanating nature. I soon learned that the most incredible, ancient-looking examples of this craft, were indeed ancient and that their current custodians had inherited them for a previous master and would hopefully find an apprentice to pass them on to. Sadly, I knew of no Bonsai master and my Bonsai dreams shrunk smaller than a Bonsai tree…

W is for Word-count in SciFi…

humanist55

   If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, this post is for writers and readers alike and more questions than answers…

Whether you are a pithy poster of blog pieces or a verbose vendor of sagas, how much do you think about the length of the pieces you write or if you are a reader, do you have a length which you feel comfortable with and reader or writer, how does that vary with the category of writing?

These days, does anybody formally describe their book as a novella rather than a short novel? There are all sorts of guides, rules and categories but since I am writing a science fiction novel I understand that they are allowed to be longer than the publishing industry standard because of all the descriptions of new worlds that might be expected. Wikipedia has an article about the Hugo Nebula Awards who specify the lengths for competition categories.

From this, you can see that the novel word count begins at 40K which seems quite small went many other authorities suggest 90K for the average fiction novel – up to 120K for SciFi. One of my favourite “SciFi” authors – Kurt Vonnegut, used to give ideas for short stories to a fictional SciFi author who pops up in many of his books – Kilgore Trout – which I always assumed was because he had many ideas for stories that he couldn’t be bothered to flesh out and they demonstrate that you can convey the essence of some stories in no more than a paragraph…

So I have now reached that magical 40K which means that I can stop worrying about the length and just write what I feel I need to include – but if any of read the story so far – do you agree? Do you have a sense of “Train Wreck” being halfway through (or less) or do you think it needs a great deal more?

I have been involved with graphic design for 50 years since I joined the Printing Society at school and learned to set lead type. Later, in my first proper job, I designed forms and booklets for the Greater London Council and everything we sent to the (optical) typesetter, had to be counted up and the size of the type and its line-spacing calculated first – a process known as casting-off and very tedious it was… I have just scanned a page of Iain M Banks “Hydrogen Sonata” with my phone camera, character recognised the image and posted it into a word programme to obtain a word count of 298 words per page and since the novel has 605 pages, then this hefty paperback has a whopping 180,290 words and with the depth of Iain’s imagination and comprehensively developed “Culture” books, one does not tire of his books at any length.

Also, from that period of graphic design is the boilerplate text known as “Lorem ipsum” which is shown at the top of this post. Because it is in Latin, it is used to mock-up a design where you don’t want viewers to be distracted by the meaning of the content. Even in Latin, it is quite meaningless and you can find it on the web if you need to use it.

So should one play by “the Rules” or follow your heart on the length of the book – please give me your feelings, general or specific – go on – hit that comment box…