Fri, 02 Jul 2004
Long train journeys
Yesterday I travelled about 850 miles by train. No
exaggeration: I boarded a GNER inter-city express in Edinburgh
at 9:30am, arrived in London at 2:08pm, crossed London, had a
meeting, dropped in on the London SF meet at the Dead Nurse in
the evening, then waddled back to Euston station for the
Scotrail Sleeper Service at 11:40pm, which arrived back in
Edinburgh at 6:50am. It is a truly weird sensation to lie
awake in a tiny stateroom in a swaying, squealing railway
carriage, staring out the window at the Scottish lowlands in
the grey post-dawn light. You actually get a sensation of
distance traveled that's missing when you fly, or hunker down in an
express train travelling at twice the speed, or even drive
(with your attention focussed on the road ahead of you).
While en route, I split my time between reading the manuscript
of Karl Schroeder's next SF novel, "Lady of Mazes", and
jotting down notes towards another novel of my own. I like
what I've read of "Lady of Mazes" so far, but haven't finished
it yet so I'm not going to spout off here. (What does strike me
about it is that Schroeder seems to be intent on exploring the
way in which the technology you use dictates your values, and
vice versa. Very thought-provoking.)
All I can say about my own jottings so far is that I'm
thinking about far-future SF novels including alien contact --
and how virtually no-one in the field has managed to invent an
alien organism that's remotely as strange as a
tree.
And then I got to thinking about the sheer speed of human cultural
drift, the rarity of institutions that can survive even one
human lifetime, and wondering what this might mean for a human
interstellar polity where journey times are measured in
decades and the centres of habitation have drifted apart
culturally to such an extent that the idea of shared cultural
values is oxymoronic.
Quote of the day:
Have you heard about the Edwardians? They are a gang of
proletarian louts who dress like Beaton with braided trousers
and velvet coats, and murder one another in 'Youth Centres'.
-- Evelyn Waugh to Nancy Mitford, 1954
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