The Forge: Fire and Ice - SciFan anthology

The Forge: Fire and Ice
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Forge: Fire and Ice is a science fiction and fantasy anthology. It has a fascinating Foreword by Doctor Who and Harry Potter actor, Simon Fisher Becker, who nicely ties in the title with the theme of the collection. The stories themselves are the winners and shortlist from a SciFan competition run by Fantastic Books Publishing plus two professional author contributions.

The five major prize winners are the stand-out stories. Forged by Dan Staniforth, a haunting tale that plays with memory, is the worthy winner. It’s a story that will stay with you. All the Time in the World by JX Plant took second place; the story of a future catastrophe told through the very tight lens of a bed-bound protagonist. Third place went to A Worm in the Toffee Apple by RL Kerrigan, a gripping story of a future society, the lens again focused down to a single protagonist.

Along with the winners, three more stories were singled out as highly commended. These were Tim Gayda’s edge-of-seat space adventure, The Button; Kitty Waldron’s Speak Before You Think, exploring the potential nightmare of AI systems gone wrong; and Boris Glikman’s The Light of Their Lives, a truly original take that explores what happens when the advertising moguls get their hands on light itself.

The professional contributors are Danuta Reah with Out Of Her Mind, a tense psychological tale; and Stuart Aken with Greed is Good, looking at mankind’s worst excesses.

The rest of the collection comprises nineteen stories from the competition shortlist: All the King's Men by Katie Lewis looking at the human story behind future genetic augmentation; Blind Alley by Emily Wootton, a spine-tingling chase through a future urban landscape; By the Grace of the Two Suns by Ed Newbould, cleverly playing with the fire and ice theme in a world of superstition and vigilante justice; The Yellow Bus by Helen Parker is a delightful tale of a mobile library with a portal to the worlds of the books it carries; Damned If You Do by Alan Paine is the futuristic tale of someone with a stark choice: death by fire, death by ice.

Elemental Sacrifice by John Hoggard brings fire, ice and drama into a well-crafted fantasy world of dwarves and wizards; Lagoon, a second story by RL Kerrigan, plays with the ideas of isolation and global threat; Responsibility Discharged (Fired and Iced) by CM Angus is another of the ones that plays ingeniously with the theme, where a fired employee has literally been put on ice. Fire and Ice by Louisa Morillo is a superbly described restaurant scene, one to avoid reading with your dinner. The Mandarin by Robin Bilton explores the machinations of a future society through the concepts of obligation and betrayal.

Frost Fires by Pierre Le Gue, set on a train journey with a difference, is one of those stories where the air of menace grows gradually; Frozen Fire by Rachel Lovat is one of several tales that uses man-made climate change as a theme albeit a far-reaching one, and is also one of those stories where the menace creeps up slowly as you shuffle ever closer to the edge of your seat. The Cold Ones by Joseph D Wheeldon again racks up the tension, taking fire and ice, heat and cold to the heart of a survival tale; Justice in the ’Pool by Jonathan Edwards has an entertaining take on the book’s theme, using it to create a futuristic police drama; one of several stories that made me smile.

Lucantha by Sue Hoffmann neatly winds the topic of the book around the idea of tales told by the fireside; The Separation of Fire and Ice by Mira Callahan is a crisply told narrative that has an interesting synergy with the winning story, Forged, although they are very different. Indeed, it is a recurring thread through the book, the way that the stories – all unique – bounce off each other as the fire and ice theme is explored.

On the Slope of Survival by Lynn McInroy is one of the stories that explores extreme climate shifts and follows a community on a treadmill of second guessing what the new seasons will bring, cleverly mirroring the real fire and ice with the ebb and flow of the main character’s key relationship; The Despoilers by Dominic Bell gives a different take on climate change where catastrophe comes from off-planet in a story with a strong sense of place that gives a global view; and finally, Adolescent Rebellion by Ann Bupryn, plays out in a single room, exploring the relationships between three generations through the focus of the fire in the grate and the ice in granny’s cup.

The stories from the competition shortlist are all worthy supporters of the excellent winning half dozen and the pair of professional contributions. All of this set of charity anthologies is professionally edited and it shows in what is overall a slick, professional collection that makes for a page-turning read.


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[originally posted on FB]

I thought it was probably a send up when someone said a popular daily newspaper had castigated Dr Who along blatantly racist and sexist lines, but as I like to check out the source material for these claims I took a look. Guess what? It didn’t stop at race and gender, it took a pop at the disabled too.

The DN (as I will call it - the Daily Newspaper) tells us it is speaking up for the poor beleaguered ordinary citizen who, they infer but never say, has not the wit or the gumption to speak up for (or indeed think) for themselves.

What are Dr Who’s sins by DN standards?
After an intro that makes clear this article does not approve of anything about the new series, we are invited by implication  to mock these aspects:

A “stridently feminist” lead with “extraordinary engineering skills” (a woman good at engineering?! In this day and age?!) Add a “racially diverse cast” (shock horror?! In this day and age?!) but not just that, it gets worse. Alongside the “strident” feminist is a “black actor” playing a “dyspraxia sufferer” and another black actor playing an “Anglo-Asian police officer”.

And the bit that made me laugh. It was reference to the “token white middle-aged male”. I mean how can anyone – the subtext reads – even consider watching a programme that is not at least 99% middle-aged white male. Aren’t middle-aged white males the effective majority in much of life. Well yes, DN, they are, and just look what an f***ing mess they’ve made of it.

Oh and the DN doesn’t spare the “token white middle-aged male” because “even [he] is a cancer survivor”. (Oh no, not a portrayal of a cancer sufferer in a TV drama!? Hadn’t we plumbed the depths with trying to portray a dyspraxia sufferer as normal i.e. not totally and constantly defined by his condition?! Whatever next?)

The Doctor herself we are told is “too busy preaching to fight aliens”. It seems the DN at this point was frothing with too much rage to notice that this declaration was the header for a paragraph describing the Doctor’s encounter with “psychotic alien Tzim-Sha” in an earlier episode.

The thing is, they weren’t frothing about the programme pretending that the world isn’t entirely made up of white middle-aged males at that point, they were frothing along different lines, so didn’t spot the anomaly.

Apparently (I didn’t see the episode), the strident feminist had tried to stop the murderous alien by persuading him to reform. It doesn’t work and she was “forced to resort to more drastic action”.

“More drastic action”? Well well, suddenly mealy-mouthed about spelling it out? So I’m assuming that the “more drastic action” could not have been described as “forced to resort to murderous violence with comprehensive collateral damage such as would have been perpetrated far sooner by real men” i.e. the proper white male middle-aged role model seen in so many male-dominated films, programmes and computer games, and not the ‘strident’ woman making out that she’s good at engineering whilst surrounded by a cast of non-white no-hopers.

It doesn’t even stop there, the article froths ever more wildly as it goes on. Dr Who has wide appeal (the DN clearly hates that) and it’s peddling the idea that it’s not the winning that counts. It doesn’t quite say: how dare a programme watched by so many children peddle the idea that losing doesn’t make them worthless pieces of shit for the rest of their lives who should know their place and kowtow to their bigger, stronger, richer, whiter, non-disabled peers whilst being grateful for any crumbs that come their way, unless they have the luck to tip into that elite category at some point, in which case they’d better learn to despise the non-white, non-male, non-able-bodied pretty darned quick or they’ll be thrown out of the club.

But it does say, “To the delight of risk-adverse snowflakes everywhere, the Doctor is a firm believer in the maxim, ‘it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part’.” But give them a bit more leeway and they’ll be spelling it out.

The article ends on the racist seam where it began. The programme has “found room for ... ONE middle aged white bloke” [their emphasis]. They’ve done this “in a bid to prove” they are the “most inclusive show on television”.

Actually, they are one of the most popular shows on television. And what the DN apparently can’t stomach is to have a popular show peddling the message that non-white, non-male or non-able-bodied does not mean inferior being. Wow, all that vitriol! All that pathetic insecurity. All that longing for the good-ole 1950s. White middle-aged male power feeling under threat, is it? Who’s the snowflake now?

I have not linked to the article. They get enough exposure, but here's a book by an actor from previous series which is especially interesting in this context as his recollections really contradict the DN's frothy inadequate attempts to reminisce about days gone by.

My Dalek Has A Puncture