Richard Wright

Eh?

The spam filters around the comments function of this site are being put hard through thier paces at the moment – yesterday I removed 98 spambot droppings from the moderation queue. Over thirty of them started with the above subject line.

I know that functioning grammar is too much to expect from a humble spambot, but this one boggles my mind every time I see it. I mean, what is it saying? It raises so many questions.

• Who is she? A nubile young filly full of sexual stamina, or somebody’s great-grandmother? Is the statement an enticement, or a vaguely worrying threat? Does the product being endorsed guarantee me a psychotic stalker?
• Does it mean she will love me more than she loves other guys? How many other guys is this hussy seeing anyway? Am I to be part of some sort of harem?
• More worrying still, does it mean that she will love me more than the other guys will? Is she, in fact, part guy? Does that mean this product make me irresistible to shemales? Is that something I want in my life?

When you’ve read the declaration as often as I have in the past twenty-four hours, these questions become inevitable. I almost want to follow the links, just to see if there are answers on the far side. Perhaps it’s a riddle, and great rewards will be bestowed on he who solves it…

Anyway, for those who have met the moderation message, that’s why it’s there. Theoretically, once I’ve approved one comment from you, telling the website that you’re a proper person (hopefully with some vague notion of why grammar was invented), your future comments should be passed automatically, and published immediately – so if you see it, don’t shy away. I don’t censor people posting (well, if things got abusive I might, but that’s not likely), I’m just trying to make sure this doesn’t become a default porn site by association.

Oh, and you may have noticed that you can now tick a little checkbox when making a comment. Doing so means you’ll get an email notification whenever anybody else, including me, posts a comment on the same article. Helpful, if you want a reply but haven’t time to keep coming back to see if I’ve got round to it…

It may be a fatal injury. This morning, I popped into the city centre to mail off a novel manuscript to a publisher based in the US (fingers crossed, as ever). In total, the novel in question hauls in at about 107,000 words, across 372 professionally formatted manuscript pages. Also included in the package were the usual covering letter, bibliography, and synopsis.

The cost to send it air mail to New York? £42. If you’re in the US reading this, that’s $81. In Canada, try $94. Australia? $103. Japan? 9550 yen.

You get the point. When I’d regained the power of speech, I bravely handed my card over to the Post Office lady, attempting to pretend that such a figure was nothing to a man of my means, and tried not to cry as I tapped in my pin number.

It’s easy to forget how radically the Internet and email have altered how we communicate. Just eight years ago, my submission were whirling around the world by post as a matter of routine, and the chance to submit by email was a rare and splendid thing. Not the opposite is true. While there’s something pleasing about taking a physical letter or package to a post office, it fails to balance up against the sheer inconvenience attached.

That’s what we expect these days, I suppose – instant gratification at minimum cost. I’m so used to it, that I get slightly giddy when I can’t have it.

Hey ho. I’ll be feeling the sting a lot less if the book is bought, I suppose.

If that brings back memories of soul-numbing fear, you and I are on the same wavelength.

In the history of British music, has there ever been anything more charmingly bonkers produced than Jeff Wayne’s musical The War Of The Worlds?

I first discovered this musical insanity when I was a kid, going through some tapes (remember those?) my uncle had left behind on one of his infrequent visits to the family home (he was a jetsetting chef, working contracts in chain hotels all over the world). Being familiar with television adaptations of Wyndham’s The Tripods, which the Martian war machines on the cover reminded me of, I thought I was putting on an audio book of that story. It took about fifteen seconds before I realised how wrong I was.

The other day, in a fit of nostalgia (and also, for various reasons, because I needed to get into a Victorian mindset), I picked the remastered version of this bizarre rock opera off the shelf at HMV, and have been listening to it since. It’s easier to see its flaws today, but that doesn’t kill the love. Firstly, there’s Burton’s fabulous performance, straight out of old style radio drama. Forget your James Earl Joneses and Morgan Freemans – if the end of the world needs to be narrated, Burton is the one I want to hear do it. His performance is what binds the whole thing together – the utter obliviousness to the fact that he’s in an opera at all is what sells the story. His crisp, matter-of fact narration is perfect, making the most of some gloriously evocative bits of text, and when he ups the drama with just a vocal twitch (the quaver when he describes a war machine over Big Ben, or the tiny break when he sees his missing love pulling out of a harbour on a heaving ferry), it’s perfect.

As is the story, but do remember to read the book. The musical only hints at the horror of the martians rooting for human bodies, or the doomed, heroic last stand of the Thunder Child and her crew as they try to defend the last boat out of England against five war machines, or the madness of Nathaniel, a man of God struggling to rationalise the demons he sees around him with his faith. Consider this the Cliff Notes, set to prog-rock…

Because, yes, it’s all surrounded by the most bizarre studio rock you’ve ever heard. Some of it is brilliant – the soundscaping around the first Martian crash on the common, or the red weed growing over the earth, for example. Some of it is horribly over-earnest, like the saccharine Forever Autumn, played over the Burton’s otherwise intensely evocatve descriptions of six million refugees running headlong through the streets of London.

Somehow, it all works. It really shouldn’t. I absolutely should not feel an intense joy as I listen to it. My partner’s right – it’s an embarrassing mess.

But I adore it.

Now, if I could only remember where I put those William Shatner albums…