Yesterday Tomorrow, Tomorrow Today!

Retro Sci-Fi or just behind the times? Who can tell, not me. I prefer stories about Upper Sixth gels at boarding school with crushes on the Head girl and the Head Gardener respectively, who find themselves struggling with their burgeoning womanhood.... But perhaps the less said about that - especially with Mrs T. around - the better! My own preferred reading aside, I bring you the second and final part of Mr Lewis' comic (so he tells me) time-travelling story. It's not bad I suppose, but not a boarding school gel in sight!

Timeless Trevor T.

Proprietor and lover of saucy literature and not ashamed of it by gad!

The story so far: Leonard Skrane, scientific genius and budding science-fiction author, gate-crashes the virtual sixth annual Big Brains of Sci-Fi convention, (remotely thanks to the virtual-reality relay, the numbskull - or braindrayne, depending on your financial position) to bring all those present the startling news that he has not only invented a form of time-travel, but has used it to inadvertently tamper with the past. If he hadn't the delegates and audience would have remembered that Albert Gore, a young man from the East End of London, circa 1888, was the Biggest Brain of Sci-Fi ever. The delegates and audience have no memory of the name Albert Gore, and so, Skrane proceeds to tell them how the biggest brain in Sci-Fi ever, was accidentally erased from their memories ...

by Mark Lewis

Part 2 - Tomorrow Yesterday

2.

It was a Sunday evening in the autumn of 1887 when I arrived in Grapeshot Lane. Dusk was falling like the heavy lid of a dark eye, slowly closing upon the low roofs of all the houses. I had expected to find the streets swathed in a pea-soup fog, but the air was surprisingly fine and clear. The smell of soot from the hundreds of chimneys strongly perfumed the air, and even though a native might have ignored it, it added an excitingly foreign tang to my adventure.

As well as the fog, I had also expected to find the street full of the kinds of colourful characters you see on the Numb; prostitutes and barrel-organ grinders, shoeless street-urchins and old lady flower-sellers; but instead the street was practically deserted. A few Hansom-cabs jingled over the cobbles, a few moustachioed gents in their best but still shabby suits sauntered past, no doubt on their way to the pub; but that was the sum total of human traffic on that clear, September evening. No one noticed me as I walked along in search of Gore and sons master butchers, and as I strolled nonchalantly along the pavement, I congratulated myself on the effectiveness of my disguise.

Gore and Sons stood at the furthest end of the street. On one side of the shop stood a cobbler’s and on the other, a second-hand clothing store. All three shops were rather poor and mean-looking but far from disreputable.

The windows of the shop were darkened and the shop door was bolted, but as I pressed my nose up against the glass, I could see a faint glow of light coming from inside. Someone at least was home. I looked around me carefully, and seeing that the street was empty once again, I walked through the locked door and into the empty shop.

Perhaps at this juncture I ought to explain the basic principles of my time-travel device.

As many of you are no doubt aware, since Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity were published, physicists such as Hawking, Firmi and Pod have been arguing the impossibility of time-travel.

Whilst it has long been thought possible that, thanks principally to the phenomenon of time dilation, a person travelling faster than the speed of light might travel to what we might perceive as the future; no one has yet come up with a satisfactory theory to answer the question of how to travel backwards in time.

However, to go back to the theory of time dilation, as you know the theory states that during this phenomenon, external time slows down to the observer who is travelling faster than the speed of light, whereas their own local time continues at a constant rate. Therefore, when the observer arrives at their destination, only days may have elapsed for them, whereas back on their own planet, far, far away by now, time may have moved on a thousand-fold. But, in Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, time dilation is reciprocal, so that an observer standing at the same point of the time-traveller’s departure, looking at the time-traveller’s destination, would see only an image of a long dead past.

Giving this theory a practical basis, I began to wonder if it were then possible to project an image back through to the past from that future point? After all, the light that reaches us from the stars is already aeons old by the time our eyes perceive it. What if, using a vehicle travelling faster than the sped of light, I could place a device in the far future that could project an image of myself back to the Earth of the distant past, couldn’t it then go where my body couldn’t; back in time to the London of Albert Gore?

So I began to work on this idea of mine, using a far more complicated version of the basic theory I have just outlined. And, adapting current Nubskull technology, I experimented and refined a technique whereby I could send a projection of myself from a relay placed in the far distant future, (sent there on board one of the new automated faster than light freighters supplied by my dear friend, space-shipping magnate Zu-Zu Sarthrust). This relay would also allow me to receive an image from the past and assimilate enough visual data to simulate a sensory impression of my surroundings.

And that eventually, was how a projection of my self was able to walk through the solid, wood and glass door of Gore and Sons, with all the ease and stealth of a prowling ghost.

Entering the shop, I noticed that the light was coming from a back room. I moved swiftly past the empty counters, and the meat-hooks, toward the source of the light.

Around me, the tin trays that on workdays would be filled with meat, and the white wall-tiles, glistened eerily in the creeping gloom. Beyond the shop, there was another room filled with scarred benches and big wooden meat-lockers that were stained with blood, and then finally a heavy wooden door, topped by a pebbled window that led to the shop’s back parlour. And it was from here that the light was shining.

Once again I floated through the door with ease.

The Gore’s back-parlour was neat and snug. The floorboards were painted brown and dotted with rag-woven rugs. Solid, heavy furniture and dark framed photographs gave the room a feeling of gloom and oppression, as if making a statement that this was owned by serious, sober people.

It was now dusk outside, but inside the small parlour I had the impression that it would always be dusk there, no matter what time of day elsewhere.

Besides the dark, oppressive furniture, the room had very little ornament: a few improving texts; a thick, leather-bound family bible; some fire-irons and a large fire-place, its coals weakly smouldering; a brass oil lamp with a frosted globe. And then of course there was the occupant.

At a small polished dining table beneath the lace-curtained window, sat a young man in his late teens. He was a sturdy, round-faced youth, with wispy, flaxen hair that would be gone by his mid-twenties and a florid complexion that they would have called choleric in the Middle-Ages. And yet for all his angry colour, the youth looked mild and placid. His only real feature of note was his slightly protruding lip, which added a slight aspect of idiocy to his otherwise plain appearance. He was respectably dressed in the style of the times, shirt and waistcoat, heavy black trousers; the only concessions to the informality of the room was that he had removed his starched collar and donned a pair of carpet-slippers.

In front of him was a card-backed ledger, the sort that the shop accounts would usually have been kept in. The pages were thinly ruled and divided into columns by heavy blue lines. But the young man was not keeping his accounts. Instead, in the precise handwriting instilled in him by the parish elementary school, he was hurriedly, almost feverishly inscribing sentences and paragraphs that spilled over the ruled columns and rushed down the page like a river that had burst its dam. This was the man I had travelled two hundred years to meet. This was Alfred Gore the Biggest Brain of Sc-Fi.

I stood and watched him at work, feeling understandably awed by the experience of being so close to genius. On his part, Gore was so engrossed in his writing that he completely failed to notice me. His eyes were rapt, and I noticed that as he wrote the tip of his tongue protruded slightly from the corner of his mouth.

For a while there was only the sound of his pen, scratching across the page, alternating with the tap of his pen in the ink-well, and a slight, adenoidal whistling coming from his nostrils. I crept closer, trying to peer over his shoulder at what he was writing. I wondered if it was The Metal Bird Menace or perhaps Upwards to the New Babel, both of which were known to have been written in the late 1880’s. I had no chance to find out for as I drew closer, as if through some sixth sense, Gore suddenly shivered and turned round.

To say he was astonished is an understatement. Catching sight of me, Gore suddenly turned pale. His pendulous lip fell and began to quiver. His pupils dilated to the size of dinner plates; and he jumped in such a violent manner that he upset his chair and knocked the table, almost spilling the ink-well over his ledger in the process.

For a moment he was rigidly silent as if all the air were being squeezed from his throat; and then after what seemed an hour, he finally managed to ungrammatically stammer: “A .. a apparition!”

I felt embarrassed. I had meant to announce myself more properly, rather than be caught sneaking a glance over the genius’ shoulder. But nevertheless I gathered myself together and did my best to explain:

“In a way Mr Gore, I am indeed an apparition as I have no real, corporeal form. However if I am an apparition, it is one of science rather than the supernatural.”

This didn’t seem to help. Gore still looked terrified and there seemed to be tears welling at the corners of his eyes. He clutched at his chest with one chubby hand and for a moment I thought he were about to have a heart-attack. Luckily for both history and myself, he wasn’t.

“W … what do you mean, ‘an apparition of science’?”

“I mean that I am able to visit you through the intervention of a mechanical device. I have in short come from the future to ask you to help me prevent the terrible things I have seen. Only you with your big brain can help.”

This didn’t have much of a calming effect. Instead, Gore began to sway, and if it hadn’t been for the table behind him, propping him up, he would have ended up a crumpled heap on the floor.

I tried a different angle of attack.

“I come from the future. A future where you are worshipped and adored as one of the Biggest Brains in Sci-fi. A future where your great literary works have made you almost as famous as Shakespeare.”

He blinked at me with his – it must be said – rather stupid, bovine eyes.

“Famouser than Shakespeare? But I’ve only had one story published: ‘The Underground War’.” He spluttered with amazement. “ - in the Reverend Crisparkle’s Good News and Ill Omens. I don’t think it has that much of a circulation beyond Hampton Wick”

“Believe me maestro, your fame has come to pass in the future of which I am part.”

But Gore was still not convinced, and it took a further hour before he finally began to realise that he was not being visited by spirits from the grave; or a product of a combination of brain-fever and the worry over some loose change he had purloined from his father’s overcoat pocket.

Finally, as we heard the sound of his parents in the back yard, arguing bitterly as they returned from a visit to relatives, Gore hurried me upstairs.

“We better talk in my room,” his hissed urgently, “I can’t begin to think what Ma and Pa ‘ud make of you.”

So I followed him up the dark and rickety stairs, to his dark and rickety back bedroom. I cannot say I was impressed. It looked more fitted for a meat locker.

“So how exactly can I ‘elp Mr Skrane? Though I hardly believe I can help.” He was still whispering as the angry shouting went on, muffled, but still audible, below.

“Mr Gore, your stories will offer the most exciting and plausible visions of the future for over a century and a half. And then, even more remarkably they will cease to be merely plausible but in fact frighteningly prescient as well …”

His eyes lit up, but not for the reason I’d first imagined.

“Prescient, that’s a good word. Let me write that down. What’s that mean exactly?”

I explained with a sigh as he scribbled it down on a celluloid cuff that had been sitting on a shelf above his tiny bed.

In some respects, this had turned out to be a disappointing meeting. Perhaps I should have tried the older, and definitely more learned Gore of ten years in the future. And yet, would the older man rather than the impressionable youth have listened to me? I doubted it and so persevered.

“To put it plainly,” I explained, “people will think you saw the future in some almost magical or mystical way. But the worst thing about your gifts of prophecy is not that they will come true but that people will make them come true. You will show people what terrible things they will be able to do with technology, and they will act upon them. Don’t misunderstand me, it won’t be your stories alone. Artists, philosophers, clergymen, poets and scientists, but mostly the film-makers will translate your stories into essays, paintings, poems, machinery and films that will make your nightmare vision look, well, ravishing, desirable – ahem – sexy even.”

Gore flinched at the word ‘sexy’, but he understood all the same.

“These great thinkers and artists won’t do it to arouse society, to whet its appetite if you will. Like you they will act out of a sense of duty. Unfortunately they will be the only ones who understand. The rest of humanity will only get excited and see concrete and neon, high-rise buildings, killer robots and interstellar warfare desirable or fun (here I had to explain the concepts). But be assured, it is human nature that is at fault maestro, not you your-self.”

There was a moment or two of silence, punctuated only by the bitter argument still going on downstairs. And then Gore spoke again in tones of awe.

“But what can I do about it short of stopping writing now? Which I must say I’ve half a mind to do; not write another bleeding line, if you’ll excuse the profanity.”

“No, no, no maestro. That would be more terrible than a world where your stories come true. You must continue to write, it is your duty.”

“But what about all this prescience business, I can’t change human nature, so the word ‘ull all come out the same anyhow if I keep on writin’.”

“Not if you change the emphasis of your stories maestro. Not if instead of writing about a robot that maims and destroys, write about one that nurtures and frees a man from back-breaking, soul-destroying chores so that he might teach his children to love, not destroy their world.”

It was a heart-felt and impassioned plea, and I think a very successful one.

Gore looked like a new man. His eyes shone and the weak, fleshy curves of his face and body seemed to harden and take on a new aspect of determination. Even his pendulous lower lip seemed to be drooping a little less.

Yes my mission had succeeded. We spoke a little more and then, as the hour was growing late, I bid the Biggest Brain of Sci-fi a fond farewell and slipped away from 19^th Century England, happy in the knowledge that at last I had helped humanity a little further up the evolutionary ladder, away from its violent and recidivist past.

3.

The entire, virtual audience and delegates of the 16^th Conference of the Biggest Brains of Sci-Fi sat in stunned silence. Skrane looked around him at the millions of amazed virtual-faces and all their mouths hanging wide open, and felt ashamed.

“Imagine my surprise when I returned to find the world in an even sorrier state than the one in which I had left it. As I looked around me at the high-rise city tenements and people, pushed by killer robots falling from the high-rise tenements, I am not ashamed to say I wept. Not only had my plan failed but it was even possible after my meddling with time, that I was partly responsible for the terrible state the world was in!

But what had gone wrong? The answer soon came to me as I dialled up the complete works of Albert Gore on my numbskull. There wasn’t one, not a solitary story, not a single reference except, perhaps an obscure one that might have occurred to one or two of you when I first introduced his name this afternoon.”

A few dozen of the virtual mouths closed as recognition dissolved their earlier stupefaction. They were beginning to get the picture.

“Yes, Albert Gore and his goody two-shoes stories had completely failed, and consequently the outlet of creativity having been bunged up, so to speak, poor Albert became a beast himself.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the only mention I found of poor Albert Gore the butcher, was in connection with a list of possible suspects for the notorious Whitechapel murders of the late 19^th century. Once they were known by a different name, but now ladies and gentlemen, thanks to my intervention, you will know them properly as the crimes of Bert the Butcher!”

The End

Tomorrow, Today - Yesterday, Tomorrow!

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away? They certainly did!

Yesterday I was resting on my chaise-lounge eating hot buttered teacakes and reading the collected works of Saki whilst listening to Edith Piaf on the gramophone. Today, I am in the hot broiling city, in scratchy tweeds looking down at the pale and pimply faces of my staff and their proffered words and pictures as they shuffle across the office floor on their bony knees.

Thank goodness then for the jottings of Mark Lewis, new enfant terrible of the Gindylow literature factory, he of such past glories as ‘The Skin Suitcase’. Alright, so his work has a certain lower-sixth naivety and would seem rather more Sci-Fi Then than Sci-Fi Now, and certainly reads as if there’s never been a Bladerunner or a Neuromancer or indeed New Romance, and seems rather more John Wyndham’s maiden aunt’s hobby-horse than real cutting edge stuff. And though it was laughed out of the offices of both Interzone and Asimov’s Science Fiction, I still feel that, well, it’s better than the rest of the random and ridiculous jottings my staff are currently vomiting out. Also, though embarrassingly short on scientific fact, cogent plotting and believable characters, it does at least have a reasonable amount of long words spelled correctly and some nice, accompanying pictures; and though the idea of time-travel is incredibly hackneyed and overused in Sci-Fi, it does at least contain a couple of laughs in reference to toilets, and a bit of almost quite persuasive social comment, which is what it’s all about really; or so I tried to console Mr Lewis as I helped him off the filing cabinet and unwound the kettle-flex he was trying to hang himself with.

So, sit back in your well-upholstered mahogany and brass time-chair, put your slippered feet up on the Axminster-topped chrono-footplate and with a cup of Darjeeling at your elbow, enjoy our latest fictive offering: Dive into Yesterday’, it’s really not all that bad.

by Mark Lewis Part 1 - Big Brains of Sci-Fi

According to all the advance publicity, the 16^th conference of the Big Brains of Sci-Fi was to be held in the Victoria Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria. This was all very well, but for twenty die-hard fans it was to prove both misleading and a major disappointment.

When the small cluster of jet-lagged fans arrived from the airport, still shaking the dust of Nairobi from their safari jackets all they found in the Victoria hotel’s conference-room was a solitary service-engineer sitting on the vacant stage. He sat in silence, intently reading a copy of the Jet-Boot Nooz, whilst behind him, a large and unwieldy numbskull relay squatted like a Neolithic monument.

In reality the two hundred and twelve conference delegates were relaying their speeches via the numbskull network or alternatively the braindrayne (depending on a viewer’s financial situation) so that a million-or-so less keen, but infinitely wiser Sci-Fi fans, were able to enjoy the conference in the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the large and unwieldy relay squatting on the stage of the Victoria Hotel, Nairobi.

The delegates also enjoyed themselves. In fact, not having to be physically present at the conference, some of the delegates enjoyed themselves so much that they were often to be seen delivering their keynote speeches in the comfort of their own kitchen; or in the comfort of an expensive restaurant with a few intimate friends. Veteran author Dag Maggertone, was even spotted delivering his speech from the comfort of his own toilet, but the less said about that the better.

So that was the 16^th conference of the Big Brains of Sci-Fi.

Everything was going swimmingly. The service engineer was able to finish his newspaper in perfect contentment and then move onto an edition of the Jet-Boot Gazette. The twenty or so mistaken but still die-hard fans enjoyed taking bets on who was speaking now and what a particular series of blinking lights on the relay meant; whilst the other million or so less keen, but infinitely wiser Sci-Fi fans enjoyed the facial contortions of Dag Maggertone as he tried to alleviate some of the colonic irritations he had suffered since lunchtime.

Everything in fact was going swimmingly until Leonard Skrane burst into the conference unannounced.

If you had been one of the less keen, but infinitely wiser Sci-Fi fans sitting in your own living room, this is what you would have seen: viewing the conference by numbskull (or the cheaper and let it be said, far inferior brayndrayne), your own front room would have been transformed into a virtual conference hall. In front of you, where perhaps your treehee or your quadro usually sat would be the darkened stage, and seated (squatting or standing according to what they were up to at the time of transmission) would be the delegates attending that particular session.

So for instance if you had been watching the debate on ‘Who Is the Biggest Brain in Sci-Fi’ , you would have seen Gray Howser on the left, dressed in sarong and open-toed sandals, lying in his hammock and sipping on a cocktail; Dag Maggertone on Howser’s left, still unfortunately straining on his gold-plated toilet bowl; Saybe Goff, on Maggertone’s left, wearing dressing-gown and slippers and sitting in a comfy armchair; and finally May Yang O, seated in a restaurant enjoying a fine steak and claret, dressed to the nines and laughing at a joke her (unseen) companion has just told. Then suddenly, as Howser drawlingly lets rip about the genius of Sladek, Skrane fizzes onto the scene.

Skrane is dressed strangely for a young man of the twenty-second century: bowler-hat, black frock-coat, waistcoat, cravat, a pair of black, narrow trousers and shiny, narrow-toed Chelsea boots. His face is hooded and serious and there is a maniac gleam in his eyes. He removes his bowler and strides across the virtual stage pointing it angrily at Howser.

“Poppycock!” He bellows at the top of his virtual voice. “Bilgewater and tripe!”

Howser meanwhile has spilled tequila sunrise all over his sarong and is mopping at it furiously as Skrane marches towards him. So, with Howser otherwise engaged, it is left to Saybe Goff to leap to her feet in indignant fury.

“What gives you the right to rudely barge-in without an invitation? And besides whatever your opinions of our esteemed colleague’s opinion, this is neither the time nor place to voice them. I myself would love to thunder ‘Nonsense, Bradbury was a far superior writer, why just look at his sensual imagery coupled with …”

But Skrane has no time for this. He waves his hands emphatically as if scrubbing Goff’s sentences away.

“You’re missing the point all of you!” He shouts passionately. “I came here today not to argue but to tell you without contradiction who the Biggest Brain in Sci-Fi is, was and will be and the great tragedy is, once you might have all agreed with me!”

There was a brooding silence as the other delegates looked at each other; perhaps searching for an explanation or an indication of what to do. But despite the combined power of their big Sci-Fi brains, their faces remained blank.

“Yes fellow science-fiction writers,” Skrane continued, “from your vacuous expressions I can see it has already come to pass that the man whom once you would have celebrated as the Shakespeare of Sci-Fi has been expunged from your memories as easily as a tear wiped from the eye; and as I am most ashamed to admit, it is I brothers and sisters who am to blame!”

The faces of the delegates remained blank, all except that of May Pang O, who had broken off her meal to make a phone-call. She turned her own, broadcast volume off and began a silent but clearly furious tirade into the ‘phone. She had called the broadcasting network in an attempt to have Skrane’s signal blocked.

It was no good.

Unlike the other big Brains of Sci-Fi, Skrane was also a scientific virtuoso and thanks to his technical know-how, he had set up a number of hidden numbskull relays so that it was impossible to trace his original signal. The only way to remove him from the conference, the numbskul network’s technical manager confided solemnly, was to pull the plug on the whole conference and begin again. May Pang snapped her phone shut angrily and then fizzed out of the conference altogether. Evidently the steak, the burgundy and the witty conversation had more to offer than Leonard Skrane’s nonsensical invasion.

Skrane meanwhile was beginning to strut and fret across the stage in a distinctly Shakespearian manner; one thin white hand thumping his breast whilst the other fanned the air with his bowler.

“Yes my literary brethren, I am the guilty party and must answer for crimes not only to the good and noble name of Science-Fiction Literature, but to the very progress and development of human society itself!”

The blank looks of the delegates turned to looks of alarm. Either Skrane was telling the truth or (and this was the more likely suggestion of the two) he was insane. But, insane or not, he continued to hold court:

“And now I feel I owe you a proper explanation and so I will deliver an explanation such as you have never heard before …

“As you know I have long been at the forefront of my field, indeed perhaps the greatest living exponent of the science-fiction genre (coughs and splutters of outrage from the other delegates). To what I attribute this genius I cannot truly say except a natural brilliance combined with a beneficial regime of hard work and efficiency. Also, as you know, I have kept myself abreast of all the new scientific developments, so that in my own small way I have produced much that is innovative and new in the field of quantum physics; my own particular field of expertise.

“What has always disappointed me however is the inability to really help my fellow Man, except perhaps by giving him a few hours of relief with my many wonderful stories. So it was with this unfulfilled desire to help humanity in mind that I set out to contribute something to what I perceived as the untold suffering of Mankind. But where to begin?

“It seemed to me that the worst thing about our modern age is the grim, dehumanising effect that technology has on ordinary people. People live in isolation. They have laboursaving devices, but because labour is saved it is also devalued. Esteem and personal worth is measured in terms of economic wealth, and yet, ironically the only people who possess that wealth are the most unworthy; people possessed of freakish skills or a selfish tenacity that has propelled them into a near god-like stratosphere of obscene wealth and appreciation.

Wars are still fought but the casualties are no longer the soldiers but rather the poor civilians who starve or die of thirst whilst their governments and the ones they are fighting spend all their resources on bigger and more devastating weapons. The only way to escape these horrors is through a mixture of narcotic abuse, sexual adventure, home-decorating and technological opiates.

“In short ladies and gentlemen, technology is the hand-maiden of our modern horror. But how so? Surely, our forefathers dreamed of technology as an aid to mankind? Surely they thought that technology would free humanity from the unlovely drudgery of existence, which would in turn enable humanity at last to create the kind of enlightened utopia that mankind had always dreamed of? If so, what had distorted our aspirations and dreams? And it was whilst pondering this last question that the answer came to me; why my friends the answer was: ‘stories’; stories had distorted the dreams of technological utopia, and in particular the stories of one man: none other than Albert Gore, the biggest brain in Science-Fiction ever; bar none!”

Once again the conference guests and delegates regarded each other with blank looks; except this time there was a faint glimmer or frown of concentration in several of the faces; as if, even though they had no memory of the name Albert Gore, once, lurking amongst their neural connections there had been an Albert Gore-sized memory. And now, as they struggled to remember his name, they were probing the gap that had been left, like a tongue feeling the hole where a tooth had once been.

Skrane carefully scrutinised his audience for a glimmer of memory, and then sighed. The blank looks had won.

“I suppose then it behoves me to explain in more detail,” said Skrane sadly.

“Albert Gore was born on the 24^th of August, 1867; and with the exception of a few day trips to France, spent his entire life, living and working in the East End of London, England. His father and grandfather were butchers and so naturally it followed that the young Albert would on reaching his maturity, join the family business. However, Albert was a gifted and sensitive child and fired by the religious mania of his mother, dreamed of helping mankind in the role of a teacher, a doctor or an engineer. That young Albert could have been all three there is no doubt. However, as the story all-too-frequently goes, his overbearing and autocratic Victorian father would hear nothing of Albert’s higher aspirations. What was good enough for him and his father would be good enough for Albert too. And that was that. Leaving school at fourteen, Albert Gore became an apprentice butcher in the small but prosperous firm of Gore and sons, butchers, Grapeshot Lane, Whitechapel, London.

“Nevertheless, Albert had not forgotten his aspirations and so during the few hours of respite he earned; on Sunday afternoons, on high days and holidays - he began to write stories full of warnings and fears for what might happen if humanity gave itself over to its darkest side; and strangely enough, just as a draper’s assistant from Bromley in Kent began to write about a possible Martian invasion of Earth, Gore was writing with almost godly prescience about all the things that would eventually take place in his future and our present. It was those stories that made him famous throughout the world and earned him the title of the biggest brain in Sci-Fi.

“But what of his prognostications? Even though he had warned us about a world overrun with machines, where human lives were as cheap as dirt; why did we not take heed? Because to be frank ladies and gentlemen, they were so damn exciting and interesting in precisely the way that something pious and noble isn’t. But there was something more chilling still about his predictions; something about his stories which seemed to inspire or even compel mankind to emulate them. Yes, I had no doubt that albeit unintentionally the wonderful, compelling but ultimately bleak stories of Albert Gore had influenced and therefore indirectly created the modern world we are living in today. And so friends with this in mind, I set out to do something about it. I set out to travel back in time to stop Albert Gore destroying the glorious progress of mankind towards Utopia …”

After clearing his throat theatrically, Skrane began to tell his story in the narrative style that had yet to earn him a place amongst the Big Brains of Sci-Fi.

End of Part 1.

Down, but not yet out! More Art for the downtrodden!

Where do you go to my lovely? Well, I’ll tell you, (though I suggest you stop being so forward – a simple ‘Mr Tweedthwack sir’ will usually suffice) the Gindylow management in the form of Mrs Tweedthwack and myself have been on our hols, far away from the steaming grey cauldron of the city; away amidst the rolling green and the boundless blue of the yorkshire dales, staying at a small, ever-so-la-di-dah establishment with the unlikely name of the Austwick Traddock; a name out of MR James if ever there was one!

Of course whilst we were bathing in fine Moulton Brown shower-gel and eating locally-sourced organic sausages (though of course at different stages of our visit, approximately on a rotation of five minutes: wash – sausages – wash – sausages etc) the Gindylow ethic of furious industry seemed to be on vacation also!

It seems that whilst Mrs T and I were away, my weak and scrawny, whey-faced staff that clutter the tiny, oak-panelled Gindowlow office had a holiday of their own; or it would seem so from the knee-high pile of paper-aeroplanes and towering piles of photocopied posteriors that greeted us on our return, not to mention the total lack of a blog entry for nigh-on an age!.

Still, as I type this, the inquisition is on, heads shall roll; but only after the paper aeroplanes are shovelled up first. Meanwhile, to you out there in the grey, soupy blogosphere, fortunate enough to have opened our bright yellow Gindylow envelope, we send another beam of brilliance in the shape of one of Mr Bove’s Ministry of Disinformation posters. It is a strange and purple offering and may serve to warn others of your own purple patch to come, following yet another wasted hour or two spent in an interminable office meeting. Click on it, download it, print it out (handily tying up office resources) and place it on your partition wall as a kind of ‘V’ sign to the cheeriness of your co-workers.

The meaning of Mr Bove’s poster is at once unambiguous and mysterious in equal measures. Perhaps, I should take it as a cry for help by the artist? Or perhaps I should just take it as the normal, self-pitying, self-obsessed offering I always seem to receive from him? Who knows?

I do however feel it my duty to point out that Mr Bove is rather less svelte and certainly not as youthful as the depressed lad in the picture, which rather leads me to the opinion that it is a work designed merely to point out the ambivalent nature of both the depressive and those more jaunty folk who interact with said mentalist, as well as an opportunity for Mr B to play around with Corel Paintshop Pro. Of course, in the long-run, as with all works of Art, great or small and even smaller (like those of Mr B) the choice of meaning is up to you. I can only offer you my conjecture, especially as I try to avoid conversation with my staff as much as possible.

Anyway, I’m back, and don’t you forget it!

Slippery (on account of the lavish applications of Moulton Brown bath products) but oh-so sweet-smelling, Mr Tweedthwack.