The Shape of Things to Come
| August 2, 2012 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under culture |
Dystopias are funny, aren’t they? They started off as a pessimistic response to the optimistic utopias of the later stages of the 19th century, they flourished in the darker parts of the first half of the 20th century and now they come in all shapes and sizes. For the majority of the time they focus on the authors’ own personal fears – for example, Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is something of a reaction to the ultra-feminists of the 1970s, the fears of the cold war era, and a history of unfair relations between men and women – or as a vehicle for the authors to satirise their contemporaries, such as G K Chesterton’s Napoleon of Notting Hill, written in 1908… more
Billy Pilgrim Syndrome
| July 4, 2012 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under creative writing |
There are things that happen with no explanation. Prophets, sorcerers and summoners, potions, apparitions and ghosts; science explains away many of these things, as do the public confessions of the conmen who rely on the superstitions of others. But there are rare occasions where science offers no explanations to a supernatural problem or, stranger still, actively supports it. Recent advances in neuroscience led to the discovery of the “temporal lobe,” which governs our perception of time and led to an explanation of prophets and fortune tellers, above other things. Until recently, oracles and the like had always been filed away as those with over active imaginations that got lucky every now and again, or merely liars who invented dreams and… more
The Tragedy of Age
| May 22, 2012 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under creative writing |
White was probably the only person left who respected Marshall. He had for all the time he had known about Marshall; alright, he hadn’t been there at the beginning, not when Marshall’s breakthrough novel Leftovers of London had come out, and maybe he hadn’t been there during his high times, when Marshall had been one of the best known names in British literature, and was churning out great novels annually, and no, he wasn’t there when his name was blackened, when the sickness set in and when the world forgot about him. But he was here now, wasn’t he? He had found Marshall out, living alone and blind, and offered to help him around the house. He had gained Marshall’s… more
Not history repeating itself, but man
| November 22, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under international |
Nine months ago, Hosni Mubarak was deposed as president and absolute ruler of Egypt. The people overthrew an autocrat, and expected democracy for their efforts. So far, so good. Since then, the military junta (the armed forces council who have been in charge since) have been promising elections, promising some kind of change, but to no avail. This reached a head this week, when protesters occupied Tahrir Square yet again, demanding elections, yet again. Only this time, they are being oppressed much more effectively than the troops under Mubarak, since they’ve already ‘won’. After all, the revolution has happened, Mubarak has gone, so what do they have to complain about? But ‘revolution’ has two meanings, you see. It can either mean… more
Decline and fall
| October 6, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under lifestyle, technology |
When a self-made man becomes sole head of an empire, reforms it and makes it great, his passing usually causes the destruction of everything he has created. After Napoleon, the French Empire was never the same, the “Decline and Fall” of the Rome started after Augustus’ death, and it has been said that, if Hitler had died a natural death, the Nazi war machine would have fallen apart without him. And on October 5th, 2011, Steve Jobs, the Augustus of Apple, the Caesar of Computing, the Ayatollah of iPods, died, leaving behind him one of the largest, most successful corporations – a company so rich it has more money than the American Government and could probably buy Ireland and rent… more
Barrel Fever – David Sedaris
| August 25, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under culture, reviews |
Want to experience 90s America, but missed your chance? And by this, I mean the sadder, darker, madder side of America? Then fear not! The wit and essayist David Sedaris (he’s big in the US of A) wrote a collection of short stories and essays many, many years ago going by the name of Barrel Fever which act as a zeitgeist for the final years of the millennium. And that’s just the short stories. The essays go into the life of the writer, including the now infamous SantaLand Diaries, which tell the slightly bleak story of Sedaris’ job as an elf in the SantaLand of a large, New York department store (using the local language). But let’s discuss the stories… more
The end of the world
| August 9, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under international |
There is a man who has installed himself in the public areas of York. He has a beard, wild eyes and a scruffy dog. What makes him different from other madmen? He is always stood next to a sign: “10 reasons why the world will end soon”. And, I fear, the world will end soon, but I don‘t think the reason will be on his list. I don’t think it will be divine retribution that ends the world, or a Survivors-style pandemic. No, as usual, it will be our fault that society will collapse, and that is because we have invested too much in the Americans. Yes, our pan-Atlantic cousins, the saviours of the free-world, will be the instrument of… more
The sad end of the Race
| July 29, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under international, science |
It’s sad that we, humanity (the good guys, if you will), have become disenchanted with space in the last 50 years. In the same month that the last shuttle funded by the American taxpayer was launched into space, I bought a copy of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. He predicted that, by 12 years ago, the first manned mission to Mars would have been launched and within 25 years the red planet would have been completely colonised. So, where did it all go wrong? Why have we only got as far as (albeit permanent) inhabited satellites floating in our cosmic back yard? Unfortunately, it’s all a matter of politics. In the 60’s, childish competitions such as the Space Race were… more
The slow death of the independent bookseller
| July 5, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under culture, national, technology |
In November, 1936, George Orwell said that “the combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence”. And yet an intellectual revolution on the scale of the combine harvesters and artificial fertilizers has arisen in the literary world. First came Amazon, which sold cheap books to anywhere on Earth, an idea which, surely, would strike the death knell for booksellers the world over? It would seem not. There was one minor casualty in the guise of Borders, which soon realised that a Starbucks on every floor does not disguise the taste of over-priced books. It merely helped turn it into a reference library, where people pick a book they like, retreat to the café to peruse the novel… more
One man and his dog
| May 27, 2011 | Posted by Fergus Doyle under satire |
You’re walking down the street one day, and you see a Man walking his Dog. You’ve see these two before, the Man and the Dog, but never together. The Man is old, and wears a shabby blue suit. He usually stays out of the way, but now he’s out and about, swaggering around like he owns the place. This is probably because of the Dog. It was a stray before; small, nimble, free, with a glossy yellow coat. Now he stomps along side the Man, constrained by a leash. He’s bigger now – maybe it’s fat, maybe it’s muscles – and when he snarls (which he does a lot now), you see rows of razor-sharp teeth. So, the Man and… more
