AI Illustrates 'The Wager and the Bear': Part Two - Chapters 7-13

 Here we go with some more of the weird and wonderful creations of OpenArt.AI illustrating chapters from 'The Wager and the Bear.' Some are good. Some are , er, less good. One is amazing. I'll let you decide.

Chapter 7: Tom and Monty meet in Greenland. This could be perfect if they didn't look like Russian cosmonauts from 1970. It kind of works though ... I think. 



Chapter 8: We're back in St Piran. It isn't quite how I imagine the path up to the church. And where does that lower path lead? But the church itself and the headland are reasonably Cornish.


Chapter 9: Almost perfect. Menacing and dark. The storm in St Piran


Chapter 10: It's another one in Tintin style. There's no motor on the boat, and Ilse should be younger, but let's not be picky. 




Chapter 11: Now we're doing it. Monty and Tom set off across the ice. Lovely.


Chapter 12: I have to admit it. This picture of Benny and Lacey Shaunessey is my favourite one of all. That's them. It really is. Go Benny!



Chapter 13: Let's be careful not to reveal too much. Welcome to the ice cave ...




So what do you think? Let me know. I'll post more in few weeks.



AI Illustrates 'The Wager and the Bear': Chapters 1 - 6 (11 October 2024)


 

Writers are forever looking for ways to generate interest in our books, and publishers are always keen to encourage us. So I had this idea for 'The Wager and the Bear' (which comes out in paperback in German on 31 October and in English on 21 February). I thought I might ask an AI image generator to have a go at illustrating the chapters, and if it worked, I could bash these out on social media.

Well, my expectations weren't especially high. But it has been a fascinating and generally instructive exercise. If you have read the book  (it is already available in German and Italian editions) you might like to compare the illustrations with your own impressions of the scenes they represent.

(For anyone who wants to have a go at this, by the way, I'm using Openart.AI )

Above is Chapter One. Tom arrives in St Piran, beautifully illustrated in watercolour. I like this. The village isn't quite right and the sky is a bit too gray. But the general impression is good. 

Here is Chapter Two:


So my brilliant editor, Sarah Jayne, says Monty is too tall here. Perhaps he is. But I rather like the sense of foreboding, don't you?

Chapter 3: AI really struggled with this. I must have tried over twenty variations of prompt to get here and it still doesn't feel right. So I shall cheat and give you two versions - the oil painting and the Tintin versions. I can't choose between them. 



Chapter 4 was almost perfect. It is done in a kind of Japanese watercolour style - and it really speaks to me about Tom's and Lykke's meet-cute encounter on the harbour at sunrise. I love this one. 




For Chapter 5 I chose an impasto oil painting style - and I like this too. What do you think?


 

In Chapter 6 Monty goes to meet the new Prime Minister. Here he is looking suitably shifty.



I'll post another set of chapter illustrations in a few weeks. It has been a rather fun exercise, and I am still working through them. Sarah Jayne has warned me no to give too much away. I shall try to follow her advice. Watch this space ...




Landfill (a poem): 10th Sept 2024

 I've never posted a poem before. But then I thought, hey, why not? So here are some lines I wrote last night. Landfill.


That brand new coffee maker in its box

The pedal bike you sometimes get to ride

The Merry-Christmas-music-playing socks

The blanket chest that someone left outside

The candelabra and the cordless drill

The painting of a piglet in a sty

The matching set of cases

And the shoes that lost their laces

And the bucket with a hole

And the little plastic troll

Well they’ll all end up in landfill

Yes they’ll all end up in landfill, yes

they’ll all end up in landfill by and by

 

The 3D television

That was wholly your decision

You couldn’t quite envision

Why it gathered such derision

But one thing you can very clearly say

It will end up in a landfill one fine day

The foot spa and the heated hostess tray

The banjo and the yellow plastic sleigh

The printer that always seemed to jam

The winter coat, the retro children’s pram,

The assegai, the ink supply,

The faded regimental tie

They’ll all end up in landfill

Yes they’ll all end up in landfill, yes

they’ll all end up in landfill by and by

 

Well there may be little trinkets hidden somewhere in your home

That might survive the disregard of others yet to come

There might be space on a junkshop shelf

For those dumbbell weights

Or that Christmas elf

But don’t expect the future to

Make room for plastic caribou

Or that trendy bomber jacket

That cost a blooming packet

Or those solar lights or stunter kites

Or cricket whites

Or body tights

Say what you will, yet they will still

Go in the spill … and why?

Because they all end up in landfill by and by.

 

The green enamel shower tray

That didn’t match the loo

The tangled box of cables where you don’t know what they do

The hardened glue, the leaky shoe,

The shirt you wore for that interview,

The microwave, the aftershave

The wristband from the Oxford rave

The bass guitar the pull up bar

The items from the school bazaar

Their days now surely numbered are

You’ll load them one day in the car

And drive them to the local tip

And chuck them gladly in the skip

Where unloved things are left to die

And off they go to landfill

Yes off they go to landfill

For they’ll all end up in landfill by and by.

 

Every carpet ever woven

Every fridge and every oven

Every book and every toy

Every box of Christmas joy

Every single DVD

And every tiny bonsai tree

And every leather backed settee

And every helium balloon

And every card that plays a tune

And every tool in ever shed

And every mattress, every bed

Every strimmer, every mower,

Every useless autumn blower,

Every screw and every nail

And every package through the mail

And everything you’ll ever buy

They don’t have long before they lie

Lost, abandoned and forgotten

Deep in landfills dank and rotten

No one there to wish them all goodbye

For all of them ..  and me and you

When all our days on earth are through

will all end up in landfill

Yes we’ll all end up in landfill, yes

we’ll all end up in landfill by and by.



"How terribly strange to be seventy ..." July 2024

In case you don’t recognise the quotation … it’s from the song, ‘Bookends’ by Simon and Garfunkel from the album of the same name. The full stanza is: ‘Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?  How terribly strange to be seventy.’  I have often thought about that line – especially in the past few weeks as I passed my own seven-decade milestone.  ‘How terribly strange …’

But here’s the thing. And I hope this is a welcome reassurance to anyone reading this who still has a way to go before reaching the dreaded birthday. It isn’t strange at all.  Seventy is normal. There’s nothing to look at here. I’m living my normal life. I’ve a new novel coming out next year and one already in the blocks following behind. I’ve finished the manuscript for a book I’m calling, ‘The Climate Crisis Picture Book.’  I’ve been walking the Offa’s Dyke Path with Sue and with friends. I’ve been on the zip wire at Blaenau Ffestiniog. I still go to rock concerts. I still travel. According to the Stepz app on my phone I walked  4.7 million steps in 2023 which works out as around 13,000 steps a day. And I don’t say this to brag, I say it because every seventy-year-old I know (and I know a few) would tell you much the same thing. I couldn’t imagine sharing a park bench quietly with any of them.

A week or so ago a whole crowd of my family and my very good friends ambushed me with a surprise party. It was a genuine surprise. It was lovely. We partied into the night. I love every single one of them for being there and for keeping the secret and for being such amazing people. I was too shocked and unprepared to give a proper speech, but if I had I’d have told them every day of our lives is a precious gift. And don’t be afraid of seventy. It’s ok. For me, seventy is the same as fifty but with problem feet.

The album ‘Bookends’ came out in 1968. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were 26 years old when they recorded it. Of course they thought seventy would be terribly strange. When you’re 26 even 30 is pretty strange. Today they are 82. Older than Joe Biden. I bet they think differently now.  I do.   




The Wager and the Bear: COVER REVEAL 28 June 2024

 

I'm excited to reveal this gorgeous cover from the drawing board and extraordinary imagination of Edward Bettison. Even more exciting, it is ready to pre-order. Just click the link below. If you pre-order I will personally drive a copy to your house with a chocolate cake, prosecco and a real live polar bear*. (*Note: this offer depends upon the availability of a live bear. Also this promise may have been made by a fiction writer and you know how truthful they are).  Please let me know if you like the cover. And check out my website:  https:///www.johnironmonger.com  for more news. 






Announcing the Polish edition of 'The Whale at the End of the World' 17 June 2024

 


I'm excited to announce that my novel 'Not Forgetting the Whale' will launch today in Poland as 'Wieloryb i Koniec Swiata.' Thanks to the great team at Relacja. We've had fun this week filming bits for the trailer. Thanks to Sue who did some of the filming, and to Jenny and Graham who helped us find a great beach, and to Jon who filmed the pub scenes and stitched it all together. Here's the trailer ...

How many giraffes were on the ark? (and other musings) [22nd April 2024]

So how many giraffes do you think there were on Noah’s ark? (By the way you don’t have to believe in Noah or his ark to answer this. It is a theoretical question. You only need some familiarity with the mythology.) I’m asking because this is a question that pops up in my novella ‘The Year of the Dugong’ and the answer sheds an interesting light on our knowledge (or lack of it) of the natural world. Stay with me …





 Start, if you can, by imagining an illustration of Noah’s Ark – the kind you might find in a children’s book. Like the one I’m using here. An artist with this commission is ridiculously spoiled for choice. There are a million or so animals available to populate the picture. But since most of those million creatures would be rather inappropriate for an ark – including fish, bugs, worms, and myriads of sea-creatures, let’s limit the scope to land mammals, reptiles, and flightless birds. This would offer around fifteen thousand pairs of animals for our illustrator to choose for the ark. Yet despite this, you may have noticed, one pair of animals nearly always makes an appearance – giraffes. No respectable ark is complete without them. Just two of them. But here is the thing. Two giraffes are not enough. There are, you see, depending upon whom you ask, either four, six, or eight, or even nine different giraffes. Noah would have been remiss in his duties if he didn’t take eighteen. You don’t often see eighteen giraffes on Noah Ark. But perhaps you should.

It might surprise you to learn that a giraffe is not always a giraffe – or rather that two giraffes randomly admitted onto an ark might not necessarily be the same. We are used to using the one word, ‘giraffe’ to describe them all. But that’s our laziness or our ignorance, not a recognition of reality. The four species most zoologists agree upon are the Masai giraffe, the northern giraffe, the reticulated giraffe (sometimes called the Somali giraffe), and the southern giraffe. It isn’t all that difficult to tell them apart. The reticulated giraffe, for example, has a rather distinctive pattern. It doesn’t have spots. It has a kind of continuous, smooth, white line on a nutty brown, almost orange background, creating large and slightly irregular polygons, like something drawn by a graphic designer during a coffee break. The Masai giraffe is a whole lot darker, and its pattern is blotchy. It has smaller markings that are sometimes described as ‘star shaped’ but are more like the kinds of explosion-shapes you get in comic books. The northern giraffe looks something like the reticulated giraffe, but with smaller markings and a wider white line. You can spot a northern giraffe because its pattern ends at the knee (which is not strictly a knee, but you know what I mean). The southern giraffe is lighter – often very pale – with spots on the lower legs.  

And there could be more. There are zoologists out there who insist that the northern giraffe is not one species, but three; these people are cheerleaders for the Kordofan giraffe which lives in hard-to-get-to places like Chad and the Central African Republic, the Western giraffe (mostly confined to Niger), and the Nubian giraffe which lives in East Africa but isn’t really happy there. Equally the southern giraffe might be two species –the Angolan giraffe, and the South African giraffe. Which would give us eight.

This is all rather confusing, and somewhat unexpected. This is the Twenty First Century after all. Surely, we know how many species of giraffe there are? But no. It seems we don’t. The fact is, while zoologists can get very worked up about identifying species, giving them names, describing them in guide-books and so on, nature itself tends to get on with things in a much more messy way, content to leave the cataloguing up to us. Most dictionaries define a ‘species’ broadly, or approximately, as ‘a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of interbreeding,’ and this is an important definition because the idea of a species is a fundamental concept in biology, in the same way, perhaps, as an element is in chemistry, or a date is in history. A species should be something with hard boundaries, about which we can all agree. But take a look again at that definition. ‘Similar’ is a rather vague word to have in a dictionary definition. Is a reticulated giraffe similar to a Masai giraffe? Well yes. Tourists might see both in parts of Kenya and not be aware they’ve seen two different giraffes. But can they interbreed? Now this is harder to establish. We know from studies of giraffe genes that the four species described above have not exchanged genetic material for over a million years. But this doesn’t mean they couldn’t. Maybe they have been separated geographically for so long they haven’t had the opportunity to try. Perhaps if Noah found two frisky, fecund giraffes – one reticulated and the other, say, a Nubian – they might be persuaded to breed. This isn’t an experiment we can readily carry out, and even if we could, there are powerful ethical arguments that would (and should) prevent us. But even if we were, somehow, to cross a Masai and a Nubian giraffe, it wouldn’t necessarily mean they were the same species.

Consider the lion and the tiger. No one would dispute these are different, very distinct species. Yet there exists an animal known as a ‘liger’ which is the offspring of a female tiger and a male lion. (A ‘tigon’ is a similar thing where the parents are the other way around). Ligers and tigons only exist in captivity, and no evidence has ever been found that lions and tigers have ever interbred in the wild (even though their ranges cross in parts of India). We know from genetic studies that lions don’t have tiger genes, or vice versa. There was once an assumption that these liger and tigon hybrids would always be infertile in the way that mules are (a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey), but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In 2012 a Siberian zoo successfully bred a ‘liliger’ which is the offspring of a lion and a liger.

So where does this leave us? Are lions and tigers the same species or not?

On 11th July 1978, shortly after nine in the morning, a 22 year old Asian elephant called Sheba, who had been behaving rather strangely, surprised her keepers at Chester Zoo in the north of England by delivering a calf. The only bull elephant Sheba had encountered for well over two years had been a rather temperamental African elephant known as Jumbolino or ‘Bubbles.’ No one had expected an Asian elephant and an African elephant to be able to interbreed. The calf, called ‘Motty’ (after George Mottershead the founder of Chester Zoo), had ears like an African elephant, but just one ‘trunk finger’ like an Asian elephant. A day later the baby elephant was on his feet and bottle feeding, and within four days Sheba was feeding him normally. Sadly he didn’t survive very much longer. He died of septicaemia aged just ten days, but there is no reason to think he couldn’t have lived for very much longer – perhaps even a full elephant lifespan.

As you’d expect, these are by no means the only animal hybrids, or even the best known. The world of hybrid animals is characterised by an apparent desire to mangle a name for the new creature out of the names of the parents. So we have zeedonks (zebra and donkey), jaglions (jaguar and lion … although surely jagons would be more conventional), grolar bears (grizzly bear and polar bear), and even camas (camel and llama). There was once a fashion for creating such animals, although most zoos would look dimly on such an idea these days.

But perhaps the real surprise should not be that some animals can be persuaded to interbreed, but rather that so few do, and especially that this hardly ever happens without our encouragement. It seems that the word species might need a bit more definition. Perhaps we should redefine it as ‘a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of interbreeding, and generally disinclined to breed with any other species.’

This is important because the whole idea of the species is so fundamental to zoology. So while we are about it, shall we dispose of some of the other words people often use when they try to talk about a species? Let’s kick off with breed. I can’t tell you how irritated it makes me when I hear someone call, say, a chimpanzee, a breed of monkey. To begin with a chimp isn’t a monkey – it’s an ape. More importantly a breed is something we humans create. We breed dogs for hunting or for fetching or for pampering and the resulting specimens we call a breed – cocker spaniels, German shepherds, French poodles – these are all breeds. Throw them together and they would have no hesitation in creating all manner of cross breeds, and these are breeds too whether or not they are recognised and named by the Kennel Club or anyone else for that matter. We have breeds of sheep, of cattle, of domestic cats, but we don’t have breeds of giraffe or chimpanzees. While we’re on the subject of breeds, we could throw in varieties. I have heard this word used too when the speaker clearly meant species. You can have varieties within a species. Some people have red hair, others are dark. Some giraffes are taller than others. Variety is the motor for evolution, but varieties are not taxonomically significant – which is to say they don’t affect the way we classify or name animals or plants. Variety is often used by breeders to describe variations within a breed, and they can be given names of their own – especially with plants. Any competent horticulturalist can create new varieties of say, roses, by selecting seeds with the characteristics they would like to see. Mix and match, and a couple of generations later, hey presto, a rose named after your grandmother. That’s a variety.      

So having cleared that one up, let’s turn our attention to a much more slippery word. In a park in Williamstown, Kentucky, about an hour’s drive south of Cincinnati, you will find a very curious tourist attraction. Ark Encounter is a building designed to look like … well, an ark, albeit an ark on land. Apparently built to the dimensions provided in the book of Genesis, it’s aim is to convince us that Noah was a real historical figure and his ark was a proper boat, and that, guess what, he did indeed sail away in a flood with two of every kind of animal, and there on board to help prove the point are models of hundreds of animals including dinosaurs and even a couple of unicorns. But did you notice the contentious word? Kind. This is the word that enables Ark Encounter to get away without providing sixteen or eighteen giraffes, or six thousand snakes, or seven hundred thousand beetles. Their website explains it like this: “Species is a term used in the modern classification system. The Bible uses the term “kind.” The created kind was a much broader category than the modern term of classification, species.”

There. With a single judicious use of an ambiguous word translated roughly by seventeenth century scholars in England from a seventh century Greek translation of a bronze age Hebrew manuscript, Ark Encounter are able to sweep away a thousand years of biological science. This is very convenient for creationists. They no longer have to house loads of giraffes on the ark. Two will do. A website called ‘Answers in Genesis’ goes even further; it argues that the giraffes on the ark not only became the ancestors of all of today’s giraffes, but also of okapis, and a host of now extinct creatures. (That sounds suspiciously like evolution to me but let’s not be too provocative.) The Answers in Genesis site goes as far as proving us with a picture of what the giraffes on the ark might have looked like. They label the picture ‘Shansitherium.’

There is no point really trying to argue with this. Creationists will believe what they want to believe. But can the rest of us please agree that the word ‘kind’ does not belong in any discussion of taxonomy. And while we’re about it, can we dispose of another contentious word: race. Race might once have been a useful (but informal) term in biology to describe a genetically distinct population of individuals within the same species, but the word has become hijacked by disagreements within our own species, so I would suggest we set it aside completely. Along with the word ‘strain.’ There may be races and strains of giraffes – there probably are – but I don’t imagine even God expected Noah to collect every variation or every strain of giraffe on the ark. If he had there wouldn’t have been room for anything else.   

Now here’s another tricky word. Subspecies. The idea of the subspecies can feel like a rather helpful way for zoologists to avoid too many disagreements. We tend to call a group of animals a subspecies when we find them in a different area with particular differences in size, shape, or other characteristics, even though we might suspect that the different subspecies can probably interbreed. You might have read about the imminent extinction of the Northern white rhino. There are only two known individuals of this subspecies still alive. Both are female, so sadly this is almost certainly the end for the Northern white rhino. The two rhinos are called Najin and Fatu. They live in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya where they are protected by armed guards. When they go it will undoubtedly be a great loss. But there is a sense that the loss of a subspecies is less of a tragedy than the loss of a species. Northern and Southern white rhinos have been living separately for at least half a million years, but the differences that are visible to us are subtle, and you would need to be an expert in rhino morphology to confidently tell them apart. There may be other differences, of course, that are not visible, and this might lead us to wonder if there are more rhino subspecies than the ones we know. This could also be true of giraffes. Noah would surely have had quite a challenge to untangle this. But the key point for us, and for Noah is this: if you have two subspecies that haven't interbred for half a million years, you do need to put both on the ark. Sorry. Remember that according to Bishop Ussher the flood that floated the ark was in 2349 BC, just 4,373 years ago - a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. (Not really long enough by the way for a giraffe to evolve into an okapi but I did promise not to be provocative.)  The IUCN (the International Union for the Conservation of Nature) who are the arbiters of these things, officially recognises nine subspecies of giraffe. Here they are in the illustration below (happily a royalty-free image: thank you Alamy).   



 So the answer to our original question (memo to Mr Noah) appears to be eighteen giraffes. We have to hope the ceilings on the ark were high. 

But there is a follow-on question. Why don’t we all know this? Why don't illustrators of the ark know this? Why isn’t this taught in schools? How is it that we can identify soccer strips and car marques and fashion logos but we can only collectively identify one giraffe? We knowledgeably and assertively distinguish grape varieties and wine labels and cheeses and breeds of dog, but if you ask one hundred people what species of rhinos still walk the earth, most, I fear, wouldn’t know. (There are five, white rhinos, black rhinos, Indian rhinos, Javan rhinos, and Sumatran rhinos). Why does this matter? Well if we can’t tell animals apart, we won’t mourn them when we lose them. That is why this matters. As Toby Markham says in 'The Year of the Dugong:'  

"Do you know how many moths there are in Suffolk? How many species? Probably over two thousand. And how many people do you think could identify a single moth? Just one species?’ Toby raised a finger. He paused to look at the silent crowd. ‘I doubt if one person in a hundred could do that. So, if no one can identify even a single moth, how many people are going to notice if two thousand species of moths become one thousand? Or one hundred? How many people are really going to care?’

Natural history is becoming a dying art. That’s sad. I don't expect people to identify two thousand moths. But more people ought to know how many moths there are. Because if we don't care, then one by one they will surely go. And so will the Northern white rhino. And one day there may really only be a single species of giraffe. That's heartbreaking.  


Check out my website: www.johnironmonger.com 

The Wager and the Bear [Posted 29th Feb 2024]

 


It's leap-year day so I have an announcement. My climate-crisis novel, 'The Wager and the Bear,' is to be published by Fly on the Wall Books, a northern based publisher-with-a-conscience who specialise in books that might raise awareness of political or climate issues. I love this publisher very much and I can't think of a better home for 'The Wager and the Bear.'   Do please follow me on social media for announcements closer to publication date, or check out my website https://www.johnironmonger.com/  and I'll let you know when it is ready to pre-order.

It isn't a heavy polemical novel. It's simply a good old adventure yarn and a romance but it is quite clearly set against the backdrop of a slow, unfolding global crisis. Oh ... and there is a bear ...  



Check out my website: www.johnironmonger.com 

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE 21 Jan 2024

 


I don't want to jinx this because I know a lot of water has to flow under the bridge between the day you sign up with a studio and the day you buy a cinema ticket to see the finished film ... but all the same I can't resist this little teaser. This is probably all I'm allowed to reveal. Apart from saying that the team behind the movie are utterly awesome. But I will post updates whenever I can. Watch this space ... 


One Step away from the Precipice: Climate Change in Fiction [Posted 20 Nov 2023]

 This was my article yesterday in La Repubblica - Italy's biggest newspaper. The title translates as 'One Step from the Cliff' - and it is an artcle about climate change in fiction, and about my novel 'The Wager and the Bear' (Soon to be published in English I hope). 


Here is the translation of the text:

David Bowie had a remarkable talent for writing songs that could conjure up a story. It is impossible to listen to ‘Space Oddity’ without imagining Major Tom, sitting in a tin-can, drifting forever into space.  But the Bowie song that stays with me most is ‘Five Years’. It tells a very simple story. News has reached us that the earth has only five years left. The planet is dying. In the song, the newsreader weeps. All around the market square people lose their minds.

What would it be like, I have often wondered, if we really were told this news? If a solemn news report, backed by all the world’s serious scientists, was to tell us we were running out of time? How would we react?

Well we now know the answer to this question. Newsreaders wouldn’t weep. No one would go crazy. We would ignore the danger and carry on with our lives as if nothing had changed. We know this because this is what we do. Every few months the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces a new report telling us the planet is running out of time. Every year the COP climate change conference makes dire predictions. Every year we learn that the previous year was the hottest on record. We watch forest fires in Canada and Brazil. We see dramatic floods, powerful storms, devastating droughts. We watch the collapse of animal populations. World leaders fly in and out of conferences. They make vague promises. But very little changes. And the world continues to die.   

The challenge seems to be a failure of human imagination. Perhaps it is the timescale. If the world was doomed in just five years, we might be more alarmed. If it was an asteroid hurtling towards us, we might make a real global effort to find a solution. But climate change seems to be a long unfolding tragedy. We are like passengers in a slow-motion train crash. The train is heading for a precipice, and all the pieces are in place for a terrible disaster, but everything is moving so slowly we stop worrying.  

All this presents a particular problem for story tellers. Climate change is the biggest story of our time, yet very few novelists are ready to grapple with this. Ten centuries from now, if humanity is still around, I suspect historians will only be interested in one story from our generation - how we responded (or failed to respond) to this existential threat to the planet. Science fiction, in general, has done us rather a disservice here. Writers have sold us either Mad Max-style desert dystopias, or impossible tales of starships taking survivors to new green planets. What we don’t have are real world stories that could help us to imagine the kind of earth we are creating.  And that is a shame, because imagination is what we need, now more than ever.

Once again, timescales seem to be the challenge. Novelists need a central protagonist with whom readers can identify. This character needs to have a story arc, and human dramas are typically too short for climate change to feature very much. There is a second problem too.  It is hard to imagine any character playing anything but a very minor role in what is a huge global drama. No one is going to step forward like Bruce Willis and save the world. For a writer, that is an unhelpful backdrop. We do not like to set up a jeopardy for our characters, without giving them some way to fight back. But how do you fight back against a warming planet?

In ‘L’Orso Polare e una Scomessa Chiamata Futuro’ (The Wager and the Bear) I hope I may have found a way to navigate a little around these two problems. The narrative unfolds over a whole human lifetime, and the central characters are front-seat observers of the climate disaster. The story involves two young men. One, Monty, is a politician. He is a climate change-denier. He lives in a grand house on the beach in Cornwall. He has a splendid lifestyle, and like so many of us in the slow-motion train crash, he doesn’t see the precipice approaching. The second man, Tom, is a climate scientist and campaigner. One drunken night, over too many glasses of cider in the local inn, the two men get into a quarrel. It ends with a deadly wager. In fifty years, either the sea will rise enough to drown Monty in his home, or Tom will accept the jeopardy himself, and will walk into the sea and drown. A video of the wager, posted online, goes viral. How will it all work out?

Well we have fifty years for the story to unfold. The lives of the two men cross several times, leading them both onto a melting glacier, and ultimately onto an iceberg floating down the coast of Greenland where their only companion is a hungry bear.  

The story is not entirely without hope. It is set against the backdrop of a campaign to restore some of what the world has lost. Neither Monty nor Tom can save the world. But there is at least hope, as well as despair.  

Climate change doesn’t have to be front and centre in contemporary fiction. But we shouldn’t be ignoring it either. As writers we have a responsibility, sometimes, to make the future seem real. We are hurtling towards a world of human-made disasters, of dying oceans, of rising seas, of failing harvests, of droughts, of economic collapse, and of climate-driven conflicts. We cannot ignore these things. If these aren’t part of our fictional landscape now, then they need to be.  Otherwise one day we may find we have just five years left. And it won’t just be the news readers weeping. 


Check out my website: www.johnironmonger.com 




A brilliant but rather scary Italian cover for 'The Wager and the Bear.'

I thought I'd share this rather terrifying cover. A brilliant piece of art. Thanks to the great team at Bollati Boringheiri


Check out my website www.johnironmonger.com 


 

The Wager and the Bear (Der Eisbär und die Hoffnung auf morgen). [Posted: 27 April 2023]

So I have a new novel launching in Germany next month. The English title is, ‘The Wager and the Bear,’ and the German title (a little less catchy perhaps) is ‘Der Eisbär und die Hoffnung auf morgen,’ which my google translator tells me means, ‘The Polar Bear and the Hope for Tomorrow.’ It might be a while before an English language edition is published – which is a shame. I’ll try to explain that in a moment – but first let me tell you about ‘The Wager and the Bear.’


The original idea for the story came from my brilliant agent, Stan. I told him I wanted to write a climate-change novel, and he sent me an email in February 2021, outlining a scenario he described as a cross between Not Forgetting the Whale and Local Hero. He called it ‘Not Forgetting the Iceberg.’ I rarely (normally) pick up on story-suggestions people give me but this was a rather compelling idea, and I found myself sitting down and writing an experimental first chapter. Then of course I had to write a second, and a third … and this is how novels get written. Stan wanted the story to be set in Scotland. I wanted it back in Cornwall – in my fictional village of St Piran. Stan saw the iceberg as the central threat. I saw the iceberg as a harbinger of a greater threat. And so I set about ignoring all Stan’s advice, and now not much remains of his original story, alas, except for the iceberg. But the iceberg (as you will see if ever you read the novel) does play a very central part. It is a story still very rooted in St Piran, and both the hero, Tom, and the anti-hero, Monty, are St Piran boys. It is an action story, a love story, a story with real, terrifying jeopardy … and a story with a bear.

The challenge with any story about climate change is to accommodate the long timescales. The climate catastrophe is something that might be almost instantaneous in geological terms, but measured against human lifespans it is ponderously snail-like. (See my last blog post https://notablebrain.blogspot.com/2023/04/climate-change-cats-and-spaghetti-essay.html) So unlike ‘Not Forgetting the Whale’ (Der Wal und das Ende der Welt) this story unravels over a whole human lifetime. And during this lifetime we will come to discover if Tom really is the hero and Monty the anti-hero. Or is it more nuanced?

I do hope, if you can read German, you will discover this book. If you do, please write to let me know your reactions. You can message me through this blog. If, like me, you are limited to reading in English you might have to wait a little longer. I suspect UK publishers want to wait to see how well it does in Europe – and this is because my last novel, ‘The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild’ didn’t sell all that well in Britain. My counter to this is to explain that ‘Heloise’ hit the bookshops in hardback when shops were closed due to Covid, and the paperback launched when bookshops were closed again. It launched with virtually no publicity. There was, I suppose, very little point publicising a book when the shops were all shut. So it goes. It had a beautiful cover – but (in my mind) the title was wrong. My original title was, ‘Katya’s Gift,’ and I can’t shake off the feeling that it would have done better with that title. Heloise is still my favourite novel by the way. And it is still out there if ever you’re looking for something new to read.

Anyway – all that aside, I can’t wait to see ‘The Wager and the Bear’ in print. Here again is that beautiful cover. And thank you once again to the wonderful people at S.Fischer Verlag for having faith in me.  

Cats, and Spaghetti, and Climate Change [13 April 2023]

 I can’t remember when (or where) I first heard the expression, ‘herding cats.’ I don’t think this idiom was around when I was young. So far as I can tell, it was invented sometime in the 1980s and it took off. Soon everyone was using it. It’s a great little saying because we all know enough about cats to understand right away what it means. ‘I did my best, but it was like herding cats.’ At once we appreciate the futility, the complexity, and the sheer absence of co-operation from everyone concerned. You don’t get herds of cats. They are too bloody-minded.

My father had a saying that meant almost the same thing. But not quite. He would say, ‘it was like trying to organise spaghetti.’ Somehow, for me, organising spaghetti feels like an enterprise even more doomed to failure than herding cats. The cats may not want to be herded, but there is at least the possibility that they might eventually succumb. Spaghetti on the other hand will never submit to organisation. And unlike the cats this isn’t due to wilfulness or contrariness. Disorganisation is a property of the spaghetti itself.

Efforts to resolve the climate-change crisis are often compared to herding cats. In this metaphor the ‘cats’ are the 195 countries on the planet, across 7 continents, where no two countries think alike, or act alike, or have the same priorities, or enjoy similar political systems, or possess the same resources, or have the same levels of understanding. How do we ever herd these slippery belligerent cats into the same box?  Even so, I worry that the problem is more like organising spaghetti. There is no way to do this. We’ll never get everyone on board. Perhaps we ought to accept this and find a different way.

There is, by the way, a rather clever online tool called ‘Google NGram Viewer.’ It can help you to figure out when (but not necessarily where) a word or an expression arose. It searches millions of books over the past two centuries, and if the words you’ve entered appear in 40 books or more in any calendar year, it counts them and plots a graph to show how the frequency has changed with time.  Forty books feels like quite a high bar to me. If you enter ‘herding cats’ you won’t find any use of this expression until 1938. In 1942 the phrase disappears, and it doesn’t reappear until 1987. After that the frequency graph rises meteorically, like the lift-off of a space rocket. It is as if there was something that happened in the Eighties that made this expression useful.

If, by the way, you try ‘organised spaghetti’ in NGram Viewer you don’t get any results at all. Maybe this expression was exclusively my dad’s.

If I look up from my keyboard, and glance out of my window, I can see a storm coming. The clouds gathering over the estuary look as grey and heavy as gunmetal.

And now, in the time it has taken me to type that last sentence, the storm is upon us. The rain is driving against my window. I no longer have a view.  Funny how the weather can do that, and we all accept it. We look at the forecasts and we plan our days around them. Let’s do the beach on Sunday when the rain stops. But if we’re told the whole global climate is changing, we go into a complex form of denial.  We don’t really know how to plan. We hope that tomorrow will be much the same as today, and on the whole it is, and that gives us comfort. It makes us think this is nothing to worry about. Yet.

One metaphor I have heard used about climate change is ‘a slow-motion car crash.’ I used this myself in a novel, ‘The Wager and the Bear.’ The image I wanted was  of an impending catastrophe where the parts are all in motion, where no one is yet hurt, but where terrible death and destruction await if no one acts to stop it. A slow-motion car crash seems to tick all of those boxes. But all the same, I’m not altogether happy with this metaphor. For a start it seems too prosaic. (I’m using the word prosaic to mean lacking in poetry – but also to mean lacking in purpose.) I’ve tried to think of a better image. A train crash is better perhaps, because it involves more people. But slow-motion is insufficient to describe the slow and gradual increments of change that the climate crisis delivers. Sea levels are rising by around four and a half millimetres a year. In ten years, at this rate, they will rise four and a half centimetres. And the sea, as we know, moves up and down, sometimes quite erratically so that doesn’t feel like a threat. Not really. In a century the sea might rise forty five centimetres. About knee high. And none of us likes to think forward more than a century. Do we?

Isn’t that odd? We don’t have this blind spot with history. We’re fascinated by the lives of the Tudors (Henry VIII was on the throne 500 years ago). We love stories about the Romans (2,000 years ago). And yet we don’t speculate much on where our descendants might be in 500 or 2,000 years – what kind of world they will inhabit. Or what (since we chose this measurement) the sea levels might be. So let’s speculate then. Assume that sea levels keep on rising at 4.5mm a year (in reality the rate will almost certainly accelerate but let’s ignore that for a moment.) Our descendants in 2000 years will inherit seas 9 metres higher than today. The map of the world will have been altered irreversibly. Britain will have lost most of East and Central London, and great swathes of the Thames Valley including towns like Dartford, and Kingston. Hundreds of seaside towns will have been wholly lost to the rising waters - places like Portsmouth, Southampton, Middlesborough and Blackpool, Cardiff and Newport, and Gloucester. Lincoln (now 38 miles from the sea) will be a seaside town. So will whatever remains of Cambridge. So will York. So will Taunton.  Across The Channel most of the Netherlands and much of Belgium will be underwater.  So will huge tracts of Northern Germany. America will lose thousands of communities down the Eastern seaboard. China will lose Shanghai and Guangzhou. Bangkok and Kolkata and Ho Chi Minh City will be gone. And Basra, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 

And here’s the thing. The water will still be rising. It still has a way to go. If all the ice melts (and it probably will if global temperature rises by 4 degrees) then sea levels rise seventy metres or so.

9 metres of sea level rise puts the Netherlands underwater


And sea level changes are, perhaps, the least of our worries. A 4 degree rise would make most of the world between the tropics practically uninhabitable. It would certainly make agriculture almost impossible. It will cause catastrophic drought . And the Northern farmlands which will now be warmer will not take up the slack. Celestial mechanics will still restrict sunlight in winter, and the soils are anyway very unproductive. And anyway a weird side effect of climate change might mean that as the world gets hotter (and sea levels keep rising) Europe curiously will get colder as ocean currents slow down.

Finally there is a terrifying threat. This is how it might be in, 'The Year of the Dugong.' If atmospheric CO2 levels exceed 1,200 parts per million (ppm) (and they could) it could push the Earth’s climate over a tipping point. This would see clouds start to break up, and, a cloudless world will reflect away less sunlight. According to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience, this could trigger another 8°C rise in global average temperatures. Game Over. 

So slow-motion train crash doesn’t work, does it? ‘Ultra-slow motion asteroid-collision,’ might be better. A disaster movie that runs at one frame a year. But the disaster is still going to happen. And it is inevitable unless we can herd the unruly cats who govern us and get them to start organising the spaghetti. Now.


Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com 



More Movie Cliches ... [31 March 2023]

Back in January I wrote a blog post bemoaning lazy cliches in movies and on TV. https://notablebrain.blogspot.com/2023/01/movie-cliches-tropes-and-memes.html This, in turn, was prompted by an earlier blog post grumbling about the gun-related cliches in the new Avatar movie. https://notablebrain.blogspot.com/2022/12/avatar-2-and-all-american-love-affair.html

Well, as often happens, those posts got me noticing plenty more lazy cliches that movie makers use; so here, just for you, are a few of them. You’re welcome…

1. PSYCHO KILLERS ALWAYS PASTE THEIR BEDROOM WALLS WITH NEWS CUTTINGS. When the cop finally stumbles into the lair of the serial killer/psycho that’s how we know they’ve found the bad guy.

2. OLDER COPS ARE JUST ABOUT TO RETIRE. One extra case eh…

3. SENIOR COPS ALWAYS BAWL OUT THE GOOD COP. This seems to be a rule. There is always a more senior cop usually with a glass fronted office that looks over the incident room, and he (or she) is NEVER pleased with the way the case is going, never says, ‘well done,’ usually threatens to take the good cop’s badge, and generally pulls the good cop off the case.

4. IF THE SENIOR COP ALSO HAS A BOSS, THAT BOSS WILL BE BENT

5. COPS NEVER CATCH ANYONE IN A CAR CHASE. Did you ever see a car chase where the cops catch the guy they’re chasing, even if they throw a hundred cars at it? No. The guy (who is being chased by cops usually because of a misunderstanding) always gets away.

6. WRITERS ALWAYS WEAR SPECS. Also they either live in a cabin by a lake or in a New York apartment. 

7. HEROES ARE NEVER HAPPILY MARRIED. Usually the wife has died. Or else they’ve had an undeserved separation. Whatever, they are now available but only reluctantly.

8. TEENAGE SONS ARE ALWAYS REBELLIOUS. If the hero dad gives his teenage son an order, you know the son will flagrantly ignore it in the next scene. But in the end the teenage son comes good, sees the errors of his ways, and makes up with the dad.

9. TEENAGE DAUGHTERS ARE ALWAYS SUPER SMART AND USUALLY ABOUT TO GO TO HARVARD.

10. DOCTORS ARE ALWAYS READY TO TELL YOU HOW LONG YOU HAVE TO LIVE. AND IT’S USUALLY JUST SIX MONTHS. But protagonists with six months left always look reasonably fit, they don’t spend the six months suffering in bed, they get out there and fight the bad guys.

11. NIGHTCLUBS/SEEDY DIVES ALWAYS HAVE A STRIPPER IN THE BACKGROUND, BUT NOBODY IS ACTUALLY WATCHING HER

12. IF A MOVIE STARTS WITH A HAPPY COUPLE MOVING INTO A NEW HOME, YOU KNOW IT WON’T TURN OUT WELL.

13. IF A MOVIE INVOLVES A SINGLE PERSON MOVING INTO A REMOTE CABIN IN THE WOODS, THEN DITTO.

14. MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS WILL ALWAYS QUARREL

15. THE HERO COP/DETECTIVE WILL CASUALLY SPOT A CLUE THAT THE WHOLE CSI TEAM HAVE OVERLOOKED. Hmm. I wonder who left this cigarette butt …

16. IF A SCENE TAKES PLACE IN PARIS, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO SEE THE EIFFEL TOWER IN THE BACKGROUND OR THROUGH A WINDOW. In London it’s usually Big Ben.

17. THE BAD GUY’S HENCHMEN DIE FIRST. Finally he’s the last one left alive, but he’s also the trickiest to kill. Also, have you noticed; henchmen never have any lines. No henchman ever has a wisecrack, or says something poignant while dying. A shot henchman simply does the decent thing and dies quickly and quietly. Also where does the bad guy find all these henchmen? Are they amazingly well paid? Do they get paid holidays? Do they grumble over their conditions of employment?  Why are they always happy to do as they are told even when it looks as if they’ll die doing it? Why do they never say: ‘hey, this isn’t my fight. Leave me out of it.’ And on that subject ...  

18. HELICOPTER PILOTS EMPLOYED BY VILLAINS ARE STUPIDLY RECKLESS. Where do you employ a guy who is happy to fly a helicopter into such a dangerous situation that he and his helicopter will end up as a massive fireball? There must be an agency somewhere specialising in suicidal pilots ...



19. THE UNIFORM ON THE PEG/DEAD GUY IS ALWAYS A PERFECT FIT WHEN SOMEONE ELSE NEEDS IT. We never see a character struggling to get into a stolen uniform. A side door just opens and out they step, dressed up. And amazingly no one will question them.

20. WHEN THE BAD GUY GETS HIS CHANCE TO KILL THE GOOD GUY HE ALWAYS CHOOSES NOT TO. Why would you do that?

21. BIG PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES ARE ALWAYS EVIL. So are the billionaire owners of social media and tech companies except for Stark Industries

22. IT IS REALLY EASY TO KNOCK SOMEONE UNCONSCIOUS. If you’re cool and you know how.

23. IT IS REALLY EASY TO KICK DOWN A DOOR. If you’re cool and you know how.

24. IT IS REALLY EASY TO SNATCH A GUN OUT OF AN ANTAGONIST’S HAND. If you’re cool and you know how.

25. IT IS REALLY EASY TO HACK INTO JUST ABOUT ANY COMPUTER. If you’re uncool and a nerd hacker.

26. IT IS ALWAYS EASY TO PARK. There is always a convenient space.

27. GIRL WAKES UP IN BED – WONDERS WHERE HER LOVER FROM THE NIGHT BEFORE HAS GONE – DON’T WORRY – HE’S COOKING UP BREAKFAST. And actually he’s an amazing cook. Who would have guessed?

28. IF THERE IS A POKER GAME – SOMEONE WILL ALWAYS HAVE AN UNBELIEVABLE HAND. One protagonist has a once in a lifetime hand. But what do you know. Someone else at the table has a better one.

29. IF THERE IS A CHESS GAME IN PLAY, IT IS ONLY EVER ONE MOVE AWAY FROM CHECKMATE.

30. IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND TO PAY FOR A CAB. Movie people just pass over a banknote and get out without speaking.

31. IF YOU CHASE ANYONE DOWN AN ESCALATOR AT A TUBE STATION, GUESS WHAT? THERE WILL BE A TRAIN RIGHT THERE AT THE PLATFORM (OR JUST ARRIVING) FOR THEM TO HOP ONTO. Yet whenever I run down an escalator at a tube station I find I just missed the train. 

32. THE HERO ALWAYS MISSES HIS DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY PARTY / CONCERT. It isn't his fault. He'll be forgiven at the end.

I'm beginning to think this is an almost endless seam to be mined. If you've spotted any more lazy tropes, let me know, or drop them into the comments. I daresay I'll keep noticing them. 

Please check out my website for more information on my books. https://www.johnironmonger.com 


AI Illustrates 'The Wager and the Bear': Part Two - Chapters 7-13

  Here we go with some more of the weird and wonderful creations of OpenArt.AI illustrating chapters from 'The Wager and the Bear.' ...