PD Smith

Final­ly, after four years of research and writ­ing, yes­ter­day I received fin­ished copies of my book Dooms­day Men. It’s a spe­cial moment for any author, as I’m sure many of you will know… I’ve writ­ten a blog about it here, togeth­er with my views on a cou­ple of oth­er recent­ly pub­lished books.

But just in case you’re won­der­ing what my book looks like, here are the front…

…and back views:

[orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on Myspace]

There are two new begin­nings in my life.

The first flower has opened in our new gar­den.

We recent­ly left the Big Smoke (Lon­don) in search of time, space, and a gar­den. Maybe this camel­lia augurs well. Maybe we too can put down roots here…

And the sec­ond begin­ning?

Well, this blog, of course. (Thanks for invit­ing me, Brad!)

Any­one who has fol­lowed my blog on MySpace will have noticed I’m a lazy blog­ger.

But life has been pret­ty hec­tic recent­ly, what with mov­ing house and liv­ing with builders, plumbers, plas­ter­ers, and elec­tri­cians. That lot can be noisy house-mates.

That’s my excuse any­way. I’ll try to turn over a new leaf. Promise.

What will the blog be about?

Well, my new book Dooms­day Men traces the ori­gins of the dream of the super­weapon in sci­ence and pop­u­lar cul­ture. It’s a reminder of how close we came to wip­ing out life on earth in the cold war.

This haunt­ing image is of the first atom­ic explo­sion, the Trin­i­ty test, in the New Mex­i­co desert on July 16, 1945. It was “the near­est thing to dooms­day that one could pos­si­bly imag­ine”, said one eye-wit­ness.

Just before it explod­ed, physi­cist Enri­co Fer­mi was tak­ing bets on whether it would set fire to the atmos­phere and destroy the world. He had some sense of humour.

But I don’t want to just bang on about the Bomb.

Per­haps I’ll keep that for my own site, which hope­ful­ly will be up and run­ning in a few weeks.

I’d like to range a bit wider here.

As I do a lot of review­ing, and pub­lish­ers are always send­ing me their lat­est offer­ings, there will cer­tain­ly be high­lights from new books in pop­u­lar sci­ence and cul­tur­al his­to­ry. And if any have caught your eye, then do let me know.

Beyond that, I hope to share some ideas I’m cur­rent­ly explor­ing in my own writ­ing. It helps to talk about these things.

Want to join in?

Here’s a great quote to whet your appetites:

“the pre­ci­sion of the artist should accom­pa­ny the pas­sion of the sci­en­tist.”

(I’m tempt­ed to add “Dis­cuss”. But I won’t.)

It’s from Nabokov, natür­lich.

As well as writ­ing some of the great­est nov­els of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, he was a sci­en­tist work­ing at the cut­ting edge of lep­i­doptery. In the 1940s he spent 14 hours a day glued to his micro­scope at the Har­vard Muse­um of Com­par­a­tive Zool­o­gy. He was dis­sect­ing the gen­i­talia of the South and North Amer­i­can poly­omma­tine but­ter­flies known as the “Blues”.

Well, I sup­pose some­one had to do it.

By the way, the Nabokov quote is from James Hamil­ton-Pater­son­’s beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book on the sci­ence and his­to­ry of the ocean, Sev­en Tenths.

I’ve just been read­ing it for review. It was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1992 and now Faber have reis­sued it.

As a writer who is also fas­ci­nat­ed by the links between sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture, what Hamil­ton-Pater­son does with words makes me green with envy. If you want a mas­ter­class on prose writ­ing, and par­tic­u­lar­ly on how to com­bine sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture, then read this book. It’s superb.

But now it’s time to go.

I have to dig a hole in the gar­den. A big hole.

There’s a six-foot bam­boo plant just itch­ing to gets its feet out of a pot and into the earth.

[orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on The Ner­vous Break­down]

Good­ness, is it real­ly that long since I did a blog? How time flies — I almost said when you’re hav­ing fun, but in this case ‘when you’re suf­fer­ing’ would be more accu­rate.

Well, maybe suf­fer­ing is a bit harsh — but we’ve got the builders in our house. They’ve been here 6 weeks and 4 days — and believe me, I am count­ing the days…

Have you tried writ­ing to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a ham­mer-drill? On sec­ond thoughts: suf­fer­ing is def­i­nite­ly the right word.

Any­way, apolo­gies for a gen­er­al lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion on my part. To make amends here is a piece I did on John Grib­bin’s lat­est pop sci­ence best-sell­er The Uni­verse. It’s a cool book — lots of stuff on cos­mol­o­gy and the quan­tum won­der­land. Enjoy.

If you’re look­ing for some­thing to read (hope­ful­ly not to the sound of ham­mer-drills) you could do worse to check out some of the recent paper­backs I’ve been review­ing — here and here and here.

Got to go now — I think they’ve just drilled through the water main…

[orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on Myspace]

Just back from a much-need­ed break in Paris. It’s a great place in which to just wan­der aim­less­ly around, absorb­ing the sights and sounds. And that’s pre­cise­ly what my part­ner and I have been doing for the last cou­ple of days. The washed-out colours of autumn go well with the fad­ed impe­r­i­al grandeur of its avenues and mon­u­ments.

 Of course, when it comes to food and wine, France still rules the world. Even sim­ple and inex­pen­sive things like cheese and bread taste bet­ter here. How is it that we have com­plete­ly for­got­ten how to make mouth-water­ing bread here in Britain? Answers on a (French) post­card please.

My tip for a café: Le Boulanger des Invalides Joc­teur on the cor­ner of the Ave de Vil­lars and Bd des Invalides. After indulging in their cof­fee and cakes you could do worse than take a stroll in the Parc André Citroën, a new dis­cov­ery for me. It’s a for­mal, French gar­den updat­ed for the mod­ern age: large in scale but full of beau­ti­ful, inti­mate spaces. A great place to take pho­tos – I’ve put some on my Flickr site. (Thanks to Kin­dra for explain­ing how to post images in the blog…let’s see if it works!)

I’ve been mean­ing to read Rid­dley Walk­er by Rus­sell Hoban for a long time and the Eurostar train jour­neys to and from Paris pro­vid­ed the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty. I’m glad I did – it is a quite extra­or­di­nary nov­el: the kind of writ­ing that haunts your mem­o­ry for days and weeks afterwards.  The nov­el – which was pub­lished in 1980 – is set many years after civil­i­sa­tion has destroyed itself in its quest for the “1 Big 1”. The world has been blast­ed back to the stone age, to use the unfor­get­table phrase of one Cold War gen­er­al. Life for the inhab­i­tants of the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic plan­et is now nasty and short. Their tech­nol­o­gy is vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent and they have an under­stand­able fear of “clev­er­ness” – any­thing that we might call sci­ence. The hubris of “Eusa” and his dead­ly fas­ci­na­tion with “the Addom” that led to dooms­day has become a myth­ic sto­ry that fills the peo­ple of the future with dread. Rid­dley Walk­er, the main char­ac­ter, is thrown into an intrigue involv­ing “yeller­boy”, “chard coal” and “Saul and Peter”. Sul­phur, char­coal and salt­pe­tre to you and me – the ingre­di­ents of what this future world calls the “1 Lit­tl 1”. Their soci­ety is about to take its first steps on the road that leads first to gun­pow­der and explo­sives, then even­tu­al­ly to atom bombs. It seems humankind is sim­ply too clever for its own good.

Hoban’s cre­ation of a new lan­guage or dialect in the nov­el is a great achieve­ment. At first, the dif­fi­cul­ty of read­ing is a bar­ri­er between you and the text. But grad­u­al­ly the lan­guage draws you into a new world, one that is also dis­turbing­ly famil­iar. Let me give you a sam­ple of his writ­ing. Here’s a char­ac­ter telling Walk­er how the knowl­edge of mak­ing gun­pow­der can­not now be sup­pressed:

“You can get jus as dead from a kick in the head as you can from the 1 Lit­tl 1 but it’s the nature of it gets peo­ple as cit­ed. I mean your foot is all ways on the end of your leg innit. So if youre going to kick some 1 to death it aint all that thrilling is it. This oth­er tho you’ve got to have the Nos. of the mix­ter then you’ve got to fynd your gready mints then you’ve got to do the mix­ing of the mix­ter and you’ve got to say the fis­sion­al seak­erts of the act befor you kil some body its all that chemis­tery and fizzics of it you see. Its some thing new.”

There’s a remark­able poet­ry and range in this arti­fi­cial lan­guage. The strug­gles of the boy-man Walk­er to under­stand the past of the world he has been born into echo our own attempts to cope with inno­va­tion and change in a world poised on the brink of self-destruc­tion. As Walk­er puts it, almost in despair:

“If you cud even jus see 1 thing clear the woal of whats in it you cud see every thing clear. But you nev­er wil get to see the woal of any thing youre all ways in the mid­dl of it liv­ing it or mov­ing thru it. Nev­er mynd.”

So that’s my rec­om­men­da­tion to you for the autumn: take a trip to Paris and buy a copy of Hoban’s bril­liant book. It worked for me.

[orig­i­nal­ly on MySpace]

Apolo­gies for my silence over the last cou­ple of weeks – the cause was a bad dose of the House Mov­ing Blues. But now that my inter­net provider has kind­ly decid­ed to recon­nect me to cyber-space…I’m back!  The expe­ri­ence of mov­ing home is every bit as trau­mat­ic as peo­ple tell you – and I don’t just mean that awful moment when you arrive at your new home to find that the toi­let is bro­ken, the sinks leak and the cen­tral heat­ing does­n’t work. (Yes, it was that bad.) 

No, for me what is worse is hav­ing your books and notes shut away in card­board-box lim­bo for weeks. For some­one who could locate any text on his shelves – despite the decep­tive appear­ance of chaos – after a momen­t’s thought, that real­ly is hell. It remind­ed me of a sto­ry about John Bet­je­man. A new assis­tant took it upon him­self to reor­gan­ise the poet­’s library while he was away. Bet­je­man returned to find his delight­ful­ly dis­or­dered shelves trans­formed into pris­tine alpha­bet­i­cal order. He was utter­ly appalled; noth­ing was where he expect­ed it to be. I don’t think the assis­tant stayed in his job very long. 

Still, at least Bet­je­man could see his books. But as one of my new neigh­bours remind­ed me, there is life after card­board box­es.  For the last few days I have been more pre­oc­cu­pied with DIY than Dooms­day Men – although plumb­ing cer­tain­ly has its apoc­a­lyp­tic moments. But the good news is that my book now has an Amer­i­can pub­lish­er – St Mar­t­in’s Press. So my Amer­i­can friends won’t have to make do with import­ed edi­tions!  Here in the UK, Dooms­day Men now has a cov­er, or at least a draft ver­sion of one. I saw it for the first time on Fri­day – an excit­ing although slight­ly fraught moment. After all, despite what peo­ple say, peo­ple do judge a book by the cov­er. But I think it’s great; it has a 50s, pulp fic­tion feel to it and giv­en the hours I spent read­ing old SF pulps and sto­ries that’s high­ly appro­pri­ate. I’ll share it with you soon. Watch this space…. 

I have to say, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing see­ing some­thing you’ve been work­ing on for the best part of three years grad­u­al­ly being trans­formed into an actu­al book, with a beau­ti­ful­ly designed cov­er and a com­pelling blurb. Final­ly, after all those hours in the library and late nights in front of the com­put­er, the dream has become real­i­ty. Now I just hope there will be some­one out there who wants to read it…

[orig­i­nal­ly on MySpace]