Still on deadline (3 novels due like NOW… and I keep getting distracted by some film scripts and graphic novels that I’m always adding to), so haven’t done much but sit and write. This is what I’ve been listening to — pretty random mix, no special order, and I’ll often hear an artist in here and then decide to put their entire album on instead.
Use Somebody Kings of Leon
All I need Air
Clair de lune Debussy
Guaranteed Eddie Vedder
Paparazzi Lady GaGa
Sex On Fire Kings of Leon
High and Dry Radiohead
No Surprises Marissa Nadler
Best Friends Amy Winehouse
Bittersweet Symphany The Verve
We Are The People Empire Of The Sun
New York Eskimo Joe
Ragoo Kings of Leon
Till I Collapse Eminem
Foolish Games Jewel
Who Knew Pink
No Surprises Radiohead
Cry Me A River Michael Buble
Gloomy Sunday Heather Nova
Mr. Pitiful Matt Costa
9 Crimes Damien Rice
How To Save A Life The Fray
All I Need Radiohead
Breathe Me Sia
Electric Feel MGMT
Running up that Hill Placebo
Good Life (ft. T-Pain) Kanye West
sinnerman (felix da housecat mix) Nina Simone
Paranoid Android Sia
Beware Of The Boys (ft. Punjabi MC) Jay-Z
On Call Kings of Leon
Shadow Of The Day Linkin Park
Videotape Radiohead
Home (feat. Jay-Z) Kanye West
Falling Slowly Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová
One U2
Love Stoned Justin Timberlake
Watch Over Me Bernard Fanning
Aint No Love Jay Z
I Want You Kings of Leon
The Last Day On Earth Kate Miller-Heidke
Elephant Damien Rice
Lucky Man The Verve
Somewhere Over The Rainbow Norah Jones
Night Drive Gotye
Let The Drummer Kick Citizen Cope
I Don’t Like Mondays Tori Amos
Nobody Sees Powderfinger
Everybody Hurts R.E.M
Walking On A Dream Empire Of The Sun
Blackout Muse
The Drugs Don’t Work The Verve
Breathe Me (Fourtet Remix) Sia
Every you every me(Single Mix) Placebo
Dream catch me Newton Faulkner
Signal Fire Snow Patrol
Heartbeats Jose González
Take A Bow Muse
Black Eyed Dog Nick Drake
Pruit Igoe & Prophecies The Philip Glass Ensemble
Last Request Paolo Nutini
Butterflies and Hurricanes Muse
Judas The Verve
I’m Yours Jason Mraz
blackbird Sarah McLachlan
Hallelujah Jeff Buckley
chocolate Snow Patrol
Time After Time (Acoustic) Norah Jones
Times They Are a Changing Bob Dylan
Pure Morning Placebo
The Sounds of Silence Simon and Garfunkel
In The House - In A Heartbeat John Murphy
99 Luft Balloons Nena
All I Wanna Do Is ‘Bang Bang’ And Take Your Moneys MIA
Mad World Gary Jules
Fix You Coldplay
The Metre Powderfinger
Fake Plastic Trees Radiohead
Rob Dougan - Clubbed To Death Rob Dougan
Steve Jobs, is there anything he can’t do?! Check it out:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
I’m busy wrapping up Fox 5 at the moment, so apologies for the delay in replying to the emails that have come through over Christmas — I’ll get to them asap. Thanks again for the feedback; it’s been great for me to hear how well LIQUID GOLD has been received… so far so good.
This year I have a busy publishing schedule. August we will see Fox 5 hit the shelves and it’s by far the fastest thriller I’ve written with the whole story fitting into a day so it can be pretty much read in real-time… if only the writing process went so quick. The first novel in my ALONE (teenage) series will appear in May, and its sequel comes out October. I’ve also contributed to some short story anthologies and serialised novels, starting with:
http://watchlistbook.net/
Happy reading, more soon.
JP.
My good American friend Allana Solo was around the other day so we recorded a little chat for this site, here’s the transcription:
AS: You wrote your teenage novel ALONE over a year ago?
JP: Yeah, and I’ve written one and a half Lachlan Fox novels since.
Is it still fresh in your memory?
Memory for me has nothing to do with time. It’s more about how and why I’ve stored the item away in my memory banks. When you have an emotional memory or sensational memory it comes back very, very easily if your mind is in tune, or your heart is in tune with a kind of call. Not to mention the trivial and mundane things that are vital to a writer, they’re an essential part of our toolbox. So I’d say I remember very precisely the writing process of ALONE, which was short but very intense. I remember the sensation of discovery, because it stays in you forever, especially with a character like Jesse. Even in FOX HUNT, the novel I wrote the first draft of in 2000 or 2001 or something like that — the dates I often can’t remember, nor the back-breaking hours at the keyboard tapping away to flesh out the scenes — it’s the story beats themselves I can remember, the breakthrough moments, and the magical sensation of creating that’s what’s always there. An afterglow of creation. It’s like each novel has been a little piece of my life, a little snapshot of where I was and how I saw the world in that moment.
Did you rely on your own memories form when you were Jesse’s age — he’s 16 in ALONE, yeah?
Yeah, and it was a great exercise in bringing back pivotal memories, a first kiss or learning to drive, that sort of thing. Something has to recall it, a trigger in every day life that may come along every now and then, but working on this book has been to immerse myself back in that time, with those moments. And I can say that being a teenager a second time around isn’t any easier — all the emotions are so raw and new intense in that period. You remember the sensation, even though there’s something that’s beyond time, and as an author that’s what you catch. You re-create the moment, because you catch with the sensation, with that sensory memory.
Where’s ALONE at now?
Editing the Australian edition, just about to send the finished draft out to my overseas literary and film agents. First project I’ve been involved with where publishers, film production companies, and book industry people have been asking well in advance about it — I mean, the book is still taking form in the editing room and I have all these people asking if they can read it — it’s crazy but I guess such early buzz is a good thing, and hopefully it translates to an appreciative audience.
And what else are you doing — Fox 5?
Getting there, don’t remind me! It’s a mind f*ck at the moment. Actually, that’s not true, it’s JUST these last few days broken through that awful stage where it takes on it’s own life and propels itself to the finish line.
Where’s it set?
France, mainly. It was going to be Istanbul and then somewhere on the Med coast but a character in the book who was a real life person compelled me to start off in France.
Real life?
Yeah, Paris is where he died, so it’s integral to the story.
Any clues as to who he was?
That would give away too much - this book ain’t out for about a year! How about this… he was a Russian diplomat, and his diary serves as a MacGuffin to the story - it’s what sets it in motion and propels them to the first act climax and to what they’re all really after. That said, perhaps what Fox has been really after is right next to him through the whole story…
Kate?
Yeah. It’s fun to write a love story over what is now a 3 book arc –
Separated by BLOOD OIL.
Exactly! Glad to see you’ve been paying attention.
And what’s this something that they’re after?
You won’t get it out of me today. Let’s just say it’s something key to the make up of America as we know it. I read a few good books on the history of the US and I’m always fascinated by the purchases and cessation of land that would eventually be the make up of the USA: California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada ceded from Mexico in 1848, Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 pretty much doubled the size of the US. So, somewhere in all that is a trilling tale, and that’s what I’m exploring through Fox now.
You’ve written about France before…
Yeah, a little bit in PATRIOT ACT. This time Paris is a central character.
What does the city mean to you?
I think you get attached to a place because you either have a personal history with it or you’re fascinated by it for some reason or other. You have memories with it, thoughts that may be yours or someone else’s, some kind of ideal of what it could be like. Paris has plenty of such thoughts and memories for me. Going back to Jesse’s teenage story and beyond, whether it’s the first kiss, or the first split-up, or the first betrayal, the first job… you remember them as turning points somehow. And Paris, or any city where you are when you are going through those things, becomes sort of the map of your heart. And so as I’m writing, I’m in tune with those memories, with those sensations. This time for Fox it’s as much a love story as it is a race against the clock for America’s — the whole book fits neatly into a single, frenetic, day.
So you’re saying that in your head there’s an emotional map of a city that overlaps with the street map?
Yeah. While I’m writing I have street maps of Paris and France and of course Google maps too — mine’s full of little pins on the map and highlighted routes where they’re going, all locations with several meanings — one of which is the Fox/Kate love story.
How do you fell about writing about overseas settings, like Paris or New York?
I believe you need distance to write about somewhere, to see it more precisely, and be interested in writing about it. I remember a quote from Victor Hugo, which I think about from time to time although I may have bastardised it a little: “The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong, but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.” Having experienced the whole world as a foreign land I occasionally want to settle, and while I feel at home here in or near Melbourne I also have that feeling in New York, and France and Italy have some places that I find very appealing.
Through Fox and Jesse they see these places in a similar fashion to how I see them. I wanted full involvement with the world, in some way, and the ability to cease observing from time to time and this, it seemed to me, required a solid footing geographically, this required belonging. And what belonging seemed to mean was perceiving oneself as so intrinsically a part of something — village, nation, community — that to be constantly wondering about it would be like questioning the necessity of your heart. I’m not sure if that’s intrinsically a guy thing or not? Anyway, in leaving the US, Fox leaves a place in which had begun to reconcile some of the relationships between himself and a place. Fox has spent a few years now as a foreigner. Granted, being Australian in the United States is not as strange as being an Aussie in Russia, or in the mountains of Afghanistan, but it does entail constantly being reminded of one’s origins and of one’s foreignness. And to this extent one has to make oneself feel at home whereas when you are a native, you are at home, you don’t have to contemplate your being quite so much, you don’t have to act like a one-man country, an island nation, a self-governing overseas dominion.
Just for one day?
Fox 5 spans one day, but he’s been in country a little longer, with Kate and Al. By then end of the book… he may not return to New York.
Got a title?
Yes, but it’s secret for now. Actually, it has ’secret’ in the three work title. That’s all you get.
So at the end of LIQUID GOLD, when Fox is on his on his BMW motorbike and rides off into the sunset –
Don’t give the ending away!
Readers will know that he lives — you’re writing the sequel. Anyway, he’s riding off and these bad guys in Umbra are out there looking for him and Kate and their man Babich — what happens with that?
That all comes to a head, in Paris. I thought about having Fox squeeze in a little hiatus from saving the world, you know, him and his bike headed west living the Easy Rider life, the life of outlaws, freedom, dust and bourbon. The America of Brando, of Jim Morrison and Dennis Hopper; the America of the sixties and seventies, of movie posters on adolescent bedroom walls. It was tempting to put a little break in there, maybe have it flashback in the book or referenced or something, and for me it was tempting because like so much of Fox’s adventures it contrasts nicely to my experience my experiences: of never-ending graduate school, of home ownership and taxes and jobs involving desks and coffee and consumer concerns. Yeah, I’ve been my own nation the past four or so years as a full-time novelist, but I’m still surrounded by bluepill-popping people who have traded in their version of an Australian or American dream for a reality more akin to those people plugged into The Matrix. Becoming a novelist I took that red pill and I’m discovering with every page I write just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
But every now and then, man, if only you’d taken that bluepill!
Oh yeah, the blissful ignorance of illusion versus embracing the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasant, truth of reality of the redpill! But I was too aware, have been forever, that I want to know more and do more. Novels and the post-grad study are my exploration for now. Fox lives in the States but it’s not America as increasingly defined by Gap or Starbucks, by Idol and 2 1/2 Men, the America of commuters, computers, and the therapy and firearms to make it all bearable. He’s his own island (hence he literally moved from Christmas Island when we first met him way back when, and now that larger island of Manhattan… maybe he’ll end up home one day a long time from now, in that big island content of Australia) and though he’s surrounded by those inside the white-collar gilded cage, the urban middle class America where people were tied to desks and tied down by the debt, he’s been surrounded by so much closeness to death that he’s attune to life in a way that’s beyond most of us. Too may of us in America or in our Little America of Australia have lost sight of that adventure. That said, I think this touches on something that has made the Fox books so successful — that the issues are so readily identifiable to the world around us and Fox gets to do and say things that we want someone out there doing as we maybe feel that our government isn’t doing it for us or because we’ve lost some confidence in our nation’s military and intelligence capabilities. I think this is ultimate strength of Fox series, in terms of what sets it apart from the other thrillers out there, that they reside in the sense that the story really exists — we have a real identifiable man being chased while he’s pursuing some illusive truth that’s important to all of us — with a strong contemporary edge, it’s all happening on the page in a world with stories that seem like they’re ripped from tomorrow’s actual headlines.
Who’s his closest literary antecedent?
He has a few. Way back in high school Henry Lawson’s Jack Mitchell provided a skeleton for his character –
You a Lawson fan?
No. Barbara Baynton is my Aussie lit hero, she was just a phenomenal writer, really the writer of that time, but back to Fox!
Ok.
So, Mitchell because he was a successful persona rather than a fully-developed character, and I love that aspect or writing where the reader creates a bit of their own character and story — it helps us put some of ourselves in the character’s shoes.
You give them just enough.
Yeah. So, Mitchell, like Fox, is a man on his own except when he finds a mate to travel with — he’s firmly related to the Romantic outcast figure of The Wanderer. Aragorn is another one. Fox kind of I plays it like a guy who is beating himself up a lot, and as capable as he is, it’s like he’s almost trying to ignore every aspect of the confident hero of the story — he’s always searching for some form of identify and belonging, some kind of redemption from and for himself and atonement for his sins. Other characters that were influential for Fox were Siddhartha (and Govinda for Al Gammaldi), and Rorschach from Watchmen. In the tradition of James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, and Dirk Pitt, Lachlan Fox has a short-lived military background as it gives him a handy skill set.
The protagonist in ALONE, Jesse, has a few literary models and his closest literary parentage would probably be Frodo.
That’s interesting…
I can’t explain that further as it may give away too much of where his character goes in future books.
Back to your post grad stuff –
I’ve just taken six months leave from my PhD to write my next 3 novels. So back to the books come April 2010, and I’ll wrap it up next year.
Right. After completing your M.A., you did some teaching at university in what, creative writing?
Kind of. I did indeed teach a couple classes per semester for a few years, in the M.A. Writing course that I completed with high honours –
Summa cum laude.
We’re not that big on Latin in Aus, but yeah, I guess that’s right. Anyway, this Masters degree is in ‘writing’ rather than ‘creative writing’, so it was a broad coanvas with as much or more non-fiction (journalism, writing history, essay writing, etc) content as fiction (scripts, prose, etc). The M.A. was via coursework, not by thesis.
So the goal is not to produce a novel at the end of it.
Correct. Weekly work, say an essay in response to the lecture material and tute question, and then a major assignment for each subject at the end of the 12 week semester.
Dare I ask, why write thrillers?
I’ve answered this so many times already… ‘thriller’ is such a loose term, and critics and others will apply it to anything that’s exciting. You have to work on each scene and each story beat on so many textual levels, and I love that aspect. It’s vital that the thriller writer knows what he or she is doing and has a clear image of what they’re trying to achieve — I always know the sense of emotions I want to elicit in the climax and coda. The thriller is based upon a relationship between a protagonist and an antagonist, in which the protagonist is somehow the victim of this villain — we always work towards that obligatory scene where the protag has to face off the antag. I love exploring themes and issues and people involved — human beings are angel and devil, and a most are a perfect balance of the two, and novels can look deeply into these extremes. With human beings you never know from one day to the next which you’re going to get: on Monday they build Notre Dame cathedral and on Tuesday, Auschwitz, and which is it going to be? And you only need to pick up a newspaper from one day to the next, and you see this constant manifestation of the deep evil in human beings. And what all of us try to do, of course, is deny it exists in us. Storytelling, when it is art, is not about the middle ground of human experience, we go through the middle ground of human experience to get to where we’re going, and where we’re going is to a story climax that will be at the limit of human experience. And art, which has the power to illuminate these dark corners of human nature, can make us understand that it’s us, and it’s in our nature. It doesn’t mean that we’re evil ourselves, that we’re going to be overcome by our own evil nature, but it’s always there, and the power is there, and as long as we understand that and are aware of it, then we can keep ourselves in balance and go round being a decent human being. Fox has that struggle on a daily basis but I like to think I’m painting a picture of a guy who’s getting it together more and more with every outing.
Will you always write contemporary settings?
For now that’s what interests me. Director Paul Greengrass said of contemporary relevance: “Film shouldn’t be disenfranchised from the national conversation. It is never too soon for cinema to engage with events that shape our lives.” I feel exactly the same of novels: they are part of our greater discussion as a society, people read them and talk about them and study them for good reasons.
You must do so much research.
Yes but that’s boring to talk about. I read a lot, I talk to plenty of people, I travel with my eyes open. I take plenty of notes. That’s the short version.
Okay, what about weaponry?
Research-wise? Well, I make sure I have the rights units, say the FBI’s HRT or the Secret Service guys or 10th Mountain, using the right gear.
I noticed Fox used an FN Five-Seven pistol in the last book –
Or was it BLOOD OIL?
I think it was LIQUID GOLD.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t have a gun at all in that book.
Shouldn’t you know these details?
You’d think. The FN is a semi-automatic pistol popular with SWAT teams, that has armour-piercing capabilities because of the unique type of round it fires. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, used an FN Five-Seven in the bloodbath at the Texas military base. Hasan had bought the weapon legally at a gun store close to Fort Hood in August and practiced at a nearby shooting range. Terrible.
Should those weapons be banned?
For civilian use, yes. What’s the need? You’re minding your own business and come up against a guy who’s wearing body armour, you’re in more trouble than an FN pistol can get you out of.
Okay. You’ve written a bit since the last couple Fox books… I see you have a whole shelf dedicated to short story anthologies you’ve been published in over the years.
Yeah, and the beauty is that I’ve had maybe eight short stories published but some have appeared in five or six books, so it looks like more work than it is! I only write two short stories per year — they take too long. There’s this great line and I forget who wrote it, maybe Hemingway or Twain, but he wrote a letter to a friend and prefaced or ended it by the line: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
If only we had more time to chat…
True, but I’ve got some books to write.
Time to reveal that project I was involved with… THE COPPER BRACELET - the sequel to the Audiobook of the Year, THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT – is coming Oct. 29! If you can’t wait, you can download the first chapter for free right now. Just go to www.audible.com/copper (Registration required. No credit card needed.)
Sixteen of the world’s greatest thriller writers collaborated on The Copper Bracelet. Once again, as he did with The Chopin Manuscript, Jeffery Deaver wrote the first chapter. Then, each successive author wrote a chapter in turn, finally returning it to Deaver to complete this thrilling sequel.
A peaceful picnic in the French countryside explodes in violence. A mysterious assassin hisses a deadly threat. And events are set in motion that could propel India and Pakistan down the road to nuclear confrontation.
Two years after the events of the “Audiobook of the Year” The Chopin Manuscript, former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton and his Volunteers once again must crack a secretive conspiracy that not only threatens their lives, but the stability of the world. Their race against time will take them from London to the U.S. to Russia and beyond. And at the heart of it all is one question: what is the secret of the Copper Bracelet?
We wrote the book last summer (well, it was summer for me, winter for the other novelists involved) and it was my job to put together the penultimate chapter. It’s a fun read, and it’s first coming out as an audio book, narrated by Alfred Molina, and then as a published book titled WATCHLIST in January 2010.
The Copper Bracelet was written by:
Jeffery Deaver
Gayle Lynds
David Hewson
Jim Fusilli
John Gilstrap
Joseph Finder
Lisa Scottoline
David Corbett
Linda Barnes
Jenny Siler
David Liss
P.J. Parrish
Brett Battles
Lee Child
Jon Land
James Phelan
I’ll be in Newcastle over the next few days for the NYWF, speaking on a range of topics. Fox more info go to:
www.youngwritersfestival.org
Each week I’ll get one of my friends (whoever comes around the house) to interview me for a couple minutes. Eventually we may video it. Here’s the first.
Interview with JP by his good mate Pete Venkman.
PV: You just had the TV on when I came in. What were you watching?
JP: 30 Rock. I love it, can’t get enough.
Watch much TV?
No, DVD’s of my favourite shows, mainly. Entourage - those boys are so much fun. 30 Rock, hilarious, especially Baldwin’s character, and I’m totally in love with and in awe of Tina Fey.
Mad Men, for the women. Man… those women. I thank that show for taking on the boxy fashions you see on so many girls today and bringing back that old-school feminine silhouette. TV; is there anything it can’t do?
Do you get nervous?
Do I seem nervous?
I mean at public events?
Yeah, although I’ve learned to combat that by talking at a library, school, or writer’s group every week or so. About the most nervous I’ve been was a couple years back when Bob Levinson told me on the day on an awards banquet for the publishing industry that I he was going to get me up on stage to do something. That was it, no clues as to what it might be. I thought I was going to have to sing a number in front of a thousand of my peers. Thankfully he just had me read a message out from Mayor Bloomberg –
This was in New York?
Yeah. And then I made it into a ribbing of Bob, which I later found out went down especially well as he’d been having digs at all the guys who write for James Patterson – those digs had either gone over my head or I’d been too preoccupied with fear to hear to him.
Do you see your career in terms of having a strategy?
What?
A career plan.
I never really thought of having a strategy, or planned that further than a year or two ahead. I probably should have one. I mean, I’ve already been doing this for several years and I still feel like a newbie.
How many Fox books will there be?
21.
Really?
How do I know?
You don’t know?
Why, should I?
What?
Huh?
Okay. How many James Bond stories were there?
14, I think.
So, will you do more than Fleming - you certainly started out younger.
Do more?
Books.
How do I know?
Right. Okay. I see you a little of him in your books. More le Carré though.
Yeah, sounds right. Look, I see being an author to be a life sentence. Flemming died early but le Carré is still going. You do this job until you’re in the ground.
That simple?
Yep.
Religious?
Next.
Come on…
No, not really. I’m not an atheist. Agnostic, I suppose, am with most things.
Why are we here?
At my dining table?
Humanity.
Because Shakespeare made it so.
Who’s career do you want?
Thom Yorke.
I mean literary.
Harper Lee. Or Thomas Pynchon. They’ve almost never been seen. I like that. And I’m envious of John Milton’s self-imposed exile/reading time he undertook after college. I want to do that - go to a country house for a few years and do nothing but read books.
Any regrets on making the switch from architecture to writing?
I had some good times studying architecture and working for a firm, but the great thing about life is that we don’t have to just stay with what we’re doing. We can go into other areas of ourselves, and novel writing was my ultimate passion. Now, architecture is an interest and hobby.
Different creative process?
Yes, in terms of having total and final creative say, which resides with the novelist but not the architect. Architects have clients, even if it’s your own house you’re constrained by council laws and perhaps money and the limits of engineering. Novels don’t have that. Both skill sets are quite spatial though, in terms of each is made to be lived in. Both require using many tools, and are equally refined; you start big in scope and by the end have to work on the details, where it’s like working with a watchmaker’s tiny tools.
That reminds me of Dr Manhattan from Watchman.
Because his dad was a watchmaker?
Yeah – was he?
I think so – in the book I remember something like that.
You like the movie?
Loved it. Loved the book more, but the movie surpassed my expectations.
Would you write a film script?
Maybe. I’m booked out with four more novels to write over the next 18 months, so I might need to do something completely different after that. The real beauty of screenwriting is that it’s skeletal — you know that there are going to be all these other collaborators who will fill it in for you, like the actors and director have done more thinking about the characters than you have. Downside is that it’s a completely new art to me, so it’ll be a slow exploratory process to write the first few scripts. It’s a shorter process, and ultimately, I think, a fun one, as writing my teen book ALONE proved to be. We should all be writing screenplays and children’s books; I think we would have much happier lives.
Happier?
“To write is to sit in judgment on oneself,” Ibsen inscribed on the flyleaf of one of his books. I think that applies mostly to novels. So I judge my internal monologue every day, have done for years, and it would be nice to have some distance from that for a bit. Not yet though, deadlines ahead…
You’ve just turned 30.
Getting old, yeah.
Learned anything?
There are no asterixis in this life, and it’s not as simple as saying “the only thing that counts is the final result”.
What does that mean?
Enjoy the process. It doesn’t matter how hard it was to get there, all the trouble is worth the journey whatever result, and we all end up in… well, maybe not the same place, but I think the same state. I’ll tell you when I get to the finish line.
Zombies would most likely wipe out humanity if they really existed, claim scientists.
Civilisation would most likely be finished in the event of a zombie outbreak, claim Canadian mathematicians who have calculated the possible devastation caused by an attack by the fictional monsters.
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent, Telegraph UK.
Published: 4:11PM BST 18 Aug 2009
Using models developed to calculate the effects of more plausible pandemics, the team from the University of Ottawa have discovered that unless man struck back quickly and aggressively then they would be doomed.
The scientific paper, which is published in a book “Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress”, looks at an attack by the undead creatures, who infect the living with a bite.
In their study, titled When Zombies Attack!, the researchers picked “classic” slow-moving zombies such as those in Dawn of the Dead as models and divided humanity into three: the living, zombies and the “removed” – zombies who had been killed by decapitation.
They concluded there was no point trying to cure those infected or live with them - the best thing was to destroy them as quickly as possible.
“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly,” they write in the book
“While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
“As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”
Joe Imad, the study’s co-author, said: “If you look at it in a more realistic way, zombies are about the same as any other major infectious disease, they get out and we try to eliminate them.
“Modelling zombies would be the same as modelling swine flu, with some differences for sure, but it is much more interesting to read.”
If zombies attacked, what would you do?
JP says: there’s some interesting comments on their site, go check it out:
FROM: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6049924/Zombies-would-most-likely-wipe-out-humanity-if-they-really-existed-claim-scientists.html
A while back I wrote a post here where I pointed out my disappointment at how many authors and publishing peeps don’t know the history of their profession - eg what novels were groundbreaking and how were they received at the time, etc. Of course, the same is true for any profession, and life, for history surely teaches us to move forwards and not make the same mistake twice. Surely… At least I like to think so, but unfortunately we continue to repeat mistakes of the past - which means we don’t progress as we should.
A geopolitical example of this is in the global reaction to the Kargil War of 1999, where Pakistan invaded India and then vehemently denied it to the global media, just as Russia did with their incursion into Georgia in 2008. It’s disappointing the world does not have leaders who stand up to such blatant bullshit but hey, local economic security comes before foreign rape and murder in most politician’s constituencies.
I’m reminded of all this as we continue to see states in the US quarrel over access to fresh water. For the history lesson, here’s a little excerpt from my latest novel LIQUID GOLD:
… “Harry Truman once said that when Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel
over water in the Arkansas River they don’t call out the National
Guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring a case
before the Supreme Court of the United States and abide by
the decision. There isn’t a reason in the world why it can’t be
done internationally. And the key to access is control – who has
their hand on the tap.” …
And here is a New York Times piece from this week:
August 16, 2009
River Basin Fight Pits Atlanta Against Neighbors
By SHAILA DEWAN
ATLANTA — The residents of the economic engine of the South, as they like to call this comparatively gleaming and rapidly expanding state capital, have always suspected that they are the objects of resentment from their more rural neighbors.
Now they are certain of it.
A recent court defeat has left Atlanta howling that its enemies, including Alabama and Florida, are trying to choke off the city’s prosperity, if not out of sheer spite then at least the misguided notion that jobs and money would flow to them instead. The conflict is the timeworn rural-versus-urban enmity writ large, a battle over water that has pitted Atlanta against its neighbors in and out of Georgia.
“The only motivation is political,” Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, said of the fight. “We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”
Ostensibly, the war among the three states is about a river basin that supplies the taps of 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta before it flows down the Alabama-Georgia state line and into the Florida Panhandle. Each state says the others are demanding too much water. But many experts say there is no actual scarcity — the system, managed properly, could meet the needs of users along the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, including power companies, farmers and oystermen.
Still, the three states have spent nearly 20 years battling over the allocation of the water. And now, no matter their motive, Alabama and Florida have the law squarely on their side. On July 17, Judge Paul A. Magnuson of Federal District Court agreed with their argument that supplying water to Atlanta was not an authorized use of Lake Sidney Lanier, the federal reservoir northeast of the city at the headwaters of the river basin.
For decades, Judge Magnuson ruled, the Army Corps of Engineers had illegally managed the Buford Dam, which created the lake beginning in 1956, to provide the Atlanta region with drinking water. He said Congress built the dam only for navigation, flood control and hydropower. The 97-page ruling largely faults the corps for overstepping its authority but also suggests that Georgia knew for decades that Congressional approval was needed.
Govs. Charlie Crist of Florida and Bob Riley of Alabama, both Republicans, hailed the decision.
“Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted, whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less,” Mr. Riley said.
After the court’s ruling, he added, “this massive illegal water grab will be coming to an end.”
Alabama officials say that they are not trying to prevent Atlanta from growing but that they want the city to pay for the infrastructure that growth requires. In 1948, the mayor of Atlanta declined to contribute money to the construction of the Lake Lanier dam, arguing that the city would not need the water.
Atlanta has responded with a major public relations offensive, painting the city as a good steward that has carried out a water plan, treats its sewage until it is drinkable and, during the recent drought, put conservation measures in place when downstream users did not. (Environmentalists concede these points but say that they are half-hearted at best and that the metropolitan area could save millions of gallons through more aggressive conservation.)
Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, a Republican who is not normally an Atlanta ally in intrastate battles over rural and urban priorities, has recently begun to defend its water use. Mr. Perdue cites figures showing that the city’s net water use is less than 1 percent of the river basin’s water flow when it reaches the Florida-Georgia border. At that point in the basin, the minimum water flow maintained by the corps is 5,000 cubic feet per second, compared with 750 in Atlanta.
Mr. Perdue argues that the real goal of Florida, in suing for more water under the Endangered Species Act, is to protect the fishing industry in the Apalachicola Bay. And he says that while Alabama has argued for better navigation, it really wants water to cool power plants. Neither goal is an authorized use of Lake Lanier, and neither, Atlantans say, is as crucial as their own needs.
“What happens in metro Atlanta and Georgia doesn’t hurt either of those states,” said Pat Stevens, chief of the environmental planning division for the Atlanta Regional Council, blaming Georgia’s opponents for the many failed efforts at negotiations over the years. “But if their goal is to hurt metro Atlanta and Georgia, they could achieve that. I always just thought they never had a reason to come to an agreement.”
If that is true, they have less reason now.
Judge Magnuson did not order the spigots shut off immediately, nor did he say that the system could never be used for drinking water. Instead, he said he would allow three years for the corps to receive approval from Congress to use the lake for that purpose.
Several members of Congress have said they will not act unless the three states make a deal. But Georgia’s hand is now far weaker than it was before the ruling.
“Why didn’t they go to Congress for approval 20 years ago?” asked Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental organization. “It was obvious that this was a gamble to say well, the corps gave it to us so we get to keep all this water. There’s no insurance policy in that.”
Instead of taking a conciliatory approach, though, Mr. Perdue has vowed to “fight to the death,” accused his opponents of hypocrisy and pointedly brought up a 150-year-old Supreme Court decision declaring the Chattahoochee River to be on Georgia’s side of the state line. Mr. Perdue is hoping to find allies among other states where reservoirs built for other purposes are used for drinking water.
The governor has also talked about building reservoirs and is planning to appeal the decision, although even his allies say a successful appeal is unlikely.
Mr. Riley has engaged in theatrics of his own. When Mr. Perdue appointed Mike Garrett, the chief executive officer of Georgia Power, to work with Congress on the water issue, Mr. Riley warned the power company’s parent, Southern Company, to stay neutral. He did not mention that Alabama Power, another subsidiary of Southern Company, has been a party to the lawsuit for years.
Seeking Congressional authorization would be a tricky matter for Georgia, whose delegation is outflanked by Alabama and Florida combined, both in size and influence, though all three states are led by Republicans and lack firepower in the Democratic leadership that controls Congress.
Representative John Lewis, a Democrat from Atlanta and the senior member of the Georgia delegation, said members of Congress would become more involved in negotiations among the states. “It would be our hope,” Mr. Lewis said, “that the three states and the members of Congress from the three states would work it out, and if not we will take it up at the Congressional level.”
One of Mr. Perdue’s goals, meanwhile, is to go back to the negotiating table. To show his enthusiasm, on July 30 he sent a letter, which he made public, to Governors Crist and Riley, listing 40 possible dates for a meeting.
They are both still reviewing their schedules.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16water.html?_r=1&ref=earth&pagewanted=print
Heard this the other day:
ELIZABETH JACKSON: There’s been speculation for some time that future wars will be fought over water.
Now a study published in the journal Nature has raised concern that the issue of water resources could make India’s already-fraught relationship with Pakistan even worse.
The NASA study shows that aquifers in north-western India, bordering Pakistan, are being depleted at a much greater rate than they’re being replenished.
Carly Laird reports.
CARLY LAIRD: India’s north-western region is known as the country’s breadbasket. And if the rate of groundwater depletion there is anything to go by, there’s a lot of food production happening.
Matt Rodell is a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in the United States. He and his colleagues have been using satellites to determine how much water is being depleted from below the Earth’s surface.
MATT RODELL: One of the places that stands out is north-western India, where there’s sort of a bullseye of red, where red is like a decrease in water storage.
And so we knew that north-western India has had issue with using too much groundwater and peoples’ wells going dry and people needing to find clean sources of water.
We also knew that that was one of the most heavily irrigated areas of the world for cropland irrigation, so our hypothesis was that the groundwater’s being depleted due to pumping for irrigation and so we decided to take a little closer look.
CARLY LAIRD: They found that between 2002 and 2008, the north-western region of India had lost over 100 cubic kilometres of groundwater. That’s double the capacity of India’s surface water reservoir.
MATT RODELL: And we know that the really heavy irrigation of the land began in the 1960s when they had what they called a green revolution, where they tried to increase agricultural output by using Western agricultural practices such as irrigation and synthetic fertilisers.
CARLY LAIRD: And he sees this as a potential problem for India’s north-western neighbour.
MATT RODELL: Potentially if India’s using a lot of water and drawing down the water table and it affects Pakistan, that could irritate the tensions that are already there.
CARLY LAIRD: Water is something that’s already been a source of conflict between the two countries. Dr Sandy Gordon is a Professor at the ANU’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security.
SANDY GORDON: India has built an enormous hydro dam on the Chennai River. Now Pakistan claims that this has drastically reduced the flow of the river and Pakistani farmers are saying that this also depleted the surrounding groundwater.
So this has become a serious cause for concern between India and Pakistan.
CARLY LAIRD: And he thinks the problem could escalate.
SANDY GORDON: As water is depleted in recent years I think it’s going to come much more to the fore in terms of its sources of tension between the two.
CARLY LAIRD: But hydrologist and NASA scientist, Matt Rodell, argues the Indian Government should actively try to prevent conflict from arising by encouraging farmers to change their practices.
MATT RODELL: Rice is one of the major crops in this region and rice requires a huge amount of water to grow. They could also try to implement more efficient irrigation techniques.
And hopefully the Indian Government will create incentives for them to do that sort of thing.
ELIZABETH JACKSON: Matt Rodell, a hydrologist at NASA, ending that report from Carly Laird.
FROM: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2656906.htm
Nature article is at: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090812/full/460789a.html
Interesting post by Shekhar: http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2009/08/why_are_we_hidi.htm#more
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