Just watched the first episode of Eleventh Hour with Rufus Sewell. Er, wow. Admittedly, biology isn’t one of my strong tracts, but the science in this, for once, held up pretty well. OK, it still wasn’t 100 % OK, but at least it didn’t have me screaming at the TV (as I did for pretty much every science fiction show I ever watched). Special points for NOT attempting defibrillation when the heart monitor flatlines, but instead doing what doctors actually do, ie CPR. Sure, there was nothing earth-shatteringly out of this world as regards the science (people trying to clone humans[1]), but it felt particularly realistic precisely for that reason.

Also, bonus points for actually having a scientist with a strong sense of ethics, which is a welcome change from all the people without scruples you see in TV shows–and for having him actually specialised in biology rather than being McGyver (I’m looking at you, Samantha Carter).

Later googled stuff, and found this article on IO9 about how the show gives science a bad name. Er, ok, I’m not sure why the strong reaction here. Without being over-alarmist, science does have good and bad sides, and I don’t see why the show shouldn’t be able to focus on the excesses of science applied blindly and without morals (there’s plenty of books and movies that present science like some kind of miracle, and this is no more realistic than the alarmist approach of Eleventh Hour ). And Jacob Hood not being in a lab? Given the guy’s sense of practical (trying to write down the plate number of a car by standing in front of it…), I’m thinking he has a PhD in theoretical science, and that if you give this guy a lab (ie one with dangerous products), he’d blow it up in no time.

Also, Rufus Sewell… totally yummy :=)

Please tell me it stays that good. Pretty please. I like the bit when I watch a science-y show and don’t scream at the TV. I really do.

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[1] The episode has the surrogate mothers of the clones dying of complications. And, yeah, I know that based on what we’ve done on animals and for IVF, we can suspect that the biggest problem with human cloning is going to get viable embryos rather than worrying about mothers dying in childbirth. But since we haven’t actually tried the whole thing on humans, I’m ready to buy that the cloning process could be less straightforward than we think. In any systems, there’s always some weird interactions, and I’ve seen weirder things than an egg with a reconstituted nucleus messing up the delicate balance of a pregnancy.

Went over to the supermarket to buy some celery. When I got to the tills, the cashier looked at the vegetable with a dubious air. He then turned to his colleague brandishing it and asked, “How much is that?” His colleague shrugged and said he had no idea what the thing was.

“It’s celery,” I pointed out.

He still looked very much bemused. After he found the barcode for it and I was in the process of paying for the shopping, he wanted to know if there was any use for it and what you actually did with this weird-looking veggie.

Clearly, celery isn’t as recognisable as carrots :=)

Wedding preparations continue apace. Various blog posts and interviews are being redacted.

On the minus side, I’ve written a grand total of 2 paragraphs of fiction, and stopped because I have wonderful characters but no plot. I dearly want to blow up something, but I suspect the correct solution is to go research the heck out of something (I had a similar problem when writing “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”, which solved itself when I decided the action was going to take place in a 19th-century mining town, and researched accordingly).

Oh, yeah, and the synopsis for Book 3 of Obsidian and Blood, having had the agent-go-ahead, is now in the hands of my editor. Temp title Master of the House of Darts, subject to editorial approval/my changing my mind/the weather.

Bookwise, I seem to make up for my lack of fiction writing by reading a lot: I finished The Cardinal’s Blades (fun, if not unforgettable) and a French SF by Gérard Klein, Le Temps n’a pas d’Odeur (Time has no smell). I ordered Dream of Red Mansions in a beautiful 4-volume edition (Foreign Press, the same Chinese publisher I got Three Kingdoms from), got myself a copy of Daniel Abraham’s Seasons of War (the only way to get The Price of Spring in paperback), and started on Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series (love the characters, in spite of fairly standard worldbuillding).