The Art of Seduction

 

During the pandemic I read The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, a researcher by trade who’d worked in the publishing industry. The book itself was, as you’d expect, very well researched. Full of real-life historical examples from all over the world and from a wide range of time periods, 48 Laws puts forward this series of rules for attaining power. It describes how to enact them, and what pitfalls await when you transgress them. 

I started to notice these laws had been applied by managers over the years. I figured Greene might be onto something. He may not be a psychologist / sociologist himself, but he seems well-versed in the area. I whipped through it in a few weeks. 

Greene may not be a business owner, nor a psychologist, but he’s a good researcher with incredible worldwide historical knowledge. He also seems to understand people, one of the key skills that can move you forward in any sphere in life. Delving into his bibliography, I noticed he’d written The Art of Seduction. I really wanted to see what his take was in particular. How strong was Greene’s game? 

I eventually bought it in January 2025. This book was the same size as The 48 Laws – around 450 big pages with small text – and I hammered through the first one really quickly, so surely… 

This time, the book started to feel like a huge slog instead of a rollercoaster of human behaviour. The level of detail seemed so intense and so broad, that it was difficult to imagine how to apply the stories to my own life: especially when the examples range from Prince Albert courting Queen Victoria in 1800s England, and Casanova rampaging through 1700s Europe. How does this apply to a 40-something clumsy bachelor stumbling through overpriced cocktail bars in contemporary Manchester? I really had to work hard to pluck out the specific advice being dished out within the stories. 

This gets even harder when Greene uses biblical passages and passes them off as fact. Also, Greene questionably celebrates some eyebrow-raising individuals. Revered seducer Casanova courted a 17-year-old when he was 21. (But then, look who’s talking. Didn’t I?) A lengthy passage celebrates renowned seducer and actor Erroll Flynn, who in 1942 was tried for the statutory rape of a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old. (He was acquitted, but still.) Along with cocaine addiction, malaria and tuberculosis, Flynn was much more of a mess than his heroic Hollywood image would suggest. 

The examples tend to come from people who are either fictional or already dead. There are no interviews with living, contemporary renowned seducers. There are no references to Neil Strauss (author of The Game) or David DeAngelo (of Double Your Dating) or any other big names in that field. An interview with someone like Billy Bob Thornton – successful actor but regular looking bloke – would have been highly insightful, seeing as he bagged Tomb Raider herself Angelina Jolie, and had her visibly hanging off his every word.

 

Smattered through the weighty book, there are moments of genuine insight about keeping things light-hearted, keeping an environment close knit, avoiding hesitancy or familiarity, and essentially avoiding fretting over yourself by focussing your attention on the other person. There are nuggets that are genuinely helpful, I guess to both genders. 

Essentially, though, the book is lacking that modern-day, real-world relevance. How can I use this smorgasbord of advice when I’m stood in a swanky cocktail bar in Manchester talking to a semi drunk girl who I can hardly hear over the bass? How exactly do you ‘use a spiritual lure’ in a journaling event in a vegan restaurant? There are no breakdowns of different environments – the workplace, the club, the gym or other sports groups, the high street – all of which, I gather, need different approaches. 

In essence, the book reads more like a history of seduction attempts – fictional and factual - rather than an actual how-to guide. A lot of hard work (I spent about a year and a half reading it) for little payoff.

Bloody Social Worker

I work in a field of healthcare – you can Google to find more – and I’ve moved around between several offices over the past 18 years. At one of the offices I’d worked in, the staff told me that a former social worker who’d been part of the team had left to write a book, an autobiography called ‘Bloody Social Worker.’ I bought it for a Secret Santa event that we were having, but due to some confusion I ended up keeping the book. 

I read it recently. As someone who’s on the paperwork side of things, I don’t get to deal with the social work patients face to face, but I do deal with them over the phone. It’s always fascinating to hear of the more hands-on side of the field. Author Richard Wills details how he made a solid crack at what is basically an impossible job: supporting the town’s most vulnerable people under the Community Mental Health Team. 

What seems to be the over-arching theme of the book is the stress that comes with dealing with mentally ill patients for decade: the toll it takes on the mind and the body when you’re supporting people who are frequently delusional, usually in some discomfort, and occasionally violent. This stress, it can’t be denied, is only exacerbated by the drip-drip effect of 14 years of Tory cuts, meaning fewer staff, and hence a bigger workload. Unfortunately, Labour haven’t particularly alleviated that situation since they took over. Social Workers are, on average, lasting 6 years in their jobs, according to Skills for Care. Less funding means fewer positions, which means as workers leave the profession, they aren’t necessarily replaced, meaning in turn that the workload is distributed across the rest of the team. Increased stress for the workers, longer waiting times for the clients. 

It’s a clusterfuck. 

The upshot of this: social work requires getting your clients to ‘let their guard down’ to describe in enough detail, what the problems are that they’re facing. The clients are less likely to discuss their problems, which are frequently highly personal, if the rapport between the client and the worker hasn’t been developed because they don’t get enough contact time. 

You get the picture. It’s this disappointment, affecting all the clients, that – according to this book – led one service user to mail his dirty underwear to then-PM David Cameron in protest. 

A fascinating, funny and depressing book. It just needed a tad of editing here and there, including one typo I spotted. But it’s great that Wills has taken the time to illustrate the pressures that these public services are under and the value to society that CMHT teams across the country bring, and the improvements they could make, with the right funding.

The Laws of Human Nature

 

 

Author Robert Greene’s biggest book is The Laws of Human Nature, a 2018 investigation into human behaviour and the most effective way to handle the different people in your life. I started reading this 600-page beast in May last year and finished in March. I read a big chunk of it in a week on holiday, the first few chapters in Manchester airport waiting for a delayed flight. I’ve dipped in and out of it since then. 

In the above video, Greene summarises the book: people are who they are. There’s no point trying to change them, but you can change how you handle them. Since the book came out, we’ve had a worldwide pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout, a British change of government, 2 American political switch-ups, the Nova Festival attack and the genocide on Gaza. There have been a range of reasons for people to argue and, in some cases, fall out and never speak again. It’s been a frustrating few years, but again… people are who they are. 

It’s fitting that just as the book came out, the challenge of understanding human nature – people’s emotions, their pride and ego – became a steeper hill to climb. 

There’s an interesting passage on causes and cults: people banding together for one purpose or another. As I was reading it, I realised its descriptions were eerily similar to something I’d already experienced. In cults, people begin to act the same way as each other, then almost rub each other up the wrong way by being so similar. Alternately, people who are too different then try to fit a figurative square peg into a round hole by forming unworkable friendships through this group setting. This was exactly what I’d seen in certain men’s support groups in Greater Manchester – lonely, isolated people across the full spectrum of life, different backgrounds, incomes, IQs, EQs, all trying to connect, largely failing, but then allowing that environment of the men’s talking sessions to take over their whole lives and having very few meaningful interactions with anyone outside of the group. 

The book is full of valid advice, but there are some brow-furrowing moments. I don’t think Greene understands depression entirely, and this is surprising considering he’s had a stroke from which he recovered. I expect that would have impacted on his mental health. He also compares fictional biblical dreamer Joseph to historical philosopher Socrates. Separately, there’s a grammar error on p159. 

As much as Greene’s books are well-written, there’s an over-arching criticism to be made about all of them: he’s a researcher by trade. An author. He’s been in publishing since his 20s. He’s not a psychologist or sociologist. Nor has he credited anyone who is, who would have lent some authority to the text. 

Human nature is such a broad subject and the book is so lengthy that despite my interest in the subject I’m left wondering, what exactly was the intention of the book?

Law 1: Never Outshine the Master

In Robert Greene’s the 48 Laws of Power, his first law is ‘Never Outshine the Master.’ 

His example uses a 17th century French king, Louis XIV, and his finance minister Nicolas Fouquet who upstaged him. Fouquet ended up spending his remaining days in a mountainous, freezing prison in the Pyrenees. (Wikipedia tells a slightly different reason to Greene’s version, suggesting Fouquet’s networking and influence in society was a more aggravating factor. But hey, maybe that outshone the King too.) 

I’ve got a slightly more contemporary example. Some time at the end of the 2000s, I was training in a Mixed Martial Arts gym in Oldham. The instructor DB was known to be good at what he taught – his fighters usually won, and his lessons were packed with solid advice. If it transpired that DB didn’t know a specific thing, he’d go and look it up and incorporate it. We were drilling chokes in one session, and I used the word ‘trachea’ instead of ‘windpipe,’ off the cuff, and I seemed to be the only person in the room who knew the word. He started using the word during choke lessons not long after this. 

There was a kid training there who probably wasn’t even 18 yet. He’d apparently had a period of absence, and then rocked up one day at training with a largely unnecessary written note as to why he’d been off. This got him the nickname ‘Sicknote.’ He was young mentally too, and not particularly confident when he spoke, but when he did pipe up had a habit of doing so at the wrong moment. 

During an explanation of a particular move, Sicknote contradicted DB in front of the class. 

“Do you want to take over?” DB sarcastically asked him, pointing to a space in the mats. 

Sicknote did not. 

He was apparently training in MMA elsewhere as well. I was a similar height and build, so at DB’s gym I paired with him a couple of times. Twice, he changed up the movement that we were drilling to some other movement he'd learned elsewhere, which first off is a ballache when you have memory difficulties. It’s hard enough just learning one thing, without throwing in something else in the same round. More to the point, it’s rude. If you’re paying someone to teach you to do something, just do what they tell you to. They’re a martial arts INSTRUCTOR, not an ADVISOR. 

The second time this happened, DB pulled him up on it. Sicknote protested, claiming he was doing nothing wrong. DB went to the cash register, gave him his class fee back, and told him to leave the gym. Sicknote was gobsmacked, but complied. We never saw him again. 

The upshot: if they’re in charge, let them be in charge. Transgress this at your peril.

Comic Con Liverpool this week

Looking forward to this week. 

Jack Reacher creator Lee Child is signing at a sold-out event via Waterstones Deansgate on Tuesday. His brother Andrew is also in attendance. I was too late to get a ticket. 

I’ve received my tickets for Comic Con Liverpool, where on Saturday I’ll be meeting Doc from Back to the Future, Christopher Lloyd. It’s going to be great, Scott. It looks like there’s still some Sunday 11am tickets till available. Jump on this fast! Also in attendance: wrestler John Cena, Captain Marvel Brie Larson, Luis Guzman off Addams Family and Carlito’s Way, Boogie Nights / Austin Powers star Heather Graham and the female voices of South Park. Many more fill the stacked Roster. 

New men’s mental health group The Gathered Men has launched in Oldham, ‘for honest connection, grounded energy, and real conversation.’ Sadly, they last met in zionist Costa Coffee, so I’ll pass, thanks. Friday’s upcoming meeting is in the more palatable Black Sheep Coffee on Market St. 

Busy week.

Avery, Vegan Reading, Eye Pokes and Pizza

Filmmaker Roger Avery liked my tweet about his 2002 film The Rules of Attraction.

The Rules of Attraction. James Van Der Beek fresh from Dawson's Creek, pre-Justin Timberlake Jessica Biel, pre-Vampire Diaries Ian Somerhalder, a fading Eric Stolz, an aging Faye Dunaway, Thomas Ian Nicholas off American Pie and - for at least a second - DJ Paul Oakenfold. https://t.co/zzDGWd6IqJ

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) October 25, 2025

Went to a vegan alcohol-free bar to read a book. Hinterland in Manchester’s Northern Quarter hosted the Sober Silent Reading Club, a chance to sit in silence and read yet still be part of a community. Their principle for the event was to build a community without alcohol and companionship without communication. A relaxing evening. May be monthly. Check back. 

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey)

 

Ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to watch UFC 321 in Joshua Brooks. Good group of lads showed up. Tables were booked, but one of them was empty as the group hadn’t showed, so we had it. Small screen at the end of the table, nice tidy venue upstairs. Shame the main fight ended in a no contest due to accidental eye poke. House music DJ downstairs. Seemingly no charge to get in. good music. Went to Yes bar after this, which has 3 floors of music. Mostly house I think. Here’s the flyer: 

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BOUND ART BOOK FAIR (@boundartbookfair)

Went to Yes bar in Manchester after #ufc321 last night for eclectic electronica and pizza

[image or embed]

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 3:17 PM

 

Will be back in Yes soon.

Sober Silent Reading Club / UFC

Thursday night things go a little left field. 

Vegan alcohol free bar Hinterland host the Sober Silent Reading Club, ‘a chill session of reading with like-minded folks. Bring your favourite book and enjoy the quiet.’ There’s a meetup with Manc Mates to coincide. 

Next: big contrast here, but different strokes and all that... 

It’s fight week. UFC 321 on Saturday night has the UK’s Tom Aspinall, from Atherton Bolton no less, makes his first defence of his heavyweight title against Frenchman Ciryl Gane. Joshua Brooks is showing the main card, starting from 7pm, and Manchester Nightlife meetup group will be there. I’ve got my free ticket. JB’s isn’t far from Circle Square, so it might be good to have a look around that area after.

Convention Fails

Movie convention For the Love of Horror happened this weekend. I wasn’t there: the lineup wasn’t my thing until they announced Linda Blair – Reagan from The Exorcist – at the last minute. The whole event sold out by the time I got around to trying to book. I had a wander around town last night to see if any guests were knocking about. No luck. 

Went to Inkblot Comic Festival Saturday. 

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey)

 

Underwhelming fair in Sugden Sports Centre down Oxford Rd. Nowhere near enough stalls for the size of the venue, very few complete graphic novels on sale, and the main Aliens comic they were touting on the promo material was only part 1 of an anthology and cost £13! No sale. I was in and out in 10 mins. 

Had a wander around Manchester in the hope that some of the Horror guests might be knocking around. No sign of them.

Reading Month ‘25: Review

Been a massive bookworm for a month (when I wasn’t checking out filming locations of following recipes or trying to get in shape for the Santa Dash.) It’s one of 8 plans I have this year. I read:

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey)

 

1) Rendezvous with Rama 

Arthur C Clarke’s 1973 follow-up to his groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama follows some astronauts travelling to a cylindrical metallic planet, which itself is hurtling towards the sun, and they investigate its potential as a second home. 

Massively inventive, scientifically fascinating, dialogue now quite dated and the plot didn’t seem to go anywhere. Certainly an enjoyable read though. 

2) Stan: Evil Rises 

Short comic free on entrance to 2022’s For the Love of Horror convention. British take on The Evil Dead with a livestreaming wannabe influencer in the lead. Pretty funny. 

3) For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond 

Times journo Ben Macintyre’s mission is to guide us through the life of one Ian Fleming, also a former Times hack but – earlier, in the Second World War, a Naval Intelligence Officer. This life of dreaming up schemes against Britain’s enemies, planting limpet mines on submarines and downing (literally) crippling amounts of hard liquor gave plenty of inspiration for his writing life. 

Before long, he devised the ultimate post-war fantasy of the secret agent: James Bond, suave MI6 operative with a licence to kill, seduce and down insane amounts of vodka martinis yet still be able to drive sports cars without careening off a cliff. Someone that men and women could fantasise about in one way or another – transported from their bombed out city, they could imagine themselves in tropical islands, living the high life, eating fine cuisine, firing hi-tech weaponry and getting the girl. 

The book is a biography of the author, but also an investigation into the Bond character: the background, the role at Q branch, the missions he’s sent on. 

It’s also a comparison of how Fleming’s and Bond’s lives cross over, and how the lives of the people he knew inspired Fleming to create the ultimate spy (not to mention, a few supporting characters too). There’s a great anecdote about Fleming crashing the filming of Dr No in 1962, plus many others. A must for Bond fans. 

4) Maus 

Maus, by New Yorker magazine artist Art Spiegelman, tells the story of Spiegelman’s father Vladek, a textiles trader and all-round handyman, and how he survived Auschwitz. 

Published in 1992, it’s the first and to date only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. This weighty, generous book, set mostly in the ‘30s and 40s, depicts the Jews as mice – including the narrator and family – and the Nazis as cats, all in bleak monochrome. 

The tale of a young Polish man who endures and survives the most horrendous of environments tells a harrowing account, one that many others of his family didn’t live to tell. The creator – who puts himself in the frame as a central character as ‘Artie,’ also depicted in rodent form – interviews his father and coaxes out of him a memoir that haunts and sears into the mind. 

Terrifying, poignant and more relevant than ever today. 

5) Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families 

Author Stephen Moss joins a BBC film crew – headed up by naturalist legend David Attenborough – for a 2018 5-part documentary series following animal families over the course of up to 2 and a half years. 

Each episode follows a different animal – usually an alpha male or female - and their families, and are given anthropomorphic human names, along with their kindred. Charm is a lioness on the plains of Kenya’s Masai Mara, defending her territory. David, a Senegalese chimpanzee, fights to maintain his position as group leader, when Luthor makes a strike to usurp him. (Their diet is described, bizarrely, as ‘catholic.’) Tait, a painted wolf native to Zimbabwe and alpha female, is the only one in her pack who will breed. But with whom? 

Moss adapted the programme into a solid, beautifully explained and illustrated accompanying book, each episode forming a chapter. The section on emperor penguins was more general, as opposed to following one particular creature. I got the impression that as there were so, so many of them – thousands of seemingly identical birds are photographed – that there’d be no way to single them out and name them. 

Finally in central India we join Raj Bhera, a 5 year old female Bengal tiger as she rules over the same land area that her ancestors have for the last century, possibly longer. 

Brilliantly written with stunning photography, the team behind the programme pulled together to make an astounding TV show and literature. 

Interesting to see a nod to naturalist Jane Goodall, who as it happens died this month. 

Didn’t get as much read as I wanted, but made a dent on the To Be Read pile. Enjoyed it, though.

Inkblot Comic Festival This Saturday

Horror movie convention For the Love of Horror is this weekend. The line-up had nobody who grabbed me until the last minute when they announced Linda Blair, Reagan from The Exorcist. By the time I got around to phoning (the website never works for me) the event had sold out. Never mind. There’s more going on. 

I seem to have blown something in the back of my left knee, so running is out of the question. Pump classes seem fine, though, which involves weight movements with planted feet like deadlifts and squats. I’m skipping circuit which involves a lot of jumping around. Keep forgetting I’m 43. Will I be fixed for the Santa Dash at the start of December? Who knows. I guess I’m going to have to phone the doctors. 

It’s the last week of this reading project I’m doing. Expect a review soon. 

Saturday daytime: comic convention Inkblot promises ‘a day packed with comics, creativity and good vibes.’ Sugden Sports Centre, right down Oxford Rd, from 12pm. There’s a meetup with Manc Mates if you want to say hi to a few people. 

 

Reading Month ‘25

Look at this for a To Be Read pile. Absurd.

I'm going to attempt to read as many of these books as possible in one month. Where would you start?

[image or embed]

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 9:48 PM

I’ve looked through my Before 44 blog post from a couple of months ago, a list of tasks to do before my next birthday at the end of July, and realised I’d better get started on it. All of these challenges are very similar to things I’ve done before, so I figured: why not do the one that I’ve done the least recently? 

4) is a reading month. One month of reading books as often as possible. I’ve done this a few times, years ago. This will exclude psychology books (2 of which I’m already reading). I’d need to do separate posts for those, so I’ll pause on reading psychology. I’m going to cut down on the gym a little bit, stick to a few classes, and focus on getting settled into books. 

This time next month, I’ll upload a review of everything I’ve read.

The Concise Mastery

Read this recently. Solid read. #robertgreene #mastery

[image or embed]

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 3:46 PM

Back in December we had a staff Secret Santa, and I got the concise version of Mastery, a guide to mastering your career. Author Robert Greene - he of 48 Laws of Power, 33 Strategies of War and Art of Seduction fame - lays out the steps to achieving directorial powers. 

The full book will obviously go into more detail, and offer more examples to back up its hypotheses, but The Concise Mastery has enough content to put across a point. I expect it’s a little difficult to write an advice book about careers that will apply to most people: different lines of work will have different structures, different experiences to offer, different challenges. So a guide to ‘learning the secrets of the field you have chosen’ will need to be a little bit generic. The sections reflect this – ‘Discover your Calling,’ ‘The Ideal Apprenticeship,’ ‘Absorbing the Master’s Power’ etc. It’s all valid advice, but requires you to fill in the gaps given your own circumstances. You might be a plumber; you might be a PR officer. The same rules apply. But the advice is interspersed with trademark historical stories to back up Greene’s points. 

A recommended, serious read.

The Missing Piece

[image or embed]

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 1:36 PM

 

Relationships can be hard work. They’re never smooth sailing and there’ll always be challenges. There are a thousand books about how to navigate your relationship, so when writing a book on this topic, the challenge is to write something that hasn’t already been discussed, and in a way that draws people in and keeps them reading. 

An email came through to me from Ascot Pr.  

‘Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness “an epidemic on par with tobacco use and obesity.” But there is hope. Creating healthy connections is a skill set that can be learned, say Stacey and Paul Martino, and they share their groundbreaking methodology in their new book, The Missing Piece.’ 

With an opener like that, you’d get the feeling that the book might be more about the formation of relationships in its early stages, or advice for single people on beginning one. The Missing Piece, however, focusses more on how to sustain an existing relationship. That isn’t my circumstance at the moment (rarely, in fact), but I’d agreed to review it anyway so I ploughed through it. 

It turns out Dr Murthy actually doesn’t feature in the book at all, and that loneliness isn’t exactly covered. The Missing Piece is more an investigation into the differences in how men and women communicate with each other in their relationships. It’s a guidebook for sustaining a relationship through communication, and is intended to help us understand how men and women communicate differently. 

An interesting premise, although hardly original. But as a result of Dr Murthy’s absence, there’s no clear indication of qualification from the authors. Did the Martinos go to university? Which one? What did they study? Have they had a clinic? Do they see patients? In essence, I’m asking, why should I believe this couple? 

That said, I myself have been in NHS therapy many times and I’ve picked up a certain amount of psychological knowledge and skills from these experiences. I’ve also read a lot of psychology books, many of which were recommended to me by said therapists. There’s a lot in The Missing Piece that I’d agree with – men ruminating over a disagreement for longer than women might, as we want to protect people in relation to whatever the problem was, for example. Another: women will sometimes describe a problem but not actually wanting a possible solution as a response, and men not realising that and thus diving in with their own 2 pennies, as another. The Martinos helpfully label these as ‘processing conversations’ and ‘solving conversations.’ (Key point, if you were wondering: assume it’s ‘processing.’ Don’t offer advice unless she asks for it.) 

A lot of what’s advised in the book rings true with what therapists etc. have advised me, but there were times where I raised my eyebrows. There’s a section on how we react negatively to things that other people say or do, or our ‘triggers.’ Stacey here believes that no one is triggering us, and that other people being late, for example, is an issue for us to deal with. People are sometimes late. It’s life. But what the Martinos don’t discuss is when people are always late, then we’re going to see a pattern. It’s not respectful to your time to constantly be waiting for the same person. Surely you’d prefer they were honest about their own time frames than left us standing around. Just to say to the reader ‘you haven’t solved your own triggers yet’ feels a lot like gaslighting. 

The Martinos discuss problem solving in relationships, and break this down into 4 types of ‘human processing’ – how we deal with situations like partner arguments. The descriptions do make sense – I’d describe myself as Type 4 of these, a ‘methodical and patient processor.’ There are others, but again, says who? Have any major universities or psychological bodies backed up this criteria? 

As much as I may have agreed with chunks of the book, I found it a difficult read. I’d agree that there’s a level of work that needs to be done to keep relationships and marriages going, but when you’re discussing ‘healing in a relationship where trust has been broken,’ that sounds like an affair to me. Wouldn’t most people just move on? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? There are times like perhaps these, or definitely when abuse is present, where the relationship SHOULD end. There wasn’t much discussion around THAT. 

The Martinos also advise against measuring what you get in a relationship to what you give. But, if you don’t have your eyes open to what’s happening in a relationship… how would you know if you were being taken for a mug? 

Maybe that’s my own weakness coming through. I dunno. 

The book also fails to mention that the more developed a nation is, and the more rights women have, the higher the divorce rate. Are the undeveloped nations, where women face greater inequality, really having better conversations with each other and saying together as a result? Or are there more evident barriers to divorce, whether practical or bureaucratic? And in the more developed western nations like in Scandinavia, where the divorce rate is among the highest in the world, wouldn’t the more open conversations likely to be happening more there anyway? Given the high standard of their education? 

The book offers up a lot of key phrases with capitalised words, most of which I forgot the meaning after they've been defined, and there’s no glossary for these things. Also, the acknowledgements section at the end doesn’t indicate anyone involvedin the book having a psychological background. 

Furthermore, the Martinos suggest that ‘being too different’ is just an excuse to split up, and that people say that and then end the relationship because they actually ‘came to the end of their skill set.’ But surely, sometimes, Person A just doesn’t want to be with Person B because they just aren’t making them happy? The Missing Piece’s principle is that relationships can be saved. Wouldn't they’d be much happier with people that they suit better? The book overlooks the idea that staying together ‘for the kids’ – children they’ve had in that relationship - is only going to cause more harm, and that by dragging the relationship out, their kids are going to be exposed to constant arguments. The emphasis on trying to keep couples together felt to me like gaslighting, or perhaps shortsightedness. 

There were other parts of it that didn’t sit right with me – either it got too technical and relied on a bit too much phraseology, or that examples of conversations seemed too formal. 

Maybe I’m missing the point of the book. I dunno. I think with a bit more science and authoritative input it could have had more impact. 

That, for me, was the missing piece.

James Bond Encyclopedia

 

The Name’s Kindersley, Dorling Kindersley. 

Encyclopedia Kings Dorling Kindersley turned their hand to the James Bond franchise in 2007, and in 2023 I found it in a 2nd hand charity shelf in Tesco. I must have started reading it in September at the latest last year and finished it this week. Alongside, I’d been reading other, more compact and physically lighter books that were better for travelling. 

Even so, The James Bond Encyclopedia is a large, weighty investigation into the movie franchise – very pictorial but also hugely expansive and well-researched. 

The book’s broken down into chapters on author Ian Fleming, who Bond is, his style, his role, villains he faced, women, supporting cast, vehicles, weapons & equipment and the movies themselves. 

I’m sure I’ve seen all the Bond movies but there’s so much in the films that I don’t remember, or hadn’t latched onto. It’s also surprising how a huge role in a Bond film doesn’t necessarily pluck an actor from obscurity. After playing the titular Dr No in the original Bond adventure, what did Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman do? Buck Rogers in the 25th Century is the only credit I recognise. So many Bond girls didn’t seem to make a name for themselves either. Shirley Eaton portrayed Jill Masterson in Goldfinger, famously dispatched by asphyxiation through gold paint to the body. Aside from a couple of episodes of the TV show The Saint, her filmography is very short and obscure. Also, did you know Minnie Driver was a talentless singer in Goldeneye? 

A must for Bond fans.

Feersum Endjinn

I found this little Iain M Banks SF novel in an Oxfam months ago, and started reading it pretty much straight away. 

It’s set in a far-flung future in which the higher echelons of society live in humongous castles, public policy is dictated by some moving stones, and a local count (like a mayor) oversees the land, known as ‘The Fastness.’ Only problem is, someone keeps assassinating him. He manages to revive himself by backing up his entity to some kind of national electronic platform, as do most people, but that platform – as I understand it – is under threat from The Encroachment, a giant interstellar cloud that’s about to wipe them all out. Bascule the Teller – a clerical dude with an apparent learning difficulty and what I interpreted to be a heavy Yorkshire accent – is tasked with contacting dead people on their families’ behalf. He has a pet ant called Egretes, that is abducted by a giant metallic eagle, and is determined to find said pet, a creature that seems to understand him. But first, he must climb the tower in the hope of reaching a control room, to direct the whole planet away from The Encroachment. 

There’s so, so much more to it than this. Bascule’s dialect really slows down the pace at which I could read it. Every sentence has to be absorbed carefully to interpret it and the perspective of the book keeps jumping around between characters and first and third perspectives. 

It’s certainly not where I’d advise people to start out with Iain M Banks. Endlessly inventive but hard, hard work.

Meeting Peter F Hamilton Again! Part 2

See Part 1 of the event. 

The roaming mic goes out into the audience for some questions. 

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Exodus was a collaboration. Were you about to work on something else? 

PETER F HAMILTON: I have about 4 or 5 ideas, and I left things hanging. I have made plans to stop writing. 

AQ: Would you write Exodus differently? 

PFH: No, this is where I wanted it to be. If I changed earlier work, I’d change the style. I’d put it in a drawer, and come back in 2 years. In reality, you can’t do that. 

COMPARE DAVID BRENT: An editor just fainted somewhere. 

PFH: These days I take a take a little bit more attention to what others understand, and how I describe it. 

An audience member asks about the fact that Exodus is a duology. 

PFH: I’m writing number 2, and the game will have more stories. But I know how Exodus ends. 

DB: Is it a collaborative process? 

PFH: Writing the book wasn’t collaborative; with books I know what fits into the universe. 

It transpires that Hamilton has already collaborated with Netflix. One of his short stories, Sonnie’s Edge, was adapted into a short animated film of the same name and was included in the first anthology of SF series Love, Death and Robots, which I saw. 

DB: People are now making more SF TV shows. Which of yours would you like to see on the big screen? 

PFH: Game of Thrones (originally written by George RR Martin) changed things. I think (2004 novel) Pandora’s Star would make good TV. I say if it’s gotta be done, get a professional screenwriter to write it. 

AQ: Have you played the computer game? 

PFH: Absolutely. I’m not a big gamer, but I’ve seen scenes. The great thing about the book is I get so much amazing artwork of something I described before I’ve even finished writing it. 

An audience question asks about which books got him into SF writing. 

PFH: I thought, some kids’ books are not good. I could do better. (James Bond author) Ian Fleming was once in hospital, and asked the kids there what they liked. They said, Beatrix Potter. Ian hated it, and then went and wrote (the original novel) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

AQ: You mentioned you revise as you go. What is the process at the editing stage? 

Hamilton admits he gets carried away with the writing sometimes. 

PFH: I wrote a 30 page scene about a party. After 5 pages, the editor said, ‘yes, we get it.’ 

DB: How far are you into the next one? 

PFH: Oh, almost there! My publisher is in the audience! You can’t ask that! 

During the signing I whip out a picture from 2010, when Hamilton was touring with The Evolutionary Void. He says he still has the waistcoat! 

Meeting Peter F Hamilton Again! Part 1

“My books are big as a consequence of how I write,” tells Peter F. Hamilton. 

David Brent, actor and journalist, has introduced Hamilton to the floor. Britain’s leading sci-fi author is welcomed to Waterstones Deansgate as he launches his 30th book, Exodus: The Archimedes Engine. 

“Books aren’t like they were in the 60s and 70s,” admits Hamilton. “I grew up then. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I also want to know what happens to the little man. Things change people.” 

The big thing changing people in the Exodus universe, Hamilton tells us, is time dilation (time moving differently for different observers). “You get to see the consequences of your actions.” 

Hamilton tells of a videogame tie-in with the Exodus universe, developed by Archetype Entertainment (the team behind games Bioshock and Balder’s Gate). 

“We were given money, and was told they wouldn’t interfere. I wouldn’t write a tie-in but I gave a few hints into the universe, not to the game. The developers said, ‘we want Peter to be there.’ My ideas were fine to everyone’s point of view. They know what I can do. They sent me this bible of their world. I worked through and said ‘that doesn’t work,’ and made it my own. The game will be played, I think, from a human point of view.” 

DB: How much of a scientist are you? 

PFH: I’m not a scientist. I just research. The engineering will be right. I’ll read up as much as I can. People sense whether You’re making it up. But the science will be as close as I know. I think of the threat, and then I think, what kind of civilisation could withstand that? What kind of worlds would they inhabit? 

DB: What comes first with your books? The technology or the story? 

PFH: Story first. Let’s say aliens come here for our gold and women. Why would you have an alien invasion? From there, you design the world; you start producing the world itself. 

DB: Your characters drive his stories. How do you create them? 

PFH: Characters have to relate to people. Sid in The Great North Road is a great detective, but also has to get his kids to school. Bad guys are much more fun. 

DB: Do you have a spreadsheet for your characters? 

PFH: I have 3 screens, and I have to switch between them when writing. 

“I don’t see human nature as changing,” Hamilton proposes. If humanity started an off-world colony, he predicts a few challenges. “After the 3rd generation, your own kids will rebel against you. All this plays into society. Also, if machines make everything, what are you gonna do all day?” 

DB: 100 years into the future, can things like COVID return? 

“You’re far safer writing further into the future,” Hamilton advises. “Consumer gadgets coming out now you might be redundant pretty soon. With Exodus, I had to ask, what kind of society would this be? You don’t want curveballs. You want stability; static. You want people at the top making things static, which isn’t good for little humans. The book is holding up a sordid mirror. I’m sure people can read all sorts of things about modern society.” 

DB: Do you consider yourself an optimist? 

PFH: Yes. This can’t be the pinnacle. 

DB: It’s now been 40 years since TV show Threads was aired (depicting a nuclear attack on UK soil). As time went on, I though, maybe we’ll be alright. Now, maybe not. 

PFH: I’m optimistic we’ll get through it, but what will we look like coming through the other side? We need a shake-up of some kind. 

DB: Do you think the UK would accept a world government? 

PFH: Not likely. We were in a European government, now we’ve left it. America barely accepts their own. If energy consumption would be controlled, a lot of your trouble would be gone. If we had more economic distribution, we could do better. 

DB: You had off-world colonisation in your books. 

PFH: The thing with colonisation, it’s not for the majority. Colonisation is not the panacea. It’s no good just having it. People have to live well. 

DB: Given the state of the Manchester trams, I’m not sure we’re there yet. The chat rotates back to Hamilton’s earliest forays into writing. 

PFH: When I start reading SF, I was consumed by it. I thought, this is what I wanted to do. Then I went home, and at 26 I bought a typewriter, just as AMSTRAD came out. 

DB: You started with short stories. 

PFH: I did. Don’t ask me to write one now. (Hamilton’s latest novel, like the last few, edges 900 pages.) 

DB: Were you reading the classics? Asimov? 

PFH: Yes. Other stuff too, but it was Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama that drew me in. 

DB: How long did it take to find your own voice and style? 

PFH: I first sold a story to Fear magazine, then decided to do a novel. 

DB: Do you get asked about techniques? 

PFH: Yes, but you can’t pass it on. I’m grateful that a lot of my short stories can’t be found. There’s one guy in Australia who claims he’s found a few. 

DB: Do you deal with the Tyranny of the Blank Page? 

PFH: No. It’s down to technique. I know how to write the next chapter, sometimes writing into the night. I’ll write something every day. 

DB: How long does the first draft take? 

PFH: Drafts are from the typewriter era. I’ll review in the morning, afternoon, and evening. When it goes to the publisher it’s as good as I can get it. You can only do this with a word processor.

Part 2 soon.

Sci Fi, Horror, Travel, Drunkenness

On Monday I met UK’s leading SF novelist Peter F Hamilton, the details of which I’m steadily putting together in a blog post. Had Tuesday off for the sole purpose of blogging that. I also booked tickets to For the Love of Horror happening on the 19th next month, in which I’ll be meeting the cast of the Evil Dead and someone off Silence of the Lambs. I was going to meet Dina Meyer – Dizzy Flores in Starship Troopers and Dt Allison Kerry in the Saw movies – but she’d sold out. Selfie bomb time. At the end of the week I was in Essex seeing family. A funeral, sadly. I made it back in time to get the bus into Manchester to meet a mate in a Meetup event he regularly attends. Manchester Socialising and Language Exchange meet regularly in The Ape and Apple near the Town Hall. It’s not so much about language learning as a bunch of mates from all over the world catching up. By the time I’d got there things were winding down, so the only drinking I did was on public transport. I was not the only person under the influence.

Fun on the Oldham night bus pic.twitter.com/7wwB6UZ0Cy

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) September 28, 2024

Peter F Hamilton signing TONIGHT

Britain’s leading Sci Fi author Peter F Hamilton will be discussing his latest novel Exodus: The Archimedes Engine tonight. Waterstones Deansgate will be hosting the writer, who’ll be discussing the work, answering questions and signing copies. There are still tickets! Event starts 18:30. 

Busy week this week so no meetup, although expect a write-up on the above, info on the upcoming Saddleworth Santa Dash and at least one meetup next week.

Consider Phlebas

Back in 2010 I met author Iain M Banks via Waterstones when he released Surface Detail, his penultimate SF novel. I read it in 2012 and found it to be a massively complicated, long, zany and violent book – enjoyable to a degree but way too heavy. 

Other readers told me it wasn’t a good place to start with Banks’ work. Years later I decided to look into his work again; several fans told me to start with Consider Phlebas – his first SF novel and the first in his Culture series, of which Surface Detail is included. 

Then, a few months ago, my employer did a deal with Waterstones and we got a bit of money off, so I looked at my book list on my valued Omninotes app and managed to find Consider Phlebas in store. I started reading it not long after, in late April, and tapped through it very steadily. I’ve been busy. 

Again, this one is a heavy, hard Sci Fi book following Horza, an enemy of state sentenced to death in a quite grotesque manner, rescued at the 25th hour by a ragtag bunch of interstellar renegades, hoping to find a supercomputer that can help them win a war. What the crew of this new ship don’t know is that Horza is also a Changer, a species that can mimic other people, and is a threat to anyone who rules with force. If the crew realise this, they’ll kill him. 

So begins a twisting, ceaselessly inventive tale involving numerous species, planets, ships, transportation devices and a doomed love affair. 

I enjoyed it. I understood it as best as I could. Far better than Surface Detail. 

I have another book of his, Matter, in my to-read pile.