Author Archives: Wayne Smallman

About Wayne Smallman

When you're young, you think you know everything and life is indistinguishable from a game. It's only when you get older — when you begin to doubt the authenticity of the event and question the rules — that experience begins to count for something. And to quote the inimitable Forbes Bingley, a recurring character of several novels: "Life makes you stronger, at a price." In a sense, life has been preparation — practice, perhaps — for this wild stab at being an author. After all, how hard can it be, putting one word after another? Of course, like anything else in life, you only get out what you put in. At times, writing is both cathartic and semi autobiographical, where I catch myself looking backwards whimsically, lustily, with regret, a wry smile, a despondent glower or growing doubt. But writing is also a journey, one with no intentional destination, just waypoints I may navigate towards from time to time, at leisure. Though I must admit, it's a journey I would prefer not to make alone.

Google make a spectacle of augmenting reality

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Google have released a preview of Project Glass and a glimpse into a world where they see people wearing spectacles designed to specifically make use of augmented reality.

Sound familiar? Maybe not to you, but to me, it’s nothing new or particularly ground breaking, as it’s something I wrote about many years ago, which I dubbed “pre-vision” because no one had yet coined the aforementioned phrase:

“Truly useful technology is often passive, working away tirelessly, doing whatever is required to be done, to be invoked at a time of our choosing.

An example of persistently good passive technology — both from a solutions and an ergonomic point of view — would be a pair of spectacles. These things have been around for centuries and their design has varied little, the same being true of our facial physiology, to which spectacles are specifically designed for.

Our view of the world is always a sensorial affair, but our world is predominantly defined by our view of things, in a very literal sense, which makes these remarkable gadget glasses so appropriate.”

More recently, I included my take on the technology in A Darkening of Fortune, my next science fiction crime thriller:

“Those from the affluent parts of Asia are often the most distinctive, as many would be seen wearing spectacles, though not for opthalmic relief, but as an aide to their viewing pleasure, supplanting hand-held devices and supplementing their vision. They instead see the always-on digitally augmented brave new world, an enriched sprawl of virtual overlaying the real, as street performers walk through imaginary rooms made visible, which slide about their bodies as if they were the centre of motion, and interactive banner adverts, hanging the length of buildings, billowing in the wind, with children jumping up to touch them, just to see the cartoon characters chase each other up the immaterial fabric, laughing as they go, advertising the culinary delights found within one of the many Asian restaurants.

A young girl ushers her friends into a giggling huddle as she stands before them, and with the thumb of one hand to the forefinger of the other, she makes a landscape frame in front of her, and with a blink, she takes a photograph. A human gesture, when observed by the ever vigilant gaze of technology, is empowered in a myriad ways these days.”

Welcome to an alternate, virtually real world…

A photographical post apocalyptic earth

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Earth’s plight is not nearly as severe as our own; whatever we humans do to ourselves, the world will recover. That aside, have you ever wondered what a post apocalyptic earth would look like?

Vladimir Manyuhin starts with real photographs, adding digital decay and overgrowth to create an eerily realistic sense of how the world might look long after most humans are gone.

Wonderful stuff, and very I Am Legend. And, if you like Vladimir’s idea of a world after humans have flicked the self-destuct switch, maybe you’ll enjoy my own take on a post apocalyptic world in Earth Day, my first novella.

Mr. Smallman on DeviantArt

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Year ago, when I first wrote Perditions End, the first in the tetralogy I’m silently (though not secretly) working on, I decided to do some accompanying illustrations. Since then, Perditions End has become nothing more than a mere first passable attempt at what the final novel will sure be, and those drawings languished in a drawer somewhere.

However, I took it upon myself to digitise them (photographing them on my bed, if that even counts) .. and promptly forgot about those, just as I did the original dead tree format.

Well, I’ve decided to share those ancient scrawls and scribbles on DeviantArt, for your visual delectation / amusement.

Low-fi sci-fi?

Apparently, science fiction is creeping into more mainstream films. And why not? As a source of escapism, science fiction is, as they say (and without any care for sounding cliché), the final frontier.

By skirting some of the more obvious themes of science fiction, the idea appears to be “Oh, and by the way, there are aliens, too.” or “Uh yeah, this is twenty-five years into the future.” but without the heavier details that would betray a movie as being science fiction.

When trying to explain Ascending Angels, an in-development (written, but awaiting chronological tweaks) novel of mine, I am often inclined not to mention science fiction at all, since it falls into this hinterland of incidental science fiction layered just beneath the core action thriller threads with elements of fantasy. In essence, Ascending Angels is a heist, interwoven with abrupt action sequences and elements of sheer fantasia, but the feel isn’t that of science fiction at all.

So for me personally, this creeping motion of science fiction into mainstream is welcomed by me, as this will inevitably spill over into literary escapism, too.

The long play

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So I’ve suspended two novel projects because of the “long play” I have in mind, where (as I’ve teased once or twice) everything’s connected.

Everything’s connected

What does that mean for projects moving forward? I have to create a several things:

  1. Firstly, a time line into which each and every novel I write from now on will have to fit within.
  2. Secondly, decide what technologies, scientific developments and social changes I intend dealing with, as continuous themes, interweaving and spanning the various novels.
  3. Thirdly, which characters or families bestride these novels, why, and how they interact and intersect with the aforementioned.

Now, I know none of this is entirely new, but it’s something I feel needs to be done, rather than writing one-off, disparate and disconnected stories.

Aim high and be bold!

Instead, I want a narrative that spans decades, and towards the end, centuries:

  • Earth Day, the first novel (or novella, if you like) is more of a fable than science fiction.
  • Stunned (presently on pause), is a comedy thriller with a political slant.
  • Wraith (also on pause and presently only provisionally titled), is a superhero story with a difference.
  • Perditions End is a time travel saga, where our protagonist is attempting to solve a series of murders that implicate him as the aggressor.
  • Ascending Angels (written but pending a complete re-write of Perditions End, the first, or “prequel”) is a very ambitious novel with several very well-defined threads, the first of which is a complex heist thriller, the second is a metaphysical exploration, including a search and rescue, while the third is a race against time scenario, to avert a global catastrophe, invoked by the a conflict between two alien races.
  • An as-yet untitled and only provisionally understood novel, tying together Ascending Angels and Aeon, which will, amongst other things, provide the story behind Bingley and Forsyth.
  • Aeon is something quite different and a departure from the usual science fiction subtleties, this time, we’re deep into the realms of science fiction proper.

Aim high and be bold! That is my mantra, and I shall not shy away from this agenda.