Games: Scaring myself to death with Dead Space

Posted on June 15, 2013 by joelyblack

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Oh boy. I mean, oh boy. I’ve just spent a good couple of hours on chapter 2 of Dead Space. It’s lunchtime on a sunny Saturday in the middle of summer and I’m still tense, every time I click to open a door or a hatch. I still glance into every corner of the room, move hesitantly about, listening for the various groaning, gory sounds of necromorphs.

DS is genuinely frightening. I’ve grown too used to ‘horror’ games where all you get is endless hideous creatures hurled at you, and you just have to keep fighting them. Games where, once you’ve grown used to the jump scares, only offer you more of them, until it’s frankly boring. Dead Space, the original Dead Space, is nothing like that.

Remember when we all watched the first Alien movie? The careful use of noise, the genuine fear on the faces of the characters, moving around a spaceship that was both keeping them alive and harbouring something that would kill them? Playing Dead Space is like that. But now you’ve got to edge through those rooms yourself, expecting any moment to be jumped on by a necromorph and mauled to bits.

I don’t know about you, but hideous monsters by themselves aren’t all that scary. Yes, they look like the living version of what happens if you drink way too much alcohol and eat a very dodgy kebab. But I belong to the generation of people who watched Evil Dead quite young, and we need more than just limbs all over the place and a head with brains showing to be scared. That’s gory, but not scary. It’s what you see in surgery, after all.

Scary is when those creatures pop up behind you while you’re trying to do something else. Really scary is when you edge down a corridor, able to hear the thing somewhere near by, but you can’t see it, or shoot at it. It’s almost a relief when they do descend on you, after you’ve spent so long peering into every shadow, stood by a door and listened to the sounds, wondering where the fucker is. When it comes bawling down on you, limbs waving, you can at least get on with the business of shooting it.

I was struck by how much time you spend not being attacked in Dead Space. If you play games for a while, you know there are certain things you can expect. Very often, opening a door, picking up a thing, finishing a quest, reaching the next stage of a mission, triggers a fight. You get so used to it that it almost feels like a necessary part of the job. You sigh and get on with it, only slightly more inspired than you would be when stuck with the photocopying of a morning.

You can’t get that complacent with DS. For a start, you’re busy doing a lot of other things. Although the basis of the game is “go here, get that”, going there and getting that involves a host of activities, all of which require some combination of skills and thought. I have the feeling that you aren’t just here to shoot at things. That’s a real break from some shooters, where the going there and the getting that are excuses for lots of shooting.

So far, I’ve had to play around in zero gravity, cope with not having much air, make use of kinetic abilities to get across rooms, use stasis skills to slow down bashing doors, all while trying to locate the components of a bomb. There’s relatively little shooting, and not very many necromorphs. This isn’t the “open door, kill things, find stuff, move on” standard I’d come to expect.

You don’t need waves of enemies if you know how to use the elements of fear psychology. Once you know that horrific killing things are out there, you only need to keep implying that they are there, and then ensure you stagger their appearance to be the most surprising, to keep the player on edge.

DS makes incredible use of sound and light. It’s not that every corridor you step into dims the lights automatically. It might happen halfway down the corridor, or it might not happen at all. It doesn’t feel like a triggered event at all. Meanwhile, you can hear the constant banging of a broken door, the hissing of an open vent, all somewhere near you, but out of sight.

It genuinely feels like being trapped on a spaceship where hell has quite literally broken loose. Instead of the missions feeling like an excuse to shoot things, I feel like the shooting things is incidental to the story. That’s why there aren’t all that many necromorphs. They don’t need a lot to make the point. Just enough to stop you getting complacent. You always know there could be another one, or three, at any minute, but you don’t know exactly when or where.

It’s an always-on game. I got Fable II at the same time, and it’s more than possible to switch off a little for some sections of that. Sometimes, it’s what you want. You do a job for a bit to earn some money, and yeah, you’re not exactly paying 100% attention to it. You can even slash your way through a lot of the fights without much effort put in. Dead Space requires all your attention, all the time. You listen, you look around, you creep along, and you start to feel a little like Ellen Ripley. Well, I do, anyway.

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Friday Reads: Saladin Ahmed – Throne of the Crescent Moon

Posted on June 14, 2013 by joelyblack

 

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This is the book I’ve been hungering after for a while. I’ve slogged through so many faux medieval farmboy-to-Chosen-One stories lately, I was getting desperate. Fantasy badly needs authors like Saladin Ahmed. White western culture isn’t the only one that has a rich bedrock of fantasy underpinning it, and I’ve been on the hunt for stories that expand the genre, that explore new lands from the perspective of that culture, rather than reducing them to bland and often insulting stereotypes.

I’m slap-bang in the middle of Throne of the Crescent Moon right now, and loving it. Ahmed tells the story of three very miss-matched individuals living in a tense political and magical culture, threatened by a mysterious and frightening force. It veers between poetry and humour, and Ahmed is very easy to read, words easy on the eye.

Adoulla Makhslood is a ghul-hunter. He also reminds me a little of Dirk Gently, perhaps, or any number of similar slightly grumpy old men who feel like they’re ready for retirement but don’t have the chance, because the world needs saving. He bumbles about, always speaking too loudly, appreciating poetry, books and good tea. He belongs to an ancient and all but forgotten order, one that the Khalif will shortly miss very much.

Adoulla’s assistant, Raseed bas Raseed, is a headstrong, brilliant warrior, cursed by being a dogmatic religionist. His main problem is that he desperately fancies the third member of their party, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, a girl from a wild tribe who’s been blessed with the ability to transform into a lion to fight. It would be all right to fancy her, of course, except that his religious beliefs get in the way. Mind you, the strictness of his beliefs tend create a lot of conflict with reality as it is.

Zamia herself has her own special brand of zealotry. Hers is devotion to her tribe, her band, all of whom were killed in a ghul attack. Wild, rude and haughty, she perfectly matches Raseed in zeal and in battling her own feelings for a man she believes she can’t possibly like.

Ahmed handles these three with great tenderness. So far, this has shaped up to be a story about relationships across boundaries, the difficulty the young face in squaring their ideas of the world with the reality of the world, and struggles of the older generation to help them on their way. Reading Ahmed, I’m aware of a very large world, just beyond reach, that could hold many possibilities for excellent stories. This is the first of a trilogy, I believe, and I really hope he’s getting on with the next one.

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Writing Wednesday: You don’t always get what you want…

Posted on June 12, 2013 by joelyblack

It feels like a very long time ago, now. I had a publishing deal fall through. One of those publishing deals that writers dream about. I think I was consistently high for about 48 hours after the phone call, even though it at all came to nothing in the end. My whole life opened before me and I saw wondrous possibilities ahead.

None of which ever came to pass.

The journey since then has been rocky. I cringe slightly that beyond putting out what I think of as ‘background books’, illness has prevented me really pumping out work over the last four years. Until very recently, I kept kicking myself for not just getting on with The Inheritor series, getting it out there, getting on with it.

And then something changed. I had this idea that I would tell Talija’s story instead. That went down very well with the book editor, book doctor and mentor. It led to this idea for a story to submit to the Manchester Fiction Prize.

I kept going backward, further and further into the past. Instead of doing “Amnar stuff”, I was looking at the civilisations that existed before it, and getting interested in those worlds. One thing ties those worlds together, one thread that runs consistently through all of it. I won’t reveal what it is now, but think of it as not unlike the Monolith from the 2001: Space Odyssey book and film (and everything that came after).

Amnar as I imagined it for the first 12 years of its life was a standard fantasy story. The focus lay on one person, a Chosen One, who goes on to do great deeds. It’s a fairly obvious trope. That’s not to say that’s bad, but as I stepped back from Amnar, especially over the last nine months to a year, I started to think I wanted to do something different.

This is the benefit of not being published before you’ve had a lot of time to think about what you really want to do. I probably wouldn’t have come up with the ideas I have now. “Amnar” is no longer Amnar, or at least, it now lies out there in a future, while I imagine its past. This is much more about different places and times and how they dealt with one particular thing, a Monolith kind of thing, and the stories that revolve around that.

I’ve always been very grateful for the small and dedicated group of people who pay attention even though I spend a lot of time not ‘getting on with it’ but dealing with other things. This post is mostly for them. But it is also a valuable lesson. I’ve read a fair number of books recently where I wonder if a few more years without publication might have done a lot for the work, made it more rounded and more impressive, made it stand out from the fantasy crowd.

Writing is rather like cooking, in that respect. Stories have a moment when they are ready, when they really live up to their potential. The problem, of course, is that unlike cooking, you don’t have a recipe book telling you to leave it on 120 for one hour fifty. You can only guess when these stories are really ready, and a lot of whether they get told at the right moment is often the luck of the draw.

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Books: 10 excuses for buying another book even though you shouldn’t

Posted on June 11, 2013 by joelyblack

You were going to save money this week/month/year (delete as appropriate). You really want that new tattoo/house/computer/tablet and it requires saving up for it. But then there are books. And excuses to buy books. These are my favourites.

1. There’s a three-for-two sale on at Waterstones.

2. I only need one more stamp on my card and I get a free £10 gift voucher.

3. I need a new book on writing/skepticism/science.

4. Somebody whose opinion I really value has recommended it to me, and I’d like to discuss it with them.

5. I’ve got nothing to read for Friday Reads (never technically true, but you know what I mean).

6. I’ve just read an article about a certain writer or type of writer and feel the need to explore their work. It must be done NOW.

7. It’s for book club.

8. It’s a new copy, signed by the author.

9. It comes with a freebie.

10. It is my sworn duty as an avid reader of books to keep buying them from stores because there’s nothing like browsing books in a bookstore.

And this is what you end up with. So many books you have to use your staircase.

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Books: RIP Iain (M.) Banks

Posted on June 10, 2013 by joelyblack

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It hit like a bolt from the blue. This happens a lot with social media. You take a few days off to sort your books out or vacuum under the bed, and come back to find something big has happened. I guess from the times that I wasn’t too late. The news that Iain Banks had died felt like a punch in the chest.

Here’s the weird thing about dying, and somebody dying. A lot of people have died around me lately. When you get that cataclysmic diagnosis – “this really is the end” – you take the life expectancy very seriously. My uncle died of a brain tumour last year, and we took the week he was given very seriously indeed. But Banks was supposed to have a bit longer than this. People had made arrangements.

Life – and death – doesn’t feel the need to pay attention to our particular timetables.

I never met him, and he’s one of those authors I desperately did want to meet. From a very early age, Banks’s novels appeared on my parents’ bookshelves and at the local library, which was where we spent a lot of our time. Back in the 80s, all his books had blocky, ugly covers, and The Wasp Factory stood out as the blockiest, ugliest, and most compelling. Like the way the Dune covers always fascinated me, so did Banks’s books.

The Wasp Factory itself is the consummate novel of unreliable narration. I have to admit, I’ve always read more of Banks’s non-sci-fi novels. Something about the imagination it takes to write sci-fi is infused in his other work, but I know most of my friends have read the Iain M. Banks rather than the Iain Banks novels. Except, of course, for my Scottish friends, who all have a special place in their hearts for The Crow Road. Over the months I’ve had it, the RISE tattoo on my arm has had many interpretations, but the best was the man who saw it as a tribute to that novel, and that my black birds were, in fact, crows.

The Business and The Bridge were read in a day each. The only book of his I found too creepy – and I have a high tolerance for creepy – was A Song of Stone, which I’ve always promised myself I’d go back to when I was feeling a little stronger. The Player of Games was the book that introduced me to The Culture. In all his books, his capacity to write stories with great twists, chilling characters and faulty narrators in prose that is unfussy and unpretentious shines through.

I feel like I’m gushing now, so I should stop. I’m sad that he didn’t get to see his last book put out there, although given the publishing world, we will see it in some form, when a suitable person has been found to do the final work. Regardless, we have just lost a giant of Scottish and British fiction, and it is a sad loss to us all.

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Friday Reads: Raymond E. Feist – Magician

Posted on June 9, 2013 by joelyblack

Magician (new UK)

It’s not Friday, so this is “Not Friday Reads” or the Friday Reads that happens when you spend all Friday fixing your broadband, cleaning your flat and waiting in for a mattress. By the time I’d finished, there wasn’t any time left (or energy, for that matter) to write up the book I’ve been reading. It’s that classic of fantasy, Raymond E Feist’s Magician. About a month or so ago, the conclusion to the saga was released, so it seemed appropriate to start this off.

This book comes with a mystery. Last week, on my way down to Devon, I picked up a parcel. I wasn’t expecting anything at all, but when I opened it, I found a copy of this book inside. Now, I already have a copy that I bought a while back to add to the “to read” pile on my sideboard. I cannot for the life of me remember ordering a copy, entering a competition to win one or arranging a book exchange.

What’s worse, there’s no note, invoice or anything with the book. It comes without explanation.

I gave the new copy to my dad. It might be indicative of his feelings about it that when I also gave him Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie, he abandoned Magician. I feel a little embarrassed. Friends gushed when I said I was reading it. I’ll try to be kind.

I’m aware that I’m reading a book from the 1970s, which saw a Tolkien revival and possibly explains the plodding nature of the story. I kept being reminded of all the times I’ve been told to cut out things that aren’t necessary, things that aren’t story, things readers don’t need to know. I’m feeling a little conflicted about the book.

It takes a while for anything to happen. We follow the story of Pug, a standard kitchen boy in a castle in your standard fantasy novel. The story trundles along dealing with the minutiae (and I mean minutiae) of Pug’s life. What puzzled me was that even as I was wondering when something might happen, I kept on reading. It didn’t annoy me, and it was still quite readable, despite its flabby prose.

At about 100 pages in, plot happens. This is really what makes Magician more than a tedious farm/kitchen/skivvy boy becomes chosen one story. The rift, and the idea of two interlocking worlds meeting each other are both fascinating. I just wish it took less time to get there. I wish we took less time to get to the other events in Pug’s story, too.

Then we have the elves and dwarves. “Oh no, not more bloody elves,” as they say. Tall and enchanting and beautiful elves bought from the Standard Fantasy Tropes shop. I wonder if, at the time, it felt newer and fresher than this, but if people were groaning at elves in Lord of the Rings, somehow I doubt it.

Thing is, it’s great if that’s what you’re after. I have to highlight that. Despite the book being in desperate need of an editor’s red pencil, the writing isn’t bad. I think more recent fantasy has raised the standard rather and it’s harder for books like this to look good. Yet there’s a great market for this kind of thing, and I keep on reading because I want to know how the rift plot plays out.

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Writing Wednesday: Write what you don’t know

Posted on June 5, 2013 by joelyblack

I’ve read that phrase a lot recently. Strangely, I don’t think anybody ever told me to write what I do know. But I have read “Write what you don’t know” an awful lot, in just about every guide to writing I pick up.

The first place I saw it was a guide on writing non-fiction. It’s probably easier to write what you don’t know in non-fiction. After all, it’s all about what actually happens in the world, you can stick to the concrete findings of research and, if nothing else, Wikipedia. Writing fiction is more difficult.

We do it all the time though. If I could only write what I know, I could really only write about a small ginger woman with a weapon fixation living in the north of England. Which is a pretty narrow subject, if I’m honest. Every time you step into another character, you step into something you can only imagine the experience of. I put a lot of work into finding out what things are like (hence the archery, etc), but I can’t ever actually ride on a dragon (more’s the pity), so I’ve got to imagine what that’s like.

I never really considered that I spend almost all my time writing what I don’t know, until I started writing about cancer.

I’d initially decided not to write ‘the cancer story’ because it felt like I was straying into territory where even the most intensive, thoughtful research would fall short. I was very worried that people who read it and had had cancer would easily pick holes in it, not just over technicalities of treatment but the daily experience of living with such a serious illness.

I do have some experience of cancer. It’s the experience of the relative, the family member. It’s the experience of sitting in sterile waiting rooms, inhaling the stinging odour of antiseptic and bleach, reading through The People’s Friend, apologetic looks from nursing staff. It’s also the experience of the long night drives when you finally get the call that your relative is approaching the end, and this is your last chance to say goodbye.

My uncle died of a brain tumour when he was 37. I was nine, and just about old enough to understand what was going on. His tumour wasn’t cancerous, in the sense that it had no ambitions to spread to other organs. It was, however, aggressive about the space it needed in his own skull. Operations proved unsuccessful. We saw him several times at his London hospice, gradually fading away. He had the nursing staff buy us Matchbox cars and little Lego kits so we could pick a toy when we came to see him in that over-warm white room that smelled of nothing.

My grandfather also died of cancer, in the same hospice, seven years later. It didn’t affect me in quite the same way; I was older and had to take the call from the nursing staff that he was about to die. It was eerily calm, waiting for the inevitable.

It wasn’t until I decided to write about cancer, and specifically about a brain tumour, that I realised how affected I was by my uncle’s death. My other uncle died last year, also of a brain tumour (this one was cancerous, and aggressive in its own, malignant way). Since the age of nine, I realised, I was convinced I’d get a brain tumour and die at 37. This is how children base their assumptions of the world on adult experiences.

I wasn’t convinced in a way that affected my life or thinking directly. It was in the background, like I assumed I’d buy a house, go to university and publish a book (not necessarily in that order). My uncle was also the man who inspired me to get a PhD. I’d get one because he had one. It was inevitable that way.

It is very different being the patient, though. How could you possibly know how you’d react, being told you had cancer? I was lucky, in that a friend on Twitter sent me some long accounts of his experience. What struck me was how unlike my expectations it was. I thought there might be drama and emotion, fear and dread. Instead, what struck me was the level of trust in experts, the slightly dissociated way the patient is carried through the process of diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

I wasn’t writing about recovery. In the end, I couldn’t use much of the technical information (great though it was). I strayed into unexpected, more personal territory. I know I would feel a great deal of unease at the idea of somebody cutting into my brain. I feel rather more attached to that organ, since I suppose it is the source of the thing I think of as me. It feels more invasive, intrusive and dangerous, and found myself dealing more with that fear than the horror of cancer itself. When you start out, you never know exactly where you’ll end up.

I submitted the story this week, so I’m still waiting to hear what happens to it. Fingers crossed.

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Book Review: Ursula le Guin – Gifts

Posted on June 3, 2013 by joelyblack

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I brought several books to read while away in Devon. I’m here for five days. My biggest dilemma was how to fit all the books into the suitcase. When I arrived, I immediately picked out a bunch of books to read from the selection on offer, including others to take home. I am possibly a little crazy.

One of the books was Gifts. It’s the first in a series but sits as a good standalone as well. The intended audience is probably a lot younger than me, but since Le Guin is one of those essential authors, I had to read it. It’s a delight, the kind of thing I’d want to read in one sitting. You probably could, too, if you didn’t have small children around you all the time clamouring for the use of your iPad.

It packs a lot of story, a lot of world, into a comparatively small number of pages. I always feel Le Guin’s worlds have something ethereal, or dreamy about them. Blurb on the back describes them as forceful and delicate, which is not far off the mark. She does an awful lot with few words, which shows up all those gargantuan doorstop novels that crowd out the shelves.

Gifts was a pleasure to read. A circular style novel, it describes a wilderness world, not unlike the moors I’m currently staying in. It’s people are known for their ‘witchcraft’, or gifts as they call them. Each lineage has their own kind of gift, whether it’s the ability to call animals, heal or harm people with a thought, or most destructive of all, unmake things.

The thief Emmon stumbles into this wilderness from the Lowlands, and will turn this world upside down by the end. Much of the story details the life of Orrec, the son of the head of the lineage who can destroy things. It never feels like we’re reading background, or a backstory. It might feel uneventful, as Le Guin focuses on the budding relationship between Orrec and Gry, and their struggles with the burden of having such gifts.

The book is also very much about the inter-generational conflict between father and son, mother and daughter. In their own ways, neither Orrec nor Gry fit the mould their parents have made for them, and must make a crucial choice about whether or not they can find a way to fit into this society that doesn’t seem to have a place for them. In some ways, a coming-of-age story, and in others a sensitive and often deeply moving look at the struggle of growing up and find your own path.

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Book Review: Joe Abercrombie – Red Country

Posted on May 30, 2013 by joelyblack

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

I’ve done it. I’ve caught up with all of Joe Abercrombie’s published work and he now has permission to produce more. I have to admit, I’d love to see where he goes next with this. He’s done the classic fantasy trilogy, he’s done vengeance fantasy, he’s done war and military history and now he’s done the wild, wild west. What next?

This book was special. This book was heralded because we’d all gone two books without so much of a sign of the Bloody Nine, and we all wanted to know what happened to Logan after he leapt out of that window. I think we were all waiting, hoping he’d show up, maybe in a bit of a disguise. Finally, then, when the trailer came out for Red Country, there was that missing finger…

We need more Logan Ninefingers.

We need more Logan Ninefingers.

Satisfaction! But first, a brief summary of the plot. Shy South is a farmer with a history (they all have a history), who lives and works with a grumpy northerner called Lamb. They come home from selling the annual crop to discover the farm burned and Shy’s younger brother and sister taken. They do the obvious thing: they go after them.

The story falls a little bit flat, I’ll be honest. Since Best Served Cold, there has been a lack of the twisted plots that made the First Law Trilogy so very memorable. Not that everything has to be so twisted, but I do love it when they are. The characters are interesting enough. Yes, Logan returns. Yes, so does Shivers and Nicomo Cosca and a variety of others. We also have some new faces to get to know.

I can’t help but feel Shivers was crow-barred in there, though. He was supposed to have been over Logan killing his father and brother back in Best Served Cold, so it feels a little strange that he reappears, although it’s claimed he’s here on Black Calder’s business (this is never really resolved). I do like Shivers, and I think his character arc has been a great one to follow. But it seems to be repeated, over and over, and in Logan again in this book. A bad man can’t be a good man, always has to go back to fighting. You know the drill.

Nicomo Cosca returns, and he is always a bright star in the Abercrombie sky. Like he’s stumbled out of an Evil Musketeers episode where the noble four fell into a parallel universe and found bad versions of themselves. That’s Nicomo Cosca: Alexandre Dumas’ sweaty nightmare. He’s still as rumbunctious, drunk and verbose as ever, now carting around his own biographer. He is a dying star, however, and it’s clear he’s not going to last much longer.

There’s a feeling to this book that our time in this particular world has run its course. A strong feeling of endings. Perhaps its because many of the characters we have seen before, and it lacks the freshness of The First Law and Best Served Cold. You reach the point with Abercrombie where you expect everybody to be cowardly and underhand, so it’s no surprise when they are. All the big fighting men think about being good but feel they can’t be, and that never really changes either. While Shy has her own story to tell, she occasionally feels like Monzcarro lite, or the version of Monzcarro who went back to her farm and was never bothered by war again.

I feel like I want to read Abercrombie do something very new, and very different. It was great to see Logan again, but I think maybe what I wanted was a rehash of The First Law, and really, I could just go and read that series again. Red Country often feels thin, a lot of pages for less story than his earlier works. It’s still worth reading, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like Abercrombie’s talent could be applied to something very different, rather than simply telling the next stage of various characters’ stories.

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Rant: Oh god, BT. Why must you do this to me?

Posted on May 29, 2013 by joelyblack

So I had this awesome idea. Well, I had an Adult Idea, which is similar but usually involves bills and spending less on them. This was last week. After the unparalleled success of getting new and cheaper home contents insurance.

This is adulthood, folks. Your dreams of greatness, fame and money descend into long battles on the phone trying to decide whether or not you need extra accidental damage coverage.

Flush with the power that comes from making decisions, I decided to upgrade my broadband with BT. Yes, BT.

I know some of you are groaning and saying, “But WHY are you with BT?”

And to that I answer, “Because of all the time I’ve spent watching you on Twitter complaining about the service you have that isn’t BT.”

They haven’t been too bad, to be honest. In the sense that I actually have wireless internet that works. At least, they’re great until you have to talk to them in any way shape or form.

I logged on to my account and took a look at the new packages. “These are the packages you can order!” the website said. I picked the right one, and clicked OK.

The next page in formed me that this package wasn’t available for me. Would I like this one instead? Well, OK. I didn’t get the Sainsers voucher, but then I don’t shop in Sainsers. Meh.

I placed my order and the email came through OK. It said the service would be switched on today. Excite!

Or not. Today rolled around and I’d heard nothing from BT. NADA. Not even the second order confirmation email. It was all quiet on the BT front.

I decided to check my order, which involved remembering the new username and password I’d set up before. For some reason, I can remember all ten of the different bits of information I need to get into my bank account but when it comes to BT… well, it could be anything. Let’s not forget if I want to check email I have to use Yahoo. And that’s just a whole pile of shuddering awful.

I logged on. I’d been directed to this page, having been told from here I could track my orders. No link. I did eventually find the right page. It took a few attempts to get the right number. The system considered matters.

NO ORDER RECOGNISED.

I tried again.

NO ORDER RECOGNISED.

Now, I may be a trifle forgetful at times, but I’m not given to forgetting entire sections of my life. Unless the haze of traumatic amnesia descended. I decided to call BT on one of the several numbers they suggest.

Before I’d even started, the filter system (or whatever they call it), asked me three times which type of service I wanted. So I told them, three times.

It took surprisingly little time to get through to an actual person. General experience in 2013 is that there are no other human beings left, and certainly none to answer questions about where your order is, why they’ve double charged you or what happened to your new hub.

The next problem emerged: the person on the other end was nice. Really nice. A lovely chatty, possibly Australian, person. Just when I was ready to be a bit annoyed at them, they flung the ultimate weapon against British Anger: Somebody Polite.

I explained the situation and she looked up the order.

The System, she said, decided I couldn’t have the order because it was pretty much the same as my old service, except a bit cheaper.

The System. I’m starting to think BT has something like a prototype of Skynet here.

Press 1 for new customers, 2 to discuss your bill, 3 to die.

Press 1 for new customers, 2 to discuss your bill, 3 to die.

I said I still wanted it, if I could have it. Turns out, I could. She put the order through again, with a new date for delivery of next Friday. YAY! I said I was grateful, took down the order number, and said I hoped The System didn’t decline the order again. Then I rang off.

Here’s the thing. It was awesome to speak to somebody real, and have that real person be nice and get Mac users and all the rest of it. However, I was never informed that my order was cancelled. All’s well that ends well, but goodness, it would have been simpler just to tell me somehow that the order hadn’t been confirmed.

On another note, if that is the way of The System, then BT need to stop telling people calling them they can do things online. That’s the lesson there. Oh yes, and The System. It is evil.

It probably has the voice of GLaDOS.

The System

The System

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