Book Post: Twits

(Photo credit: sharnik)

People's approach to censorship is strange. In a country that brought in copies of '50 Shades of Grey' I had someone concerned at my answer to an interview question, "Why did you start writing?" to which I responded, "I gave up smoking in 2001 and needed to find something publicly acceptable to do with my hands".

They weren't sure whether that could run or not.

The discussion started off today's Twitter Book Club meeting. We talked about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy, of course - but also Olives and Beirut.

What made you focus on Shemlan - how had you found out about MECAS and its role in the little village? 
I'd known about it for years, but only relatively recently found it becoming an itch I had to scratch, buying up esoteric books about MECAS and others peripheral to it but which mentioned the Centre, including Ivor Lucas' memoir of an unexceptional life of a diplomat, which was to inform much of Jason Hartmoor's backstory. And then, of course, I had to go up there - a first visit with pal Maha found the centre, subsequent visits saw me lunching like a little pasha with friends at the glorious Al Sakhra (Cliff House) restaurant which is so central to the plot of the book. It is a truly beautiful place, BTW...

Olives was a novel whereas Beirut and Shemlan went more robustly down the Tom Clancy route. Guilty as charged, but I think (IMHO) Shemlan is more nuanced and closer in spirit to Olives than Beirut.

How can Lynch kill a trained killer with his bare hands? 
He gets lucky a couple of times, that's all. He's not fit and drinks too much. In fact, Lynch drinks when he's happy and drinks when he's sad. At least he's given up the fags.

Where did you get Gerald from? 
He was the result of a meeting I had with a prominent businessman who gave me the "I've been 20 years escaping being Gerry" line. I left the meeting punching the air as I built my spy in Olives around that memorable quote - a negation of a humble Irish upbringing.

Will there be more Lynch books? 
Not right now, not the next book. But possibly in the future. He was never actually meant to be in Shemlan, he gatecrashed it. I don't know how the book would have turned out if he hadn't.

Why do you do messy murders of characters we like? 
Because I can. I'm laughing when I do it. I enjoy the idea that I can, occasionally, shock my readers. If you're not expecting it, the unexpected can be quite a powerful thing - particularly when books follow a 'formula'.

Lynch. He's an SOB in Olives, a hero figure in Beirut and a nice guy in Shemlan. 
Not sure about nice guy, but as I've often said, Olives is told in the first person by the young man who Lynch is blackmailing. He's hardly about to tell us what a great guy our Gerald is. In all three books, Lynch is a self-serving maverick who does his own sweet thing but manipulates and bullies those around him to get results.

Olives and the narrative arc. Is Paul too passive? 
I've just finished writing the screenplay for Olives, which I've given When The Olives Weep as a working title, and it's been a fascinating exercise. And it's shown me there's a clear narrative arc in there, it's just not obviously based on the compelling need of one character and that characters odyssey to fulfil that need. Paul is a more passive player, but he still embarks on a journey to fulfil his purpose. It's just he doesn't know what it is. His confusion shouldn't hide the fact he's got to act to get though all this.

And he makes choices we think we would be better than to make. 
Sure, which is what I set out to do with the book. We all like to think we'd be altruistic and heroic and not weak or vacillate when the chips are down. Which is where we're kidding ourselves.

How long did Shemlan take to write? 
It was done in two tranches - about halfway finished (but relatively clearly plotted) when I published Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and finished subsequent to that. The last portion of the book  the Estonian scenes especially, was finished at incredible speed as I smashed away at the keyboard with my Bose Wife Cancelling Headphones pumping high volume death metal straight into my cortex. It took a bit of editing afterwards, but it was really fun to write.

We talked about more, of course, lots more: about my rejections and why I finally turned my back on 'traditional' publishing and let my agent go, about characterisation and the body count in Shemlan, about selling books, online and offline distribution and about what I'm up to next. We talked a lot about the souq in Aleppo and how beautiful it was in a very in your face sort of way and how it had, eventually after much soul searching, to find its way into the book untouched by the war that, of course, has utterly destroyed the huge Ottoman maze that was the world's largest covered souq and one of its oldest. Well, at least I did...

As always, great fun. I love book clubs.

Book Post: Shemlan's First Outing

I'm going to be meeting the Twitter Book Club (@TwitBookClub or twitbookclub.org) tomorrow to talk about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy. It'll be the first time I meet people who've read it who aren't close friends, family or beta readers.

I'm a tad apprehensive, tell the truth. Readers are a funny lot and their perceptions, thoughts and questions never fail to have me rethinking things from a totally different perspective. I suppose I'm lucky in that so far (touch wood) people have generally played nicely, even my protesters have been gentle in their remonstration.

I'm not expecting any protests about Shemlan, although I can't say I was necessarily expecting the controversies of Olives. The book was championed in the year's first edition of Dubai Eye Radio's 'Talking of Books' earlier this month, which was all very nice (the podcast is linked here for your listening pleasure) and the genteel members of the TOB team seem to have enjoyed the read. It'll be interesting to find out what the booky twits all made of it.

If you want to come along tomorrow, I'm assured you're more than welcome. I'll have a couple of copies of Shemlan with me if anyone wants to buy 'em, too! The TwitBookClub meets at 11am Saturday the 18th January (and every third Saturday each month) at Coffeol Emaar Boulevard, Boulevard Plaza, Tower 1, Ground Floor - here's a handy map. There's even 50% off food and 20% off drinks for book club attendees. Yes, you did hear that right. 50% off! Where are you going? Wait for me! Sorry, Dubai radio ad scriptwritis.

I'll let you know how it all goes... In the meantime, if you want to get your own copy, you'll find all the links to buy Shemlan as an ebook or paperback right here.

The UAE Mobile Market. Some Numbers

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority is set to end its 'My number, my identity' campaign tomorrow. The campaign saw all mobile users in the Emirates being sent texts to go into their telcos offices and register their SIM cards against their passports or national IDs.

It's unclear whether this is something we'll have to repeat every two years as we renew visas, but the campaign's drawing to a close certainly means a weeding out of the 'dead' SIMs in the market. Operators tend not to count unused SIMs when they publish claims of network size and penetration, often giving exaggerated market size numbers as a result. The UAE, for instance, is a market of 14.1 million mobile subscribers, a penetration of 171%.

Gulf News reports today that Du will suspend unregistered lines from January 17th with a 90-day period in which subscribers will be able to re-register before the line is deleted. Presumably Etisalat will follow suit. And an awful lot of people who haven't moved to re-register their lines are going to go into a last minute tailspin and dash to get the job done when they find their mobiles stop working.

So what has been the impact of the campaign so far? According to GN, TRA director general Mohammed Al Ghanem has said 3.82 million SIMs were cut off and 1.35 million suspended after the fifth phase - we don't know if that's a total for the whole campaign and, if not, about the first four phases or, indeed, how many SIMs remain unregistered, but that figure would mean something like 26% of the market was wiped out in the campaign so far.

Which is quite a chunk of any market, I'm sure you'd agree...

Is Microsoft Clutching A One Way Ticket To Nowhere?

Image via CrunchBase

Microsoft isn't really as smart as people think and it probably isn't as smart as it thinks it is, either. Its fortunes were set by being in the right place at the right time with a piece of operating system software it didn't actually code - it bought it in. Seattle Computer Products' QDOS was to become PC-DOS and, in a moment of brilliance, was licensed rather than sold outright to IBM for the company's new Personal Computer.

The result was a gravy train for Microsoft, which promptly did the dirty on IBM by licensing MS-DOS to makers of PC clones. Why IBM put up with it is anyone's guess. but by the time Compaq released an 80386 based machine ahead of IBM and took effective leadership of the PC market, Microsoft had its own version of a goose in every pot and a wagon in every barn - pretty much every PC in the world had Windows and Office installed and MS was printing money.

The OS/2 body swerve was a final blow to IBM's dream of getting back dominance of the desktop and was to start the chapter in the company's history where it exited the PC market Jobs' Apple had cheekily welcomed it to in 1981. IBM eventually sold the business - saved, in the meantime, by its ThinkPad laptops - to Lenovo just in time to avoid the current spiralling decline of the PC.

Microsoft was so busy thinking it was smart, rather than being merely an accomplished rider on the PC clone gravy train, it missed the Internet. Entirely. Netscape nearly pulled off its coup - creating a platform for third party software that would disintermediate Windows. But Gates turned MS on a sixpence and brought the company's crushing market dominance to triumph in the 'browser war' that followed. They got in late, but they got in with such venom it appeared they were unstoppable. They weren't.

The win cost Microsoft a punishing - and embarrassing - trial at the hands of the US Department of Justice. Reeling from the whole bruising process, a four year trial ending in 2002, Microsoft found itself fighting a number of persistent enemies, including Sun Microsystems, Oracle and a growing horde of passionate Linux backers - a party that IBM joined with a $10 billion investment in the open source software. By the time the next big thing came, Microsoft missed it as badly as it had the Internet - the trouble was, it wasn't one big thing but several.

Google's IPO in 2004 showed an astonished world how very big the company had grown from absolutely nowhere (today, ten short years later, it's a more valuable company than Microsoft, BTW). Three years later, Steve Jobs launched the iPhone and then Google bought in a piece of software that was to achieve precisely what MS-DOS had achieved almost twenty years earlier for Microsoft. Android.

Meanwhile, Microsoft was busy screwing up Windows in an attempt to rekindle the 'must have this year's version' of the WinTel heyday. The awful Windows Vista stalled adoption, many electing to stay with the stable and 'not broke' Windows XP. Windows 7 rectified the awfulness of Vista, but arguably it was already too late. People were playing with new toys: tablets. And Microsoft had no way to compete with iOS or Android - and no plan to, either.

Why didn't Microsoft turn on a sixpence again? Because it had nowhere to turn - its dominance of the desktop didn't stretch to the new wireless world of smartphones and tablets. And its eventual attempt to face the conundrum is all too clear from the schizophrenic Windows 8.

But it's bought Nokia - and it has the chance now to join the smartphone and tablet market with a better version of Windows that'll put the faults of Windows 8 (which is an absolutely fabulous mobile OS, strangely enough given Microsoft's long history of awful mobile OSs. Windows CE anyone?) behind it.

Only Microsoft hasn't got a huge and successful content-rich ecosystem like Amazon, Google or Apple. And it doesn't have the support of a wide enough base of applications developers. It's got Bing losing to Google, Azure losing to Amazon - too many fights on too many fronts. And too many innovations taking place away from the source of the majority of Microsoft's revenue - the desktop.

Is the party over? Yes. But does Microsoft have a ticket to the next party?

Book Post - A Truckle Of 'Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy' Trivia

For no particularly good reason, a handful of things you probably didn't know (or even want to know) about Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy. Which is a book I've written. Don't know if I mentioned that before or not...

The wooden Estonian orthodox church is real
Dennis Wye meets Jaan Kallas outside a wooden church with an ageing congregation. It's real, down near the port in Tallinn (just across the road, in fact, from the Museum Of Soviet Uselessness) and rather beautiful. It's one of few surviving churches in Tallinn - Estonia seems quite proud of being the most secular country in Europe and most churches have been deconsecrated and are being used as concert halls or Irish pubs. Hence the ageing congregation. The music in these churches, by the way, is beautiful and forms a connection to the Syrian Urfalee church.

So's the ice road
And you genuinely are told not to wear a seat belt and to travel within the minimum and maximum speed limit for fear of creating resonance and cracking the ice.

Marwan Nimr is back
He was inspired by a box of fruit. There's a company that airfreights fruit out of Lebanon called 'Marwan' and its logo is a little dakota-like aeroplane whizzing through the air. And so Marwan Nimr was born. He makes a cameo in Shemlan - having survived Beirut - and he's not best pleased with our Gerald.

Talking of cameos...
Lamiable extra brut champagne makes a brief appearance, following its excellent debut in Beirut. It's actually hard to make great extra brut champagne (with little or no added sugar, or 'dosage', it's easy to make sour extra brut, hard to make flinty, dry but rounded extra brut) The family that produces this exquisite single grower grand cru champagne appear to have forgiven me for using their delicious product to kill a chap in Beirut. I know they've read it because their UK importer sent them the relevant passage. Snitch.

The Puss In Boots
Marcelle's rather outré establishment in Monot, Le Chat Botté, is actually named after a Belgian hotel I stayed in as a kid. It just seemed like a good name and I've always liked that Marcelle insists on using its French name rather than the English version. How very Lebanese, darling!

Lance Browning
The nature of Lance Browning's fate and the fact he works for a certain bank are by no means intended to be some sort of revenge on my bank and certainly not written with ferocious relish. I can state that categorically.

The baddies are really bad...
The Ühiskassa, the umbrella organisation of the Estonian mafia is real, although apparently less active these days than in its heyday before Estonia's accession to the European Union.

The goodies are hardly better - and no, the whole CIA scheme in the book is by no means far fetched
In fact, the precise scheme they're up to in Shemlan is documented as having been seriously evaluated as an operation by the CIA. There are many recorded instances of US intelligence having become involved in the international arms and drugs trades, including the ill-fated Iran contra scandal, as well as money laundering drug related funds. So now you know...

You can buy the book here. 

There's also more stuff about the book and the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies there, too!

Emirates ID To Function As Bank Card? Oh Horrors...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There's no end to the things you can do with a smart card and the Emirates ID card is no exception. Gulf News reports today, in all seriosity, on a banking executive from Noor Bank who has commented on the announcement, made apparently on December 31st, that the Emirates ID card will be integrated with bank cards to create a single, seamless customer service experience paradigm excellence luminance entity.

Given my UAE bank has over the years managed to screw up every single service it offers, from failing to make transfers through to issuing cards, from honouring cheques through to failing to call me before blocking Visa transactions and so on through a litany of incompetence and befuddling idiocy, the very idea of integrating such a bunch of hooning nitwits with my biometric identity chills me to the marrow.

And while it may sound attractive to pool a range of services into a single smart card, the practicality of it all is that the more things you load onto a single transactional device, the more shocking the consequence of that device's failure are. It's a little like passwords - we're constantly told by security experts that we shouldn't have a single password for every service we use. Similarly, a single card with multiple functions is inherently less secure and more prone to visits from Mr Cockup.

Added to that, the ID card now requires renewal every two years, which would mean that you forsake access to your bank account for the period between expiry and renewal. And - as we all full well know - when you for some reason fall off the rails and become an exception to the system for some reason, you could well find yourself bereft not only of identity but funds as well.

This whole integration thing comes hot on the heels of the recent ATM outage in the UAE, where customers from at least two banks found themselves unable to withdraw money from ATMs but - in many cases - found their accounts debited by the amount of the failed withdrawals.

The executive quoted by GN apparently "Admitted that there could be certain issues". You can sing that, buddy...

UAE Anti-Smoking Law. Genius Or Just A Fag?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UAE is to implement a smoking law banning tobacco advertisements, smoking in schools, universities and places of worship and smoking in cars with kids of less than 12 years of age. Oh, and making under-age smoking illegal with a fine of up to Dhs10,000.

The National reports on the story today. The implementation of the Federal law is to take place on January 21st. Strangely, the law itself dates back to 2009 - but crafting regulations, by-laws and compliance with many shades of red tape have delayed its implementation.

There's no tax on cigarettes in the UAE, so a pack costs less than £1. Something like 40% of teens in the UAE smoke.

There's no effective ban on smoking in public places (offices, restaurants and other outlets), despite early talk of the by-laws to the Federal smoking law including such provisions. The Ministry of Health has, according to The National's piece, just 'prepared a draft resolution to ban smoking in the ministry’s hospitals, primary health centres and specialised treatment centres.'

So despite that early sabre-rattling, there's to be no UAE blanket ban on smoking in public. It would appear that whatever the intentions of the law originally were, the process of negotiating its implementation have drawn many of its teeth. Does the implementation go far enough? Well, if you believe smoking is a bad thing, no it doesn't.

I speak as someone who used to smoke for England. I chugged my way through about sixty a day until finally coming to the realisation that I was manipulating the people around me so that I could be sure of finding myself in a situation where I could smoke. I didn't like that in myself. But I did promise myself I'd never become one of those rabidly anti-smoking ex-smokers.

It's a promise I'm finding increasingly hard to keep, to be honest with you. I gave up the fags back in 2001 and find it harder each day to remember why I ever thought what I was doing to myself was anything other than insane and suicidal.

Which is why I'm mildly horrified to realise I don't think the implementation of the law on 21st January is enough. A UK/Ireland style blanket ban of smoking in all public places is what is required, not a range of halfway house resolutions.

If the me from before 2001 could hear me now, he'd kick my arse...

Book Post: Shemlan, Newgale, Pembrokeshire And Floods

Jason Hartmoor has been alive a little over an hour. He has recovered from his recurring nightmare and turned the damp side of his pillow to face the mattress. He luxuriates in the bright light streaming through the window overlooking the sea. It takes up most of the length of the room.

The bed sheets are white and crisp. Every opening of the eyes is a bonus, a thrill of pleasure. Sometimes he tries to stave off sleep, lying and fighting exhaustion until the early hours. It is becoming increasingly hard to push back the darkness. These days he’s lucky to hold out beyond midnight.

Throwing the lightweight duvet aside, he pauses for breath before sliding himself into a sitting position, looking out over Newgale’s glorious sandy mile, the breakers cascading. The dots of shivering early surfers bob in the glistening waves.

The pain starts to creep back, like a slinking dog.

He stands by the window, gazing out over the hazy beach, the fine misty spray thrown up by the incoming tide. His face in the morning light is lined and wan, pain etched into his still-handsome features, a face that would seem haughty but for the humour in the blue eyes nestled in the bruised-looking shadows. His hair is white, his forehead prominent and his nose aquiline. He draws himself up unconsciously; the slight puff of his chest brings a twinge of discomfort.
From Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy

What's the connection between the Lebanese mountain village of Shemlan and the Pembrokeshire coast? Absolutely none, unless you count me. Retired diplomat Jason Hartmoor was always going to have holed up either in Newgale or Pendine, it was touch and go which until I actually started writing the words above. I just wanted a long beach.

I spent many idyllic childhood holidays just around the corner from Newgale, the family stayed in the village of Pen Y Cwm (Welsh for 'top of the valley') and we'd often walk over the headlands to the village shop. When the tide is low you can walk from the beach at the end of the valley to Newgale, a mile and more of golden strand stretching out before you and a huge sea wall of slithering grey sea-worn stones protecting the pub and campsite that, apart from a handful of houses scattered on the hillside, make up Newgale itself.

The recent bad weather in the UK saw the Pembrokeshire coast taking something of a battering and Newgale was no exception: for the first time in living memory, that huge mound of stones was breached by the tide and wind-blown sea, flooding the campsite and pub beyond.

My parents never lost their love of this majestic coast and - arguably too late in life - chose to move there in their retirement. It was more my father's choice, he had a hankering to live by the sea. They ended up inland, a little down the road from Newgale and so we travel there frequently enough. The beach remains a favourite walk and yes, even in the winter months that mercilessly cold grey sea is dotted with the figures of surfers. I've always thought them quite, quite mad.

Anyway, as you travel uphill out of Newgale towards Pen Y Cym and Solva there's a bungalow with blue windows. Stand below it and look out across the vast expanse of shining sand at low tide and you'll see the view Jason took in on the day he pushed his x-rays into the kitchen dustbin and trundled his wheelie bag out to the taxi on his way to Beirut and his date with destiny...

Films On The Fly

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I only ever watch films when I fly Emirates. This is for two simple reasons. Firstly I'm there anyway so I can't complain at wasting 90 minutes of my life and secondly it's free, so I haven't shelled out 35 hard earned Dirhams (or whatever it is) on sitting around and consuming over an hour's worth of vapid guff dressed up as something I really, really need to watch. Because nine times out of ten, it's nothing more than vapid guff wot's on offer.

Rarely have I found myself driven to such a state of fury by Hollywood as I was this time around - that the crash came on the back of finding - to my consternation - two enjoyable films just made it worse and the impact all the more shocking.

I watched 'Jobs' on the way out, which was interesting. Ashton Kutcher does an impressive Young Jobs and somehow manages to make the transition to Ill Jobs believable. There are just a couple of 'Look, see I can do Steve Jobs' trademark silly walk' scenes too many - okay, you can do the walk. We get it. I've always had the feeling that Jobs was an obsessive egomaniac with a sizeable Jobs fixation and the film certainly reflects that side of the man's nature whilst doing a neat balancing act that avoids alienating the many million iZombies out there who would all too readily cry foul if their icon and obsession were handled too roughly. But generally the film's an engaging and entertaining portrait of Our Steve from his college dropout days through to the internal reveal of the iPod - the film's opening scene.

On the way back I watched 'Rush' which I enjoyed thoroughly. The film tells the story of James Hunt and Niki Lauder's rivalry and for some reason reminded me strongly of Frost vs Nixon (I found out just now this wasn't coincidental - both films were directed by a bloke called Ron Howard). It really is a period piece, all sideburns and flared collars, both title role actors do a fabulous job of portraying their characters and this is by no means a film you have to be a petrol-head to enjoy. It's truly great stuff, gripping and intense, stylish and rarely less than dramatic.

And then I decided to watch Matt Damon in Elysium. Don't ask me why, looking back on it I can't fathom what on earth I thought I was doing. But I did it. And, perhaps more worryingly, I stuck with it rather than being a sensible boy and finishing the Top Gear Marathon I had started on the outbound flight.

It's possibly the worst film I have ever watched. It actually made me angry that someone, somewhere not only picked up the script but made the awful thing. I'm still fuming.

Everyone on earth is poor and sick and we've broken the planet. The rich elite have escaped to an paradisaical toroidal orbital called Elysium where everyone has garden parties and every house has a machine that fixes all known illness. Some of the Elysium people come back to earth in order to run companies that make profits by exploiting the labour of the ill earth people. Some of the earth people try to get up to Elysium but their space jalopies are blown up by secret agents on earth working for Elysium, in particular a nasty South African called (I can't remember) who has lots of wizzbangs and guns and things.

Matt Damon plays (I can't remember), a former criminal gone straight. Everyone except Matt Damon is Hispanic. He works in a factory doing something a great deal more interesting and diverse than most factory workers. We never get to find out quite what, but it involves screwing things and assembling what look like droids. Matt gets fried in a radiation oven when he tries to unblock the door and is sacked. Quite why you would want to bathe droid carcases in a radiation oven is never really resolved. It is explained to him he has received a massive dose of radiation and has suffered massive organ failure and will die massively in five days. This makes him puke up. Massively. Having just had winter vomiting bug, I find myself in sympathy with Matt, although couldn't help questioning quite how extensive organ failure and imminently terminal radiation poisoning makes you puke up but leaves you still able to stagger around.

Matt goes to see (I can't remember), the local hood to offer his services in return for a black market ticket to Elysium where they can cure his terminal illness. The hood laughs at this. What could Matt Damon possibly offer him that would make it worth a ticket on a shuttle to Elysium? Oh hang on, he just thought of something! Phew!

Matt is now too sick to walk and so is fitted with a mechanical exo-skeleton by some black market surgeons who are surprised to find him alive the next morning after they have screwed the whole thing into his bones. Alive he might be, but he's a mess. Strangely, at no point in the film do we get the impression that Matt is a dying man propped up by an exo-skeleton, he's far too dynamic and just damn heroic for all that. He does, however, mop his brow and stagger occasionally - to signify existentially threatening illness, we presume.

This provides possibly the only interesting aspect to this film - the brand collision between Matt Damon and his role. He's supposed to play a man dying of acute radiation poisoning, but he's Matt Damon, man of action! How can he possibly play a man weakened by illness? Simple! Be Matt Damon with an exo-skeleton!

Matt and a gang of hoods set out on a heist to capture the mind-state of a top Elysium official who has come to earth to run a factory. This is his price onto a shuttle, it seems. Oh, lookie! It's the same official who ran Matt's factory where he got sick. Luckily, Elysium Man (I don't remember his name) is involved in a plot to launch a coup in Elysium hatched by the wicked Minister for Defence, who is a nasty lady in a natty suit. So when Matt downloads the chap's mind state, he receives the code to reboot Elysium's servers.

For some reason, Elysium's server farm requires green screen pages of code overlaid with a knifey-looking graphical logo thing that says 'DANGER THIS IS THE SERVER REBOOT CODE WE DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE' or something like that. I can't quite remember. While we're on the subject, writing a reference to 'the cloud' in the script doesn't make your film sound technical and futuristic, it makes you sound stupid. And if we ever (and I doubt this very much) evolve to the stage where we can build toroidal earth orbiting paradises, I don't think we'll still be using server farms, let alone keyboard based computers. Do please feel free to laugh at me from your toroidal earth orbiting paradise when you are searching the earth archives on your laptop PC in a few hundred years' time and find this.

This code is now in Matt's head, so the South African bloke wants to capture him. There's a hot looking Hispanic doctor chick Matt knew as a child and she has a daughter with terminal leukemia who also wants to go to Elysium. The kid is cute. Who'd have known?

The South African baddie captures the hot Hispanic chick, whose name I don't remember, and her cute kid. He also captures Matt and takes them all to Elysium. The hood and his henchmen also go to Elysium because they've figured if Matt has the code to reboot Elysium's servers in his head then they have a chance of resetting the place and making it accept all humanity as members of the The Elysium Club. This will cure everyone, heal earth and make everything right again, apparently.

There are a lot of fights. The hood uses his laptop computer to break all the door locks. Matt kills the South African guy. The kid gets to an Elysium machine and is cured. Matt is plugged into the servers and they reboot. He dies. All of humanity is accepted into Elysium. Yay.

It's the biggest pile of wombat doo I have ever seen in my life. The write-up in the ICE brochure thingy said it touched on important issues, but if there are important issues in here I certainly didn't find them. Unless you're talking about the blindingly obvious and egregiously simplified haves and have-nots thing going down amongst the witless action and lamentable, drooling dialogue.

I had to watch three hours of Top Gear to calm down. I'm still not right, even now. Look on the bright side - I've taken a 109 minute one for the team so you don't have to.

Book Post - Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy On Da Radio

From 11am tomorrow, Dubai Eye Radio's regular Saturday book programme, Talking of Books, will be featuring Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy in its 'Book Champion' slot, in which one of the team proposes a book they think the world should go out and buy and read right now.

I mean, you can only agree with such exquisite taste, can't you?

I'll be joining them on the 'phone at around 11.40am to talk about the book and answer questions. Coming on the back of a 'red eye' flight home, the slot may well feature a sleep deprived maniac babbling absolute rubbish about books, spies and the like and so should at least be entertaining from that point of view.

If you haven't got around to buying your copy yet, here's a handy link to the various online stores who'll sell you an ebook or printed copy.

It'll be my first real public grilling about the book (the Twitter Book Club meeting on the 18th will be a chance for a real eyeball to eyeball encounter with readers) by people wot has read it, so I'm looking forward to finding out what they thought and what questions it left 'em with. I bet we'll be talking about MECAS and George Blake, Kim Philby and the like but you never know. There's plenty else to chat about, from the Lebanese Civil War through Aleppo's destroyed souk to driving across the frozen Baltic.

If you're not UAE based, you can catch the interview streaming online (about 7am onwards UK time, about 9am Beirut time) on this here handy link. Alternatively, you can use this information to neatly avoid the encounter.

What larks!