The Creaking Hinges Of The World

Coming to the end of the ongoing, I'm able to slack off this weekend, for the first time in over a month. More work yet to be done, but the end is in sight. Here in London we've enjoyed beautiful autumn weather, warm temperatures and clear blue skies, and leaves tumbling down on mild breezes. Out and about on Friday evening, in my home patch, where many City workers live, restaurants and pubs were packed with suits charged with the desperate exuberance of soldiers back from the front. On Saturday, a ramble around Hampstead Heath, the breeze so slight only one person was attempting to put up a kite on Parliament Hill, and then down the hill to Camden, and Marine Ices (best ice cream in London). And today the local park was crowded with people, some shirtless, enjoying the sunshine, as people did in in the glorious August of 1914, before everything changed.

Autumn is my favourite season. You can feel the hinges of the world begin to turn, as the year winds up. Everything is changing; everything seems charged with potential. Especially now, when, thanks to the suits and the quants, the great engine of hypercapitalism has blown its valves and pistons, and everything is up in the air, and every kind of future is at hazard. Crisis frees the mind from habit. What better time to be a science fiction writer?