So, to a party in London, where the first person I talk to is Fay Weldon. It is incredibly noisy and cramped, and when I tell her that my latest work is really a sort of time-travel book about Sweden she gets the idea that I have written a work of science fiction, and talks for some time about how best to sell such a thing.
Later I speak to an academic about early Islam. He introduces himself as a historian of the subject, and says he has enough Arabic to read some of the sources. All this interesting and becomingly modest: this morning, when I looked at his card, I discovered that it actually says “Professor of Arabic” — and this at an extremely prestigious institution.
His partner, a nice archaeologist, is an American. When I give them one of my nice little Moo cards which says “Writes for people” on the back, she says “Writes for People?” Ah, no. Lower case people.
But you should write for People!
Actually, a science fiction novel about time travel in Sweden sounds potentially very interesting.
I’ve stayed in rural Sweden. It’s like those Star Trek episodes where you beam down to the planet, hit a space-time bubble, there’s no Enterprise on the other end of the communicators, and you have to rub two elks together to keep warm while Spock invents some device using bits of twig to reverse the polarity of the discontinuity and conjure a RyanAir 737 out of a wormhole…
Recommended.
R
I would love to see someone try to rub two elks together. I suspect that the ®SPCA and PETA might object.