(1) Go figure.

(2) Whether genre-splitting labels are in fact needed is another debate. No point ignoring that we have them, though.

There was an interesting space opera panel after that — basically asking where the hell it's gone, aside from books. I missed about half of it for signing duties (cover sheets of the "Dark Currents" anthology I'm doing for Newcon Press (not Solaris, as I think I mistakenly said previously) and came in having missed a big chunk. One possibly mistaken impression I got was that other than the Black Library (Games Workshop's very successful publishing imprint) authors, who were happy to own to it, there was a distinct uneasiness at being "space opera" authors rather than "SF" authors. There is a perception — off the back of Star Wars if nothing else, which I always thought of as the quintessential space opera — that the science goes out of one window when the "opera" comes in the other. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Next up — and I really want to get in on one of these — Ready Steady Flash!, in which Lee Harris gave out story themes to Paul Cornell, Juliet McKenna, Tony Lee and Stacia Kane, and gave them 5 minutes to write a story on each. Sitting in my comfortable seat in the audience I was all about the "yeah, I could totally…" but I guess it's rather different when you're actually fighting the clock. The results were very impressive — not only both funny and thought provoking (Juliet's were consistently good, I thought, and particularly Tony Lee's flash poem about the real reason for Anthony Head's delayed arrival), but a testament to good writing under pressure. Can't imagine any of them have an excuse to miss deadlines now…

Thanks to everyone who turned up for my signing slot, which was one of the best-attended I've done, and left me with I think 2 books unsold at the end of it (thanks particularly to Salvador for picking up practically the entire set. Always the path to an author's heart.) Forbidden Planet were selling out right and left, and I think the other booksellers (Abaddon, Angry Robot etc.) were likewise doing a brisk trade. China Mieville did comment that the "geek pound" seemed to be quite an economy-proof currency.

I didn't get to see Brian Blessed's piece, mostly, but by God did I hear him sing opera. There is no end to the man's talents, so long as those talents involve being very, very loud.

Part 3 to come, ish.

SFX 2012 — absolutely the best yet — as a convention they have been getting bigger and better since the first in 2010, and I was very happy to see that as well as the film & TV slots (1), the relatively small number of literary slots from previous events have been considerably expanded this year — and also that the audiences were there for those panels, with the larger spaces in Prestatyn being filled for book-related events.

(1) Interestingly, the schedule has never touched much on games, which surprises me given how much of an impact they have in the genre. Maybe that's yet to come.

And for once, while derailments and inclement weather between them seemed to have it in for anyone travelling anywhere over that weekend, coming from Leeds turned out to be an actual advantage. God's wrath was restricted to parts south.

I am vastly grateful to the staff at Tor, who really do look after their authors very well. The promised "cottage" was a failed-restaurant-turned-guest-house large enough that I was still getting lost there on the Sunday morning (2). My having a room to myself rather thank bunking up (3) with Mark Newton was more a testament to the size of the place than my standing as an author, I suspect, but probably to the considerable relief of Mark at any rate.

(2) Although with my sense of direction this wasn't actually much of a thing

(3) Originally: "Shacking up". Absolutely wrong choice of words.

My panel, "Elf Preservation", ably chaired by Jared from Pornokitsch, was good fun and well attended, but got stuck on the "fantasy races yea or nay" rather than the "magic yea or nay", so I never did get my Peake on as I had intended. Interesting debate, though, with Joe Abercrombie, Juliet E. McKenna, Graham McNeill and Gav Thorpe. In general a split over fantasy races (notably Joe more anti than pro but pondering writing a story with a Shanker main character, which sounds interesting). Scorn on the derivative, plaudits for the innovative, Juliet and I both bemoaning that people will slap the elf/dwarf/etc label on races that really aren't, and my noting that Games Workshop (for whom Graham and Gav have both written) have essentially reclaimed the orc(/k) so that theirs is now the gold standard that other people tend to take off (4).

(4) Not sure gold is the right word for orcs, but there we go.

Interesting history panel later talking about writing and research (and how it takes over your life) — including Pat Kelleher on WWI, Adam Christopher on the prohibition, Maria Dahvana Headley on Ancient Egypt and Paul Cornell on delving into London for his upcoming "Cops and Monsters". Paul was then rushed to the main stage for one of the absolute highlights — a genre-based "Just a Minute" that he was chairing, which was won by Joe "gift of the gab" Abercrombie against varyingly determined resistance from China Mieville, Sarah Pinborough and Toby Whithouse.

Friday night kicked off with Pornokitsch.com's "Kitschies" awards. Now, I have issues here. The website name and the award name and the, er, fact that they're giving away rather beautiful plush tentacles as prizes prepares you for something that's going to be tongue-in-cheek and a bit of a joke, but these were very serious awards being given out on the basis of real innovative contributions to the genre. Find the winners, and more info on the awards and the site in general, here.

Party at Tor place Friday night, very well stocked with Kraken rum, which was sponsoring the Kitschies. Memory of precise details of much of the later evening somewhat vague and rum-sodden.

12pm Friday 3rd February at SFX, I'm doing

"Elf Preservation: without magic and monsters, it's not fantasy. Is it?"

Expect me to get my Peake on unless someone beats me to it.

UPDATE: I will also be signing at the Forbidden Planet Stand at 2pm on Saturday alongside Stephen Baxter — so come for him if not for me . If you grab me with books to sign at any other point I will be happy to do so, but you may need to bring your own pen.

There are some nice other panels at SFX that I intend to catch as audience. I particularly note a panel on World Building vs Character Building Saturday at 4pm, and the somewhat ambitious "WHO IS THE BEST PERSON IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY EVER" which is on at 10am Saturday. Depending on how Friday night went, if you bring some alka-seltzer, that person could be you.

At Alt Fiction later in April I'm down for "Diversity in Fantasy"  with Mark Newton, Anne Lyle and Jenni Hill (12–1 Sunday) (1) and also, to my immense delight, "Not another F*cking Elf" with Adam Lowe, Jenni Hill and Paul Cornell (11–12 Saturday), and I know it's only January, but that has just about made my year I think. Also full supporting programme, and a good looking one at that.

UPDATE: On the subject of Paul, he has kindly asked me to guest post on his blog today, and you can find musings on SFX and the series in general here.

On another note, if anyone out there is after a signed copy of any of my books but, for example, has never been in the same country as I have, or similar, ebay seller Koontz & the Gang (link is to Ebay store) currently has all the book in stock, signed, lined and dated and, I think, on sale for normal cover price.

(1) At this distance, all subject to change of course.

And, yes, they say make your blog entries short and pithy, but when I get my rant on it's hard to stop, Explains why the books tend to break the 200,000 word barrier, certainly.

And before I start, the Shadows of the Apt Wiki has just had a superb facelift, so go check it out!.

OK, apropos of nothing save my recent Christopher Priest binge, secondary worlds for real, or for make believe:

Getting past any initial objections about considering the reality of fictional worlds, when sundry children found their way into Narnia this was presented as a real place. You’d have to stretch the text past breaking point to find an interpretation where it was all, as Edmund originally claims, just a game, imagination by consensus. Narnia exists, insofar as the books are concerned. It’s a real place, as real as the “real world”, and indeed set within a wider multiverse of linked worlds (and aren’t those parts of The Magician’s Nephew actually more intriguing than actual Narnia itself?).

There are similar stories where the balance of probabilities tilts strongly the other way, though: that the fantastic world is the product of imagination, or even mental disorder. This can also be found in work intended for a younger audience. The film Bridge to Terebithia, for example, is pretty much impossible to interpret as a genuine fantastical encounter. Although we see the world the children “visit” it’s  explicitly all in their heads.

Or the reality of the secondary world is up for grabs. Of the “big three,” for example, Wonderland could go either way, although as it is essentially a satire (indeed a mirror, in the 2^nd) of the real, a “realist” argument possibly carries more weight. On the contrary, Neverland and Oz are both presented as very real (save perhaps in the best-known filming of Oz, where they chicken out) and both Barry and Baum go as far as to present their fantastic worlds as superior and preferable to the actual one. It’s a bold move that I think would cause difficulties today – the idea of children retreating into a fantasy world being a good thing would catch a lot of flak from conservative critics (1).

Fiction aimed at adult/older audiences also shows this uncertainty. Leaving aside Walter Mitty(2), whilst the phenomenal film Pan’s Labyrinth looks on first viewing to be about a child escaping a traumatic home environment by taking refuge in her fantasies, it’s quite possible to watch through on the basis that it’s all real, and arguably that brings a more satisfying (certainly less depressing) closure to the film.

For me, I’m an unregenerate fantasist. A secondary world presented as a therapeutic tool or delusion to be escaped from in order to find wholeness is always a bit of a let down for me – “it was all a dream” sort of thing. Terebithia was a well-made film, and heavy with meaning and poignancy and all that, but at the same time the Scooby Doo of it left me feeling empty. Just my personal take, but I’ll go some distance to find a reading that will give that world reality.

Iain Banks pulls some interesting sleight of hand with some of his early “mainstream” books. On the face of it, The Bridge is a look into the damaged mind of an accident victim trying to find his way out of his own injury, and that’s the standard reading I think. The world of the Bridge that we’re presented with, however, is fascinating and bizarre, a kind of mix of Kafka and Gormenghast stretched over the unending structure of the title – it seems almost too much to be just a fleeting construct. The world is a satisfying one in its own right (lord knows there have been straight out secondary worlds with less depth (length, breadth?) than that of the bridge.)

What precisely is going on in Banks’ Walking on Glass is even more uncertain. It’s like Lao Tzu and the butterfly – anyone’s guess as to who is dreaming who. Banks, of course, has something of a unique relationship with the bookshelf, having his two personas, ostensibly genre and non-. Whilst a number of his “non-M” books are solidly rooted in the real world, one wonders how much of a sly game he’s playing with the critics. Transitions, the latest “non-M”, has a great deal of topical relevance, but although it sits there on the general fiction shelves it’s surely a stretch to read it as anything other than flat out world-switching science fiction. With that in mind, it’s worth a re-reading of The Bridge and Walking on Glass with an eye to the reality of the fantasies presented.

The secondary world can also decline in reality as a series goes on. M. John Harrison’s Viriconium sequence, for example (3), kicks off with some epic far-future dying earth fantasy that could link arms with Jack Vance or Michael Moorcock, but each iteration of the setting brings more uncertainty and a greater distance. The very reality of the world is explicitly malleable, the issues at stake become more nebulous and less epic, the heroes less classically heroic, until we are left with “A Young Man’s Journey to Viriconium”, locked out of the world that we have known, left with nothing but the real, and maddening, unfulfilling whispers. At the end of our journey, we are forced to ask if any of it was actually real, or just our own delusion (4).

But it can go the other way. I give you Christopher Priest’s The Affirmation, where the main character is a Londoner who has a breakdown and ends up torn between the demands of the real, and the fantastic “Dream Archipelago” as he tries to address his own past and identity. Simple. Except it’s Priest, so it’s not at all. The protagonist has written an ‘autobiography’ that is not only inaccurate but takes place in the Archipelago, another world. The “him” in the Archipelago has memory issues and has to rely on an account he wrote that is set in our world. Although I suspect the mainstream reading of the book is “real world man with mental health issues suffers from delusions” it can be read the other way, it really can.

And then Mr P brings out The Dream Archipelago, and, very recently, The Islanders, the first a collection of stories set in the Archipelago’s fully detailed world (with no concessions at all to the real one) and the second a purported travel guide interspersed with short fiction, much of which relates to the stories and characters of the original, making the whole enterprise something remarkable and possibly unprecedented as a literary endeavour. But the Archipelago has its own reality, however much it cannot be mapped or quantified.  It is that rare thing, a modern secondary world – not an alternate history, not a possible future, but a world that (post-Affirmation) has no concrete link to ours, and yet is recognisably on a par with our 20^th/21^st century existence (5). Indeed — and with the caveat that, like Gene Wolfe, you can’t take anything Priest writes at face value — arguably Islanders is more fantastic than Archipelago – there’s one story pair, mentioning no names, where the Archipelago original seemed to be strongly indicative of repressed traumatic memories in the narrator, but where it’s Islander “counterpart” pretty much says, “No, that horrifying crap was real.” Priest has therefore given us a world that has gone from a dream of mental imbalance to a self-contained reality over three volumes. Of course, his next one, should he revisit the islands, might turn it all on its head again.

(1)   Unless, possibly, that fantasy world had strong Christian overtones.

(2)   Unrelated, but it is an odious thing when someone is described in the press as “something of a Walter Mitty character,” because this seems to be wheeled out specifically to describe a shyster who has taken advantage of other people and ruined their lives, but whom we are apparently supposed to dismiss as a harmlessly deslusional/loveable rogue. Digression over.

(3)   Firmly on my list of “You Must Read This” books/series.

(4)   The reworking "A Young Man's Journey to London" (in Things that Never Happen) is cited by some reviewers as Harrison 'making peace' with his earlier genre work, and though I can't comment on this, not being up on the history, it's a welcome reading but not what I took away from the story. To me it seemed to be continuing the trajectory of the original story, taking us further out and killing/excising Viriconium altogether. I found it an unsettling read but I'd be happy to find I was reading it wrong.

(5)   There is a whole extra post in this topic.

Secondly… (dramatic chord) … I have started the second chapter of book 10 today! I was under the delusion that it was the first chapter when I wrote it, but have had second thoughts since. The last book in the series promises to be somewhat nerve-wracking to write. Y'know, no pressure…

I have had sight of a draft alt fiction schedule. I'm down for "untitled fantasy panel". Kind of hard to research that topic, but watch this space.

Lastly, an article in today's Metro (3) that provoked some bewilderment. "Dust off that novel, new app could make you a best seller." This is Apple's "Author" app, and my real beef with the article was the discrepancy between what the headline seemed to promise and the subsequent proud reportage, stated in such a way as to imply that this is the app's primary source of authorial gold dust: "It allows users to drag a word file into the programme, which automatically lays it out with the appropriate chapters and headings." I mean, thank God! Because where the chapter headings go is always the part of the writing process that really causes me difficulties.

Apparently it's all very multimedia, allowing easy inserts for videos (4) and things, and anything you make with it will only be marketable via Apple's own iBookstore/iTunes outlets, which promises controversy.

(1) Yes, I get my information on when my own books are being released from Amazon. This is the world we live in.

(2) On second thoughts I'm not entirely sure what that means. Just accost me instead.

(3) If you're wondering, it's a free newspaper randomly distributed about the UK's public transport network. It has Nemi in it.

(4) This seems to be an alarming attempt to up the ante, especially for epic fantasy. Am I supposed to be collaborating with Peter Jackson on my next one or something? (5)

(5) If you're reading this, Mr Jackson, seriously it would be an honour

These are the fantasy awards, after the David of the same name, voted for by you, the readers.

If anyone would like to support the home team (2), voting is accomplished here. Also up for grabs are the Morningstar Award for best newcomer and the Ravenheart award for best cover art. Go cast your stones (3)!

(1) Can you say "Split vote"?

(2) Or, you know, vote for someone else, but I may never forgive you.

(3) Now I've written that, it looks weird.

Janine already has a body of work out there, of a somewhat different sort, but shortly she will be bringing out her first Arabian Nights fantasy, Heart of Flame, which was published as an ebook by Samhain on 20^th December 2011, and will be out in paperback later this year.

JA: Hi Adrian. Thanks for having me here on your blog!

AT: So, honing my interviewing skills: What's the lowdown on Heart of Flame?

JA: Well, it’s a fantasy-romance  – you can probably tell that from the cover style, heh.  My heroine, Taqla, is a sorceress  in 9^th century Damascus. When the Amir’s beautiful daughter is kidnapped by a djinni, she agrees to help merchant-traveller Rafiq ( a Sinbad type) rescue the girl, because she’s fallen in love with him. But she can’t tell him that. She can’t even let on that she’s female – she’s in magical disguise. They set off on this quest which ends up becoming more complex and dangerous and crazy as they go on, dragging them into wilder and weirder places – swamps, ancient temples, desert ruins, cities halfway across the world — and getting them into seriously deep trouble with undead emperors and pagan gods and hungry ghouls. This is all before they even tackle the djinni…

AT: This is a departure from your previous writing?

JA:  Yes; there’s a lot more plot … and a whole lot less sex. My normal genre is erotica. Heart of Flame is a romance, and it’s not even a straight romance because there’s so much of the magic/monsters/adventure element. So, cross-genre. But the romance is still pretty steamy. If you read the uncensored One Thousand and One Nights, there is an unabashed sexual element there.

AT: The mythic Middle-east is an area I've not seen a good take on in a while, in fantasy fiction. Where are you drawing your setting from?

JA: It’s a fantasy version of the real 9^th Century Middle East – and let’s be honest, it’s very much the Thief-of-Baghdad, Golden-Voyage-of-Sinbad Arabian Nights. I’m not an Arabic historian. My starting point was a translation of the traditional 1001 Nights, strongly larded with the Ray Harryhausen-era  Hollywood movies I grew up with.

I also used a lot of 19^th Century Orientalist art, by people like Jean-Léon Gérôme, as inspiration. These are wonderful, photo-realistic-looking paintings of a Middle East that was only just opening up to the Victorian West. But again, even those depict an exoticised, prurient, filtered version of reality, intended as entertainment as much as education.

I did my historical research too, I hasten to add!  Philip Hitti’s History of the Arabs was my bible. It’s just full of the most wonderful incident and detail. I love it. And I’ve been lucky enough to visit Syria and Jordan and Egypt. I did call on those experiences.

AT: How does your setting contrast to its historical counterpart?

JA: I’ve been historically accurate where I can – I use some historic personages like Caliph Al-Ma’mun, and the scholar Ibn Ishaq of the House of Wisdom, who sets my heroes off to find the answer to a riddle — though I did mess with the dates very slightly. The main thing I bore in mind was that I was writing in a mythological setting, so facts were subservient to the Arabian  Nights ‘look’ of the thing. Rafiq fights with a scimitar (which were really a later introduction: Arabic swords at the time were straight). He drinks cardamom-flavoured coffee with fellow merchants (coffee probably hadn’t reached Baghdad from Yemen at the time).  He plays backgammon and smokes a hubble-bubble pipe (tobacco an obvious anachronism, and the water-pipe was a C16th Indian invention). But honestly, that sort of thing is as integral to the Arabian Nights as genies and magic rings – I couldn’t do without them!

AT: What sort of fantastical elements can we expect  — a lot of fantasy at the moment is relatively low-magic and gritty — where does Heart of Flame fall on that scale?

JA: Hah! Old-fashioned high-magic fantasy, I’m afraid. My heroes travel on a magical silver horse, otherwise they’d never reach the places they have to go to. Taqla uses her sorcery to get them out of all sorts of trouble. They meet various monsters, including one holy one, that come out of Arabic and Persian legend. They parlay with an animated statue and a dead man made of flies. And then there are several djinn … and that scary scary angel …

AT: What would you give as your sources of inspiration?

JA:  My inspiration as a writer has always been Angela Carter. Lyrical but totally unsentimental, she lulls you with her fairy-tale prose and then sticks you with something really cruel. In Heart of Flame you’ll also find some sneaky nods to my other favourite writer, H P Lovecraft: there’s a copy of The Necronomicon in the House of Wisdom (under its Arabic name, of course) and the ghouls are Lovecraftian as well as Arabic. This may be the first time anyone has ever snuck the Cthulhu Mythos into a romance novel.  I would like to think so!

AT: How about film and TV depictions of similar settings. For me, I'd put forward the Hallmark Arabian Nights TV Movie as a surprisingly good shot at the genre.

JA: Yes, I enjoyed that: lush, clever and romantic. The tattooed genie from their Aladdin stayed with me as the mental image of my djinni antagonist. I’ve also watched Pasolini’s artsy 1974 version (lots of boobs), but didn’t much like Prince of Persia despite the pretty CGI scenery. The fact that their entire cast was white struck me as … inexcusably cowardly.

My favourite version is still The Thief of Baghdad: given that it was made in 1940, its cheesiness is completely excusable.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have a movie version of Heart of Flame with Ray Harryhausen animated monsters!

AT: A great deal of fantasy settings that include a middle-eastern-ish culture tend towards the "religious fanatic adversary" type, and obvious, in the West, that entire part of the world is a sensitive cultural and political issue. Has that influenced the book, and how did you approach that?

JA: It’s impossible not be aware of current events and political attitudes, even when writing a historical fantasy. I did try to be careful. Well, you know me: I’m not naturally the soul of tact and sensitivity…

I mention mosques but don’t set any scenes in them. I mention the Qu’ran once, but I don’t mention the Prophet.  I use the word “God.” My heroes aren’t pious but they are respectful Muslims. The thing to remember is that the Islam of the 9^th Century Abbasid Empire, the “Golden Age of Islam,” was not the same as modern fundamentalism. It was urbane, scholarly and tolerant. Jews and Christians of various sects were part of society.  People drank wine. And Caliph Al Ma’mun imposed a rationalist, non-literalist theology, heavily influenced by Greek science and philosophy.

So yeah, it’s possible that I might offend someone. But you can’t stop people taking offence if they want to. My intentions are certainly positive, for what it’s worth. Rafiq and Taqla are my heroes, after all.

Okay, I’ve probably burbled on enough. Thanks, Adrian!

I will shortly have a crack at another post on computer games, this time with the spotlight on role-playing (or lack of same), but currently research is, er, taking up all my time.

For now, just a quick update.

The various projects that I previously mentioned I was contributing to are now all up for grabs, being:

Vivisepulture, edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons, from Anarchy, wherein lurks my story "Pipework".

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been, edited by Storm Constantine, from Immanion, wherein is my article "Can I Keep Him?" and the story "The Indecipherables" which I've co-written with renowned author Justina Robson.

Horror for the Holidays, edited by Scott David Aniolowski, from Miskatonic River Press, wherein can be found my Lovecraftian opus, "Season of Sacrifice and Resurrection".

Furthermore I have a few dates for the 2012 diary even now:

- I will be at the SFX Weekender on 3–4 February doing I know not what, but I'll be there. The previous two have been fairly phenomenal multi-media events with extremely congenial company, so I'm looking forward to this one.

- I have been asked to guest at this year's Picocon (at, I think, Imperial College, London or thereabouts) on 18th February, at which I will also be doing Stuff.

- I've signed up for Alt Fiction 2012 on 14–15 April — this is not at Derby like the last few, but has migrated to Leicester for the convenience of the denizens thereof, or some such reason.

- I certainly intend to be at Fantasycon 2012, given the fun last time (3)

(1) Leaving aside the New Age types who have rather galloped ahead of the pack in declaring the end of the world, scholarly debate suggests there is no actual evidence that the Mayan calendar portends anything apocalyptic at all (from the wretchedly sparse material available). It seems just as likely that they were all marking their great great… grandchildrens' diaries for a particularly good party (2)

(2) Which in turn suggests that the Mayan culture was built on absurdly extended forward thinking and a careful attention to scheduling, and possibly the Spanish dealt them such a blow just because they failed to call ahead and book their invasion.

(3) Journey back through The Country that Public Transport Forgot notwithstanding.

Anyway:

Brief diversion on the writer's art to look at these two characters, a brace of Beetle-kinden politicians. Unprepossessing stuff, surely.

However, what the two of them, bitter rivals as they are, demonstrate is the ability of characters to get completely out of control. Along with many writers, I've often gone off on one about the plot and characters having a life of their own, and I'm never sure whether people think this is just authorial poseuring or what, so:

If you've read as far as the Scarab Path, you'll remember these two. Jodry is one of Stenwold's allies, and he kicks the plot of Scarab off by prompting the Khanaphir expedition that Che is a member of. Helmess is the man whose thunder he's stealing, an opponent of Stenwold and all round less reputable character. That's the first we hear of either of them.

Except of course that's not true. However, it was the first I wrote of either of them. And, if you've got as far as Sea Watch you'll know that they both become rather important characters thereafter. Their shared achievement, however, is to somehow concoct an Apt-powered time machine and make subsequent appearances before their intended first outing.

I was writing the first draft of Scarab Path (then called Sacred Servants) at around the same time as my agent was helping me get Empire into shape, and one of his suggestions was an early chapter in which Stenwold gets heavy in the Assembly, Churchill stylee, and for that I needed a foil. It could have been anyone, but i had this chap Helmess Broiler kicking about, and so he got the job. The man of suspect loyalties became a more concrete antagonist, and of course, if you've read Sea Watch, you'll know where that all goes to.

Similarly, Jodry Drillen was new-minted for Scarab Path, but then I ran into something of a timing issue in Salute the Dark. Stenwold returns from his jaunt to the Commonweal and is met by Lineo Thadspar, the old Speaker for the Assembly. Except that Salute had a rejigging in which the order of some sections changed, and abruptly Lineo was basically bedridden when Stenwold needed to chew his ear off. Before I could put in a casting call, enter Jodry Drillen, already with his eyes on the Speaker's newly vacant sandals, handling Stenwold like a professional.

It's very likely that without those chance substitutions and additions, neither character would have become sufficiently fleshed-out (literally, in Jodry's case) to become the major players they are in Sea Watch and beyond: twin careers in politics born entirely out of editing necessity.