The London signing, and no, I didn’t predict a riot…

August 10th 2011

Posted by: Simon Morden in: From the Author, Metrozone, News and Updates
Tags: appearances | Degrees of Freedom | Equations of Life | Forbidden Planet | Metrozone | middle class angst | Orbit | riots | signing | Theories of Flight

While it’s unlikely that the Metrozone books are going to get blamed for inciting riots in the real London, it was nice to visit our capital city before it became wreathed in smoke, and hordes of looters made off with armfuls of expensive consumer products – and stuff from Poundland… I suppose the remarkable thing is that it doesn’t happen more often, given the obvious inequalities of not just wealth, but of opportunity and aspiration.

I live in a country where something like 80% of all the places at our top two universities go to leavers from just six schools – five of which are private. My kids don’t go to the one state school on that list, like 99.99% of their cohort. If either of them wants to go to either Oxford or Cambridge, then the odds are already stacked hugely against them, whereas for the moneyed elite, access to the dreaming spires is simply a matter of buying their children places. I’m sorry if I’m coming over all painfully middle class, but despite the fact they have every advantage in life (except fantastically wealthy parents), that’s the reality of it – and, in my own middle class way, it makes me want to burn stuff down. And don’t get me started on the banks.

Sorry, sidetracked there. Back to the signing.

It was lovely – the whole process was lovely. Forbidden Planet staff were lovely, my fellow authors were lovely (even if Nicole Peeler gets all the goodies – apparently it’s a Romance writer thing), and the pub afterwards was also lovely, even if we did manage to clear out their real ale stocks very quickly.

Everything, including the photographic evidence of beardage, is on the Orbit website.

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