The steady accusations of the clock

I suffer, quite often, from sleeplessness. It would be wrong to say insomnia, since I do actually manage to sleep eventually, just never quite when I want to. I'll tuck myself in at midnight like a good boy, and still be wide awake and itchy-eyed when the sun rises, which is usually the cue for my body to pass out and put me in a sleep-coma that lasts all day. I have a pretty good idea why this happens to me, though I'll be damned if I seem to be able to do anything about it. Lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, there isn't much to do but ruminate and jumble those negative thoughts around. Thanks to my uncanny ability to remember the worst of times in exacting detail, there are plenty to choose from. During the day there's plenty to keep me occupied, but once I'm in bed... well, that's just my brain's favourite time to stir that stuff up. You try sleeping when the worst of you is jitterbugging in front of your mind's eye.

This is how I devour so many books, and have a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of Daniel Radcliffe's recent interviews (What? He's a goddamn delight and magnetic to watch!). All that dead time that normal people fill with sleep is when I let distractions pour into my brain. Anything - anything at all - to keep myself away from those insidious, creeping reminders that my life is far from peachy right now.

TFD knows what's up

I've done pretty much everything except get dosed up on sleeping pills, engaging in pretty much every method of 'sleep hygiene' that seems remotely credible and some that weren't: visualising energy leaving my body, anti-histamines that cause drowsiness as a side-effect, meditation and even spending the night next to a massive open jar of majoram. I expect it's only a matter of time before I buy a dream-catcher from a car boot sale and start sacrificing goats to Morpheus and/or Neil Gaiman. None of it really works, though, and so I'm left with this cycle of being shattered one day and then full of energy the next, once I've actually managed to sleep.

It's not all bad though. Being sleep-deprived on a semi-regular basis makes the world a funny place to look at. For starters, I am always insanely high-energy after a night on the insomnia-juice. My mind, at least, is sharp as a slightly manic tack and I generally find I get a lot more of my brain crack down on paper. This post only exists because I've been up all night and am desperately trying to find something to do that'll eat up time before I can legitimately go to bed. I find this feverish creativity thrilling, frustrating and appalling in equal measure.

Finishing that brain crack is another matter, however, as my body seems unwilling to keep up with my mind and soon lets it be known that it'd like to sleep. Now, please. No, don't worry about it, just go lie down on the bed. Oh, whoops! Now it's 8pm and dark out! Days like this are generally consist of racing to get as much done as possible before the inevitable crash.

The one significant ray of life in this strange twilight existence is knowing that I'm not alone in it. It's a common problem for people suffering from depression, which I have experienced, and I've got it better than most. I actually can sleep, just not when I need to or want to. Yes, it screws up the odd appointment and interview - the last one I did was fuelled entirely by Tesco's own brand of energy drink, a noxious concoction called KX - and yes I often shuffle around the house like a particularly brain-deprived zombie, but when sleep comes  it is glorious. When your day consists primarily of applying for jobs and then running around trying to find things to do that will fill up all that horrendous empty time, the prospect of being able to pass out into a long, dreamless sleep at the end of the day is amazing. Plus, it's a massive boon if you want to learn about Daniel Radcliffe, so there's that. Hey! Silver linings, right?

Book Review: Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear

Greg Bear is a big name in contemporary British science fiction, taking his cue from the harder, more epic side of the genre. While refreshing in the face of the glut of 'speculative fiction' like The Hunger Games or Oryx & Crake, his brand of grandiose high-concept storytelling sometimes falls a little short of that magical creativity which marks the work of contemporaries like Banks or Gaiman. That's the problem plaguing Hull Zero Three, which in isolation is a perfectly decent science fiction thriller, but suffers from comparison with some much more worthy predecessors, as well as modern films and video games.

It's a classic tale of a generation ship: an idea first proposed (in print, at least) in the 1920s and used ever since by science fiction authors looking to inject a degree of realism into their work. Considering that faster-than-light travel is impossible (or at least, so we believe), the only feasible way for humanity to colonise the stars is by travelling in enormous arks capable of either sustaining life in suspended animation or allowing the creation and survival of a multi-generational society during the journey. It's an idea that's been used time and time again in books, TV programmes and even some surprisingly mainstream films (Wall-E, for one).

Hull Zero Three is a novel in that grand tradition, opening with the messy and disorientating expulsion of our protagonist from his cryogenic pod, into a nightmare of predatory robots, malfunctioning gravity and confusion. The narrator of the story - unnamed but generally referred to as Teacher due to his demeanour - is a passenger on a generation ship woken early in a nightmarishly confusing situation. The character's total amnesia allows us to discover what's going on at a reasonable pace, given the eventual complexity of the plot and, inevitably, the science. Bear's descriptive prose is stark and clinical, which makes it difficult for the less scientific reader to imagine exactly what's being described; where some would talk about doughnuts, Bear talks about tori.

Minor complaints aside, the problem with Hull Zero Three is not that it isn't intriguing or gripping - it is! - but that it has shades of half a dozen other, more memorable sci-fi settings that tend to crowd your senses and make it hard to enjoy the book for what it is. Given the generation-ship-malfunction plot the immediate connection to make is with the spectacular Non-Stop by Brain Aldiss. This tale of a society built up in the damaged wreckage of a generation ship as it drifts through space is a classic of the genre and is superior in almost every way. The characterisation is better, the world more deftly realised and the pay-off at the end much more profound and affecting.

Early sections of the book are reminiscent of BioShock (and in particular of the Little Sisters) and certain plot elements bring cinematic corridor-horror-fest Pandorum immediately to mind. In books like Hull Zero Three, the setting is the novel and there's only so much you can do with it without stepping on other people's toes. It feels sometimes as though less time should have been spent on establishing the nature of the environment - which after all, is always going to echo past works on a similar theme - and instead focus on character and plot development.

Bear does tread some interesting new ground towards the end; the implications of the epilogue are by far the standout parts, drawing together the speculation and uncertainty of the preceding chapters into something resembling closure. Prior to this last-minute gasp the resolution of events seems strangely unsatisfying, rambling along to a conclusion without a particular climax.

Basically, Hull Zero Three is a passable if not particularly memorable addition to the genre. It adds little in the way of new ideas to concepts first laid down in the late 1950s and, while in any other genre that would expected, for a science fiction novel from such a celebrated writer you can be forgiven for expecting more.