Ian Hutson

Born during tiffin in the sea-side town of Cleethorpes, England, in the year nineteen-sixty. The shame and scandal forced the family to move immediately to Hong Kong. There spoke only Cantonese and some pidgin English and was a complete brat. At the end of the sixties was to be found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Still a brat. Finally learned to read and write under the strict disciplinarian regime of the Nicolson Institute and one Miss Crichton. Then spent a year living in Banham Zoo in Norfolk, swapping childhood imaginary friends for howler monkeys and gibbons. Literally in the zoo, to get home he had to go through the entry turnstiles, past the wolves, past the bears and past the penguins. Didn’t bother with the local school for the entire year, and school was grateful.
Found himself working for the English Civil Service. Was asked to leave by the Home Secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s assistant. A few years of corporate life earned some more kind invitations to leave. Ran a few unfortunate companies. Went down the plug-hole with the global economy and found himself in court, bankrupt, with home, car and valuables auctioned off by H.M. Official Receivers. Lived for some years then by candlelight in a hedgerow in rural Lincolnshire as a peacenik vegan hippie drop-out. Now lives on a canal boat, narrowboat Cardinal Wolsey, rushing up and down England’s canals and rivers at slightly over two miles per hour. Wrestles with badgers.
Dog person not a cat person. Dogs and cats both know this.
Found himself working for the English Civil Service. Was asked to leave by the Home Secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s secretary’s assistant. A few years of corporate life earned some more kind invitations to leave. Ran a few unfortunate companies. Went down the plug-hole with the global economy and found himself in court, bankrupt, with home, car and valuables auctioned off by H.M. Official Receivers. Lived for some years then by candlelight in a hedgerow in rural Lincolnshire as a peacenik vegan hippie drop-out. Now lives on a canal boat, narrowboat Cardinal Wolsey, rushing up and down England’s canals and rivers at slightly over two miles per hour. Wrestles with badgers.
Dog person not a cat person. Dogs and cats both know this.
The Cat Wore Electric Goggles
Science fiction
Relax, ease your gussets and indulge in a picnic for your brain-gland. Rocket-ships invaded by aliens Secret government satellites plummeting Insane Cold War time-travel Victorian flying-saucers Elderly ladies and moon landings Awfully embarrassing royal “first contact” Edwardian evolution gone splendidly alien Love, icebergs, ocean liners and ghosts Crash-test dogs speaking Latin and Klingon A viral inconvenience escaping from a lab Exceedingly logical robotic detectives ...and even a few adventurous medieval monks. This book is not entirely serious, and it's not entirely not serious. There’s only one cat (briefly) mentioned in the whole book, velociducks do not hunt in packs around English village ponds, and the Moon landing actually cost England a lot more than two hundred and fifty quid. Think Ealing comedy written by chaps in white laboratory coats, some of whom were on psychotropic substances, some of whom were quite sober, and you won't go far wrong. It may be British science fiction, but the science is entirely implausible - and that's really what makes it such fun. |
NGLND XPX
Science fiction
If you love rolling around in parts of the English language that haven’t seen the light of day for a long while, and if you don’t mind the occasional dozy Labrador dog throwing up in his goldfish-bowl space-suit helmet, then NGLND XPX (“England Expects” in text-speak) is the book for you. Ten splendidly old-fashioned fictions of science and humour include a completely erroneous account of the Industrial Revolution, the migration of the entire human race off-planet in ultra-cheap Virgin Model-T spacecraft, and old-age pensions replaced by National Service. Alien first contact takes place on the lawns at Buckingham Palace, England deals quietly with a rogue extinction-level comet, and a small, flustered, wholly unsuitable planetary survey robot is called upon to replace the ten commandments as best he can. The science is improbable, the history inaccurate, the plots farcical and the fiction splendid. NGLND XPX is the literary equivalent to a Victorian parlour – it is overstuffed, verbose and dusty in all aspects. Splendid and fascinating stuff abounds. A single word is never used where ten more delicious and juicy words might better serve. |
The Dog With The Bakelite Nose (Not about dogs)
humor, science-fiction, speculative
Ten slightly mouldy slices of England’s brilliant future failures, each successfully consigned to the pre-apologetic, more successful past. Wonderfully tragic beginnings meet gruesomely happy endings, miserable lives wallow in cheerful second chances. Old-fashioned blokes, being blokes, doing awfully modern bloke things such as inventing stuff and exploring space, but with not a caricature or stereotype left undisturbed. The science is ridiculous, the plots are risible. The opening line of the first story is “Awoogah! Awoogah!” and that’s got to be one heck of a clue. This is England’s beautiful, bumbling, blue-blooded belligerence, lovingly portrayed in properly-punctuated, politically-incorrect, purple prose. Enjoy tales of rocket-ships crewed by utter idiots, of hung-over gurus struggling to meet demand, of some minor problems with the shape of the moon and of how we, the Smiths and the Browns and the Greens, side-stepped the rat-race, won the space-race and lost touch with the human race. This book is not about dogs, there are only two in the whole text and they are mentioned but incidentally. The characters in this book are much less well-adapted to the modern world than are either the Collie or the Labrador – they are Englishmen! |
Cheerio, and Thanks for the Apocalypse
humor, science-fiction, speculative
It’s not easy being a vegetarian ray of positivity and social sunshine after the apocalypse. For one thing, meat’s easier to come by than broccoli. Seven awfully English tales of life just that one step too far into your future. I went there so that you wouldn’t have to. Once upon a time you could rely on death and taxes, but now it’s only taxes. Old age is rotten, life never ends and croaking it, turning up your toes, putting on the wooden overcoat, assuming room temperature, shaking that last double-six and even, not to put too fine a point on it, pushing up the proverbial daisies isn’t the restful release that you hoped it would be. Your last best hope is England’s two finest “popular television scientists” and their dog, each being granted three wishes by a troglodyte genie from Lancashire. You won’t believe what the dog wished for. I believed it, but then, you see, I knew the dog in real life, so nothing surprises me anymore. This book is a celebration of old-fashioned language and unsubtle entertainment. It features strong male leads and no diversity whatsoever. This book won’t enlighten you and it certainly won’t somehow “educate” you. If we’re lucky, you and I, it might just distract you for a couple of hours. Imagine your brain as being made of soft rubber, being let off the leash in the park and running around on the grass with other brains, peeing up trees, chasing balls and then throwing itself down at your feet, panting – that’s the best effect that either of us can hope for from Cheerio, and Thanks for the Apocalypse. Seriously. This is a book for blokes. A very unserious book indeed. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? Laugh and the whole world will give you the wide, wary berth you always dreamed of, wondering what you know that they don’t. Cry and they’ll be lining up to poke you with sticks. I recommend laughing. |