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You will hear an interview with Derek Allen, an author, about the writing process.
1 Derek Allen thought his book would be successful because
A it deals with an unusual subject.
B he did a lot of research for it.
C its packaging was appealing.
D he invested a lot of effort in it.
2 Allen says that writing for radio is useful because it
A can be good preparation for writing a book.
B makes you popular with a wide audience.
C requires the same dialogue as a book.
D allows you to introduce a variety of characters.
3 Allen says he uses science fiction because
A it represents his vision of what the future will be like.
B many events can happen in a short space of time.
C he wants to make it popular among readers.
D it allows him to explore a bizarre chain of events.
4 According to Allen, other writers use coincidence to
A throw light on characters.
B resolve difficulties with storylines.
C make the reader work harder.
D introduce an element of danger.
5 If Allen was a painter, which element of a painting would he get wrong?
A the background
B the shape of the figures
C the proportions
D the detail
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Audioscript
Interviewer: .. OK, and now we move to our section on books and authors. The book we’re discussing today is Travelling in Space and we’ll be discussing it with its creator, Derek Allen. It was originally presented as a 12-part radio series and it’s a pretty outrageous and satirical science fiction epic but offers a gleefully pessimistic view of modern society. A year later, the book of the radio programme was published and it went straight to the top of the best-seller list — it sold 10,000 copies in the first month alone. Derek Allen, welcome. Now, can I start by asking you what is the essence of its success?
Derek: Of course, it’s an unanswerable question. If one knew the answer, one could bottle it. The only thing I can say with any degree of certainty is that, however extraordinary its success may have turned out to be, there's a little bit of me that isn’t surprised because I actually know how much I put into it in terms of worry and stress. I mean, we all know the packaging can be very attractive but it’s what’s inside that matters. And, you see, there's a little bit of me that doesn’t expect anything I’ve written to be any good, so you work at it a bit more and a bit more, and you are so determined to pack everything in, so it doesn’t surprise me that people have got so much out of it in the end.
Int: It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, radio and writing books go together, don’t they?
D: The overlap between radio listeners and a book audience is absolutely enormous, very much more so than between a book audience and television. But it is words. Now the thing is that one of the strengths of the book is that I originally wrote it all as dialogue. Now the thing about that is that the characters, therefore, are forced to tell the story. So the range of dialogue the characters have to employ is enormous. The mere fact of getting the characters always having to be the ones who tell the story, that gives you a tremendously good backbone for then writing a book.
Int: Absolutely. Now, the thing that strikes me is that in some ways you are ‘sending up’ the craft of science fiction and yet you’ve become a hero of the genre. Curious, isn’t it?
D: As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t ‘sending up’ science fiction. I was using science fiction as a vehicle for ‘sending up’ everything else. In comedy, for example, a sketch can create some sort of surreal premise on which a universe is based that will then last for two or three minutes and then you’re on to the next scene. And I always wanted to say — but what are the consequences of that surreal premise?
So, for example, right back at the beginning of the story, it could start with a man whose house is demolished to make way for a by-pass and so it then becomes conceivable that the earth then gets demolished to make way for a hyper-space by-pass. OK, now let’s move it on again, let’s give that consequences and of course, once you’ve blown up the earth, you are kind of committed to science fiction!
Int: Yes, and the other thing I notice is that while most writers avoid situations based
on coincidence, you positively revel in it.
D: Yes, well, coincidence is the thing that for many authors indicates that the plot has broken down and he is in danger of losing the reader! But I decided to embrace coincidences. As a coincidence is difficult to write about and to do it successfully you have to understand the force that you’re dealing with. For example, I can put characters in great jeopardy and you have a dilemma, which is, that if the jeopardy is going to mean anything, then you can’t get them out of it with one bound. So it’s got to be something, something that’s going to be of equal weight. I was watching a TV programme on judo where the principle is to use your opponent’s weight against himself. So every problem I come up with has to be resolved by something that is equally implausible!
Int: So is this all clearly delineated for you before you start?
D: Well, no, normally what an artist would do is rough out the general shape of the picture — a man’s going to be standing here, there’s going to be a donkey over here or whatever and you’ve got the main shape of the picture. Then you gradually put in a background — you rough it out in grey and then you put in the layers of paint but the first thing that’s there is the shape of it.
Now, if I was a painter, I would start painting in enormous detail down in the bottom left-hand corner and by the time I got to the top, everything would be out of scale.
Int: Right, OK well, let’s bring in our guest reviewer now ...
Everyone knows that parrots can imitate human speech, but can (1) _____ birds also understand meaning? Two decades ago, researcher Irene Pepperberg started working with Alex, an African grey parrot, and ever since then, she has been building (2) _____ data on him. Pepperberg, (3) _____ recently published book The Alex Studies makes fascinating reading, claims Alex doesn’t copy speech but intentionally uses words to get (4) _____ it is that he wants.
In actual (5) _____ , some of his cognitive skills are identical to those of a five-year-old child. (6) ______ a child’s, Alex’s learning has been a steady progression. Early on, he (7) ______ vocalise whether two things were the same or different. Now, he carries (8) _____ more complex tasks. Presented (9) _____ different-coloured balls and blocks and asked the number of red blocks, he’ll answer correctly. He requests things as well. (10) _____he ask to sit on your shoulder and you put him (11) _____ else, he’ll complain: ‘Wanna go shoulder.’
A (12) _____ experts remain sceptical, seeing very (13) ______ in Alex’s performance beyond learning by association, by (14) ______ of intensive training. Yet Alex appears to (15) ______ mastered simple two-way communication. As parrots live for 60 years or more, Alex may surprise (16) _____ all further.
