andy jennings

Cities are growing all over the planet. In considering Melbourne's housing problems, I was momentarily distracted by San Francisco. Seems there has been an influx of some 75 thousand people over the last decade, leading to some well publicised incidents: demonstrations at Google buses, posting of nasty signs. Serious, I thought. Then I realised that Melbourne is growing by some 50 thousand people every year. So where SF has struggled with 75 thousand, Melbourne has somehow dealt with 500 thousand. Wikimedia:  Biatch  at  en.wikipedia Impressive, I thought. Melbourne is successful. In a sense, yes. There are problems with success. It becomes expensive, for one. "The Economist" global housing prices. How can it be that it's more expensive to live in Melbourne than in London? At one level, it is the price of popularity.  How does it do it? Mostly by adding at the edges. The fastest growing areas are in the outer fringes of the city. Great...

A traveller crosses the globe, "searching for a better place". They most likely have googled the destination so much, seen the images, imagined what it is going to be like. When they arrive, they are open to the sunshine, the beaches, the people. I live in Melbourne, Australia. Have almost all my life. Quite a lot of people arrive here with great expectations, excited that they have found a place that is so different to where they come from. For us residents, this is a bit weird. Melbourne is visually impressive. It's only a few kilometres to a beach where you don't have to fight for a patch of sand. If you get up early enough in the morning, you might have it to yourself. The sun shines, a lot. It doesn't snow. The economy, if not booming, is certainly powering along. If you've just got off the plane from Ireland, or Spain, or the crowded cities of Asia, or the cold of Germany, then I guess it looks pretty good. I've only lived outside Australia ...

In the near future, you might face an interview with a policeman or woman wearing the google glasses. How might it go? First he/she might ask you your name. The glasses have access to images of you from various databases. If you give a false name he will know  straight away. Let's say you are on a train. He might ask where you are off to today. The ticket you carry has a unique number linked to your identity. He will know where you boarded the train.  He might ask where you work. Linked to the tax office database, he will have your complete work history.  What changes with the glasses is the immediacy. Especially in identifying you. Much of crime fiction is nostalgic. Typically (e.g. Rebus) the detective is an older male, quite uncomfortable with technology. He relies on younger people around him to make use of it. Even then, not a great deal of surveillance is employed. There might be some trawling through CCTV footage. Is the past somehow more human? O...

My novel  'Murder in the Fabric'  is set in Melbourne in 2020. The preferred mode of transport is to don the hoodie and the dark glasses. Then get onto your bicycle, and move freely wherever you like in the city. There is nothing distinctive about pedalling that will give the forces of darkness a handle. I'm a big fan of the Jack Reacher books. I have read almost all of them. Jack is ex-military, the quintessential outsider. He has a bank account somewhere, but not much else. Drifting from place to place, he encounters trouble, and deals with it. In the books, the Jack Reacher character is physically quite large. Large enough to stand out in a crowd. Of course the character goes back quite a while, and mostly he is in small towns in the mid-west of America. He doesn't carry a mobile phone, all transactions are in cash. If he checks into a hotel then he invents a new name each time. In the modern surveillance state, how long would Jack last in a big city without be...