Kodak Coda

The real turning of the page will be when Kodak decides it's not worth making film any more. Not making film cameras any more is an easy decision, when a digital camera can be had for a few pounds. I know of at least one (from a recogniseable brand) that can be bought in by resellers for about 15 notes. I'm not saying it's any good, but nor would a film camera at that price be.

So I'm reading The Poet at the moment, first published in 1996, and one of the main plot points turns on the fact that the perp has been using a digital camera and has to special-order another one. Except of course I'd been reading throughout on the assumption that it was a digital camera, because I hadn't looked to see when the book was published.

People (authors, filmmakers) keep doing it, but using "the latest technology" in a film or book is the surest way of ensuring that it will end up seeming quaint, silly even. And it's odd, but the best SF never suffers from this, because the real world never, quite, manages to "catch up" with the imagination of science fiction writers.

Anyway, apart from the quaint technology plot twist, The Poet suffers from having an extremely unsympathetic narrator. Connelly's Bosch novels are written in the 3rd person, but this 1st person narrator comes across as a weasel.