The Japanese edition of my book Unofficial Football World Champions was published this week by Asuka Shinsha. It’s available from all good bookshops, including Amazon.co.jp, and there’s more information (in Japanese, obviously) at the Asuka Shinsha website.

The book traces football’s alternative championships from the very first international match in 1872 via more than 800 title matches, involving legendary teams and footballing minnows, classic finals and forgotten friendlies, celebrated players and unsung heroes.

As it happens, Japan are the current Unofficial Football World Champions, having taken the title from Argentina back in October. However, the Japanese play South Korea on Wednesday in the latest Unofficial Football World Championships (UFWC) title match. You can read more at the UFWC website.

The English edition of Unofficial Football World Champions was published in January, and is available in paperback from all good bookshops, including Amazon.co.uk, and it’s also on Kindle. There’s more information about the English edition here, and you can order it using the links on the right.

Books, Football

Hal Graham, the first man to officially fly a rocketbelt, has died. The following is an edited extract from The Rocketbelt Caper:

Harold ‘Hal’ Graham was a 27-year-old science graduate from Buffalo who had been working for the Bell Aircraft Company as a test engineer for just over a year when he was selected to be the first man to pilot the rocketbelt – the iconic flying jetpack created by engineer Wendell Moore.

It would be Graham’s first taste of flying. He was not a registered pilot, and the only machine he had previous experience of driving was a car. He was, however, a rocketbelt fan, having grown up with Buck Rogers comics and Commando Cody serials. When Bell began to ask around for a volunteer to fly the rocketbelt he had no hesitation in applying for the job.

Graham’s first tethered flight took place in March 1961. These flights took place in a large aircraft hangar. The rocketbelt was suspended from the ceiling, and small amounts of thrust were used to generate moderate lift. 36 tethered flights later, it was time for the safety ropes to come off.

The very first untethered rocketbelt flight took place at seven in the morning on 20 April 1961. A 20-man Bell crew gathered at an empty clearing near the Bell plant on Buffalo’s Niagara Falls Boulevard and opposite the Niagara Falls Municipal Airport, which had been specially closed for 30 minutes. The crew ran through a detailed checklist in preparation for the flight.

Then Graham, wearing a black rubber suit, white helmet, work boots, and goggles, released the throttle in a short burst to check the propulsion. All seemed fine. Again he released the throttle, this time successfully lifting the belt around 18 inches from the ground in a thick cloud of steam, and piloted it in a straight line at a speed of around ten miles per hour.

The noise was incredible – an explosive roar of gas as loud as a pneumatic drill. And visibility was poor – almost zero according to Graham – due to condensation created by the rocket exhaust.

On the first free rocketbelt flight Hal Graham flew for 13 seconds and covered a distance of 112 feet – eight feet less than the Wright Brothers had covered in their inaugural flight. It was nevertheless a thoroughly triumphant debut.

Following the success of the test flight, Bell executives were keen to unveil the remarkable device to the public. After 28 test flights, Wendell Moore was satisfied enough to agree to a public demonstration.

The first public rocketbelt flight took place at Fort Eustis, Virginia, on 8 June 1961 at a demonstration of new technologies. Light bulbs flashed and film reels rolled as Graham piloted the rocketbelt into the air, legs swinging below him. Against a backdrop of Air Force planes, Graham maneuvered the rocketbelt over a truck, and higher into the sky. He flew to around 15 feet, and then descended, bouncing slightly as he landed on his feet. Graham then offered a salute.

After removing his fire suit, Graham was mobbed by the press. Microphones were thrust into his face, and pencils jotted down every word he said. Bell officials handed out press releases which began, ‘Harold M Graham is believed to be the first man to fly with back-carried rocket equipment.’

The story made the front pages across the US. The New York Times headline read, ‘Portable army rocket propels man 150 feet in 11-second test flight.’ Life magazine said, ‘Graham was strapped to a hydrogen peroxide-fuelled rocket. The Army hopes it will someday make all foot soldiers look like Buck Rogers.’

One week later, Graham demonstrated the rocketbelt on the front lawn of the Pentagon in Washington DC in front of a huge crowd of military personnel.

Then, in October 1961, Graham, Moore and the Bell crew travelled to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to participate in another military demonstration, this time as part of a display of combat readiness. The demonstration was performed in front of a notable guest of honor – President John F Kennedy.

Graham, wearing a US Army uniform, took off from an amphibious landing vehicle, flew across a pond in a spray of water, and landed 14 seconds later on a sand embankment in front of JFK. Graham remembered to salute but forgot to depressurize the belt in the excitement of the moment, although he managed to remain on the ground. ‘Mr Kennedy was described by an Army Officer sitting near him as “wide eyed and open mouthed, just like a kid”,’ reported the Buffalo Evening News.

The public interest and publicity surrounding Graham and the rocketbelt generated much correspondence. Letters requesting public appearances began to flood the Bell offices. One man wrote to Bell requesting the use of the rocketbelt in order to claim a $1 million treasure trove that, he claimed, he could only reach with the use of the belt. Suspicious Bell executives turned the request down.

Although Hal Graham could now proficiently fly the rocketbelt, he was still not a registered airplane pilot. In November 1961 he decided to do something about that. He began to take flying lessons, and qualified for his pilot’s license in July 1962. That year also saw the debut of the B-Series rocketbelt. The new belt was engineered to reduce weight, and, as rocketbelt pilot, Graham was kitted out in a brand new bright yellow flight suit.

But Hal Graham’s short career as a rocketbelt pilot was coming to an end. During an ill-fated demonstration at Cape Canaveral, Graham fell 22 feet, landed on his head, and was knocked unconscious. He survived the crash, but decided to get out of the rocketbelt business. Graham made 83 untethered rocketbelt flights during his time at Bell, but he left the company in 1962 to pursue his new love of flying traditional aircraft. He set up his own one-man, one-plane charter flight company in Crossville, Tennessee.

Hal Graham died in Nashville on 22 October 2009, aged 75.

Watch Hal Graham fly the rocketbelt (YouTube)
Read The Rocketbelt Caper

Books, Technology

It was clear from this week’s London Book Fair that the UK publishing industry is finally ready to embrace ebooks. But before the ebook can really challenge its paper equivalent, the industry has to avert a format war a whole lot more complicated than VHS vs Betamax…

Read the full story at The Guardian.

Books, Technology The Guardian

I’ve just spent a day and a half at the London Book Fair, primarily researching a feature on ebooks – more of which tomorrow. The LBF is the UK trade show for publishers, retailers and book industry service providers.

The first thing that struck me when wandering around the Earls Court venue was that it seemed so much busier than last year. Aisles seemed narrower, with more stands squeezed in, and it was difficult trying to negotiate a route past slow-moving foreign delegates and publishing assistants trundling heavy trolleys full of book proofs. Perhaps the recession had forced more of the book trade to venture out in search of the big deal that might keep them afloat for another year.

Something that quickly becomes apparent as you wander past the many thousands of books being whored is that few of them will actually sell. For a start, there are far too many of them. Most will not find space on the bookshelves and in the review columns, and will remain unsold and unread.

Also, content is far less important than profile. Big announcements are made about new books from Chris Evans and Dan Brown. They will sell because they are by Chris Evans and Dan Brown. Somewhere among these bustling aisles could be the greatest book ever written but, unless it has a big name attached, those in attendance will bustle on by.

And then, of course, there are the many books on display that don’t deserve an audience – those that are ill-conceived or badly produced, and those with such a ridiculously niche appeal that you feel the author could have satisfied all potential demand by printing a single copy on an A4 desktop printer.

The entire output of one American publisher, who I won’t name, falls into this category. I’d spoken to him last year, and initially felt sorry for this old chap with his boxes of unsaleable cheaply-produced Sherlock Holmes rip-offs, until I found out he was a vanity publisher, charging authors to publish their work AND encouraging them to spend thousands of dollars travelling to London to needlessly attend the fair.

The LBF is best avoided by writers – unless they have the thickest of skins. The prospect of finding hundreds of publishers – plus numerous agents, distributors and other book industry bods – gathered together under one roof might seem tempting, but authors hoping to generate interest in their unpublished manuscript or self-published novel will almost certainly receive the shortest of shrift.

Stepping outside to enjoy the sunshine at lunch time I was approached by an author who was touting a frighteningly militant expose of the medical industry, a shoddily-produced self-published copy of which she brandished in front of me. Luckily I was able to defend myself with my press pass, explaining that I had no clout whatsoever within the industry.

Last year, while wearing a publisher’s pass, I had been accosted by an author selling a raunchy memoir of his time as a male stripper. I politely made my excuses, and he handed me his business card – which featured a colour photograph of his penis. I passed his details on to a colleague.

This year I was interested to see James Patterson signing copies of a book that he has not even written. His name is on the cover of 8th Confession, in HUGE LETTERS. Underneath, in much smaller type, it says “with Maxine Paetro”. Patterson came up with the plot, apparently (“Unconventional cop juggles personal problems while playing cat and mouse with inventively gruesome serial killer? Kerching!”). Paetro, who actually wrote the thing, was not at the signing session.

Tech-wise, aside from ebook stuff, of which there was lots, I was interested to take a look at the Espresso Book Machine, an on-demand book printer about the size of an office photocopier that produces individual paperback books at a speed of 100 pages per minute. The final quality was impressive – perhaps not quite as good as a well-produced paperback, but certainly good enough to suggest that this might represent the future of retailing backlist books. Blackwell’s are the first UK retailer to get onboard, and the chain’s first Espresso machine can be found at its Charing Cross store.

Grumble-wise, I wasn’t allowed to take photos inside the LBF for undetermined reasons, and for the second year running I left with no decent free stuff. Everyone else, it seemed, was leaving with cotton shoulder bags stuffed with proof edition blockbusters, promotional t-shirts and, for all I know, shiny new Sony Readers. I left with some unwanted flyers and a digitally-produced copy of the Koran.

Books, Technology