Re:China Mieville is one of SF's new wonders
on
The Scar
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I can read Joyce, Faulkner and have lapped up generations of Sci Fi writers who dabble in stream of consciousness and radical visions.
Not being able to read 'truly original work' isn't the problem here. The problem I found that Mieville was far more interested in proving how 'utterly charming' his world was than crafting a good story. I don't need (or even prefer) traditional narratives. What I need and prefer is good prose instead of the amateurish stuff I found in Perdido. As well as characters who's actions are more than an attempt at showing just how damned cool they are.
Perdido didn't strike me as original in the least. It glommed bits and pieces from a number of closely related modern fantasy environments using what I find to be very clumsy descriptive ability, and it tried to do it by overwhelming with volume instead of quality.
As for messing with heads, this doesn't even rate on any kind of scale that includes the likes of Philip K. Dick. That's messing with heads.
You want original worlds? Try Jonathon Lethem (Gun With Occasional Music, As She Climbed Across the Table, Fortress of Solitude or almost dozen others) or James Morrow (Blameless in Abbadon, Towing Jehovah, This is the Way the World Ends and a dozen others.)
Re:Perdido was horrible.
on
The Scar
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· Score: 1, Redundant
God forbid I post an unflattering opinion on the book and explain why I felt that way. I didn't realize having different tastes was grounds for Flamebait.
Perdido was horrible.
on
The Scar
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Unreadable, actually. I forced my way through a hundred pages before I had to toss it down and move on to something well written. It's overloaded with gratuitous 'ambient detail' in an effort to give it this crazy, unique world feel. Unfortunately it ends up resembling a mish-mash of just about all the modern fantasy fan fic on the web. Which is not a complement. The characters and the situations just don't read true. Everything's way too contrived.
No way in heck I'm trying the sequel. I wish I could get my money back for the first.
Paranoid you say? Paranoid like a fox!
on
Reading, Writing, RFID
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Sweet Zombie Jesus, this is terrifying. Kids growing up in a world where their every move is in effect monitored, as are all objects around them. If you're old enough to know better, you can at least fight the concept. But to grow up in the middle of it as if it were natural... disgusting. We're going to be raising children who are either soulless or, in the case of those who can't deal with it, psychotic. What a truly hateful development.
Somewhere Huxley and Orwell are weeping. And yes, I'm aware Orwell wasn't trying to predict the future but was in fact commenting on totalitarian regimes in his lifetime. He's still weeping.
Unfortunately, this challenge only applies to the increase in percentage of TV broadcast ownership. The change allowing cross-media ownership (so that ClearChannel, for example, can now own several radio stations plus TV stations plus newspapers) will not be challenged. Congressmen (mostly Republics, surprise, surprise) threatened to kill the entire bill if any changes in the cross-media section were pushed.
Still, better than nothing I suppose. If this passes, Fox will have to go ahead and divest itself of the excess Television coverage they picked up that put them in violation of the cap.
Fair amount of crap can translate as many things, but when it's aplied to a small pool, it's equates to a small amount in the end. If you want to talk percentage, a smaller percentage of indie comics are worthless than so-called mainstream.
As for outproduce, I should have been more specific. I meant 'produce better quality,' not more quantity.
As for the art argument, once again when you have a pool attempting to be art and one that attempts to be jevenile/soft-porn stuff, the former is inherently more noble and will invariably turn out more examples that actually achieve the mark of art than the latter.
Finally, in regards to TMNT, do you even have a point or are you just jerking off? I said that the moment it was purchased it ceased being indie. Of course that means not before. By definition, ferchrissakes. TMNT hasn't been an indie phenomenon for almost fifteen years. It's irrelevant to any discussion of indie stuff today.
And if you don't feel like travelling to take a look one of the only relevant forms of visual media in the world today, that's your choice and your loss. Why bother expanding one's horizons when there's so much nonchallenging product to fall asleep to, right?
Puh-LEEEZE. There's a lot of shit among indie comics? Not even remotely like there is among the juvenile, stunted sexual fantasies of so-called mainstream comics in the US. How the term 'mainstream' can be applied to the ridiculously narrow superhero genre is beyond me, but as someone formerly involved in running the finest comics show in the US (and no, it's not the abortion that is San Diego). I will assert that comics taken as a whole consistently outproduce the garbage-pit that is Marvel. Yes, there is a fair amount of crap, a surprising percentage which just attempts to recreate Marvel drek at an even cruder level. But there is a hell of a lot of material of differing mastery that goes far beyond anything Marvel or it's ilk has ever attempted to publish. It's stuff that actually attempts to qualify as Art, regardless of the level of finish applied.
As for stuff still standing from the eighties, hmm, let's see... Cerebus ring any bells? Also, how about Love & Rockets? How about Eightball which produced a little something called Ghsotworld? If you include alternative press comics, as one should, then how about everything Fantagraphics and Top Shelf produce? And that's just the tip of the iceburg. Are you even familiar with indie comix? TMNT wasn't indie the moment is was purchased by mega TV/toy concerns. The wave you refer to was the garbage wave of Image and chromium/variant covers and the death of Superman and all the other shit.
Indie comics won't kill the industry, the professional companies have already pretty much accomplished that. If you want to see what's actually worthwhile in comics in this country, attend the Small Press Expo in DC and check out MOCCA in New York.
Hey, I'm a movin' to Greece in the Fall, and I haven't been able to find any decent broadband isp's while searching online.
Anyone know the state of highspeed wireless there? Or ground-based, for that matter?
Putting aside for a moment that the Oscars are absolute garbage awards that have no bearing on the artistic worth of the films they award, this topic isn't so tough a question to answer to me.
Personally, I think that maybe they need a Best Voice Actor award, and that perhaps that would be the best category for Serkis in this case. Acting is more than speaking, it includes movement and posture as well. The fact that an entire team of people intepreted Serkis' performance and then modified it completely to suit their needs leads me to believe that it would be quite unfair to his competition to nominate him individually as an actor. They, the competition, had to rely on themselves to come up with convincing (or unconvincing as the case may be) physical performances.
Maybe they need to have a Best Team Effort at Creating a Digital Actor award.
Yeah, I forgot to add that point to the end of my post. Despite not 'kicking ass' in respect to physical violence, in the comic Mina is portrayed as the toughest member of the group. In other words, she's the most mature and thus the most resolute and dangerous.
Instead we'll have derelict Quatermain transformed into virile Connery, who will obviously lead the group. Because ultimately, though girls can kick ass, they apparently aren't suited for the higher brain functions.
Still and all, the one silver lining is that Alan and Kevin will be getting paid well for their work.
The comic's pulp brilliance also relies upon Kevin O'Neil, the hyper-frenetic, stylistic artist who has brought us (along with writer Pat Mills) such sick-humor nightmares as Marshall Law (one of the original and best post-modern deconstructions of superheroes, but one all about the humor and the sado-masochism). Kevin got his start with British imprint AD 2000, responsible for such stalwarts as Judge Dread and Slaine, working with Pat on stuff like Warlock.
I recommend LoEG the comic quite heartily (despite Ain't it Cool's support. ..even a stopped clock is right twice a day). It's written in the tradition of Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton books, where he takes such characters as Tarzan and Doc Savage and writes his own 'more realistic' adventures mixing them with other pulp heroes and villains. Moore can't use these characters due to our criminal copyright laws (he wanted to originally with the Twilight of the Superheroes series, the proposed DC book of which Kingdom Come was a very weak but direct rip-off) so he had to go back to earlier characters.
For those with twisted humor and a high tolerance for violence, I especially recommend looking for the original graphic novel collection of Marshall Law, Marshall Law: Fear and Loathing.
O'Neill's over-the-top art work is as detailed as Moore's references, and without it LoEG wouldn't be half the book that it is.
Additionally, LoEG predates the show League of Gentlemen. As for the trailer, it looks fun, but also a bit sad as they felt the need to turn Mina Harker into a vampire. I suppose that's their idea of grrl power, the dumbest/most-hypocritical ploy in marketing history (baby, you've come a long way. ..not only can you smoke yourself into an early tomb, but now you can be as brain-dead violent as so many Neanderthal men!)
Gibson long forgotten by me
on
Pattern Recognition
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· Score: 4, Interesting
As seminal as his first few novels were, I believe that Sterling lost any relevance well back with the likes of Virtual Light and Idoru. It became quickly obvious that he was writing screenplays clothed as novels, the real problem being that the screenplays weren't even good.
The science was unimpressive and, worse, uninteresting. The scrappy, plucky, aww-shucks main characters weren't remotely realistic or resonant, and the stock, two-dimensional villains almost as embarassing as his overreliance on deus ex machina.
The last few books of his that I would read I would approach as if they were bad scifi movies, and I would wait for the villain to vanish in 'death', and then I would wait and call to the page when he would 'mysteriously' return. Then I just gave up.
I have limited time in this world to read truly excellent work. Hell, there's better trash sci-fi being put out in comics these days if that's what floats your boat.
Neuromancer will always rank as something extremely special to me, but it was obviously time to move on from Gibson's lowered expectations a long time ago. Maybe if I hear that he's gone back to writing books instead of crappy screenplays (or horrificly cheezy and outdated X-Files episodes) I'll give him another shot. In the mean time, Im giving a pass on Pattern Recognition.
If a subsidiary of AT&T is sued, than AT&T is responsible. If the Broadband department loses a judgement, who do you think ultimately pays it? Or at least who has to knock it off the corporate profits?
Further, if AT&T allows this to happen, they open themselves up to lawsuits by a virtually infinite number of potential litigants who would have similar cases. AT&T's not about to let that happen, IMO.
It is possible that AT&T would just settle, but the next case will just be right around the corner, so they might as well take a stand now.
Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets. We're talking AT&T here, not some little indie ISP. Seems to me that the RIAA might have been better off not pissing off some of these companies who can field as good or better a legal team and who can throw as much money at Congress.
Slashdot Mirror
Not being able to read 'truly original work' isn't the problem here. The problem I found that Mieville was far more interested in proving how 'utterly charming' his world was than crafting a good story. I don't need (or even prefer) traditional narratives. What I need and prefer is good prose instead of the amateurish stuff I found in Perdido. As well as characters who's actions are more than an attempt at showing just how damned cool they are. Perdido didn't strike me as original in the least. It glommed bits and pieces from a number of closely related modern fantasy environments using what I find to be very clumsy descriptive ability, and it tried to do it by overwhelming with volume instead of quality.
As for messing with heads, this doesn't even rate on any kind of scale that includes the likes of Philip K. Dick. That's messing with heads.
You want original worlds? Try Jonathon Lethem (Gun With Occasional Music, As She Climbed Across the Table, Fortress of Solitude or almost dozen others) or James Morrow (Blameless in Abbadon, Towing Jehovah, This is the Way the World Ends and a dozen others.)
God forbid I post an unflattering opinion on the book and explain why I felt that way. I didn't realize having different tastes was grounds for Flamebait.
No way in heck I'm trying the sequel. I wish I could get my money back for the first.
Sweet Zombie Jesus, this is terrifying. Kids growing up in a world where their every move is in effect monitored, as are all objects around them. If you're old enough to know better, you can at least fight the concept. But to grow up in the middle of it as if it were natural... disgusting. We're going to be raising children who are either soulless or, in the case of those who can't deal with it, psychotic. What a truly hateful development. Somewhere Huxley and Orwell are weeping. And yes, I'm aware Orwell wasn't trying to predict the future but was in fact commenting on totalitarian regimes in his lifetime. He's still weeping.
Unfortunately, this challenge only applies to the increase in percentage of TV broadcast ownership. The change allowing cross-media ownership (so that ClearChannel, for example, can now own several radio stations plus TV stations plus newspapers) will not be challenged. Congressmen (mostly Republics, surprise, surprise) threatened to kill the entire bill if any changes in the cross-media section were pushed.
Still, better than nothing I suppose. If this passes, Fox will have to go ahead and divest itself of the excess Television coverage they picked up that put them in violation of the cap.
Fair amount of crap can translate as many things, but when it's aplied to a small pool, it's equates to a small amount in the end. If you want to talk percentage, a smaller percentage of indie comics are worthless than so-called mainstream.
As for outproduce, I should have been more specific. I meant 'produce better quality,' not more quantity.
As for the art argument, once again when you have a pool attempting to be art and one that attempts to be jevenile/soft-porn stuff, the former is inherently more noble and will invariably turn out more examples that actually achieve the mark of art than the latter.
Finally, in regards to TMNT, do you even have a point or are you just jerking off? I said that the moment it was purchased it ceased being indie. Of course that means not before. By definition, ferchrissakes. TMNT hasn't been an indie phenomenon for almost fifteen years. It's irrelevant to any discussion of indie stuff today.
And if you don't feel like travelling to take a look one of the only relevant forms of visual media in the world today, that's your choice and your loss. Why bother expanding one's horizons when there's so much nonchallenging product to fall asleep to, right?
Puh-LEEEZE. There's a lot of shit among indie comics? Not even remotely like there is among the juvenile, stunted sexual fantasies of so-called mainstream comics in the US. How the term 'mainstream' can be applied to the ridiculously narrow superhero genre is beyond me, but as someone formerly involved in running the finest comics show in the US (and no, it's not the abortion that is San Diego). I will assert that comics taken as a whole consistently outproduce the garbage-pit that is Marvel. Yes, there is a fair amount of crap, a surprising percentage which just attempts to recreate Marvel drek at an even cruder level. But there is a hell of a lot of material of differing mastery that goes far beyond anything Marvel or it's ilk has ever attempted to publish. It's stuff that actually attempts to qualify as Art, regardless of the level of finish applied. As for stuff still standing from the eighties, hmm, let's see... Cerebus ring any bells? Also, how about Love & Rockets? How about Eightball which produced a little something called Ghsotworld? If you include alternative press comics, as one should, then how about everything Fantagraphics and Top Shelf produce? And that's just the tip of the iceburg. Are you even familiar with indie comix? TMNT wasn't indie the moment is was purchased by mega TV/toy concerns. The wave you refer to was the garbage wave of Image and chromium/variant covers and the death of Superman and all the other shit. Indie comics won't kill the industry, the professional companies have already pretty much accomplished that. If you want to see what's actually worthwhile in comics in this country, attend the Small Press Expo in DC and check out MOCCA in New York.
Hey, I'm a movin' to Greece in the Fall, and I haven't been able to find any decent broadband isp's while searching online. Anyone know the state of highspeed wireless there? Or ground-based, for that matter?
Putting aside for a moment that the Oscars are absolute garbage awards that have no bearing on the artistic worth of the films they award, this topic isn't so tough a question to answer to me. Personally, I think that maybe they need a Best Voice Actor award, and that perhaps that would be the best category for Serkis in this case. Acting is more than speaking, it includes movement and posture as well. The fact that an entire team of people intepreted Serkis' performance and then modified it completely to suit their needs leads me to believe that it would be quite unfair to his competition to nominate him individually as an actor. They, the competition, had to rely on themselves to come up with convincing (or unconvincing as the case may be) physical performances. Maybe they need to have a Best Team Effort at Creating a Digital Actor award.
Instead we'll have derelict Quatermain transformed into virile Connery, who will obviously lead the group. Because ultimately, though girls can kick ass, they apparently aren't suited for the higher brain functions.
Still and all, the one silver lining is that Alan and Kevin will be getting paid well for their work.
Here's one with the complete story, which would have been tremendous:
Twilight of the Superheroes breakdown
The comic's pulp brilliance also relies upon Kevin O'Neil, the hyper-frenetic, stylistic artist who has brought us (along with writer Pat Mills) such sick-humor nightmares as Marshall Law (one of the original and best post-modern deconstructions of superheroes, but one all about the humor and the sado-masochism). Kevin got his start with British imprint AD 2000, responsible for such stalwarts as Judge Dread and Slaine, working with Pat on stuff like Warlock.
I recommend LoEG the comic quite heartily (despite Ain't it Cool's support. . .even a stopped clock is right twice a day). It's written in the tradition of Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton books, where he takes such characters as Tarzan and Doc Savage and writes his own 'more realistic' adventures mixing them with other pulp heroes and villains. Moore can't use these characters due to our criminal copyright laws (he wanted to originally with the Twilight of the Superheroes series, the proposed DC book of which Kingdom Come was a very weak but direct rip-off) so he had to go back to earlier characters.
For those with twisted humor and a high tolerance for violence, I especially recommend looking for the original graphic novel collection of Marshall Law, Marshall Law: Fear and Loathing.
O'Neill's over-the-top art work is as detailed as Moore's references, and without it LoEG wouldn't be half the book that it is.
Additionally, LoEG predates the show League of Gentlemen. As for the trailer, it looks fun, but also a bit sad as they felt the need to turn Mina Harker into a vampire. I suppose that's their idea of grrl power, the dumbest/most-hypocritical ploy in marketing history (baby, you've come a long way. . .not only can you smoke yourself into an early tomb, but now you can be as brain-dead violent as so many Neanderthal men!)
The science was unimpressive and, worse, uninteresting. The scrappy, plucky, aww-shucks main characters weren't remotely realistic or resonant, and the stock, two-dimensional villains almost as embarassing as his overreliance on deus ex machina.
The last few books of his that I would read I would approach as if they were bad scifi movies, and I would wait for the villain to vanish in 'death', and then I would wait and call to the page when he would 'mysteriously' return. Then I just gave up.
I have limited time in this world to read truly excellent work. Hell, there's better trash sci-fi being put out in comics these days if that's what floats your boat.
Neuromancer will always rank as something extremely special to me, but it was obviously time to move on from Gibson's lowered expectations a long time ago. Maybe if I hear that he's gone back to writing books instead of crappy screenplays (or horrificly cheezy and outdated X-Files episodes) I'll give him another shot. In the mean time, Im giving a pass on Pattern Recognition.
If a subsidiary of AT&T is sued, than AT&T is responsible. If the Broadband department loses a judgement, who do you think ultimately pays it? Or at least who has to knock it off the corporate profits? Further, if AT&T allows this to happen, they open themselves up to lawsuits by a virtually infinite number of potential litigants who would have similar cases. AT&T's not about to let that happen, IMO. It is possible that AT&T would just settle, but the next case will just be right around the corner, so they might as well take a stand now.
Hey, at least now some of the defendants have equally deep pockets. We're talking AT&T here, not some little indie ISP. Seems to me that the RIAA might have been better off not pissing off some of these companies who can field as good or better a legal team and who can throw as much money at Congress.