The End of Summer

And so summer comes to an end. Oh yes, I know it's only the middle of August, but I've had my holidays and now begin settling in for work once more.

While I was away, I found this at The Bookman in Norwich:

Signed by the man himself!

This is why I maintain my second hand book shop habit! I actually own a more up to date version of this in the British Library publication Jack Vance: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography but who could resist a document signed by JV himself. Only a tenner, too, which is beer money, really!


While I was away, I also decided to turn my incorrigible instinct for second hand bookshops to evil: I intend to build up my collection of large SF coffee-table art books from the 70s and 80s.

An Interview With Jerry Cornelius

This interview was published in the June 2003 issue of Magic Bullet - The Monthly Magazine for Assassins, Hitmen and the Murder trade. (I believe the magazine stopped publishing in 2007; a web search turns up nothing after this date). It didn't get a huge distribution, so I'm sure Cornelius fans everywhere will be interested to see this rarity back in circulation. It was written by the then-up-and-coming murder critic Bevan St Michael, who disappeared in 2008. If he's out there, please get in touch, Bev, as I still have the "package" in my loft.)

Read more after the jump!

2000AD Part 1: I Remember the Good Old Days

It must have been the summer of 1977 to 1978. This is New Zealand, of course, where summer straddles the New Year, and it was probably after Christmas, so that means 1978. I remember particularly because we were on holiday around the North Island, one of those touring holidays we used to go on, all packed into Dad's old Fiat 128, Mum riding shot gun, three in the back and one lucky child in the coveted space in the boot lounging on duvets (don't worry, it was a hatch back). No seat belts, no car seats, Dad smoking like a chimney the whole time – this was the 70s, and life, among other things, was cheap.

I remember the day itself very well. We were staying in a motel, somewhere in Rotorua, somewhere far from the centre. It was a blazing hot, sunny day, that intense piercing sun you get in New Zealand that you can feel cooking your skin through your t-shirt. I don't remember the circumstances exactly, but all of us got a few coins to spend at the local shop. I don't remember what my brothers and sisters bought, but I bought a comic.

Rogue Trooper: Tales of Nu Earth 01

Rogue in action - brilliant work from Dave Gibbons.



War was a staple of boys' comics when I was growing up. In those days, I guess some of the older guys working on the comics could well have actually fought in the war. Certainly, guys of our Dad's generation were steeped in WW2, having grown up with it as a background to their own childhood. I guess the comics had to pass muster with the parents as well as the kids, so this stuff still sold. Even so, many of my contemporaries, not to mention my own older brothers, were intensely interested in World War 2, and all those Airfix kits and 1/32 scale model soldiers were a huge part of my childhood.

 In the dark days before 2000AD, when my brothers were reading comics like Valiant and Hotspur, and later Commando comics, WW2 stories were really common. While I was kind of interested in the violent action and tales of heroism, I found the historical context pretty boring. I'd be looking for the space or futuristic stories, but they were few and far between. That's why I fell on 2000AD with such enthusiasm as a kid: it seemed to be a comic made just for me, with all the boring crap cut out and just the futuristic and space strips.

Looking for Jake by China Miéville

This book was given to me by my not quite uncle Alan. Alan married my Mum's sister in the sixties when I was a wee baby – the tale of me vomiting all over everyone has been retold many times both by my aunty and my Mum. They were regular visitors to our home when I was a kid living in the UK and seemd seemed impossibly glamorous and interesting to me. They were somewhat younger than Mum and Dad and were the sort of couple who always knew about the cool interesting things. They were always fashionably dressed – leather jackets or Afghan coats, Chelsea boots and granddad shirts, the whole thing. Birthday presents were always interesting and quirky – unusual children's books or odd toys perhaps from their travels in exotic places, and whenever they came to visit – or when we went to visit them – it always an interesting and exciting time.

I knew Alan for the first eight or so years of my life and, aside from my Dad, Alan was the other ideal of manhood that my little six year old brain latched onto. Dad liked show tunes and trad jazz, Alan liked The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Dad was patrician and dignified, fashionable in his own way, of course, but a little staid and old fashioned, while Alan was zany and trendy and made a big impression on me.

The Complete Nemesis the Warlock Volume 1: Books 1-4

Credo!

 The big questions for a long-time 2000AD fan are this: when did 2000AD change, and what did it change from and to?

I think it's clear that it started out as a fairly traditional boys comics, updated for the post-sixties era, taking in some of the creative lessons learned from Action and giving them a sci fi twist. Early thrills were pretty much boys' comics staples – Invasion! and M.A.C.H. One were old fashioned tough guys; Flesh was a twist on the exotic jungle great white hunter story, with Old One Eye at its heart as a kind of animal anti-hero like in those Jack London novels; Harlem Heroes was a sports strip; and Dan Dare was a very clear indication that they were aiming for that core “boy” audience, probably with an average age of about twelve and a long tail going back to six year olds and petering out quickly after about fourteen.

Judge Dredd – which only began in prog 2, remember! - was an early indication of the direction the comic would take, with social satire and black humour similar to the types of sci fi movies we saw in the late sixties and early seventies – Silent Running, Logan's Run and especially the triumvirate of Charlton Heston apocalypse movies, Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man and Soylent Green. This was definitely something new in a boys comic – I'd seen the space adventure comics that had been brought out by the Commando comics people, for example, and they were much more trad space adventures than really engaged sci fi in the way of Judge Dredd.

Well, maybe we'll get to Dredd one day, but today I want to take a look at a story that signalled a similarly profound break from boys' comics that had gone before and was one of the clearest antecedents for the way the comic is today, Nemesis the Warlock.

Ray Bradbury

Here's a good article about Ray Bradbury on Slate that was linked on Arts & Letters Daily. When I was a kid, I read everything by Bradbury I could get my hands on. I first read The Illustrated Man when I was about twelve or so, and probably read it two or three times more over the course of my teens.I can remember very clearly both the copy of The Illustrated Man I used to own - it had an oddly textured cover, part of a series in fact that included Golden Apples of the Sun and The Dragon Riders of Pern.

I read it again last year (not that copy, of course) in the course of my degree, and it stood up to my childhood recollections admirably. There's not a single dud, and even if his subject matter and approach seemed rather old fashioned today there are a handful of timeless gems like "The Rocket", "Kaliedoscope", "The Veldt" and the "The Long Rain". The last two were part of the movie version with Rod Steiger, which used to turn up on TV from time to time, late at night during school holidays. I remember thinking it was a bit stodgy at the time, but maybe it would be more appealing to me now I'm older.


I bought my copy of The Martian Chronicles as part of a three-for-a-fiver deal at Whitcoulls one August holiday along with Timesnake and Super Clown by Vincent King (great title , but I never read it, I don't think) and Fratricide Is A Gas by Lindsay Gutteridge (I eventually read all three of this trilogy about a guy who gets shrunk down to the size of an ant has to fight his way across the garden to safety, all of them purchased as remainders, if I'm not mistaken).

Mum and Anna and I took the bus to Auckland, where we spent the night in a hotel and visited the tourist hotspots. I read The Martian Chronicles in one go on the way up and then again on the way back. The girl a couple of seats back from me was sick and I remember the smell of puke and the pungent floral perfume of disinfectant to this day.

I like how the article describes his stories: "Bradbury is an optimist at heart, but his head knows that hope may not be enough. ... You read Bradbury with a growing sense of wonder and joy. It's only on reflection, after the stories take up residence in your head and crawl deep into the dark cracks and corners, that the wonder mutates into something closer to dread."

Yeah, that's what he feels like, and some of his stories stick with me still.

State of Change

Today, I launch my little foray into online self-publishing in the shape of my short novel, State of Change.

This was never my intent in blogging. I started off just looking for an outlet that was somewhere between a journal and a fanzine, somewhere I could blather about whatever took my fancy without having to worry too much about whether anyone else was interested. It's a place for me to blow off some steam, but with enough discipline to make it creatively useful rather than just an indulgent blow hole.

Well, I dunno how well I've succeeded at that, but i get a bit of traffic, and I think that maybe I can capture some of this to promote my mission in lilfe, my fiction writing.

I'm blog a bit more about my fiction in the coming months, but I'm going to statr of with State of Change. For this purpose, I have established a second blog where it'll be published in ten parts between now and the autumn. After that, I'll put it all together in a pdf and then... well, I don't know. It'll disappear into obscurity, I guess.

Well, with out further ado, here's a link to the introduction and to part one. I'll be publishing every Sunday between now and ten weeks from now, so tell your friends (but maybe not your Mum as it gets a bit saucy in places).

Fungus the Bogeyman

While thinking about something else entirely, I happened across this interesting academic article about Fungus the Bogeyman from the Australian Journal of Comedy (hilarious wisecracks on a post-card to the usual address, please).

Fungus the Bogeyman is probably the book I remember most fondly from my childhood. I got for my eleventh or twelfth birthday, having seen it in a bookshop and known immediately that I had to have it. I think I was already familiar with Brigg's witty Father Christmas books, and so was primed to love this flowering of his deliciously subversive sense of humour.

It still resonates with me, thirty years later and I still find Fungus's search for meaning incredibly moving. As Andrew Casson says here:

"In its highly inventive and disrespectful way, it is one of the few books that takes children seriously by refusing to accept the conventional image of the child, by highlighting with its gentle satire our most strange society, and by treating the most serious issues of tolerance and, ultimately, the meaning of life with the humour they deserve and need if they are to be taken seriously."

Briggs's work fit precisely in the same irreverent space as 2000AD, which was then just entering its classic period. Interestingly, I remember catching an arts documentary about him in the 80s which showed him working with some of his art school students, discussing pieces for an exhibition: it was Brett Ewins!

Less happily, it was turned into an utterly repulsive TV show in the 2000s. The problems are amply demonstrated by comparing the cover image above with this publicity still from the show:

Why the hell is that Bogey smiling!?!?

Here is another great link, an appreciation by illustrator Joanna Carey.

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

One of the horrible glimpses of mortality that mid-life crisis has brought me, is the realisation that I am not as cool as my parents.

Mum and Dad lived in London during the swinging sixties, when Dad was a groovy young newsreader at the BBC. They were never what you'd call ravers. Rock music was never their thing – Dad's fond of George Melly and Humphrey Littleton; Mum likes show tunes – and they are, despite when they lived, somewhat naïve as regards drugs. Their taste in art and culture is that of bright a undergraduate circa 1959, all post-impressionists, Leonard Bernstein and middle-brow writers. But, they really lived life. They had trendy BBC friends, went to all the latest shows and concerts, and took holidays to exotic destinations in the Med.

I've hung out with arty people and taken drugs and liked the right sorts of music, movies and books, but well, what does it all amount to, really? Mum and Dad got enormously into amateur theatre in Porirua, which seemed like the lamest thing ever when I was in my twenties, and yet they both eventually received Queen's Service Medals for their efforts and are quite highly regarded among a particular demographic. And what have I done to compare with that?

For many years, I assumed that my superiority to Mum and Dad was self-evident, a thing as natural as being young itself. That's the trap of youth, I think. When they say “youth is wasted on the young” that's surely one of the things they mean, the wasteful impatient arrogance of the young that drives them out of the nest to urgently re-invent a world that, generation after generation, refuses to change.

It's this desperate arrogance that drives the characters in Moxyland. I recognise their ambitions, because at one stage or another I have felt them all. Moxyland is a tragedy, in the classical sense, as the good are undone by their better nature while evil exults. Kendra is killed by choosing ambition before art; Tendenka dies when his idealism curdles into self-importance. In the meantime, if Kendra and Tendenka are the world's creative spirit and it's conscience, then Lerato and Toby represent the forces of vacuous self-gratification and cold-hearted corporate control. Both are the product of damaged societies. Toby has been spoiled and indulged until there is nothing decent left in him, while Lerato has been deracinated by the horror and disease of the previous century. Between them, they represent the future of Afirca.

Although Moxyland is full of racy cutting-edge culture, it's message is ultimately that of grumpy old men everywhere. The short-view of youth sees only the waves crashing in, while from the long view of decades one begins to see that these have nothing against the power of the tides. Instead of being a frightening possibility of the future, it becomes a description of the eternal way of the world.

But what do I know? This is a dystopian satire for the BoingBoing generation, what some people call post-cyberpunk, but – come on! - it's straight cyberpunk, through and through, bristling with Sterlingesque futurism and a plot reminiscent of Rainbows End. In fact, all those writers and all those books are still working away at the issues first raised by the likes of John Brunner and Norman Spinrad in the sixties. So, the New Wave keeps crashing and you keep getting knocked over by it until eventually you get tired of it and get out of the water altogether, and sit in the dunes up the beach waiting for the sunset.

How To Train Your Dragon

Believe it or not, I was once quite a cineaste. I studied film at uni for two years. When I lived in Wellington in New Zealand in my twenties, I was a member of the film society and a film festival regular, and in London I used spend a lot of time in the cinemas at the NFT, the ICA and those live soundtrack events at the Royal Festival Hall (John Cale doing The Hidden, Kronos Quartet on Dracula, Faust on obscure silent horror Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages). God, I had an opinion on everyone and everything, and if I'm drunk enough I can still dredge up some of the fragments, but everything I ever thought or knew about the great art of cinema has been kicked to death by a parade of children's movies.

People tell us that we're living in a golden age of kids movies – don't believe them! If this is the golden age, then I can only assume that previous generations of children's films were long lectures where kids were called idiots and instructed to go outside and murderously toxic fast food and deadening imagination-free toys.

Look what's happened to Disney! It's a crime what they've done to one of cinema's great pioneers. Say what you like about Walt, he was driven to create movies that stand the test of time. Snow White, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty have become iconic representations of the tales with good reason – both are filled with dark and light, with all them menace and redemptive power of folklore. Things started coming unstuck with the insipid Cinderella, and the fifties ushered in a period of less interesting films occasionally saved – as in The Jungle Book – by a great soundtrack. Nowadays they shit out inexplicable horrors like Aladdin and The Little Mermaid with the instinctual robot cynicism of Skinner's pigeon.

But Walt wasn't in the movie business anymore. He'd set his sights on something else, and his ambitions took him away from film making down a path that led to a creepy ersatz multiculturalism and utopian futurism that was just a Hubbard away from being a mind-controlling puritanical religion. By the time of One hundred and One Dalmations and The Aristocats, they couldn't seem to create a movie that didn't seem cheap, lifeless and oddly creepy. I mean, while Phil Harris is great as Baloo, he sounds like a drunk in Robin Hood and a child molester in The Aristocats.

I didn't go to the movies a lot as a small kid, before I was ten or so, but I can remember stuff like Escape to Witch Mountain, Herbie, Charlotte's Web, Benji, Bugsy Malone, Pete's Dragon – yeah, okay, the seventies was pretty thin, but in those days movies were feeling the bite from TV. When I think of my early media education it's all Sesame Street, Vision On, Playaway, Dr Who, Bagpuss, The Clangers and shows of that kind of vintage. It was a great era for children's TV, but for movies, it was an uphill battle.

That changed in 1977, when Star Wars began the cross-marketed licensing juggernaut that forms the basis of the film industry strategy today, but the technology they were really waiting for was CGI. As soon as Toy Story showed it could be done, it opened the flood gates for a new generation of movie franchises that could hide their creative vacuity behind pin-sharp CGI and, now, 3D. As a parent, I have bravely sat through a steady run of witless crap like Monsters Vs Aliens, Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age (1,2 &3!), Antz (with Woody Allen!), The Bee Movie (Jerry Seinfeld!) and the Satanically repulsive Cars.

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, though. Toy Story 1 & 2 are both genuinely great films (I am dubious about a third outing), Monsters Inc is saved by terrific performances from John Goodman and Billy Crystal, and there's a lot of inoffensive stuff, no worse than Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, for example, a movie I still love while recognising it's limitations. I'm thinking movies like Desperaux, Spiderwick Chronicles, Madagascar (another one saved by great comic performances) and, the subject of today's non-review, How To Train Your Dragon.

I mean, I am thankful that there aren't shitty toys, McDonald's tie-ins and a trailer for How To Train Your Dragon 2, but this film didn't have much going for it outside the production design, which was extremely imaginative and evocative. The kids get a typical believe-in-yourself story, a lot of lines that have the size and shape of jokes without having any witty content and some really dreadful voice acting. In particular, I have no idea why they wanted to have the grwon-up Vikings have Scottish accents and the young kids be voiced by horrible American stand-up comedy voices. It was like the whole thing was cutting between Terry Jones's Erik the Viking and Bob Saget providing the voice over for America's Funniest Home Videos.

Oh well, the kids enjoyed it well enough and at least I got out of seeing Nanny Mc-shitting-Phee.

Did I miss anything?

I dunno, it seems like you just turn around and suddenly everyone you know is changing on ya, or just up and leaving. You just can't depened on anything anymore. It's enough to make ya stay home forever.