Warren Ellis's Blog, page 146
March 27, 2011
Bookmarks for 2011-03-27
"The universe suddenly seems to be pulsating with an energy that had previously gone undetected: one that is so new and unfamiliar that it can still only be heard."
(tags:music radiophonic )
Debut of the first practical 'artificial leaf'
"Scientists today claimed one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy — development of the first practical artificial leaf. Speaking here at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, they described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card that mimics the process, called photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy."
(tags:sci tech )
March 26, 2011
Bookmarks for 2011-03-26
"Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that brings together a series of four 16mm works which exist somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction." Post-flood, post-end-of-THREADS Somerset
(tags:video sf )
March 25, 2011
Monster busy day, no time even for the HALF MOON update r...
Monster busy day, no time even for the HALF MOON update right – might be tonight, might be Monday.
(Trixie)
I have a ton of links to get to, but, argh, no time to focus on blogging right now, so here's the one off the top to be going on with: Late July just sent me her album, after I tripped over the following on YouTube.
March 24, 2011
Bookmarks for 2011-03-24
"Humans first arrived in North America more than 2,500 years earlier than previously thought, according to an analysis of ancient stone tools found in Texas. And the people who left them appear to have developed a portable toolkit for killing and preparing meat."
(tags:history )
Color Looks To Reinvent Social Interaction With Its Mobile Photo App (And $41 Million In Funding)
"Say you walk into a restaurant with twenty people in it. You sit down at a table with four friends, and start chatting. Then one of your friends pulls out their phone, fires up Color, and takes a snapshot of you and your buddies. That photo is now public to anyone within around 100 feet of the place it was taken. So if anyone else in the restaurant fires up Color, they'll see the photograph listed in a stream alongside other photos that have recently been taken in the vicinity."
(tags:app social possible+disaster+in+the+making )
GUEST INFORMANT: Charlie Huston
Literally just got this in email from novelist and comics writer Charlie Huston , who's having some technical issues over at his place . Am delighted to run it here. Did I mention that SLEEPLESS is one of my favourite novels of the last year or two? Probably. Charlie Huston, folks:
So I wrote another piece for the Mulholland Books website.
Some random thoughts that had been swirling around my head immediately following Hosni Mubarak's abdication from power in Egypt and that country's military taking the reins of governance.
What I wrote is HERE.
Obviously a lot has changed in the ensuing weeks. So much has changed that as the post date for this little piece approached, I was considering writing a brief addendum. Not to correct errors in my thinking/projections, but to reflect on the speed of change in cases of revolution. As of a few days ago, spending thought bubbles on the irony of Egypt's military seeming to be a marked improvement over Mubarak's regime was a singular waste of fifteen minutes. Both the complexion and inner nature of Middle Eastern protest movements having undergone radical change.
"Protest movement."
The phrase seems positively quaint.
Updated lexicons favor "revolution" or "civil war."
As a case study for generalization, my little brain fart appeared years out of date after a span of weeks.
Of course that was before the last 24 hour news cycle in which we started hearing about THIS and THIS.
Both items to be filed under Same As It Ever Was.
Also emphasizing, to me, the speed of change.
In about three weeks, my little piece on revolution has gone from feeling, to myself in any case, relevant, to being utterly behind the curve of event, to having event go round the curve and circle back and make the piece relevant again.
Presto!
And all without even nodding in the direction of Japan.
Keeping up is no longer the issue. The question now is whether it is more efficient to run as fast as you can in an effort to keep the gap between yourself and the rate of change as narrow as possible, or to stand still and hope that you get lapped on a regular basis, gleaning what you can each time the present/future whips by scattering loose debris in its wake.
This matters to me because I'm trying to write about today. A fictional version of today that is still recognizably today. A task that is complicated by the fact that I'm trying to accomplish it in the context of a novel. A form that does not traditionally lend itself to speed.
From when I finish a clean first draft of this thing I can expect a year to pass before publication. In that time I'll have opportunities to update, correct, and amend some of the content, but it is inevitable that passages and scenes that felt of the moment when they were written will have become hopelessly bedraggled and irrelevant while type was being set.
Research.
Research in this climate of change is…constant. Relentless.
The question is the same: Try to keep up, or remain stationary?
Try to be utterly of the moment, or take a stab at timelessness?
Which boils down to: Incorporate actual current events, or fictionalize the whole world in a way that suggests the feeling of living in a era of constant crisis?
These are existential question for a writer.
I just wrote that and I did not mean it to be taken ironically. It may be the most sincere thing I have ever stated about writing. So sincere that it makes me uncomfortable enough that I need to comment on it. Because I'm a writer, not a philosopher or a thinking. A storyteller, I.
But there it is.
Lady or the tiger, whichever device you chose to employ in your story, they change the fabric of everything.
Write about the factual NOW in fiction, or fictionalize the NOW to create an honest sense of what it's like to be alive? It doesn't get more brass tacks than that.
So I wrote another piece for Mulholland Books. Filler for my new publisher's website. Loose thoughts cobbled into vague order. And it has been transmuted by the passage of events into a case study applicable to a novel I'm writing. And a way of thinking about writing it. And, because I am a storyteller, a way for me to think about how I'm living.
How it feels.
How the future feels to me.
It feels like living all the time with a hand grenade, and the pin is out.
And I don't know how long the fuse is.
Throw it and hope there isn't time for anyone to throw it back at you?
Or hold on for another second more?
And another.
Another.
A second more.
Safe travels ,
- c
THREE PANELS: Chris G
Three Panels is a guestpost spot for comics artists, wherein I ask them to do a comic about anything they like so long as it's 640 pixels across and only three panels.
The demented Chris G has been entertaining people on my message board, and via his webcomic SPACE SHARK, as well as his dA page, for some while, and I thought he should spread his brainmuck here too. So I asked him to do three panels for me. And what he produced was surprisingly serene:
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March 23, 2011
Small Things
Nice bit of Paul Pope for your evening.
Today I have mostly been writing emails, so far. You get days like this. Emailing an interview for Small New Marvel Comics Thing. Talking with film/tv agent and studio exec about Small Film Thing. (Which is not a Small Film, but a small job involving film.) Following up on emails about contract for Oh My God Huge Job That Will Eat Most Of The Next Year. Turning down stuff. Sending threatening "you am give me artist for webcomic now" messages to poor William at Avatar. He's responding with "I'm looking at fifty submissions a day, I swear." He probably doesn't deserve the somewhat sinister responses with photos of his house attached. I shouldn't have scrawled "schizo fishraep-comics fans will do ANYTHING for Alan Moore's phone number" on them. Resigning myself to the fact that I will probably not get to leave the house next week.
See those things in the picture there? Those are boobs. I ONLY GET TO SEE THEM IN DRAWINGS NOW.
I have a whole drawn comic here for an unannounced project here and I can't show you any of it. Bah. I believe it – the Small New Marvel Comics Thing – will be announced at Wondercon.
And this window's been open for an hour, while I've been fielding another flurry of emails, and obviously things aren't going to slow down tonight, so I'm pressing publish and going back to work instead of posting something interesting. Aside from the pretty picture.
Bookmarks for 2011-03-23
"We hear a lot about Google's relationship with publishers, but this week the search giant also quietly launched its own online publication based in the UK."
(tags:magazine web )
HALF MOON: Zeroing In
I had to scale this image, and some of the tone dropped out: you may behold the piece in its original size at this link.
This is all still as rough as a bear's arse, on my end. There are other details to the above in other emails, I haven't yet combined it all into a clear document or a handy logline. But this is the point where we know where we are, where we're going, and the parameters for what we're going to do.
(The "drug" thing came up through something Mike threw into one of the earlier sketches, which led us to quoting lines from (the Bowie song, not the tv show) "Ashes To Ashes" at each other. The tone of which also informed some of what followed. This also led to my playing him "Spacegirl" by Drugstore.)
Loving those huge Mick McMahon moonboots. I think the boots were the one useful thing I contributed to the visual discussion.
So. Yeah. We have the parameters for HALF MOON pretty much set. All I need to do now is come up with the story. Ha ha.
Sometimes it works like this. You can't choose what part of a story comes to you first. Sometimes you think of a setting first. Sometimes an interesting plot progression drops into your head and you find yourself looking for somewhere to put it, instead. Sometimes it's the title first, or a character name, or even a line of dialogue from nowhere that kickstarts the whole thing. There's no hard and fast method, no laws about how this works. Every job is different. Mike and I are just showing you how this one starts.
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THREE PANELS: Yao Xiao
Three Panels is a guestpost spot for comics artists, wherein I ask them to do a comic about anything they like so long as it's 640 pixels across and only three panels.
Yao Xiao created a bit of a stir with her wonderful piece for the TRANSMET charity art book, so I asked her to do three panels for me. You can find her, and her terrific work, at her website. And she's @yaoxiaoart on the twitters. These are Yao's Three Panels:
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What I'm Working On Tonight (warrenellis.com)
HALF MOON With Mike Oeming: First Notes (warrenellis.com)
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