Warren Ellis's Blog, page 200
October 7, 2010
How Charlie Stross Planned To Die
Fifth in his list of "Books I Will Not Write," novelist Charles Stross explains the novel that would probably have gotten him poisoned:
There is nothing like getting everyone mad at you simultaneously, is there? Personally, I take it as something of a challenge. And so, for the past few years I've been sitting on this book proposal for a highly commercial alternate history/time travel novel, fixed firmly in that sub-genre whereby $CONTEMPORARY_WARFIGHTING_UNIT is magically teleported back in time.
You probably remember the movie The Final Countdown (USS Nimitz magically teleported back to 1941, on the eve of the Pearl Harbour attack)…
I have a shit-stirring variation …
Let us contemplate the state of Israel, as it existed at 6pm on the evening of October 5th, 1973…
No Conclusion has a nice piece by †‡† a.k.a. RITUALZ in c...
No Conclusion has a nice piece by †‡† a.k.a. RITUALZ in collaboration with the french duo UNISON, that †‡† just alerted me to on The Twitters. The player on the page is busted for me, but there's a download link that I just opened in a new tab to listen to. Fuzzed-out Witch Balearic.
WIRED UK: Column 19
In which I talk about ghosts under glass and working with spirits. Or:
One day you're going to be walking through Dublin and you'll raise your phone, your little ghost box, to your eye and peer through it at a certain building. And a Turing-tested James Joyce, put together from correspondence and recordings and "Ulysses", will appear on your screen and ask you if you could lend him a tenner so he can buy you a drink…
Station Ident: It's True
I'm cheating this morning, mostly because I just wanted an excuse to post this image by Paul Sizer:
This is warren ellis dot fucking com yes.
October 6, 2010
Night Music: talkingmakesnosense/death register
A 40-minute-long split digital release that you can buy for a lousy two quid fifty. Crackle, drone, an atmosphere thick with (space) ghosts. Excellent night music.
whitechapel 6oct10
* Webcomics Week (Oct 7-14 2010) – You do a webcomic? Come and tell us about it, while everyone else is at NYCC.
* T-shirt Of The Fortnight #003: BEER IS MY TOTEM ANIMAL
Links for 2010-10-05
"A University of Delaware researcher is helping to design instruments for a robotic space probe that will go where no other has gone before: the sun."
(tags:space SET+CONTROLS+FOR+THE+HEART+OF+THE+SUN also+there+was+a+Sun+Probe+in+THUNDERBIRDS )
Hungary sludge flood called 'ecological disaster' – Yahoo! News
"Hungary declared a state of emergency in three counties Tuesday after a flood of toxic red sludge from an alumina plant engulfed several towns and burned people through their clothes. One official called it "an ecological disaster" that may threaten the Danube and other key rivers."
(tags:eco horror )
Travelling, African Dictator Style
From Creative Review's coverage of the Brighton Biennial.
…a series of photographs by Nick Gleis which reveal the interior opulence of the private jets owned by African dictators in the 1960s and 70s.
And that's one of the problems with crazy sci-fi design in the real world: it never belongs to the people you want it to belong to, and it carries a completely different and sinister statement about who owns the future.
Versace doing SPACE:1999 set design. It should have been Freeman Dyson's ride.
The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance WIRED UK Columnist
Russell Davies agonising a bit over what to write in his next WIRED UK column. I go through exactly the same thing for mine. At least I now know what to avoid agonising over this weekend.
Also, Russell, this?
I sometimes think all this talk of atemporality is an abdication of sci-fi responsibility. SF writers seem very keen to deny that they're writing about the future. They're not doing prediction, they're telling us about the now. OK. Well. Pack it in and get on with some prediction.
SF was never really about prediction. It was about extrapolation from the present condition, usually (in the classical traditional) to observe and comment upon the present condition. Which isn't the same thing. "Prediction" is sf's side effect.
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