Warren Ellis's Blog, page 358

How To Write A Twenty-Minute Talk From Scratch In Under Three Hours

At lunchtime, while everyone else was at the conference.

Home now. Will post the notes that I based the talk on later in the week.

FREAKANGELS 0060

It’s Friday, it’s just gone noon UK time, so it’s FREAKANGELS episode 0060, free to air.

Dundee On Sunday

And now we go dark here for a while, as I go into prep for getting up at some appalling time in the morning on Saturday to fly to Dundee, where I appear on Sunday evening in conjunction with the TIMEFRAMES event at Dundee University.

Here’s the link to the programme and other information.

As you’ll see, I’ll be signing books at sometime around six pm, and a while later I’ll be talking about god knows what as the final keynote speaker.

Pray the weather’s good, as I don’t have a smoking hotel room an

Steven Wells Is Dead

The first decent write-up I ever had outside the comics press was written by Steven Wells. And I never got to thank him. And now Steven Wells is dead. And these are his last words:

And of course all this bollocks is written by an idiot who has polished his image as an existentialist, atheist hard-man and anti-mope, forever sneering at the tribes who wallow in self-pity — the gothers, the emo kids, the Smiths fans — the whole 900-block-wide marching band composed entirely of the white male urban

SF MAGAZINES: It’s That Time Of Year Again

Come on. It’s a tradition now, right? Gardner Dozois releases a new YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION containing his Summation of the doings of the year, and I pull out the sf magazine circulation numbers from it and depress everybody. (Cue blog posts beginning "Warren Ellis makes Doom Pronoucements Yet Abloodygain…")

The 2008 sf magazine numbers as per Mr Dozois’ discovery:

ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION drops 2.7% in circulation, to a hair over 17000 copies. In the previous three years, it had dropped 5

Later This Year: CAPTAIN SWING AND THE ELECTRICAL PIRATES OF CINDERY ISLAND

As illustrated by Raulo Caceres:

Trixie Bedlam On Vacation

1. stranded, 2. toys get bigger, 3. holding down the lakefront

Corey Lewis Eats Your Brains

CLICK THROUGH FOR BRAINEATING FULLSIZE IMAGE

Station Ident: Sssshh

Zo agrees. It’s waaaay too early in the bloody morning. Ssssssh.

Night Music: I Wanna Go Home

I saw a tv interview in which Lonnie Donegan (the secret font of rock’n'roll) explained how Van Morrison basically issued instructions for the Belfast gigs that would become the SKIFFLE SESSIONS album. “Chris Barber will play bass.” “But ‘e doesn’t really like playing bass, Van…” “Shot op. And no overdobs.” “We can’t fix it in the studio?”

And it’s Van Morrison, the old monster himself, who gets caught out by the no-overdubs rule. Because halfway through “I Wanna Go Home,” an iteration of “