Warren Ellis's Blog, page 36
November 28, 2012
Bookmarks for 2012-11-28
"IN The World in 2013, which is published today, we predict that the internet will become a mostly mobile medium. Who will be the winners and losers?"
(tags:net comms )
November 27, 2012
FAQ 27nov12: On Downloading And The Length Of Books
What are your opinions on the quandary of downloading scans of comics due to a Trade Paperback’s lack of back matter. I recently bought a copy of the original 1997 Helix comics single of Transmetropolitan and loved your essay in the back. The TPBs lack this and I want to read them all. I hate illegal downloading, but lust after your mouth-words. Guide me.
Is this something I really have to have an opinion about? If I’d wanted that stuff in the trades, I’d have had them put in there. They were just ephemera for the monthly readers, for as long as we had use of those editorial pages. But I certainly can’t stop you from downloading scans, and would really have no interest in doing so. I don’t police my readers.
So long as you’re not making new money off me, I won’t track you down and have eels violently introduced into your innards through whatever human portal presents itself. How’s that?
The new book, Gun Machine, is rather short for a novel at 320ish pages. Crooked Little Vein wasn’t all that long either. Has this been a conscious decision on your point to write shorter books or have you found, so far, that this has been the appropriate length to get your stories on paper?
GUN MACHINE came out around 85 to 90 thousand words long, which is almost 40,000 words longer than CROOKED LITTLE VEIN. I’ll never be Neal Stephenson (in a great many ways). I tend towards concision. They end where they want to end. I suspect the one I’m currently writing will be about as long as GUN MACHINE. I dream of (being able to afford to spend several years) writing a huge meandering doorstop like AGAINST THE DAY, but I seem not to be that kind of writer.
(Also: I think I’d actually question “rather short for a novel.”)
Greg Rucka had an interesting further comment on this:
ruckawriter said: 90K novel is not “short.” I’ve read 60K novels that read as if they’re three times as long, and that’s not a good thing. Over 120K, in my experience, and the publisher gets nervous. And raises the price, to boot.
Bookmarks for 2012-11-26
."..as much as we may still love to superficially aestheticise history as a ‘style’ and a consumer ‘product’, we are also witnessing an engagement with nostalgia that is about ethics rather than simply style. Like postmodernism in the 1980s and 1990s, our current engagement with the past is consciously aware of what Fredric Jameson has termed its own “random cannibalization of all the styles of the past”, yet nevertheless seeks to say something beyond style in the process."
(tags:theory philosophy history )
Surgeon « mary anne hobbs
"…this is the Surgeon… one of the most fascinating men i ever met.. President of the Russian motorcycle club the Night Wolves…"
(tags:writing )
One big fiction, read and written by us all | Books | The Observer
"The newly released iPhone and iPad app The Silent History collects case histories of a future epidemic of speechlessness, in the form of a serial novel released one day at a time. Each short episode is designed to be absorbed in 15 minutes and some of the stories are tied to particular locations: the reader stands within 10 metres of a dot on the map in order to unlock the section."
(tags:digital publishing books )
Professor Elemental’s “I’m British”
The magnificent Professor Elemental returns.
(See also his marvellous “Cup Of Brown Joy.” Which is much less filthy than it sounds.)
Why COSMOPOLIS Won’t Let Me Hate It
I watched this twice, last week. Well, maybe one and a half times. I watched it once and didn’t like it. And the next day I watched some bits again because, for no reason, parts of it were sticking in my head.
It’s stagey. Stilted. Not all the actors can pull off the Don DeLillo dialogue that Cronenberg (ever a writer’s screenwriter) transposed from book to film. It’s short and still feels flabby in places. The thread of a fairly simple plot gets lost. Among other things.
And yet.
There is something almost brilliant in here, in places. The weird back-projection of the world outside the car the film (mostly) takes place in is a great choice. There are ideas, and ambitions, and… I’m going to have to watch the damn thing again. Because it’s making me think about it.
November 26, 2012
NIGHT MUSIC: Theory Anesthetic
I was very fond of Theory Anesthetic when she was recording back in the 00’s. And, hey, this turned up on Bandcamp the other day and took me back a few years. Excellent night music.
Bookmarks for 2012-11-26
"SIMPLE TOOLS AND SYSTEMS FOR DIGITAL PUBLISHING"
(tags:magazines publishing )
The Pelican Project
Because these are among the greatest book covers in the world.
(tags:books covers design )
CHANNEL SK1N
CHANNEL SK1N is visionary science fiction author Jeff Noon’s first novel in ten years. It shares many genetic markers with his previous work: the surreal sf of VURT, the body attack of AUTOMATED ALICE, the people being eaten by art and culture of NEEDLE IN THE GROOVE, and the linguistic experimentation of COBRALINGUS.
The latter is, for me, the least successful element of CHANNEL SK1N, otherwise a diverting, sad and lovely story of a processed pop star, and her Svengali’s damaged daughter, being eaten by television. At times, the concept plays as MAX HEADROOM via DO ANDROIDS DREAM in David Lynch’s basement, but I absolutely recommend it for the glory of the prose, and the many instances where he lifts the material into stunning human moments. This is a virtuoso’s warm-up set: loose, occasionally flawed to my ears, but magisterial.
You can find out more about CHANNEL SK1N, and how to buy it as an ebook, at this link here.
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