Multiverse--Michael Moorcock discussion
2017/2018/2019 What Are You Experiencing In Multimedia?
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The other day, I ordered a copy of Maigret tend un Piège (Maigret sets/lays a Trap), starring Jean Gabin, from 1958. It turned up really quickly. So I've just watched it as my Saturday night treat. I've already got a copy of the sequel, L' Affaire Saint Fiacre (Maigret and the Saint Fiacre Case), but that's a rather creaky country chateau mystery. This one, is a police procedural, with the police chasing a serial murderer though Monmartre, in the heart of Paris. Gabin's Maigret is very convincing. I've read the book, watched both the Bruno Cremer and Rowan Atkinson versions, however this is possibly the best Maigret that I've seen. A portrayal almost as good as Gabin's ageing gangster character in, Touchez pas au Grisbi, from four years earlier. And that's one of my all time favourite movies.
Reading the book's gives you the best version, of course. ;>)
I have been going through a big anxiety/OCD crisis so it is difficult for me to read a fiction book so I have been postponing reading Wolfe's Book Of The Long sun 2, although I think about reading it all the time.However, I managed to read some comics: Astro City 3 and the last Tom Strong collected issues ( here in Brazil it was published in 6 volumes, but I have the deluxe edition in English so I only bought this 6h issue ) which features two stories written by Mike, which are insanely good along with other stories also quite good written by Steve Moore and Alan Moore.
I have bought Hefner/Sienkiewicz Shadow take which I had read a long ago and I had forgotten how terrible this is. The art is awesome, but the dialogs and plot just make me miss Chaykin's Shadow.
I have been watching the show The Good Place on Netflix which is incredibly funny. Yesterday I have watched the 2 new episodes of the last Star Trek show: Discovery. I have to admit, I love the TOS but I am not quite fond of the spin offs but I liked this very much.
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It came in very clear on MeTV. Very enjoyable.
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And, earlier in the night, they played Star Trek "The City on the Edge of Forever" also loosely based on a script by Harlan Ellison.
I have been watching Star Trek Discovery ( still enjoying a lot unlike anything else from ST universe besides the gorgeous TOS ) and The Man In The High Castle, best sci fi show since Fringe.I am waiting this Friday to start seeing Stranger Things season 2.
My family plans to watch Thor Ragnarok this Friday but I am watching Blade Runner 2049 I think.
I am reading books again, slower than usual, I just resumed my reading of Book Of the Long Sun ( book2 ) which is bad ass.
Promethea absolute edition volume 2 was finally issued here in Brazil, but as of now I cannot afford without causing a fight at home ;-)
I watched an amazing Icelandic movie called Metalhead, which I really recommend for everybody. The movie is a drama, but it has have some happy moments, my favorite one is when
Spoilers
.. the priest is revealed to be a metalhead!
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I think if Netflix had a brick n' mortar headquarters, and if they would not give viewers more Stranger Things, it would be burned down to the ground after a huge street riot. People have taken that much of a liking to it.
I, myself, can't even entertain the idea of Stranger Things going away some day. I feel it is a series that should last forever.
I am so into the story that I looked up things about it, fortunately saying that there should be seasons 3, 4 and maybe a season 5.
I think it could go on with so many possibilities.
I love Stranger Things and Stranger Things 2!
Hey LemecI am on episode 7 of Stranger Things second season, you pretty much says all about it, fantastic show.
I got annoyed by Voyager, but it is way better than any of the previous spin offs.
I have watched Thor Ragnarok and it is an ok movie, albeit much better than Thor 1 and 2. Mike Moorcock once said - when commenting about Avengers 1- that he could not get why Disney spends a lot of money to reproduce a regular good comic story which is all that Ragnarok is, does not even compare to Guardians 1 and 2, but then I am a fan boy ;-)
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I am on episode 7 of Stranger Things second season, you pretty much says all about it, fantastic show.
I got annoyed by Voyager, but it is way better than any of the previous spin offs...."
Stranger Things is great! I'm currently re-watching season 1 before I start season 2. :)
Demogorgon forever! :D
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I am also watching their Heavy Spoiler Filled Talk Show on Netflix with special guests and actors.
Some thing I don't want explained, some things I want to learn more about and want to watch it expanded!
I would like to see the characters in 1987, when the 1980's started to get a little different from the first six years of the decade.
When such action movies make the scene like the original Lethal Weapon. And at a time when some movies have a tremendous impact on audiences, like Full Metal Jacket, which is vastly different in tone that what most people were used to in film. (way to go, Kubrick!)
Happy Halloween!!!
Netflix has released a behind the scenes documentary about the Stranger Things and I was really glad to see that the Duffer brothers are real geeks but they cite Lovecraft as an inspiration for the upside down beings.I finished second season btw, I said somewhere else that the best shows since Fringe were ST Discovery and Man in The High Castle, but I need to add ST to the list.
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For myself, the director is the most interesting thing about the Thor movie. However, I do appreciate how one of its trailers turned my young daughter into a Led Zeppelin fan.
Heresiologist wrote: "I do appreciate how one of its trailers turned my young daughter into a Led Zeppelin fan."FTW!
My all time Zep song, their heaviest probably.
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It was pretty wild last week, I am waiting for tonight's episode.
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Maybe soon, between the movie theater next week and the free broadcast television shows, I will get a good look at Avengers: Infinity War. I saw the many characters in images online, as well as the video teaser. Maybe we will be surprised by new footage at the movies.
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I'll probably view the new Jurassic Park movie trailer sometime this weekend.
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I also watched some miscellaneous videos on youtube.
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I got a great deal during the Black Friday time period, all streaming videos, of the classic episodes of Jonnie Quest, and I viewed episode 1 so far. The entire season was $5.00 USD instead of near two dollars for each one!
Episode 3 looks to be about Egyptian archaeology, so I'm really looking forward to watching that episode!
Hanna Barbara is a fantastic thing!
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Ever watch The Wild Wild West episode with the sarcophagus?
A red laser shot from the top of it, sort of like, in later years, the red laser emitted from the headpiece of the staff in Indiana Jones!
I had written a comment here where I was praising Netflix Glow, which I have seen this weekend and unlike what I thought before watching it I really liked it.I finished watching season 2 of Man In The High Castle after taking a break ( I also took a break on ST Discovery after a very formulaic episode which I did not like at all ), but this show is superb for the lack of a better word. It uses the book concepts as a canvas to create a new story - still related to the book - but very different and very original which is one of the themes of the book: so many realities existing ( Multiverse nod ;-)) exploding into reality when small events change and bifurcate the events ( modern quantum theory nod ;-) ).
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Lemec wrote: "Even Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had to mention Multiverse now, and it was pretty much the definition that Mike Moorcock created."I need to watch that series while Netflix has it.
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Heresiologist wrote: "Ted Chiang on the "AI threat to civilization" as espoused by Silicon Valley's captains of industry."Hey H, thanks for sharing this excellent article. The risks of an AI/machine doing any harm may be prevented and avoided by good programming practices which is something you cannot teach corporations to do as they have all these vile ambitions and will not stop until a goal is achieved no matter at each cost.
If corporations were smart enough they would realize that to maximize their gains they are necessarily obliged to treat their agents well, which is something companies Google and Amazon seem to do, because it will maximize performance. Sadly, everything tends to become what goes in countries like China: very skilled, numerous and intelligent people doing small bits of work for a larger machine which is ruthless and simply do not care for the healthy of its components.
Edit: I have read the article again.
The other aspect is automatic data retrieval that most of these tech companies use to improve their business but in reality we were already bound and lock by banks and governments before because they all know us well enough. The fact we can have machine learning applied to this market just makes it easier for them but we people cannot sadly avoid it. But I do not think Google or Amazon are not as nearly as dangerous as Facebook is.
Heresiologist wrote: "Ted Chiang on the "AI threat to civilization" as espoused by Silicon Valley's captains of industry."Awesome! I'll read anything Chiang writes... even nonfiction :-)
Google and Amazon vs. Facebook? I think they're both as dangerous as Facebook. I hate that people tag my photo on their facebook posts—I don't want my photo to be automatically recognizable—but I cringe every time I type in the first word of a search phrase, and Google immediately suggests exactly what I'm looking for. Google knows far more about me than Facebook does. And Amazon knows all my buying habits. My fault for buying from Amazon, but it's so insidiously easy...
Derek wrote: "Heresiologist wrote: "Ted Chiang on the "AI threat to civilization" as espoused by Silicon Valley's captains of industry."Awesome! I'll read anything Chiang writes... even nonfiction :-)
Google ..."
Have you read story of your life and other stories? It is a great book, a few short stories are ok, but there are some there that are master pieces.
I have. Restored my faith in short stories :-)
I have sold 27 CDs ( I usually listen to digital these days but I like to collect cd box sets ) which allowed me to buyJudas Priest The Complete Collection 19 cds
Saxon The Carrere Years 4cds box set
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My recipe for fiction set ten years in the future used to be 90% already-here, 9% not-here-yet but predictable, and 1% who-ordered-that. But unfortunately the ratios have changed. I think we're now down to maybe 80% already-here—climate change takes a huge toll on infrastructure—then 15% not-here-yet but predictable, and a whopping 5% of utterly unpredictable deep craziness."
Dude, you broke the future
I read that. It's eerily close to Ted Chiang's essay for BuzzFeed: the "AI threat to civilization" as espoused by Silicon Valley's captains of industry.
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Agreed, though I think Stross's piece is wider ranging. I originally had a note about the similar AI thoughts in the post, but backspaced it into the memory hole.
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Zera Yacob: like Hume, Locke and Kant (except not so invested in notions of white and male supremacy).
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Ah yes, Paper Clip is a good one, a serious one that fits well with conspiracy and the UFO/Alien mythology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Clip
Those are the ones that interest me the most.
I was/am a big fan of everything up to season 7. After that I stopped watching it, not because I did not like it, I just stopped.
Jack Of Shadows wrote: "Daniel wrote: "I was/am a big fan of everything up to season 7. After that I stopped watching it, not because I did not like it, I just stopped."Yeah that's what happened with me too. I should gi..."
Man, I have just cancelled my amazon stream subscription ! I am thinking about renew it. "Man In the High castle" has become one of my faves. Ok, I know I say this all time and some time later I say something else, but in this case this series continues to be in high count for me just the same as other great shows like Fringe or Farscape.
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RIP Ursula Le Guin.
Ah, fuck. Reading a bunch of tributes just now, my favourite was Harry Dresden (who I've never read) - "She is not gone, she's transcended."
My mother is Kardecist, although one cannot agree, they say that some souls are highly evolved and came to this plane for the sole purpose of enlightening us with their presence. My mother told me this as a reference when my grandmother passed away some years ago. I definitely see the these two women like that regardless of the religious belief one has or not.Some many years ago, I was 13 or 14 I have discovered her book "Left Hand Of Darkness" at my mother's shelf ( her brother and sister who are and were still LeGuin's fans lent her the book ) after I had discovered Childhood's End a week before.
Reading that book put me in this science fiction/fantasy or whatever else you may call it field of reading.
thank you Ursula.
RIP.
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I really enjoyed her Earthsea trilogy when I was younger. She was one of a small handful of authors that made me appreciate science fiction and fantasy. RIP."
Then I suggest that your older self might really enjoy the later three Earthsea books she wrote. Last fall I read Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind, both of which, especially the latter, I quite liked.
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Well, it sounds like you might also not know about Studio Ghibli's animated Tales from Earthsea movie, which I also recommend, though I think it's more like a loose adaptation of Tehanu rather than Tales from Earthsea. My daughter enjoyed it a lot, but the villain freaked her out.
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It's been ages since I read it, but I think there's stuff in both of the suggested books that will make more sense if you read Tehanu first.
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Heresiologist wrote: "Jack Of Shadows wrote: "The two books you suggested are available on Archive.org to read, so I'll be starting one of those this weekend. Thanks again. "It's been ages since I read it, but I think..."
Jack do you have a smartphone? You can read at one if you.
I do all my reading on my smartphone.
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As a high-tech Luddite I use a dumbphone. A Nokia with actual buttons. It's getting pretty annoying to use so change is in the air.
Elsewhere on the internet: Toronto's Yorkville: Hippie haven in 1967.
Within the first 5 minutes meet "...Bill, a real hippy." Bill has yet to submit his first published story to New Worlds. Perhaps he has yet to see sky the colour of a tv screen, tuned to a dead channel.
Ha, ha! I clicked through to the link before reading your last paragraph, and read "A 19-year-old draft dodger named William Gibson conducts CBC Television on a tour ...", and thought "could it be....?" It could.What a fascinating blast from the past. I used to live nearby, and worked in Yorkville (post-hippie though: early 80s).
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Heresiologist wrote: "played by the guy who used to be Max Headroom, "Poor guy only gets to do SF. He had a major part in Orphan Black, too.
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Derek wrote: "Poor guy only gets to do SF. He had a major part in Orphan Black, too."
Since you've lived in Toronto, maybe it's not too obscure for me to say I saw him play a serial killer on Da Quincy's Inquest, way back when. I think I saw him once in a normal person role too (though that may have been his serial killer's public persona) and it seemed real weird. Poor guy ;)
I don't remember that. I thought I hadn't missed an episode of Da Vinci's Inquest, but it apparently ran longer than I thought: I stopped watching TV when I moved out to wilds of Nova Scotia without cable or even reliable over-the-air TV. Nicholas Campbell was on Q last week. Donnelly Rhodes died last month.
btw, does netflix in USA, CANADA or UK have any of Lewis films? Brazil netflix does not have any. :-(