Given the choice, how would you prefer to announce the presence of your species in local space? Imagine all the ways you could describe the emergence of a digital-age society on this planet. All the ways you could explain our species and our environment and biosphere, and explain that, no, we’re not perfect, we’re still fighting, we still haven’t resolved our relationship with nature, there are still hungry people and sick people. But we’re trying, and in some places we’re winning, and although we can’t reach you, we could really use a friend. All the ways in which you could hope to open up a conversation with the Other, wherever it may lie.

Or you could just send them a Doritos ad.

Because, yes, on the morning of June 12 2008, the EISCAT high-powered space transmitter station on Svalbard used its array of radars to beam a Doritos ad at a solar system 42 light years from here.

For six hours, the MPEG video file was repeatedly pulsed at system 47 UMa, in the Ursa Minor constellation, which was chosen because it seems to have a circumstellar habitable zone. 47 UMa does have two Jupiter-class planets outside the HZ, although one of them is so massive that it very probably does weird gravity things to the outside edge of the HZ. This means that, if there are Earth-like rocky planets inside the habitable zone that we just can’t see yet, there’s a fair chance they’ll be small, lumpy, thirsty and ugly. Like a man in a Foster’s commercial. Or, presumably, a Doritos one.

EISCAT, which has had funding problems, has received an undisclosed but presumably substantial donation from Doritos in return for the broadcast, which will help them meet their actual aims of performing radar astronomy experiments. The director of EISCAT is quoted as saying: ""Some years in the future, the money that comes from this kind of commercial service could be used to fund pure research."

This would seem to open the door to polluting local space with the grottiest capitalistic artifacts conceivable in return for being able to do a bit of science. That’s a pretty high cost — of a piece with the recurring nightmare in fiction of the Coca-Cola logo being permanently sprayed on the surface of the moon. Others will champion this as private enterprise giving science the boost it needs, which is usually where I’m told to wave my hands in glee that Richard Branson and his mates have created a zippy goshwow 21st Century space business on the same kind of suborbital lob Alan Shepherd managed in 1961 (and a fair distance short of the full orbital flight Yuri Gagarin made).

Fuck that. I don’t care. Attempting to announce our presence to any intelligence that can get in front of the signal by sending them something made by a company that sells crunchy shit in bags is not the way to the maturity of the species.

According to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence’s Permanent Study Group, it’s been argued that "a civilization which hopes to detect radio evidence of other civilizations in the cosmos is obligated to reveal its own presence. Others maintain that it is suicidal to shout in the jungle." There is, therefore, a San Marino Scale measuring risk in these matters. You can play with an online calculator, if you know a few specifics, to work out whether or not a signal broadcast into space will in fact bring down the alien hordes ov chewy doooom. And if it does, you know damn well that their first words will be "Sponsored by Doritos?"

Amazingly (to me), it’s not the first time we’ve fired signals at 47 UMa. Notional lifeforms in-system will also one day be privy to The 1st Theremin Concern For Aliens. They’re due to get that in the summer of 2047. The funny thing about that, of course, is that the theremin was usually used to announce the presence of spooky space aliens in 1950s science fiction films…

We’re just asking for it, really.

Image 5 is Laurenn McCubbin threatening to punch people in the face with her shiny engagement ring. (This is why they called her "McKilla." When her back is turned.) It’s Laurenn who introduced me to Natasha Strange, in image 4, who later kindly put me up in her house for a week without, you know, making me drink piss or anything. She’s also offered to carry out the castrations if I decide I do want a cadre of Temple Eunuchs to flank me at conventions.

1. Investigation-of-Greed-(&-Water)-szeretlek, 2. Cranes, 3. You know who you are., 4. preview of new pics, 5. Punching fist of engagement ring DOOOOOM!, 6. peony from my mother’s garden

Wherein Alice has to climb a ladder and we discover what KK stands for.  FREAKANGELS episode 17, free to air, just like all the others…

• YouTube – Spider Car
  holy fucking shit it walks
  (tags: tech art)
• Would an antimatter apple fall up? – space – 12 June 2008 – New Scientist Space
  New experiments are being proposed to test a big unknown in physics: how antimatter reacts to gravity.
  (tags: sci)
• Pluto-like objects to be called ‘plutoids’ – space – 11 June 2008 – New Scientist Space
  “The new classification will be used to refer to bright dwarf planets that spend the bulk of their time outside Neptune’s orbit.”
  (tags: space)
• Space station to be quantum communications hub? – tech – 11 June 2008 – New Scientist Tech
  The International Space Station could soon be relaying messages secured using quantum entanglement
  (tags: sci tech comms space)

Siege is a fucking genius with a camera.

Sometime this year, I’m going to get around to writing a novelette, because the publisher said that if he liked it, he’d publish it with new photos by Siege as illustrations.

Siege runs a tumblelog that he updates several times a day. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes he’s really pissed off and rants a lot. Sometimes it’s just really fucking strange. It’s become an essential daily read for me.

I have to thank the people at Highpoint Lowlife for slipping me an advance copy of Funckarma’s Dubstoned EP1. It’s an evil, lurching, jagged piece of science fictional noise that shoves about eight different kinds of music into a centrifuge in order to spit out a life form configured for life in the last city on earth when the next ice age comes. Or something. Any fifteen second stretch of any one of the five tracks can include hip hop, crackle, 1983 videogame noises, industrial grind and dubstep mutations. It evokes the image of mad scientists doing live mixing with DNA. I like it.

I should also remind you that Highpoint Lowlife, being basically fine human beings, offer a lot of free download material of excellent quality. I would recommend anything by Tigrics to you, and would mention that, although I haven’t yet gotten around to listening, The Marcia Blaine School For Girls have been recommended to me by several people. So that’s your listening sorted out for today.

1. Day 213: Lady of Fire, 2. 061108, 3. A writer writing his damn novel, 4. I’ve run out of titles, but Nina Simone just came on, singing “I Put A Spell On You” and so it is., 5. The BallmerBot, 6. Simmer, let’s get a drink

So this came up last night — a sudden request from The Hollywood Reporter’s photo editor for a headshot (god knows if it’ll be used in the print edition or not, all I had to hand was a camphone shot from a couple of years ago) was the first I knew of the story.  Obviously, I was aware we were selling RED to Summit, but things moved very quickly all of a sudden.

First off, I should address the plot synopses in the news story. At this stage, these things are like Chinese whispers, and the versions of the graphic novel and mooted film storylines that hit the newsprint are not necessarily the ones people started off with.

For another, RED is more of a graphic novella, a short and tight book, and a novella doesn’t fill out a film’s running time all on its own. This is an adaptation, not a direct transfer/translation from page to print. What the screenwriters will do is take the core concept of RED — a troubled old man still having nightmares of his role as his government’s monster suffering an attempted murder at the remote hands of a terrified political appointee, and bringing the world of covert assassination back to the agency who wanted to drop him and his body down an Orwellian memory-hole — and expand upon it. The book is, if you like, a folded shape that can unpack into a film.

And I’m fine with that. Summit bought the right to build upon the story. My only niggle, frankly, is that the news story calls it a Wildstorm/DC book first, and not a Warren Ellis/Cully Hamner book, which is what it is. We went with Summit because they make films like INSOMNIA and MEMENTO with people like Christopher Nolan (and they produced FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, too).

So, no, I’m fine with the fact that RED, the potential film, will not be exactly the same as RED the graphic novel. That’s understood and expected going into the process. But don’t put too much stock in the synopsis being circulated. It’s unlikely to represent the screenwriters’ exact approach to the material. Give the Hoebers the space to write their film.

And that’s two of my graphic novels that have attached screenwriters in two weeks.  That’s a weird thing to think about.  Within the same two-week period in which I turned in my final draft of the CASTLEVANIA; DRACULA’S CURSE screenplay myself.  Strange days indeed.

I just woke up, so I’m going to quote from The Hollywood Reporter right now. (Reuters also have the story, as does AICN) Obviously, it’s going to be one of those days:

Summit Entertainment is entering the comic book adaptation business, picking up the movie rights to WildStorm/DC Comics’ "Red."

The project marks the first time that a DC Comics title is leaving parent company Time Warner’s fold.

The book was written by Warren Ellis, whose comic "Ocean" is set up at Warner Bros., and illustrated by Cully Hamner.

’Red’ aims for green light

As ever, I was represented in the deal by Angela Cheng Caplan of the Cheng Caplan Company.

• ‘Electron turbine’ could print designer molecules
  “It’s like a nanoscale inkjet printer,”
  (tags: sci tech)
• True Primes – Brooklyn, New York – Rock / Trance / Rock – www.myspace.com/trueprimes
  Discovered them the other day, listening to album “Enjoy Eternal Bliss” right now — music from the heat death of the universe. Wonderful stuff.
  (tags: music)
• New details on venusian clouds revealed
  new images of the cloud structure of one of the most enigmatic atmospheres of the Solar System reveal brand-new details
  (tags: space)
• Texas Sect Leader: Doomsday Begins Next Thursday, June 12
  Nuclear war will begin next Thursday, June 12, or sooner, according to the latest prediction of self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl “Buffalo Bill” Hawkins, the founder of a religious sect in Abilene, Texas.
  (tags: cult)

LOW SELF-ESTEEM is a book of photography by my longtime friend Katie West, available here via Blurb.

1. resurrection I, 2. New Baby, 3. increase property value, 4. Xbox 360 no RPG de Shu, 5. Nevarmoar!, 6. Untitled

If you’re reading this on a LiveJournal syndicated feed, such as warrenelliscom or warrenelliswire — stop. Unsubscribe from those feeds and add http://warren-ellis.livejournal.com/ , which I am turning into a crossposted LJ later today. The advantages of this include creating a working archive of the site on LJ (syndicated feeds, including all the comments, get wiped after 14 days or so), and my being able to received comments and conversations generated on the LJ.

For the rest of you: LiveJournal is a once-popular social-blogging service that was run into the ground by SixApart, and is now largely a repository for amateur writing about Harry Potter being jerked off by hobbits. In space.

From Wednesday in North America, from Thursday in the UK and elsewhere:

1. Skull & Crossbones Ice Cubes, 2. Shift Freedom, 3. Progress, 4. my lil’ monster, Iggy Pop hugs on to me, 5. MY FIRST FISH!, 6. Mooby picks his nose and prepares to be steak

The devices at Queen’s University Belfast are described as "small hockey-puck-like antennas," but they sound like bugs to me. They channel wireless data signals across human skin using a physical effect called, I swear, The Creeping Wave. The Creeping Wave Effect would allow several electronic implants to communicate with each other across the surface of your skin — essentially, a bluetoothing of the human body. Or, if you like, bugging yourself — monitoring and updating your own devices over the air. I’m not sure if New Scientist’s term "skin-tenna" will stick. Let’s face it: it’s going to be a creeping bug.

At the same time, however, a team at Rutgers has its own creeping bug problem. They thawed out a bunch of soil-based bacterias, the youngest of which went into the deep-freeze in 1974, and tried some antibiotics on them. Antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem in the medical sector, and some elements of that resistance may be found in soil, hence the experiments. No-one was happy to see these vintage soil-bugs fend off a dose of Cipro that would literally have killed a sumo wrestler.

The thing is, Cipro doesn’t occur in nature. And all of the antibiotics used in the test were developed some considerable time after the soil bacteria samples were stuffed in the icebox. Bacteria that have not been exposed to an antibiotic should not have been able to evolve resistance to it, right? I mean, Cipro used to work just fine. And these bugs had never seen Cipro, because it came after they’d been frozen and because it was generated in a lab. Speculative explanations seem to begin with the suggestion that "natural variation or prior exposure to undiscovered Cipro-like molecules could explain the bacteria’s retroactive resistance." But a different idea occurred to me.

What if bacteria update over the air in a creeping wave across the surface of the earth?

Available in better comics stores from this Wednesday:

Neil Clarke, of the excellent web-based sf magazine CLARKESWORLD, threw his hat into the ring in re: the decline in the major print sf short-fiction magazines (a thing that’s been interesting me for years, and an occasional focus of my writing here for a year or so). In making points I never got around to because it was the print magazines’ plight that was interesting me — such as, obviously, that short fiction is making its new home on the web — he generated some interesting graphs.

These are found in the comments section of the post, which you need to pop because there’s some really interesting stuff in there. Anyway. Provided LOCUS’ data are unimpeachable, those lines are really pretty difficult to refute.

A note on ASIMOV’S, which I’ve been reading again for the past several months (after all the shit I talked about the print sf magazines, I bought a bunch of subscriptions in the interests of fair play): I haven’t seen it yet mentioned that they seem to have cornered/re-invented what my friend Rosie Sharp calls the "sigh-fi" market. I’m trying not to sound disparaging, because I think it may be a good thing, but some might term it "Oprah sf." Stories in which the daughter defeats the evil father to save the mother. Stories in which the surrogate mother saves the daughter-figure. Stories in which, yes, the disgraced man complicit in the daughter’s death becomes the faithful family dog to aid the heroic estranged wife. There seems to be a definite skein of Women’s SF forming there. Which, given that women have been believed to be the dominant sector in the reading market for years and years, would appear to be a rich vein indeed. I’m not certain anyone involved has realised it. The packaging is the same dismal regurgitation of "classic" sf themes that all these things wrap themselves in like a homeless person piling cardboard on themselves at night.

I am going to be interested to see how WEIRD TALES fares year-on-year following their dramatic re-invention.

1. IMG_0714.JPG, 2. Absent City, 3. Nationaltheateret Station, 4. Day 210: EXIT, 5. baconnnnn, 6. Untitled

I had a sort of infernokrusher/BRUTE! moment in July of 2005. A searing rupture in the sf paradigm: the certain knowledge that in fact what sf needed was both an upgrade and a retrograde. A science fiction dominated by obsession with penis size, an adolescent terror of sex, sickening violence and massive, random, senseless explosions. Written with the sort of ugly, naive bluntness with which a disturbed teenager might craft the self-produced pornographic material that just barely prevents him from going off the rails and fucking all the neighbourhood pets to death. Imagine, then, a lobotomised fourteen-year-old Stephen Hawking who’d been sexually abused by nuns since the age of three, turning his hand to the great game of science fiction. I felt that, somehow, this would produce the perfect science fiction, the truest response to the early pulp-magazine sf.

Luckily for everyone, I sobered up a day later because my family was coming home. The only products of that 24-hour fugue state were the following two sketches. And thank god there weren’t any more. Even my dear friend, the late Eva Lux, a sometime porn performer, looked askance at terms like “beef missile.”

But, sometimes, deep in the armpit of the night, these sketches call to me. I dream that perhaps I walked away from the purest fiction ever to have touched a screen. And then I dream that I’m being repeatedly punched in the face by everybody.

Planet Earth’s Control Room

Jesus Christ’s liver tasted of gin and semen. I gobbed it out on to the floor and looked around the control room. Somewhere out back, the Pope was still screaming. If I hadn’t punched the teeth out of the pirahna before I poured them up him, he might be dead by now. The only thing muffling his fucking noise was the mouthful of used condoms. The Virgin Mary came out of a side door with a shotgun. I bit off the end and spat it in her eye, laughing. “Virgin Mary my arse,” I said. “Any wife of mine coming home with that story would have been left out for the lepers before midnight. You like the taste of dadpaste and no mistake. I’ve chewed open your son and washed his raw meat down with a bottle of shit wine. What do you think to that?” As the Virgin Mary went down on her booted knees and skilfully guided my purple-headed battering ram past her prehensile tonsils, I looked at the control panel. There was a depression in it with a red button at the bottom with the sign DO NOT PRESS. At the last moment, I ripped my beef missile free of her vocal cords with both hands and shoved it down into the control console.

The world exploded.

And THEN I ejaculated.

The end. Fuck off.

The Insulted Lover

I grabbed a handful of my own semen out of Mother Teresa and flung it at the oncoming cops. They all got instantly pregnant and fell over. Even the men.

“I’ve had better,” said Mother Teresa, sparking a match off her nipple and lighting up a joint.

It was then I knew I had to kill everyone in the city. With my penis.

I flexed my flaming meathammer. The road cracked in half. The cops exploded. So did the buildings. Everybody died.

Except me.

Result.

The end. Fuck off.

1. CIMG4259, 2. evil DJ, 3. 06-08-08_0038.jpg, 4. DIY Wearable Alarm, as housed in The Aphrodite Project: Platforms, 5. Ed’s Playboy security batch, 6. Guess who made the cover?

This just turned up on Whitechapel via one of our Brazilian inmates: I’m going to show you one of the milder images apparently being prepared for all Brazilian cigarette packets, and you can go to the link to see the others (some of which are pretty fucked up).

Andre says they were released into the marketplace this past week.

1. Washington Sq Park: guitar girl, 2. hot nun action, 3. Lover’s Quarrel, 4. Posing sideways for three cameras, 5. i heart you brooklyn bridge, 6. opera4