• Open the Future: A Cold War Over Warming
  "What happens if global efforts to set and abide by strong carbon emissions cuts fail? The standard answer to a question like this is that "we all suffer." While that's probably true, it misses the point — we may all suffer, but we don't all suffer equally."
  (tags:eco )
• BBC News – English whisky bottled for first time in a century
  "The first single malt made in England for about a century has attracted the interest of UK whisky enthusiasts. St George's Distillery, a family-run Norfolk company, is behind the drink."
  (tags:whisky )
• climate defense systems – mammoth // building nothing out of something
  Just the term: CLIMATE DEFENSE SYSTEMS
  (tags:eco )
• The 100 essential websites | Technology | The Guardian

  (tags:web )

Well, probably not that Ministry Of Space. But:

Britain is to get its own space agency more than 40 years after the Apollo project landed the first astronauts on the moon. The agency will come into being next year and replaces the existing British National Space Centre as a single co-ordinating organisation for the nation’s space exploration activities.

The announcement coincides with the publication of a government review of space exploration that warns the nation is "at a critical point" in deciding its future in the space business.

Britain has a long-standing policy of not contributing to human spaceflight programmes and instead supports robotic and satellite-based missions. The review urges ministers to consider backing a space programme that involves both robotic and human explorers…

Issue eight of YETI magazine arrived today. I noticed it because it has a Zola Jesus interview, and I am fond of Nika and her noises. But it’s a monstrous 200-page thing packed with all kinds of interesting stuff. Also, an eighty-minute CD full of rare/unreleased music by shitloads of people. Here’s Yeti’s site, with the information you want. It’s USD $11.95, or USD $19.95 if, like me, you’re ordering from outside the USA. For the amount of content here, that’s really bloody cheap.

Oh, and I got this last week., but I want to mention it: Julianna Barwick’s sublime FLORINE, previously only available as an mp3 EP from eMusic, is now available as a CD. This was one of my very favourite discoveries of 2009, and I’m so glad to now have a physical copy to hand. Julianna’s mailing these out herself, and mine arrived with a nice little note on the back of the envelope.

A book by Katelan Foisy:

Fifteen women.
Three portraits each.

They Be We provides an intimate look at the lives of fifteen different women. From mothers, to Voodoo doctors, to those in the limelight, each woman has a story to tell.

Go to this link here for a set of discount codes to use.

Shots from the photographers who accompanied Scott and Shackleton’s teams:

• World around us: Ukrainian student killed by exploding chewing gum
  ""A loud pop was heard from the student's room," the ukranews.com portal said, citing an aide to the city's police chief. "When his relatives entered the room they saw that the lower part of the young man's face had been blown off.""
  (tags:weird stupid probably+not+delicious )
• Scientists unveil first ‘bionic fingers’
  "Those fitted with the device will be able to bend, touch, pick up and point, simple actions which can be difficult with absent fingers and thumbs."
  (tags:sci tech bodymod )
• Spillway: Bunkerlust

  (tags:architecture history retro )

• polis: a blog about cities: Six Questions for a Paramodernism

  (tags:architecture theory )

• Inkdrops 007 ? The Endless Commission Now Available

  (tags:peopleiknow art )

Oops, bit late with this, so I’m backdating it to before midnight, haha. Fuck the future.

I came across this book a few months back, and was reminded of it yesterday. CYCLONOPEDIA: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, by Reza Negarestani. So I did a little look, and found the website. And, if the author will forgive me, here’s the entire, mental description of the book:

The Middle East is a sentient entity – it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ’lubricant’ of historical and political narratives.

An American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along. Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil …

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, Cyclonopedia is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. Cyclonopedia is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

After reading that, I decided that I needed a copy — I mean, christ, wouldn’t you? — and it arrived today. I intend to get into this over Xmas, with a bottle of wine and Xela playing through noise-cancelling earbuds while my family spend a day trying to kill each other over possession of the tv remote.

–

I’ve had a bunch of questions on the forthcoming movie version of mine and Cully Hamner’s graphic novel RED, which starts shooting next month (I think). Let me try to field a couple of them.

First off: RED, the book, is 66 pages long. If you were to film 66 pages of comics, you might, might just about get 40 minutes of film out of it. If you added a musical number. The comics-page to film-minute ratio is pretty bad. A straight adaptation of a 150-page graphic novel might, if you squint at it, get you a 100-minute film. But it’s unlikely, because comics and films use time so differently. One page with four lines of dialogue on it can be slowed to a crawl to the point where you have to spend several minutes digesting the information on it. In film, however, four lines of dialogue is four lines of dialogue, and you can’t just pronounce it very slowly for the same time consumption. Beyond filmic/dramatic effects like the pause or montage or whatever, film is timelocked.

So, yes, RED the film is very different. Not least because it needed to generate more material than the book itself actually constituted.

It is in fact best to consider RED as a short story being adapted into film.

Next, and related: RED-the-book is also something of a chamber piece. There are essentially only four characters. (And a lot of people who get killed.) Now, while you can perfectly well make a film with only four characters in — or even just one character — those films tend not to be massive commercial propositions. And Summit is in the business of making commercial films. Also, they needed to expand RED from a half-hour to an hour-and-a-half. So, yes, there are a lot of new characters.

The new characters are all in theme, all in the same line of work as (Paul in the book, Frank in the film) Moses. The theme being, in part (and also poked at in my other books GLOBAL FREQUENCY and RELOAD) the unexploded bombs of the 20th Century.

(This actually gave the Hoebers the excuse to have fun with old spy tropes like CIA Nutter Guy — there’s a lovely piece of business with him in the first half-hour that amused me no end.)

I don’t think any of them are bad. Also, did you see the goddamn cast list that’s signed on for those characters? Bruce Willis as Moses, yes. But also: Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, John C Reilly, Helen Mirren, Julian McMahon, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfus. It reminds me a bit of those 70s films like THE TOWERING INFERNO, that had in them everyone you wanted to see in a film, all at once. RED is a bit like that, only with more automatic weapons.

Bruce Willis: when you look back over his filmography, that man’s actually had an incredibly weird career. DIE HARD and all that, sure… but also FIFTH ELEMENT, TWELVE MONKEYS, PULP FICTION, an adaptation of a Harlan Ellison short story for TV and getting a film adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut book made by sheer force of will. Not bad.

The tone: no, the film isn’t as grim as the book. The book is pretty grim. But it’s also pretty small. When I sell the rights to a book, they buy the right to adapt it in whatever way they see fit. I can accept that they wanted a lighter film, and, as I’ve said before, the script is very enjoyable and tight as a drum. They haven’t adapted it badly, by any means. People who’ve enjoyed the graphic novel will have to accept that it’s an adaptation and that by definition means that it’s going to be a different beast from the book. The film has the same DNA. It retains bits that are very clearly from the book, as well as, of course, the overall plotline. But it is, yes, lighter, and funnier. And if anyone has a real problem with that, I say to you once again:

Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.

I mean, if you don’t want to see a film with Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle, I’m not sure I want to know you.

–

• Global Guerrillas: JOURNAL: Fighting an Automated Bureaucracy
  "When the Taliban arrive in a village, I discovered, it takes 96 hours for an Army commander to obtain necessary approvals to act."
  (tags:war )
• California gives green light to space solar power – space – 08 December 2009 – New Scientist
  "On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission gave its blessing to an agreement that would see the Pacific Gas and Electric Company buy 200 megawatts of power beamed down from solar-power satellites beginning in 2016. A start-up company called Solaren is designing the satellites, which it says will use radio waves to beam energy down to a receiving station on Earth."
  (tags:space )
• UK man fears cult leader release
  "Mehdi Zand, leader of the World of Yaad, a cult which claims to hold the secret to everlasting life, was jailed along with members Francesco Zand and Mohammed ?Javad? Kashefi for a total of 11 years, after attacking the restaurant owner and his business partner.[...] ?Mehdi Zand said to me, ?you have betrayed your god of 20 years?, then he ordered the others to kill me.?"
  (tags:cult crime )
• Raelian leader from Iran seeks asylum in Turkey
  "With their libertarian attitude to sex, and their belief that humans were created by extra-terrestrials, Raelians inevitably fall foul of the religious authorities in Iran. The crime of apostasy ? rejecting religious faith ? carries the death penalty there, and supporters of Negar Azizmoradi say that is what will happen to her if the Turkish government sends her back to Iran."
  (tags:cult )
• BBC News – Nasa tests Aberdeenshire find for life on Mars clues
  "Macaulayite is only believed to exist at a quarry at the foot of Bennachie in Aberdeenshire. Researchers think it could be the same mineral which gives the planet its red colour. "
  (tags:space geo )

Emma Vieceli’s been up to something:

I…(was) asked to provide some images that would work in a sketchbook style artbook… The clever bit is that you get to browse the full range of images available and then pick and choose a customised art book!

Some of the images I chose are illustrations you’ll have seen prints of before, some are reproduced with special permission from publishers and would certainly not be available any other way (including in progress shots of Much Ado and my Phonogram back-up story) and some are brand new, never before seen! (if you go for a customisable option, there may also be one of my – erm – naughtier pictures in there, hahaha).

Emma’s Signature page is here.

I love the blog Merlin In Rags, not just for the obscure and ancient music it digs up, but also for the wonderful record covers it finds. Here’s a selection of images posted there over just the last few days:

(more legible larger size)

The editor of FILAMENT magazine thought it’d be funny to have me answer several reader questions on the general subject of Etiquette. Apparently my written responses made her proofreader cry. The issue in question, number three, is out now (preview page) and can be purchased at this link here for a very small number of pennies for such a clever and classy-looking object.

And, before anyone asks: no, my piece isn’t online. FILAMENT are in business to sell copies of magazines. But I will give you a brief preview:

"At what age is it best to crush a child’s dreams so that they have an easier time stepping in to the status quo?"

You fool. You do not do such things to children. A child is like a poison missile you aim at the Future. You encourage, fund and resource their dreams to the fullest extent of your capability, knowing that your reward will be the pain and misery of generations yet unborn.

(Also in issue three: Gala Darling and Zoe Margolis. Not bad company to be keeping.)

Fun little photo essay at English Russia:

Back after a short break:

Alan Moore once told me that, in conversation with Julie Schwartz, it has come up that Schwartz, who started out as a literary agent during the pulp years, had met HP Lovecraft. As Alan retells it, he couldn’t help but ask Schwartz what Lovecraft was like. And Schwartz said, “y’know, when I met him, I said to myself, I gotta remember what this guy’s like because in fifty fuckin’ years Alan Moore’s gonna ask me…”

• Scientists discover tsunami on the Sun
  "In what is a surprising discovery, scientists have found tsunami-style towering waves that race across the face of the Sun."
  (tags:space )
• Ancient Volcano’s Devastating Effects Confirmed | LiveScience

  (tags:history )

• Controversial Signs of Mass Cannibalism | Wired Science | Wired.com
  "At a settlement in what is now southern Germany, the menu turned gruesome 7,000 years ago. Over a period of perhaps a few decades, hundreds of people were butchered and eaten before parts of their bodies were thrown into oval pits, a new study suggests."
  (tags:history )
• Wonderful Wooden Reasons
  #30 (click on "current issue" once you're through the front page) has been released. Excellent review of fringe musics by Ian Holloway.
  (tags:music )

A snapshot of what friends and acquaintances have been doing and looking at, via their Flickr accounts:

1. League of Extraordinary Steampunks, 2. Crane, 3. All Good Mermaids Have Jazz Hands, 4. super suit.jpg, 5. About to fly home., 6. Private pod

On my message board Whitechapel, Kieron Gillen (writer of PHONOGRAM. S.W.O.R.D. and THOR) and R Stevens (creator of DIESEL SWEETIES and the best t-shirts and socks on the internets) are both doing open Q&A/conversation sessions.

The Kieron Gillen Week, and The R Stevens Diesel Sweeties UFO Shack.

Go and say hello to them.

From Brandon’s latest blog entry. I warn you: Brandon’s blog entries are one of the greatest things on the comics internet, but each one is nine feet long and very graphics-intensive.

I am completely failing to keep track of the volume of stuff entering my house lately. I think I’ve even lost the last issue of THE WIRE, still sealed in its plastic bag. So I’m making Received Goods its own category, in an effort to force myself to at least log the physical objects being shoved through the door most days.

I pre-ordered this, and am looking forward to digging into it tonight:

Publisher Creation Books (so glad to see them still around!) have a nice little page on the book:

Starting with the guerrilla media tactics of Industrial music in the late 1970s, the author charts an ongoing trend in electronic music: an increasing amount of sonic quality, recorded output and international contact, accomplished with a decreasing amount of tools, personnel, and capital investment. From the use of laptop computers to create massive avalanches of noise, to the establishment of micro-nations populated largely by sound artists, 21st century sound culture is expanding in its scope and popularity even as it shrinks in other respects. The text of MICRO-BIONIC is built up from exhaustive research into the world of audio extremity, including physical travel to the various ‘hot spots’ where these new sounds are made…

–

The author keeps a blog on the book, MICROBIONIC. He seems to be having a bit of a rough time at the moment, in fact.

I’ve always loved electronic music. I have a theory that anyone who lived in Britain through the same period as me has it kind of embedded in them, as it seemed like all children’s tv was scored by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or their peers.