May 26th, 2011 | music
It’s a slate-dark late afternoon shot through with icechip rain. On a day like today, what I really want to listen to is some overcast, disorienting space drone coming from the inside of a broken DEFENDER arcade machine.
And l found it, too. Lovely.
May 26th, 2011 | researchmaterial
During the early days of space flight it wasn’t just the Soviet Union and the USA breaking new ground.
The Welsh Space programme scored some remarkable firsts including the first monkey in space – a Mwncinaut called Major Tom…
Somewhere, Matt Jones of BERG is smiling. Welshly.
May 26th, 2011 | brainjuice
May 26th, 2011 | people I know
Available today for USD 4.99 at Thwipster.
Molly’s work reminds us of the dream we had after drinking large amounts of mushroom-infused tea, falling down some steep European stairs and winding up in an Amsterdam hospital. Anthropomorphized pigs in bowler hats, Dorian Gray, half-naked women, Victorian carnival performers, suave Octopi…
May 25th, 2011 | comics talk
Artist Rick Buckler, writer Doug Moench, “Deathlok The Demolisher,” ASTONISHING TALES #25, Marvel Comics, 1974.
May 25th, 2011 | researchmaterial
I’ve written several times about Norman Spinrad’s seminal 1960s sf novel BUG JACK BARRON before, and how it was one of the formative influences behind my TRANSMETROPOLITAN. It’s now been republished as an ebook by an outfit called Reanimus. Here’s the Amazon.com link. Here’s the Reanimus link. I haven’t downloaded it myself, so I can’t speak to the quality of the transfer. The ebook “cover” is, yes, appalling. If you’re coming to BUG JACK BARRON for the first time, you will find it didn’t date so well in certain areas, including language and sexual politics (during its serialisation in NEW WORLDS, a fact which led to the magazine being denounced by the goverment, it’s reported that the magazine’s own feminist typesetters wouldn’t go near the thing. And that was then). It was written in 1967 by an angry sf author, and it’s raw and ugly. It was also a horribly prescient book in many ways. An angry American sf author, who was really writing about the media and political landscapes of his time, ramped up to eye-burning glare by the amplifying power of speculative extrapolation.
And the fact that it was banged out in ‘67 means that, in Norman’s own words:
BUG JACK BARRON–denounced on the floor of the British Parliament, the basis of a famous unmade movie in Hollywood held captive by Universal, more or less in continuous print for four decades in France, nominated for various awards, published in more languages than I can remember, reprinted in more editions in the US than I can remember, generally considered one of my magnum opuses and certainly the most famous–could not have an ebook edition because it was written on a typewriter.
Here’s an introduction to BUG JACK BARRON by Mike Moorcock.
May 25th, 2011 | comics talk
whom I will not be seeing at London MCM Expo, which is saddening
there’s a print of this, you know
May 25th, 2011 | events
I’m signing stuff in the Comics Village area of MCM Expo this coming Saturday from 2pm to 3pm.
That’s it.
I’m literally just getting on a train, getting a cab from the train station to the hotel, dumping my bag at the hotel, going to the con site to sign stuff for an hour, then going to the pub. Expo, for me, is really just an excuse to see a few old friends like Kieron Gillen and Emma Vieceli.
Check out the guest list. I literally do not know who ninety percent of these people are, but you might.
Please don’t bring great big boxes of stuff, and please be conscious of the people waiting behind you to have their own books defaced by a very tired old man with a Sharpie.
Hope to see some of you there.
May 25th, 2011 | station ident
Back from a beer and brainpunching session with BERG in London. My head hurts. For many reasons. Organic ale is not my friend. And probably neither are you. I want to be in bed. And probably not with you. BUT:
There is no crying in warren ellis dot com. Or pain. There is only work. And brain.
May 24th, 2011 | photography
sent from [device: spacephone]
May 24th, 2011 | photography
sent from [device: spacephone]
May 23rd, 2011 | brainjuice
May 23rd, 2011 | researchmaterial
If you like design, you will like Film On Paper.
After two years of preparation, I am very proud and excited (and a bit nervous) to finally reveal this personal project to the world. Film on Paper was created because I decided I wanted to photograph my collection of original film posters and share them with a wider audience. The site represents 17 years worth of collecting and features posters from all genres as well as several countries, multiple sizes and various formats.
At launch there are 1494 posters represented with their own individual pages and a total of 12,080 images attached to them…
Scratches the same itch for me as the archives of Polish film posters of years gone by. Guaranteed to surprise you within minutes. This was my first discovery:
May 23rd, 2011 | researchmaterial
Here’s a sideways take on James Bridle’s New Aesthetic: |
sponsored by BMW Exterior Design Munich
Lovos (Lifestyle of Voluntary Simplicity) is based on a philosophical idea, which asks critical questions about the design, construction and use of road vehicles, as we know them today.
How many parts do we use to build the exterior of vehicle? How would a car look like, if it was build by just one (recurring) piece? The result of an experimental research is a vehicle that is made by 260 identical, exchangeable pieces which are fixed with a hinge on a substructure.
The individual pieces are movable, which allows the surface of the vehicle to be closed – like the scales of a fish – or opened to the environment. These pieces work like airbrakes and are also photovoltaic, following the movement of the sun when the vehicle is stationary.
May 23rd, 2011 | photography
Gunnar Valþórsson emails to say:
Noticed you posted a picture of our latest eruption here in Iceland. Here are some pictures of the people in the nearest town suffering the consequences. This is taken in broad daylight by the way.
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