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Another bad start to the weekend
Apr. 5th, 2008 12:41 pmThe last Torchwood: well, I suppose it had its moments. ( Spoilers ) And then after, the trailer for today's new Who. Speeches about what the Doctor is get me every time. Or at least, they used to, but while at least Tate wasn't screeching these lines, nor could she make me believe them. I'm still going to watch it, obviously. But without any hope of enjoying the experience.
I'm currently halfway through two novels which have a brilliant handle on the quiet desperation of life in the first decade of the 21st century. One of them, Friction, is by Joe Stretch, the young frontman of the quite good band (we are) Performance; it came out last month. The other is 40 years old - John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar.
Friction is Michel Houllebecq if he were twice as good, and minus the po-faced self-importance of the Gallic intellectual cliche. The anomie, the corrosive effect of glossy magazines, the deadening social assumptions are all laid bare with a merciless scalpel. And nimble phrasing, too - in discussion of the modern fondness for comedy, he describes the era as 'pissless'. Which took me a moment, but...wow. Or consider: "Nowadays, opting out of social occasions is a form of self-mutilation." Best summation I've yet seen of the tension felt when one opts for a QNI. Or consider: "We have arrived at some poorly signposted junction in Earth's existence, when people can do little bar pay their rent and sit at tables, order drinks and chew Italian bread to mush. Who is remembering all this?"
Brunner, on the other hand, predicted the barely-suppressed hysteria of the big picture. Like anyone who gazes into the future, he's a little off in places; he's managed to get RSS aggregation and fake interactivity down, for instance, without realising the computer and the TV would merge. But if you had shown him the modern world, he'd have taken maybe a day to grasp it, and there's few enough people who live here of whom that can be said. In places, the problem is simply that his dystopia is too optimistic - he assumed that somewhere past the six billionth Earth human, even the core of the Catholic church would accept the need for birth control, nevermind the US government - but the overall tone, the resource shortage, the slow collapse; he saw it all coming. The gang problem causing so much woe in London? He foresees and explains it almost in passing, showing how it's the natural consequence of putting territorial mammals in an overcrowded environment. A prophet who should have been heeded sooner.
I would not yet make any claims for Marvel Comics' Secret Invasion event as Art, but as a big superhero comic about stuff blowing up, it got off to a very good start. ( Moderate spoilers )
Another good Clockwork Comedy on Tuesday; Carey Marx and Parsnip the teddy have such a wonderful way with the Wrong. I also liked the drunk Jewish girl* and the low-key storytelling guy (though I felt so sorry for him when he thought that so many people were laughing that it must all be a dream), but the video shop chap - not so much. You can't do geek humour and get the details wrong. If you were that into 300, you wouldn't keep calling it The 300. If you want to be Batman, you'll know that (regrettably) he doesn't kill. And above all, if you read Doctor Who Magazine you'll know it's not been Weekly in years.
Besides, what kind of film buff prefers video to DVD? DVD is the ultimate geek medium.
Today's random historical peculiarity: Strasbourg's 1518 'Dancing Plague': "Hundreds of men and women danced wildly, day after day, in the punishing summer heat. They did not want to dance, but could not stop". Many died. Puts the panic about Killer Rave Drug Ecstasy into perspective, doesn't it?
*Yes, I know, quelle surprise.
I'm currently halfway through two novels which have a brilliant handle on the quiet desperation of life in the first decade of the 21st century. One of them, Friction, is by Joe Stretch, the young frontman of the quite good band (we are) Performance; it came out last month. The other is 40 years old - John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar.
Friction is Michel Houllebecq if he were twice as good, and minus the po-faced self-importance of the Gallic intellectual cliche. The anomie, the corrosive effect of glossy magazines, the deadening social assumptions are all laid bare with a merciless scalpel. And nimble phrasing, too - in discussion of the modern fondness for comedy, he describes the era as 'pissless'. Which took me a moment, but...wow. Or consider: "Nowadays, opting out of social occasions is a form of self-mutilation." Best summation I've yet seen of the tension felt when one opts for a QNI. Or consider: "We have arrived at some poorly signposted junction in Earth's existence, when people can do little bar pay their rent and sit at tables, order drinks and chew Italian bread to mush. Who is remembering all this?"
Brunner, on the other hand, predicted the barely-suppressed hysteria of the big picture. Like anyone who gazes into the future, he's a little off in places; he's managed to get RSS aggregation and fake interactivity down, for instance, without realising the computer and the TV would merge. But if you had shown him the modern world, he'd have taken maybe a day to grasp it, and there's few enough people who live here of whom that can be said. In places, the problem is simply that his dystopia is too optimistic - he assumed that somewhere past the six billionth Earth human, even the core of the Catholic church would accept the need for birth control, nevermind the US government - but the overall tone, the resource shortage, the slow collapse; he saw it all coming. The gang problem causing so much woe in London? He foresees and explains it almost in passing, showing how it's the natural consequence of putting territorial mammals in an overcrowded environment. A prophet who should have been heeded sooner.
I would not yet make any claims for Marvel Comics' Secret Invasion event as Art, but as a big superhero comic about stuff blowing up, it got off to a very good start. ( Moderate spoilers )
Another good Clockwork Comedy on Tuesday; Carey Marx and Parsnip the teddy have such a wonderful way with the Wrong. I also liked the drunk Jewish girl* and the low-key storytelling guy (though I felt so sorry for him when he thought that so many people were laughing that it must all be a dream), but the video shop chap - not so much. You can't do geek humour and get the details wrong. If you were that into 300, you wouldn't keep calling it The 300. If you want to be Batman, you'll know that (regrettably) he doesn't kill. And above all, if you read Doctor Who Magazine you'll know it's not been Weekly in years.
Besides, what kind of film buff prefers video to DVD? DVD is the ultimate geek medium.
Today's random historical peculiarity: Strasbourg's 1518 'Dancing Plague': "Hundreds of men and women danced wildly, day after day, in the punishing summer heat. They did not want to dance, but could not stop". Many died. Puts the panic about Killer Rave Drug Ecstasy into perspective, doesn't it?
*Yes, I know, quelle surprise.
