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alexsarllFireworks and Remembrance both seem to have been a little overshadowed for me this year by the election - like we have something even better to celebrate than the takedown of a theocratic terrorist, like we might finally be getting around to making the better world so many sacrificed themselves for. On the Fifth of November itself, I was just sat outside the Noble as per, though London being London still obliged us with a fox, a unicyclist and a flaming balloon.
A biomechanical race devoted to the destruction of all life, whose adversaries supposed weaknesses often turn out to be their salvation (but then, the stories are being written by humans, so they would say that, wouldn't they?). First appeared in a 1963 story. The Daleks, right? But this could all equally be applied to Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers. For all that I'm usually ready to diss Terry Nation at the first opportunity, I'm not accusing him of ripping off Saberhagen - just observing that as with the two Dennis the Menaces, or Swamp Thing and Man Thing, it was clearly biomechanical exterminator time.
(This correspondence perhaps struck me so forcefully just because it was while watching the current Sarah Jane Adventures, Mark of the Berserker (otherwise completely unrelated), that it suddenly occurred to me to pause iPlayer and check out Saberhagen's stories, of which I knew only blurbs in the back of other SF books of that era. Within moments I had a free, legitimate online text of one of the novels. Which begins with a prequel short story, if you want to try, and see how like a Dalek story it feels. I love modern technology, at least up until the point where it decides to eliminate the puny fleshy ones)
My favourite bit of the Quietus interview with John Foxx is his thoughts on our city:
"London is the centre of The Quiet Man's universe. Also of mine. It has a new emergent form of nature - Grey Nature - this is Nature unconfined by the world outside cities. We will begin to see the emergence of startling and subtle forms of highly specialised life forms from now on. Alligators in the sewers are just a daft beginning. The next generation are swift and subtle and almost undetectable. They live on momentary intersections and coincidence, and have learnt to take sufficient advantage of these to predicate entire new ecologies. The tabloids will have a field day. So will any agile biologists. Just watch. The next generation of Attenboroughs will investigate The Cities - The Grey Planet Series."
Reminds me somewhat of those fantasy Above Ground graphics on the Piccadilly Line. The problem is, if John Foxx were involved in urban planning at all, even in such a fantastic capacity, then everyone would start asking leading questions about how to get across certain features, because a bridge would ruin the aesthetic, so maybe we'd need to get under it via some kind of...[pregnant pause]. And he'd finally give in and say 'Underpass?' and then everyone would shout 'UNDERPANTS!' and then he'd be obliged to press the red button on his synth and cause the sonic destruction of the Earth.
A biomechanical race devoted to the destruction of all life, whose adversaries supposed weaknesses often turn out to be their salvation (but then, the stories are being written by humans, so they would say that, wouldn't they?). First appeared in a 1963 story. The Daleks, right? But this could all equally be applied to Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers. For all that I'm usually ready to diss Terry Nation at the first opportunity, I'm not accusing him of ripping off Saberhagen - just observing that as with the two Dennis the Menaces, or Swamp Thing and Man Thing, it was clearly biomechanical exterminator time.
(This correspondence perhaps struck me so forcefully just because it was while watching the current Sarah Jane Adventures, Mark of the Berserker (otherwise completely unrelated), that it suddenly occurred to me to pause iPlayer and check out Saberhagen's stories, of which I knew only blurbs in the back of other SF books of that era. Within moments I had a free, legitimate online text of one of the novels. Which begins with a prequel short story, if you want to try, and see how like a Dalek story it feels. I love modern technology, at least up until the point where it decides to eliminate the puny fleshy ones)
My favourite bit of the Quietus interview with John Foxx is his thoughts on our city:
"London is the centre of The Quiet Man's universe. Also of mine. It has a new emergent form of nature - Grey Nature - this is Nature unconfined by the world outside cities. We will begin to see the emergence of startling and subtle forms of highly specialised life forms from now on. Alligators in the sewers are just a daft beginning. The next generation are swift and subtle and almost undetectable. They live on momentary intersections and coincidence, and have learnt to take sufficient advantage of these to predicate entire new ecologies. The tabloids will have a field day. So will any agile biologists. Just watch. The next generation of Attenboroughs will investigate The Cities - The Grey Planet Series."
Reminds me somewhat of those fantasy Above Ground graphics on the Piccadilly Line. The problem is, if John Foxx were involved in urban planning at all, even in such a fantastic capacity, then everyone would start asking leading questions about how to get across certain features, because a bridge would ruin the aesthetic, so maybe we'd need to get under it via some kind of...[pregnant pause]. And he'd finally give in and say 'Underpass?' and then everyone would shout 'UNDERPANTS!' and then he'd be obliged to press the red button on his synth and cause the sonic destruction of the Earth.
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Date: 2008-11-09 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-09 12:37 pm (UTC)I thought we'd acquired 'sark' meaning garment from Scottish and before that Norse, and Wikipedia doesn't say exactly that but still goes with me in outline:
"The earliest surviving reference to the term berserker is in Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem composed by Thórbiörn Hornklofi in the late ninth century in honor of King Harald Fairhair, a famous ruler of Norway. The poem was preserved by Snorri Sturluson. In this poem, Harald's army includes a warrior gang of berserkers fighting under the name of the Norse god of war, Tyr, in the battle of Hafrsfjord. In it, they are described as Ulfheðnar ("men clad in wolf skins"). This grounds a connection between bears and wolves in Norse warrior culture and the common assumption that the word "berserker" itself originates from men wearing the skin of the bear. An alternative etymology is from "bare", meaning unencumbered by a mail shirt.[1]"
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