Christian

On 5/27/2021 at 7:22 AM, JohnMcMahon said:

And so began the Independent Nation Of STH.

A land where knowledge of Hellblazer is currency and the anthem is a song by the Clash.

Isn’t Si Spurrier under contract with Marvel right now?

He’s writing Way of X and Black Knight (wasn’t really aware of that second one).

Bill Mantlo, 1980-

Just noticed that Fantastic Four: Life Story will be written by Mark Russell. So, it looks like Marvel did decide to give Russell more work. This should be interesting.

The comic is a celebration of the FF’s 60th anniversary.

Life Story will feature a retelling of the FF’s history, with each issue detailing a different decade. The focus will be more on how the characters deal with the real-life events of each decade, rather than simply looking at their superhero adventures again.

The first issue, obviously taking place during the 1960s will look at the Cold War. The second (1970s) will feature Sue Storm getting involved in the feminist movement.

This series looks to be different for Russell, whose work has tended to be satirical. 
Although I could see Russell’s down-on-his-luck, kind of disaffected Fred Flintstone translate well to Ben Grimm.

The first issue is scheduled to ship next week.

I’ve gotten a copy of Nick Harkaway’s new book, Gnomon. The hardcover was discounted for only $8.

It seems that Harkaway might have been reading Jonathan Hickman, Grant Morrison, and Neal Stephenson when he decided to write this novel.

It takes place in a dystopian near-future Britain, run by a computer AI. It’s a total surveillance society, but it’s not just another 1984. There is actually no outright government and there is complete direct democracy, run through the internet. Every decision, outside of the maintaining of the surveillance system (which is sacrosanct), is voted on by citizens using social media. So, imagine if Twitter were used to decide elections. Everyone spends all their time debating every decision with other citizens, and then a vote is held on that issue. 
The AI then fulfills the policy.

The surveillance system is basically the replacement for the police. Every citizen spies on every other citizen, and if someone sees something suspicious, they report it on the proper web-sites. There is then a chance given for the incriminated party to explain their actions on the internet. If the action is properly explained, then they are left alone. 
It’s basically a commentary on the current FaceBook/Twitter/whatever mentality, that there’s no reason for privacy anymore. It’s just expected that everyone is going to share all of their thoughts on everything.

The start of the novel involves a woman who writes fiction. This is considered highly eccentric, as everything is done electronically now, and physical books are an anachronism.

She is also highly distrustful of the system, and refuses to be involved with the online surveillance system. The AI is suspicious of her, and puts out an alert for her arrest. 
While the government, as such, no longer exists, the computer system still relies on a force of detectives to enforce its decisions.

The woman is arrested and taken in for interrogation. Interrogation is performed by the AI reading the mind of anyone convicted of a crime. If their memories show any knowledge of a crime or they have any thoughts which show they might commit a crime, they are convicted. Otherwise, they are allowed to go free. 
For some reason, the woman dies under interrogation. The first time this has ever happened. 
The main character is a detective. She trusts in the system and wants to find out how a citizen was killed during interrogation.

She agrees to undergo a procedure where the memories of that dead woman will be downloaded in to her brain, so that hopefully, she can figure out what went wrong.

The problem is that this woman’s memories don’t seem to be her own. Instead, there are the memories of four other individuals. 
One of them is a Greek banker prior to the economic collapse of 2008. He seems to have been infected with a shark meme which allows him to be able to correctly predict the stock market. Eventually, he becomes the richest man in the world.
The next is apparently the mistress of Saint Augustine. 
Another is an Ethiopian immigrant to England, who fled Ethiopia when the fascists invaded. 
Finally, one seems to take place in the far future and involves a being known as Gnomon.

So far, I can’t tell how the St. Augustine sub-plot applies to the wider story; but the other three side-stories make sense as part of the wider plot.

If this description seems long and detailed, don’t worry. I haven’t given anything away, as the novel is seven-hundred pages.

Yes, he was the artist on Earth X also.

Very young.

He was a very good comic artist. I first saw his artwork on the Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, written by Peter Milligan. I always liked that mini-series. Milligan’s writing was complimented well by his art.

12 hours ago, JasonT said:

Hello Kitty is defunct?

1 hour ago, JohnMcMahon said:

I'm so glad that we humans live forever and so I certainly haven't wasted my life.

I spent the past eight years of my life on an internet forum dedicated to a defunct comic book property!

This forum was old when the very Earth was yet young.

Don’t forget. This is the second version of the Straight to Hell forums.

I’m pretty sure I first joined sometime in 2003, and I didn’t quite make the cut for an original member.

Hopefully there will be an increase in quality of the stories.

The important aspect of the Apex Book of World SF was the sheer literary value of a good majority of the stories published in the editions.

The story I just finished, “Snapshots” by Jose Maria Latorre from Spain, used the plot to a Goosebumps novel. That’s never a good sign.

Maybe I have chosen some of the poorer fiction choices to start though. I am skipping around through the contents.

EDIT:Yes, there are better selections in the book. Some are quite good, doing what I would hope, which is to present different types of stories than what you’d come across in the average horror collection.  
Recently read a story from Senegal and the Filipino one, both of which I would recommend.

The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories vol. 1-This is a collection of new horror short stories published outside of the English-language sphere.

None of the stories included had been translated in to English yet.

Most of the stories are still from western Europe though.

Otherwise, there are three stories from Africa, two from South America, one from Mexico, and one from the Philippines.  
There are also two stories from eastern Europe.

The publisher lists this volumn (from 2020) as the first, so hopefully Valancourt will continue this tradition and create an annual anthology.

Especially if there will be a wider range, to include more horror fiction outside of Europe.

It could serve as a needed replacement for the excellent (and sorely missed) Apex Book of World SF series. There were a few horror-centric stories published in those books, although the majority of the fiction was science fiction or fantasy.

Been a long time since we have seen you also, Electricinca.

Yeah, time does move quickly as you get older.

The Hellblazer reference could also simply be referring to the continuing release of collected editions and the still upcoming Young John Constantine graphic novel.

I was thinking it might just be for licensed books, as the only title announced is based on a horror movie.

The article says that the new imprint is “in collaboration with Warner Brothers Consumer Products”, not just this title. So, it seems that is the purpose.

The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud- This is a sequel to Albert Camus’ The Stranger.  
The brother of the murder victim tells the story of the dead man (now given a name as Musa), how he ended up on the beach that day.

The point isn’t to paint Camus or his novel as racist though. The author makes sure to point out that he does not consider Camus to be racist, and that he is a great admirer of Camus.

The novel does serves as a critique of Algerian society since independence. It points to the religious intolerance and censorship, the treatment of women, and the continuing disparity between rich and poor since independence.

The brother killed by Meursault was an atheist and is shown to have been just as much of an “outsider” within his own society.

Diggle didn’t script the film. Peter Berg wrote the movie script.

Perhaps he invested all of the money he made in BitCoin.

According to Wikipedia, the film barely grossed more than the cost of its budget.

Budget:$25 million
Box Office:$29.9 million

Plus, while it is based on Diggle’s Vertigo series, DC owns the rights to the Losers, since they own a World War II comic with that name. Diggle doesn’t own the concept.

I’ve always found it strange how writers who were considered popular at one point can just disappear over the years.

“Using Ether, an opensea user purchased a NFT.”

It’s like this is written in some sort of strange newspeak code.

Imagine one day, let’s say in the middle of some sort of global pandemic that has nearly shut down the entire world for a year, you wake up and find that this is how people have suddenly begun to talk.

The Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar- 
It reminds me of a Barry Malzberg story.

The novel is about the first Czech astronaut. He volunteers for the project in order to escape the past: running away from a failing marriage, the discovery that his father was a secret informant for the Communists.

During his mission in space, he meets an alien who looks like a giant, talking spider; which may or may not be a hallucination in order to deal with his loneliness.

Quite good. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

The wikipedia list for “cannibalism in fiction” includes 119 entries, and that novel is not one of them.

If you were going to write fiction about a post-apocalyptic society following a nuclear war, I doubt you’d make sure that you were familiar with every example of that sub-genre. It’s fiction writing, not for a dissertation.

It’s not that well known of a novel is my point. I’m sure she came across some things like Swift or the movie Soylent Green. I doubt she would feel the need to deep research every story written on the subject.

Her frame of mind was most likely, “I have something to say about the way we treat immigrants, similar to what Swift had to say about Ireland.” Not, “I want to add to the canon of cannibal horror novels”.

Swamp Thing is the only book on that list that I’d have any interest in seeing published.

Then, I’d only buy it if it was an impressive writer. With the writers currently at DC, that would be Tom King or Mark Russell (if he still wants to work for DC).

Although, DC just needs a book called Justice League Queer. That is a thing that should always exist going forward.

Right, but how many of these books from small publishers would be published in South America?

D’Lacey won a BFA for “novel by a new writer”, not for “best novel”.

Also, it’s the British Fantasy Award, which is a bigger deal in Britain than it is to publishers outside of Britain.  
You see “Stoker Award Winner” on the cover of horror fiction over here. The American publishers don’t bother to mention “BFA Winner” on covers.

Campbell was published by TOR in the States until recently (mid-2000s, I think). TOR is the biggest genre fiction specialty publisher in America. I think TOR dropped all horror books and now only publishes sci-fi and fantasy. TOR is owned by Macmillan.

He is now published by PS Publishing, which is nowhere near the size of TOR, but certain books from that publisher still can show up in chain bookstores.

Kim Newman is being published by Titan Books here now. He used to be published by Carroll & Graff.  
Titan is a fairly large publisher when it comes to genre fiction, as they’re one of the genre publishers that are carried by chain bookstores. Titan has a distribution deal with Penguin.

Tender is the Flesh is published by Scribner’s.

Those publishers are all quite different than some some small indy specialty publisher that I’ve never heard the name of before I looked the novel up on ISFDB.

Yeah, but D’Lacey’s book didn’t win any  major awards for “best novel”.  
I’m not sure about the publisher in Britain, but it was published by an indy publisher I’ve never heard about before in America; it’s not as if it were published by a TOR or Simon & Schuster (Stephen King’s publisher).

Barry Norman has never won any genre awards, and based on the ISFDB web-site, his novel was only published in Britain.

I’m saying these books might be a bigger deal to a horror fiction fan living in Britain, rather than something that a reader in another country might come across who reads horror fiction. We’re not talking about Ramsey Campbell or Robert Aickman.

Unlike Jonathan Swift, whose work has been translated and can be easily found in most countries.

If a novel won the Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, IHG Award, or something there would be a much better chance that it would be better known in a South American country.

I hadn’t heard of either novel, and I’m a well-read genre fiction reader, while I’m not sure if Bazterrica is anything of the such.

The chances she read those novels is pretty slim though. I doubt they were considered popular enough to be translated to Spanish and published in South America.