Christian

I am now reading The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz.

She has been called the “Egyptian version of Orwell”, but this novel has far more in common with Kafka.

She was less than optimistic about the so-called “Arab Spring”.

This novel was her satirical response to the current dictatorship in Egypt.

Oh god, I read this title as “Si Spurrier”. I was shocked and thought this was a joke in very bad taste.

I also remember Si Spencer from Vertigo with Vinyl Underground. It had quite a few faults (mostly wearing his influences far too prominently on its sleeve), but it also has its moments, and I’d say I overall enjoyed it.
Bodies (also from Vertigo) was quite a quality series. If someone wanted to read a comic by him, I would unequivocally recommend Bodies.

I know “City of Demons” started out very good, but I seem to remember the plot growing fuzzy as it continued.

I, Vampire was written by Joshua Hale Fialkov, not Jeff Lemire.

The series did need more Nick Necro and less John Constantine, but that’s always going to be true.

Milligan’s writing on Elektra didn’t make up for the artwork, like Messner Loebs did on WW. One of Milligan’s much more phoned-in series.

I’m trying to remember if Deodata drew all female characters the same. I know I liked Deodata’s art when he started on Peter David’s Hulk. I thought he fit well with Ellis on Thunderbolts too.

Wasn’t J.M. DeMatteis doing the scripting for the first Jimenez Wonder Woman story-arc?

Too bad DeMatteis didn’t stick around writing the book. It wasn’t exactly DeMatteis’ best work, but it was a decent story-arc.

I only read those initial four issues and didn’t continue after DeMatteis left the book.

I’d also recommend the George Perez post-Crisis relaunch of WW as a nice starting point for the character, followed by the William Messner Loebs run which follows the Perez issues.

The Perez run drew a lot of inspiration from mythology, and being a relaunch, isn’t dependent on continuity (similar to Azzarello).

The eventual drawback for the Messner Loebs run as it progresses is incredibly 1990s-vintage art. Just...really objectifying, which draws away from Messner Loebs’ feminist-influenced writing. Jarring might be the proper word.

Messner Loebs run also goes downhill towards the end, when it moves completely in to early-‘90s territory with a brand-new Wonder Woman in an even more sex-object approved costume.

Brian Bolland was drawing covers for the Messner Loebs issues, so that’s another draw.

Continuing my above review...

”Weird Tale” by Fred Chappell-Very disappointing. Something interesting could have been done with this story, but instead, it ended up as a typical (although highly tongue-in-cheek) pastiche of the Lovecraft mythos.

Outside of his novel Dagon, Chappell’s Lovecraftian fiction has been really subpar. Probably because Dagon dealt with poor desperate people living in southern small towns, which is Chappell’s main interest as a writer.

This story started out interesting detailing the real-life friendship between Lovecraft and modernist poet Hart Crane. Crane was a gay man; and once again, there’s the coincidence of so many of Lovecraft’s friends being gay, while he had such an issue when it came to relations with women. Anyway, that ship has sailed now, as other writers have touched on that area of Lovecraft’s life. Besides which, I don’t think Chappell was the correct writer for that plot.

There’s a line towards the beginning about Lovecraft and Crane sharing a conception, although based around wholly differing contexts, that contemporary civilization is an “inhumane shambles”. The following line reads, “This sort of notion may have been an index to acute loneliness”.

It seems like a perfect set-up for a story about the two alienated figures.

Once again, maybe Chappell was uncomfortable dealing with Crane’s sexuality. If so, this was a greatly missed opportunity.  
There is dialogue from Lovecraft pertaining to Crane being a “degenerate”. Only for the man (Samuel Loveman, also widely hinted to have been gay) Lovecraft is speaking to correct him with the reply, “Maybe we all are. Maybe that’s why no one takes us seriously”.

Instead, Chappell backs down and even remarks on Crane’s suicide as the result of “discovering cosmic secrets too vast to know”. Yawn.
Crane’s actual suicide revolved around issues relating to his homosexuality, and most explicitly the fact that he was assaulted by people on a steamship after he made a sexual comment to a male crewman shortly before he made his decision.

It even briefly returns to that theme near the end, when the story quotes a letter Lovecraft wrote about the negative toll alcohol was taking on Crane, shortly before his death. Again, it leaves the most interesting direction on the table.

So, the first disappointing story in the anthology.

A 20-year old university student got involved with all that hullabaloo involving things like Reddit and the stock market.

He thought he was going to be able to pay his university tuition with the huge gains he had heard about with stuff like the GameStop stock.

He ended up killing himself after he lost a ton of money.

Gee, you mean you can lose at gambling?! Who’d ever think that??? Is that why Las Vegas has so many casinos....to make money...?! You mean it’s not to help everyone get rich without working?! Shocking.

If it was really that easy to get rich using the stock market, you’d think almost everyone would quit their jobs and spend all day investing in stocks.

Ah, Xena vs. Heracles: one of the great rivalries of Ancient Greece.
Obviously edited from popular history by liberals, or something...

Don’t really want to get involved with issues involving celebrities, especially with TV shows I don’t even watch, but just came across this blurb, and geez is Mandalorian actress Gina Carano ignorant. She must be a hard person to work with, as apparently Trump-supporter Dana White referred to her as a “bitch” in the past.

I just want to point out that before anyone decides to make a statement as to “history being edited” and call others ignorant, maybe it is best to make sure you have some understanding of history. Otherwise, that just makes you out to be stupid!
The Nazis didn’t make “neighbours hate Jews”, the Nazis appealed to bigotry and prejudices that were already present in a lot of nice respectable bourgeois hearts. It’s one reason why the Nazis were able to maintain a level of popularity.

Perhaps reading a book written by a German writer who actually lived through the time-period leading up to the Nazis taking power might be helpful. I realize that reading a book, especially one from the 1920s, is a herculean task beyond the pale of most mere mortals in the year 2021. History doesn’t need to be “edited” anymore. Why bother, when most people are just going to look on Google for the first FOX News or Democrat approved snippet online to post as a meme in their Twitter feed?

Plus, bringing this up while watching recent situations in the United States where first Muslims and then Mexican immigrants have faced this same type of hatred by “neighbours”, with immigrant populations being rounded up by the government to be placed in camps, is just so impossibly self-involved as to be almost purely laughable.

Secondly, trying to equate being a “conservative” in today’s political climate with being a Jewish person in Nazi Germany is most likely not going to carry any weight after Right-Wing thugs were planning to round up Liberal politicians and shoot them just a few weeks ago.

If she wanted to make a comparison to fascist and Communist Party paramilitary groups fighting in the streets prior to the rise of the Nazis, that might make historical events look more relevant.

I was looking for a horror anthology I haven’t read yet, and saw that Nick Mamatas edited a Lovecraftian fiction anthology called Wonder & Glory Forever (2020). That sounded like something that would appeal.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see that Mamatas decided to use up pages by reprinting “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, because that story is just so rare (sarcasm), and “City of the Singing Flame” by Clark Ashton Smith (which I’ve also read). Those two stories take up a good chunk of the only 261 page book.

It’s a shame because Mamatas made some nice selections for the contemporary authors.

Nick Mamatas included his own story “Farewell Performance”, and it is amazing. “I’d like to say that the human race had a good run, but that would be a lie.” 
He dedicated the story to the memory of Theodore Gottlieb. It’s such a perfect little story about the “end times”. It could as easily be about the Second Coming as anything related to Lovecraft, which is a definite positive. The story includes the quote from Gottlieb, “As long as there is death, there is hope”.

If you come across a copy of this Mamatas story, I definitely recommend it.

I also greatly enjoyed “Seven Minutes in Heaven” by Nadia Bulkin. I remember the first time I read her, I wasn’t impressed. I’ve read some more of her short fiction and she’s really grown on me. Once again, this is definitely the type of fiction that should be published in Lovecraftian-inspired collections for the 21st century.

Bulkin wrote the story with Robert Aickman in mind instead of ol’ H.P., and that could partially explain it. It’s the story of a small town in the Appalachians. Everyone in the small town across the mountain was killed in an industrial accident about a decade before. The main character is a teenage girl from the town which survived. It asks the question about why did their town survive when everyone in the other town was killed, and wonders if they even deserved to survive. The backdrop of an economically failing small town in Appalachia also helps set the depressing mood. It works well with themes found in Lovecraft, about meaninglessness and despair.

There are also stories by Victor LaValle, Michael Cisco, and Masahiko Inoue I am looking forward to reading. This is the first English translation of the Inoue story.

What are they going to do when the dates pass and this doesn’t occur? 
Is this like those cults who predict an exact date for the end of the world? Like that sociology book When Prophecy Fails.

Are they claiming that time is a conspiracy theory and it’s really still 1878?

How can Trump be the rightful president if there hasn’t been a legitimate president since Grant; as wouldn’t that mean that Rutherford B. Hayes should be sworn in as president, since he won the last legitimate democratic election?

Is Hayes still alive on this new timeline, since it is still (presumably) 1878?

So many questions...all of them so stupid.

The non-Trumpian argument was always that only the as-written original Constitution was valid and when the 15th amendment was ratified under Grant, it annulled the United States as a sovereign nation. Of course that ignores everything Jefferson wrote about the Constitution (it needs to change as society changes, and was written solely for the time in which the creators wrote it, not to be considered sacred and unchangeable ever after, as he recognized that society changes over time)*; or that there are legal qualifications which allow for the Constitution to be changed written within the actual document, either added to or subtracted from. Procedure followed for the 15th amendment. Of course, this argument is solely based in racism. Regardless, this interpretation of history means that every presidential election since Grant, including TRUMP, is void as the United States no longer exists as one nation.

*As critics have pointed out, if the Constitution was originally so perfect, the “founding fathers” wouldn’t have been adding Amendments to the document in the first place.

-Bob Black likes to refer to the “sovereign statist” types as the Ghost Dance of the state’s rights movement. “You can scream until you’re blue in the face that the FBI shouldn’t exist, but the court system is going to arraign you just the same.”
Instead of making up unjustifiable ahistorical belief-systems, far better to work on electing people who might abolish income tax, the FBI or CIA...although, that’s probably as likely as the former anyway. At least it’s based in reality.

Also of interest, the 15th amendment was only pursued by Grant due to REPUBLICANS insisting that unless African-Americans were given the vote, Democrats would dominate American politics.

There’s no way to create an argument on the legitimacy of the president that in any way would solely change the LAST election.

It is funny they bring that election up because Hayes’ election mirrors the Biden/Trump election somewhat closely. The Democrat candidate refused to admit defeat (he did pretty handily win the popular vote), and only agreed to recognize Hayes’ victory after Hayes made a political deal with Tilden to wind down Reconstruction. The idea of political deals based around presidential elections was enshrined during the election of 1877.

Also, some strong shades of W. Bush/Gore in that the Republican governor of Florida originally declared that Tilden won, but then on a recount declared that Republican-Hayes actually won. Which seemed very suspicious. The election wasn’t decided by the Supreme Court in that instance though.

Yeah, it’s not really about politics. It’s not the result of Trump either. He just knew how to appeal to the current mind-set. It had already started prior to Trump. It’s definitely become the result of social media.
Marshall McLuhan warned about this with the “global village”. No one understood his term and thought he was talking about something idyllic, but they obviously didn’t read his book.

It started with the idea that everyone’s opinions are of equal value, no matter how ignorant or ill-informed. Ortega y Gasset actually wrote about this development during the 1930s, long before the internet, in fact. 
The rise of totalitarian ideologies was the last time we saw anything similar to the situation today.
Everybody thinks they already know everything today, because they read it on some web-site or they heard it on some TV network. Not realizing how very little so many actually know about so much, including experts.
Anyone today can go on a female celebrity’s web-page, for example, and call her “fat” or whatever negative term, and that is just considered acceptable social behaviour. It’s now almost as valid an opinion as a person giving an in-depth review of the actor’s performance in her latest movie.

In fact, the masses prefer to argue amongst themselves over something like whether a woman is “fat” or not, rather than argue over facts or substance, which may require the use of intellect or knowledge, something that a “mass” absolutely does not include, as only the Individual human has recourse to intelligence or knowledge. So, the personal becomes of more value for opinion and debate.

Life, itself, has become like football teams. Have you ever seen football fans (take your pick: American or European, it’s the same mentality) and how they react with their team? Social media has reinvigorated “tribalism” across the globe.

Before, you might not really share your political views, or you had to discuss your politics amongst a mixed crowd, where you had to actually temper your views and listen to the other side. It could create some nuance in perspective.

Now, with social media, it’s completely different. It’s like football fans and their teams. You only want to be around and talk with those who think just like “your side”, and if you come across anyone with different views, they must be attacked as “the enemy”. Except, instead of revolving around showing your support for the big game, it becomes taking sides and showing support all day, every day, for myriad topics.

Social media is even creating a new value-laden inclusive terminology for the different sides with their all-purpose terms. Kinda Orwellian.

You can’t even try to have conversations with those whose politics you don’t share “the team” with anymore. It’s just an excuse to attempt to excoriate those on the opposite team. Nothing they say can be right or have any value, because they’re not on your team.

Not everyone is like this in real life, but the people screaming on the internet are the most visible, so it shapes perception. Although, yes, a lot of people are on social media.

It’s just going to continue to worsen also. This is never going to lead to a positive ending.

I’ve read his short story collection selected by Harlan Ellison called Nightshades and Damnations. It mostly included his horror and science fiction.
I like most of what I have read by Kersh.

Harlan Ellison is one of my favourite writers, and Kersh was his favourite writer.

Unless it’s Harlan Ellison, I don’t know about comparing people to Kersh...heh

Kiernan isn’t obscure. She is fairly popular with dark fantasy fans, or was a lot more popular in the 1990s anyway. I’m not sure if she’s still considered one of the “hot” dark fantasy writers anymore, because a lot more female genre writers have come on the scene since the ‘90s.

Kiernan’s style could be relatively comfortably compared to Neil Gaiman’s prose fiction. Gaiman is a much better word craftsman than Kiernan though, I find.

The Dreaming was a lot better when it was an anthology title, before Kiernan took over full time. It could still be hit or miss, but there were a number of really strong comic writers on the title.

I’m sure you’re not the type of book reviewer who makes random associations to describe an author’s style or themes though.

You’re not really missing anything from Kiernan. She’s someone who, if you see her name in an anthology, there’s a 50/50 chance that it’ll be a story worth reading; but it’ll never be the best story. Otherwise, you don’t need to go out of your way to read her novels. She’s just very average.

Most of her run on The Dreaming was eminently missable, but a few of her stories were top-notch and worth hunting down. That’s Kiernan’s entire career as a writer.

I know where he got the term. It’s also used as a reference to the fact that his novel takes place in a world State. That makes sense for Huxley who was involved with perennial philosophy. I’m not sure it applies to others like Boye or Perutz, who never really showed any interest in “Eastern” religions.

Most of the writers who were interested in Eastern philosophy wrote favourably of hallucinogenic drug use too, rather than using drugs for social control by the State.

Huxley used the drug Soma as a method of social control in the dystopian Brave New World, but then he alternately used the drug Moksha “medicine” in his utopian novel The Island. Of course, Huxley also wrote the book the Doors of Perception and heavily experimented with different “mind-expanding” drugs after he wrote BNW.

I wonder how that works with Spurrier working at Marvel now. I guess he just doesn’t have a contract anywhere yet.

I am going to start St. Peter’s Snow by Leo Perutz. He was listed by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the greatest horror writers. Borges also praised his work. He’s been mostly forgotten, although a majority of his novels have now been republished.

It tells the story of a conspiracy to revitalize civilization by introducing a hallucinogenic wheat fungus which is supposed to reinvigorate the religious impulse in humanity. Those behind the conspiracy were hoping to save “western” civilization through Christianity. However, instead, it seems that the religious impulse that humanity most wants to invoke is the worship of Moloch.

It can be read as a warning about the rise of Nazism.

Small aside: It’s unusual how many pre-World War II dystopian books* used the concept of a drug as a means of social control. Anti-depressants and LSD were a number of years away still.
Also see: Huxley’s Brave New World and Karin Boye’s Kallocain.

*St. Peter’s Snow is written more in the style of a Gustav Meyrink rather than dystopian science fiction.

Oh, I don’t know about that last...The Ming Doyle stuff would be hard to top on that front, I’d think.

It wasn’t very popular, and it definitely read as an alternate reality version of John. I found the initial Oscar Wilde-inspired characterization of that John to be quite entertaining.

John’s mother being dead, that’s what is important.

Black Label books aren’t usually considered to be within continuity. So, it’s fine.

“Hard Time” is Azzarello ripping off a HBO TV series, so it does nothing for me. It’s not horrible, but it’s not something I enjoy.

The sad part is that “Good Intentions” and “Highwater” could have been something quite good if written by a writer who didn’t think that stereotypes and cliches are an interesting addition to any fictional story.

They could have been a nice look at poverty-stricken American towns.

Instead we get bestiality...because hicks and all of that funny shite. Then we get a fuckin’ Golem in a story about neo-Nazis. ”Highwater” is like something that a high school age amateur writer would find deep.

I can just imagine a writer like Fred Chappell writing those stories instead of Azzarello.

”Freezes Over” was his best story.
The whole run has to be read as a failure when it is all leading up to “Ashes & Dust” and that is easily one of the worst HB stories.

Yes, it’s such great comics until around issue #50, then I had trouble reading Bendis’ DD. I kept buying it in the hope it would improve again, but it never really did get as good as the first fifty issues or so. It started to really bore me.

The Typhoid Mary story-arc was very strong.

At least it was written by Gerry Conway. I’m sure it was no Micronauts or ROM though.

Book reviewers often annoy me. I was reading a book review about Michael Cisco.

The reviewer compared Cisco’s fiction with Franz Kafka, Thomas Ligotti, Thomas Bernhard, and Caitlin Kiernan. One of these names is not like the others.

How can any meaning in that comparison be contextualized? Three of the finest writers of psychological fiction from the modern age, and then a decent writer in Kiernan.
Cisco’s writing is nothing like Kiernan.

Remember kids, guns and cigarettes are bad for you...but chainsaws are ok.

Yes, I realize that the kids will just think that John is a really well-dressed lumberjack. Still.

Powell realizes just how badly he’s fucked up. Just how badly he’s fucked everyone.

Just some friendly advice...let it die this time. No bail-outs, no New Deals, nothing.

Let Elon Musk and Jeff Beszos (and the rest of the fictional plutocracy, “fictional” as their wealth only exists in speculative stocks) watch as those unseen at any point in history fortunes go the way of the dinosaurs.

Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world, beating out poor Jeff Beszos (whose stock isn’t as high as it was when he became a trillionaire), even though his company (Tesla) is barely making a profit yet. It almost makes you laugh.

”We’ll coup whoever we like!” -Elon Musk’s reply on Twitter when someone accused Trump of backing the coup in Bolivia* for the sake of cheaper lithium to help ol’ Musky.

*The National Endowment for Democracy (American government controlled) gave $84 million in US tax-payer money to the anti-Morales opposition. America’s tax money at work...but, really, in 2021 that statement is just getting so very, very old.

From WSWS:

the interventions of the Fed since the onset of the pandemic resulting in the injection of more than $3.5 trillion into the system, coupled with a commitment to keep interest rates at virtually zero for the indefinite future.

In his press conference Wednesday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell denied that the Fed was behind the massive run-up in stock prices, declaring, “I think the connection between low interest rates and asset values is probably something that’s not as tight as people think because a lot of different factors are driving asset prices at any given time,” Powell said.
No one, least of all Powell, believes this statement.

The official leader of the Proud Boys (fascist Trump supporters, helped organize the attempted coup), Enrique Tarrio, has recently been revealed to be a FBI informant.

Tarrio worked undercover for the FBI to help ensure prosecution for thirteen different people convicted of drugs, gambling, and human smuggling.

His lawyer revealed details of one operation saying he had cooperated with the FBI to prosecute marijuana grow houses in Miami.

Curiouser and curiouser....