dogpoet

Having another go at Appelcine's Designers & Dragons. This time, I've found a copy of the first edition hardcover, which doesn't go into anything like as much detail as the '90s volume I have already, but actually starts at the beginning and covers the stuff that should have been the '90s book (Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Spelljammer and Planescape, etc) but wasn't because the companies that published those games were formed in the '70s or '80s.

Ballard's definitely an acquired taste, no question. I have even seen the Tap-esque phrase about his appeal being selective used as well...

The thing I like about BJB is that it's a rather clever conspiracy thriller with the most plausible conspiracy I've seen in an SF novel, and better still, an extremely nasty one. It's a shame that's almost lost under all of the late '60s wibbling, but it really does look ahead of its time in some regards, rather than being locked into the hippy era so firmly that it's dated even worse than a lot of golden age SF, the way a disappointingly large amount of New wave SF has (mentioning nobody called Delaney or Ellison, of course).

It also does a good job with all the media stuff as well, and though it doesn't do quite as impressive a job of that as decadent period Ballard stories, it did get there first. The only '60s new wave SF I can think of that manages a better job of that is a few of James Tiptree jr's short stories.

Started in on Norman Spinrad's The Void Captain's Tale.

Thus far, I don't think it's as good as The Iron Dream or Bug jack Barron, but it's loads better than The Men In The Jungle or Agent of Chaos. Plenty of time for it to build though, which is likely in a slow moving tale like this one.

It's bit dismaying given all of the other stuff that he did even the comics sites are commemorating him as "that Batman guy", but even if that was all he'd ever done it'd still be a sad loss.

That's the one. There's shenanigans with a set of false teeth, and an ex con who finds a nice girl but only wants to have anal sex with her as well.

Of course, the criminal haiku might be a tip of the hat to Ian Fleming as well as a reference to all the anti Japanese blather that was going on in the 'States during the mid '80s...

Just gone through another of Willeford's thrillers. There are no chickens in Miami Blues, but it's a clever, nicely crafted and very effective Police procedural which does a magnificent job of playing up the antagonism between the copper and the villain.

It's also very funny if your sense of humour runs to the tasteless and mean-spirited like mine does.

How to improve that Batman trailer:

Dismissing the definitive Adam West version as the "goofy" Batman is a bit off, mind...

9 hours ago, GottaGetAGrip said:

On the other hand, I don't suppose Cockfighter ever got a sequel where he ended the Cold War by cockfighting a genetically enhanced Russian alpha cock and making a big speech about how we should all just get along afterwards...

Very true.

Mind you, I'd watch it if there was such a film...

Nice one, Lou. I like the way you think.

As a comparison, it's not really fair on Willeford, as his book was obviously written a lot earlier, but it does spring to mind in any story that has some sort of fight competition and an underdog working their way up to a shot at the big title. However you feel about Stallone's films, the first Rocky did do a lot to establish that storyline as a cliche. I suspect that Stallone was probably more influenced by some of the chop sockys that were a really big deal in the early '70s than a book (or film) about cockfighting over that. That might have some bearing on why Rocky comes across as such an unsympathetic, self righteous little tit as well. One argument I've heard (and found rather convincing) is that the Rocky films are, at heart, all about an overdeveloped sense of entitlement being rewarded. That might even be deliberate rather than an unintentional subtext: whatever you can say against Stallone, he isn't a stupid man, and even the worst films he's produced or had a hand in writing are pretty strong on narrative.

Of course, in Cockfighter the protagonist and narrator is a real shit, but he knows it, and is fairly sympathetic despite that, which makes him a lot more appealing as a character, even when he's doing appalling things to train his chickens, so that's definitely an area where the comparison with the Rocky films favours Willeford over Stallone something rotten.

You should probably get your fingers looked at if it still hurts, Tigger. They can't do anything if it's a bruise on the bone or something, but if you've damaged the soft tissues, they can help with that.

And Balthy, sorry I blanked you, mate. Going into a discussion about Christian's MS and disappearance is no kind of welcome back. Hope things are still going well for you.

The training montage scenes are a lot nastier than anything in the Stallone film, though. Bloodsports are unpleasant, cruel and messy: who'd'a thunk it?

(Also, the trainer has taken a vow of silence until he wins the big chicken fight. I have an idea that if Rocky had done that, it would have made for a much better film, or at least one with less angry chuntering in it...)

Lovely art, Jason, but what's the question?

Yeah, that was a bit worrying given he's been diagnosed with MS.

They're certainly the biggest employer in the state of Florida. 40,000 odd on the payroll in that state.

Which makes the notion of repealing the weird (and rather dodgy) tax agreement that was used to bribe them into building a theme park in that state in the first place a strange one. (One amusing possible result of this is that Florida residents will end up paying a lot more tax to keep Disneyland open than Disney will be paying themselves.) Mind you, it isn't like any republican governor has ever even pretended to give a shit about their own state when grandstanding in hope of a presidential nomination was a factor, is it? 

Maybe he's hoping that Trump will have been locked up by the time the primaries are held?

Going through a collection of Charles Willeford thrillers.

The first one (Pick UP) isn't much of a thriller, but the second (The Burnt Orange Heresy) is hilarious, and extremely clever. 

The third is definitely the stand out if it keeps up to the same standard as the opening chapters, though: Cockfighter deals with a dodgy trainer on the cockfighting circuit, and opens with him fixing his chicken to look like it has a cracked beak before a match in order to get better odds on it. From there things get dramatic. The novel is pretty much Rocky with chickens, so far.

and if you think that's just satire, lookee here:

On 4/4/2022 at 8:35 AM, JasonT said:

The guy at 1:23! 

It's easy to see why the film makers gave him the last word, isn't it?

Just thought I'd mention that I've gone through Doomsday Clock and found it surprisingly readable.

It has some glorious art, some clever conceits, and the central postmodernist bit of cleverdickery

is just as clever as, and a lot funnier than, anything in the original Watchmen series.

Of course, I might have enjoyed it more than I should have because I have a mental image of Geoff Johns writing it with a smirk on his face and a post it note saying "remember to piss of that Moore guy for all the shit he's been talking about me referring his Green Lantern stories in my own run" on his PC monitor...

'Damn, if I've broken his hand, who's going to open the fridge for me?"

12 hours ago, seventhcircle said:

the attrition strategy more adresses your initial thoughts: what message it sends when a nuclear power can with impunity attack any other non-nato-country. the message is: we will nuke your economy to the stone age. and don't get me started on how we propably will not succeed in that, cause we didn't spend enough energy to go clean from gas and oil. thinking to much about that will give me an aneurism.

That would be true if the only alternative to embargo-ing Russian gas and oil exports was clean energy. I suspect that OPEC will be all for an embargo on Russia, though. I'd also be surprised if that nonsense about Russian fossil fuels only selling for roubles now is on the level either. It might hike the value of the rouble a bit, but with nobody trading with Russia, what good will that do?

Oh, I'm the last thing from a hawk, and so, I suspect, is Tigger. It is very easy to take a bullish stance towards this lunacy when you're a member of a NATO nation and so don't have to worry about any level of personal involvement unless things escalate to a nuclear level, though. It's nice to think that the failure to arrange a swift seizure is leading into a war of attrition which Russia can't win, but that's far from the best case scenario least of all for the Ukranians.

Of course it's possible that some of this is because the Ukrainians are trying to resist an invasion and unlike the Iraqis or whoever, are actually being allowed to portray themselves as the good guys. It would be very foolish to dismiss that.

I wouldn't worry too much about the warmongers taking over the narrative again in the 'States, at least: it's pretty hard for anybody who remembers some of the ridiculous crap Reagan spent eight years talking about the Soviet Union not to find the extent to which the republicans are all over Putin hilarious. It's almost as though they admire national leaders who don't think that international law applies to them and that democracy is a bad idea. Johnson would probably like to be taking the same line, but he's at least smart enough to recognise that the British media will hang draw and quarter him if he tries that.

To be honest, I don't buy the Nazi excuse for the current invasion at all. Sure there's neo-Nazis in the Ukraine, but there's very few countries in Europe that don't have a few similar fascist-right parties. France is practically infested with the buggers and you don't see the Russian federation invading them. I'm also a bit dubious that Ukranian anti-Russian legislation is inherently the Nazi thing it's being presented as by the Russian media and their stooges at Fox: after the events of 2014 and Russia stuffing parts of the Ukraine as full as they can of "ethnic Russians" as an obvious excuse for further military action there's other reasons for the Ukranians having a negative attitude towards Russia than them all being Nazis.

That's the problem with simplistic explanations of complex issues, after all: everything gets dumbed in ways that allow and encourage all sorts of ridiculous but convenient misinterpretations. That's probably the whole function of Surkov's demolition job on the Russian media.

Bear in mind that it's not just Surtov's pioneering of the whole fake news thing that's the issue on that level: Putin himself owns all of the Russian media apart from one television station.

As for the other, if threats of a third world war allow him to invade the Ukraine without any international comeback, then he can do the same to Finland, Armenia and wherever else. From the way they're acting during the current shitefest in the Ukraine, it looks like Belarus have recognised this and are actively collaborating.

It's even possible that the whole NATO membership thing might not defend Estonia or Latvia any in the event of an invasion there.