dogpoet

You mean the Hunger Dogs OGN? I'm not aware of any reprint, and it's certainly not available at the moment, but it will apparently be in the complete Fourth World hardcovers which DC are putting out next year.

No, not the Hunger Dogs thing (though I've not read that one either). It seems that when DC reprinted the series in the same format as those "Roots Of Swamp Thing" comics, (a couple of issues to a comic) there was a new conclusion stuck in the last one of these reprints after the last issue of the original series.

How do the fantasy novels measure up to Fevre Dream and the Wildcards books?

Has the last episode Kirby wrote for the series the first time it was reprinted in the early '80s ever been published anywhere else? It doesn't seem to be in the Young Gods collection.

Okay, because I think there's another trilogy.

Ah, I didn't know that. Thank you.

Twilight, I've not seen that one.

I'm reading Robertson Davies's The Lyre of Orpheus. No, haven't finished System of the World, it's too heavy to carry around, and I kinda gave up Nights at the Circus cuz I didn't like it.

That's a pity: it's probably Carter's best novel.

I might go back and continue to read it. I haven't really found the time to read (or post) these days.

 

I've not read any Robertson Davies besides the two trilogies. I'll have to get around to going through the rest of his stuff at some point.

Which two trilogies? The Lyre of Orpheus is the last book in the Cornish Trilogy. I liked it, but not as much as the other two books. I really liked What's Bred in the Bone, the second one.

The other trilogy is the Deptford one: Fifth Business (which you've read), The Manticore and World Of Wonders.

Which Lovecraft was it? One of the old Grafton collections or those Penguin twentieth century classics things?

 

Do you really not see what I'm objecting to, here?

Possibly that's coming down a little heavy, but everything he's saying there seems to be based on an assumption that he's much smarter than his audience who are more interested in kitchen sink drama about Rose than the SF elements. Most of this thread proves that isn't the case, I'd have thought.

And my suppositions about Davies are no more meanspirited than his suppositions about his audience, frankly.

I've always got a much more complicated, science-fictiony version of each episode in mind, and I always filter that out, and go for the more straightforward version -- the more emotional, honest [for complexity and science fiction are neither honest nor emotional] version. For example, there was a great [too great for the halfwits who watch this shit to understand, of course], complicated version of "Tooth and Claw" in my mind where, at the end of the episode, Queen Victoria is killed, and that creates the parallel universe which becomes the world of "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel". It would have been the most brilliant ending, because the Doctor and Rose would have stood there and gone "That's not supposed to happen!" But it's very subscription channel, cult audience, male sci-fi. It's a brilliant moment, but its legacy is too complicated [for my stupid taget audience to grasp], and too dark in a boring way [for my stupid target audience to be arsed with].'

This sort of thing is all about interpretation, regardless of whether you view his initial statement as acceptable or offensively patronising and condescending. I'm not even going to go into his assumption that emotion and complexity are immiscible. I've added one set of corrolaries his statements here suggest, and extended the bit that was highlighted already.

My own suspicion is that the reason he didn't do that is it would have been far too much work to tie in the half dozen or so fairly trivial changes he came up with to a differing evolution of history over a century and a half, and not going into any detail about how the parrallel reality came about let him avoid doing so but apparently I'm being far too hard on the fellow.

Still, I suppose he at least deserves a tiny fragment of credit for not referring to his unused and confusing to halfwits more complex version as the more "sci fi" version.

Until such time as he does stop spoon feeding his audience dumbed down pap though, it's impossible to tell whether he is giving them insufficient credit. My own conviction is that the mass audience is a lot smarter than it's usually given credit for, and could easily digest far more complex fiction than it's getting from the television production companies.

Davies' argument basically boils down to "the scum are too stupid to keep up with my brilliant mind," and that's demonstrably bullshit as he doesn't appear to have a particularly brilliant mind. If he did he'd be rather less conceited for a start.

Well yeah, since I'm right and you're wrong. :)

I thought you were arguing that Davies was right in his decision to hold his audience in such utter contempt that they need talking down to?

I doubt we're going to come to any degree of accord about this one.

I'm reading Robertson Davies's The Lyre of Orpheus. No, haven't finished System of the World, it's too heavy to carry around, and I kinda gave up Nights at the Circus cuz I didn't like it.

That's a pity: it's probably Carter's best novel.

I've not read any Robertson Davies besides the two trilogies. I'll have to get around to going through the rest of his stuff at some point.

In that particular example, though, he's perfectly right - it works fine as a story, but in the long term it means you're lumbered with having those fucking earpieces in very modern-day story. And you'd have to keep explaining why to the audience, who may feel a bit alienated and distanced from it.

I don't think he is right, though: he's just assuming that he's writing for idiots who need stuff dumbing down as thoroughly as possible, and frankly that isn't on.

 

Sorry, for some reason I didn't read this properly.

 

He was right because you can't change the entire universe that Who is set in without altering every subsequent modern-day story. Aside from the fact that it immediately limits the stories you can tell, it also means that episodes in season six and seven will have to use the same "funny earpiece" universe. That means that it ends up becoming the continuity-heavy wankfest of late Doctor Who, understandable only to those that happened to see the second episode of season two, rather than easily accessible light entertainment for everyone.

 

He's aiming at as wide an audience as possible, and continuity heavy stories that aren't understandable to someone just tuning in would only result in the same kind of fanboyish hardcore audience that resulted in Who being cancelled in the first place.

That argument doesn't hold water, I'm afraid. He's used underlying meta-plots in both series, and if every single episode needs to be comprehensible to everyone regardless of whether they've seen the episode before he shouldn't have done any two part stories either.

I'd much sooner a continuity heavy wankfest than a soap opera styled wankfest any day. Nobody had a problem with him bringing back Sarah Jane, did they? The only real reason for avoiding continuity is to make something easier for the writer.

(That said, I'd like to see more done with alternative realities as this is the main unexplored time travel plot device that hasn't been used: apart from the godawful cybermen stories, the only other use of that in the series was during Pertwee's first season.)

I can't imagine why in the seven hells they didn't wait to do so, personally. But clearly I'm failing to grasp the subtle intricacies of the comics industry.

 

Or, they're fucktards.

More likely the latter. O'Neill is not a man who appreciates being hurried, it seems.

Still, it wouldn't be The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen if it wasn't delayed by at least four months, would it?

Just started in on a (fairly godawful) jack L Chalker novel. I'm saving a copy of The Shaving Of Shagpat I acquired recently as a reward for when I've finished it: I've been meaning to read that one for over a decade now.

No-one knows - it was due for release in October, but an indefinite delay was announced a few weeks ago, apparently because it's not finished yet.

Thanks.

I thought they hadn't solicited this one until O'Neill had finished drawing it. Naive or what?

When is this next League Of Rum Coves GN out?

Dear Christ, Josh. Fingers crossed and everything.

If you're having them playing cards, Selkie, perhaps the severed hand and the baby vulture could be part of the pot they're playing for?

Once it's installed, it's very stable, but any OS is vulnerable as its being installed or reinstalled. In this case, I'm not sure why this install went so wrong. Maybe there's something wrong with the install CD. Very few Linux installs have gone this far wrong in my experience.

 

One thing you hear from some Linuxoids is that Linux is "ready for the desktop" and that it's a worthy competitor with Windows for the desktop market. Which is an absolute crock when you know that one of the most common types of Linux event is the Install Fest. 8-)

You do wonder just who it is who's arguing that: even the very pro Linux magazines make a point of urging people not to install it on their only system, don't they?

This is going to sound like I'm making a cheap dig, but isn't part of the point of Linux that it's supposed to be very stable?

Why the fuck are you advertising a trashy tv show at your school?

They have billboards on which posters can be stuck. If the billboard is by a school...

What's this about The Mandarin using magic? I thought his rings were retrieved from a crashed starship or some similarly daft '60s plot device.

No question. I just thought you'd said "well in fact he's right there", in an instance of him saying something that was dead wrong in every way in which it could be wrong.

In that particular example, though, he's perfectly right - it works fine as a story, but in the long term it means you're lumbered with having those fucking earpieces in very modern-day story. And you'd have to keep explaining why to the audience, who may feel a bit alienated and distanced from it.

I don't think he is right, though: he's just assuming that he's writing for idiots who need stuff dumbing down as thoroughly as possible, and frankly that isn't on.