Seeing as it is the fashionable thing to do (and an easy to way to generate new content while I'm currently working on a number of things), I have decided to start posting links to pieces of news and various cool things that I have discovered online.
Click Below to Sample my Lovely Links.
* First off, is UBUWEB, an astonishing archive of MP3s, videos, essays and other things that essentially cover most of the notable avant-garde artists of the 20th Century. In particular, I would like to draw your attention to a lovely little documentary about Argentinian surrealist master (and friend of SFDiplomat seeing as I seem to mention him a lot) Jorge Luis Borge as well as this rather cool MP3 of James Joyce reading a speech from Ulysses.
* The High Culture junkies satiated, let us move down the rent ladder to the world of video games. In particular Ghostbusters. I remember playing this aged about 10 on my old C64. Even as a 10 year old I thought it was horribly repetitive and lacked some of the charm of the film. Since then, my love for Ghostbusters has barely dimmed and I think, as a genre fan, it is one of the last ever fantasy films to suggest that the scientists were the good guys and that the mythical people were baddies. Over twenty years later a series of videos appeared on YouTube HERE, HERE and HERE, suggesting that a company called ZootFly were working on a new Ghostbusters game. Unsurprisingly, the games geeks went nuts and many suggested that the videos were fake until Zootfly issued a statement saying that yes, they are working on a Ghostbusters game but No, it probably won't be appearing anytime soon as there are copyright issues (in other words, whoever it is that owns the rights to Ghostbuster games have done nothing with those rights for twenty years and don't want to see this change). We can but hope that these issues get ironed out.
* As many people no doubt remember, SF editor Jim Baen passed away last year. A doyen of the SF scene, Baen's profile had risen in recent years following his decision to launch an e-book company in 1999. What made this company extraordinary is that it was not only the first e-book company to make a profit, it was also one of the only e-book companies not to use DRM to cripple the books they sold. Indeed, Baen made many books available for download for free because of his belief that they didn't deprive authors of sales, rather they encouraged sales by letting people read part of the book online before deciding to buy it. People who are aware of the discovery made by Nick Mamatas, namely an obituary for Baen praising him for standing up for western values in the face of the onslaught of leftist drivel that was SF's New Wave. So there you go... Jim Baen beloved by fascists and commie scum alike.
* Speaking of commie scum, I particularly enjoyed this piece in the New York Times about Apple's new iPhone and the dangers posed by its support for not only DRM but also proprietary formats. Apparently if you buy this phone you won't even be able to unlock it in order to change networks.
* While I'm linking to mainstream media organs, yesterday's Independent had a rather nice piece about the death of modern film making. On the one hand, the article by noted film historian Ronald Bergen is quite comical (with its talk of people trying to come to grips with the new way of making art on Mr. Babbage's new computing engines) and reactionary (everything after Bunuel is soul-less shit) but I can't help but share his wish that modernism would come back into vogue. Aside from there not yet having been a 21st Century equivalent of Un Chien Andalou, maybe modernism's commitment to the idea that man can and probably should remake his environment as he sees fit might see more films like Ghostbusters and less films about how evil science is.
* Speaking of evil science, I was pleased to see Strange Horizons publish an article by Dan Hartland deriding Battlestar Galactica. It's the second such article they've published and given that I've slagged BSG off on this here blog, that now makes three of Strange Horizons' critics that are pissed off with a series everyone else in SF seems to adore. Hurrah for the hater-clique!
* Continuing in a similar hating vein is the news that HBO have purchased the rights to George R. R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice. I learned this particular nugget of information from Abigail Nussbaum's blog. I say this because I think Abigail's one of the most intimidatingly clever critics out there and her review of A Game of Thrones so perfectly summed up why I disliked the book that I never bothered to write up a review of it.
UPDATE : As Abigail points out in this excellent post, it was also Dan Hartland who wrote the previous negative pieces about BSG on Strange Horizons.
Comments