I'd like to start by saying that there is no established link between televised crevice Justin Lee Collins and Paedophilia. It is simply that today I shall be talking about those two topics among others. Indeed, I would be most horrified to hear that Lee Collins had a large collection of tiny shoes (as Bill Hicks once put it) as I imagine if I were an abused child my one comforting thought would most likely be "at least it's not Justin Lee Collins).
I was not originally going to do a page of links today as I did one the other day and I have just posted my review of The Harlequin. However, I am forced into action by the delay in the publication of the freshly redesigned Scalpel Magazine (and before you ask, why yes... I have been discussing using more colours with Gabe, thank you for noticing my redesign). Poor Gabe has been fiddling more than an entire host of Emperor Neros and as a result will not be dropping the update till tonight Wisconsin time when I will, most likely, be curled up in my pit dreaming of cakes.
And so I link...
FIRSTLY, Justin Lee Collins is apparently going to try to re-unite the cast of Star Wars. This follows Lee Collins' attempts at re-uniting the casts of Grange Hill, The A-Team and Dallas for Channel 4. Eagle-eyed readers may remember that I have recently argued that Star Wars now only exists as a kind of phatic touchstone for morons and the fact that Justin Lee Collins has latched onto it only confirms this. Just this week, purveyor of fat fantasy George R. R. Martin has commented upon what his favourite SF movie of all time is. The fact that it was not Star Wars drew some comment. For the record, my favourite work of cinematic SF is Oliver Stone's JFK, arguably the best piece of counterfactual history ever committed to screen. While I'm on about Channel 4, I'll also link to THIS little beauty. It's the opening images from the launch of Channel 4 nearly 25 years ago. Some have pointed out the similarities with the film shown during the euthanasia sequence in Soylent Green.
SECONDLY, apparently Livejournal have decided to start deleting the profiles and blogs of people who write about incest and paedophilia. Evidently the problem is that aside from the blogs discussing the best way to dismember a four year old girl you stumbled across while on holiday in Portugal, they are also deleting incest survivor blogs and the blogs of people who write fanfic or erotica. I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that because you write about something, it does not mean that you want to necessarily do it. Similarly, it is possible to watch or read pornography without wanting to be a part of the scene. Hell, I'll even go so far as to say that downloading dodgy files from the P2P network is not an indication that you're necessarily a danger to children... only that you are too curious and have too much free time for your own good. However, the writers of Harry Potter and Sorting Hat slash fiction really have no grounds for being surprised by this development. Kidding Aside, the world's first group devoted to the rights of the childfree had its site and forums shut down simply for suggesting that maybe parents shouldn't pay less tax than everyone else... getting your underage slash fiction deleted should not be a surprise in the world we live in. This does raise the specter of the rights of people who socialise online though. Some people chose to socialise via World of Warcraft and had their gay-friendly guild shut down. As long as you're effectively chatting on someone else's property then this type of thing is going to happen.
THIRDLY, apparently those great pisser of billions up walls Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven are back on the job! Yes! the men who brought you the Reagan-era Star Wars Ballistic Missile Defence Shield have formed a consulting company with Greg Bear, Arlan Andrews and Sage Walker. This company deploys the mighty intellects of people who used to be noted SF writers and sets them the task of winning the war on terror. Based on Niven and Pournelle's previous performance in this field, I predict that their plan will involve something down to earth and practical such as a platinum and jewell encrusted Moon base that fires nets at terrorists. All concerned really should go back to their day jobs.
FOURTHLY, this little story about RPG giants Wizards of the Coast, who are apparently about to launch a new imprint for something called "Adult fantasy". Three observations about this story. Firstly, they're clearly trying to follow in the foot-steps of Games Workshop whose tie-in producer The Black Library recently created an imprint for non-tied-in SF called Solaris. Secondly, Games Workshop are in serious trouble financially following two profit warnings in six months. If you look at the bottom of that article you'll see that this is not the first time that Games Workshop have had problems. In fact, they've been declining for a while and the creation of The Black Library and its imprints can be seen as a move away from their old toy soldiers business. Wizards of the Coast are by far and away THE largest RPG company by virtue of publishing Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, aside from White Wolf, they're probably the only RPG outfit that constitutes a proper professionally run company... and White Wolf recently got bought out by the guys who make the videogame Eve Online... so this gives you an idea of the size of the companies. The obvious question is, are Wizards of the Coast attempting to follow Games Workshop and "diversify" out of the games business? There's a lot of talk of the game's industry teetering on the edge as the artificial boom engineered by throwing D&D open to other companies comes to an end. Thirdly, what is adult fantasy? I assume they mean "not Harry Potter" rather than vampire porn like Laurell K. Hamilton.
FIFTHLY, Bill Gibron at Popmatters argues that they don't make proper SF films any more. I had quite a heated debate about this article with my Scalpel co-editor Gabe. Gabe thinks that the article is complete swill as there are loads of great SFF films that have appeared recently. I agree with Gabe but I don't think that the article is completely wrong despite this. I think Gibron is reaching for the intuition that there's something not quite right about modern cinematic SF when you compare it to the output of previous decades. Indeed, while Blockbusters using SF tropes still do brisk business and fantasy seems to be doing relatively well, it's difficult to think of a large budget film that is proper SF. By this I mean speculative, outward looking and ultimately concerned with putting ideas forth about the nature of the universe. Indeed, in my forthcoming review of Sunshine, I suggest that the film is an attempt to kick-start the dying SF genre at the cinema. A genre that was killed off by those awful Star Wars movies and those movies about Mars that appeared back to back. there are still plenty of films about time-travel and SF ideas but compared to the 70's and 80's, we're not seeing nearly as many literary SF films as we used to see. This touches on something Charlie Stross said about US culture when I interviewed him and how Americans aren't comfortable looking forward. Indeed, Stross would probably say it's no accident that Sunshine was made in the UK.
SIXTHLY, THIS interesting article about the sexual politics of online game avatars. All I can say is that it is interesting and completely predictable. It also reminds me of the first Shrek film, in which Fiona has to live with turning into a disgusting fat ogre. In fact, both Fiona and Shrek are Ogre-shaped. They're probably the most attractive ogres that you'll ever see on screen. This is predictable because humans are hard-wired to find certain things attractive and that wiring evidently extends to humanoid species such as dwarves, gnomes, elves, orcs and ogres.
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