|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
#2981
01-07-2014, 05:45 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
I liked Welch's Trainspotting and Porno but haven't read his other work. Walking around Heathrow airport with the hot pink Porno cover complete with blow-up doll definitely got some stares... I still need to settle on a current book; just reading bits and pieces from this and that. EC - Have you read the comic Transmet? I think you'd dig it. 
|
|
#2982
01-07-2014, 08:28 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Skagboys is great so far. It's the prequel to Trainspotting so you'd probably like it. I dug pretty much everything Welsh has done so the rest of his books are definitely worth checking out.
Haircuts was alright. I wasn't blown away by it. Would've loved it if I was a teenager I think  Quote:
|
|
#2983
01-08-2014, 06:49 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
#2984
01-09-2014, 06:46 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
 It's been a while; I should check it out. Preacher is SO GOOD. I have the trades somewhere; I should dig them up and re-read them. Yep; Transmet is the Warren Ellis cyberpunk-y trade about Spider Jerusalem, rogue Journalist - It's so brilliant and ahead-of-its time. I started re-reading it and it makes me want to cheer.
|
|
#2985
01-09-2014, 07:56 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Quote:
|
|
#2986
01-10-2014, 04:57 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Reading The Trail of Cthulhu at the moment - it is entertaining enough but a bit by the numbers.
Next up for me is Johnny Alucard, the latest in Kim Newman's ANNO DRACULA series (which every one should read). Being dying to read this for a while. 
|
|
#2987
01-17-2014, 11:11 PM
|
||||
|
||||
 NORDEN, ERIC (? - ?). American author of the routine sf novel THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION (1973). [PN] This is the entire entry for Eric Norden as it appears in the first edition (1979) of THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA edited by Peter Nicholls. The next edition, revised in 1993, is a little more thoughtful, informative and in general presents the author and his work in a more positive light. A much needed correction as the kneejerk dismissal in the earlier edition is a slap in the face to this little powerhouse (142 pages) where the Axis Powers won World War II and a New York City detective teams up with the Gestapo to hunt for "the last Jew in Nazi America." While names of roads and certain landmarks have been altered to reflect the new world order, everyday life goes on much as now. The police still fight crime, elderly rich ladies still haunt the antique shops, traffic is still a Gordian's knot of rolling machinery and smog bows to no Führer. But below the surface lies a society of corruption and perversion, and it gets uglier. The good guys are the bad guys who think they are the good guys and are presented as such. But that's because most of the American characters were born after the war and grew up under Nazi domination and if they don't wholeheartedly embrace National Socialism they at least accept it as the legitimate law of the land. For example, while his Gestapo partner tortures a "Christie", in this case a Catholic priest, for information the detective expresses doubt the situation justifies the procedure but is unaffected by the mind numbing horror it produces. Norden knows what he wants and spares little to get it. And the elderly "blue-rinsed matron" mentioned above? She and her ilk like to shop with their pet picaninnies. You know what a picaninny is? You sure? As the detective describes the scene: "Her picaninny, one of the few I'd seen since the labs made them commercially available, pranced on its leash, gurgling excitedly in little drooling sputters. As she passed us it stopped and sniffed at my trouser leg and I could see the neat stiches of the lobo trepanning across the kinky curls and the puckered white scar of the tracheotomy like a pale half-moon on the black throat. I tried to see if the thing was spayed but she'd dressed it up in silver lamé pantaloons and a little brocaded vest. It started to snuffle up to Macri but he lashed out with his foot and it scampered, mewling in terror. The old broad cast us a filthy look and patted it consolingly, whispering little endearments, before exiting with a final glare in our direction." I'm not sure how Nicholls can write this off as "routine." This type of futuristic surgery isn't the only claim to sf this novel makes. There's another, and depending of the reader's bent --- as for me I'm especially warped in this regard --- it either qualifies the story as genuine sf or marks certain characters as massively insane. Whichever one chooses, this glimpse of an alternate America is both ugly and powerful. I put this book down grateful the Third Reich failed in its attempt to overthrow the world. If it hadn't, as Albert Speer said in an interview conducted by the author for Playboy magazine: "The long dark night would have begun, and finally man would not even remember the light."
__________________
"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being." Mary Shelley, FRANKENSTEIN "Within the framework of most horror tales we find a moral code so strong it would make a Puritan smile." Stephen King, DANSE MACABRE
|
|
#2988
01-19-2014, 08:46 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Haunted Highways
|
 |
|
|
