Let’s get down to it. The substrata. The core bits, the tiny tech, the miniscule building blocks that make up everything and everyone. The data that informs us, “you will be a green plastic bucket,” and “you will be a dandelion seed,” and “you will be a winged buzzy thing that lives 12 hours and dies an ecstatic, incandescent death.”
The Dervish House finds British speculative fictionist Ian McDonald breaking things down to their tiniest parts and reshaping them into objects of beauty. This describes not only his writing—luminous, incredibly accurate, devilishly clever, as always—but his knack for building worlds bright and brassy enough to smell and touch. It also connotes the way in which he constructs his plots: he begins with scattered characters and slowly draws connections between them, weaving their destinies together. But, above all it describes the central, pulsating idea of Dervish: nanotechnology.
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“If Google were sufficiently concerned about this, perhaps the company should issue children with free “training wheels” identities at birth, terminating at the age of majority. One could then either opt to connect one’s adult identity to one’s childhood identity, or not.
Childhoodlessness, being obviously suspect on a résumé, would give birth to an industry providing faux adolescences, expensively retro-inserted, the creation of which would gainfully employ a great many writers of fiction. So there would be a silver lining of sorts.
”
—
William Gibson- Google’s Earth - NYTimes.com
I have often suspected that the reason cyberpunk all-father William Gibson has ceased to write speculative fiction is because we have caught up to the worlds he speculated back in the 1980s. This may be true, but with this clever and well-written op-ed piece in the Times, he proves his brain is still just a couple of steps ahead of ours, pinging ideas off the digits and intertubes of our world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/nyregion/23reptile.html?_r=1&hp
All those urban legends are untrue. Until they’re proven true by a baby alligator showing up under your Datsun.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-lives-in-futuristic-scifi-world-where-all-his,17858/
And this, ladies and gents, is exactly why William Gibson cannot write cyberpunk anymore.
“AVClub: There’s an ongoing argument about whether videogames can be art. Where does this film fit into that argument?
Edgar Wright: I think it both eulogizes them and shows the downsides of them. I think Scott Pilgrim’s thoughtlessness and selfishness could come from playing way too many games and being lost in a world where you are the hero, the bit players are not important, they’re just items along the way, and you’re achieving experience points without necessarily having the experience yourself.
On the flipside, it’s interesting that Nintendo has become a design classic, and Mario has almost become the Mickey Mouse of our generation. I know it’s become an ongoing thing about whether videogames are art, and I think there’s plenty of examples of things that use the form in a fascinating way. Things that are more surreal or artistic, like Katamari Damacy or Vib-Ribbon.
I think where the criticism of videogames come from is where videogames are just Xeroxes of films, and when you get a film adaptation of that game, you’ve just Xeroxed something twice. I think that’s where a lot of the criticism comes from—there are ultra-violent games that are already based on a million films. But there’s definitely beauty and art and design in games. I don’t think anybody could deny that.
”
— The Onion AV Club has—as usual—an excellent
interview up with Edgar Wright, director of the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim movie. The first portion of this answer lights up all the diodes in my head and really shows a full understanding—a mastery—of the nuances behind the Scott Pilgrim character. Yes, it’s a silly, wacky and fun comic series about fighting and video games and romance, but there is also a huge character arc—and that arc is not stable, not straight, and almost certainly not all positive. Will it translate to the film? Maybe, maybe not. But it sheds analytical light on the series in general, which is always welcome.
Guys. What can I do to make you read The Meek? Tell me. Tell me, and I will do it, and you will read The Meek. This guy up here? This guy with the great facial expression? He is the new focus for chapter 3. His name hasn’t even been revealed and I am already in love with his smarmy tattooed greatness. Why aren’t you reading The Meek right now? Git over there!
Some Chinese bootlegger seems to be confused (what else is new?). Or, maybe I never realized what a saw-like ending Battlestar—that good-hearted tween comedy—actually has. I *did* feel a bit like a hacksaw had been taken to my jugular at its finale, but not enough to confuse Galactica with…the Enterprise? Oh, China.
San Francisco crime mapped as elevation
An excellent visual and a very striking one, but it only shows one side of the story. The point of view of this map depicts these mountains of crime as objects in the city terrain to be avoided, as dangerous ridges to be skirted warily. This map forces the viewer, in effect, to be an outsider looking at clearly demarcated red zones. Or, this view may be that of an enforcer: these spikes on the horizon are anomalies to be hammered down into normalcy, foothills that should be stamped flat.
But is that how we see crime in our own cities? So clear, so present a danger? To see it in a different light, I would invert the effect that crime has on the map: instead of a rearing mountain chain, depict the crime-ridden areas as deep sinkholes; unavoidable gaping mouths punched into the very landscape that drag everyone and everything into their circumference. For those living in those areas, the terrain is a living thing, one that can betray and drop you down with the slightest of missteps. Rather than climbing steadily up the mountain of crime and danger to a goal of gangland kingpin, gravity will do it for you—whether you like it or not. Dire, dark and very difficult to climb out of once you’ve fallen in.
From:
iheartmyart:
(via feltron, roomthily, fuckyeahinfo)
Just when I was becoming a little bored with Colbert’s schtick (no, say it ain’t so!) he pulls this out with Kevin Kline. Shakespearean battle, go!
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Played 10 times.
“Takes So Long” The Weepies, Hideaway (2008.)
With the distinctively lovely vocals of folk darling Deb Talan, “The Weepies” play a simple strummy folk that might make you fall in love at first listen. I first heard Talan’s rough-edged, rawly emotive voice on her solo albums, the very excellent Something Burning and A Bird Flies Out. There, her skilled lyrics and bravely unadorned vocals invited comparisons to other folk-pop songstresses such as Shawn Colvin, Lisa Loeb and Sarah Harmer.
Now, going under the moniker of The Weepies, her husband’s guitar strumming and vocal backing add a texture and harmony that absolutely sings. Their mellow, Sunday morning music is shot through with the colors of homey contentment, and even songs tinged with sadness or sorrow are still soaked in bliss. “Takes So Long” is a relatively simple, straightforward song, but one that finds complexity in the tiniest of pitch shifts. Each time the pseudonymous chorus repeats, their voices ask its question a slightly different way, bringing this spare song a new gravity. Take some time to do the dishes, weed the garden and allow the distinctly un-lachrymose Weepies to accompany you on your way.
(The Weepies’ newest album was released this year, but I haven’t gotten my ears on it yet.)
Posted by various vapor, assembled. on Wed Sep 1st at 9:08PM
Posted by Leif on Wed Aug 25th at 7:01PM![[afternoon reblog quickie]
fuckyeaheyegasms:
colorful-ice (by Marc)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l7kv78v2is1qalo8mo1_500.jpg)
Posted by grand schemes, foiled. on Mon Aug 23rd at 1:28PM