2000AD’s Judge Dredd
After touring the convention circuit the Judge Dredd-inspired fan film “Judge Minty“, written and directed by Steven Sterlacchini, has finally been released online. While the acting may be less than inspiring the special effects on the other hand show just how far technology has moved on since the days of filming spray-painted plastic bottles on wires against a blue background.
Over at Bella Caledonia writer Paul F Cockburn has an interview with Tim Armstrong, author of the Scottish language Sci-Fi novel Air Cuan Dubh Drilseach.
Meanwhile some Irish related stuff here.
Iain M. Banks
Dreadfully sad news today about the Scottish author Iain Banks whose mainstream and genre books I’ve been reading – and loving – for the last twenty years. In a personal message on his website he announced that he has been diagnosed with a terminal cancer and is unlikely to live beyond the next year or so:
“I am officially Very Poorly.
After a couple of surgical procedures, I am gradually recovering from jaundice caused by a blocked bile duct, but that – it turns out – is the least of my problems.
I have cancer. It started in my gall bladder, has infected both lobes of my liver and probably also my pancreas and some lymph nodes, plus one tumour is massed around a group of major blood vessels in the same volume, effectively ruling out any chance of surgery to remove the tumours either in the short or long term.
The bottom line, now, I’m afraid, is that as a late stage gall bladder cancer patient, I’m expected to live for ‘several months’ and it’s extremely unlikely I’ll live beyond a year. So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last.
A website is being set up where friends, family and fans can leave messages for me and check on my progress. It should be up and running during this week and a link to it will be here on my official website as soon as it’s ready.
Iain Banks”
A sad, sad day and one that makes me ashamed for being so hesitant in following my own literary ambitions. The world is loosing a truly great Mind.
Scottish writer Val McDermid has a nice tribute in the Guardian.
Good Show, Sir – and the cover of Wicked by L.A. Banks
I love book covers, as some of you may know (pop over here to see why). I especially love what some pseudo-intellectuals pigeon-hole as “genre” fiction. That’s Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror to you and me (though a lot of other stuff is lumped in there too).
The wonderful website, “Good Show, Sir”, collects some of the best – or rather, worse – book covers out there. Many are very American in style and feel thanks to that nation’s fine tradition in pulp art. One of my joys is taking the same book title from the US and European markets and comparing their frequently quite divergent cover illustrations. Unfortunately, in these increasingly bland and homogeneous times, more and more jacket art is becoming identical, with only details of language and currency to tell works apart.
Enjoy!
Good Show, Sir – The Little People by John Christopher
Grant Morrison
The New Statesman carries a long interview by Laura Sneddon with Grant Morrison, the well-regarded Scottish comics’ writer closely associated with the reboots of such classic American superhero titles as Batman, Superman and the Fantastic Four, as well as his own creations (not least 2000ADs early anti-hero Zenith). I’ve never really been a fan of the superhero genre in comics and graphic novels, especially in the DC and Marvel form, but Morrison is clearly a creative force to be reckoned with and one has to admire his abilities as a writer (and by all accounts he is also quite a nice chap!). Recently there was something of a storm in a teacup about such a well-known left-wing figure accepting an MBE (Member of the British Empire) or ceremonial order from the British head of state, not least in Scottish nationalist circles. However that will be nothing to the flurry of excitement in global Fandom when Morrison’s version of DC Comics’ Wonder Woman hits the shelves in 2013!
Warlock, The Fighting Fantasy Magazine, Number 2, 1984
Fighting Fantasy!
There is a name to instil some serious nostalgia in a geek of a certain age. Sci-Fi and Fantasy critic Damien Walter looks at the still flourishing (if lower profile) FF scene over on the Guardian.
Anyone remember the incredible artwork displayed on the the covers of the Fighting Fantasy books? Or how about the illustrations found in the pages of the White Dwarf magazine from the Games Workshop? I could never really get into the whole gaming culture (especially the desktop folk) but I enjoyed the publications around it, though as usual it was the artwork that initially drew me in. A particular passion at one time was the spinoff publication, Warlock, which I collected until its premature demise in 1986. My favourite cover illustration from that magazine remains Peter Andrew Jones’ the Snow Witch from “Warlock 2”, which I redrew several times. But then I discovered Métal Hurlant and left the tame world of Fighting Fantasy behind me.
Ah, youth…
Heavy Metal – Métal Hurlant – Classic Covers
Mary Tamm, Romana
Unfortunately I believe I have got to that certain age when the authors and musicians and actors and actresses of one’s formative years seem to pass from life with alarming regularity. Sometimes one views it with a raised eyebrow and a pinch of surprise or sadness. Sometimes though it instils a real sense of loss, as if a little bit of one’s childhood passes away with them.
That is certainly the case with the death of the British actress Mary Tamm at the all too early age of 62 (and from cancer, but of course). Sixty-two? What a terribly short life that is when one thinks about it. Three score years and two is no time to have experienced all that this world has to offer. How unfair it seems.
The Doctor and Romana, Tom Baker and Mary Tamm
Mary Tamm, in the character of the Time Lord Romana, was for me the greatest Doctor Who companion, bar none. No shrinking violet, or substitute adolescent-cum-viewer, she was every bit the equal of Tom Baker’s wonderfully exuberant, idiosyncratic Doctor: intelligent, self-confident, elegant, she put every female companion before, and after, to shame. Unfortunately in some ways that was her undoing as writers and producers latterly pushed her character towards the more traditional role of women in Science-Fiction. Lots of screaming, knuckle-biting, and falling over one’s high-heels while being pursued by monsters. Eventually she left the show and it was all the poorer for it. Until the character of Amy Pond appeared there was no one really like her in the Who universe.
Perhaps that’s why I’m attracted to smart and articulate women? Exposure to a genuine female role model at a very early age? (and why I detest tramp-stamp Barbie dolls and Jersey Shore wannabes – in Ireland they inhabit the television space titled appropriately enough Fade Street. Though looking at the pictures of Mary Tamm today I’ve just realised that quite a few of my ex-girlfriends had more than a passing resemblance to her in the role of Romana, and not just in terms of personality…!)
Romana and the Doctor, Mary Tamm and Tom Baker
Not so long ago I purchased a Doctor Who boxset, The Key of Time, first broadcast from 1978 to ‘79, a vague recollection from early childhood that surprised me by even better in reality that in memory. Thanks in no small measure to the quality of Mary Tamm’s acting Tom Baker excels as the two bounce off each other in the sort of Douglas Adam’s verbal jousting that one rarely sees on television these days (Aaron Sorkin apart. Talking of which, The Newsroom, excellent – but also a little dated, preachy and wide-eyed optimistic. American TV journalism as American liberals would wish it to be – but not as it actually is. Of course Ireland’s journalistic elite are just as bad)
If only all classic Doctor Who stories had stood up so (relatively) well to the passing of time. Have you tried watching any of the Davidson, Baker or McCoy era programmes? While one can make allowances for the antediluvian period they was made in, limited budgets, the audience demographics and all the rest there are only so many excuses one can make. Be honest. Much of it is terrible. In fact as far I remember I was an early escapee from the sinking ship, abandoning the good Doctor in the first outing of Sylvester McCoy’s cringe-inducing Time Lord and his companion, the apocalyptically awful Melanie Bush (Bonnie screamin’ Langford!), followed by the less awful but just as irritating Ace (Sophie Aldred, in proto-Rose Tyler form, in a jacket covered with “right-on” badges. Arrrgh…!).
One longed for the class, wit and poise of the original Romana, and an actress of the calibre of Mary Tamm to bring those attributes alive.
Two Time Lords are better than one, the Doctor and Romana, Tom Baker and Mary Tamm
From the obituary in The Guardian:
“The Doctor Who actor Mary Tamm has died aged 62, her agent has said.
Tamm, who played the Doctor’s companion Romana alongside Tom Baker, died at a hospital in London on Thursday morning. She had been suffering from cancer for 18 months.
The actress was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, the daughter of Estonian refugees, and had a long career on stage and screen. She starred in the films The Odessa File and The Likely Lads and had recurring roles in the soaps Brookside and EastEnders.
Tamm, who lived in Battersea, south London, trained at Rada. Her first professional job was at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre where she worked alongside Derek Jacobi, Joan Sims and Ronnie Barker. From there she moved on to television work and film, her first feature film being Tales That Witness Madness with Kim Novak.”
I think I’ll have another watch of Mary Tamm in one of her most enjoyable roles this weekend, in tribute and affection (and a wee bit of mortality-driven nostalgia. Ah, age…)
A quick post to note the passing of legendary American science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury. From the Guardian:
“Ray Bradbury, who has died aged 91, was the 20th-century American short-story writer par excellence. Although he was also known for a few novels – principally the science-fiction book-burning dystopia Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) – as well as for children’s books, plays, screenplays and poetry, it was for his short stories that he gained his widest fame, with his best-known collection being The Martian Chronicles (1950). His tales were collected in dozens of volumes and reprinted in countless magazines and anthologies, including many school textbooks, making his name familiar to younger generations.
Born in the small town of Waukegan, Illinois, Bradbury arrived in Los Angeles with his parents, Leonard and Esther, in 1934, and lived there for the rest of his life. At the time of his graduation from Los Angeles high school in 1938, he was already publishing stories in amateur fanzines, and was an active member of the LA Science Fiction Society, where he rubbed shoulders with more senior writers such as Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett and Robert A Heinlein.
The best of his early stories appeared in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, edited at that time by Dorothy McIlwraith. These were moody, macabre pieces which avoided the stock ghosts and monsters of supernatural fiction. The Crowd, about a conspiracy of ghoulish spectators at traffic accidents, and The Scythe, about a farmer who involuntarily takes on the role of Death, were typical of Bradbury’s prolific output in 1943-44. These were collected, along with many similarly grotesque pieces, in his first book, Dark Carnival (1947), with some rewritten for his definitive collection of horror stories, The October Country (1955). He also contributed numerous stories to the crime and science-fiction pulps of the mid-1940s, some of them unreprinted to this day.
Ironically, however, it was in the lowly science-fiction pulps that his second – and best – book had its origins. With The Million-Year Picnic in 1946, he began a loose series about pioneer settlers on Mars and, over the next four years, these appeared primarily in the gaudiest of poorly paying pulp magazines, Planet Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. They were gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (known in Britain as The Silver Locusts).
The Martian Chronicles was followed by The Illustrated Man (1951), The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953) and, a little later, A Medicine for Melancholy (1959; known in Britain as The Day It Rained Forever). These, along with his short novel Fahrenheit 451 (filmed by François Truffaut in 1966), remain the core Bradbury books. The best of their tales have a magical quality that endures.
Although he continued to write to the end, most of Bradbury’s work after 1960 was less successful. Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) were adequately entertaining mysteries. Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) and From the Dust Returned (2001) were latter-day attempts at “fix-up” novels, put together in the same style as Dandelion Wine. The former was based on “Irish” short stories written in the 1950s and 60s, inspired by his experience of working on location with John Huston on the 1956 film of Moby Dick (for which Bradbury wrote the screenplay); and the latter on very early fantasy stories of the 1940s. Later collections ranged from The Machineries of Joy (1964) to Driving Blind (1997), One More for the Road (2002) and We’ll Always Have Paris (2009).
Despite a 50-year decline from his peak of the 1950s, Bradbury remained a much-loved writer, his work often adapted for film and television. Never a great traveller (he preferred a bicycle to a car, and usually avoided aircraft), he lived quietly and was the recipient of many awards ranging from an O Henry prize in 1947 to a Bram Stoker lifetime achievement award in 1988 and, in 2004, a National Medal of Arts award.
Marguerite [his wife] died in 2003. Bradbury is survived by their daughters, Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra.”
Below is Ray Bradbury introducing the last performance of his Irish play, Falling Upward, in Los Angeles, 2007, a comedy based on his experiences staying in Ireland in the 1950s.
The Guardian holds an excellent Q&A with comics’ writer Alan Moore, one of the modern doyens of the genre, focusing in particular on his series of comics and graphic novels beginning with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and how he views the third volume in the saga:
‘When we started the third volume of League, we got a vague idea of how the plot would progress and would enable us to use characters and situations from respective Leagues – 1910, 1969 and 2009. But as the book has actually progressed as it has been written, the prevailing thing about it seems to be a critique of culture. And the most noticeable thing is the decline if you like – diversification. It’s always the most healthy thing for a species and it’s probably the same for culture as well.
When we start out in 1910 we have a fairly rich background to draw from – we’ve got Brecht’s Threepenny Opera which was set around that time, we’ve got all of those wonderful occult characters that were being created around then. By the time we get to 1969 we’ve got some equally interesting characters but they’re a kind of different category. They’re more often drawn from popular culture, because of course popular culture has expanded incredibly in the 50 years since 1910 when culture was still largely the preserve of an educated elite. But changes in society over the first 50 years of the century meant that by the middle years culture had changed. Certainly by 1969 where pop culture was predominant and previous culture was perhaps in danger of becoming increasingly marginalised. And by the time we return to the League story in 2009, it’s a much bleaker cultural landscape still.
So I suppose inevitably you’re going to find in this book that there are contrasts that are going to arise between the different eras. And there’s also a marked sense that culture is possibly contracting in certain areas. There is the thing of the richness of the Victorian or the Edwardian era. That the range of characters and ideas to draw upon have nowhere near the same breadth that they seem to back in the day. This is something that has purely emerged from the story. Wasn’t anything that we necessarily set out to write. But it seems to be the case.’
He also talks about working with long time creative partner and acclaimed comics artist Kevin O’Neill:
‘It is an absolute pleasure to work with Kevin. He is one of the finest and most distinctive comic book artists this country has ever turned out. Also, he is the only one of my mainstream collaborators who is from a similar background to myself and who has ever taken my side in any of my bust-ups with the comic companies. This is why Kevin is the only person that I’m still working with. During the unpleasantness with DC, he was taking the brunt of it. Because I’d walked off and he still had to finish the book. They were very angry that we got sick of them and were taking it to another publisher. He is as good an individual as he is an artist.’
For some more on graphic novels and comics visit here.
John Carter of Mars holds a special place in the history of Science-Fiction. The hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ series of Barsoom novels he is one of the archetypal figures of the genre, a character who has been reimagined numerous times and under numerous guises in the works of other authors. So it was with more than a little trepidation that I read the news last year of Disney Picture’s planned movie version of the first book, A Princess of Mars (1912). Looking at the pre-release teaser for John Carter it would seem that my worse fears may well be realised. Oh dear…
I’ve written several articles about the long tradition of Irish language authors working in the Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror genres and will post them here soon. In the meantime here is some interesting essays which touch on the subject from the Celtic Cultural Studies journal. Interesting question: when does Mythology and Folklore cross over into literary genre? Does Irish Mythology qualify as Fantasy?
More of this from me anon but in the meantime we have:
Garland Kimmer, “‘For We Have New Worlds Here’: Ireland, Myth, and Alternative Heroism in Fantasy Fiction”
Kate Hennessey, “Star-Crossed Lovers or Gun-Toting Gangsters?: Paul Mercier’s Adaptation of The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne”
Philip O’Leary, “Science Fiction and Fantasy in the Irish Language”
C.W. Sullivan III, “Conscientious Use: Welsh Celtic Myth and Legend in Fantastic Fiction”
I have a lengthy appreciation of the wonderful British-born Irish language writer Cathal Ó Sándair - whose prodigious body of quality works would shame most other writers, in any language – that I will post here as well.
Meanwhile here is a link to the blog of Irish Sci-Fi author Peadar Ó Guilín, whose new children’s book The Deserter (image at the top) is receiving a lot of positive press at the moment.
And if you like your Science-Fiction or Fantasy with a hefty dose of Irish and Celtic inspiration try these gems:
Being something of a Pan-Celtic Nationalist (and Pan-Gaelic in particular) I like to keep a close eye on my fellow sea-divided Gaels. So I regularly peruse the main Scottish blogsites (I rarely bother with Scotland’s media – it’s as North British as Ireland’s is West British).
My favourites are the excellent Gerry Hassan (read it!), Pat Kane (yes, he of former pop-combo Hue an’ Cry), Joan McAlpine (great blog name: Go, Lassie, Go) and Bella Caledonia. The latter carries a good overview of the Culture Cycle of books by Scottish author Iain M. Banks (and a recent SNP convert from being a long-standing and very vocal British Labour supporter). It is well worth a read if you are unfamiliar with Banks’ wonderful Sci-Fi output. Very European, very Scottish, very, very good.
My own thoughts on the Culture series can be found here, and here.
This weekend the Books section of the British Guardian newspaper is devoted to all things Science-Fiction, so pop over for a look. An introduction by Iain M. Banks, reviews of the works of Gene Wolfe, China Miéville, some author favourites and much more.
Follow the link to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/science-fiction
