ZONKED OUT ON TRUNG (Editorial)
Imagine if we cured all insanity one day, all neurosis. Bang: all of us sane forever. Would the knowledge we can never escape into madness, that that option, that port from the harsh storm of responsibility was forever denied us send us all... well what?
Not mad, certainly: that's been cured! Hyper-sane perhaps?
Hyper-sanity might be the most terrifying psychosis of all...
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This
Israel-Gaza conflict has to be the most bullshit-prone war of my
life. Every news item from every source has an angle or an axe to
grind.
If it ain't anti-Semitic it's Islamaphobic, if it ain't
pro-Hamas utter nuttery it's pro-Zionist self-righteous swagger, if
it ain't western-'splaining it's Russian equivocating. All of it
topped off with a zillion web yahoos with their own 'modest'
proposals of how they'd sort it out if only they were in charge. You
cannot get the straight dope with this one.
F*ck
it I'm gonna have that second slice of cheesecake...
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Has science fiction become decadent? Lost its way? It's a question hovering over British fandom of late, and one hard to refute when our leading authors see nothing wrong in receiving fellatio mid-interview...
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You
say 'Bowie SF song' most people go 'Space Oddity' but I've never been
a big fan. Too obvious, too conscious, too Arthur C Clarke.
Lyrically, I much prefer the abstract stuff, the one's that suggest
apocalyptic futures with a few half-seen glimpses. Your brain has to
fill out the rest: Diamond Dogs, Drive-In Saturday (which if you
ignore the 50s doo-wop vibe is actually too nightmarish to consider
for too long), Five Years, TVC 15.
I
learnt from him that world building ain't all about drawing maps and
detailing planetary orbits etc. A lot of its throwing fishing hooks
into the murky waters of your mental abyss and reeling up strange,
strange beasts.
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Tales From The Nightshift:
20:00: Guest, a builder, tells me I have strong thighs.
20:30: Man asks me to book room. Room is in our Newport, Wales, branch.
21:30: Sit down for coffee. Suddenly realise that nearly twenty years ago my young naive self unwittingly turned down sex. And in a way that must have seemed immensely arrogant.
21:35: Buy chocolate from machine.
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I've
noticed a funny thing. I listen to a lot of old radio comedy on me,
er, radio and I've noticed I don't find anything before 1952 funny.
It's as precise as that: 1952. It's like that's where a
socio-cultural sheer drop is, an event horizon my funny bone can't
cross. Weird.
Believe
me I WANT to love ITMA, if only for the fact is confused and
disturbed the Nazis (Goebals had his people conduct investigations as
to what this 'peculiar Anglo-Saxon propaganda' was all about).
It's
an oddity alright.
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If Leicester was a coastal city there'd be an HMS Mardy by now.
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