by Ken Goldman / Alasdair Stuart / Paul Kane / Anthony Leigh
You would be forgiven, after having read the back-cover blurb, for thinking that Once Bitten was a shameless rip-off of every other vampire romance novel you’ve ever read (or avoided). Indeed, the book begins with a plot that seems instantly predictable – the simplicity of the writing, acting as camouflage for the diabolical plot that follows. You think you know where the story is heading, then you’re suddenly driven down an unmarked sidestreet with nothing but your signal-less mobile phone for company, and there’s something moving in the shadows…
Despite having an aversion to horror staples that don’t take themselves too seriously, I couldn’t help but enjoy Once Bitten. Rardin has a great career ahead of her – she’s made vampires fun again!
The Complete Nemesis the Warlock, volume 2
Written by Pat Mills, Drawn by Bryan Talbot and Kevin O’Neill
Published by Rebellion
One of the most unusual and frequently grotesque of the classic 2000AD strips, ‘Nemesis’ embodies everything that the publication has done right over its lifetime. Challenging art, boundary pushing stories and a concept that feels genuinely alien, and at times genuinely disturbing. This is about as far from the desperately tired pop culture satire of slump period Dredd as its possible to get and the end result is something that’s both difficult and endlessly rewarding.
The basic concept is this; in the far future, Earth is at the centre of a colossal and colossally xenophobic empire. Ruled over by Torquemada, the Terran Empire is horrified not only of aliens but of the contamination they bring. The ultimate embodiment of order, they are opposed by the ultimate embodiment of chaos. Nemesis is a demonic looking alien sorcerer who embodies chaos and, with the help of his assistant Purity, sets out to bring Torquemada down.
It’s an iconic story in almost every sense with Bryan Talbot’s precise, at times elegant art and Kevin O’Neill’s nightmarish, insectile characters somehow meshing perfectly. This is a world of skin crawling terror, sexual repression, big swords and an alien with a beaky nose who looks a lot like the devil. It’s the perfect combination of the insane, over the top action that 2000AD does at its best (Nemesis’ son resurrects Satanus the T-Rex, star of a minor 2000AD strip. As a pet.) with some remarkably well handled character moments (Most notably in ‘The Two Torquemadas’ which sees the far future dictator meet his namesake.)
However, what really works here is the nightmarish tone of the world. From the containment suits married couples wear when they sleep in case they touch or have…feelings…in the night to Torquemada himself, a towering and oddly insectile figure of spiky edges and desperate intellect, this is a story which reads like a waking nightmare. It’s a point driven home by the fact that Nemesis, unusually, has no problem concentrating on the big picture. He’s quite happy to sacrifice lives in order to get the job done and this, combined with his somewhat eccentric take on the truth marks him out as a far more interesting, far more ambiguous character than the standard square jawed (And less beaky nosed hero). This is a story, as is noted in the after word about race and prejudice and it’s dealt with in remarkably smart, elegant terms. Which given the amount of dogfights, swordfights and dinosaurs on display is no small achievement. Whilst the Monad stories which see a guest appearance from the ABC Warriors (To say nothing of a story which is finished IN ABC Warriors) are a little clunky, the rest of this volume is an elegant and at times very disturbing look at a broken world and the closest thing it has to a hero.
Nemesis is a relentlessly spiky, difficult story and it doesn’t have any of the cosy, jack booted familiarity of Dredd, or Rogue Trooper or Strontium Dog. There haven’t been endless rehashes of the story, haven’t been any ‘lost tales’, just a single run of books exploring the conflict between order and chaos, human and alien. Difficult, hugely ambitious and jam packed with cheerfully horrific violence, these are some of the best stories 2000AD have ever published. Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! Or go against the flow, and pick up the story of Nemesis. You won’t regret it.
Poltergeist 25th Anniversary Edition
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring Craig T. Nelson, Jobeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke
Cert 15, Warner DVD, £16.99
Can it really be 25 years since Poltergeist came out? Now that really is scary. For many, this remains the most popular ghost movie to come out of the Reagan era, taking the disturbing family horror trend of Rosemary’s Baby, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (ironic for reasons you’ll see below) and Halloween, then boiling it down for the masses. Responsible for this were producers Steven Spielberg (who came up with the story and co-wrote the screenplay), Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. Hired as director was the aforementioned TCM’s Tobe Hooper, though many have argued that Spielberg was so hands on that it might as well have been his film. And, indeed, I defy anyone to watch it and not sit there thinking: this is a little like Close Encounters or E.T., just with a supernatural flavour.
The film begins by setting up the all American family’s cosy life in suburbia – we even get the Stars and Stripes at the beginning. Dad Steve Freeling (Nelson) sells houses in this new property development, Mom Diane (Williams) is a homemaker for three cute kids, including little Robbie (Oliver Robins) and blonde-haired Carol Anne (O’Rourke). Life is fine until Carol Anne begins to act oddly, becoming obsessed with TV static and claiming that “They’re here.” When Diane finds that her kitchen chairs are moving of their own accord and the cutlery is bending, even though Uri Geller isn’t her neighbour, they begin to suspect there might be something supernatural at work.
When things take a turn for the nasty – Robbie is almost eaten by the creepy living tree outside his window and Carol Anne is sucked into the television – it becomes a case of ‘Who ya gonna call?’ when three intrepid parapsychologists from a nearby University run tests on the house. When they too witness a light show the likes of which would make Jean-Michel Jarre feel humbled, and the spirits begin picking on them too, it soon becomes clear that they need to call on a true psychic medium to cleanse the house and bring back Carol Anne. But why have the dead come back and what exactly does it have to do with the graveyard at the top of the hill…?
If it’s excitement, spectacle and lightweight chills you’re looking for, then Poltergeist should already be on your list of ‘to buy’ DVDs (this is the first time it’s been released, even though the second and third instalments have been out for ages). To be fair, the film does contain some extremely creepy moments – who could forget the bubbling steak, or the clown under the bed (enough to give anyone a case of caulrophobia)? But, as with all Spielberg family fare, the safe line is virtually always taken and it is very rarely crossed. The acting, though, is exceptional – particularly from the late O’Rourke, who sadly died after making Poltergeist III. It’s a testament to her that she will always be remembered for this role and will always have a place in horror film history.
Extras in this anniversary edition, which is only a single disc version, include a two part ‘They Are Here’ documentary which examines the real-life phenomenon of poltergeists from a scientific and a psychic standpoint, much like the film itself does. There’s some interesting material here (I especially like the parapsychologist who was inspired to go into this line of work because of the cool equipment used in the 1982 movie), though the shows put together only add up to about half an hour. I could have sworn I’d seen it advertised somewhere that we’d get a ‘making of’ featurette as well, or at the very least some commentaries?
These criticisms aside, the film is still worth picking up and can still hold its head high in this age of CGI effects. A classic and deservedly so.
Editorial
The Banquo Effect
by Alasdair Stuart
The last ten days have seen, as they frequently do, a minor ripple go through the internet. Astonishingly though, this ripple has had nothing to do with Optimus Prime’s colour scheme or the latest chapter in the rolling fight between the Science Fiction Writers of Amer
ica and, amusingly, several American science fiction writers.
No, this one hit closer to home. Specifically, this one was about science fiction magazine circulation. But don’t worry, those of you already skipping to the reviews, or the internet, or going to staple things to your forehead, this article ISN’T. At least, not directly.
Long story short, every year Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology runs the distribution numbers for Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction and Interzone and every year, frankly, it makes for pretty depressing reading. Numbers are down, in one case circulation has dropped by 13 PERCENT since the previous year and it’s hard not to look at those figures and feel like there’s little point in going on. If those figures are to be believed, we’re a dying breed, literally. Genre readers and writers are getting old and new people, according to those figures at any rate, aren’t coming in.
Comic author Warren Ellis dropped the pebble into the pond on this one, posting the figures up on his website early last week. Ellis is an agitator without peer a man who is fully prepared to throw a grenade into a room and then watch the results and this was no exception. Within days, several authors had broken cover and started discussing ways the figures could be raised, the magazines saved. Cory Doctorow, on boingboing.net went as far as effectively laying out a survival strategy that would not only put the magazines’ content in front of more people but raise their profile and bring them, from Doctorow’s point of view at least, into the closing decade of the 20th century. We live in a world where copyright is no longer mandatory, where podcasts (More on those in a moment) and rss feeds and pdfs can reach HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of readers and for magazines not to take advantage of that sort of technology, Doctorow argues, is not only foolish but potentially suicidal.
He’s hard to disagree with on this one too. Doctorow’s a passionate, articulate and phenomenally talented writer who has made his bones, by and large, by giving his books away. If you’ve not read his stuff, then beat a path to his website and start with Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom. One of the finest science fiction novels of the last twenty years and you can read it, for nothing, legally. Tens of thousands of people did and a lot of them went and bought it anyway.
But that’s a whole different ballgame. What these figures have shown, what the people who broke ranks to discuss them have demonstrated is that we live in a world where there is nothing BUT alternative content models, nothing BUT, to use a profoundly offensive phrase, paths to market. An author can build their fan ase without going NEAR a publisher at this point, and then, go to that publisher, or that magazine with thousands of people in tow.
It’s a point that John Scalzi, author of Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades (Again, beat a path to this man’s door. The website will be at the bottom of the page) made later in the week. Scalzi steered the middle ground between Doctorow’s passionate triage and Ellis’ sniping by pointing out that of the last seven Campbell Award winners, precisely ONE was published in the ‘big three’ US magazines prior to winning the award. Scalzi’s point is both simple and devastatingly effective. Take a step back and it becomes clear that these magazines are just part of a larger picture, a richer, more vibrant and healthy picture than those sales figures ever begin to demonstrate.
Which brings us back to podcasting. I’m going to put my hands up here and say I’m a huge, huge podcast fan. I’m lucky enough to work for a podcast I’ve followed since the beginning (Pseudopod.org) and I’m a huge fan of authors like Scott Sigler, Matt Wallace (Again, Failed Cities Monologues is something you need in your life.), Matthew Wayne Selznick and many more. Every, single, one of these people have thousands of listeners, many are now making the jump to mainstream media (Wallace is screenwriting, Selznick’s first book is out with his second to follow, Sigler regularly dominates the Amazon pre-order charts) and they all, almost without exception have done it themselves.
And yet for many podcasting is still a dirty word. One of my abiding memories of the last year is the response several people had to the word ‘podcasting’ at a BFS meeting in London. Varying from disinterest to outright disdain, it was something which hadn’t seemed to register, a nebulous concept with nothing to back it up and a vague sense of the cheap and cheesy.
Tens of thousands of listeners. In some cases hundreds of thousands. A building block to a career, and all you need is dedication, the cost of website hosting and a thirty pound headset.
And that’s even before we get to livejournal, or the success of sites like 365tomorrows who do one flash piece a day and have done so for the last three years. There are as many ways to get your work out there now as there are authors and yes, all of them require application of effort, and yes, all of them require moving outside your comfort zone but IT’S TIME TO DO THAT.
We have never been in a better position than we are now. Genre fiction is mainstream fiction and anyone who argues that point clearly doesn’t own a TV. Lost and Heroes are the two most successful TV shows of the last four years, one a superhero series, the other a piece of philosophical science fiction/horror. Look at the critical success of graphic novels, of science fiction and fantasy movies (And dull as the SAW films may be, they take three times their budget every, single, time.) of the return of Doctor Who to the TV and it’s massive success. Look at Primeval, at Cape Wrath, Stephen Moffat’s Hyde, Jed Mercurio’s Frankenstein even the BBC’s Robin Hood. This is OUR time, WE are the mainstream now and there has never been a better time to take advantage of that fact.
So if you’ve got an idea, do it. Make a podcast, start an LJ novel, hell produce tiny pieces of fiction on twitter, I know people who do. Stop worrying about how small the campfires are getting and go and make one of your own. Because this is our time, our chance and we will never have a better opportunity than the one we have now.
LINKS
www.warrenellis.com –Warren Ellis
www.boingboing.net – Rolling science culture blog to which Cory Doctorow contributes.
www.craphound.com Doctorow’s website
http://scalzi.com/whatever/ - John Scalzi’s blog
Podcast Authors
http://www.scottsigler.net/ - Scott Sigler’s homepage.
His new novel, NOCTURNAL, launches on Halloween.
http://matt-wallace.net/ - Matt Wallace’s homepage with a link to The Failed Cities Monologues, his superb piece of science fiction noir.
http://www.mattselznick.com - Matthew Wayne Selznick’s homepage
www.escapepod.org – Steve Eley’s science fiction anthology podcast
www.pseudopod.org – Its sister show Pseudopod, fronted by yours truly.
www.podcastle.org – The fantasy show, launching soon
Technical Links
Podcasting DIY
See Hub’s own podcast tutorial in issue 3 available from
http://www.hub-mag.co.uk/backissues.html
Audacity
audacity.sourceforge.net/
The industry standard audio utility. So easy even I can use it and available for both Mac and PC.
Twitter
http://twitterfic.googlepages.com/ - 140 character fiction produced through micro blogging utility.
www.365tomorrows.com – One piece of 600 word flash fiction a day. EVERY day.
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