Reviews, Blog, and the occasional Rant
Halting State is set in the not too distant future. Scotland has devolved (in a political not Darwinian sense), gained independence, and the world is even more saturated with information technology and computer nerdiness than ever before.
In China Mexicans were quarantined and in Hong Kong a hotel got blockaded. Eqypt threatened to kill all its pigs and in Afghanistan, there was talk of killing the country’s sole hog. They only have one in the whole country apparently, which is a bit weird.
In my youth alien planets were desert but today they are forests. To be specific, in my youth they looked like the Vasquez rocks outside LA and now they look like a Canadian forest.
I missed two marches in London I would like to have seen.
Killzone starts off in the mother ship and you are introduced to yourself as Sevchenko or ‘Sev’, a double hard Sergeant in the ISA Special Forces Alpha.
This is the life of a transmission controller doing the nightshift. We walk among you looking relatively normal. We work in dark rooms without windows. We literally watch tv for a living hoping it won’t break. We are the ones responsible for putting up ‘Sorry we are experiencing technical difficulties’ pictures as we panic and realise we’ve done something wrong.
This game starts with your birth. Literally. You are pulled out of your mother and see the doctor and your dad – who happens to be Liam Neason (the voice anyway).
You may have guessed by now that I get pissed off by conspiracy types that claim we haven’t been to the moon. What they have done is look at all the stuff NASA has put out and rather than construct any decent arguments, have simply picked holes in the ‘proof’.
Ringworld is superb. I often prefer pre-1980s Sci Fi as it tends to be more idea and philosophy based. The world itself is a very cool, very huge idea and the possibilities for it are almost endless.
When Richard Mayhew rescues what seems to be a wounded homeless girl, he suddenly finds himself sucked into an alternate underground London.
Apparently there is a Mexican fighting league that are all midgets. Two of them were out drinking and whoring before a big match (well why not, it sounds like a stressful job) when they got chatting to a couple of hookers.
Although over 95% of the Thai population are Buddhists, there is also a strong belief in Animism or spirit worship. Ghosts and spirits (known as Pii) abound and are found everywhere from offices and homes to haunted trees and fruit groves.
Don’t be put off by the fact that this book is a ‘Russian classic’, Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons is truly worth a read.
My favourite has to be: (from Metro) ‘George Osborne charged the taxpayer £47 for two DVDs of his own speech on Value For Taxpayers’ Money.’
Apologies for the huge gap in blog entries. And reviews. And anything new at all being added to the site. I have been busy and I even got married.
It’s now 6am and I am at work. There is something wrong with the way my life is going. Working in TV as a freelancer is a bizarre way to make a living.
I caught a cold and while flopping pathetically on the couch and lamenting my illness, my girlfriend (reading the paper) said that maybe I had swine flu.
I have tried to avoid the popular press for a couple of days and I’ve been scouring all the piles of magazines that have littered my flat. I have discovered a few things of minor interest that I would not have otherwise known. For example, Hitler really did only have one ball.
Colin Martin worked in construction, had his own small business, and was married with kids. An almost clichéd idyll that makes the subsequent fall all the more compelling.
JG Ballard died of cancer aged 78 on the 19th of April 2009. It is sad to think he will never release another book. He was usually labelled a Sci Fi writer but he frequently strayed from this label to write unique, often dystopian, scenarios that sort of/kind of/might just happen.