#Emergency Reviews

[chickenstrangers]

ONLY FRIENDS | EPISODE 4

YOUR EMERGENCY CONTACT HAS EXPERIENCED AN EMERGENCY by CHEN CHEN (2022)

[scpaesthetics]

SCP Aesthetics: 2527 (requested by @sleeping-raccoon, written by daveyoufool)

What do? (monochrome, computers, torture)

[myfriendgoo94]

Nerds Gummy Clusters Review

[petty-tears]

EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS!!!!!!!!

Please like, RT, share

I need serious help for things like basic needs and data so I can call to get a job and go to the doctor. I need this for food for me and my ten year old brother, to help my parents pay rent, buy gas, buy medicine, we're on our last legs. My priority is getting a job however I can't do that without the ability to call, I just need help.

[ryuki-blogs]

- Schwarzette is indefinitely out of stock but I'm lucky enough to grab the last Calibarn, excited

- she finally arrives

- on the runner the faceplate is broken into three pieces

[queer-ragnelle]

Post an Arthuriana Daily quote without Ragnelle, Gawain, Dagonet, Kay, Bedwyr, or Palomides challenge level: Impossible.

[fagsex]

see no evil 1971, occasionally billed as 'blind terror' starring mia farrow is genuinely an interesting and creative take on the home invasion and stalker subgenres in horror, especially for its time. spoilers because i am about to ramble about this film.

many seem to prefer the billing title 'blind terror', as did i for a portion of the film. the terror and dread it builds as the audience knows whats going on and the protagonist is literally blind to it is stomach churning. from the beginning, you feel sympathy for farrow's protagonist, a young woman recently totally blinded by a horseriding accident, even more devasting as we learn she was a champion/award-winning racer, but you can also empathize with her desires to be more independent, even moving in with her cousins. she was clearly a very capable woman before her accident, and even moreso, i would say, afterwards. shes kind, but shes headstrong, and unafraid to do what she pleases or speak her mind. she rides a horse she hardly knows in the mud, in the rain, smiling. you can tell how free and safe she feels, and it is a taxing sport. shes confident and it keeps her alive again and again. despite obvious appearances as a damsel in distress, you dont really feel pity for her, you are moreso scared FOR her, because she is just so personable.

with that is the title see no evil. this mainly refers to the fact she cannot see the many corpses of her family members littering her home, and cannot run anywhere but foreward, nor hide. this in itself holds a great deal of tension. the audience ourselves cannot see the evil either. the antagonist cuts off at highest his breast, and usually centers around his knee downwards, showing a pair of emblematic cowboy boots, first seen walking out of a gorey, sensational double feature that is meant to comment on young sensibilities to horror and keenness towards the vile.

however, it holds a seconday meaning as well in function to the plot that makes me heavily prefer it for the films billing title. on appearances, characters are consistently jumping to conclusions and judging each other, endangering themselves and those around them as they do. farrow's sarah's family treats her like glass, and as if shes newly weaker than the rest of them. they see her as in need of protection, and are unable to protect themselves at the hands of a psychotic stalker. at one point, she is driven to her boyfriends house, and her family member driving her becomes enraged at a caravan blocking the road. even when theyre very quickly moving the way, he incessantly lays on the horn, scowling, and making his comments about his disdain for [romani]*. despite having no way to perceive the scenario, outside of his comment about his dislike of the people, sarah remains positive and understanding, explaining theyre not hurting anyone, and she sees nothing wrong with them. upon arriving at her boyfriends ranch, she makes it clear they can only continue if she is given her autonomy, and when she is allowed to ride a horse she cannot even see, cannot even judge, she is at home. she is fully confident in the horse and its abilities, and holds no fear. she is never once mistaken in this confidence.

later on, when she returns home and the next day discovers her family murdered, and the gardener barely alive, he reveals to her that theres a bracelet in the hall, with a mans name on it. he dies before she finds it, and she is left without the name on it. as the killer returns, she blindly flees and finds easy home in the camp of the [roma]* people they encountered earlier in the film. a mother quickly takes her in, takes care of her, and listens to her story. when her son, tom, comes home, they read the bracelet together, and perceive this name as that of his brother who they see as trouble, 'jack', mentioning they told him to stay away from 'her'. they want to protect him, but cant bring themselves to hurt her, and drive her out just far enough off the road to where she cannot be immediately found, nor immediately die.

meanwhile, her boyfriend and his friends who live and work at his home/ranch with him, return to her home, find the murdered family, and seek sarah. tom finds his brother jack, and begins to scold him and chide him heavily for what hes done, for ruining their lives. jack cries that he hasnt done anything, he had in fact went to see sarah's cousin sandy that night, which was mentioned around the beginning of the film, and left when no one seemed to be present.

when sarah's boyfriend finds her covered in mud, grime, and utter filth, it is not by sight, but by sound. she dredges through stretches of wet filth to try to save herself, never despairing at the waste around her, until she finds a way to make noise, which finally attracts her freedom. she is taken to her boyfriend's ranch, tells her story, and is suddenly left under the care of one of the ranch hands as he, and several other hands, leave. all he had taken from the story was that one of the [romani]* did it, and everyone makes disparaging comments about them as a whole.

they then hold the mother, and her two sons at gunpoint, threatening them and throwing what they view as due harassment, before jack explains that the bracelet found is not even his, he doesnt even wear them, he just had gone to the house to visit his girlfriend at night because they knew her parents wouldnt approve, that his family discouraged because they Knew how theyd be. the bracelet, in fact, says 'jacko'. they didnt even see it right, and leapt to conclusions that they viewed as so very obvious due to their prejudices and their clouded perspectives.

jacko, the killer, the stalker, is in fact a ranch hand of sarah's boyfriend, who was left alone to supervise her and watch over her. jacko wears starry cowboy boots, levi jeans, a tight white shirt tucked into them. he has bright blue eyes, and fluffy sandy blond hair past his ears. he is attractive. and when we saw him before his face, he was very obviously overtly confident in his actions and knowing he was going to get away with what he was doing. he seeks his bracelet in her pockets as she bathes, and when their hands brush, he doesnt even think before he begins to strangle her under the water, without even a lapse in thought. she is saved at the last minute by the friends, with the [roma]* family in tow, watching with a final sense of calm.

conclusions are leapt to again and again about guilt and prejudices. the camera work also ensures that any potential suspect for the booted killer is always shot above the knee, and all obvious candidates are innocent, such as the gardener, the boyfriend, and all men in the roma camp. jack, the boyfriend of her cousin, isnt alerted to the murders of his girlfriend's family, because of how they seem him, and he knows they will judge them both. he is immediately seen as the guilty party. even his family, knowing how people see them, fear the worst, and begin to pack up their lives, knowing they will never be seen, let alone found, as innocent. how the audience sees characters (archetypes like the Boyfriend, the Gardener/Butler), is taken into account, and played with.

how sarah 'sees' the world is portrayed is naive, and innocent, and you can feel you are meant to lambast her for how she perceives everyone and everything around her. but she is visibily the most confident and intelligent person in the film. she gets herself out of certain danger time and time again, by avoiding perception, and relying on anything but it. she survives. she keeps herself alive, and she maintains justice. when she says the [romani]* arent hurting anyone, at the beginning of the film, and later on when jack is the primary suspect, the early statement feels like a form of dramatic irony. and yet, when we reach the end of the film, we realize she was right. they werent. the mother took her in, tom couldnt bear hurting her even when he thought she could tear their lives down, jack just wanted to be happy and date a little higher up girl. theyre happy to see her safe at the end. the killer, the psychotic stalker was an all around boy next door that we first seen walking out of a (fictional) double billing of 'rapist cult / the convent murders', clear commentary on who we see as killers in a horror movie audience vs. who actually is. hes familiar with the victims family, they let him into the house. the mother is found dead in her living room chair, in comfort. the daughter, undressing in her bedroom. the father, the kitchen. at ease in their own domains in their own home, they knew him, and let him in. they saw him, and perceived him as innocent. when he saw sarah was absent, he killed them all.

he watched her move around the house, around her familys corpses, blind. so much of the film revolves around sight, perception, and its unreliability. often we hear that our sight is our most trustworthy sense, that seeing is believing, but the film goes above and beyond to portray this as incorrect. for an english, 1971 film, this is certainly an interesting twist in the horror genre. the little, blind, waifish blonde mia farrow is a confident, near fearless 'final girl'. the detested outsiders/foreigners/other are kind, and open their hearts and minds to the innocent. the angry villager like hands of the ranch are wrong. the psychotic stalker is a lithe blond prettyboy that the protagonists boyfriend trusted enough to leave her in the care of. expectations, perceptions, are turned on the head.

this is a lot to say what is obvious. this is a lot of repetition of the same concepts and meanings. but with a tight 1h29 runtime from 1971, it is very well done. despite mia farrow leading, and many other strong british actors assisting, it is very little spoke. about in horror, thriller, drama, or crime communities. it is a horribly underspoken of film. i enjoyed it quite a lot. the visuals (lol) are lovely, and the subversions are excellent. part of the reason i wanted to state all of this was due to the fact i was upset they were cheaping out and making the random roma boy the stalker, but this was the first red herring that had me in a while. it reflects the audience's, even well meaning, presuppositions. i liked it a lot

*the terms roma/romani were obviously not used in the film. i substituted the more broad slur that was used in the film for this terminology instead. the characters were unlikely to actually meant to be roma/romani, and the term was likely meant to be a broad term for travellers/nomads/people who live in caravans, as it typically is even today in england and other european countries. however, who knows!

[subterranean-heartsick-blues]

Emergency Broadcast by Boris Bacic book review

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I can be the subject of your dreams, your sickening desire / Don't you wanna see your man up close? A phoenix in the fire (Bite – Troye Sivan).

Here’s something new about me that you might not know; I’ve been really into the zombie genre for the last couple of months or so. I mean, I’ve always liked zombie movies and the like, and I've got opinions about them floating up to here, but I don’t think I’ve been this into them in… well, ever! I've got the craving. I'd say that I could easily ace trivia night whenever they get to the topic, but knowing me I'd probably choke and forget everything I've ever known and ever will know. But since I'm here, I'll just to try and prove my credentials by doing one of my favorite things to do: list a bunch things. Yay! Let's see, off the top of my head, we’ve got Dying Light 2, Dead Island 2, 28 Weeks Later, Night of the Living Dead, both Dawn of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and now this book, Emergency Broadcast, argh my brain is overloaded with useless information about zombie tropes! Wait, I think there’s a zombie joke in there somewhere that I can't think of right now, can we just pretend like I actually made it? Thanks. No, but really though, the amount of zombie media I’ve consumed in such a short amount of time is actually kind of staggering. I’m stuck in zombieland and nothing can satiate this hunger! All this preamble is my way of adding context, I guess, but what I’m really getting at is that I really enjoyed Emergency Broadcast. It’s good old zombie fun and fits perfectly in that list up there! But I think this book’s biggest strength really is that… it really just focuses on the zombie threat. No duh, right? I know this is sounding like faint praise, but you’d be surprised at how many of these new age zombie flicks try to move past the whole “walking dead” thing as quick as they possibly can. It’s sad, really. The thing is that a lot of zombie stories are so dead-set on being as depressing as possible in an attempt to be taken seriously as a medium, that it’s almost easy to forget how silly the premise of zombies actually is. Because the truth of the matter is that most zombie stories pretty much all come to the same conclusions in their messaging. Yeah yeah, dehumanization or consumerism, it was said first (and best) by George A. Romero and everybody else has mostly been just riding his coattails ever since. Sure, that doesn’t mean that a zombie story should never try to arrive at something deeper and more poignant, but when you have a million stories all hammering in the same “humans are the real monsters” message, it can come as a relief whenever a zombie thing just focuses on being as thrilling and creepy as possible without doubling down on some kind of lofty and harrowing moral.

For example, obviously The Last of Us is better and of a higher quality than the Resident Evil movies (not the games, the movies, the MOVIES), I think we’re all in agreement there, but there’s no denying that there's something more tangible and realistic in how Resident Evil will place the blame of all of its world ending conflicts on corporations being cartoonishly evil rather than The Last of Us or The Walking Dead's cynical idea that people's base form will always default to being as selfish and cruel as possible given the opportunity to live without the constructs of society. It's just that these super serious and philosophical zombie stories have always had the vibe of being embarrassed at both their medium and the context in which its subject matter exists. No shade, but I’ve always felt like there was this underlying resentful writing style to The Last of Us due to the fact it’s still essentially just a zombie flick. They've got a serious chip on their shoulder about it all and you just know that they hate having to deal with the fact that their world is full of zombies. Oops, I mean "Clickers," my bad. Yeah so, it’s hard not to roll my eyes whenever they’ve got Troy Baker out there frowning in his super serious black-and-white photo shoots in a diner and touting about how his zombie thing isn't just a zombie thing and The Last of Us is an elevated piece of art and by calling it a “zombie” story, you're diminishing its meaning. Shut up, dude. The meaning is that "people are selfish and cruel," we get it. Well, I like zombie things, and I’m not ashamed to say it! I don’t know, I guess what I’m trying to get at is that if there’s hardly anything new to say with the genre, then why not take a note from Emergency Broadcast’s page and have some fun with it? I should mention that there’s a fine line, tonally, because while I say that this book very exciting and fun, it still plays its premise as straight as possible (really though, where are all the gay people?) and deals with the zombies about as seriously as somebody in the real world probably would. I’d say that if anything, this book reminded me the most of The Walking Dead: 400 Days, which follows the journey of several survivors (who are all also jerks) at different points in the first 400 days of a zombie apocalypse, and then it eventually ends with them meeting up in a (debatably) satisfying way. Similarly, Emergency Broadcast also features five or six different people in the hours leading up to them getting the titular emergency broadcast that reads that it’s of the utmost importance that they “stay inside, don’t make too much noise, and wait for further instructions.” Woah, that’s pretty creepy, right? I mean, I thought so. Otherwise, I can see how a person going into this might be a little disappointed at how long it takes for the story to get to the whole zombie thing (and then it ends on a cliffhanger, which was pretty annoying, I can't lie), but my favorite part of a horror movie is always the beginning bit, where everything is sunshiny cool but with a understated sinister vibe contrasting against it, helping to highlight the horror.

And while nothing in this book is played for laughs at all, I couldn’t help but think that it was super funny how nobody takes the broadcast seriously at first and just how slowly it takes for several of the characters to catch on the fact that, hey, maybe they shouldn’t mess around with the very obviously reanimated corpses milling about. And I know that it’s really easy to scoff and laugh at the dumb behavior of the protagonists in a horror story, but I can’t say with complete certainty that it's actually unrealistic. People are always doing some dumb shit in a panic, that's just how it is. Of course, I’d like to think I’d catch on real quick like Jim from The Office in A Quiet Place: Part 2, but the truth is that if I got an official text message telling me to hide and stay inside, close the blinds, and make as little noise as possible, my mind wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that zombies are roaming the land. In fact, I’d probably just assume that there’s some fucked up new Mr. Beast, Squid Game-esque torture labyrinth thing going on out there that he’s been allowed to conduct in my city for some dumbass reason. Seriously though, what's up with that guy? But I digress, I’m just saying that it’s really easy to watch a horror movie and point out all the wrong decisions that the characters made along the way, but let's be real for a second, who out there is actually ready to deal with the dead being reanimated? Don’t answer that. Anyway, final point, because while I did like this, I’ve got to give out my own emergency broadcast warning to everyone looking to read this that the characters in this book leave a lot to be desired. They’re literally all shitty people. And it’s not even a “the end of the world brings out the worst in us” kind of thing, because these people don’t even know they’re in a zombie apocalypse for most of the book, so we’re just following a bunch of assholes! First of all, every male character is operating on thinly veiled misogyny and not to be dramatic, but I think all of them deserve to be stuck in a plague ridden city full of zombies. I don’t know if we’re supposed to be rooting for them to escape the city per se, but just know that whenever they were in trouble, I was busy chanting “I send a pestilence and plague, into your house, into your bed, into your streams, into your streets, into your drink, into your bread,” so you know where I stand on the matter. On the flip-side, it doesn’t help that all the women are either characterized as either being "homewreckers" who are constantly in need of a man’s approval or women whose “maternal instinct” leads to them needing protection… from a man. So yeah, that bit kind of sucked, and it’s the main reason why I didn’t love love this book the way I would have liked to. Can’t have it all, I suppose. On to the next one?

“So, they’re like zombies, essentially,” Lincoln said.

“They’re more dangerous than zombies. They’re very aggressive. They can run, and they don’t stop attacking until they’re dead. Not very smart, though, so you at least don’t need to worry about that. I don’t need to mention you’re authorized to shoot on sight. Just be ready to haul your asses out of there because gunshots are sure to attract more of them.”

…So, they’re like zombies, essentially.

[remembertheplunge]

A journal review

The following is my November 26, 1983 review and critique of my  journal entries since August ’83: 

August ’83.

Thoughts in review:

Open up…use a bigger canvas. You use too much detail. What are you really thinking and feeling?. Take me down there.

 What is good about your journaling is that you see the world and its impact on you. You connect with it.

The past journal entries are terrifying for me to read. My private law practice causes me anguish, it’s scary and hard to do. I want to quit.

September 2.

I'm finally writing outside of the lines on the page which makes my writing more interesting . It shows that change is starting  in my life! Im beginning to live outside of societal dictates and boundaries..

One thought the journals have given me is that I used to be excited about what others thought about me. I wanted friends and was desperate for affection. Now, I find self satisfaction from within. How wonderful!  I’m Ok as is. I don’t need you for me to be so!

I like how you share your life insights in your journal entries. You share what you have learned along the way.

Now, the mid September entries are about beauty and cause me to have good feelings.

In August and September:

 Money and the law practice are the focus of my self worth.

I see that I have used the same diary techniques all along. They include lists and dream recording, 

Late September

You Got Guts—you get that pain out on that PAGE…reading it, I feel it all again.

Eary October:

I discuss bad aspects of my character followed by good aspects of it. I like that.

October 13

I’m opening up

Late October

I’m unfolding—beauty is pouring in.

Early November

I’m getting happier

November 6, 1983

And the DIARY changes

End of entry

Notes: 12/28/2024

In August -November  1983, I had a private law practice in Placerville California in which I practiced criminal law, family law and school law. It was rough going there financially.

I would eventually “quit” and take a deputy public defender job Modesto. Between May and August of 1984, I left my private law practice, my wife and my straight life behind!, 

[notmoreflippingelves]

1 & 6 please!

Fandom Year in Review Asks

Favorite fictional characters this year

Already answered.here

Favorite movies of the year

I really don't think I saw a ton of movies this year and certainly not ones from this year. The only ones I saw in theaters this year were Dune 2, Inside Out 2, and Wicked (Part 1). Wicked was definitely my favorite of them by far (which I'm not very surprised about tbh) and I am already hyped for Part 2.

In terms of movies from other years that I enjoyed, The Wizard of Oz is still the ultimate fave and I am especially jazzed about it due to all the Wicked excitement. Am looking forward to starting my annual Christmas movie watch through as well when I get home. (Especially looking forward to my annual post-White Christmas watch heartbreak that Judy/Phil smutfic doesn't exist. Because look at them.)

Fandom Year in Review Asks

[nachobsns]

honestly really need to curb my phone addiction and i’ve been looking into dumbphones lately as an alternative for when i’m out and about and like. say what you will about brand consumerism but i am a simple man and the barbie phone is calling to me

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ian McDonald's "Hopeland"

Tonight (May 30) at 6:30PM, I’m at the NOTTINGHAM Waterstones with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Christian Reilly (MMT Podcast).

Tomorrow (May 31) at 6:30PM, I’m at the MANCHESTER Waterstones, hosted by Ian Forrester.

Then it’s London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

Have you ever read a novel that was so good you almost felt angry at it? I mean, maybe that’s just me, but there is one author who consistently triggers my literary pleasure centers so hard that I get spillover into all my other senses, and that’s Ian McDonald, who has a new novel out: Hopeland:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765375551/hopeland

Seriously what the fuck is this amazing, uncategorizable, unsummarizable, weird, sprawling, hairball of a novel? How the hell do you research — much less write — a novel this ambitious and wide-ranging? Why did I find myself weeping uncontrollably on a train yesterday as I finished it, literally squeezing my chest over my heart as it broke and sang at the same moment?

Hopeland is a climate novel, and it’s not McDonald’s first. Hearts, Hands and Voices (published in the US as The Broken Land) is a climate novel (that also happens to be about the Irish Troubles). So is his stunning debut, Desolation Road, which I picked up at a mall bookstore in 1988 and lost my mind over:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/07/02/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-mars-book-desolation-road-finally-back-in-print/

But those were climate novels written in the early stages of the discussion of the gravity of the anthropocene, and so climate change was more setting than anything else. In Hopeland, the climate is more of a character — not a protagonist, but also not a minor character.

The true stars of Hopeland are members of two ancient, secret societies. There’s Raisa Hopeland, who belongs to a globe-spanning, mystical “family,” that’s one part mutual aid, one part dance music subculture, and one part sorcerer (some Hopelanders are electromancers, making strange, powerful magic with Tesla coils).

We meet Raisa as she is racing across London in a bid to win a rare, open electromancer title. She is on the brink of losing, but then a passerby pitches in to help: Amon Brightborne, part of another mystical family whose stately, odd manor in the English countryside can only be reached by people who can work the “gateway,” which makes the road disappear and reappear. Amon is a composer and DJ who specializes in making music for very small groups of people — preferably just one person — that is so perfect for them that they are transformed by hearing it.

Amon’s intervention in Raisa’s bid for electromancy unites these two formerly disjoint families, entwining their destinies just as the world is forever changing, thanks to the decidedly un-magical buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. They have a romance, a breakup, a child. They are scattered to opposite ends of the Earth — Iceland and a tiny Polynesian island.

Their lives are electrified. Literally. On her passage to Iceland, Raisa confronts a ship-destroying megastorm, speaks its true name, and sends it away before it can sink the container ship — captained by a Hopelander who gives her free passage — that she is sailing on. In Iceland, she falls in with more Hopelanders, tapping a thermal vent to create a greenhouse cannabis farm, which begets a luxury salad greens business, then an electricity plant that attracts cryptocurrency weirdos like shit draws flies.

Amon, meanwhile, is sinking into drunken ruin on his island paradise, where he becomes a kind of mascot for the locals, who respect his musical prowess. The island is sinking, both figuratively and literally, as its offshore king, hiding in a luxury mansion in Sydney, drains its aquifers for the luxury bottled water market and loots its treasuries to fund his own high lifestyle.

McDonald takes a long time getting to this point. This is a 500 page novel, and the build to this setup takes nearly 300 of them. Every word of that setup is gold. McDonald’s prose often veers into poetry, or at least poesie, and he has this knack for seemingly superfluous vignettes and detours that present as self-indulgences but then snap into place later as critical pieces of a superbly turned narrative. How the fuck does he do it?

How does he do it? How does he deliver a sense of such vastness, a world peopled by vastly different polities and populations, distinctly different without ever being exoticized, each clearly the hero of their own story, whether they live on a tiny island or captain an American battleship?

I mean, cyberpunk — the tradition McDonald most obviously belongs to — was always about a post-American future, but no one ever managed it the way McDonald did. He delivered a superb, complex, Indian future in 2004’s River of Gods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/06/12/ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-new-novel-river-of-gods-bollywoodpunk/

And then did the same in Brazil with 2007’s Brasyl:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/04/30/ian-mcdonalds-brasyl-mind-altering-cyberpunk-carioca/

And Turkey in 2011’s Dervish House, a novel of mystical nanofuturism set in an Istanbul that is so vividly drawn that you feel like you can reach through the page and touch it:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/07/12/ian-mcdonalds-dervish-house-superb-novel-of-the-mystical-nano-future-of-istanbul/

Those were ambitious books, but Hopeland puts them to shame. It draws on so many threads — music and art, climate justice, mysticism, electrical engineering, economics, gender politics — and has such a huge cast of finely drawn characters. By all rights, it should collapse under its own weight. I mean, seriously — who can write multi-page passages describing imaginary music and make it riveting?

McDonald is just so damned good at writing love-letters to places that turn them into characters in their own right. The first third of Hopeland treats London that way, bringing it to gritty life in the manner of Michael de Larrabeiti’s classic Borribles trilogy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/16/the-borribles-are-back/

Or, for that matter, China Miéville’s debut novel King Rat, itself out in a fancy new Tor Essentials edition with an introduction by Tim Maughan, who absolutely bullseyes the appeal of Miéville’s novel of underground music, mystical societies and urbanism:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250862501/kingrat

(It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Miéville is a giant Borribles fan:)

https://www.tor.com/2014/03/13/the-borribles-excerpt-introduction-china-mieville/

I have loved Ian McDonald’s work since I picked up Desolation Road in that mall bookstore when I was 17. One of the absolute highlights of my writing career was writing an introduction for the 2014 reissue of Out On Blue Six, a book that mashes up David Byrne’s solo projects, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Dick’s Do Androids Dream in a madcap dystopian comedy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/20/out-on-blue-six-ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-novel-is-back/

I’ve read everything I could find about how he manages these giant, weird, intricately constructed novels, like this fascinating 2010 interview about his research process:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100726181934/http://www.cclapcenter.com/2010/07/an_interview_with_ian_mcdonald.html

But despite it all, I find myself continuously baffled by how manages it, but each book just stabs me. For one thing, he’s such a good remix artist. His three-volume, essential retelling of Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress starts with Luna: New Moon (2015):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/09/22/ian-mcdonalds-luna-new-moon-the-moon-is-a-much-much-harsher-mistress/

Which substantially out-Heinleins Heinlein, adding thickness and rigor to the tropes Heinlein tossed in as throwaways. Then, he topped himself with the sequel, Luna: Wolf Moon (2017):

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/28/ian-mcdonald-returns-to-the-harshest-mistress-in-luna-wolf-moon/

Before bringing it all in for a screaming landing that tied up the hundreds of threads he pulled on in the course of the previous two volumes with the conclusion, Luna: Moon Rising (2019):

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/05/16/luna-moon-rising-in-which-ian-mcdonald-brings-the-trilogy-to-an-astounding-intricate-exciting-and-satisfying-climax/

In each volume, McDonald proved — over and over — that he understood precisely what Heinlein was trying to do, then outdid him, and, in so doing, shredded Heinlein’s solipsitic, simplistic, seductive argument about a libertarian utopia.

Perhaps this is McDonald’s greatest gift: his ability to rework others’ ideas, tropes and tales, without ever trying to hide his influences, and then vastly outdoing them. That’s certainly what was going on with his wild-ass, deiselpunk YA trilogy, which started with 2011’s Planesrunner:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/12/06/planesrunner-ian-mcdonalds-ya-debut-is-full-of-action-packed-multidimensional-cool-airships-electropunk-and-quantum-physics/

One important McDonaldism: being deadly serious about his whimsy. The books are all very whimsical, but never frivolous. To get a sense of what I mean here, consider his 1992 graphic novel Kling Klang Klatch, a deadly serious comic book about the Klu Klux Klan, told entirely through adorable teddybears in a noir cityscape, whose dialog is heavily salted with Tom Waits lyrics:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/24/ian-mcdonalds-kling-klang-klatch/

No, really. And it’s fantastic.

Back to Hopeland. It’s a climate novel, because what else could you write in this time of polycrisis? The book is vast enough to convey the scale of the crisis. The storms that ravage the world are both personified and realized, a terror to compare to any literary monster or Cthuhoid entity. But it’s called Hopeland for a reason, because it’s a book about hope, not nihilism, a book about confronting the crisis, a book about solidarity and love, about overcoming difference, about challenging the way things “just are.”

That’s why I was crying and holding my heart yesterday on the train. The hope. What a ride.

One of the reasons I was in such a hurry to read this novel now is that I’m appearing on a panel with McDonald this coming Saturday, June 3, at Edinburgh’s Cymera festival, along with Nina Allen, author of the new novel Conquest:

https://www.cymerafestival.co.uk/cymera23-events/2023/4/4/connection-interrupted-with-nina-allan-cory-doctorow-and-ian-mcdonald

I’m so looking forward to it. I’ve written a couple dozen books since I read my first McDonald novel as a teenager, and while I still have no idea how McDonald does it, there’s something of his work in every one of my books.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Nottingham, Manchester, London, and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/30/electromancy/#the-grace

[Image ID: The cover for the Tor Books edition of 'Hopeland.']

[hkpika07]

(516)

I just finished playing Mario and Luigi brothership and I gotta tell you its PEAK. Ign can fuck off with their 5/10 review.

The game is super fun.

I KNOW RIGHT!?!?? THEY CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF WITH THEIR 5/10 I'm still in the middle of playing it but its SO much fun and a blast and I love the writing and story and characters and little details. Such a delight. It has a slow beginning but most rpgs do and it's not a big issue. The battle system is fun and the plugs offer such fun variety.

I swear to god they didn't even play the fucking game.

[alwaysbewoke]

[bunnyboy-juice]

alr getting over myself for a moment: whomst has cane recommendations for someone who wants a collapsible cane that is pretty-ish (preferably like orange/pink at the very least so i can put stickers on a pretty base) but also needs one that can support around 230lbs