#but recently i’ve been replaying johns cover a lot

[cultofbeatles]

john’s cover of stand by me just really does it for me

[gumnut-logic]

Callisto (Part 8 - Recovery)

Prologue 1. Incident - Bit 1 | Bit 2 2. Fallout - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 3. Voyage - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 4. Arrival - Bit 1 | Bit 2 5. Orientation 6. Rescue Site 7. Investigation 8. Recovery

This one is over 4600 words to the point I considered cutting it in half. But lots happens so I’ve posted it whole. Now I just need to play catch up because I had a crappy couple of weeks and now I’m only about 500 words ahead of this. I have a few days off coming up, so wish me luck :D

As always, many thanks to the amazing @janetm74​ @scribbles97​ @tsarinatorment​ @vegetacide​ and science officer @onereyofstarlight​ You guys have helped me make this what it is. I so hope you are enjoying it.

For the first time in this story, I’ve slightly gone off plan and have had to add in a chapter because of it. Here’s hoping I can keep this going. We are now at 35,000 words which is approximately halfway.

Warnings: some whump.

Thank you for all your support with this fic. I doubt I could do it without all the cheerleading and support. You guys are just amazing ::hugs you so much::

Enjoy!

-o-o-o-

Jeff Tracy was a man of action and drive. Eight years in the depths of space had eroded the edges of his impatience, but hadn’t eliminated it.

So, sitting in Callisto Base watching his family work and not having anything much to do wasn’t in the best interests of his mental health.

But what could he do?

He had set up a kind of mobile control despite not being in control of anything. John had linked him into everything and he and Lee had pretty much taken over one of the command centres of the Base.

Grae hovered the entire time.

Jeff watched the well-oiled machine that was International Rescue with no small amount of pride. He watched them track down the lifesigns, survey the site, drill extra access, deploy Thunderbird Four and-

“Gordon!”

“Guys, get out of there! Now!”

The holographic image of the lake swelled and swept his sons away.

Jeff was on his feet without thinking.

Three of the five life signs on the strategy map darted erratically, one coming to an abrupt stop against the cavern wall, while the two others travelled some distance up the main tunnel before stopping suddenly.

“Thunderbird Five!”

“Please hold.”

Jeff’s eyes widened. “John!”

Data was suddenly thrown at his terminal. His sons’ vitals sprung up and he was relieved to find them all strong. A sitrep appeared a moment later tracking where the wave had come from, probabilities of a recurrence, a site safety scan and a feed from the Dragonfly Pod.

Its lights were still on, one shining at an angle across the tunnel it had landed in, the other reflected back a glare of white and a blue as beautiful as an Earth sky in the early evening.

The first one explained why.

One of the Dragonfly’s legs was sticking up out of a solidified white mass.

Of ice.

The math added up in his head very abruptly and he was suddenly moving.

It was a sign that Lee and he still had that unspoken communication as the engineer didn’t even ask and just moved with him, following his mad run to the hangar without a word.

Alan and Gordon had left the second Dragonfly pod at the Base and Jeff was ever so grateful.

“What’s…where are you going?” Grae’s eyes were wide as they all skidded to the side of the pod.

“Three of my sons are buried in ice. Where do you think I’m going?”

He didn’t bother to wait for an answer, climbing up into the cockpit with a leap of agility he hadn’t felt for years. With a nod from Lee, he snapped the hatch shut and grabbed controls he hadn’t used outside of a simulator in over a decade.

It was like returning home.

The Dragonfly took off for the airlock far above as the doors began their opening sequence without request.

-o-o-o-

John reacted the way he always reacted.

Without thought. There was no time for thought.

Hands moving across his console dragged as much information as he could from the static-fouled scans.

He blinked as the interference cleared somewhat.

A worried plea from his father John had no time for. A flick of his wrist and he mirrored his sources to his father’s terminal.

All three of his brothers had come to a halt. Gordon was still in the cavern, Four slammed up against a wall. Scott and Virgil were in the tunnel. Vital signs were still good, but there was no response from any of them.

No matter how much he yelled into comms.

One of the beacons had been swept away, causing the interference to intensify in that area, but the readings he had added up to a scenario that echoed past hell.

His father was already moving.

“John?” Alan’s voice was professional but sported an edge of terror.

“I’m coming down, Thunderbird Three.” He grabbed his helmet. “Dad is on his way out there. Do we have enough parts for a third Dragonfly?”

His brother’s voice solidified with the plan of action. “Yeah, Virg overcompensated as always. He packed stuff in as if he was planning to stay out here for a couple of years.”

John didn’t answer that. “Assemble another pod. I’ll see you down there asap.”

“FAB, Thunderbird Five.”

“Eos, align the Excel with the danger zone. Initiate elevator deployment.” He flung himself through his ‘bird. “I need as much information as you can give me. Relay on descent.”

“Yes, John. It appears that the water volume of the lake increased dramatically before the incident, but has now returned to its previous status.”

John slipped through the airlock to the elevator. He hit his comms. “Michael, there has been an incident. I am going down to the surface. You have the Excel.”

“FAB, Thunderbird Five. I will monitor.”

“Liaise with Eos.” He killed the connection as he entered the cockpit, his seat rotating towards him in welcome. “Eos, be nice.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Too bad. We need him.”

She grumbled in a way reminiscent of Virgil before coffee.

Maybe she had been taking notes.

He ignored it. “Send all information to my terminal here.” The elevator shuddered as it disengaged from Five and began its descent. The cockpit lit up with holograms.

He eyed the replay of the static-riddled scan as the lake swelled and overcame his brothers.

Four had been swept out of the water and washed ashore violently. Scott and Virgil, standing on that shore, hadn’t stood a chance.

One gloved hand reached up to poke the playback, pause and rewind. There had been a local seismic disturbance just before, epicentre to the north-east by a few hundred metres. Minor on an Earth scale, but since Callisto supposedly hadn’t had any major crustal movements in eons, it was unusual in the extreme.

“Eos, pull the Base seismic records. Have they detected anything like this before?”

The elevator’s thrusters fired as it hit the faint atmospheric boundary.

“Their system has recorded several incidents, but nothing of this magnitude.” Eos’ voice shifted to one of concern. “Incidents have been increasing recently. There have been three in the past month. John, one was recorded by the Base system the same day as the five members of their crew disappeared.”

“What? Why wasn’t that mentioned?”

“Unknown.”

He stared at the scan. “Do we have any source for more water to reach the lake?” It hurt his physics sensibilities. Water should not exist as a fluid in this environment at all.

“None within sensor range.”

Damnit. He was used to being able to see everything.

“Deploy a net of probes. I want everything in a ten thousand kilometre radius as crystal clear as you can get it.” If there was a pun in there, he refused to acknowledge it.

“Yes, John. That will cover the entire surface of the moon.”

“Exactly.” Something weird was happening here and he wanted to know what. If he had to throw everything Thunderbird Five had at it, he would.

The elevator thrusters fired again and the moon appeared around his windows, followed by the striking red of Three.

“Alan, are you ready?”

“Pod assembled, Thunderbird Five. Awaiting your orders.” There was no tremble in his brother’s voice, but there was an anxious impatience.

The elevator touched down with a soft thud. Eos’ control was perfect. “Thank you, Eos.”

“You are welcome, John.” A pause. “Be safe.”

His lips tightened a little. “FAB, Thunderbird Five.”

She didn’t answer as he stepped out onto the moon.

-o-o-o-

Alan didn’t remember his mother, but he had four brothers who did and he knew far too well the pain of what had happened when she was taken from them.

The fact that three of those brothers were now buried in the space-ice equivalent of an avalanche was absolutely terrifying.

The water had managed to travel some distance before solidifying and trapping everything. As far as Alan could tell, his brothers were encased in ice.

If they had been on Earth their lives would be in peril. In space, they were at least wearing their spacesuits. But spacesuits could be damaged.

He didn’t let himself follow that train of thought. He couldn’t afford it right now. Instead, he followed procedure.

That was what procedure was for.

It was a matter of minutes before John was stepping off the space elevator, his tall brother as confident and professional as ever.

Part of Alan was still surprised when John directed him to take control of the pod. Perhaps it was because Alan was used to the control freak habits of his two eldest brothers?

“Get us down there Alan.” John was distracted, glaring at his wrist projector.

He didn’t need to be told twice. With John secure in the backseat, Alan threw them down the gaping hole his ‘bird had dug, through the mole’s extension and into the dry cavern below.

The dragonfly latched onto the beacons and they darted down the correct tunnel, glittering rock streaking past them as their twin beams of bright light hit everything.

Including the mass of white that that suddenly swelled up on one side of the tunnel.

It wasn’t quite a wave, more a slosh of water, frozen in motion.

“What the hell?”

“Edge down the tunnel a little further, Scott is...” But they were already there and the flash of blue and red was obvious.

His eldest brother was embedded in the ice halfway up the wall. Alan only had breath as he yanked the dragonfly to an abrupt halt, her claws leaving gouges in the ice. “Scott!”

He was out of the pod as fast humanly possible.

One of his brother’s arms was dangling free and Alan reached for it. “Scott?”

Limp, gloved fingers.

John already had a hand laser out and the red of its beam was cutting ice in a loose silhouette of their brother’s body. As they worked him free, bits of ice fell away to the floor. It was fragmentary. Somewhere between solid and hard packed snow. The water had obviously frozen so quickly, it was aerated enough to stiffen fully.

Fortunately, because Alan had the sudden realisation that spacesuits or no, if his brothers couldn’t expand their ribcages, they couldn’t breathe regardless. The sudden relief sprouted new terror.

John helped Alan lower their big brother to the floor.

“Sc…Scott?”

For a second, Alan thought it was John speaking, but his astronaut brother answered, voice urgent. “Virgil?”

No response.

“Thunderbird Two, status!” John was moving, long legs leaping in the low gravity, propelling him back to the pod. He reached inside and pulled out a large torch. “Alan, attend to Scott.” And then his brother was running further down the tunnel, light bouncing ahead of him, holographic map hovering over his wrist.

A further spark of terror was smothered in Alan’s brain as he turned back to his prone and unconscious eldest brother and began chipping and melting ice to free him.

-o-o-o-

Virgil was lying flat on his back staring at white lit up by his helmet lights.

It took him a few solid minutes to realise exactly what he was looking at. His brain felt sluggish and was hurting like hell. He really needed more painkillers.

He automatically tried to calculate how long it was since his last dose and came up blank. There was time missing.

This realisation was quickly followed by the discovery that he wasn’t able to move.

God, his brain was slow. The first thought that came to mind was that yet another building had fallen on him. It happened far more often than he was willing to admit.

But then where was his exosuit?

He blinked slowly.

One arm was caught at an awkward angle and was protesting its position. His legs seemed to be splayed out evenly, though and his other arm seemed happy enough. Hell, there wasn’t really even much weight on him. He had definitely had worse.

But his chest was tight and breathing shallow. Something had him in its grip and he had to force down the visuals that came with that.

Not being able to move always sucked.

He really wished his head would stop hurting.

“Sc..Scott?” It was instinctual. In trouble, call for his big brother.

Need a hand.

“Virgil?” John’s voice. Johnny had the power to call Scotty, to get him help.

He opened his mouth to answer, but something shifted in the ice...ice...it was ice! Memories slammed into him of ice and snow and trapped and oh god...his sluggish brain couldn’t handle it.

“Thunderbird Two, status!”

John’s voice shook him.

Um, um…his heart was beating a mile a minute. He fought for control.

“Virgil? Son?”

Dad.

His father’s voice set off both relief and fear. Relief because of a deep-seated trust in his own father.

Fear because where was Scott? Scott should be here.

But Scott had been with him when the whatever had hit him.

Had hit him.

Water.

Space.

Callisto.

Sparkling crystal flickered in his mind’s eye.

“Scott?”

“Your brother is in good hands.”

Even his sluggish brain could see that as a non-answer. “Dad?”

“We’re digging you out.”

Oh.

As if to emphasize that statement there was a red flash and the world around him hissed. He closed his eyes as the light stabbed into his hurting head.

“Dad? Gordon?”

“Nearly there, son.”

Virgil’s heart clenched.

They uncovered his head first and Virgil teared up at the sight of his father’s worried expression above him. John was there as well, darting in and out of sight, obviously the source of the laser light.

“Johnny…”

There was a crack in the ice.

Ice.

His mind blanked in terror again.

Too many memories.

Far too many.

“Virgil! Look at me!” Dad’s voice held command and he had no choice but to obey. “You are safe.” His hand was being held and Virgil realised it had been cut from the ice. He tried to move his other arm, every heavy-lifting muscle he had straining against its restriction.

Another crack of stressed ice, a yelp from John and Virgil’s arm was suddenly free, ice fragments raining down on him.

Encouraged, he began working on his feet.

“Virgil, stay still just a moment longer.” John’s voice was strained.

Virgil wanted out.

“Virgil.” His Dad grabbed his flailing hand forced him to look at him, grey eyes reflecting the white ice. “Hold still, John is cutting you out.”

Yes, John was cutting him out. Red flickered amongst the white. Virgil swallowed and attempted to get the panic under control and found that he was trembling.

Damn.

He was a rescue operative. He should be calm.

The remaining weight on his belly was removed and he was finally able to take a deep breath.

It helped ever so much.

He closed his eyes and sought his centre.

And fell back on procedure.

If Scott was down, International Rescue was now his responsibility. He needed to be in control.

In control.

By the time John lifted the remaining ice off his legs, Virgil had found himself again. He clambered out of the ice as fast as he possibly could and shot to his feet.

And nearly fell flat on his face for the effort.

His father grabbed him and prevented his fall. “Virgil, sit down.”

There was a flicker of a medscanner, but Virgil was too busy assessing the situation to care. “Scott?”

“With Alan. Unconscious, but safe.”

“Gordon?”

“Still in the cave. Thunderbird Four is silent. I sent Lee. John is following him down.”

Damn. Virgil shook the last of the ice stuck to his uniform, straightened his baldric and took a step towards the direction of the cave, but was halted by a firm grip on his arm.

“You’re not going down there.”

Virgil spun on one foot and the world in all its glittering glory spun with him. “Gordon is down there.”

“John and Lee have him. You were buried in ice, Virgil.”

To his ultimate shame, Virgil shuddered at the concept.

But Gordon...

That grip on his arm tightened. “You’re coming with me.”

Virgil straightened, forcing steel into his spine. “With Scott unconscious, I am in command. I need to be down there.”

“No, you don’t.” His father took a step back up the tunnel, obviously intending to drag Virgil if he had to.

Virgil was no longer the scrappy kid who wanted to play with his paints instead of cleaning his room, and he stood fast.

His father had been in space a long time and his strength had paid the price.

There was no competition.

Buried in ice or not.

“Dad, I am going down to help with Gordon. Scott needs you. I’ll meet you up there the moment Gordon is safe.”

The need to be in two places at once, or more correctly four places, at least, was a common feeling Virgil had to ignore.

Gordon was the priority.

“I need an analysis of what happened. There was a wave. Why? See to Scott and Alan.” He reached up and gently peeled his father’s grip of his arm. “Thank you for helping me. Now I have to go help my brothers.” Turning he hit his comms, asked John for a sit rep and hurried down the tunnel.

He did not look back.

-o-o-o-

Scott had a headache.

That was the first hint of reality and not a new one in his life. He often woke with headaches, the only remaining question was what caused it this time.

“Hey, Scott, are you with us?”

Alan.

Several factors hit home at once. He was wearing his helmet, hence his uniform and Alan, only Alan, had said his name.

Mission.

He was sitting up before his brain had filled him in on the fact he was millions of miles away from home and gravity was a whole different thing on Callisto.

“Whoa!” Hands grabbed him. Hands that definitely belonged to Alan. The astronaut was crouched over him with worried eyes. “Take it easy. You might have a concussion.”

Head injury then.

“Mission status.”

“John’s gone after Gordon. Virgil is awake and out of the ice.”

Gordon. Gordon had been in the water. The weird water.

The very idea of Virgil being buried in ice again awoke horrors he did not want to face.

“Help me up.” Scott rolled himself over, ignoring the protests from his brother to stay put. His head protested very loudly and it became very apparent that the supposed head injury was not impressed with any movement.

Ow.

But, mission.

“Scott, what are you doing?” Another set of hands grabbed at him, which was probably a good thing because he was going down if they hadn’t. As it was, the whole world shifted as he was forcibly lowered to sit on the white, white ground again.

There was a flicker of yellow light and muttering from his youngest brother. “We need to get him back to base.” Alan’s voice was worried.

But Gordon. “I’ve got to go help Gordon.” He tried to stand up again, but too many hands held him down. His shoulders were grabbed and he found a pair of grey eyes staring at him. “Dad? Gordy is in danger.”

“I know son. John, Lee and Virgil will see to him.”

Virgil. He blinked. “Virgil was with me!” Again he struggled to get up.

His father held him down. “Virgil is very determined that he is fine. You, however, are not. You have a concussion. I will take you back to the Base and you will rest. Alan will help his brothers.”

“But-“

The hands on his shoulders squeezed. “Do I have to ask Virgil to reinforce that order?”

Virgil? Order? God, his head hurt.

But this was Dad. Dad knew what to do in space. Dad was...Dad was...

“Scott, you with me?”

He was shaken just a little and his head hated him for it. A groan and his hand encountered his helmet. Augh.

Space sucked.

“C’mon, Scotty, let’s get you into the pod.” Alan’s voice was gentle and professional. He was so proud of his little brother. “Yeah, well, I learnt from the best. Up you get.”

He was pulled slowly to his feet and he had to bite down or lose whatever the hell it was he had eaten last. There were steps and then he was sitting and familiar restraints were holding him in place.

He closed his eyes.

Gordon. He had to help Gordon.

“Your brothers will help him, Scott, you know that.”

But-

His world shook as the pod lifted. He glimpsed the back of his father’s helmet. Dad. Dad was driving. Dad had control.

He could let go.

-o-o-o-

Alan swallowed as their father launched the pod back down the tunnel, its headlights sparkling.

He had reported Scott’s status the moment they had the medscanner’s results and had received a very abrupt acknowledgement from Virgil.

It was unusual to have Virgil in command in space. It wasn’t his native environment and he didn’t venture into it very often. It, of course, wasn’t the first time, and Alan trusted Virgil with his life. But this was Alan’s turf, he needed to be there to help.

He leapt into the remaining dragonfly and dashed off down the tunnel.

It got tighter and tighter as he flew closer to the Crystal Cave, his access blocked by frozen lake water. For a moment he thought he was going to have to abandon the pod, but he was just able to squeeze through the entrance.

The lake was exactly as it had been. Calm and glittering in the pod’s headlamps. He turned slowly on the rocky beach to find Four, free of ice, jammed up against the wall beside the tunnel entrance. She was on her port side, cabin rammed into the rock.

Alan’s heart clenched as he set the dragonfly down.

Both John and Virgil along with Uncle Lee were attempting to gain access via the rear hatch. The ‘bird was made for water, but on the very rare occasion such as this, Brains had built space capable redundancies into her airlock.

How many submersibles in this universe were also space capsules in disguise?

But all this was redundant if the seals had been compromised.

A quick query of Thunderbird Five reassured Alan that Gordon’s vitals were still strong. There was still no response from their fish brother, but he was alive and relatively stable and Four reported no seal ruptures.

Yet.

Virgil grunted as the back of Four was slowly cranked open. Uncle Lee and his engineer brother were putting all their muscle into heaving the hatch open while John slipped into the vehicle.

A moment later the door was shoved shut again and Alan was surprised to see Virgil seal it with a hand laser.

Tired eyes caught Alan’s. His brother didn’t need to explain why he was doing what he was doing.

“Inner airlock door is now compromised.” John’s voice was calm and sure despite the subject matter. “Proceeding to the cockpit.”

Alan stared at Virgil a moment, caught by his haggard expression before hurrying around Four towards her belly viewports.

All he could see was Gordon’s feet. No matter how he shone his hand light through those windows, he could see nothing more. Gordon’s pilot’s seat obscured everything.

For it to be in that position it had to have been severed off its mountings.

Hell.

Determined, Alan scrambled around Four’s nose and tried to find her front viewports. Everything was obscured by rock.

Crystal glittered mockingly at him, an almost scarlet chunk of quartz sticking out of the wall and falling over as if it was reaching for Four.

Alan fought the urge to shove it away from his brother’s ‘bird.

“Cockpit hatch is non-operational. Eos, relay through my suit sensors and give me a detailed report on Gordon’s position.” John’s voice was ever so calm.

Alan wanted to scream.

He hurried back to the lower ports and stared at his brother’s feet.

Again Gordon had been crushed in his ‘bird. How hurt was he this time. How long would he take to recover?

Virgil spoke up and Alan was startled to find his engineer brother and Uncle Lee standing beside him. Virgil was standing ramrod straight. “Eos, can you pull any medical data?”

“Please hold.” The AI’s voice was crisp and professional. “Compensating for interference.”

Damned interference. Alan was so sick of static. Their comm lines and sensor feeds were usually perfect. What was it with this place?

A big hand gently wrapped around his arm.

“I’m fine, Virgil.”

The hand did not let go.

“Thank you, Eos.” How did John stay so calm? “Cutting into the cockpit now.”

Virgil’s wrist control lit up and projected the sensor data he had requested from Eos. True to this place, parts flickered and there was some pixilation, but a clear outline of both Gordon and John inside Four was all the reassurance it could be.

Gordon was curled up on the ‘floor’ of his ‘bird, on what had been Four’s portside viewports.

The laser cutter in John’s hand flared up brightly as he cut through the cockpit hatch mechanisms.

Red light flickered through the marine acrylic enough to catch on Alan’s uniform.

“His right arm is broken again.” Virgil sighed. “He’s going to be so pissed.”

“I’m in.” And John was. Light lit up the viewports, quickly followed by the yellow of a medscanner.

“Oh, thank god.” Beside him, Virgil visibly deflated in relief. The hologram lit up with Gordon’s full medical details. A red alarm hovered over one arm where the break snapped his right ulna and his head had an orange flag that pinpointed a likely concussion. But other than that, Gordon appeared whole and safe, his spacesuit undamaged and airtight. Alan’s shoulders dropped almost as much as Virgil’s.

“He’s safe to move, John.” No doubt John knew that, but Virgil obviously had a need to confirm it anyway. He had a habit of doing that. Alan wasn’t really sure who it was for, Virgil’s brothers or himself.

The next few moments involved cutting open the rear hatch of Four again. This time there was the hiss of escaping atmosphere as Virgil took the entire door off the sub, no longer needing to worry about Gordon’s suit integrity.

John emerged carefully carrying his unconscious brother, Gordon’s helmeted head limp on one shoulder, his arm in an emergency splint, no doubt from one of Four’s first aid packs.

“Vincent, I’m thinking you boys need to take your brother back to base.”

Alan suddenly realised they were a pod or two short to carry all of them. There were five operatives and only one pod.

Uncle Lee eyed Virgil, his lips thin. “Albert, you could fly George while Vincent, John and I dig out the other pod.”

Virgil shifted his feet as he translated that, and Alan frowned at him. His engineer brother was wrecked. Alan could see it in his eyes. Understandable

Virgil’s nod was firm, regardless. “FAB. Alan, you’re with Gordon. John, what is the impact of the interference on Eos’ capability to pilot the pod if necessary?”

Their space brother was looking down at Gordon’s face frowning. “Eos is deploying a moon-wide probe net. We can use them to strengthen the signal. I think that above ground, Thunderbird Five should be able to pilot reliably. I would not recommend attempting it underground.”

Virgil nodded again before striding over to Alan’s pod and, climbing up and throwing the hatch back, began reconfiguring the backseat to transport their injured brother.

Alan hurried over to help and within minutes, John had secured their unconscious aquanaut brother prone on his side in the back of the pod.

Silent, eyes closed, non-responsive.

Alan took off smoothly and with as much care as possible, flew back up the tunnel, heading above ground and back to Callisto Base.

His last glance at the Crystal Cave outlined the shapes of two brothers and an uncle standing ever so alone in a giant cavern that had tried to kill three of his brothers.

-o-o-o-

Next

[buzzdixonwriter]

I've Told You A Million Times To Avoid Cliches Like The Plague

Recently a year old re-print of a 1959 Writer’s Digest article by Donald Westlake started circulating on social media.

First off, if you don’t know who Donald Westlake is, go find out.  You like rough edge crime stories, try his Parker books published under his Richard Stark pseudonym; you like funny crime, dig up the Dortmunder series under his own name; you like odd ball history, check out Under An English Heaven “being a true recital of the events leading up to and down from the British invasion of Anguilla on March 19th, 1969 in which no one was killed but many people were embarrassed.”

Second, Westlake was a serious writer in that he took the craft of writing Very Seriously indeed, no matter how light hearted and funny some of his books could be.  He wrote a blistering letter (later turned into an essay) in the fanzine Xero (starts on page 97) where he excoriated  the sci-fi field of the era as being neither artistically nor commercially viable.*

So who am I to challenge this master’s assertions?

Well, I take the craft of writing Very Seriously indeed myself, and to quote a late, lamented friend:  “Fools rush in, and there we are…”

The Writer’s Digest article is a mixed bag, partially a quick off-the-cuff job for a few bucks, partially a valid observation on pitfalls in writing popular fiction in September of 1959.

Bear the date in mind, it’s crucial to this discussion.

This was an era when Americans read a lot.  Millions of people subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post or dozens of other slick magazines (not to mention the digests, which are what the form the old genre pulps mutated into), and this meant each week dozens of new short stories or serialized novels were available to them (and that’s not counting non-fiction).

Westlake in 1959 was commenting on an over saturated market, one where too many writers and editors simply replayed old tropes over again and again because they knew a significant portion of their audience felt comfortable with them (this is particularly true in the slicks, more so than the digests).

Westlake divides his 36 plots into three groups:  Mysteries, science fiction, and slicks.

My first quibble lays in what Westlake means when he says “plot”.

From the original article:

“A plot is a planned series of connected events, building through conflict to a crisis and ending in a satisfactory conclusion. A formula is a particular plot which has become stale through over-use.

“My own working definition of plot is what I call “5C.” First, a character. Anybody at all, from Hemingway’s old man to Salinger’s teenager. Second, conflict. Something for that character to get upset about, and for the reader to get upset about through the character. Third, complications. If the story runs too smoothly, without any trouble for the character, the reader isn’t going to get awfully interested in what’s going on. Fourth, climax. The opposing forces in conflict are brought together. Like the fissionable material in an H-bomb and there’s an explosion. Fifth, conclusion. The result of the explosion is known, the conflict is over, the character has either won or lost, and there are no questions left unanswered.

“5C: Character. Conflict. Complications. Climax. Conclusion.”

All well and good, but in his article Westlake provides almost no examples of same.

To me, a plot is a quick summary of a story that lays out beginning, middle, and end:   G.I. Joe captures a Cobra secret weapon but doesn’t realize what it is.  Cobra needs to get the weapon back without alerting the Joes to its potential, and the Joes must figure out what Cobra is after before they can get their hands on it.

(There’s a lot you can do with that plot.  It can be a slam-bang action oriented story, a techno thriller, or a slapstick farce depending on your angle of attack.)

What Westlake presents are more along the lines of story springboards:  ”What would happen if…”

A lot of the situations Westlake presents are rife with potential: “John Smith is sitting in the park, feeding the other squirrels, when a beautiful girl runs up, kisses him, and whispers, ‘Pretend you know me.’”

Okay, let’s list the possibilities, shall we?

She’s being stalked by a creepy guy and needs protection…

She’s been hired to set Smith up for some reason…

She’s mentally disturbed from trauma in her past…

She’s a flipping psycho intending to kill Smith…

She’s a secret agent slipping a secret code in Smith’s pocket…

She’s a silly college girl doing this on a dare, unaware Smith is a serial killer…

Six stories right off the top of my head, and each one could be played in several different ways, from deadly serious to over the top farce.

That’s a lot of potential in a single trope.

Here’s another: “John Smith, private eye, is sitting at his desk, when Marshall Bigelow, thimble tycoon, trundles in waving thousand-dollar bills and shouting, ‘My daughter has disappeared!’”

Well, d’uh, isn’t that what private eyes do?  Find missing people?  Or uncover who committed a crime when people don’t want the police involved?  Or find out if a spouse is cheating?

Name a private eye story that doesn’t play off some variant of this.  From Murder, My Sweet to Harper to Shaft, hiring a private eye to find a missing person is a perfect way to get a story started.  “You find my Velma.”

Of the dozen story springboards he offers in his mystery section, none are unworkable, though two remain overly familiar to this day and probably are best avoided unless the writer can provide some incredible new spin.  

The science fiction section is more problematic, and here’s where I suspect Westlake was slumming (there ought to be an article on the type of articles one shouldn’t write for Writer’s Digest that includes articles like the one Westlake wrote).

Seven of the eleven clearly reference classics of the genre, and if this wasn’t a deliberate dig at those authors on Westlake’s part, one can only argue that while they may be shopworn now due to retreads by the untalented, these ideas remain strong enough to support a good story.

The other four remain headscratchers.  Two -- Adam & Eve and “atoms are tiny solar systems” -- are indeed hoary old ideas, burned off by EC comics earlier in the decade. 

I can’t say there weren’t thirteen year old aspiring sci-fi writers who submitted these to publishers and editors back in the day, but they seem more likely to have been found on the pages of fanzines (i.e., what sci-fi geeks had before the Internet) than a professional slush pile.

We know Westlake was active to some degree in sci-fi fandom of that era; could those two tropes have come from seeing those stories in the pages of amateur magazines?

The remaining two ideas represent a ribald attitude I don’t recall seeing in sci-fi digests of that era.

Oh, sex was starting to rear its beautiful head in science fiction, and there were a few cutting edge stories, but these two seem more like set ups for smutty fanfic, not genuine submissions of the time.

Again, something I’d expect to see in a fanzine, not a professional market.

Like I said, I think this tips off that Westlake is having us on, that this whole article came off the top of his head in a matter of minutes instead of being carefully thought out.

On the other hand, his critique of slick magazine fiction seems pretty spot on and devastating.

While he covers several sub-genres, his primary focus seems to be on stories written for a female audience, the type found in McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal.  He doesn’t come close to a dozen examples, however, as several (even those labeled as sub-examples) are just the same story springboard in different settings.

Two of his bad examples, however, stand out quite clearly as a dislike (whether personal / professional / aesthetic, I can’t tell) aimed at a specific series of stories found in The Saturday Evening Post, i.e., the Alexander Botts, tractor salesman stories of William Hazlett Upson.

One of Westlake’s verboten plots isn’t even a plot but a literary device: “Any story told in an exchange of letters”.  The other one that ties into Upson’s oeuvre is “Joe Doakes, a traveling salesman for a paper clip company, gets involved in some pretty unbelievable adventures in a small town in the Midwest. The other participants are a local belle and a salesman for a rival paper clip company.”

The two combined describe Upson’s Botts stories to a T.  The second one is richly ironic since Westlake eventually used the same basic premise for his Dortmunder series (the only change being Dortmunder is a thief, not a salesman; po-tay-to, po-tah-to).

Finally, Westlake left himself a huge out with “If you can take one of the 36 clichés listed above, and give it a brand new twist, so it doesn’t look like the same story any more, you may have a sale on your hands. If you search hard enough in the magazines on the stands today, you’ll find one or more of these variations currently in print.”

Look, I get it.  I’ve faced deadline doom before myself, and more than once have fired off a short piece that contained all the depth of a dixie cup.

This isn’t the worst writing advice I’ve seen, but it’s far from the best, and Westlake coulda and shoulda done better.

  © Buzz Dixon

   *  He wasn’t alone in his opinion, though ironically the 1960s proved to be one of the most fertile eras for the genre.  Yet Westlake and other writers such as John D. MacDonald, Frederic Brown, and John Jakes left sci-fi for other genres because it couldn’t support them either as artists or professionals.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #252

my personal laptop has to be fixed, so therefore i don’t have games to play, so expect plenty of these to pass the time lmao.

Have you ever said something just to see what kind of reaction you’d get? No, not that I remember. Have you ever confronted someone about using too much chat-speak? ??? No??? Have you ever revealed someone’s secret, after promising not to tell? No. Secrets are one thing I'm very serious about respecting. What is one emotion that you experience regularly? STRESS, MOTHERFUCKER. Describe the last major change you made concerning your hairstyle? Lopped it all off, lmao. It's been like, two years now though. Who was the last person to walk out of your life, and why? It feels like my friend Alex. She's kinda just... left me hanging for months. I think she's active online, but not with me, despite reaching out. She's also deleted her b.net account or just removed me from her friends list, idk. Absolutely nothing seems like it would've prompted that, though. Are you less likely to approach people that look/dress a certain way? I was going to say no, but the last person's answer inspired mine to yes; like, I'm not going to go talk to people with some crazy or offensive shit on their shirts, nor am I going to just go walk up to someone covered in blood. Name one embarrassing activity that you take part in? I don't know. Like I say enough I'm VERY self-conscious of revealing I RP, but only because I'm sensitive to how the person will respond. I'm in no way like, ashamed I do it. I'm just terrified of judgment over something "unusual." Ever been told that you can’t understand love due to your age? Not that I remember. I only claimed to "get it" (to my recollection) at a point in mine and Jason's relationship, and I very legitimately would've guffawed at and honestly nearly slapped you if you claimed I "didn't understand" love. What is your favorite Starburst candy flavor? THE PINK ONES. Do you think that you act like yourself while online? I act more like myself online. Have you ever lied about something to get someone to like you? No. Who is the fakest person in your life right now? I don't keep those people in my life. Have you ever laid down in the grass, and made shapes out of the clouds? As a kiddo. When someone’s constantly negative, how do you deal with it? It depends on the person, but ALMOST in all cases, I really really try to support the person as best I can. It may start to bring me a bit down, but I feel I'm just like... hardwired to help those I love. I think it's what my relationship with Jason did, as he left because he couldn't handle my depression anymore, and with how that absolutely and utterly annihilated me, I don't want anyone else to feel that pain. Now, for people I don't have much of a bond with, it's easier for me to say "I'm sorry, but I can't handle this right now," but even then, I prefer to help. Does Christmas make you feel like a kid again? No. I'm really most excited for aunt reasons, lol. Do you have any artistic talent? Some. Would you ever shoplift from a store if you knew you wouldn’t be caught? Absolutely not. When one of your pets dies, how do you react? Usually cry. I've only ever not done so if I hadn't at all formed a bond with the animal. When you go to the movies, where in the theater do you sit? Close to the front, in the middle. When was the last time you lost your appetite? I don’t know. Have you ever neglected to take care of yourself? Er. Quite badly during '16, in the depth of my depression. I'll just say my teeth are kinda yellow because of it. I want to whiten my teeth at some point if I can afford that kind of luxury. The last song/poem/story you wrote - what was it about? In RP, the most recent section being written now is my main protagonists receiving a visit from their allies before getting their asses torn up the next day lmao. After a fight, who apologizes first - you, or the other person? Usually me, but it does depend. If I genuinely feel I didn't do jackshit wrong, no, I'm not apologizing. When you’re feeling creative, what do you do? Write. Do you mind being in your house alone overnight? Not really by now. Done so a number of times. Are there any dreams you remember from childhood? Nightmares, yes, and one very realistic dream. What worries you most about death? Not knowing what happens afterwards. Do you watch really old tv shows or movies from the 1970s or earlier? I love The Munsters, I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Addams Family. I'm sure there's more, considering I liked to watch stuff with my mom as a kid. Who’s your celebrity crush(es)? HHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG Ever been to a rave? No. Are you afraid to name the person you talk the most shit about? I don't really do that. Like I'll vent about people occasionally, but "talk shit" seems like the wrong word. I don't like gossiping. Are you a jealous person? Envious, rather, sometimes. I get VERY envious when it comes to photography, but otherwise, I don't feel it much. Who do you text the most out of your friends? Sara is like the only friend I text, lol. What would you do if you saw a complete stranger dealing drugs in public?
 Honestly, call an authority. I don't fuck with that. I'm not watching it happen. How often do you play video games? What are some of your favourites?
 I played World of Warcraft daily until my laptop took a shit. Need to get that fixed. Now I play actual video games very rarely... but mostly just because you can only replay the same ole game so many times before you've had enough of it for like a year. There are a great number of new games I want to play, though. I want a PS4 soooo badly. What are a few things that get on your nerves when it comes to Facebook (or your social networking site of choice)?
 More than anything, posting something that's crying for attention only for the person to be like "ugh I don't wanna talk about it." Then don't fucking post it. What are three things you’ve started to like lately? I feel like I haven't found new interests in a long time... Wait! I do feel The Handmaid's Tale and the Wings of Fire book Sara lent me have revived my love of reading! :') I want to go to the book store when I can and get both the new sequel to THT and the next WoF book. What was the last reason for having butterflies in your stomach?
 *shrug* Do you need a lot of space in relationships, or are you happy to spend a lot of time with your SO?
 I need SOME alone time, but for the most part I love being together. Once we're really close, anyway. What was the last thing you cooked from scratch? Scrambled eggs. Have you ever won anything from those games in arcades?
 Yeah. Funny story, there was this one time my sister won a stuffed duck from a claw machine, and it was the one I wanted after trying many times, and I cried so hard that one of the employees literally got one out for me lmfao. I probably still have it in the attic. When was the last time you went out to a fair?
 Not since right before the breakup. How far is the nearest zoo or wildlife park from your house? Do you go often?
 Like, two hours. We almost never go because of the distance. Are either one of your parents retired? If not, what do they do for a living?
 No. My dad's been a mailman all my life, and Mom is currently on disability because she has cancer and obviously can't work because of chemotherapy and all that. She was a pharmacy tech, though. If you could change one physical trait about yourself, what would it be?
 Can all this weight like vanish please. Have you ever gone out with someone you didn’t like?
 ????? Why would I do that???? Well, I didn't yet like-like Tyler because we hadn't been reunited as friends long enough; dating was kinda like... a dumb way to re-get to know each other? Thank fuck that was only two weeks. Would you ever take a bullet for your significant other? I'm single. Would you ever work at a fast food restaurant?
 No. History shows I can't work with people. Are you good at haunted houses, or do you scream your head off?
 AHHHHHHHHHHH I LOVE!!!!!!!!!!! If you’ve seen it, what did you think of the Twilight movie?
 I never watched them. Have you ever gotten your tongue stuck on a frozen pole?
 No. Are you a cat or a dog person?
 Cat. Does the movie Titanic make you cry?
 Ha ha, yes. I watched it on movie day while at the psych hospital and all of us were lil bitches almost sobbing, lol. Because it's a long movie, it went past our allotted time, but the nurses decided to let us finish it because we were so into it. I do have some good memories from those times... Do you think that fat people should wear skinny jeans? I think people can wear whatever the fuck they want without fear of judgment. Do you prefer game systems like Xbox, or older ones like Super Nintendo? The former. Do you enjoy indie music? Yep! What is the most strange piercing you’ve ever seen? Those ones people were getting on their fingers instead of rings... just huh. What do you do when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store? Look around, I guess. Think. What is your favourite beach to go to? I haven't been to enough to know. Have you ever been to a country club? No. Have you ever seen an animal die in real life? Too many times. Animals have been euthanized in my arms, and a kitten slowly died in my hands once. One of the most heartbreaking things I have ever experienced. Teddy accidentally punctured its lungs or broke ribs, I think, or something like that. I'm pretty sure he was trying to bring it back to its siblings because it wandered off, but he held it too tightly. I was home alone, too. It was fucking awful. Do you live on a Rd, St, Blvd, Ln, Way, or Ave? Road. Do you have naked pictures of someone saved on your phone? No. Would you ever go see an opera? Bitch I played Parasite Eve, I don't trust that shit. But seriously, no, not my scene. Do you own anything John Deere? No. Do you have a push mower or a mower that you ride on? Neither. A friend mows for us; he has the latter. What is the longest amount of time you’ve been stuck in traffic for? No clue. I think during a trip to New York. Would you consider joining the air force, army, etc? No. Who was your first crush and what made them special? This kid named Dylan. I thought he was super cute and cool. What is one thing nobody knows about you because nobody ever cared to ask? I dunno. Who did you idolize growing up? Steve Irwin. Do you believe that we are all here for a reason? What might the reason be? No. Have you ever carved your name or initials into a tree or stone? No. What were your best and worst subjects in school or college? Best: English. Worst: math. Name something you would like to devote more time to seeing or doing. Writing poetry. Drawing. Do you like to get your nails done? No. Do you remember the last movie you saw while on a date? Yeah, IT. Do you like to wear dresses? Hell no with my current body. Do you like any ‘manly’ activities like hunting, fishing, or camping? I find fishing to be fun and relaxing, but because of morals, I can't stomach doing it anymore. What was the name of your first boyfriend? First with the title, Aaron. First *real* boyfriend, Jason. Your first kiss? Jason. Are you still with either of those people from the last 2 questions? No. Have you ever used your bra to hold things like you would a pocket? Ha ha no. I think. What is your longest relationship to date? Three years, 7-8 months. I don't remember if the breakup was in August or September. Who ended the last relationship you were in? It was kinda like... mutual-ish, but moreso her. Have you ever gotten back with an ex? No. Who was your first prom date? Jason. Do you cry during romantic movies? Sometimes. Who was the last person to see you cry? Mom. Have you ever been used? I don't think so romantically, but in other ways, I know I have been. Have you ever felt violated? Yes. Do you like when a guy takes you by surprise and kisses you? Not everyone likes guys, so what an assumption. But anyway, only if we're very serious and have heavy trust in one another. Do you ever leave the house without makeup? Pretty much always. When was the last time someone gave you flowers? Been a few years. What kind of gift can win you over? BITCH buy me something Mark-related and you earn like 20 points. Has anyone ever sung to you? Yes. Do you like massages? Depends on who you are. In almost any case, no. They're awkward. Have you ever been skinny dipping? No. Do you sleep naked? No. Is smoking a turn-off? Yes. Is there a certain tv show you get upset if you miss? No. When was the last time you spent the night at someone else’s house? When I was at Sara's a year or so back. What is one food you always crave? Ice cream. Are you an exercise freak? Hunny- What scares you more, spiders or snakes? Snakes don't scare me, so spooders. Do you expect to be married in the next two years? No. Would you ever get implants? Nah. Have you ever had a crush on a sibling’s friend? No. Have you ever had a crush on a friend’s sibling? No. Are you more of a 'girly girl’ or a 'tomboy’? A tomboy. Have you ever dated someone with a child? No. Are you addicted to texting? No.

[itwasanangryinch]

3...2...1... Happy New Year!!

For the first (?) time, I’m actually going to make and complete a New Years meme, because fuck it, I had a good year. I’m also going to put much shorter answers for last year since I had wanted to do this then, but then... didn’t.

Favourite new (to me) band: Against Me!     5 favourite songs:

The Ocean

White Crosses

True Trans Soul Rebel

I Was a Teenage Anarchist

Norse Truth

I’ve known about Against Me! since lead singer Laura Jane Grace since she came out as trans in 2012 with her Rolling Stone profile, but I hadn’t heard any of their songs until a couple of years ago. This year was the first year I really got into her music (both here and with The Devouring Mothers) after reading her biography Tranny while on vacation in Melbourne.

Runner up: Miss Guy and the Toilet Boys, seen for the first time at Wigstock 2.Ho

2017′s answer: Ataru Nakamura, the very, very talented trans performer who played Yitzhak to JCM’s Hedwig in Japan (and because of the staging, also played Hedwig for the non-singing part of the script.)

Favourite new (to me) city: Melbourne, Australia.

If you had asked me last year, my answer would have been Tokyo, Japan and this year’s is my favourite for much the same reasons: Melbourne is very easy to get around, very fun to walk around, and I got to see the wonderful John Cameron Mitchell perform there.

Melbourne is absolutely beautiful with so many shops to explore and a free (within the few square blocks I mostly kept to) public transport system.

Runner up: Sydney, Australia. Very similar to Melbourne and might have been the favourite if I had been able to stay there longer, but.... schedules.

2017′s answer: Toyko, Japan. For the reasons listed above. I could actually see myself moving to Tokyo at some point. Not right now, but possibly eventually.

Favourite concert: John Cameron Mitchell: The Origin of Love, Brisbane

This year I have seen this concert seven times in addition to one very abridged show in Portland, Oregon to go along with a double header of Hedwig and How to Talk to Girls at Parties.

On this particular date, the band gelled really well; John was in a great mood, great energy; the crowd was incredible..... Everything just... Worked. (Even tho this was the concert I had the least amount of interaction with John afterwards, lol.)

Definitely looking forward to seeing where John takes the performances for his upcoming stateside tour and at a later, yet to be announced, time in Japan.

Runner ups: (aside from the rest of the OoL tour), Rocky Horror with Mason Alexander Park, Taboo 15 (with Mason), Alice Cooper, and Wigstock 2.Ho where I finally got to see NPH performing as Hedwig.

2017′s answer: Hedwig and the Angry Inch: October 14th, evening. Tokyo, Japan.

In my estimation, this was the best of all of the Hedwig concerts. By this point, everyone had performed this in front of an audience twice before and the show from beginning to end gelled really well. Again, there was an incredible energy between the band and the two lead performers and the audiences for all of the Japan shows were great. From beginning to end, this one was the best.

From about the Tommy monologue til the end, the final Tokyo show (Oct. 15th) was the best because there was this crackling, alive, angry energy that had an almost dangerous feeling to Exquisite Corpse and was the only show (surprisingly!!) where I cried at the delivery of my favourite line “Then love the front of me.” On that show, with the exception of Exquisite Corpse, I cried from that line til John started the encore song, ‘The End of Love’ and I had only stopped there because I had completely forgotten he was doing an encore song.

Favourite movie: Black Panther

I’ve been waiting literal years for this movie to be made and there was not one thing to be disappointed in in its final rendering in my opinion. I realize that unlike a large portion of the audience, this movie was very much not reflective of my experiences and at no point would I claim to be represented by it as anything other than a nerd and a comic book fan.

Being a fan of the Black Panther for years has meant having tone deaf comic lines, sidelined animated stories, and much less content, merch, and even cartoon adaptation than some of his paler counterparts. So to see a film that was technically and narratively perfect being rendered so beautifully and taking the box office for many, many weeks was a wonderful way to start this year.

Runners up: Deadpool 2, Bad Samaratian, and does How to Talk to Girls at Parties even count for this year if I saw it last year in Japan??

2017′s answer: a strong tie between Transpotting 2 and HtTtGaP. T2 because it was so much better than I could have ever hoped it to be. It married themes and footage from the first film perfectly to the characters’ lives 20 years on. It gave me hope for an eventual Hedwig sequel in terms of quality because based on interviews, they share a similar tone in terms of ageing characters. Plus Danny Boyle’s cinematography was truly beautiful with the use of shadows, call-backs, foreshadowing.... A true equal to the most iconic of Scottish films.

HtTtGaP because well.... John Cameron Mitchell’s direction mixed with an alien invasion set against punk rock and the Queen’s jubilee? How could I not love it? To me, it’s a strong second to Hedwig in terms of quality and netted my absolute favourite review via the BBC (‘This is one of the worst films ever made’, trust me Beeb reviewer, if that were true, cinema would be a far more enjoyable art form.)

Favourite vacation: Australia

Long story short: I met my favourite actor five times. It’s very rare in this life that you can actually tell an artist who influenced your life in a very meaningful way just how much their art and they as a person mean to you. This year, after seeing JCM perform live eight times and on video, no lie, thousands of times, I had the chance to actually do this. And unlike how I was worried about for the past three years, I wasn’t actually nervous to talk to him at all. Part of that is that he is a very easy person to feel at ease with, very comforting presence.... And part of it was that during the first Australian show I went to where I’m dressed as the very first Squeezebox Hedwig, John lay on top of me as part of the final number. How could I be scared to talk to him after that introduction??

Runners up: going to see Taboo 15 in New York with my best friend and touring the David Bowie Is exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum (March), going to see Wigstock with Risa. Technically, I ditched work to be able to go, but.... 10/10, I would do it again. I saw a lot of amazing performers for the first time, had a chance to chat with Mason again, and saw the tour de force that is Neil Patrick Harris as Hedwig and Lena Hall as Yitzhak.

Hopefully next year, the Hedwig section will be able to be longer. (Or maybe Yitz will perform by himself. Or multiple Hedwigs. Or just the entire Hedwig script delivered at the end of a seven hour drag festival pre-show.)

2017′s answer: Hedwig in Japan. Not only did I get to meet my friend @miyacantdecide for the first time in person, I was able to see the wonder that is JCM as Hedwig live. Even when he’s not delivering the script, his presence as Hedwig is truly something else. And having seen him perform as himself (but in a version of her makeup) this year, I can honestly say that She has a completely different stage presence to Him and how incredible of an actor to be able to deliver such radically different interpretations of the same material and songs??

Outside of Hedwig, I can honestly say that I came back from Japan a changed person. Better in so many ways than I was a year previous. Almost completely made whole again after past traumas (and completed a year later on a different trip.)

2017′s runner up: seeing RENT 20 live. I had a blast hanging out with my mother most of the days and the RENT 20 cast? Holy shit. What talents. Cried from ‘I’ll Cover You (Reprise)’ til the end of ‘Finale B’. Just goes to show: it doesn’t matter if the show’s set in December and it’s hot As Fuck outside if you have a talented cast bundled up in sweaters for 75% of the script.

Favourite album: Golden by Kylie

Not only does pop’s most talented princess talk about her recent breakup with Joshua Sause (sp?), there’s themes of her ageing as this year our princess turned 50. While I agree with reviewers that this isn’t her best musically or vocally, I find myself replaying this one over and over on my stereo and headphones more than almost any other album this year. Favourite song: a toss up between Shelby ‘68 and Low Blow.

2017′s answer: Pollinator by Blondie. It had been two years since the release of 2014′s Ghost of Download, but unlike Ghost’s offerings that went largely unnoticed by me at the time, every single from Pollinator got me more and more hyped not only because of the excellent music evident on songs such as Fun, Long Time, and Doom or Destiny, but collaborations with artists such as Raja (on the video for Fun) and Joan Jett (the aforementioned Doom or Destiny), the honey-thick entrancing song Fragments, and the wonderful Love Line.

This year has been weirder, queerer, and more wonderful than any year yet on record. I’ve been to a number of technically-but-not-really drag shows, revisited some of my favourite artists in concert, met two of my favourite Hedwigs, and saw four total Heds perform.... I’ve read and learned more about the queer experience that not only deepened my understanding of my larger community, but of my own experiences and how they fit within the community. I’ve become more confident being out to coworkers and customers at my job....

I had the pleasure of meeting two of my close friends @hedwig-in-a-jukebox and @fdelopera in person (with plans to meet up again early-2019) as well as making some new friends.

Here’s to an even better 2019! Onwards and upwards.

[mozgoderina]

Sources, influences, racial politics (ArtsATL) / Glenn Ligon

Since the 1980s, conceptual artist Glenn Ligon has incorporated practices of literature, Abstract Expressionism, photo-based media and appropriation to critically explore issues of identity, politics, sexuality and personal desire, to dazzling effect.

The materials Ligon employs to create his large-scale, often monochromatic works are as varied and textured as the subjects he explores. He moves seamlessly across screen printing, oil paint, white neon painted black and even coal dust, and uses quotations from Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin and comedian Richard Pryor in many of his most widely recognized works.

In 2011, Ligon’s first major mid-career retrospective, “Glenn Ligon: America,” was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Although drawing comparisons to artists such as Jenny Holzer or even David Hammons is tempting though tenuous, a more precise parallel is to Abstract Expressionists such as Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg, whom Ligon frequently cites as early influences.

The High Museum of Art’s inclusion of Ligon’s 1988 work “There is a consciousness we all have …” in its current exhibition “Fast Forward: Modern Moments” is felicitous. The piece — a relatively small rust-colored work of oil on paper — uses the text from commentary by former High Museum Director Ned Rifkin (then chief curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden) in a New York Times write-up on the celebrated sculptor Martin Puryear. The quotation reads, in its entirety: “There is a consciousness we all have that he is a black American artist (by madison ), but I think his work is really superior and stands on its own.” The quote suggests a cultural blindness to which the art world was recently exposed again by way of a series of controversial reviews by Ken Johnson in The New York Times, more than 20 years after Ligon produced the piece.

ArtsATL spoke with Ligon in advance of his artist lecture at the High Museum this Thursday, January 10, at 7 p.m. Following is an edited excerpt of our conversation.

ArtsATL: In the summer of 2011, I went to your retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was really interesting to see the progression from some of the earliest works to the current neon “America” works, so I wanted to start off by just talking about that progression a little bit. One of the things I noticed was this shift from the use of color to a lot of black-and-white monochromatic works and then back to color in the mid-to-late 2000s. I’m thinking of those very early more personal works. What caused that shift from more colorful personal works to using other text or to reappropriating text in your work?

Glenn Ligon: With the works that have color in them — the Richard Pryor joke paintings and the coloring book paintings — I think the shift there was in some ways trying to think about color again, because I started out as an abstract painter. So before the text work I was doing abstractions, but they were just abstractions and very involved in color and composition. I decided that that wasn’t the direction in which my work was going.

The Pryor paintings were a way back to color [while] still using text; it allowed me to think about color more but also think about it in relationship to someone like Andy Warhol and his self-portraits from the 1960s. And also it’s just a very simple idea that Richard Pryor needed to be in color.

ArtsATL: The Richard Pryor works are interesting. They are so bright that they’re almost kind of difficult to look at, because if you stare at them too long, they start to kind of vibrate.

Glenn Ligon: Yes, I think, partially, if you look at the Warhol portraits, he’s a master colorist. A lot of combinations have that kind of electrical charge, and their juxtapositions become difficult to look at or obscure the image — that’s what I was interested in. Also because I think Richard Pryor’s a comedian but he’s not funny, so I was really interested in work that made the viewer work to see [it] but was difficult to look at.

ArtsATL: With a lot of your work, you really make the audience work for it. When you [read it] deeply, all of these complications arise. I’m thinking of the text work created with oil stick on just a white background, where the text starts out as this clean line and gradually crescendos into this mass at the bottom of the canvas you can barely read. When I look at this work, it reminds me of music in the sense that you are using a pre-existing phrase, but you are making it your own or replaying it much like a score in your own way. Obviously literature is a big influence in your work, but I wonder if music is anything that you think about as well.

Glenn Ligon: I was just recently at a concert by Steve Reich, and he was talking about some pieces from the ’60s — “Come Out” and “It’s Gonna Rain” — and the use of repeating, out-of-sync human voices. I’d been listening to Reich for years, and I’d never thought about it in terms of my work. Then suddenly I thought, “That’s ridiculous! Why have I never thought about it?” It makes perfect sense. It’s my work, basically.

So it was interesting to think about how music has been important, though it’s not been in the forefront. I did a piece for the pianist Jason Moran for a concert based on Thelonius Monk called “In My Mind.” What he asked me for, or what I thought he asked me for, was something for an album cover or poster, so I took that phrase “In My Mind” and repeated that and made a drawing out of it. When I went to the concert, there was a whole section where that drawing was being projected on the screen behind the musicians and they were playing, as Jason said, to the spaces in the drawing, and using the spaces as pauses.

I thought that was amazing, this relationship to music in the work, although not something I had thought about consciously but something Jason understood. So yes, I think music has been a kind of touchstone, particularly Monk, who I think was influential when I was thinking about making the Richard Pryor paintings, because the playing is so idiosyncratic and so much his own, but absolutely masterful and virtuosic.

I was thinking about that in terms of thinking about Pryor, who can seemingly get up and tell a story, but then realized that Paul Mooney was his writing partner [and] if you listen to different albums they are pursing their material. They changed the jokes to make them more effective. It’s very interesting when you realize he’s not just up there telling stories. There’s a kind of deep back and forth.

ArtsATL: What is it about text that you find so intriguing? I’ve listened to interviews where you’ve talked about your upbringing and how your mother would buy you and your brother books.

Glenn Ligon: Well, I think for a black working-class family, education is the cliché, education was the key, so there’s a lot of emphasis placed on reading and literacy as a sort of way to achieve. Also when I was younger I was interested in writing too, so I think I was more interested in writing than in art.

ArtsATL: Did you ever want to be a writer when you were growing up?

Glenn Ligon: I did, but at some point I realized that writing is as hard as making art, you know? It got to the point where I could make art as a profession; I just thought, “Well, I know lots of artists write,” but I find it as hard. I’ve written a fair amount for magazines, but it’s maybe once a year. We just published a book of writings right around the time of the Whitney show.

I think literature was around in my childhood, and it’s also a place where you’re legitimately allowed to be alone. I grew up in the South Bronx; it was kind of a turbulent neighborhood. I couldn’t justify staying inside all the time unless I was doing something that required being inside. So I think literature became important to me early on.

But I also grew up around appropriation and text. Why write your own when there are texts in the world? Appropriating text is a way of getting certain ideas into the work directly. In a way it’s very straightforward — like, “Oh, I want these ideas in my work; well, just use them.”

ArtsATL: I think a lot about advertising and the work of artists like Hank Willis Thomas, Barbara Kruger or Martha Rossler and this sort of engagement with the idea of being perpetually surrounded by language. It’s how we navigate the world, so I want to ask you about this interaction with public space and your surroundings and how that comes into the work. You’re operating from this very interesting perspective, which is basically you’re in this body, as am I, as an artist, where you are endlessly navigating this idea of being a black artist or being a gay artist or being an American artist, and there are all these things that play into the work in interesting ways.

Could you explain the process of creating “Notes on the Margins of the Black Book,” in which you juxtaposed images of mostly black nude men taken from Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Black Book” with comments about the images collected from people at a bar that Mapplethorpe frequented?

Glenn Ligon: You’re asking a hard question. Specifically with that piece, I just thought that Mapplethorpe was an interesting figure because he was the subject of a big retrospective, also at the Whitney, very celebrated and because he had this body of work that dealt with representations of black men. Because my work wasn’t figurative, I thought it was an interesting project — to use Mapplethorpe’s images as a sort of ready-made material on which to operate.

But instead of defacing it or whatever the impulse would be would seem very simplistic to me, I thought let’s create this context for it. Put the work in the context of all these debates around black male representation, gay sexuality, censorship, AIDS, personal desire. Put all of that next to the work and let the viewers sort it out. And they can choose. They can not read the text and look at the photos or read the text and sort through those issues in the same kind of process that I went through when thinking about that work. It’s just a way to open up that work to a sort of larger context.

Sometimes I think I am interested in that, and sometimes it’s more hermetic. I think I make abstract paintings. They’re text-based but they’re essentially abstract paintings, so in some ways they’re sort of rooted in the specificity of the text I’m using, but in other ways they feel very far from it and it’s the trace of that language [that] is more interesting to me than the specifics of what that language is.

ArtsATL: You’ve mentioned that some of your influences were people like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who are both Southern artists. Could you talk about that?

Glenn Ligon: It’s probably less about them being from the South, though I think there’s some interesting work on Rauschenberg’s paintings from the ’50s which I love: “The Black Paintings” and “The White Paintings.” There’s a historian, Mignon Nixon; I think she is actually from the South and she’s at the Courtauld [Institute of Art] now. She did some work on Rauschenberg’s “Black Paintings” and was asking, “Well, if you look at what was on the covers of those papers at that time, it was all about civil rights groups.”

I don’t know what he made of that or what importance that takes, but I think it is interesting to think about how work that is seemingly not about something can be about something. But I think I was interested in Johns and Rauschenberg — I think more in Johns because of the use of language, but now increasingly in Rauschenberg — because I’m very fascinated with how he made images work and with decontextualizing very familiar images. Johns, too, you know [American flags] and all of that, but also because they were painters, and I gravitated more towards them than I did towards Barbara Kruger or Joseph Kosuth. I wanted to remain a painter, and they provided certain kinds of models. Someone like Kosuth or Kruger provided certain kinds of relationships to theory and appropriation and critique of consumer culture, so I was trying to walk the line between those.

ArtsATL: Because your work is so closely connected to language and is also often connected to American history, I want to ask about context. I’m thinking about James Baldwin’s Stranger in the Village, which you’ve also referenced in your work. How do you feel that your work changes in different environments? What are the responses to your work outside the United States?

Glenn Ligon: Well, I had a funny sort of encounter. I had a year-long fellowship in Berlin in 2000, and I was making work for Documenta that Okwui Enwesor curated, a body of paintings based on Stranger in the Village. I had an interview with [American critic] Blake Gopnik, who was doing an article about American artists living overseas. He came and picked my brain and then when I got the article it said, “Glenn Ligon’s issues don’t translate in European context.” And I thought, “Well, James Baldwin? Stranger in the Village … what doesn’t translate?” I thought that was fascinating, this kind of blindness or the inability to extend the reading of a text from a different era to a present situation.

I have a show coming up in Japan in March, and one of the neon works I was thinking about using is one that says “negro sunshine,” which is from Gertrude Stein. I asked the curator if she could find the Stein book that it’s from and tell me what the translation is into Japanese. And she said, “Well, it’s not so good. It’s ‘the sunshine of black people,’ ” and I thought that was great. It’s fascinating, but it loses the specificity of the word “negro,” a word in American context that evokes a particular time period.

That kind of slippage is really interesting. It’s not something I’ve worked with extensively — most of the work I’ve done has been in English — but it is an area that I’m thinking more about exploring. But it’s tricky, because one has to sort of dive into a language that’s not your own or trust people’s interpretations.

ArtsATL: Right. It is really tricky. It’s also interesting, this sort of discomfort you feel with not being entirely fluent in a language and having to trust somebody to translate for you.

Glenn Ligon: I guess also it’s trying to understand what kind of cultural presuppositions come out of thinking about translation. That word “negro” is not really translatable into Japanese, and so it’s “black people.” Why didn’t they just leave it? If you can’t translate it, just leave it. So I found that all kind of fascinating; whether I can work with that as material, I don’t know. It’s increasingly interesting to me as I start to show in places outside the United States.

ArtsATL: I want to talk about the very beginning of your career. I just turned 29, which is right around the age you were when you received your New York Foundation for the Arts grant. Could you talk a little bit about that transition? I know you were working; you had a “day job” and then you got this grant and it freed up time that allowed you to become a full-time artist.

Glenn Ligon: My mother joked that the day I knew I was an artist was when the government said I was an artist. The NYFA doesn’t trust artists with individual grants any more — they now have to be administered through a handler — so this was back when the government would actually send you a check. I just decided it was a moment where I could try to be a full-time artist for a while.

I don’t remember the amount of the grant, but it was enough to take some significant amount of time off from work, and I thought, “Well, what does it mean if I start working full time or try to have a proper studio?,” because I was working out of a basement in my house. So that was a huge, huge shift — I guess that was in ‘89 — and I had just started to show, a few works were selling. It just became this sort of launch pad for this thing called “being an artist” which I was already doing, which I was just sort of doing part time and kind of decided to do it full time then.

ArtsATL: It’s really interesting, because very rarely do I get the opportunity to hear artists talk about that progression or that jump between working in your basement, or your mother’s basement, and then suddenly becoming a full-time successful artist.

Glenn Ligon: Well, also I didn’t go to graduate school, so it took me a long time to get a working practice. . . . I never had two years where all you had to do was be in your studio.

ArtsATL: I read somewhere recently that you’re working on a piece based on Walt Whitman’s work.

Glenn Ligon: Yeah, it’s a big neon piece for the New School. It’s going to be in the student center in the new building they’re making.

ArtsATL: What made you choose Whitman for this project?

Glenn Ligon: Well, I think because the New School has such a history of social engagement. It was started by refugees from Europe during the ’30s, and not started by but stocked with refugees from Europe. There are some very famous Orozco murals there that were illustrating the history of Communism basically, that are kind of fantastic, and they also collect widely and exhibit work in their various buildings. So I just thought that the history of the New School was about a certain kind of populism, and it would be interesting to think about some author who embodied that. The piece concentrates on Leaves of Grass, more specifically on the city as subject matter and thinking about bodies and how one encounters bodies in the city and desiring those bodies. So essentially it’s a big piece about cruising in the student cafeteria. I don’t think they know that.

  Source: ArtsATL. Link: Sources, influences, racial politics Illustration: Glenn Ligon [USA] (b 1960). 'Warm Broad Glow (reversed)', 2007. Photogravure and aquatint on Somerset paper (62 x 90 cm). Moderator: ART HuNTER.

[retrocollect]

Before I actually delve into the main meat and potatoes of Cowardly Creations’ recent PS4 and Vita release, I want to discuss the title. Uncanny Valley is named after the notion that the more accurate simulations of human faces and expressions get, the more we (as in, us real humans) become aware that they might not be authentic. A great example of this are the characters seen in the Tom Hanks computer generated movie The Polar Express. The facial animations of the characters are eerily lifelike…but there’s something decidedly soulless about them and the human eye has an unnerving ability to detect the fabrication. The same can be said of the young Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy or the recreation of Peter Cushing depicted in Star Wars Rogue One. Like The Thing from John Carpenter’s eponymous 1980s masterpiece, it looks like a human…but it isn’t. And so ends the pseudo-science lesson. I simply find the notion of the uncanny valley theory totally fascinating and this in part might be one of the reasons that I was drawn to this retro-inspired psychological horror in the first place.

Uncanny Valley is actually a fairly old game, having originally been released on Steam way back in 2015. I only discovered this after searching for information about the game prior to its release on the PlayStation Store earlier this week, and I unearthed a bunch of rather unfavourable reviews, too. Not wanting to be influenced by the actual reasons behind the various two-star ratings Google threw at me amongst the search results, I decided not to read them and instead wait for the game to arrive and play through it with no prior knowledge or information about the storyline or the gameplay mechanics. The only things I cared about at the point of purchase were that I was enamoured with the 2D, pixel art trappings and the promise of playing what looked like a retro-themed take on Silent Hill. Having experienced and enjoyed aesthetically similar games on my Vita, such as Lone Survivor and Slain (both of which have a definite horror theme), I wanted to give Uncanny Valley my full, undivided and uninfluenced attention.

The game starts with you playing as a guy called Tom (which was disconcerting at first, as I though the game somehow knew my actual name), who has just taken a job as a security guard at an isolated facility surrounded for miles around by nothing but snow-covered forests. The facility was once the home to an organisation called Melior, but now stands unused yet is eerily still full of office equipment and machinery. So far, so The Shining; and I think it’s important to reference Stanley Kubrick’s seminal horror flick at this point because Uncanny Valley draws much of its uneasy atmosphere from the 1980 movie. The feeling that everything appears to be normal, but there’s something not quite right. Where are all the workers from the facility? Why does the massive building stand empty apart from you and another security guard with who you share a shift pattern? Who is the mysterious house keeper you occasionally run into at the now deserted staff accommodation block? There are so many unnerving elements to the game’s story that you can’t help but be drawn in, driven by a desire to know more. It’s like The Shining mixed with the desolation of Pripyat and the mysterious, unnameable weirdness of HP Lovecraft’s novella Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Once you settle in, Uncanny Valley sets you the task of doing the rounds in the Melior building after dark, where Buck (the other security guard) gives you instructions on which floors to patrol and barks at you over the radio to fix the generator if the power goes down. During these shifts (which actually only last for 7 minutes each) you are generally free to roam around the deserted building and the limited outside areas by torchlight, picking up audio tapes and reading emails on the various computer terminals you find. Both of these activities will yield further information about what went down at Melior before the firm went to the wall, and also reveal the unease felt by staff at working in such a remote location, with the company dabbling in unethical and slightly disturbing research. It is once these night shifts end and Tom finds himself needing the warm embrace of sleep that Uncanny Valley truly takes a trip into the macabre and surreal.

The dream sequences place Tom in a host of unconnected scenes and locations – police stations full of corrupt cops, alleyways populated by mutilated corpses and tenements full of what can only be described massive green faces bursting through walls…because that’s what they are. The desolate reality merged with the horrific dream sequences, both in turn coupled with no real idea of what is going on (initially at least) do make Uncanny Valley a truly unique and genuinely unsettling experience. For this, I cannot fault it. The game does start a bit slowly, and is a little bit more of a walking simulator than you would expect, but after a while the creepiness ramps up and the action starts…and then it goes fully Silent Hill and you find yourself running down shadowy corridors, shooting zombies in the head and being chased by crowds of invincible silhouettes. What does it all mean? What was Melior doing out there in the place beyond the pines? Well…I won’t spoil it for you, but rest assured it’s pretty creepy and makes Uncanny Valley stand out on the Vita especially as a game well worth investigating.

Another, not so positive aspect of Uncanny Valley, is just how full of glitches it is. At first, I wondered if what I was encountering was a play on Eternal Darkness’s way of messing with the player. Remember the ‘corrupt memory card’ prank and the other ways in which the Gamecube classic tried to freak you out by breaking the fourth wall? Well, Uncanny Valley has plenty of these moments…but they aren’t intentional. A major bug I found was that if you are in the middle of attempting a puzzle when the game forces Tom back to his bedroom to get some sleep (it’s a bit like the mechanic used in Shenmue where Ryo Hazuki has to keep popping off to bed when it gets late), then the game will not load the following screens. It’s hard to explain, but essentially you can still move around and interact with items and other characters…but you cannot see anything on the screen. Pressing pause will make the black mask flash for a split second, revealing the game as it should be before going back to a black screen. In this case, the game had auto saved and no matter how many times I reloaded my save, the black screen glitch was replicated. Annoyed, I restarted the adventure resigned to the fact that I’d just wasted two hours of my life.

Interestingly though – and as a testament to the message you get upon starting Uncanny Valley for the first time – on my second play through I got a slightly different experience. Different conversations with the same characters, different items in the game world to collect and slightly different dream sequences. Uncanny Valley boasts several different endings and you are encouraged to play through the whole adventure multiple times to see everything the adventure has to offer, and the fact that this annoying glitch forced me to restart after just two hours allowed me to get a look at what the developers intended. There are some other clever aspects to Uncanny Valley, such as the ability to heal certain parts of Tom’s body with bandages, and the damage model will hinder progress (such as making Tom walk slower or not allowing him to move boxes at all if his arms are injured). There are standard puzzle elements too, such as finding key codes and unlocking doors and there are also some nice little touches like being able to interact with the vast majority of background items. However, the muddled way in which the story is revealed to the player, and the general air of not knowing what to do next does detract from the overall experience.

In a nutshell, Uncanny Valley is an intriguing and refreshing experience – certainly on the Vita, anyway. It looks pretty great and the animation is brilliant, while the sound design perfectly builds suspense and a feeling of uncertain and otherworldly horror. Sadly, there is a distinct air of style over substance. The somewhat aimless wandering around and slow pacing of the opening sections will probably leave many gamers cold, and the occasional game-breaking glitch means that many will likely never get to see the further recesses of either the Melior facility or Tom’s subconscious. Indeed, if I hadn’t decided I was going to review Uncanny Valley here for RetroCollect, I probably wouldn’t have restarted the game at all. Ultimately though, if you’re hankering for a new approach to horror on your Vita (or PS4, as cross-buy is included in the price), then by all means give Uncanny Valley a few of hours of your time. It looks good and the general weirdness peaks the interest just enough to make you want to see just how bizarre the game can get, and with multiple endings there’s a decent level of replay value.

Since playing Uncanny Valley, I’ve been back and looked at those reviews I mentioned in the opening section of this review and for the most part I agree with the criticisms levelled at the original Steam release. Not much seems to have changed since the jump from PC to console, and even the same glitches appear to have been dragged along for the ride. That said, as a Vita game there’s not really a lot of competition for Uncanny Valley and it’s really quite an interesting take on survival/psychological horror. Head into this expecting a Super Nintendo version of Silent Hill and you’ll be disappointed. Head into it expecting an intriguing new slant on the genre and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Just remember not to attempt any puzzles before Tom’s bedtime.

Link: Uncanny Valley at PlayStation Store

via RetroCollect - Retro Gaming Collectors Community

[brucegargoyle]

Today’s book is one I picked up on a whim from the library, yet I am happy to report that upon reading it I learned lots of interesting new trivia about everyone’s favourite, foot-stabbing toy, Lego.  The Cult of Lego is a coffee-table sized, photograph-laden romp through the history of the humble, foot-stabbing Lego brick and here’s the blurb from Goodreads:

No, this isn’t a book about joining some fringe cult. It’s a book by LEGO® fans, for LEGO fans, and you and your kids will love it.

In The Cult of LEGO, Wired’s GeekDad blogger John Baichtal andBrickJournal founder Joe Meno take you on a magnificent, illustrated tour of the LEGO community, its people, and their creations.

The Cult of LEGO introduces us to fans and builders from all walks of life. People like professional LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya; enigmatic Dutch painter Ego Leonard (who maintains that he is, in fact, a LEGO minifig); Angus MacLane, a Pixar animator who builds CubeDudes, instantly recognizable likenesses of fictional characters; Brick Testament creator Brendan Powell Smith, who uses LEGO to illustrate biblical stories; and Henry Lim, whose work includes a series of models recreating M.C. Escher lithographs and a full-scale, functioning LEGO harpsichord.

Marvel at spectacular LEGO creations like:

A life-sized Stegosaurus and an 80,000-brick T. Rex skeleton Detailed microscale versions of landmarks like the Acropolis and Yankee Stadium A 22-foot long, 350-pound re-creation of the World War II battleship Yamato A robotic, giant chess set that can replay historical matches or take on an opponent A three-level, remote-controlled Jawa Sandcrawler, complete with moving conveyor belt

Whether you’re a card-carrying LEGO fanatic or just thinking fondly about that dusty box of LEGO in storage, The Cult of LEGOwill inspire you to take out your bricks and build something amazing.

And here are Five Things I’ve Learned From The Cult of Lego by John Baichtal and Joe Meno:

1. The first products out of the Lego factory weren’t little connectable bricks at all, but wooden toys – the most famous being a pull-along wooden duck.

2. Lego has been around for so long that its original patents have expired, which is why in recent years multiple products bearing the “Lego-compatible” mark have popped up around the place.

3.   The best selling of Lego’s products to date has been the Mindstorms robotics system.

4. Lego has been used to great effect in Autism therapy programs, as well as in corporate settings to encourage creative problem solving.

5. In accordance with Lego’s tagline, “build your dreams”, clever folk around the world have built everything from functioning ATM and vending machines to prosthetic limbs out of Lego…although my personal favourite creation is the working, floating bug killing device designed by two pioneering Kiwis (the people, not the birds) to overcome the problem of having an uncomfortable number of water insects inhabiting the family pool.

When I checked this one out of the library I expected that it would be the kind of book that I would idly flick through during points of boredom, but I actually ended up reading it cover to cover.  This was no mean feat given that the book is a hefty, coffee-table sized tome, but I like to think that holding it up for long periods counted as exercise.  Beginning at the beginning, the book takes a look at the fascinating history of the toy company that would eventually become the home of the ubiquitous and iconic Lego brick.  The company’s commitment to quality, amongst other things, is clearly one of the reasons why Lego has been around for so long, and has made such an impact on popular culture.

From Lego’s early incarnations, the book moves on to explore the extensive world of AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego, to the uninitiated) and the “cult” that has built up around the humble toy brick.  You may not be aware of this, but adult Lego fans are everywhere, with their own webcomics, literature, conventions, language, online forums and competitions and if you ever wanted to be part of a hardcore hobbyist community based around a children’s toy, Lego could certainly provide your entry ticket into such a world.  As well as the world of competitive building by adult Lego fans, the book takes a look at Lego as art, Lego as architecture and the ways in which adult builders have taken Lego to whole new levels that could not have been imagined by the company’s founders.   No book on Lego could be complete without a close look at the Minifig phenomenon, and these little guys play a big role in the cult of Lego, influencing everything from the scale of creations to the builders’ choice of avatar in the online and business worlds.

There is a section of the book devoted to Lego and robotics and this was a whole new world for me as I have never particularly dabbled in the Technic sets, let alone the Mindstorms system, which allows users to program robots for all sorts of purposes, from the aforementioned vending machines, to robots designed to solve Rubik’s Cubes.

The point of difference for this book is that it takes a focused look at how a simple interconnected building toy has made such an incredible impact on wider society.  At the same time, it uncovers the vast and complex subculture of adult fans of Lego and the many ways in which the brick has evolved beyond “toy” status, in the hands of grown ups with innovative ambitions.  If you are a fan of Lego, and indeed of social history, I can recommend this book as one to lose yourself in.

In a nod to those adult builders, below is a little selection of photos from the Brisbricks (that’s the Brisbane Lego Fan User Group) display that Mad Martha visited in June of 2016 at Strathpine:

Kudos to the builders that came up with squirrel herding and chickens escaping from KFC!

Until next time,

Bruce

The Cult of Lego: A “Five Things I’ve Learned” Review Today's book is one I picked up on a whim from the library, yet I am happy to report that upon reading it I learned lots of interesting new trivia about everyone's favourite, foot-stabbing toy, Lego.  

[uzzuling]

hi~ sorry it’s been a while school has been completely overwhelming recently :/// anyways, how has your week been? also im kind of curious so what other music do you like besides kpop and what are tv shows/movies or books you like? i hope everything’s going well for you! -secret santa

hello~~ don’t worry i’ve been busy with school as well!! i just had my first exam of the semester (genetics!) and i think i did well! my sister also got sick but it seems like she’s getting better!! (future bianca: i ended up writing a lot so this is under a read more oiengoier)

i don’t tend to listen to other types of music very often but i do love love john mayer (watch the ‘still feel like your man’ music video)!! and also soft instrumental songs like this which was the first one i was exposed to or also anything by In Love With A Ghost. There’s also some songs by bo en available on spotify that i really like (some recommendations: miss you; winter valentine; my time). other than that i love old nostalgic songs (the 00s mainly) - i’ve been replaying buttons by the pussycat dolls recently nonstop (mostly because of this dance cover) - i love beyonce as everyone should, and also some charlie puth songs (and i blame Dragon Stone for it). QUICK EDIT: i also know all of mamma mia’s songs because it’s the best musical.

as for tv shows, i just finished little witch academia if that counts gienroigner and i’ve been following boku no hero academia as the third season comes out! i’m also working hard to one day finish naturo!! non-anime but still not quite tv show: i watched and love all of gravity falls and most of adventure time. i finished the second season of voltron and plan to finish it all one day oops! i adore stranger things!! i love unbreakable kimmy schmidt but i never watched the third season. brooklyn 99 is a blessing. powerpuff girls z is the superior powerpuff girls.

i admit it’s been a While since i last finished a book but i still do love them, trust me. i read all the pjo books and other famous series. i have all the hp books but still haven’t read them all but ONE DAY i just gotta find the motivation to finish the hobbit which i’ve been hanging onto for over a year by now oiengroeng one of my favorite books is winger which i highly recommend!! and also ready player one though we already talked about that! half bad is also Incredible though i never read the sequence. i’ve never finished the lunar chronicles either but it’s AMAZING another good recommendation!!

sorry this got so long omg but!!! i hope you’re doing well and that maybe you’ll like some of my recommendations oigenrgoier good luck with school and everything else!