Children of Men.

Clive Owen's understated performance in this overlooked 2006 film was to say the least noteworthy. Based on P.D. Jame's novel the title is taken from psalm 90(89):3 in The King James Bible. It is set in a world on the border of choas in 1992 England. At this time for reason not fully understood all are infertile. The people alive are the last generation on the planet. The film opens with the last peron born on record being killed in a barfight in South America. It moves on from there with a quick and coherent story line. The scene where Clive's character walks out during a pause in a firefight is spellbinding.
Take the time. It's worth it....

A tail worth telling.

Toward the end of the Civil War. The South was so befret of supplies due to the blockades and overall cost of the effort that everything was in short supply. The silk thread used for surgery had almost disappeared.  Enterprising Southern surgeons had took to boiling hair from horses tails to make it supple enough to use. The boiling had a two fold effect. It made the hair easier to handle as well as to make it sterile. This cut post op infections and caught the attentions of the physicians who then made the jump between boiling material and lack of infections. Which lead to sterilization of surgery tools.
                                                                  Think of that........

Sartre's crabs

When Jean Paul Sartre was in Normale he ate mescaline by the fistfull. He used to see crabs following him everywhere. He would greet them in the morning and tell them to be quiet as they went to class. Ahh to be French.

Cleaner makes your more ethical?

A study to be released by a BYU professor found people in a clean and orderly enviorment act more ethically.  Really? Weren't Nazis a clean meticulous people. The camps laid out in orderly grids. I don't know about you but clean and meticulous makes me edgy.

Krung Threp

I met the guy who built the Tyrell pyramid in Blade Runner in Bangkok. He said it was knee high and could fit on a table. He also said the entire Blade Runner set was only a block on a back set.

                                          Think of that......

May set fire to the atmosphere?

Enrico Fermi, a brillant Los Alamos physicist was worried that when the first Atom bomb was detonated the the reaction would be so energetic that it may set fire to earth's atmosphere. The army thought at the time it was a acceptable risk.

Your tax dollars at work circa 1944

At the height of World War II. A dentist (a profession fundamentaly evil by nature.) named Lytle S. Adams came up with the idea for a bat bomb.  Bats as it turns out can carry close to their own weight in flight. And as luck would have it there are four caves in Texas with something like seven million bats . Bats when dormant hibernate so would need very little care and when active hide during daylight.  They seek out eves and attics which interestingly enough in Japan were constructed of wood and paper. So this toothpuller hooked up with another gigglemaster by the name of Louis Fieser the inventor of napalm. He designed a .6 ounce napalm bomblet with timer to be carried by a bat. The bats would be carried in 26 trays stacked forty to a bomb. The bomb would be dropped at night at five thousand feet and release the bats at one thousand feet where they would seek out the comfort of the aforementioned eves and attics. The timers go off and the bats and Osaka Bay would burn to ashes.
 There was a plan to produce  1,040,040 batbombs and fly them over Japan from Alaska. During testing and bunch of bats(colony?) escaped and burned  a Army base in Carlsbad New Mexico to the ground.
 It was due to be made opperational in 1945. The little parties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki made it unnessary.

Seamless Transistion

The transistion from speculative fiction to mainstream was effortless in this watershed novel. Gibson loses none of his edge or quicksilver dynamic in this novel about a coolhunter,9/11 intertwined with industrial espionage.  Read it.

The only weapon banned by the Catholic Church

This weapon was banned by Pope Innocent the II for use against  Christians. Before the introduction of the arbalest a mounted knight could pretty much mow down foot soilders at will. But armed with a crossbow a comon foot soilder drop a mounted night with ease. This presented a conundrum for the Church since the cash flowed from the nobility. So you could draw,quarter burn alive and otherwise create any mayhem you could imagine. But stick a bolt in some armored miscreant you were going to Hell. Unless he wasn't Christian or noble(no cash see)

Augment (teaser) Look for Augment in spring of 2010

       "What's he doing Colonel?"
       "It looks like he is making a depth change, probably near test depth. Amazing, almost eleven hundred meters."
       " I'm overjoyed your impressed Colonel. Thomas are we going to be able to reach him?"
Thomas smiled. "As stated earlier. Distance or depth will not be an obstacle.      
       "For your sake I hope so." Stone smiled back.

        "Sir passing through seven five zero zero meters."
         "Excellent. Engineer how are the stress sensors?"
         "Sir the sensors report even stress through out the pressure hull."
         "Well done. Report any changes. Officer of the deck make your depth nine zero zero zero meters."
       
          "He's still diving?"
          "Just passing through seven thousand five hundred meters."
          "Good." Stone chuckled. 'Tell me when he levels out."

           "Approaching one zero zero zero zero meters."
           'That's a lot of zeros. Level out at one zero five zero zero."
           "Aye Captain."

            "He leveled off, holding at just under eleven hundred meters."
            "Excellent. Stand by Thomas."

             "Engineer. board still green?"
            " Board still green. Captain."

            " Alright Thomas, hit that fucker."

A klaxon rang out startling all those in control. The Captain roared. "Report."
The weapons officer responded. "We got radiation alarms going off all over in the missile bay."
            "Alarms? Has the pressure hull been brea...."
There was a flash of unearthly white. And a billionth of a second later the Zheng He ceased to be.

            "Holy Shit. We are picking up a massive undersea detonation in the megaton range at the Zheng He's last reported position." Phones and alarms began to go off all over the control room.
             "Fuck me. That's the Joint Chiefs." Picking up the phone the Colonel responded. "Yes Sir. I have it on my screen's now. No, does not appear to be accidental launch, much too deep. What caused it? I have no idea,some catastrophic failure. What Sir? Yes he's standing right here." The Colonel handed the phone to Stone. "Sir, it is the Vice President for you."
Stone took the receiver and paused for two heartbeats. "Stone here. I see, why yes, I would love to meet at the earliest opportunity. Not at all Mr. Vice President. Thank you Mr. Vice President." Stone hung up the phone.
The Colonel looked stunned. "That was you? How?"
               'That is a need to know issue Colonel." Stone said softly.  "Come Thomas we have the Lord's work elsewhere." The two left without looking back.  



        
        
        

Alpha cyberpunk

The more I learn about this gentleman. The more amazed I become. Truely a Wizard who spooked the hell out of Edision. His invention the capacitor is one of the bedrocks that our modern electronics depend.

Gregorz Jonkajtys

Grzegorz Jonkajty's Ark was a brillant ground breaking short film. Check out the biomechanical odyssey 36 stairs.

I want to eat you up.

I have heard from both camps. It's wonderful, whimsical. It's frightening and sends the wrong message.
I am seeing it this weekend. I let you know.

Molly in Panther Modern chameleon suit.

A lot more of this type of material surfacing on the web with Neuromancer coming out.

Joesph Arthur's Rages of Babylon. Old school and worth a listen.

Just because I can

The new paradigm

For the first time in it's history the airforce will be training more drone pilots than fighter pilots. Spooky.

I find this perversely interesting.

Really?

---

October 14, 2009 , 6:41 am

Women, Vampires and Gay Men

Today’s idea: American women are attracted not so much to vampires as to the gay men they represent, a writer argues. This is part of society’s effort to process, through vampire stories, a “newfound acceptance of what so many once thought strange or abnormal.”
Culture | “Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men,” Stephen Marche writes in Esquire. “Not all young straight women, of course, but many, if not most, of them.”
He says consider the subtext of the relationship between Bella, the young heroine of the “Twilight” series, and the boy vampire Edward, to whom she is attracted “because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her.” Marche explains:

“Twilight”/Summit Entertainment Gay boy meets straight girl?

“Twilight’s” fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that’s the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Sex that’s dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving. In the bedroom, we want to have one foot in the 21st century and another in the 19th.

Marche thinks today’s vampire stories — whether their gay themes are taken by implication, as in the “Twilight” series, or explicit as in HBO’s “True Blood” — are “symptomatic of something much larger: a quiet but profound sexual revolution and a new acce

The Health Care Circus.

As I sit transfixed I am both horrified and amused at the workings of the U.S. congress.  People complain that congress does not work well. Untrue. The work very well for the people that pay them. Not, us. Not the mere $158103.00 base. Which they raise at every opportunity regardless of their lack of progress. The large lobby groups which float their re elections and then employ them once they leave for obscene salaries.

The Federal clown college is during their best to sidetrack any real reform due to such considerations as cost or competition (this obviously did not concern them during the trillion dollar Wall Street bail out.) It looks like a weak bill may pass. No public option(oh the horror!) but at least you won't be denied coverage for being ill or having preexisting issues.

My grandmother once told me while watching Billy Graham that she could carve a better man out of a bar of soap. This may be a option. God knows they would be less slippery.

Still going strong after all these years. I first saw him during plays live in 1982. Amazing. Check out the "Talk to me" Video. Great stuff.

Could have been.

Man. I went into this one with high hopes. Ben Foster who did such a great job in 3:10 to Yuma was largely wasted here. Great concept, but fell apart. Like a good curry. Got to start strong, hold and finish nicely. This left a bad after taste.

Barrista with a night off.

This gentleman has much too much time on his hands.

A good bookend for the Road.

I will never read this again.
It starts with a little girl being murdered.
And yet somehow manages to carry a thread of hope throughout.
Regardless I can only recommend it.

The Road

This is a book that I still can't quite shake. Books that I enjoy or are well written I often reread many times.
I will never read this again.
It is a unflinching, unfiltered portrait of a father's love for his son.
If you are a father it is required reading.
You will never forget it....

A sad touching novel.

Anime benchmark

Are all Japanese anime artists arrested developmentally at age fourteen?
As I understand it translates as bodycon.
Regardless, it is a beautiful and intelligent film well worth the viewing.

The Elegant Ape Speaks...

The current resurgence of the caliphate can be traced directly to the training and arming of ninth century fundmentalists in order to make things uncomfortable for the Soviets during the occupation of Afghanistan.  Who thought that this was a good idea? What strategic significance did Afghanistan hold? Did someone in the Reagan administration want one of those groovy pakol hats? How this is not central in the consversation is a mystery.

                                                                    Think of that.......

Cutting edge flick shot in disconcerting negative image format.

Frightening Japenese Cinema - Trailer

"What the Hell is in the bag?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_bMvPbaeE

where it all began

This is where all of it started. Anthony Burgess brilliant novel. Still chills and awes at every reading.

steampunk

A girl and her dog. Reise.

European Cyberpunk

Great European cyberpunk. Early, gritty, worth a look.

Broken Angels

"I walked in firing.
The guns, the interface guns, like rage extended in both hands. Biofeed from the palm plates gave me the detail. high impact, fragmentation load, magazines full to capacity. The vision I had, outside my fury, found structure in the writhing thing before me and the Kalashnikovs punched solid fire at it. The biofeed put my aim in place with micrometer precision.
Lengths of cable chopped and jumped, dropping to the sand and flopping like landed fish.
I emptied both guns.
They spat out their magazines and gaped open eagerly. I pounded the buts against my chest. The harness loader delivered, the gun buts sucked the fresh clips in with slick magnetic clicks. Heavy again, my hands whipped out, left and right, seeking,sighting.
The killing cables were gone, chopped off. The others surged at me through the sand and died, cut to pieces like vegetables under a chef's knife,
I emptied again.
Reloaded.
Emptied.
Reloaded.
Emptied.
Reloaded.
Emptied.
Reloaded.
Emptied.
And beat my chest repeatedly, not hearing as the harness clicked empty at me."

Wintermute Image

wintermute (neuromancer)

"I improvise. It is my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans, you see.....Really,I've had to deal with givens. I can sort a great deal of information, and sort it very quickly. It's taken a very long time to assemble the team your part of. Corto was the first, and he nearly didn't make it. Very far gone in Toulon. Eating, excreting, and masturbating were the best he could manage. But the underlying structure of the obsessions were there: Screaming Fist, his betrayal, the congressional hearings."

"Is he still crazy?"

"He's not quite a personality." Dean smiled.

"But I am sure you are aware of that. But Corto is in there, somewhere, and I can no longer maintain that delicate balance. He's going to come apart on you, Case. So I will be counting on you. . ."

"That's good, mother fucker," Case said, and shot him in the mouth with the .357.

He'd been right about the brains. and the blood.

count zero

"The plane had gone to ground near the sound of running water. Turner could hear it, turning in the g-web in his fever of sleep, water down stone, one of the oldest songs. The plane was smart, smart as any dog, with hard-wired instincts of concealment. He felt it sway on it's landing gear,somewhere in the sick night, and creep forward, branches brushing and scrapping against the dark canopy. The plane crept into deep green shadow and sank down on it's knees, it's airframe whining and creaking as it flattened itself, belly down, into the loam and granite like a manta ray into the sand."

neuromancer

"The sky above the port was the color of television,tuned to a dead channel."

GoodReads

Eric Richard Gabrielsen's books on Goodreads

Gideon's Fall: When You Dont Have a Prayer, Only a Miracle Will Do

reviews: 4
ratings: 15 (avg rating 4.44)

eBook

Gideon's Fall eBook

Customer Review

dennis_batchelder

A Vonnegut-style tale of the next century

Reader Rating See Detailed Ratings

Posted December 6, 2008, 5:46 PM EST: Eric Gabrielsen's "Gideon's Fall" paints a picture of the world 80 or so years from now: a world full of augmented bodies, consolidated countries, a single Catholic church (except for a few lingering Mormon terrorists), a space catapult, and a couple mind-machine mergers.

The book is a collection of story lines told from the perspectives of quite a few characters, including Gideon (gladiator who wants out), Leslie (gladiator who got out for a while and became a drug lord), and Shadrach (a super-strong super-fundamentalist out to destroy any enhanced people). Some of the story lines are the rise and fall of Leslie, the retirement of Gideon, the end of the Church, the revenge of a drug crime victim, and the ascension of James from a homeless person to Pope.

Gabrielsen's book has more than a few spelling and grammatical errors. However, several of the myriad of story lines and characters were compelling: I enjoyed reading about Michelle and then Tobe's restaurant, Anna's life of the super-rich, and Eddie's quest for revenge.

Excellent Read - Check it Out Now

Gideon's Fall at Barnes & Noble