comic book movies

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Captain America’s Wings

Artwork by Jack Kirby

When I was a kid in the sixties, living from comic book to comic book, the mere idea of superhero movies and television shows was an unimaginable dream.

The comics were so magic. To see the heroes in them for real would be utterly miraculous!

Today, as the concept has become commonplace, I have to say the reality falls fall short of my eight year old dream.

With due respect for our times, I must concede that video has become the medium of the superhero for the present century. Why buy comic books when you can see Gotham, and The Flash, and Arrow, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for free on TV every week? And estimating an average reading time of 15 minutes per book, you could read 8 comics at $3.50 plus in the time it takes to watch one $12 movie. That balances the cost of the movie against an expenditure of at least $28. You can even get popcorn and a drink and still come out ahead.

One of the utter delights of the Silver Age of comics was their price. One dime and two pennies. Let’s look at the inflation rate. A 10 cent chocolate bar from the sixties now costs 11 times as much. A comic book at least 30 times as much. The economics are not kid friendly.

There’s also the issue (hah! comic nerd pun there) of continuity. Marvel Comics through the sixties and into the early nineties told a continuous story, in which what went before mattered to what came after. Now the same heroes have been around over 50 years in some cases. That’s a lot of continuity to reflect, not to mention the absurdity of generally accepting any given hero ages about one week for every year of publication. By their very nature, the comic book experience cannot be what I gloried in primarily during the shorter range of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

So I give today’s hero worshippers their TV shows and movies. May they derive as much pleasure from them as I did and still do from the original sources.

That being said, today’s fantabulous cinematic industry does not offer the same experience as the actual comics of the Silver Age and after did. And, in my opinion, not as enjoyable an experience.

But I didn’t anticipate that in the 60s. As I said, Silver Age superheroes on the silver screen? What could be more marvellous? (Hah! More comic nerd puns.) Or D.C.ish?

It’s a mystery to me why I thought that way. I mean, you could always see the heroes. That was the whole point of a comic book! The pictures! The artist as well as the writer! Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Mike Sekowsky, dammit, not just Stan Lee and Gardner Fox.

Artwork by Mike Sekowsky

Why did I think the pictures would be even bigger and more fantastic (Four in a series!) than the actual original illustrated stories?

Some movies have risen to the challenge. Most don’t. The reality came home to me with 2002’s Spider-Man. You had Spiderman, and you had the Green Goblin, in an utterly pointless personality-less redesigned costume for the movie. Big battle at the end! Spiderman in full face-concealing mask, and the Goblin in full face-concealing helmet, faceless face to faceless face.

Am I the only one noting the obvious lapse in cinematic thinking here? You have a moving, morphing medium, and you can’t see the expressions on the faces of either your protagonist or antagonist? You never had any doubts about what the Goblin was thinking in the comic books.

Artwork by Steve Ditko

Then there was Dr. Doom in 2005’s Fantastic Four movie. Jack Kirby designed Dr. Doom’s mask with close ups in mind. His metallic face was endlessly cruel and expressive in the comics. In the movies? Best seen hooded and in the distance, which again completely reduces his villainous personality. Because once more, the masked face in the movie never changes expression.

Artwork by Jack Kirby

And then there’s 2011’s Captain America. Let a picture speak a thousand words.

They did better in the 1944 serial, leaving off the wings entirely.

There have been some successes. Dr. Octopus and the Sandman in the later Spider-Man movies had the right look — if certainly not a viable plot in Sandman’s case — and Heath Ledger brilliantly caught the original spirit of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. I would even rate Nolan’s Batman Begins as the second best comic book movie ever made, in terms of capturing the true spirit and look of the original medium.

Artwork by Jack Kirby

Oddly enough, the one hero I thought would never work on the big screen was Marvel’s The Mighty Thor. I don’t think the movies are that good, but I have to admit Chris Hemsworth carries off the character well. Strangely by playing the character more relaxed than his eternally high strung comics original often came across. And ditching the winged helmet. Smart move, that.

But on the whole, I find the movies to be either campy mugfests for name stars to dress up and play pretend, or visions that fall short of the full range of the visual imagination demonstrated by the print creators, no matter how many special effects you cram in — again diminishing the original illustrated medium’s magic. Oddly enough, I think this conundrum works both ways. Even though the franchises have been successful in print, I always found Star Wars and Star Trek comic books to be stiff and less fluidly believable than their original video universes.

But until I can see Jack Kirby’s epic artistry duplicated on screen, I won’t believe that movies can give me the same thrill as going back and rereading the stories on paper from the sixties and seventies.

Artwork by Jack Kirby

However, I did say I consider Batman Begins to be the second best comic book movie ever made, in terms of capturing the true spirit of the original medium. So what movie do I consider the best?

Zack Snyder’s 2009 rendition of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen. Moore didn’t like it, but that’s just Alan Moore. See next week’s blog. Just as the Watchmen comic gave the print medium a wake-up call in 1987, Snyder’s movie unrelentingly and legitimately tells the same anti-hero tale establishing the same degree of psychological intensity and disfunction, and the look of the movie breathtakingly brings Dave Gibbons’s artwork and palette to life, accurately duplicating the covers of the original run of 12 comic books in some shots. Throw in a great soundtrack, and even I have to admit the movie makers did the comic professionals justice, accurately translating the dream from one medium to another and hitting the high points of both.

So it can be done.

Leaving us with the eternal paradox — why do the wings on Captain America’s helmet look plausible in a comic book but utterly ridiculous in any other form? The unreproducible mysterious magic of Jack Kirby … 

Artwork by Jack Kirby

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The Contestants go chivalrous in a send up of Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur this week, part one posting on Monday and part two going up Friday, January 30th. It’s Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition — Episode Three, continuing at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

King Arthur is spinning in his grave, and Monty Python’s still just spinning.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

All with illustrations by the author. Omigod, and in the same column with artwork by Jack Kirby! The hubris, the hubris!

anna karenina's nose

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Anna Karenina’s Nose

illustration by Barnett Freedman

Peter Mendelsund, in his book What We See When We Read makes this very interesting observation on page 24:

Some readers … suggest that the only way they can enjoy a novel is if the main characters are easily visible:

“Can you picture in your mind, what Anna Karenina looks like?” I ask.

    “Yes,” they say, “as if she were standing here in front of me.”

    “What does her nose look like?”

    “I hadn’t thought it out; but now that I think of it, she would be the kind of

     person who would have a nose like …”

    “But wait — how did you picture her before I asked? Noseless?”

    “Well …”

    “Does she have a heavy brow? Bangs? Where does she hold her weight? Does she 

    slouch? Does she have laugh lines?”

(Only a very tedious writer would tell you this much about a character.)

Mendelsund’s argument is that even should we read a writer tedious enough to tell us that much about a character, we still wouldn’t build a clear picture in our minds of exactly how that person looks. The best a writer can do is convey an impression, a feeling of what a character may actually be like built more upon their actions than their descriptions. The photographic details simply never add up.

I’m not certain I entirely agree with that. At least as regards Anna Karenina’s nose.

In another part of the book Mendelsund makes a very good point, stating that once we’ve seen a movie of a book we inevitably cast those actors in the same parts as we read. I’ve read Anna Karenina twice, both times before I saw any movie version. When I did finally, that was with Sophie Marceau as Anna. I enjoyed the movie, but in all honesty I would never picture Sophie Marceau as Anna Karenina when I read. Her face is too young. I see someone with a more mature bearing. More of a Claire Bloom. But not Claire Bloom. Someone with smaller eyes and a rounder, more symmetrical face. With a delicate nose I can picture quite clearly in the centre of it, balancing the other elements perfectly.

But you know what? (Spoiler Alert!) I could never precisely picture this Anna killing herself, which is why I had to read the book twice.

As well, the questions Mendelsund raises concerning how an author can and cannot create a picture of his or her characters are somewhat disturbing to me at the moment for a completely different reason. For the first time I’m presenting a Reality Fiction opus on the Internet illustrated with pictures of the characters involved that I drew myself. If anyone should know what my characters really look like, it should be me. Thereby bypassing the whole question of how to describe the characters’ appearances in the writing itself, right?

Not really. I’m not that good an artist. I’m only supplying cartoons of what I think the characters might look like in a humorous manner, I can’t draw real people that well. Even before I read Mendelsund’s book I was thinking to myself, I hope readers don’t think this is what the characters are really supposed to look like. These are just cartoons. Ironically enough, impressions of how I want you to think the characters appear. They are clearly real people when I write about them.

Thus I may potentially be distancing my readers even further from how I want them to have true impressions of my characters by supplying actual pictures of them. How much more confusing am I making matters!

I don’t really know. But a reassuring thought regarding how the whole process works came to me through the memory of a serendipitous event. Maybe I can picture Anna Karenina exactly the way I think she should look, right down to her nose, when I am reading Tolstoy’s book — but if I can’t understand why a woman who looks like that will kill herself at the end of the book, have I truly pictured the woman Tolstoy wants me to see? Is the image I picture just another, more elaborate cartoon I’ve provided for myself? Then I remembered this incident …

We had our son in Musical Theatre classes at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School many years ago. Coincidentally at a time when the RWB were debuting a full length dance version of Anna Karenina, with veteran prima ballerina Evelyn Hart in the title role. The production was in rehearsals while Dylan was taking his classes.

One evening, as I was leading Dylan through the chaotic setting of the RWB building, a mix of classrooms, rehearsal space, offices and common rooms always overloaded with people, we ran directly into Evelyn Hart returning from an Anna Karenina rehearsal with a group of the corps de ballet on a narrow walkway. It was a weird sight. The younger ballerinas had all dropped out of character, giggling and flitting about like bunheaded butterflies all around this menacing central figure — Evelyn Hart still fully occupying the role of Anna Karenina. Striding forcefully towards us with feet firmly upon the ground, eyes lowered oblivious to the rest of the world.

illustration by Barnett Freedman

Now I had never pictured Evelyn Hart as Anna Karenina at any time while reading the novel. Too short, for one thing. But my God, this woman was Anna Karenina walking towards us right then. Scared the hell out of Dylan.

The expression on Evelyn Hart’s face perfectly embodied Anna’s incapability of refusing Vronsky, her desperate regret over having given into her impulses, her defeat in the failure of their later relationship, and her despair over the loss of her children. Her entire body conveyed Anna’s pain. This was a woman I had no trouble imagining throwing herself under a train.

I would never have said Evelyn Hart looked like Anna Karenina as I pictured her. But she totally nailed how Leo Tolstoy wants you to see Anna. As a presence, not a photographic reality.

So I’ve got to tip my hat to Peter Mendelsund after all. Even when you can see a character’s nose perfectly in your mind, it still might not be the nose the author wants you to see. Better to get those impressions of her character clear, rather than the details of her physiognomy.

But just for the record, Evelyn Hart has quite a nice nose too.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The Hermit’s Tale concludes, with the results given on Monday and The Electric Detective Chapter Two appearing on Friday, January 23rd. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition, continues at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Ace finally explains the new rules and themes. Revealing that our Episodes this time around will be based on great works by great writers, hopefully not too extinctually massacred in the retelling in Reality Fiction. Thus, so far we have had:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

All with illustrations by the author.

murder in the archives

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Murder in the Archives

I had a short, unimpressive career as an Archivist during the late 1980s. I worked for the Manitoba and Northwestern Conference of the United Church, at their Archives located in the University of Winnipeg. A terrific source of mayhem and mystery as events unfolded afterwards.

I wrote two Jason Midnight extravaganzas — one a novel, the other a novella — in which the Archives played a major role, and also my one and only full out vampire novel. Appropriately for an Archives piece entitled Dust to Dust.

Archives are perfect settings for mysteries. For one thing, they are full of them themselves. And what’s better, they’re also full of the answers to mysteries. If you can only find an adequate indexing system to locate the proper artifacts.

Anything can end up in an Archives, not just paper records. The three central principles of Archival work are provenance, integrity, and original order. Provenance assumes you know precisely where a record originated. Integrity means the record is complete and the genuine article, whether the information the record imparts is true or not. Because sometimes what’s missing or left out of a record can be more important. And original order refers to an individual’s or institution’s collection of artifacts being donated to the Archives being kept in the precise order in which that individual or institution maintained it his, her, or itself. Stating a great deal about the psychological make up of the suspect in question.

And all primary sources! If this isn’t a recipe for mystery building and resolution, I don’t know what is.

Great stuff. Now combine that with the always rich possibility of discovering some bit of deliciously revealing information on a shelf somewhere that really isn’t supposed to be there. Or, as we used to like to say in the business, “the real fun in the Archives isn’t the dust. It’s the dirt.”

That being said, there’s two approaches one can take to writing mysteries after having worked in an Archives. I took the approach of using the Archives itself as central to the theme. In Jason Midnight’s “The Dead Ministers List”, victims are knocked off one by one in conservationally correct manners. (Posted somewhere, I’m sure of it. Damned if I can find it. Remember what I said about the necessity of good indexes for your Archives.) Including being crushed to death between sliding shelves, a particularly nasty way to go in my opinion.

I took that approach because even though I worked in an Archives, I was never much of a History person. I liked the stories, and I have an unnatural interest in organizing and indexing information. Usually practitioners join the industry fresh from a History degree or because they have some other background in the theme of the particular Archives they work within. My friend and fellow novelist Cathy Macdonald is a perfect example of that. She was the original United Church Archivist in Manitoba, and my mentor in the profession.

Cathy worked in an Archives, is a Historian, and has a history of ministry in her family. Therefore it’s no great surprise to see that her first published mystery, Put on the Armour of Light (Dundurn, 2014), is a novel set in a particular historical setting with a young minister as her hero. She interweaves layers of historical accuracy regarding regional geography, customs, and events throughout her depiction of Winnipeg in 1899, creating a fully realized world for her drama to unfold within. You feel you are there with the Reverend Charles Lauchlan as he unravels the knots tangling the other characters in the book. Not just in a carefully developed fictional reality that might accommodate any book, but specifically in 1899 Winnipeg.

We experience a fully three-dimensional world. There is an extra resonance to a setting based not only on historical accuracy, but on accuracy regarding how people think and react within that setting as well. Accomplishing this requires a writer who has a real feel for history, acquired through an Archives or however.

Another book I read over the holidays, What We See When We Read, by Peter Mendelsund, makes a number of very interesting points regarding the fine art of a writer making a setting or character come to visual life for her or his readers. A theme I’ll be exploring in more detail next week when I make an intensive study of Anna Karenina’s nose. One of the central points of Mendelsund’s book however is that an author can never give you a photographic representation of what she or he tells you about in their story. Although it’s a fair bet Cathy researched actual photographs in the Archives of the time period and setting she wrote about in Put On The Armour Of Light.

No, Mendelsund points out repeatedly at best all an author can give you is the suggestion of details you have to visualize for yourself. Ultimately you’re given more of a feel than a look, passing through your imagination in an ever shifting blur of actual details.

In which case we can say Cathy made solid decisions regarding which details to present from her personal Archives of historical Winnipeg, and what a young WASPish minister’s life might be like within it around the turn of the Twentieth Century. The factual history doesn’t get in the way of her story, instead adding more depth to the characterization and the development of issues within the novel. As with any well-written novel, it’s fun to walk the streets of a different town in a different time. But there’s an extra thrill to think that it probably looked/felt just like this as the properly evoked details blur past us, and that people were probably speaking and thinking much the same way they do in the book.

Every author should have such a rich Archives to draw on. Dusty or not.

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week! Jason Midnight returns! A new dimension to the Contest is introduced with Chapter One of The Electric Detective on Monday, while Episode Two: The Hermit’s Tale begins on Friday, January 9th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition, continuing as always at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

We begin to get a feel for how the themes for the Episodes are being selected now, as Episode One had a distinct Dante-Ish air about it, and Episode Two comes in proudly Chaucer-Ish. Complete with illustrations by the author.

2014 reading list

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Reading, 2014

Not a bad year. I read 116 books, which is about average for me. I’d call 59 of those books good reads, and 46 were very good reads. And I don’t have any entries in the what-was-I-thinking! category for a change. I didn’t finish any book I didn’t want to read, having brains enough to stop after 25 pages or so in the half dozen or so which were going to be obvious mistakes.

I do have a list of books I was disappointed in. But that was strictly a matter of taste this time around, not because I found the books particularly badly written. So I won’t besmirch any author’s name on a matter of subjective judgement I can’t back up with objective illustrations of “look how he or she blew this bit!”

At the end of 2014, combining my fiction and nonfiction lists, I find there are 17 books worth commenting on.  Starting at Number 17 and working my way up …

Seventeen: Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles. A novel I bought my wife. Sort of a romance.

A good, vaguely Gatsby-ish evocation of a bygone era. I liked the strong female narrator.

Sixteen: The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter. A novel I picked up in a secondhand store in hardcover, no less. A thriller with benefits.

I commented on this one a few months back, in my search for a great summer read. Carter’s novel was a good summer read, but as I decided at the time, maybe a better fall read all in all. Very intelligently written, and quite suspenseful at times. Again, a highly likeable central narrator. There was one run-on sentence about midway through the book that alone would have been worth the full price of the novel.

Fifteen: The Skull Beneath the Skin, by P.D. James. A novel I borrowed from the library. A mystery.

I completed reading the Adam Dalgleish novels in order in 2014, and topped them off with the two Cordelia Grays. I didn’t find the first of those to have much impact, but I quite enjoyed the second. I like the dwindling cast of characters trapped on an island with the murderer schtick, and as usual James’s precision of language was always a treat. P.D. James happened to die a few days before I started this book. I have to give her much admiration for continuing to produce quality work right into her eighties. She will be missed.

Fourteen: Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, by Carl E. Schorske. A nonfiction book lent to me by my friend Ron. Cultural commentary.

A group of essays on architecture, writing, and artists in the European centre leading up to the Twentieth Century. It made me actually go out and look at the buildings in my own city differently.

Thirteen: Picasso’s War, by Russell Martin. A nonfiction book I borrowed from the library. Cultural, historical and social commentary.

A few months back I decided I wanted to read a good biography of Picasso. I haven’t found one yet. There’s a six volume magnum opus out there I tried reading part of, but it was too detailed for what I wanted. And a bit too gossipy. Martin’s book is specifically about Picasso’s painting Guernica and the history behind it and after its creation. I find it’s rewarding to have certain things put in context for me. Guernica, the event and the painting, are well worth knowing the whole story of.

Twelve: Mr. Norris Changes Trains, by Christopher Isherwood. A novel passed onto me by my friend Nurit when she was cleaning out her personal library preparing to move. Literature (like the others ain’t).

I happened to read three novels in a row, one set in Madrid, one set in Paris, and this one set in Berlin, all telling stories from the same time period in the first half of the Twentieth Century. I like getting perspective on things, as I mentioned above regarding the Guernica book. Of the three, Isherwood’s Berlin stands out as the most lively. I think I liked this book better than I Am A Camera, which I reread a few years back.

Eleven: Making History, by Stephen Fry. A novel I purchased new. Time travel.

It’s difficult to go wrong with Stephen Fry, but I did find this book to have a better plot and to be written in less of a Tourette’s Syndrome manner than others I’ve read by him. The dialogue and humour are rich as ever.

Ten: Why Does the World Exist?, by Jim Foot. A nonfiction book I bought for myself for Christmas in 2013. Philosophy.

For philosophy, this book is quite accessible. Foot goes on a trek all over the world consulting experts in various disciplines on the question, comparing their answers. The conclusion he reaches of course isn’t necessarily a final word on anything, but it is perhaps a bit surprising. Although unquestionably quite reasonable.

Nine: Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith. A novel I borrowed from the library. A mystery, but so much more.

I came to this by rather a circuitous route. I love Hitchcock’s movie, and have seen it a number of times. Then I read The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, and discovered Hitchcock lifted the legendary merry-go-round out of control final scene from that book, an entirely different novel. So I decided I needed to know how the original story actually ended.

And in the process of course, discovered just how creepy a writer Patricia Highsmith can be. The psychological complexities of this novel are so much more spider webbish than the movie, you can’t really compare the two treatments, even though they have the same nominal plot basis. An old one that will definitely never go out of style.

Eight: The Murder Room, by P.D. James. A novel I bought secondhand. Mystery.

As I mentioned, I finished reading all the Adam Dalgleish novels in order this year. I started in June of 2013, and read the last of the 14 in June of 2014. This one stood out the most for me of the later works, but I must say I liked them all. Any of the last five could have made this list.

Seven: The Angel Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A novel I bought my wife. Literature, suspense, supernatural (?).

The Spanish really know how to write about the Devil like few other races do. Zafon’s two companion novels to this book are excellent as well, but you don’t have to read any of the others to enjoy each one for its own sake. An entertaining book for people who like to read about an author’s mindset as well.

Six: Two For Sorrow, by Nicola Upson. A novel I borrowed from the library. Mystery.

I read all of Nicola Upson’s books available to me this year, a series using real life mystery novelist Josephine Tey as Upson’s investigator. Thus Upson can write about at least two themes each book, the mystery unfolding in her own pages and the life of the mysterious Scottish authoress as well. Of the series, this book — the third in the group — stood out the strongest for me. More for the way she treats Tey’s life events than the mystery I think, but that is done well too.

Five: Railsea, by China Mieville. A novel I bought new. Ostensibly science fiction, but really Moby Dick redone. With giant rodents.

It bugs me that Mieville hasn’t topped my yearly lists once yet, although The Scar, The City and The City, and Embassytown could all probably have done so this year. But during the years I read them, there was always just one other book that was unbelievably even more exceptional. How unlucky can I be, right? Nevertheless, I rate China Mieville as one of my top favourite contemporary writers, and Railsea keeps him there. Wildly imaginative and tightly written as always.

Four: Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, by Sean Howe. A nonfiction book I bought new.  Cultural and economic commentary.

A modern day phenomenon I actually lived. The rise and fall of Marvel Comics from the 1960s through to the late 1990s, all during which I was an avid collector, living the triumphs and shaking my head over the disasters. After reading this astoundingly informative book I no longer have to shake my head about anything, everything comes clear. But even if you don’t care about comic books, the portrayal of the short term profit business acquisition and divestment scorch and burn philosophy of the nineties is chilling. An attitude that brought Marvel from its best selling years ever to bankruptcy in less than 5 years. Possibly even more pertinent in any number of other contexts today.

Three: The Eustace Diamonds, by Anthony Trollope. A novel I bought secondhand. Literature. It’s old, right, so I guess that means that classification’s more correct.

Trollope novels continue to place highly with me every year these days, a wonderful later discovery of an author who has so much to offer. I started working my way through the Palliser novels in 2014. Again, any of the first three I read could make this list, The Eustace Diamonds being the best representative of the bunch. Possibly because it’s the closest thing to a thriller I’ve read by Trollope yet. A genre that didn’t even exist when he was writing.

Two: Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter. A nonfiction book I bought new at the behest of my son. Epistemological treatise.

One of those books that continues to stand alone, and is still worthwhile to read many years after its publication. It helps if you’re into math, but it’s not entirely necessary. Mind you, I couldn’t help wishing repeatedly that I’d read this back when I was a computer programming student in the early eighties.

One: Nova Express, by William Burroughs. A novel I bought new. A William Burroughs book.

It’s tricky tracking down books by William Burroughs in Winnipeg, if you’re determined not to order them over the Internet. Bookstores only maybe carry one or two titles at a time, and the library copies keep getting stolen, so you only have a limited resource there. As a result, I’ve ended up buying two copies of The Soft Machine, but had never ever been able to track down Nova Express or The Ticket That Exploded at all — until this year. When they were reissued in new editions and showed up on the bookstore shelves again. At least, on one bookstore’s shelf I was lucky enough to be in time to raid.

What can I say? I still maintain that since I survived emergency open heart surgery in 2005, William Burroughs is the only author that truly makes sense to me.

Now, what’s 2015 going to bring …

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

This week! The game gets under way in Monday’s post, and we hear the first round of results on Friday, January 9th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition hits the Dark Forest running. As always, at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

Mak Skeeter — because how can you keep him out — explains the new rules; the 34 Entry Contestants make a mad dash for Hell; we hear from the Judges and everything comes across just a tad Dante-Ish. With illustrations by the author!