MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

ITEM: This has been out for awhile but only just come to my attention and it’s worth passing on – a 1975 article by William S Burroughs on a Led Zeppelin concert followed by a conversation with Jimmy Page on the nature of music and magic.


The key word is “conversation”, as Burroughs explains:


By a wild coincidence, I’ve adopted the same technique in my day job as a journalist. I always try to structure them so they’re more like conversations than strict Q&A – they flow better and, more often than not, you get better answers.

Anyway, the article is recommended reading for any Burroughs fan. Or Zeppelin fan, come to that.

Stairway to heaven,

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If you click right here, you will allegedly see a memo that David Mamet wrote to the writers of The Unit (of which he was executive producer) on how to write dramatic television.

I can’t say for sure that he really wrote it, But if it’s a hoax, it’s a jolly convincing one. And it’s a good primer for aspiring writers of any stripe – it’s intended for people writing television, but I dare say a lot of it could apply to prose as well (see: Elmore Leonard).

Sample [All-Caps are intentional]:


Obviously this won’t apply to all situations and all scenes. But for certain types of writing, it’s a good place to start.

Because who's going to argue with the guy who wrote one of the greatest motivational speeches in cinema?

High drama,

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Speaking of H2G2 ... I have no idea how I missed this story for an entire year, but I did. So if this is old news to you, then just humor an old man for a moment.

ITEM: Apparently there’s a new Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book coming out today. Here’s the cover.



Notice the author’s name is Not Douglas Adams.

Which is perfect, because it raises a topic I’ve been meaning to bring up ever since I saw Dracula the Un-Dead – the official sequel to Dracula written by Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew Dacre – in a Dymocks shop window a week or so ago:

Authors taking over characters from other authors. Especially authors who are now dead.

I remember all the kerfluffle in the 1980s when John Gardner was green-lighted to take up where Ian Fleming left off and write new James Bond adventures. Fleming purists were aghast at the idea. But Gardner still went on to  write more Bond books than Fleming ever did, and has since been succeeded by Raymond Benson and Sebastian Faulkes.

Meanwhile, sequels have been done for a number of classics (some authorized, some not). Then there are slightly weirder examples – like KW Jeter writing official sequels to Blade Runner (as in the film, rather than PK Dick's  Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, though Jeter sort of refers back to the book as well).

So there’s tons of precedent, sure. But as a rule I never read “official” sequels written by other people. Eoin Colfer’s H2G2 will be no exception – and not just because I wasn’t all that impressed with Artemis Fowl.

Here’s the thing:

For my money, writing is the purest and most personal non-oral form of storytelling there is. As such, writing novels is an intensely personal project to the point that it’s hard to separate the creator from the work.

To put it country simple, I’m not just a fan of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin et al – I’m a fan of the bloke what wrote them. The H2G2 books (and the radio series before them) are what they are because Douglas Adams brought his own personal experiences and observations and sense of the absurd into the narrative and the characterizations. Not just anyone could have written it to the same effect.

By the same token, unless it’s a series designed from its inception to be written by multiple writers (Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Sweet Valley High, etc) – or unless yr Frank Herbert’s boy, perhaps – not just anyone can simply take over a story and get the same result. It might be a good different result – but it wouldn’t be the same experience any more than it would be if you hired Garrison Keillor to write a sequel to Tom Sawyer, or Warren Ellis to write a sequel to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

Nor should it be. And to be fair, I don’t think Eoin Colfer wants to pass himself off as the New Douglas Adams any more than John Garder wanted to be the new Ian Fleming or Dacre Stoker wants to be his great-grand-uncle. And since I do respect the idea of public domain that leads to things like new Sherlock Holmes stories and a zombie version of Pride And Prejudice, I guess technically official sequels by new authors are no different.

But I’ll pass anyway. Best of luck to Colfer, but I’d rather re-read the Adams books.

To be continued,

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Now playing on the Monty Python channel: famous Americans talking about how and why they became Python fans.




A lot of what they say is true for me. I saw my first Python on PBS when I was around 11 or so, and I was hooked immediately – possibly because my mom (who is British) disapproved. And like many of them, my fandom transformed into an even bigger nerd in school than I was already. Which is saying a lot.

It’s true. Python was NEVER cool when it first started showing in the US (or at least in Middle Tennessee), and yet its influence on American comedy is undeniable. If nothing else, Saturday Night Live owes its very existence to Python’s cult success.

It’s definitely responsible for my goofy-ass sense of humor which was further fed by even more British comedy imports, from Benny Hill and Dave Allen to (yes) The Goodies. The fact that BBC shows were allowed to show women in their knickers was an influence in itself.

And then Douglas Adams came along and my transformation was complete. Which is why I’m writing stories about evil plots by extraterrestrials to use high-tech mind-control lingerie to enslave the Earth.

No need to thank me.

And now for something completely different,

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Ever wonder why we say things like “once in a blue moon”. “raining cats and dogs”, and “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”?

Neatorama has the answers.

A couple of them I already knew. Here’s one I didn’t:
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Pretty much everyone I know who entered NNWM this year hit 50,000 words something like three weeks ago, so I’ll be one of those people who finishes the marathon long after everyone else has gone to the hotel for the victory party, and they'll be asleep by the time I’m showered and dressed.

But that’s okay since – as predicted – I’ll barely be halfway through the story by November 30, so I’ll just file my word count, collect my certificate, and keep on writing. I hope to make it to the end before Christmas. I’m probably being way too optimistic.

I was hoping to finish in time to enter this year’s Bad Sex In Fiction Awards, but those were handed out on Tuesday. Just as well – this year’s winner, Rachel Johnson (whoever she is) sounds like a tough competitor:


Even if she hadn’t entered, I still would have had to defeat John Updike, who’s been nominated four years in a row, and wrote this gem:


See, all I have is a scene where a demented policeman kidnaps his former partner, ties him to a bed and sets three prostitutes upon him to “cure” him of his homosexuality – the punch line being that he’s not actually gay. And then there’s the opening scene where two men and two women have a foursome in an attempt to open a space-time portal to communicate with aliens. And ...

Well, maybe the competition will be light next year.

BONUS MATERIAL: More nominated bad sex scenes here. Some aren't all that bad, really – those being the ones that don't use words like "member", "vulva" and "glans". I mean, seriously, who uses those words outside of a biology class?

Spurting glans,

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The Christmas decorations are going up all over Orchard Road, where supermodels with crutches cruise sidewalk bars and play practical jokes on bus drivers. Meanwhile a hundred people aged between 15 and 70 are performing a synchronized dance routine in a tent while a busker plays Creedence Clearwater Revival on a Chinese banjo.

It is a full moon in Singapore tonight.

Which would explain all the howling drunks in Borders. Although they could have been driven mad by the constant beeping of the malfunctioning shoplifter alarm. I’d like to think it would also explain the random shelf placement of 40% of Borders’ stock. But that’s been a problem for years. To say nothing of the worrying trend that 80% of the horror section is occupied by bas-ass women in tight leather pants who are either vampires, or werewolves, or bounty hunters who hunt either.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying.

No matter. I have Wild Turkey, some new authors to try (James M Cain, Dashiell Hammett – no, never read either before) and the new Jonathan Richman album. All is well.

Except for this strange throbbing in my glands. And of course these goddamn deadlines I’ve been ignoring.

Still, I always feel inspired after visiting the book stores. Half an hour of browsing is all it takes to remind me that, Christ, if these people can get a book deal, why can’t I?

Enough. I need granola bars and antibiotics. Then we will roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Man at work,

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Might as well get this out of the way.

By order of dr_nebula :


At least I know I’ll have some shelf space reserved for my science fiction porn novels. Too bad print will will be dead by then, and the Dewey Decimal System rendered irrelevant.

Pigeonholed,

This is dF