Cyberman upgrades for the five-and-over age group…

Is it me, or are Cybermen getting shorter..? File under 'Want One!': Cyberman voice-changing helmet, y'say? Imagine the hilarity up and down the country on Xmas day as hundreds of little helmet-clad darlings sit down to try to stuff their festive turkey and sprouts through the light-up mouth-piece...

Do you think they do one in extra large..?

But wait, what's that? Forbidden Planet don't have them in stock? They've got everything else..! Just you wait 'til I speak to that Joe Gordon... what's that y'say, Joe? FP were already recommending them on the FP Blog back in October, sold out in seconds as a result, and now can't get their hands on any more because every other bugger has caught on after the fact and the manufacturer didn't make enough in the first place? I might have known...

Ah well, looks like I might have to get one from Amazon instead. Mind you, £69.99 (ouch!) might be a bit much, even to scare the hair off my three-and-a-half-year-old niece on Boxing Day...

November 29, 2006 | Filed Under Stuff | Leave a Comment

Looking good: Age of Conan MMORPG

File under 'games I wish I had the time to play': there's a new MMORPG on the way, one that's based in the Hyborian world of Robert E. Howard's Conan sagas.

Age of Conan looks, frankly, rather superb, and seems like it could very easilt become exactly the sort of totally immesrive, life-consuming obsession that I've been assidiously avoiding for at least six years now (seriously, I haven't so much as downloaded a single demo for even one MMORPG title; I just know that if I did I'd never get anything useful done, ever again...)

Here's a quick screenshot, to give you an idea of the atmospherics, and there are dozens more on the website:

Screenshot from Age of Conan copyright Funcom, 2006

The game is still in heavy development and won't be seeing the light of day until sometime in 2007. And, luckily for me, this one has been slated as a Windows Vista showcase game, so seeing as I won't be installing that particular piece of ~~crap~~ software for at least two years after release (and no doubt about twenty 'service pack' patches later), then with any luck I'm perfectly safe from temptation, this time around at least...

November 29, 2006 | Filed Under Gaming | 2 Comments

Happy birthday Dark Horse!

Dark Horse Comics - publishers and purveyors of many a fine sequential illustrated fiction title - are 20 years old, round about now-ish. And to celebrate they've sent out presents to everyone on their press list (which, happily, includes yours-truly) like these:

'Dark Horse 20 Years' is a gallery of artwork by some of the many fine artists who have worked with DH down the years; there's a fantastic Mike Mignola cover for starters, a rather superb Adam Hughes portrait of Hellboy, Conan the Barbarian gets the Sergio Aragonés treatment, whilst Groo the Wanderer is drawn by Paul Chadwick, and Stan Sakai provides his own unique take on Sin City, along with many more.

And they sent other stuff as well: a commemorative coin, a window sticker, birthday postcard, some sort of candy-coated cookie or biscuit, and a rather snazzy (is that still a word?) Dark Horse keyring, which I'll be using henceforth.

So thank you very much, Dark Horse, and a very happy birthday to you!

November 29, 2006 | Filed Under Comics & GNs | Leave a Comment

New Arrivals - late November '06

Collected a consignment of new books for UKSFBookNews last night from the post office. Everything will be listed in the next Books Received article on the site, but I just wanted to highlight a few choice items here that will henceforth be contributing to my own personal what-to-read-next dilemma:

Gradisil by Adam Roberts

Adam is a client of mine, and I do try to make a point of reading as many of my clients' books as I can, but I have to confess that I'm a Roberts behind at the moment; I still haven't sat down to read The Snow [Amazon].

But then Adam is one of those authors who writes individual novels at a time, exploring the possibilities of whatever idea has most captured his mind's eye and then moving on to the next, so I ought to be able to skip ahead to Gradisil and then go back to The Snow when I've unpacked it (so many of our books are still in boxes after last year's house extension...)

Ilario, The Lion's Eye by Mary Gentle

There's nothing I'd like more than to sit down and lose myself in the new Mary Gentle novel for a few days, but alas, there's work and chores to be done, so I may have to restrain myself. I made the mistake of trying to read Ash [Amazon] in fits and starts and I really don't think I got anywhere near as much out of it as I should have, so Ilario [Amazon] may have to take pride of place on my 'priority holiday reading' list for next year, by which time a more portable paperback should be out.

It's a real shame, because Ilario sounds like a wonderfully inventive alternate history, as most of Gentle's novels are, and I really do enjoy that particular sub-genre.

Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker

The second part of the Engineer Trilogy, by one of my very favourite authors. Parker writes complex, multi-layered fantasy with a dry, biting with throughout and an absolutely superb observational eye. Her Scavenger trilogy is one of the most intriguing and enjoyable fantasies I've read, this series started out just as well in Devices and Desires, although there does seem to be some small risk that she's covering a bit of the same ground that she explored in her first, Fencer trilogy.

Anyway, this is a potential 'drop everything' title, although I think I'll finish the short Christopher Priest novel I've just started before I treat myself to 599 pages of Parker.

Endymion and The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons

I now have all four books of Simmons' Hyperion sequence waiting for me on the shelf. All I need now is the time to sit down and appreciate them fully. Again, I think I tried to read Ilium too piece-meal and ended up not fully appreciating its complexity, and I've heard so many good things about this series that I'm determined to find the time to do it justice. Another two for the holiday shelf, perhaps...

November 28, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 5 Comments

Hey kids, Jackanory's back!

Great news, folks. After a ten year hiatus (too long! too long!) the BBC has brought back classic kids' story-telling series Jackanory.

Showing this week is a three-part adaptation of Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's fantasy tale Muddle Earth [Amazon]. The first part was on CBBC at 4.30 today, with further installments on Wednesday and Friday, although if they do it properly they'll repeat the whole thing on Saturday morning, just before Swap Shop. I'm pretty sure that's how they used to do it when I was a kid.

Of course, this being the twenty-first century and all, the new Jackanory is a blended live action and animation spectacular, with narrator John Sessions appearing in a variety of CGI guises (mind you, I remember being impressed when Jackanory did The Hobbit back in the '70s and Derek Jacoby wore a sling to do the voices for the dwarves after the Battle of the Five Armies - gotta love those '70s SFX) although I must admit I'm only judging by the trailer so far; I'm setting all three up on Sky+ for a run-through at the weekend.

Anyhow, if you ask me there should be a statutory requirement for anyone with children old enough to watch television (that's what, about three months onwards these days?) to sit them down and make damn sure they enjoy every single episode. Who knows, if more kids watched television shows about story-telling, instead of moronic game-shows full of little more than gunge, pop music and sugar-fuelled screaming, then perhaps a few more of them would still be reading books in their teens, instead of hanging around on street corners in day-glo hoodies, mainlining Tango and beating up old ladies with foam hammers. Eh?

November 27, 2006 | Filed Under Books, TV | Leave a Comment

Home-brewed coffee: any suggestions..?

Now, I like a good cup of coffee. I've publically admitted before to enjoying a Starbuck's caramel macchiato (scarily artery-hardening though it clearly is) and about the only good thing that I can see about being anywhere near Manchester city centre during this pre-Xmas season of pure shopping hell, is that it gives me a chance to get my hands on their gingerbread latte (no whipped cream, extra shot, thank you very much).

photo by 'mandilee', available from www.sxc.hu Okay, that might not be your idea of 'good' coffee (maybe it's more like 'junk' coffee in your book) but hey... I have a sweet tooth, and sometimes that syrupy sugar rush is all that gets me around the shops and back on the tram without exploding with the sheer loathing of the aforementioned pre-Xmas thing... but that's another blog entry.

Since I started working from home, I've been trying to keep my coffee intake under reasonable control, basically for fear of not being able to sleep at night. And ever since I set up the home office, I've been meaning to get myself a decent yet inexpensive coffee machine; one that brews an espresso or two at a time, so I don't have to drink a whole flask before it goes cold, and one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I mean, hey, I'm not a coffee-freak or anything, I just want to have a decent brew a couple of times a day, y'know?

So, if you have any suggestions as to a reasonable machine that I can try to get hold of in the January sales (the physical January sales being second on the pure-loathing scale only to the aforementioned pre-Xmas thing, so online options would be most welcome) then please do leave 'em in the comments.

I've already seen a nice-looking hand-grinder from Clipper, and I've still got a jar of Illy beans (generally a smooth roast with a pleasant, not too bitter flavour) that might not be too far past its use-by date yet, so I'm sorted for that side of things. Unless you have any particular accoutrements and / or roast recommendations for me as well.

Ta very much.

November 27, 2006 | Filed Under Drink | 6 Comments

The Hellblazer marathon: Part I - From Swamp Thing to Soho

Hellblazer is one of my all-time favourite comics series, bar none. It's provided an expressive outlet for some of the very best writers, cover artists and interior artists in the industry, and if I'm right, is the DC Vertigo imprint's longest-running title.

I first started buying and reading Hellblazer back when I was at school (aged about 17 or so), along with the original run of Sandman, Doom Patrol, Black Orchid, the four issue mini-series that was the original Books of Magic and a whole bunch of the early Vertigo titles. Then pretty much all comic buying activity stopped in my second or third year at University when I started to run up the overdraft. But I've picked up the occasional graphic novel in the series since then, and I've always promised myself that one day I'd sit down and re-read the whole run, from the very beginning.

I started doing just that a couple of months ago. First I had to fill in a few gaps in the collection, which involved some scrabbling around on eBay and I still haven't gotten hold of a copy of issue #27 - Neil Gaiman's guest writing slot; the incredibly moving ghost story 'Hold Me' - but luckily it was reprinted in a 'best of' anthology GN when the movie came out a couple of years ago. And I decided to forego John Constantine's very earliest appearances in the pages of Alan Moore's early Swamp Thing tales, because he only plays a peripheral role, and I can pretty much remember most of it (turn up, act mysterious, smoke fags, disappear...)

'Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits' by Jamie Delano & William Simpson I have to admit that the series does take a little while to get going properly. In fact - although this is going to sound horribly disrespectful to Jamie Delano, a writer whose work I generally admire very much - it wasn't really until Garth Ennis began writing the classic Dangerous Habits [Amazon] storyline that, for me at least, John Constantine really got going as a lead character in his own right.

The earliest Delano episodes start out as a pretty straight Brit-horror comic, with demon yuppies and neo-nazi golems and all sorts of fun. It was all heavily informed by the state of Britain at the time; languishing under Thatcherism's yoke and slowly crumbling into a state of abject moral terpitude, if Delano's themes and plotlines are to be taken at face value. Plus the occasional segue to tie up some loose ends from the Swamp Thing series and generally play ball with some other stuff happening in the DC Universe at the time.

Then, round about episode #14, a rich, mystical vein kicks in, as Constantine finds himself swept along by the events of the 'Fear Machine' storyline, tangles with the Family Man and then gets involved with some serious heavy-duty magic towards the end of the run as the Pagan nation attempts to restore the balance of the world set awry by some of the earlier events, and Constantine takes numerous trips into his own twisted psyche.

All good stuff; far more intriguing, dark and mature than most folks would probably expect from a comic book, but to be honest, you do have to be interested in that sort of thing to get the most out of it. And to be honest, except for the revelation of What Happened in Newcastle in issue #13, there's probably not an awful lot in there that constitutes required reading for the rest of the series, at least, judging by how inferequently the material is referenced in the next few dozen issues. There are a couple of interesting guest writer slots though; the aforementioned Neil Gaiman, Dick Foreman's one-off about a possessed bulldog, and a typically off-the-wall and hallucinatory two-issue slot from Grant Morrison.

'Hellblazer, Vol.1' by Jamie Delano, various artists But that whole mystical, slightly inaccessible air is probably the main reason why relatively little material from Delano's run has been released in GN form to-date. The first fourteen issues were collected, in four volumes, by Titan Books in the UK; they were printed in black & white, which I think actually enhanced the original artwork. And DC have published the first nine issues in their Original Sins [Amazon]
volume, with the original (not so great) colourisation. Personally, I'd recommend skipping that and tracking down the Titan volumes on eBay; but there you go.

All of which brings us - rather neatly - onto the first Garth Ennis storyline: Dangerous Habits, illustrated throughout by the wonderfully scratchy and smudgy ink pen of William Simpson. This six-issue segment is probably the comics equivalent of that classic first album; the one that bands spend years honing their craft for, but then never quite manage to come all the way close to with their subsequent efforts. For me, at least, it's the distilled essence of everything that Constantine is and represents. Forget your Mother Goddes, your Arthurian heritage, your yin-yang duality, your hanged man magus hang-ups; here's a guy who 's basically a bit of a bastard, who knows a lot more than you or me about the way the other side of the supernatural fence operates, and who is faced with a fatal problem: he's just been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Hellblazer, issue 41, page 8, copyright DC Comics

How Constantine brings his unique perspective and knowledge to bear on the matter, how we decides to deal with his mortal problem, is the stuff that story-telling legends are made of. I won't commit heinous spolierage here and tell you what actually happens, but suffice to say, if you only read one John Constantine, Hellblazer storyline in your life, make it Dangerous Habits. This segment also neatly sets up a number of sub-plots that will come to fruition in the next few issues (and, incidentally, spawns the basis for the whole Preacher series, which Ennis went on to write after his Hellblazer run came to an end).

Absolutely classic stuff, the sort of thing I could read over and over, and most probably will. Yes, it really is that good...

Not that it's all downhill from there, though, by any means. There's more good material on the way, and I'll check back in another 30 or 40 issues and let you know how I'm getting on. Actually, I must admit that I only ever read up to the end of the Garth Ennis run, first time around, so from issue #83 or so I'll be heading off into new territory myself. I'm looking forward to that immensely.

November 26, 2006 | Filed Under Comics & GNs | Leave a Comment

"With pulses racing, and eyes full of wonder…"

I'm a die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool, definite fan of New Model Army. Have been since I was about 16 and will be for the rest of my life. I thought I'd check their website this morning, see if they were doing their usual Yuletide UK tour this year (sadly, they're not, they're in the US instead and are only playing one UK show, in London).

Thunder and Consolation But I did find out that 'One Family, One Tribe', an exhibition of New Model Army memorabilia, is opening at the Salford museum on Monday, which is running through until January. Definitely one for the diary.

If it's set up anything like the version that travelled to Germany recently, the exhibition should include a wealth of NMA paraphenalia and some genuinely significant items, such as the original Ghost of Cain jacket, a selection of stage costumes down the years, plenty of artwork by artist, poet and novelist Joolz Denby, and... okay, unless you're a fellow NMAphile, you stopped reading about half a paragraph ago, didn't you?

In which case, you won't be particularly interested to learn that NMA front-man Justin Sullivan's solo album Navigating by the Stars [Amazon]
is probably one of my all-time top twenty, along with at least two other NMA offerings.

But on the other hand, if you're not a New Model Army fan yet, but are of a mind to check them out, I'd highly recommend their Thunder and Consolation [Amazon] album as the best starting point, then jumping ahead to The Love of Hopeless Causes [Amazon], Strange Brotherhood [Amazon], and Eight [Amazon], and then just blowing your next pay cheque on the rest of their back-list...

November 24, 2006 | Filed Under Music | Leave a Comment

Youtube! Uh! What is it good for..?

I was chatting to a mate of mine the other day, and one of the subjects that came up was Youtube. My mate wondered what in the unholy names of the nine hells the point of it was; it's nothing more than a dump for all the tedious crap that people churn out when they've got nothing better to do, surely? So why would anyone bother?

A lot of truth in that... but then every so often you come across something that someone has put a decent amount of time, thought and creativity into. Like this piece by a guy called Lasse Gjertsen, which made me smile:

There you go, mate. That's the point of Youtube. It's just a shame that so many people on there (over 6,000 of them who think that mixing coke and mentos is funny when you've seen it more than once, for instance...) seem to have missed the point completely...

November 24, 2006 | Filed Under Humour, Music | 2 Comments