Category Archives: Other Good Stuff

OK rain, you’ve made your point…

OK rain, you’ve made your point…
You are sky water. You fall out of big dark fluffy sky sheep called clouds. You give the plants a drink. You make overlapping concentric circles on puddles and ponds like a geometry lecturer explaining venn diagrams. You trickle down the back of my neck like the opposite of erotic fingertips. I understand you and your game. You can stop now. There is nothing more to teach me…

Wine of the Planet of the Grapes…

  • You, Ian Towey, Adam Beyonce Lowe and 4 others like this.
  •  Rhys Hughes starring Chardonnay Heston…
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Mat Joiner You should collect these and call them Planet of the Japes!
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Jonathan Barlow Beneath the Pomace of the Planet of the Grapes.
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Roman Godzich http://io9.com/dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-score-is…

    Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Score Is Entirely Made Of Ape Puns

    io9.com

    Michael Giacchino did a wonderful thing when naming all the tracks on his Dawn o… See More
    15 hours ago · Like · 2
  •  Mat Joiner It also starred Heston Bloomenthal…
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Rhys Hughes Rise of the Loaf of the Apes
    15 hours ago · Like
  •  Mat Joiner Planet of the Gripes.
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Rhys Hughes Grommit of the Apes… “It’s the wrong planet and it’s gone wrong!”
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Roman Godzich granite of the tapes ( which is what i call my rock music collection)
    15 hours ago · Like · 1
  •  Mat Joiner “This planet’s made of wensleydale! We really blew it this time, Grommet!”
    15 hours ago · Like · 1

Many people have bought John Williams’ novel STONER

Many people have bought John Williams’ novel STONER thinking that it is going to be about a stoner instead of a guy named Stoner. Doubtless they have been disappointed and have had to extinguish the joss-sticks and replace the early Hawkwind albums back in their sleeves… I recently abandoned reading it after about 50 pages for a different reason, namely that I found it a bit boring, too downbeat and ultimately pointless.

The pomegranate is

The pomegranate is an underrated fruit in Britain…
In the Middle East they have often been compared to the breasts of a woman in poetry; and in Spain there is even a city named after it. Deluged with Greek yoghurt is just one example of how they can be used to delight the tastebuds…

The pomegranate
The pomegranate
The pomegranate

My 3 positives for day 1 are:

I’ve been nominated by Olivia Kirschner to post for 5 days 3 positive things of my life

My 3 positives for day 1 are:

1: I came a fan of Giothermal energy (not quite the same as geothermal),

2: I finished writing a new story,

3: I spilled a full mug of coffee on my carpet but realised that the darker colour of the spill area looks better than the colour of the original carpet, so tomorrow i plan to soak the entire carpet in coffee.

Prolific Writer, where do you…

Gio Clairval: Prolific Writer, where do you find all those ideas of yours? Do they circle about in your head all at a time? Do they ambush you, holding a gun to your temple? Do they keep you in a mental oubliette until you spit everything onto the wriggling white page?

Rhys Hughes: i believe it is just a question of practice as with anything… the more i write, the more easily ideas come to me… these days they won’t leave me alone, they bubble up from somewhere or appear out of nowhere in my waking life, roused into being from a random word, glance, position or situation

Rhys Hughes: and yes i get agitated if i don’t express these ideas as stories… but recently i met a wonderful woman called Nina who is so full of ideas and has such a great imagination that just talking with her satisfied my need to express ideas all the time, though on the obverse side she has inspired many new ones too… but this is all good. 🙂

The Caltraps of Time

The Caltraps of Time I have just finished reading this. It’s science fiction but not the conventional sort. The stories within are more concerned with with the redefining of experiences and situations, with language and communication and the subtleties of meanings under the stresses of time dilation and time shifts, than with the standard themes and props of the genre…

David I. Masson flourished briefly at the end of the 1960s thanks to New Worlds magazine and ‘New Wave’ SF, which encouraged experimentation and a heightened awareness of literary techniques. It was a cultural progression within the genre that sought to broaden the horizons of readers and thus the next generation of writers, and although the general impact wasn’t quite as revolutionary as had been hoped, it did sufficiently change enough perspectives to make a full return to ordinary SF almost inconceivable.

There were many failures among the ‘New Wave’ experiments but in my view the successful work that emerged made the whole movement worthwhile. Masson was one of the best products of this shift, though hardly typical of it; and The Caltraps of Time, his only book, contains the entirety of his oeuvre: ten stories that are radical enough to earn him lasting respect as a highly original and significant intellectual writer.

The first story in this book is also the earliest, ‘Traveller’s Rest’, and it is really very remarkable, the sort of thing that Stanislaw Lem or Borges (if Borges had done SF) might have written. ‘Psychosmosis’, ‘Mouth of Hell’ and ‘Lost Ground’ are also superb. Masson is a bit like a cross between John Sladek and the Strugatsky Brothers with a touch of Ian Watson. For a small minority of SF writers the question “Is this possible?” is less important than “Is this logically rigorous even though it’s impossible?” And generally I prefer fiction that takes the latter approach to the former because it seems more conducive to greater imagination and invention.