Alasdair Stuart's Blog
What I Did In February 2013
March 2nd, 2013The first thing I did in February 2013? Draft this post so I don’t spend three hours at the end of the month building the thing. Usual rules apply, names and titles are usually clickable and the magic word ‘here’ will transport you to my wordspace. Or something. Anyway, first off, this happened!
So, a couple of weeks ago, Damien Walter put this piece up about Artisan authors, and how it’s a much more attractive, freeing way to get published than going through normal publishing houses. This pissed me off. Quite a lot at the time because I was having a lousy weekend. Instead of letting it fester, I got in touch with The Guardian, explained the problems I had with the piece and the stuff I felt Damien had missed and they, to my rank, slack jawed amazement, gave me a slot on the blog. It was huge fun and Damien, who remains a controversial figure in a lot of authorial circles was incredibly classy about me showing up on his patch and telling people, in a roundabout way, he was wrong. Or rather that there was a third way aside from the two he’d discussed…Regardless, it’s a piece I’m really proud of and it’s here.
-Controversy tango once again! Despite the press’ best efforts to convince the world that Judge Dredd would be tripping through the field singing tiptoe through the tulips whilst wearing a pink tutu and kissing boys, ‘Closet’ turns out to be a fantastically smart, very sweet story that reminded me, yet again, that I enjoy Judge Dredd far more when it’s about people rather than ‘LOOK! IT’S A THINLY VEILED POP CULTURE SATIRE! WE JUST KILLED!’ like it was for the ENTIRE 1990s. I review prog 1817 in its entirety here and my colleague Mr Steven Ellis has interesting points to make about the way the story was reported here.
-I love science, but I fear math(s), and as a result I tend to go a bit Gir when science goes past a certain ceiling of complexity for me. I was therefore utterly delighted when Ben Tippett, who is an actual real genius Doctor and everything, asked me to be a guest on the Titanium Physicists podcast. Every episode, the show has a guest on, who asks questions and a rotating cast of scientists answer these questions. In a way which frequently involves alcohol, often involves dirty jokes and in my case involved Arnold Schwarzenegger hurling Danny DeVito into a black hole to demonstrate time dilation. It was massive fun, Ben and his team do great work and I was delighted to blog about them here.
-Mitch Benn is one of my comedy heroes. One of the best musical comedians working today, he’s an essential part of The Now Show, a massive Doctor Who fan and is working on producing an entire album, from a standing start, in 24 hours, for Red Nose Day. I blogged about his plans here.
-In December, Merlin was wound up after a five year run. Two weeks ago as I write this, Being Human followed suit. The manner of both announcements was odd, and their close proximity triggered alarm bells, or seemed like it should..I blogged about pareidolia, the human tendency to see patterns where there aren’t any, and what it might mean for Doctor Who‘s oddly small scale 50th Anniversary year, here.
-Fearless Defenders, the latest new title in Marvel’s Marvel Now! relaunch was released early in the month. It’s huge fun, teaming street level detective and martial artist Misty Knight with Valkyrie, the last Shield Maiden of Asgard and Doctor Riggs, a really enthusiastic archaeologist. A full on action movie of a book (The first issue features Viking Zombies. VIKING. ZOMBIES.) I reviewed it here.
-I also talked to Fearless Defenders writer Cullen Bunn about the book, his acclaimed supernatural western Sixth Gun and it’s upcoming TV pilot. You can find that interview here.
-Aaron Murphy is one of the best, most talented indie comic creators working today. I took a look at Aaron’s work and the life of the indie creator, here.
-Zero Hour involves the Rosicrucians frantically hiding a huge object beneath a European cathedral as they race to complete 12 clocks that will be handed to the 12 new disciples who will save the world from Hitler, only to be brutally murdered just as the object beneath the cathedral is moved. Then it’s the present day, in New York, and a conspiracy journalist and his wife find one of the clocks.
Then the opening credits hit.
Zero Hour is not remotely calm, and is already getting savaged critically because, frankly, most of my contemporaries are idiots who have two modes ‘Heartbreaking genius/Sucks’ and wouldn’t know the middle ground if it walked up to them, shook their hand and said ‘Hello, I’m the middle ground.’ I, however, am very familiar with the middle ground and really rather liked Zero Hour. My review of the first episode is here.
-Lightfields is the follow up to last year’s surprisingly excellent Marchlands, a done in one season ghost story on ITV. Set in 1944, 1975 and 2012 at the same building, it follows a death, the consequences leading up to it and the terrified ghost it leaves behind. It’s great and my review of the first episode is here.
-Meanwhile, immensely talented writer and artist team Guy Adams and Jimmy Broxton have decided that the best way to bring back the old 1960s adventure newspaper strips is to write and publish a new one and pretend it’s an old one. It’s a very clever idea, complete with Avengers-style kink and fashion and an entire back story for the poor doomed creators. I interviewed them about the project, Goldtiger, which is on KickStarter right now, here.
-Achtung!Cthulhu is a fantastic looking new Lovecraftian RPG set during World War II. Speaking as a postmodern nerd, the concept of being able to marry HP Lovecraft’s work with Hellboy‘s past, Indiana Jones, The Mummy franchise and Charles Stross’ The Laundry series has me positively giddy and that’s even before we get to the game itself. The KickStarter is active now, and I talked to Chris Birch, head of publisher Mophidius Games about it and the upcoming Mutant Chronicles relaunch, here.
-JR Blackwell is one of my idols, an amazingly talented photographer, writer and game designer amongst many other things. She’s also the Creative Director of Galileo Games, who, with games like Bulldogs!, Kingdom of Nothing and Shelter in Place are pioneering the idea of games with a social conscience which manage to talk about issues without being preachy. I spoke to her about the IndieGoGo campaign for The Lost, the fiction anthology that ties into Kingdom of Nothing, as well as Galileo’s overall plans, here.
-We Are Monsters is a fascinating, and deeply nasty looking, horror movie currently being funded on KickStarter. I interviewed John Shackleton, the writer and director, here.
Monkeybrain Comics continue to be one of the smartest, and most diverse digital comics companies out there. I reviewed the first issue of their latest title, High Crimes, a crime comic set on Everest, here.
I have a thing for really good police procedural drama, stemming from an early exposure to the wonderful Homicide: Life on the Street. As a result, I grabbed the chance to review Red Team issue 1, written by Garth Ennis and with art by Greg Cermak, with both hands. The story of a detective unit who decide to kill a suspect and find they’re both good at it, and have a taste for it, it’s the best thing Ennis has done in some time. The review is here.
-Amelia Cole and the Unknown World is one of the best titles Monkeybrain Comics put out. It’s smart, fun take on urban fantasy is like Harry Potter if Hermione was the main character crossed with Supernatural and a wicked sense of humor. I talked to writers Adam P Knave and DJ Kirkbride about the end of volume 1 and the plans for volume 2 here.
-Hellblazer is dead, long live Hellblazer. Vertigo’s iconic, 300 issue British horror title finished this week and, after talking to fellow Bleeding Cool staffer Adi Tantimedh, I put together a piece about something which may ease the post Hellblazer blues. Pilgrim is a series of radio plays following a man who has lived 800 years, knows every secret the UK holds and wants one thing; to die. It’s a stunning series of plays that’s just started it’s fourth run on Radio 4 as I write this and I walk you through what it is and where to find it here.
Some time ago I jokingly mentioned that Sue Perkins, one half of one of my all time favorite comedy duos (Seriously, Morecambe and Wise, Garrus and Wrex, Mel and Sue, in that order), would make a particularly excellent female 10th Doctor. This was partially because I was watching Great British Bake Off and partially because, being a contrary bastard, the ‘EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWW! GIRLS!’ response that the real ale section of Who fandom had when the idea of a female Doctor was floated really irritated me. And when the idea was mentioned again on Twitter a few nights ago, I got thinking. And that means stuff tends to happen. So, I wrote an alternate history of the show, as if the Doctor had always been a woman. So, if you want to read about Joyce Grenfell’s turn as the 1st Doctor, how the 4th Doctor and The Good Life are connected and who is currently playing the 11th Doctor, go here.
Oh and this story went CRAZY. The NME picked it up, as did the Sun‘s website, the Mirror‘s website, Digital Spy, io9 and Ghana Nation. I’m still getting it retweeted into my twitter feed from people who I don’t even follow. Which is BRILLIANT. And yes I’m working on a follow up.
-On a more sedate note I prove, using science, and by science I mean words, that Die Hard 5 is actually Mission:Impossible 4.5. See the truth here.
Don’t call it a comeback, as Lionel Lionel Cool J once sung, but I’m back at travellingman.com!
-Achtung!Cthulhu is a splendidly adaptable new RPG combining the mythos with the Second World War. I talk about their KickStarter here.
-Goldtiger, by the mighty duo of Guy Adams and Jimmy Broxton, is the greatest 1960s newspaper adventure strip that never was. OR IS IT? I talk about this complex, smart, fun project’s KickStarter here.
-Whilst my issues with how DC have been comporting themselves with their creative staff, and several of the choices made, continue to grow, they’re also continuing to put out interesting work. My review of the first issue of Justice League of America is here.
-I was also pointed at a very interesting looking KickStarter campaign for Sorako. Written and drawn by Fujimura Takiyuki, it’s a subtle, slice of life series that’s very comparable to the work of creators like Eddie Campbell and Marc Ellerby. My piece about the campaign is here.
-Speaking, as we were up page, about Hellblazer, my review of that final issue is here.
-Whilst my review of the very excellent first issue of the Nova relaunch is here. I loved this, very much The Last Starfighter, crossed with the horror of being trapped in a small town back Glee had in its early, best years, and superheroic punching.
-Kill Shakespeare is a fascinating book exploring what happens when Shakespeare’s characters are all real, all worship him and go to war…The third volume, Tide of Blood, has just started and my review of the first issue is here.
-They Go Bump by David Barr Kirtley is a very clever, subtle, hideous story about invisibility. Actually it’s about three different levels of invisibility; the invisibility of individual identity in the military, the invisibility of the lower ranks to the upper as anything other than a deployable asset and the invisibility offered by an experimental piece of technology. It’s a nasty, fun piece of work and I narrate it here.
-Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Tamarisk Hunter is a story I’ve actually seen the genesis of first hand. I’ve seen Tamarisks in Texas, know what they do to the soil, and having spent four months in California know how delicately balanced it’s ecosystem is. The story’s a fascinating, bleak piece of near future environmental SF and I introduce it here.
-Michael Swanwick’s The Very Pulse Of The Machine is either tragic, hopeful, or a little of both. It’s a hard SF disaster story with a head dose of neo spiritualism and optimism to it and it’s one of my favorite stories of his. I introduce it here.
-Marc Laidlaw wrote the Half Life games, all of them and I’m delighted to see that he’s clearly used the hundreds of hours of my life I willingly paid that experience to create some fantastic short fiction too. Episode 319-Cell Call, is one of my favorite episodes of all time, a wonderfully constructed, utterly chilling look at what happens when you pass through the looking glass and don’t even know.
-Matt Wall provided the second story for February, with episode 320-The Man With The Broken Soul. A considered, measured, terrifying look at the consequences of splintering a human soul, and the immortality that comes with it, it was read with typical authority by Elie Hirschman.
-Episode 321-I Am The Box, The Box Is Me by Kyle S. Johnson is a slow burn stream of consciousness piece that speaks to both the stains left by trauma and a particularly horrible version of the afterlife. It’s a difficult piece but stick with it, it’s more than worth it.
-Episode 322-Cry Room by Ted Kosmatka is one of my favorite stories. Ever. Ted draws a subtle knife of implication and horror across social expectation and the daily grind of looking after a family to create a story which, like the Cry Room itself, is exactly what you bring to it. It’s hopeful, horrific and utterly brilliant.
So that was February, where I lost a couple of days to illness and grind. It’s okay, I’ll make the time, and words, back up and there are a few holdovers that should land in March, with luck:
-Various SFX blog pieces
-Several roleplaying projects
-Two more introductions to books.
-A short story. I got commissioned for. Seriously.
Oh and I mentioned the book, right?
The Pseudopod Tapes Volume 1 is a collection of all the writing I did for Pseudopod in 2012, revised and expanded. You won’t hear me ask for donations, won’t her me use the words Creativecommonsattributionnoncommercialnoderivativeslicence which I’ve now said so often they just become one. No, none of that. Instead you’ll get;
-A discussion of the cross medium fictional geography of Gotham City
-Pieces of history, personal and global.
-Why climbing is a bit like meditation.
-Discussions on horror, personal and fictional.
-A single piece of flash fiction.
-The 2012 Halloween Parade
-Answers to the 2012 Halloween Parade
And loads of other stuff. I’m really proud of this book and I’ve been deeply honored by how well it’s been received. So if you fancy it it’s available in print or ebook form. Adele and the crew at Fox Spirit along with superlative cover artist SL Johnson did amazing work, as did the nice people that put it on cake for the launch party. See? The cake was NEVER a lie.
See you…actually in about a week. These articles are INSANE, even collating them as I go, so I’m going to try weekly roundups instead. So, check back in seven days for Chapter 1 of All The Words I Wrote In March! Shorter! Faster! More explosions! Probably not actually but definitely the first two!
Want to talk to me about the article? Got something you need written? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.
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The Hunting Mirror:Sinister
February 22nd, 2013Slide 1: A photograph of Neolithic cave art. Stick figures are clearly discernible, as are deer, horses and mammoth. A hunting party is bringing a mammoth down to the right of the shot whilst to the left, a group of smaller figures are seen congregating around a figure with an odd, elongated face.
Professor Jonas: This is the caves at Chauvet, in France. How many of you were bought Cave of Forgotten Dreams by your parents for Christmas? (Laughter). Thought so. This image is at the back of the cave. Note the elongated face, the pointed chin. There are scorch marks surrounding and over the face.
Slide 2: A medieval woodcut. A group of people in middle European clothing are being thrown into a river from a humpbacked bridge. They appear to be being thrown by their children. The elongated face is at the bottom of the river, more defined now, with clear eyes, a nose, a mouth. There are scratch marks over it.
Professor Jonas: What do we see? Aside from proof that rap music is not the cause of evil in modern children? (More laughter). We see the children, killing the adults, to honour…(Points at face)…him. It. We see it. It see us too.
Slide 3: A group of period police cars and ambulances huddled around a house. A pool is distantly visible in the background. Four bodybags are being wheeled out.
Professor Jonas: 1966, an entire family is subdued, tied to pool chairs, dragged into their swimming pool and drowned. One child is not accounted for and never recovered.
Slide 4: A burnt out car, again clearly not contemporary but slightly closer. Human remains are visible inside.
Professor Jonas: 1979. A family are restrained in their car and burnt to death. One child is not accounted for and never recovered.
I should warn you, these get worse.
Slide 5:Another house, another huddle of emergency services vehicles. There’s a sliver of yard around the back of the house and the lawn is visible, streaked with red.
Professor Jonas: 1986. A family are incapacitated, restrained and…their heads are run over repeatedly with a lawnmower. (Gasps from the audience). One child is not accounted for and never recovered.
Slide 6:A crime scene photo showing a family bedroom. The décor is almost contemporary and the sheets are soaked with blood, arterial spray visible on several surfaces. (More Gasps)
Professor Jonas: 1998, a family are incapacitated, restrained and have their throats cut. One child is not accounted for and never recovered.
Slide 7: A backyard. We’re looking at a tree, a branch on the right side has recently been sawn off. A branch on the left holds four empty nooses.
Professor Jonas: 2011. A family are restrained and hung by the neck in their own backyard. One child is not accounted and never recovered.
Horrifying crimes, united by the single haunting image of a missing child. We know, we’ve seen the horrors inflicted on these people and we can only imagine the horrors inflicted on the child we’ve never been allowed to find. Our own minds have been turned against us, used as a weapon.
Look again.
Slide 8: Slide 1 in close up. We see the sunken cheeks, the hints of the marks over the eyes.
Slide 9: A close up on the face in the river and the children. Both are smiling.
Slide 10: A close up on the pool. There’s a shape, resembling the markings in the earlier slides but distorted through the water, on its bottom.
Slide 11: A closeup on the side of the burnt out car. There are markings on the walls around it, again similar to the face.
Slide 12: The marking, now recognisably a face, scrawled in blood on the side of the house.
Slide 13:Another crime scene photo, showing the approach to the bedroom. The face has been painted on the wall, in blood.
Slide 14: The tree, the photo taken from behind, the nooses visible. The mark is carved into the tree’s trunk.
Professor Jonas: This is Bughuul. Bughuul is an ancient Pagan deity, who, it was believed, could see you through any representation of him. Note how the woodcut and the cave painting were both marked? That’s closing the door, keeping the mirror one way. Bughuul has largely passed into history today, a forgotten deity in a world crammed with entire pantheons of them. There are hundreds, thousands, of gods who kill or steal children. You all know the Pied Piper of Hamelin story? Then you all know one story about that god.
So what makes Bughuul different? Why was his mark found at all of these horrific murders and one other? Because Bughuul would kill entire families and take one last child into his realm to consume its soul, or, to put it another way…
One child is not accounted for and never recovered.
(Murmurings from the audience)
I know, believe me. It’s one of those questions which opens far too many doors, implies far too much. The kindest outcome here is that multiple serial killers worship Bughuul and committed their single, horrific serial crimes to honour him. There is some evidence for this but, not, I feel, compelling evidence.
The reason for this is the final crime.
Slide 15: A house, clearly in the present day. The yard is visible to the left of the image and a moving van is front and centre in the driveway.
Professor Jonas: The site of the 2011 killing was purchased by Ellison Oswalt earlier this year. Mr Oswalt’s work may be familiar to you; a crime writer with good successes behind him but, only behind him. He bought the house with full knowledge of what had gone on there, planning to use it as the basis for his book.
He did not tell his family where they were moving.
(Louder murmurings)
Ellison’s motives were good, even if his methods were contemptible. He wanted to find the missing girl and he set about it with due diligence. He was the first to find the links to Bughuul in fact. He opened the door to this level of research for me. He was a good investigator, a solid mind.
Slide 16: A photo of Ellison Oswalt, clearly an older photo. It’s black and white and he’s immaculately dressed. It looks like a dust jacket shot.
Professor Jonas: Ellison and I only talked a couple of times. I never saw much of his family, and from what I can tell, neither did he. When we spoke the first time, it was as academics, dealing with abstract concepts but the second time…heseemed terrified. There had been incidents, a dog outside threatened him, his son suffered night terrors, his family took to the true nature of their home exactly as well as you might think.
(Nervous laughter)
Yet he stuck there, kept investigating the events, kept digging away at what had gone on in that backyard.
There’s bravery in that as well as stupidity and selfishness. I’m not here to eulogize the man, just to give you my thoughts on him and what happened to him. (He pauses, drinks some water).
Slide 17: A large, Gothic house. The front is covered in incident tape, the yard lined with police officers and vehicles.
Professor Jonas: Not long after we last spoke, Ellison moves his family out of the house. He wouldn’t say why, and refused to answer calls for weeks. A colleague of mine, who works in law enforcement, spoke to him the night he died and he seemed find, happy even. My colleague did give him some bad news though; that each murdered family had moved from the house the last murder had taken place in, and had themselves been killed within days of arriving at their new home. Ellison, I was told, seemed…frightened and yet…unsurprised. My colleague became concerned and reached out to his fellow officers in the area. There was no real cause for alarm, just a policeman asking a favor of another so it was not given an especially high priority but, approximately 90 minutes after the last time I spoke to Ellison, a unit arrived at his house.
(Cleans glasses)
They…ah…they found Ellison and his wife, and his son.
Slide 18: The living room of the house. There is blood spray on several surfaces. Bughuul’s face is clearly visible.
Professor Jonas: They’d been dismembered. With an axe.
One child is not accounted for and has yet to be recovered.
(Dead silence)
(He coughs, collects himself)
Professor Jonas: The depths of Ellison Oswalt’s crass irresponsibility notwithstanding, it is my belief we’re dealing with something beyond the usual serial killer or cult scenarios. I believe we’re dealing with something beyond the normal and something grounded in the lost children. I believe, in short, that we are dealing with a monster, something which eats minds as hungrily as it doe…lives. I also believe it must be stopped and that the way to do that is to tell as many people as possible. He cannot be everywhere at once, he cannot view everyone at once and he cannot take us all. So now you know, now you see him, and he sees you. Centuries after the war began, humanity has fired it’s first shots and you, my friends, are on the front line.
Now, any questions?
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