Don't forget The Calvert-Moorcock collaboration "Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters". Note also that Moorcock and Hawkwind are denizens of the Notting Hill, Portobello area of London. And down the end of the Portobello road you can still find the ancient greasy-spoon cafe "The Mountain Grill".
In case of Sonic Attack on your district, follow these rules:
If you are making love it is imperative to bring all bodies to orgasm simultaneously.
Do not waste time blocking your ears.
Do not waste time seeking a "sound proofed" shelter.
Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible
Do not panic
Do not panic
Use your wheels. It is what they are for.
Small babies may be placed inside the special cocoons
and should be left, if possible, in shelters.
Do not attempt to use your own limbs.
If no wheels are available - metal - not organic -
limbs should be employed whenever practical.
Remember:
In the case of sonic attack survival means
"Every man for himself"
Statistically more people survive if they think
only of themselves
Do not attempt to rescue friends, relatives, loved ones
You have only a few seconds to escape
Use those seconds sensibly or you will inevitably die
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
These are the first signs of sonic attack:
You will notice small objects - such as ornaments - oscillating
You will notice vibrations in your diaphragm
You will hear a distand hissing in your ears
You will feel the need to vomit
You will feel dizzy
You will have difficulty focussing
You will need to breathe more rapidly
There will be bleeding from orifices
There will be an ache in the pelvic region
You may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting or even laughter
These are all sign of imminent sonic destruction
Your only protection is flight
If you are less than ten years old
Remain in your shelter and use your cocoon
Remember - you can help no one else
You can help no one else
You can help no one else
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
If you are making love it is imperative to bring all bodies to orgasm simultaneously.
Do not waste time blocking your ears.
Do not waste time seeking a "sound proofed" shelter.
Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible
Do not panic
Do not panic
Use your wheels. It is what they are for.
Small babies may be placed inside the special cocoons
and should be left, if possible, in shelters.
Do not attempt to use your own limbs.
If no wheels are available - metal - not organic -
limbs should be employed whenever practical.
Remember:
In the case of sonic attack survival means
"Every man for himself"
Statistically more people survive if they think
only of themselves
Do not attempt to rescue friends, relatives, loved ones
You have only a few seconds to escape
Use those seconds sensibly or you will inevitably die
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
These are the first signs of sonic attack:
You will notice small objects - such as ornaments - oscillating
You will notice vibrations in your diaphragm
You will hear a distand hissing in your ears
You will feel the need to vomit
You will feel dizzy
You will have difficulty focussing
You will need to breathe more rapidly
There will be bleeding from orifices
There will be an ache in the pelvic region
You may be subject to fits of hysterical shouting or even laughter
These are all sign of imminent sonic destruction
Your only protection is flight
If you are less than ten years old
Remain in your shelter and use your cocoon
Remember - you can help no one else
You can help no one else
You can help no one else
Do not panic
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
Think only of yourself
"Studios don't release cheap DVDs the day a feature film is released, publishers don't release the cheap paperback the day a hardcover comes out."
Yebbut, Music publishers release the MP3 to iTunes the day the CD is available.
Shame it's dreadful.
The bigger issue here is how to get all those out of print books back into print. Amazon doing print-on-demand?
Please re-print John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up.
A small nuke in Mt Aetna should do it. What could possibly go wrong.
@rootyb: Those were plain old coal fired stations. The nuclear stations typically don't have cooling towers. Or at least to nowhere like the same extent.
When I was a YA, I didn't read YA fiction. And I don't now. I don't consider Little Brother to be YA fiction except possibly because it has a main character who is YA. I can't help thinking that the whole genre should die. There really doesn't need to be any genre of literature specifically aimed at 10-15 year olds. If they're mature enough to be over kids books, they're ready for real adult fiction (with a very few exceptions due to unsavoury topics).
Easy Travel to other Planets. And of course pretty much anything by John Lilly.
I really miss our bright shiny future with fins. Bring back Retro-Futurism!
Who owns it?
Nice essay, Matt. But I'd much rather contemplate the lede. "The City Is A Battlesuit For Surviving The Future"
"Battlesuit" and "Survive" definitely suggest a dystopian future and I'm undecided just how effective cities are as a location for surviving dystopias. Modern cities are extraordinarily dependent on supply lines from *elsewhere*. Break those supply lines and their continued existence is extremely fragile. When eating depends on being able to walk to a Tesco Extra, you also become dependent on Tesco's ability to get supplies of food to that outlet every 6 hours. New Orleans showed that once the supply lines are cut, cities have about 48 hours before they revert to chaos.
Looking back at history rather forwards perhaps we can see an alternate view of all this. London has survived The Blitz, cholera and plague among many other disasters. Individuals die but the city lives on. Providing enough people are concentrated in a small enough area, the sheer energy of innovation and activity makes all City problems become small. This points up the question of the subject in the lede. It appears to apply to the individuals that put on the Battlesuit of the City to help them survive. This may be backwards. Rather, it is the city which puts on the battlesuit of the mob(ility) of citizens to survive. #futuremetro
Ribofunk?
Winamp FTW. Frankly, iTunes on Windows sucks. But sadly it is now so bloated and there's so much code in there that I can't see Apple ever doing the complete re-write that's probably necessary.
The second episode was actually pretty good. It's beginning to get dark where the trailer was funny, and the first was too cute.
I can forgive Hackaway since he was born in 1972 and has Le Carre as a father. He'll work it out. But Atwood should know better. Surely she knows this whole debate has been done several times. Not least by the New Worlds group, cyberpunk and slipstream debates. People like Vonnegut or Delaney were causing the same problems before that. Go all the way back and I'm sure HG Wells and Verne were kicking against being typecast as SciFi authors; they just didn't call it then (Natural Philosopher Fiction?).
I can't believe we're still having this genre discussion and the polarisations about SciFi is all love and rockets (annd talking squid), Graphic Novels are just comic books, Fantasy is all elves and sorcery and "Literature" is thoroughly up itself.
A big part of why we're still doing this is the problem of having a SciFi section in bookshops and book buying.
And for the record: Gone Away world is absolutely Science Fiction. And it's actually pretty good too.
Please just be excellent to Keanu, m'kay?
