Buncha Links

Various links to suit today’s links-hungry lifestyle.

Linus’s security blanket comes to life.

Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke.

Wee, drookit, cow’rin, tim’rous beasties.

The Adam & Joe Podcast.

The Bat Segundo Show #50 [number fifty!]: John Updike [John Updike!]. Congrats, Ed!

New McCloud. Can’t wait.

Richard Linklater interviewed in comics form about A Scanner Darkly.

CoverFlow [thanks, James]. How long ’til Apple buy this or rip it off?

17 July 2006 · Weblog

Richard Linklater interview - fascinating. (And cool.)

A Scanner Darkly is, I think, the only book that's ever disturbed me so much I couldn't sleep knowing it was in the room.

Added by K on 18 July 2006.

I haven’t felt such a sense of nervous anticipation over a film for quite a while. As I belatedly discovered in 2004, Richard Linklater is a terrific director. But A Scanner Darkly is by far my favourite PKD novel—and I own almost all of them, and have read almost all of those—so it feels like there’s a lot at stake. That interview gives me hope that he really has captured the spirit of the book as I remember it: a bunch of funny and philosophical slackers hanging out in California, one of whom is spying on the last person you’d expect.

I’ve seen some early comments bagging the movie, but suspect (or hope) they were from people expecting a big sci-fi blockbuster, because so many other big sci-fi blockbusters have been made from PKD stories. But PKD’s novels—and short stories, for that matter—aren’t big sci-fi blockbusters. They feel like real-life novels of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, but ones in which weird stuff happens: identities dissolve, people turn out to be simulacra, time loops in on itself, the world isn’t what it seems. The Truman Show felt more like a faithful filming of a PKD story than Minority Report.

Linklater has shown us again and again that he knows exactly the sort of people the book talks about and can make excellent movies about them, so I’m hopeful he’s pulled it off. But whatever happens, it’s great to know that the novel will get a whole new lease of life out of the movie. If I had to list my ten favourite science fiction novels, that would be one of them. Top two or three, even.

Added by Rory on 18 July 2006.

I have not (yet) seen Minority Report, mostly because I really, really don't want to see eyes bounce down a corridor. Just a personal phobia.

Really I should read more Dick. Probably shouldn't have jumped straight from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" to "A Scanner Darkly", though. I agree with you that what I have read was SF with no explosions, but lots of ideas - something I value (my favourite SF writer's probably Ursula K Le Guin, at least at the moment).

Added by K on 19 July 2006.

Excellent choice on Le Guin. One of hers is my favourite SF novel of all. (The Dispossessed. I wonder what else would be in my top ten...)

If you’re looking beyond those two PKDs, try:

Eye in the Sky
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Time Out of Joint
Now Wait for Last Year
The Man in the High Castle

And Lawrence Sutin’s biography, Divine Invasions, because Dick’s life was as strange as his fiction.

Added by Rory on 19 July 2006.

I'd been secretly hoping you were going to provide a list of recommendations - thank you!

The Dispossessed is a fantastic book. I only wish it were a bit easier to get hold of some of her back catalogue...

Added by K on 19 July 2006.

A footnote on Adam and Joe. Adam Buxton has a blog where he’s been posting lots of videos, including this great one from his “I, Pavel” show that I loved so much at the Fringe last year:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQ9sJVJMiYM

http://adam-buxton.co.uk/ad/2006/06/29/

Added by Rory on 25 July 2006.


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