DoomBook

Strange things tend to happen with this online medium. Looking around today and following up to see if Jack L. Chalker had released anything new(ish) prior to his untimely demise I noticed that his website hadn’t been updated or even kept running smoothly after his departure.

How I found out about his bout of heart troubles and unfortunate end is also a bit odd. It was in the forward to a book on programming AJAX, one written by someone apparently influenced by the accomplished Science Fiction writer, teacher, and from all accounts good guy. But I digress.

One of the stranger things about all of this is that writings online tend to collect up like so much electronic floatsom washing up on the shore. Even if they’re not officially run by anyone sites stay up long after their authors slip the mortal coil.

Writings on forums get cataloged forever.

With all it’s various archives no antagonistic Usenet statement about someones affiliation with fascism or resemblance to mustached dictators will ever be lost. Just forgotten.

Postings about Usenet I find particularly funny, as they’re always written in the present tense. The reason that’s funny, for those of you who don’t use, don’t know about, and have no inclination of ever using Usenet news forums is that they’re all dated circa the late nineties.

And always proclaim that their subject matter, alt.fiction.literature or whatever, is still a vibrant community of writers that’s just waiting for you to drop in. There’s still people loitering on Usenet mind, it just hasn’t scaled. In fact, it appears to have shrunk quite a bit since the endless deluge of AOL users back when (see Eternal September on wikipedia).

Speaking of which the font of Cyber Punk genre fiction at the Tea Bowl mirror being maintained by Joel Benford. Ken Stone seems to have disappeared, washed under the tide of data. Or maybe just forgotten by Google. He ran Anime.net back at the dawn of time.

I’ll mirror it once again when Villa-Straylight is back online or Doombook’s main page gets cleaned up. Just to keep it from getting too dusty.

Because that’s all that happens. For a medium with such a short shelf life on “new” content it’s funny how things are starting to disappear less as the network spreads out. Although it’s freaky to see someone’s last writings lingering around with no tidy closing notice put on them.

–Fin

I just finished reading Transmetropolitan (Wikipedia warning: spoilers), the 60 issue comic series by industry veterans Warren Ellis (story) and Darick Robertson (art). By the end of the series run I was starting to wonder if someone over at DC had fallen asleep on the censorship switch. In an age where showing a pasty on TV during a super bowl halftime show gets a public uproar I’m surprised that a Warner Brothers label has the cojones to publish such a racy story line.

To be honest, both the language and artwork are more what I expect out of a no-holds-barred outfit like Heavy Metal Publishing rather than the tame DC Vertigo imprint. Although to be fair Transmetropolitan started it’s life on the quickly killed Helix line which was more of a mature reader Sci-Fi/Fantasy label than the “quirky” (and somewhat schizophrenic) Vertigo lineup.

What we usually get out of comics are yet more stories about super heroes, would be super heroes, people who are pretty heroic but not quite super, or dystopian anti-heroes with super powers. Warren Ellis forgoes the easy comic book cliches (this time around) and instead settles on writing about Spider Jerusalem a journalist who’s only powers are an incredible capacity for drugs and an uncanny ability to ferrit out the story.

Set in a fantastical not-quite-dystopia based on the modern day US, Ellis takes us through his fears and hopes for the future. Pervading the entire Transmet series is a sense that this is Ellis’s personal rant on what’s going on in the world given life through Spider and Ellis’s exceptional talent for telling interwoven stories.

The sometimes protagonist Spider is a take on journalist Hunter S. Thompson and the name is a nod to Spider Robinson. Both of these are pretty obvious, Spider Robinson being the only “Spider” anything that comes to mind in literature and Hunter S. Thompson having a larger-than-life writing style equivelent to the way Spider’s character is put to paper.

Transmetropolitan really worked for me as a graphic novel. Most of the “stuff” available currently is either poorly drawn (in the case of many manga series) or poorly written (in the case of many comic book series) or in some cases both. To the contrary Transmet has an unconventional story line and excellent, intricate artwork that resonates off the page. It’s definately worth the $7.99(USD) price of entry, and if you’re like me the rest of the series will be following shortly after.