The obvious start of all this was Heath Ledger’s tragic death after his fantastic turn as the Joker. Subsequently, Christian bale was arrested following an argument with his family (hardly tragic and a fairly weak effort by “the curse” there) and now, to really fuel the flames of conspiracy, Morgan Freeman has had a terrible car accident. Less newsworthy, as he wasn’t famous, was the death of Conway Wickliffe, a New Zealand-born special effects technician who died while working on the film. (The movie was dedicated to both Ledger and Wickliffe).

So, is there a curse? Or is it just like spotting giraffes in the clouds if you look long enough. Or Jesus on a toasted cheese sandwich? As with all these things, there’s as much evidence against a curse as for one, but no curse is not nearly as much fun. There’s even been talk of terrible things befalling people that go to see the movie. So how does that explain all the people that saw the movie and then had something really cool happen to them?

For a really deep look at the subject, check out this Cryptomundo article, that even looks closely at the Joker’s business card used only in the trailers. (Insert X-Files whistling theme tune here.)

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I’m pleased to say that a lot of the problems I had with Issue 1 have been fixed up a bit. I’m sure that was down to the editors of Black being regular readers here and taking my word as gospel. There were good articles on wide variety of subjects and an excellent amount of space dedicated to all things Zombie.

There seemed to be a lot less white text on black background, which was good for the eyes. There are still a few parts that strike me as a bit try-hard, but those with tastes different to mine might find them great. It takes all sorts, after all.

Anyway, the upshot is that the mag is definitely getting better and is well worth a look. At only eight bucks, you can’t go far wrong.

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Q: What book are you currently reading? Is it good so far?

I’m currently reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

It’s a book in three parts (at least the version I’m reading is a three volume box set) and I’m currently approaching the end of book 2. It’s quite an achievement in world building, with Clarke setting up an entire history (with extensive footnotes) for an England where magic once existed in plain sight and is going through a process of revival. The book is set in this alternate England during the Napoleonic wars, the first part of the 19th century. It’s written in a style that fits the era, almost Dickensian in places, using old spellings such as shew for show, sopha for sofa, chuse for choose and so on to add authenticity to the narrative.

I have to admit that in places the book is very long-winded, with some parts going on for far too long. Even some of the footnotes that are used to flesh out the history are several pages long! But on the whole it’s extremely enjoyable so far and something slightly different. Well worth a look. There’s an official website here.

I won’t hit up anyone by name with the meme, but there’s my effort. Consider yourself tagged if you read this far.

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Let me start by stating, as I’ve said here before, that I think of Blade Runner as the best film ever made. It’s really hard for me to name a top ten list of movies, but whatever films have moved me over the years, I still think that Blade Runner is the best of them all.

Rick Deckard - Blade Runner

It’s based on the book by Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.

The book is excellent - some of Philip K Dick’s best writing in my opinion. But the film is very different. There are a lot of similarities, with characters and situations taken directly from Dick’s pages, but the movie does very different things with them. Director Ridley Scott took a great book and used the bones of it to make a really great film. This is often better than a direct adaptation. Often, direct adaptations fall well short of the high bench mark set by the books. When a film-maker uses a book purely as insiration to make a film in a similar vein, the results are often better. This is definitely the case with Blade Runner.

The book already has sequels. Author K W Jeter, with the approval of Dick’s estate, wrote Blade Runner 2 - The Edge of Human, which was really not very good. I tried to read it, but couldn’t get more than halfway through. Jeter has since written two more Blade Runner sequels, Replicant Night and Eye and Talon. I don’t know if they’re any good and I can’t be bothered to find out. If I couldn’t get through the first sequel, I doubt the others will hold my attention any better.

Regardless, Philip K Dick’s book stands tall as a great piece of science fiction. It doesn’t need sequels and Jeter’s attempts are best ignored. Blade Runner, the movie, is also fantastic and absolutely does not need any sequels. When you have stories that are as well made, as well written and realised, as these things are, then trying to make sequels just devalues them. It’s a cynical attempt to cash in. If you read the slashfilm.com article (linked above), you’ll see that the sequel appears to be a long way from ever being made. Let me just add my voice to the multitude here in saying that I never want to see it made. Blade Runner is a unique diamond that can’t be copied or improved upon, and certainly should never be cashed in on.

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Billing itself as something like the X-Files, with a series long story arc to appeal to long term fans and single stories every episode to appeal to more casual viewers, it seems to have landed in a dead zone somewhere in the middle. The long story arc is a bit obvious and overplayed while the individual stories are not that great and absolutely full of holes. Seriously, the science alone is atrocious, let alone the actual story-telling.

There seemed to be potential at first as the series appeared to be like the X-Files, only a bit darker and grislier. That appeals to me. Less UFOs and more human phenomena. That appeals to me too. It could be really good. But the makers have said that they can keep the story going over several seasons or, if the studio pulls the plug, they can wrap it up in a single episode. This is a deliberate attempt to prevent the Lost syndrome where people give up on the series when it gets too complicated with no end in sight. (Although they have now announced an end date for Lost in an attempt to woo some viewers back.) Perhaps this “drop out at a moment’s notice” position contributes to the weakness of the show.

So far, and three episodes is not that many to judge by, there seems to be a very distinct formula. But no one would give a book more than three chapters to hook them in, so TV series should be held to the same standards. Especially prime time drama.

The show’s formula appears to be something along the lines of:

- Weird event occurs;
- Doctor Bishop (who is quite mad, naturally) posits a bizarre hypothesis while Agent Olivia Dunham looks on with an expression of grim determination;
- A tenuous connection to Massive Dynamic (”Generic Evil Worldwide Corporation”) becomes apparent;
- A tenuous connection to “The Pattern” is stated, which appears to mean “anything weird that Massive Dynamic might have a hand in”, although the team have yet to really take the Massive Dynamic link seriously for some reason;
- Doctor Bishop begins some preposterous experiment to move the case along, usually with something that he first developed in the 70s that he never thought he’d see again (and this is always done with absolutely no regard for any of the recognised scientific disciplines);
- A truly blatant coincidence causes the Doc’s experiment and Dunham’s grim determination to bear fruit;
- More of “The Pattern” and everyone’ s connection to it is hinted at as a post-script.

The coincidences are one of my biggest gripes. Take Episode 2 where the Doc manages to use one of Massive Dynamics funky new technologies to read the images a dead girl last saw. Don’t even try to understand how this is supposed to work. But it does work. They don’t see the face of her murderer, however - the last thing she saw - nor do they see the inside of a random building. They see a bridge she was looking at a minute or two before her murder. What a piece of luck! Not the nameless face of the criminal, but a location they can track easily (apparently). And then the criminal happens to be plying his criminal trade at that very location when Dunham and the official sidekick (Peter Bishop, son of Doc) arrive to save the day. Brilliant!

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I was convinced that you’d find some science in there.”

However, even with all this going against it, I might give it one or two more episodes to tighten up. “The Pattern” concept may yet keep me interested enough to know what happens. Or I may stop wasting my time and look up the answer on the internet once the series ends. If it carries on like this, that may not be very long.

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Now, you’d think that this would be the ideal opportunity for a bit of divine intervention, no? Or, if a god or gods were being honoured by the pilgrimage of thousands of faithful, you would think that said gods wouldn’t let something like this happen in the first place. Shouldn’t the people be gripped by a holy calm rather than a panic?

A senior state government official, Kiran Soni Gupta, said, “We have lost over 140 lives due to suffocation. This was a chance accident.”

And indeed it was, in one of those moments that are actually not that uncommon. This particular deadly stampede was the fourth in India this year. The annual Haj to Mecca has a body count that Arnie and Sly Stallone could never hope to top in their most brutal movies combined:

From wikipedia:

# On July 2, 1990, a stampede inside a pedestrian tunnel (Al-Ma’aisim tunnel) leading out from Mecca towards Mina and the Plains of Arafat led to the deaths of 1,426 pilgrims.
# On May 23, 1994, a stampede killed at least 270 pilgrims at the stoning of the Devil ritual.
# On April 9, 1998, at least 118 pilgrims were trampled to death and 180 injured in an incident on Jamarat Bridge.
# On March 5, 2001, 35 pilgrims were trampled to death in a stampede during the stoning of the Devil ritual.
# On February 11, 2003, the stoning of the Devil ritual claimed 14 pilgrims’ lives.
# On February 1, 2004, 251 pilgrims were killed and another 244 injured in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina.

Of course, hundreds, even thousands of deaths at a specifically religious event are considered a terrible accident; pure chance. One grilled cheese sandwich with the hazy image of a Messiah on it is a Divine Miracle. Let’s all look up Pareidolia for our homework.

In a slightly similar vein, I was greatly entertained today by Michael Fridman’s post at A Nadder!, where he equates books of the Bible with their very modern counterparts. Why are some mythologies still causing deaths by the thousand while others are considered nothing more than fairy stories? After all, a religion is nothing more than a myth that some people still believe to be the truth.

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It all started back on February 24th and now it’s over - thirty four (almost) weekly episodes. Today sees a bumper double episode as I’ve posted the short Epilogue and Episode 34 together. What will I post on Mondays now? I’ll have to start writing more blog posts to keep you all interested.

I do hope to write more stuff to serialise here on The Word in the future, but right now I’m working very hard on getting my second novel out. The sequel to RealmShift, it should be available sometime during October if all goes well. I know I’ve promised it on a number of occasions, but this independent publishing game is harder to control than I originally thought! But I’m getting on top of everything now, so keep an eye on the blog here for news over the next few weeks.

Also, don’t be shy to drop comments on this post and let me know what you thought of A ‘Verse Full of Scum, or anything else you’ve read here for that matter. Or you can always send me an email, the address is in the yellow box at the top of the page.

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The 1954 book by Richard Matheson is one of my all-time favourites. It’s a great mix of horror and sci-fi in the old school style and it’s a truly great story. The reason for the title of I Am Legend is inspired. Will Smith’s movie version crapped all over that.

The movie wasn’t that bad to begin with, a reasonably updated version of Matheson’s book, but the last third of the film or so became a horrible steaming pile of American god-loving bollocks, completely desecrating the original point of the story. And the CG vampires were bloody terrible. As you can tell, I wasn’t very impressed with it.

And now Smith wants to make a prequel? Even after the flashbacks in the first film that told us the story of what happened? Even if we know that basically everyone will die and vamp out and Dr Richard Neville (Smith) will be left alone in the world, supposedly. Even though we know that the story ends atrociously because Smith et al couldn’t bring themselves to stick to Matheson’s story and make a truly great film?

Way to go, Will - you’re about to make one of the worst movie adaptations ever even worse.

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I haven’t got around to checking out all the extras yet, but I did sit and watch the movie again yesterday. Man, what a great film. This is something that is a true cult classic; it’s even spawned a musical. The effects are pretty ordinary, but it was made in 1981. The story might seem cliched watching it now, but at the time it wasn’t.

Written and directed by Sam Raimi, it’s a fantastic effort for a first movie. It propelled Bruce Campbell to absolute stardom and spawned sequels every bit as good as the first. Interestingly, the sequels are more camp and funny than the original. It struck me while I was watching it that it’s actually a pretty scary movie. The comedy, which is very evident in the sequels, isn’t so obvious here. There are some really toe curling gore moments (such as the pencil in the ankle - not just stabbed, but really ground around in there) and some truly spooky moments with good jumps. And, as fas as I know, the only tree rape ever committed to film (which was banned in some places).

The whole thing centres around the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. Originally this concept surfaced in H P Lovecraft stories, supposedly written by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred, and was subsequently referenced in other fiction. Lovecraft greatly approved of this development of his ideas, calling it “a background of evil verisimilitude.” In one of those fantastic examples of fiction becoming “fact”, there are people out there now that consider that there really is something called the Necronomicon, with many booksellers being asked if they stock it or can order it. Do some web searching and you’ll come across some really entertaining stuff.

The Necronomicon (one version of it anyway). Supposedly written in human blood and bound in human flesh.

And check out the imdb trivia page about the movie here. Some really funny stuff on there. If you’re a fan of this genre, check out the movie again. The claymation effects and dodgy make-up are dated, but it’s still an absolute classic.

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