This wank ridden trailer doesn’t sell the book too well. But Nova Swing is an intimidating level of goodness. And it has characters and elements from an M John Harrison story I’m very fond of: The Neon Heart Murders.

Fiction produced for any genre written using the mechanically reclaimed ideas blasted from the carcasses of other stories and shoved inside a fatty skin of glossy marketing. As it is sold on the basis of quantity and low cost rather than overall quality and satisfaction, genre sausage is generally high in calories but low in overall nutritional value. Fine when eaten occasionally as part of a healthy and varied diet with regular exercise, but can lead to significant health problems if eaten in excessive quantities. Genre sausage can often be spotted by the cover copy advertising the book as the next X or from the citation of the one positive review from Publishers Weekly. Endorsements from friends of the author are also common sights on the packets of genre sausages.

Genre sausages rarely uses organic ingredients and instead relies on intensive factory farming methods to produce the required quantities of unrefined fiction. Not for vegetarians, vegans or people concerned about the environment.

Today I am relying on cliqhop idm radio, supermarket brand Extra Power Pain Reliever Caplets and Twining’s Everyday Tea.

There may also be curry later.

Released July 29^th in the UK.

Via Bleeding Cool and posted here so I don’t forget, although I will.

Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie are both involved with creating their own TV series. One of these series will be an adaptation of an existing book and one of these will be something new. I’m not excited about either of them because, to be honest, I don’t really get excited anticipating new media. I hate the whole cycle of hype followed by inevitable disappointment. It’s designed to increase hits on websites and drive advertising and product purchases. The TV and publishing industries aren’t your friends and they want your money.

I wish to be Zen about my entertainment. If I am going to be excited about new entertainment then I’d rather it be by people like Kelly Link, M John Harrison, David Simon, Justin Broadrick, Entertainment for the Braindead or William Gibson.

I said this about the Salman Rushdie series on Facebook when I linked to the Guardian piece about it there:

Well he has form in the area since magical realism isn’t too distantly related and his first novel was sf. Even if this isn’t exactly a new observation about the cultural influence of HBO/AMC series having replaced the 1980s Blockbuster Literary Novel, it is interesting that Rushdie is publicly forced to say it.

I think at this point my only thoughts on American Gods are a general deflated sense of having to ask is it really necessary? I mean I like the novel. At one point when I was about sixteen it was my favourite book. I do understand adapting American Gods makes massive commercial sense but I’d rather see something more original from a Neil Gaiman and Tom Hanks production.

Can any novel survive or be improved by being broadcast on TV with all the surrounding hype and criticism over six years? I don’t know, but I’m inclined to say probably not.

Both of these series will be loved and hated in equal measure. They’ll make enough money to break even and both projects are reasonably critic proof since Salman Rushdie and Neil Gaiman are themselves pretty much critic proof and have their own established audiences. A bad review, even if substantially true, isn’t going to derail these productions.

Of course we really should be talking about books here. Both authors will release one or two books during the run of these series just to keep their literary reputations ticking along. But I hope while their literary careers just ticking over that maybe some of the hype and excitement will shift to other less known authors busy creating new and original material.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, I’m not anticipating either series. Besides since I only have the BBC to watch I won’t be able to see them when they air in the UK anyway. They will be on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky anyway. If I have pick one show out of the two to support then I guess it has to be the Rushdie. It might turn out to be terribly misguided, but at least it’s a stab at something different.

Edit: Just as I was putting the finishing touches to this someone retweeted Neil Gaiman’s announcement that there’s going to be a second American Gods book. Oh well I thought the original book was nicely self contained, but what do I know? Yes I appear to have forgotten about Anansi Boys.

When I was at school in 1998 the film of the year for everyone to try and watch illicitly, as we were all under age, was Saving Private Ryan. The opening scenes of carnage on Omaha beach were the subject of discussion during many cold mornings waiting for the school bus. I was twelve at the time. When my parents rented Saving Private Ryan we gathered around the TV to watch it. My mum, disturbed by the beach landings, stopped the tape. Not much later, when my parents replaced a dead TV with a wide-screen CRT and bought an ONdigital tuner with a subscription to Film4, I recorded The Thin Red Line. At this point I doubt I’d have seen all of Saving Private Ryan. This would probably be in 2000. I doubt that it would have aired on terrestrial TV by then.

Now to me, both then and now, The Thin Red Line is the superior approach at making a war movie. It was a revelation to a bored thirteen year old stuck in dreary Midlands. A beautiful, existential and truthful vision of the Pacific war which is quite unlike the sentimental cowboy version of history presented in Saving Private Ryan. It seems that even then my instincts for narrative truth were tuned away from closure and exposition. I find it interesting that the HBO series The Pacific contrasts with their earlier series Band of Brothers in a similar way. (Although it would be churlish to call Band of Brothers a cowboy film in the same way Saving Private Ryan is.) Maybe this represents a fundamental differences between the two campaigns. See also cinematic depictions of Vietnam and the Iraq wars.