Putin’s KOMBINAT is to the Soviet Union what the Nazi regime was to Imperial Germany

We don't have an official term yet for Putin's flavour of political regime. William Gibson saw it in 1993. It's the KOMBINAT.

William Gibson has a good record of anticipating the future. Famously he coined the term "cyberpunk"in his first novel in 1984 in which he set the popular perception of the internet. He is famous for that first trilogy of books, but his second trilogy, known as the Bridge trilogy, quickly fell victim to the law of "nothing dates as fast as yesterdays tomorrow".  Published in the early 1990s and set only a decade later, the Bridge books still read pretty cool noir but it's an alternate future with no phones or Web 2.0. Some might prefer this nightmare dystopia /s.

Admittedly he's only a decade away, but some things Gibson gets pretty on the nose. Pandemics, which seemed to begin with HIV, are now a regular occurrence. As per the first trilogy the middle class is shrinking fast and society is dividing into tech driven super rich and crime inflected everyone else. Crime is riddled with Russian money and it has a solid political origin. "Kombinat" is the name given by Gibson to an evolved Communist state which is now explicitly controlled by organised crime. It seems to be sanctioned by all the other states of Gibson's Bridge world so operatives are actively acquiring new technology from locations like San Francisco and Japan. 

You might respond immediately that for all it's issues Putin's Russia is not communist! It is extreme capitalism! Well, give it time, because the more Putin's state walks like the Soviet Union, and quacks like the Soviet Union, the more those weird years in the middle look like a Weimar daydream without the sexy dancers.

Having given the Kombinat a name suddenly it's place in history looks a lot less accidental, a lot more familiar. It is common currency now to compare Putin with Hitler ("Putler") but less so to compare his regime explicitly with the Nazi Party. Compare the timelines however - 1918-1933, and 1987-2000. The fall of the Kaiser's Germany without invasion. The fall of the Soviet Union without a hot war. Economic chaos follows alongside liberalism. Nationalism as a excuse to unify. Idolisation of the past. Hatred of the future. Staged terrorism events to justify crack downs.

Soviet Union like Imperial Germany has a once mighty proud empire lost in a war that barely touches the homeland, creating no sense of real defeat. The undefeated younger generation of the old regime uses gangsterism and brutality to return to power based on militarism nationalism. and unrestrained capitalism.
In its first form this state is highly confident and aggressively expansionist. Though Imperial Germany seemed to coming to its senses late in 1914 and the Soviets barely had the resources to invade a third world state at the end, their expansionist ambitions were baked into the political mindset for the rest of the world to see.

In its second form the Nazi/Kombinat is still expansionist but only as part of a self pitying litany of grievances for past injustices. Where Imperial Germany/Russia has actual plans for the territories it seeks to acquire, the Nazi/Kombinat barely has a plan beyond invade and then “watch the world burn". There is no self justified philosophy of "white man’s burden" here, just looting, rape and destruction that would shame the Mongols.

Though not explicitly anti Semitic in its earlier more intellectual form in Imperial Germany/Soviet Union, the more aggressive populist Nazi/Kombinat is bitter, narrow minded and obsessively anti-Jew.

Some of this analysis falls apart when you consider the chasm between the class background of Imperial Prussians and Soviet leaders, and perhaps there are less actual war vets in Putin’s regime than there were in Hitler's, but the patterns of behaviour and outlook do look remarkably similar to me, and if we are looking for a term for Putin’s flavour of Nazism - KOMBINAT is as good as any I’ve come across.

Notes

Readers of Gibson's most recent trilogy will be aware that 22nd century London is run by The Klept (derived from kleptocray), descendants of the Russian super elite which escaped to London from what I'm now suggesting we call the Kombinat.

Since writing this post I've become aware of a Russian documentary of the same name, reviewed positively here -
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/24/kombinat-review-dark-eerie-doc-on-russias-socialist-city-of-steel
It seems unconnected to the Gibson term.

Blade Runner 2049 : It's No Game

It's over a week since I saw BLADE RUNNER 2049 a second time and I'm still thinking about it a lot. The dam has just burst. Prepare for random thoughts.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 is not only better than the original, by having characters you actually care about, it makes the plot of the original movie 20% better by giving that slightly abusive Deckard and Rachel relationship some consequence.

Apparently BLADE RUNNER 2049 has been a box office flop. I'm neither shocked or disappointed by this because it means I'm not going to hear theories on it from some empty headed trendy who only went to see it for Ryan Gosling.

Gosling is brilliant, better than Ford in both movies (and Ford is pretty good in this one). Gosling seems to be playing a ghost version of his doomed character from DRIVE and his work with  Ana de Armas as Joi makes for a level of hearbreak we never get anywhere near in the cold, sometimes brutal original movie.

Officer K/Joe and Joi are just about the best screen couple I've seen all year. It's horrifying when Joi is destroyed and absolutely devastating when 'Joe' finds (or is reminded) that Joi is essentially a very smart App, and the important bond he has established with this 'woman' actually meant absolutely nothing beyond his own mind.
It was a nightmarishly relatable moment.

According to Slash Film podcast review, the hero of Kafka's The Trial is 'Joseph K', who thinks he is the center of a huge conspiracy, only to find is a minor functionary. Gosling's Officer K/Joe is an instant classic movie character, tragic on several levels. The narrative's flirtation with the plot twist from ANGEL HEART is all the more tragic and pathetic when it is revealed to be a cruel tease.

Wow that was a lot of spoilers wasn't it!
Tough. You should have paid to see the movie instead of waiting to see such a breathtaking cinematic experience on your shit television.

The debate used to be
IS DECKARD A REPLICANT?
It's now
CAN DECKARD'S MANGY DOG TALK?

This movie is worth seeing more than once. After the three way love scene, between K, Joi and Marriett you hear Mackenzie Davis (also great as a kind of Pris 2.0) say to Joi
"There is not as much to you as you think" .
The first time you hear it this is needlessly cruel.
The second time, when you know what Joi is, this is cruel, accurate and heartbreaking all round.

Apparently this and other scenes are getting flak for their portrayal of women. I'm not going to defend this movie from feminists because most feminists I know have a brain and won't be offended by this movie. Like the similarly devastating and disturbing HER, there is nothing in this movie that makes me think
"wow losing my emotions to an App controlled by a immortal, omnipotent, all powerful faceless corporate is a great alternative to some sweet but dozy bird I might find on Tinder".

Denis Villeneuve has instantly become, like David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, someone whose entire back catalogue now needs to be watched. I wasn't knocked out by ARRIVAL (or INTERSTELLAR for that matter) but SICARIO is a classic. I hope he's not bitten off more than he can chew with D U N E.

Another great scene, another great actress, Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, who isn't really a powerless male fantasy figure

Standing in for Bowie (see below), Jared Leto is actually great as Wallace, 2049's frustrated Tyrell. The Slash Film podcast  summed up Wallace perfectly;
"He's the CEO of Samsung coming on stage decades after Steve Jobs (Tyrell) has left and taken all his secrets with him".

As we know Denis Villeneuve is a D U N E fanatic did he cast Jared Leto because he wants Jared Leto as Leto?

I have had issues with the BLADE RUNNER since it was the crushing disappointment of 1982 but the more I see it on better quality medium the better it gets. The first time I saw the BLADE RUNNER FINAL CUT at my friend Rob's house in dazzling HD I had a genuine Philip K. Dick moment when I thought the characters in the Philip K. Dick movie looked more real than we did in the reality that was watching it.

DANGEROUS DAYS BLADE RUNNER DOC 1 The brutal love scene in original movie was more originally more tender according to Sean Young but it was cut to look like abuse. If they were "made to be together" as Sean Young says in one cut scene, this makes Tyrell even more of a cruel god.

The more I watch the original the more intriguing Edward James Olmos's character Gaff becomes as he is obviously some form of handler for Deckard, whatever he is.

For all my re-evaluation and late appreciation of BLADE RUNNER, if you want something genuinely Philip K. Dick from the 1980s, that also screams 1980s in all it's vulgar glory, Paul (STARSHIP TROOPERS) Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL seems a little forgotten today.

C4's ELECTRIC DREAMS, a Philip K. Dick anthology show from the channel which originally brought you BLACK MIRROR. is worth a watch. A little patchy, the most mind bending thing I've seen it in so far is Benedict Wong's spot on Mancunian accent in the episode"Impossible Planet"
Benedict Wong is also in one of the BLADE RUNNER 2049 short films  (BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "2036: Nexus Dawn") so you know he's a Philip K. Dick fan.
EDIT: Benedict Wong has a spot on Mancunian accent because Benedict Wong was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester :-)

One of the other shorts, BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "Black Out 2022", should be a full length movie and I would guess will be one before long.

DANGEROUS DAYS BLADE RUNNER DOC 2 While doing painstaking model work to ensure that every microscopic light source in the cityscape for the opening of the orginal movie looks real,
Douglas Trumble's exhausted Special Effects crew gets a trip to director Ridley Scott's breathtaking actual sets. They are gobsmacked to find beautiful interiors like Tyrell's office with light dancing around like Midsummer Nights Dream from no realistic sources whatsover.
Later, graffiti on piece of  tiny modelwork is shown to say "RIDLEY IS GOD"

We speculated in the 80s that the ultimate cyperpunk accessory would be cybernetic eyes what would show you the world as if shot by the Scott Brothers. (You could have a dropdown that could switch between Tony and Ridley).

Anyway.. back to BLADE RUNNER 2049

When listened to on headphones. soundtrack to BLADE RUNNER 2049 by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, just like the astonishing Vangelis soundtrack for the original, will put you right back in the movie, even when you are actually just queuing up for a flu jab at Boots.

Jóhann Jóhannsson was the original choice for the BLADE RUNNER 2049 soundtrack before Denis Villeneuve decided quite late on to go with Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch. (If we we got is a last minute rush job it is all the more impressive). Jóhann Jóhannsson is a brilliant modern composer  which means eventually we will get a probably excellent variant soundtrack for this movie before long.

The soundtrack for the BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "Black Out 2022" short, by Flying Lotus is also good and should be expanded to album length. (While we wait for the live action movie of these events).

Bowie was the original choice to to be Wallace because Denis Villeneuve and Ridley Scott considered him to be hugely influential on Blade Runner and cyberpunk aesthetic.
As I've mentioned elsewhere cyberpunk was coined as a term AFTER Blade Runner to describe the look and concept. So what Bowie music inspired Blade Runner?
Diamond Dogs? - no, too 1970s, too glam
Outside? - no, a response, a reflection back from the 1990s

You'd need something from the big technological/style bang of the 1980s as it sloughed off the 1970s, something like this.

This is the sound of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and eventually literary cyberpunk being born screaming into life


**UPDATE** Now I come to think of it Bowie's 'Heroes' and 'Low' are much more influential on both actual movie soundtracks.


One final note.
When Denis Villeneuve needed a location to show a defunct dying Las Vegas he chose a Stock Exchange (in Budapest). I wonder how ironic and prophetic that will seem when we finally get to see BLADE RUNNER 2075?

William Gibson's new time travel novel is his best since NEUROMANCER

THE PERIPHERAL;

2030 America is one large trailer park in which the poor are paid  to be mercenaries in online games.  The money economy is based on 'builders' who create designer narcotics, tolerated by 'Homes' a corrupt security apparatus which has evolved from Homeland Security. A girl, Flynn, takes over one odd merc game job from her brother (one of many actual war vets recruited by gamers after their service). This merc game is a new one, a security/surveillance game in a strange environment - in which she inconveniently witnesses a murder.
We, and Flynn, then find that it is not a game, and the interface she is using is actually rich elites from 70 years in the future, hiring cheap disposable labour from the past to control their drones, and their living, breathing 2100s equivalent, called 'Peripherals'.

2100 London is mostly a Victorian theme park, re-greened after a world wide catastrophic event called 'The Jackpot'. Dotted with "Shards" which have an environmental as well as accommodation function, and cosplay zones, in which tourists can interact with Victorian recreations from the past. It is inhabited by the surviving super rich and their families, most of the activity is artful reconstruction of the past for tourism and education purposes. London's lost rivers have recovered as 90% of the human population has died off. Politically the city is run in a feudal fashion by Guilds from the City of London.

After a decade or so writing contemporary (if wierd) spy ficition  William Gibson returns to science fiction with a time travel novel, and it is probably as good as anything  he's written since his hugely influential first novel Neuromancer,  which actually coined the modern use of the word 'cyber' in 1984.

Gibson's version time travel seems to work like this - the super rich in the 2100s can create a 'stub' back to a version of the 2030s which allows them to communicate but not travel. Once established the stub runs concurrent time at both ends of the link (you can't jump forward or backward within it) and creates a separate time stream which does not create paradoxes. They do seriously affect the later development of history within that reality but the 'Klepts' - the descendants of Russian mafia that seem to run London 2100 just don't care. Some in fact run the stubs like live strategy games, purely sadistically, for fun.

This is a great and topical idea and quite a believable extension of current economics - perhaps a logical extension of outsourcing. Why should 'job creators' even have to pay subsistence wages in their own timeline when they can pay resource from another era to do it? Plenty of businesses right now would run call centers using switchboard operators from the  1930s if they had the means to to so.

In the reading this book just flashes by and I found myself slowing down and pacing myself just to enjoy it. Previously "unputdownable" isn't a phrase you would normally apply to William Gibson. His novels are not written as thrillers, Gibson's attention to detail is more Bret Easton Ellis than Tom Clancy.
Often they are (Spook Country) much better on second reading.

I've started and given up on reading about four or five novels in a row  (starting with a Thomas Pynchon last year) but I burned through this,  to the extent that it wormed it's way into lunch and things to do in the evening.Very short chapters helps, and he's a great writer.

Gibson's grasp of characters gets better and better - the slightly cardboard cartoons of his first beloved novels are now fully fleshed rounded and quite tragic characters. The defunct rock band of Pattern Recognition and Zero History is replaced by a trailerpark full of young crippled veterans and their families in mid 21st century, balanced against the quirks of an even more distant future London society post Jackpot.

Like the recent Bigend trilogy, he spends time building entertaining characters and once he gets to play with them the results are often very funny. When American girl from trailer park 2030 operates a living Peripheral in 2100 to identify the murder suspect she has to be fitted with a module that spouts the pretentious society bullshit of the 2100s to fit in.

Aside from the scifi, and the general pleasure of reading Gibson in top form this is the most sympathetic portrayal of an unclass environment world I've come across for some time. There is no sneering at Flynn's trailer park world, and the pity reserved for the war vets is mixed with respect. The forced bonds which develop into friendship between the underclass of 2030 and the high class semi magical world of 2100 are perhaps the highlight of a great read.

When the explanation for the Jackpot arrives this it is a horribly believable idea;  that the mass die-off at the end of the century is not from one cause but an accumulation of environmental, social and economic horrors that have been building for some time until eventually human civilisation 'hits the jackpot' of mass unmanageable disaster. Flynn asks when it started and is told it has been in progress long before her own time of the 2030s.

As usual with Gibson the fantastic is convincing particularly with regard to the future tech and its relationships with society. Gibson admits in an afterword that creating a world of 2100 we can relate to in any way , and even a language to describe it,  was the most difficult part of the writing. The 2100 world of 'assemblers' is very hard to grasp early on, and yet  I have just spent weeks visiting London's Hampstead of the 2015 and the London of 2100, with its greenery full of Russians and underground car parks full of giant German luxury trucks really seems only fantastic in the detail.

This is further examples of how Gibson, - a native of Vancouver - gets the wider world in general and London in particular. The Big Smoke features heavily in the Bigend books, obviously in The Difference Engine, and even the last of the initial scifi Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisna Overdrive. This Pacific Northwester's thing for London is something I regret I never got to ask him at his recent BFI visit.

A warning, The Perpheral has a steep learning curve and is tough to start. Readers are dumped right in at the deep end of both future environments and there is minimum background and explanatory detail, the Jackpot for example is not explained until the final 100 pages. Very short micro-chapters chapters help. Just let the detail flow over and allow comprehension to slowly sink in.

In an Afterword, Wilf Netherton and the Facebook of Dreams, Gibson talks about the tension between writing a narrative and making an environment comprehensible, alluding to Arthur C. Clarke's quote that
"any sufficiently advanced organisation with be indistinguishable from magic"
In his 2100 people tweet in their dreams (and have their dreams tapped by the security forces). The stubs which allow contact with previous eras are enabled by a mysterious Chinese server which is presumed beyond the understanding of anyone outside China.

"There is a working tension, in this sort of fiction between naturalistic narrative and technical exploitation. My own tendency is towards narrative, both as reader and writer. I'm content with Clarke's magic, and The Peripheral, with it's unknown, Chinese 'server' enabling the entire narrative is no doubt an extreme example of this"

Pyongyang is my favourite track on Blur's new album MAGIC WHIP, which has made a good soundtrack to the reading of this novel.

Pics are from my Sunday morning walk to Canary Wharf along the Regents Canal. About two hours listening to a typically fantastic Tom Ravenscroft 6 music show (Lapulax)

William Gibson Keynote Talk at BFI Southbank - UPDATED

We were told not to take pics as this would be up online as video at the BFI website - but I can't find it.*

Of Tron : WG said it was the first most exciting representation of interacting with events in the cyber environment he's ever seen. Typing he believes is not exciting or dynamic and he avoids mention of it throughout Neuromancer.

On Pattern Recognition he said the Buzz Rickson jacket in black didn't exist until the book was published - then the clothing company asked him if they could produce a version!

On dystopias he said they are perhaps too much a thing of the moment, and the world of Neuromancer is no more dystopian than this one if you are in the wrong part of the world.

He gets a lot of inspiration from the bitter wit of Steeley Dan lyrics.

One book that he thinks that needs to be a movie - Them Bones by Howard Waldrop

He dropped several hints that he and Ridley Scott has discussed a movie version of Joe Haleman's (absolute classic) Forever War but interviewer ignored  them all to ask the same boring questions about Blade Runner we've been hearing for the last 30 years.

WG's own dramatic highlight was his X-Files episode, The Kill Switch

And finally, in response to an audience question, he wondered if the future of novel writing was writing for an audio book audience.

I'm currently listening to Difference Engine.

*I'm not generall impressed by the BFI at present, the £45 I spent on a years membership got me a staggering £1.50 off an £80 booking fee last week, and the film print they showed last night (of Robert Zemekis's Contact) was the worst I've seen since the Scala Cinema club days

Spook Country

After slating it online earlier,
I've just finished the Spook Country unabridged audio novel. Must say I really, really enjoyed Spook Country 2nd time around as an audio book when I pretty much hated it first time around.

At first read Spook Country is definitely the most impenetrable, pretentious, inconsequential William Gibson novel. Given a second chance though, the ripe prose is beautifully poetic in places, the crazy detail is mostly surreal spy-fi (Hubertus Bigend's mag-lev bed, a bulgarian pistol that shoots salt, voodoo spirits that possess cuban spies) and the shaggy dog story plot is actually a very bitter Gibsonian version of Cohen Brother's moronic spy movie Burn After Reading. This is Gibson at his most political, and there are even supernatural overtones. He's always been a cool cold blooded writer, almost like Cronenberg or Brett Easton Ellis, but Spook Country is really seething with anger at the Bush era.

Spook Country's embarrassing tech, "locative art", that looked already out of date in 2010 now looks quite possible, as
'augmented reality', with the arrival of Google Glasses.

What I most like SC about it though is how it serves to set up Zero History. As if characters like Cayce Pollard in Pattern Recognition cannot be topped, he spends the majority of book II just setting up their replacements for book III, which is as much a direct continuation of Spook Country as Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited (something else 100% better second time around) is the main feature after apparently pointless the Hotel Chevalier short film which precedes it.

Of course this presents Zero History as a main feature, an epic modern spy tale, Thunderball set in the West End, when it actually is just another pretty silly London caper about a defunct rock band, an eccentric ad agency and a super secret pair of jeans ... but in these decades beyond Neuromancer you take your William Gibson with as much Wes Anderson as Bruce Sterling and you just learn to smile at the detail.

William Gibson on dealing with depression and low self esteem

I've said it before I'll say it again, Zero History is very good

At last ... The Next Day.... (David Bowie)

What you need to know - David Bowie's The Next Day really is his best since Scary Monsters and, unlike Heathen and the other albums since his classic era you'll know this immediately at first listen. It's certainly the catchiest album I've heard for ages, possibly since Yeah Yeah Yeah's It's Blitz!  Right now after third listen I've three or four tunes buzzing in my head, Stars, Valentine, Boss of Me, How Does The Grass Grow.. I've even finally appreciated the almost Vangelis Blade Runner synths in Where Are We Now

God .. The guitar on The Stars are Out sounds like the best guitar I've heard on anything in years. It helps that it comes with a brilliant Lynchian music promo.Valentine's Day could have come right off Hunky Dory, followed by If You Can See Me, which brings us right back to 2013 with a bang.

(just looking through the track list now I have another tune from The Next Day - Dancing out of Space - in my head despite listening to different stuff all of yesterday)

It's all lyrically very dark. I'd Rather Be High and How Does The Grass Grow feature anti-war  lyrics that could have come off PJ Harvey's Let England Shake

As for the help, I thought the guitar (Earl Slick?) on The Stars Are Out was Pete Townsend guesting.. and Gail Ann Dorsey.. I think I remember falling madly in love with her and her Ken Russellesque outfit at Pheonix Festival in 1996. Great to see she is still on board and I might check out some of her solo stuff (as I'm a big fan of another bassist gone solo - Melissa Auf Der Maur)

Slight suspicion Bowie has given up here trying to be groundbreaking and is rehashing rather but much as I like Heathen and Reality they did sound empty and bereft at first listen, certainly in comparison with the new one.

Full Bowie disclosure

I'm yet another Bowie nut. I was exposed at college, when Bowie was at his creative nadir in the mid-80s, by future novelist Jaine Fenn (new novel Queen of Nowhere just out) 

Jaine was desperate to stop my painful tirades about the hideously over hyped, over trendy  British pop movie Absolute Beginners, which embarrassing mid-80s mainstream pop Bowie found himself a part of. (Bowie is of course known for creating stage persona's like Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke. His persona in the Absolute Beginners/Let's Dance/Tonight/Never Let Me Down era was The Shameless Douchebag)

So mid 80s I was skeptical ....but first fell for the guitars in Man Who Sold The the World and then simultaneously fell for everything in that classic era. It's a great buzz, really getting into a musical artist and realising that that have an entire decade of brilliant work, in different flavoured eras, to enjoy. Like an audio version of five Christmases at once. This culminated in a deep synchronic bond with Scary Monsters and Super Creeps just as I discovered the neo noir of William Gibson and cyberpunk. I only recently discovered that that incredible guitar howl that opens that album is courtesy of Robert Fripp. King Crimson was my old music discovery of 2009.

So in light of his current output at the time - the Bowie narrative then (in the mid-late 80s) was more tragedy, the brilliant super cool musician reduced to cringing awful mainstream music videos with a similarly bereft Mick Jagger. It was depressing but I was primed to be positive to any subsequent releases from Bowie, and, further spiked by the discovery of Iggy Pop (via the opening titles to Repo Man) I found out Bowie was making a come back with Iggy's guitar heavy backing band...

..what I'm avoiding saying is that I've been a passionate defender of the critically reviled Tin Machine for decades..  (I am a habitual defender of lost causes ... coming soon to this blog - Quantum of Solace is better than Skyfall). Tin Machine might well be awful to most ears but it is the screeching sound of an artist jamming on the brakes and trying to turn a corner before a career ending collision. Tin Machine is Bowie's Kid A, (he just left the left turn a lot later than Radiohead), and The Next Day to me completely validates his decision to throw out his day-glo pop era and temporarily start a (very good BTW) metal band.

Of his albums since I'll also defend the Brian Eno produced Outside from a slightly more secure defensive position. Songs from Outside appeared in three classic movies of that era - Se7en, Lost Highway and Starship Troopers (but such was Bowie's lack of credibility at the time the 'edge' in Outside seemed to be credited to Trent Reznor). Interestingly looked at now the scifi themes of Outside is Bowie trying to overtly jump on the cyberpunk bandwagon late, when he seemed to have helped kicked it off in the first place with Scary Monsters.

To digress, it fascinates me that William Gibson is the only author I know to rip themes visuals and moods from movies and music. As the more mature medium this usually happens in reverse, with sci-fi movies reliably 20 years behind their written inspiration. It's an incredible tribute to to the visuals in Blade Runner that they were a direct inspirations to a ground breaking classic novel that appeared AFTER (Neuromancer - the reason I work in IT)

Black Tie White Noise makes a lot more sense when you find it was written as music  for his wedding (and congrats on that BTW, obviously a smart move, Iman must be a lovely gal, though I struggle to imagine her in the kitchen). Prompted by the first single from The Next Day I revisited Heathen which I had hated on first listen but seemed to be one of my few positives in the endless winter of London 2012-13. This blog post was to have said something like "I seem to be perpetually ten years behind Bowie" but it seems the accessibility of The Next Day has broken that theory.

One thing he has very sensibly done is movie back out of the media limelight. In the hideous Absolute Beginners/Let's Dance/Tonight era you could not turn on a tv or a radio without hearing his voice and the brutally funny caricatures of him that appeared from Stella Street and The Adam and Joe Show (all fans I'm sure) are a direct result of this. Mick & Keith take note.

So David, you are back! Hurrah!... but please stay out of the limelight and keep reclusive for at least another ten years. Let the current generation of music journos continue to wank out their careers over Morrissey - they've been dancing on your grave for decades.

Don't delay gratification - William Gibson's Zero History

I've just finished Zero History, the final novel in William Gibson's espionage marketing trilogy. 

I delayed finishing to savour Zero History and I regret it. I should have powered on through, forgotten about the rest of my life and stayed in-mode, with my prose perception tuned to William Gibson's dissonant portrayal of reality and characters. As it was, I got distracted. Lost my edge.
The tight surreal descriptions of surroundings that make for such great poetry-punk in describing Gibson's contemporary 21st century really get frustrating when describing action scenes. When Zero History briefly turns into cyber-SNATCH at the end the need to read every paragraph twice stops being clever and quickly gets irritating.

The re-introduction of great characters from Pattern Recognition is a let down and although the characters from the near impenetrable Spooky Country are much better shown here they are continually undercut by a new boyfriend or new henchman appearing from nowhere to save the day.

As with the other Hubertus Bigend novels, Gibson's need to keep introducing minor characters is a real irritation, especially at the expense of great characters you would rather hear a lot more of. The Molly Millions of Zero History is Heidi Hyde, the drummer for Hollis Henry's defunct band, Curfew, who is consistently funny throughout and makes you wish the novel had been less about fashion espionage and more about eccentric ex-rock band members adjusting to life in normal society.

The more the arcane characters of Blue Ant (the accidental SPECTRE of ad agencies) and Curfew recede into the background and the more convenient romantic foils feature (I did not believe in Gareth or Fiona for a second) the less interesting Zero History became. The director or Blue Ant lets his daughter have a career as a dispatch rider in London? I'm not sure I would have believed in something like that in Neuromancer let alone the supposed reality of contemporary London.

Still, aside from the characters and the action which are problems common to the rest of the Bigend trilogy, Zero History has moments of real dazzling imagination and poetry. Reading most of Zero History was a real pleasure. More and more with Gibson the actual plot and characters are receding into the background behind the poetry of mundane detail. Less and less influenced by Philip K Dick and Ridley Scott, he's becoming more like Brett Easton Ellis and Ballard. 
Cabinet, is virtually a character in itself

I particularly like this, which fits easily with my experience of life:
Milgrim, speaks of Bigend's personal philosophy

He believed that stasis is the real enemy.. Stability is the beginning of the end.. we only walk by continuing to fall forward

It also gives us a fresh look at London from a foriegn perspective. WG is obviously obsessed with the retro-fit in London and Paris, and has never hesitated to tell us the the nationality of every person we meet - still influenced by the multinational Los Angeles bequeathed by Ridely Scott and Sid Meade in Blade Runner.
Gibson created another world out of that, The Sprawl, and the similarly other worldly and deliberately obtuse nature of his prose is hard but rewarding work to adjust to. It is just possible that had I not deplayed my pleasure to savour the book and stayed in mental WG mode to read straight through to the end I might have enjoyed a lot more.

In one chapter he makes more of an Ekranoplan than Sebastain Faulkes does throughout the entire of Devil May Care, which now I think about it was the last thing I finished. Maybe I should stick to Ekranoplan related fiction.
So, despite delay, I was feeling pretty good about actually finishing a book in pretty good time. 400 pages in two weeks. 

Then I hear, back in Parracombe, Peter Goode has finished the new Neil Stephenson ('his 'pattern recognition'), REAMDE, 1040 pages, in two days. "Very good, bit too much gun touting for my personal taste, but very readable, great characters I think and fun plotlines."
MF

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• Portions of this blogpost previously appeared in a drunken rant 24/3/12
• The automating line spacing and formatting in Blogger continue to be a mystery to me. If I formatted documents like this as part of my job I would be taken out and shot.

The Altered States of London

Good week so far.. experiencing the mini-Scala revival of Ken Russell Forever at the HQ of the new Scala activities, The Roxy Bar and Screen (beneath The Shard, where the pic was taken). I became a member at the weekend just in time for their double bill of ALTERED STATES and Russells take on BARTOK.

Both excellent.

ALTERED STATES, is I remember, a very strange ken Russell film and I think some of the younger audience were a bit surprised by it. Instead of crazed nuns, OTT sex and art horror the movie plays now more like the cusp between Kubrick and Spielberg. It is incredibly sober and well put together for a KR film with a magnificent oscar nominated soundtrack by classical composer John Corigliano and dialogue written by Paddy (NETWORK) Chayefsky from his book.

KR could be brilliant with his actors and the central romance angle to Altered States is very strong. Seen from then, in the early 80s, dominated as it was by the incredible effects sequences, we compared the movie with Doug Trumble's BRIANSTORM and AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. Seen from now it is the brilliant characters carved out by William Hurt and Blair Brown (among others), which stand out and make it closer to the human Goldblum/Davis tragedy within THE FLY of later that decade.

On a big screen in HI-DEF ALTERED STATES would be amazing and would stand comparison with 2001. Those who like a bit of humanity and characterisation may even prefer it.

BARTOK was one of Ken Russell's rarely seen BBC Monitor documentaries on the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Long classical black and white music videos, this initially looked like hard going but eventually came good (perhaps because I recently visited Budapest and really liked the place). Highlight was KR's video for Bartok's BlueBeard. Bluebeard leads his wife down to see his final terrible secret -- through a stylised 70s building (New Zealand House apparently) to her eventual doom. Looked amazing even in crackly black and white.

After six months of not finished a book I am tearing through William Gibson's Zero History at flank speed. Much easier to read than Spook County (previous one) it is perhaps because London 2012, Hubertus Bigend and Blue Ant suddenly seem a lot more real and believable. Got into a great routine listening to the magnificent LL show every day. I must be in a good mood, I quite like the sound of the new Paul Weller album.

The Guardian has me doing a hi-tech Time Team archaeological dig looking for and collecting old documentation.

From the new flat I'm house-sitting on Grays Inn Road I'm reading. writing, updating my blog playing good computer games and getting out and about - where am I finding the time for all this?
(TV in flat is broken)