83: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

fictoplasm
fictoplasm
83: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
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I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Show Notes

Intro 00:07
Synopsis 00:54
Themes and Games 08:45
– Vampire Science 08:55
Blade
The Strain
The X Files
– Proper Vampires 14:39
pretty vs nasty vampires, or how the 90s ruined vampires
Other Media 21:52
– The Films
The Last Man on Earth
The Omega Man
I am Legend
The Vampire in Europe by Montague Summers
Arktos by Joscelyn Godwin
Fevre Dream by George RR Martin
Ultraviolet
Chill RPG
World of Darkness

Music Credits

Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive

Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “Another version of you” from Thoughtless

Episode 68: Mythago Wood and Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock

fictoplasm
fictoplasm
Episode 68: Mythago Wood and Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock
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Mythago Wood and Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock

Show Notes

Synopsis 01:10 // Mythago Wood 01:15 (plot dump 02:46) // Lavondyss 08:27 (Blavatsky 08:30) // Themes 20:07 // “British rural fantasy” 20:07 (Robin of Sherwood, Children of the Stones, Century Falls) // The “rural fantasy formula” 22:37 // Landscape 26:09 (Wizardry and Wild Romance, M John Harrison’s “great clomping foot of nerdism”) // Three perspectives on the Mythago 31:10 // RPG 33:33 (liminal fantasy, representing ) // Afterthoughts 38:32 (Pale Assassins, etc.)

Links

Quite a few references here.

For podcasts check out The Grognard Files episodes on Robin of Sherwood, part 1 and part 2, and The Good Friends of Jackson Elias on Heaven and Earth

And from this podcast, check out the episodes for Pale Fire, The Magicians, The Land of Laughs, The King in Yellow part 1 and part 2

About Michael Moorcock’s Wizardry and Wild Romance

An old blog post on Department V including M John Harrison’s Very Afraid essay and link to Warren Ellis’s blog

Music Credits

Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive

Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “Another version of you” from Thoughtless

Episode 66: The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman

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fictoplasm
Episode 66: The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman
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The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman

Show Notes

Plot and Setting 01:18 (viral learning, accelerated childhood, photosynthesis, viral augmented reality, living history, communism, living history, viral empaths) // Themes 15:04 (utopia and distopia, invading thoughts in the gestalt, J G Ballard, Anne Leckie, the bigger picture, Big Questions, Cyberpunk cheats death, constrained by time, death and transcendence, editing the soul) // The Roleplaying Bit 29:38 (two experience tracks, Brexit, countdown to apocalypse, local and global collapse, the Village)

Music Credits

Music is by Chris Zabriskie: chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive

Samples: “Is that you or are you you?” from Reappear // “But enough about me Bill Paxton” from Direct to Video // “Cylinder four” from Cylinders // “I can’t imagine where I’d be without it” and “Another version of you” from Thoughtless

Perfidious Albion on Speed

If you’re British, or even if you aren’t, a good chunk of your news feed will have been swallowed by the Brexit pantomime, including hilarious exchanges like the one between Will Self and Mark Francois:

WS: Your problem… is since 2016 you don’t need to be a racist or anti-semite to vote for Brexit, it’s just that every racist and anti-semite in the country did. MF: I think that’s a slur on 17.4 million people and I think you should apologise on national television. I think that’s an outrageous thing to say WS: Well, you seem to find a lot of things outrageous MF: Are you saying that 17.4 million people are racist and bigots… WS: No, that’s not what I said MF: That’s pretty close to what you said WS: It’s not remotely close to what I said. You seem to be a bit exorcised, sir MF: Well, I’m offended WS: The politics of offence, eh? What I said was that every racist and anti-semite in the country, pretty much, probably voted for Brexit. MF: How can you know that? WS: I suspect it. MF: Well, I think you should apologise. WS: To who? Racists and anti-semites?

OK, pretty funny although the best comment on the showdown was by Sara Pascoe on Frankie Boyle’s New World Order saying (IIRC) “What you’re seeing there is a clash between two different kinds of alpha male”. Everyone should wind their neck in.

But this is Fictoplasm, so there’s going to be a fiction element — and that’s this piece by Will Self in the aftermath of his face-off, where he name-checks J G Ballard:

Perhaps the pivotal years were around middle of the noughties – at any rate, that’s when I went to speak to my friend and mentor JG Ballard about what would prove to be his final novel, Kingdom Come. Jim was as bluff and strange as ever – he had the manner of the RAF pilot he might have become if he’d completed his training, combined with the thousand-yard stare at what’s immediately to hand, which is the sure sign of a surrealist. He pointed out to me the flags flying in the front gardens along Old Charlton Road, the utterly bland suburban road in Shepperton (an utterly bland Surrey dormitory town), where he’d lived for 40 extremely odd years. For him, the flying of the Cross of St George was undoubtedly minatory: it had come about through a synergy between football fandom and the rise of ethnic nationalism; these were the years of the British National Party’s ascent to the giddy heights of the 2010 general election, when their candidates won over half a million votes. Reviewing Kingdom Come in the Guardian, Phil Baker succinctly noted “Ballard’s central idea is that consumerism slides into fascism when politics simply gives the punters what they want”. Well, Jim was always prescient – this was the writer who conceived of the celebrity car crash as a catalyst of collective hysteria a quarter-century before Diana Spencer was killed in the Pont de l’Alma underpass, and who also anticipated the baleful impacts of global warming as early as the late 1950s. Jim got that English nationalism was on the rise – and that under neo-liberal conditions favouring consumption over production, it was likely to become a vector for the most troubling aspects of the famously ‘tolerant’ English psyche.

Meanwhile, Mark Francois is providing meme-tastic soundbites like Perfidious Albion on Speed.

Perfidious Albion on Speed is too fussy a title to be Ballardian. In fact, Perfidious Albion is already the title of Sam Byers’ second novel, which didn’t start out as a Brexit novel but perhaps it evolved that way:

The honest truth is that it began in a much more speculative fashion. I did the bulk of the work on this book in 2015 and 2016, and while it’s true I continually adjusted for events such as Brexit, I think what really happened is that the world just caught up with me in surprising and disturbing ways, and so I accepted the idea that rather than continually reinventing things in order to be out in front of the phenomena I was depicting, I should anchor myself and play more with the ways in which the context of the book was evolving.

Here’s a video of the author:

Episode 304: The Changeover by Margaret Mahy

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fictoplasm
Episode 304: The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
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This episode Liz, Ralph and guest Rhiannon Lassiter experience a magical awakening in Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover

Show Notes

The Changeover by Margaret Mahy

Rhiannon Lassiter, Elizabeth Lovegrove, Ralph Lovegrove

  • Synopsis 2:55
  • Themes 6:30
  • RPG bit 22:40
    • Liz’s game 22:45
    • Rhi’s game 26:55
    • Ralph’s idea 30:57
  • Closing 42:36

Music Credits

“Is That You Or Are You You?” from Reappear by Chris Zabriskie

“But Enough About Me, Bill Paxton” from Direct To Video by Chris Zabriskie

chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive

Episode 210: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

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fictoplasm
Episode 210: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
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Liz, Becky and Ralph discuss Jane Austen’s Regency romance and satire Pride and Prejudice.

Show Notes

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Becky Annison and Elizabeth Lovegrove with Ralph Lovegrove

Synopsis 00:40 // Comments 03:50 // the BBC version 05:10 // Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 07:40 // The Penguin special clothbound edition 08:40 // balls 10:20 // teh Establishment suks 13:50 // Kitty the Aircaptain 16:20 // The RPG Bit — Liz’s Game (Sagas of the Derbyshirelanders) 18:10 // Court Whispers (Stiainin Jackson — under playtest) 19:10 // Monsterhearts 19:40 // Anti-Establishment PCs (that would be all of them) 25:15 // Inferno and Inc. 26:05 // social proximity and introductions 27:15 // Becky’s Game 31:00 // Breaking the Ice 31:20 // Nomic 33:20 // TOWIE 36:10 // like Archipelago? 36:25 // sh.t games for vampires 38:35 // changing rules mid-scenario 39:35 // Dogs In The Vineyard (and Human Resources) 41:20 // Final Remarks 44:10

Music credits

“Is That You Or Are You You?” from Reappear by Chris Zabriskie

“But Enough About Me, Bill Paxton” from Direct To Video by Chris Zabriskie

chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive