The amazingly prolific Warren Ellis does it again with Mek, a three-part miniseries that came out earlier this year. This time it’s about extreme body modification: the step beyond tattooing, and even beyond the usual fantasies of cyborgization. “Mek” is short for biomechanical implants. Everything from a laser pointer in your eye, to claws that emerge from your nails during sex–if you and your partner like it rough–to all sorts of bizarre weapons, concealed in your tongue or in the palm of your hand. The protagonist, Sarissa Leon, was one of the founders of the Mek movement. But in the years she has been out of town, the subcultre has developed in directions she doesn’t like, or even recognize. Now she’s returned to “save” the Mek movement–that is, her original vision of it as a kind of freaky avant-garde artists’ scene–even if she has to destroy it in order to do so. High-tech bloodbaths ensue, ironically enough since the violence that Sarissa unleashes is motivated by her not wanting to see the Mek scene degenerate into something that is more about lethal weaponry than anything else. All in all, Mek is a twisted and ambiguous tale about subcultural creativity, and the battle over who controls the meanings of these subcultures and their creations. There are no easy answers, but Ellis and his team of artists (most notably Steve Rolston and Al Gordon) create a vision of posthumanity that is neither utopian (like the Transhumanist movement) nor dystopian (in the manner of all too many moralizing ecologists), but rather something much more disconcertingly–dare I say–human.
The amazingly prolific Warren Ellis does it again with Mek, a three-part miniseries that came out earlier this year. This time it’s about extreme body modification: the step beyond tattooing, and even beyond the usual fantasies of cyborgization. “Mek” is short for biomechanical implants. Everything from a laser pointer in your eye, to claws that emerge from your nails during sex–if you and your partner like it rough–to all sorts of bizarre weapons, concealed in your tongue or in the palm of your hand. The protagonist, Sarissa Leon, was one of the founders of the Mek movement. But in the years she has been out of town, the subcultre has developed in directions she doesn’t like, or even recognize. Now she’s returned to “save” the Mek movement–that is, her original vision of it as a kind of freaky avant-garde artists’ scene–even if she has to destroy it in order to do so. High-tech bloodbaths ensue, ironically enough since the violence that Sarissa unleashes is motivated by her not wanting to see the Mek scene degenerate into something that is more about lethal weaponry than anything else. All in all, Mek is a twisted and ambiguous tale about subcultural creativity, and the battle over who controls the meanings of these subcultures and their creations. There are no easy answers, but Ellis and his team of artists (most notably Steve Rolston and Al Gordon) create a vision of posthumanity that is neither utopian (like the Transhumanist movement) nor dystopian (in the manner of all too many moralizing ecologists), but rather something much more disconcertingly–dare I say–human.
John A. Williams’ Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light is another book I found out about from Kali Tal’s list of Militant Black Science Fiction. It’s a strange and bleak book, published in 1969, and set in a near-future 1973. An official of a “moderate” civil rights organization, frustrated at entrenched racism, goes to the Mafia to order a hit on a white cop who has killed a black teenager. From this act of revenge, things escalate into a full-scaled race war in the cities of America. The book is powerful, as a cry of frustration with no easy answers. Along the way, we get a nuanced, insightful sense of race relations and racial history in America–including a look at the position of Jews and Italians, who have only been admitted into whiteness on sufferance. Not a perfect book by any means, but a disturbing and thought-provoking one. Cops still kill black men with considerable frequency today, and nearly always get away with it. It’s happened three times in Seattle alone, in as many years. I’m not favoring an-eye-for-an-eye retribution, and the paths such vigilante action might lead us down; but after reading Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light, I can’t help wondering about it just a little.
John A. Williams’ Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light is another book I found out about from Kali Tal’s list of Militant Black Science Fiction. It’s a strange and bleak book, published in 1969, and set in a near-future 1973. An official of a “moderate” civil rights organization, frustrated at entrenched racism, goes to the Mafia to order a hit on a white cop who has killed a black teenager. From this act of revenge, things escalate into a full-scaled race war in the cities of America. The book is powerful, as a cry of frustration with no easy answers. Along the way, we get a nuanced, insightful sense of race relations and racial history in America–including a look at the position of Jews and Italians, who have only been admitted into whiteness on sufferance. Not a perfect book by any means, but a disturbing and thought-provoking one. Cops still kill black men with considerable frequency today, and nearly always get away with it. It’s happened three times in Seattle alone, in as many years. I’m not favoring an-eye-for-an-eye retribution, and the paths such vigilante action might lead us down; but after reading Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light, I can’t help wondering about it just a little.
King Rat was China Mieville‘s first novel. Though it doesn’t have the scope and ambition of his subsequent books Perdido Street Station and The Scar, it’s still quite a wonderful book…
King Rat was China Mieville‘s first novel. Though it doesn’t have the scope and ambition of his subsequent books Perdido Street Station and The Scar, it’s still quite a wonderful book…
Continue reading “King Rat”
The first part of Warren Ellis’ three-part miniseries, Reload, is out. Justified paranoia, government conspiracies, Presidential assassination, electromagnetic pulse bombs. Good stuff….
The first part of Warren Ellis’ three-part miniseries, Reload, is out. Justified paranoia, government conspiracies, Presidential assassination, electromagnetic pulse bombs. Good stuff. In this series, as well as in the recently-completed Transmetropolitan, and the ongoing Global Frequency (that I commented upon here), Warren Ellis has his finger on the pulse of the 21st century.
Well, the ninth issue (of a total of thirteen) of Grant Morrison’s The Filth is out; do I need to tell you how over-the-top fabulous it is?
Well, the ninth issue (of a total of thirteen) of Grant Morrison’s The Filth is out; do I need to tell you how over-the-top fabulous it is?
Continue reading “The Filth”
I’m of two minds about the DC/Vertigo title 100 BULLETS, written by Brian Azzarello, and illustrated by Eduardo Risso. On a panel by panel, page by page basis, I find this comic pretty compelling. But conceptually, I have my doubts…
I’m of two minds about the DC/Vertigo title 100 BULLETS, written by Brian Azzarello, and illustrated by Eduardo Risso. On a panel by panel, page by page basis, I find this comic pretty compelling. But conceptually, I have my doubts…
Continue reading “100 Bullets”
Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III’s comic book Promethea is witty and inventive, if not as mindblowing as some of Moore’s earlier work (such as his two best known graphic novels, Watchmen and From Hell). I’ve only read the first paperback volume, containing issues 1-6 of an ongoing series that is already up to issue 25; but I’m hooked…
Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III’s comic book Promethea is witty and inventive, if not as mindblowing as some of Moore’s earlier work (such as his two best known graphic novels, Watchmen and From Hell). I’ve only read the first paperback volume, containing issues 1-6 of an ongoing series that is already up to issue 25; but I’m hooked…
Continue reading “Promethea”
The New York Times has finally (a week after his death was announced) published an obituary for Maurice Blanchot. Not only is this obituary so brief and vague as to give no indication of Blanchot’s importance, let alone what he was about–something I am willing to leave aside, since Blanchot himself would have disclaimed what I and many others regard as his extreme importance, as being one of the most profound writers of the 20th century–but also, unforgivably, it completely misstates Blanchot’s political history. The last paragraph of the obituary reads: “Before World War II he was an outspoken rightist, but after the German invasion in 1940, his fascism gave way to French nationalism.”– Just for the record: Blanchot’s dubious right-wing political stance of the 1930s was precisely a French nationalist one; after 1940, what he abandoned, and henceforth condemned, was both fascism and nationalism; during the War he travelled in Resistance circles; after the War, and for the rest of his life, he mostly withdrew from any sort of public affiliation, but was active in supporting Algerian independence in the late 50s/early 60s. was active in the rebellion of 1968, and proclaimed his allegiance to a non-Soviet, pretty much anarchistic and egalitarian form of what he insisted on calling “communism.”
The New York Times has finally (a week after his death was announced) published an obituary for Maurice Blanchot. Not only is this obituary so brief and vague as to give no indication of Blanchot’s importance, let alone what he was about–something I am willing to leave aside, since Blanchot himself would have disclaimed what I and many others regard as his extreme importance, as being one of the most profound writers of the 20th century–but also, unforgivably, it completely misstates Blanchot’s political history. The last paragraph of the obituary reads: “Before World War II he was an outspoken rightist, but after the German invasion in 1940, his fascism gave way to French nationalism.”– Just for the record: Blanchot’s dubious right-wing political stance of the 1930s was precisely a French nationalist one; after 1940, what he abandoned, and henceforth condemned, was both fascism and nationalism; during the War he travelled in Resistance circles; after the War, and for the rest of his life, he mostly withdrew from any sort of public affiliation, but was active in supporting Algerian independence in the late 50s/early 60s. was active in the rebellion of 1968, and proclaimed his allegiance to a non-Soviet, pretty much anarchistic and egalitarian form of what he insisted on calling “communism.”
Bruce Sterling’s new nonfiction book, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next 50 Years is a genial work of futurological speculation…
Although it was published a third of a century ago, Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat By the Door is still one of the most brilliant and relevant books I have ever read about race relations in America. (Via Kali Tal’s list of Militant Black Science Fiction). Mixing blaxploitation images with a sophisticated social critique, it’s an imaginative story, published in 1969, of underground guerilla warfare organized by black militants in American ghettols…
Although it was published a third of a century ago, Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat By the Door is still one of the most brilliant and relevant books I have ever read about race relations in America. (Via Kali Tal’s list of Militant Black Science Fiction). Mixing blaxploitation images with a sophisticated social critique, it’s an imaginative story, published in 1969, of underground guerilla warfare organized by black militants in American ghettols…
Continue reading “The Spook Who Sat By the Door”