warren ellis rules.

1. Desmond Dekker's dead. These are
the days where I really hope I'm
right and there's no afterlife;
otherwise, poor old Desmond is
being slapped around right now for
covering "You Can Get It If You
Really Want." Jimmy bloody Cliff.
Music for people who don't actually
like music. I need to dig out my
copy of "Israelites" when I get
home. Now that was the good stuff.

2. Outlines just kill a story for me,
because there's no blood in them.
Heavily plotty stuff just reads to
me like a Tom Clancy book -- all
event, no character or idea. Hell,
Clancy can't even follow up on his
own ideas. There's a bit in one of
the later Jack Ryan books -- and
you're damn right I read them all,
those things sold in the multimillions
and were acting on the heads of a
mass audience like no-one since
Stephen King -- where a general
says to Ryan, "we will give them
HYPERWAR." And I said, fuck yeah,
show me the HYPERWAR, you
funny-looking little man. No
fucking sign of it. No discussion, no
theory, no evidence aside from a
single UAV and some micromunitions.
If you promise me HYPERWAR, I want
to fucking learn about it. But that
might have slowed down the
relentless this-happens-then-that-
happens-then-this-other-thing-
happens. Prick. Bad writer. All
those books read like 1000-page
synopses. Which is, I suspect,
their charm. You have to keep
turning the page because there is
literally nothing else to do.

S