BLOD & SVIN: En Skräckens Komedi

Läs ett utdrag ur min vampyrroman BLOD & SVIN: EN SKRÄCKENS KOMEDI, som finns på Fantastikbokklubben.

En ryslig och rolig rövarhistoria om Chefen Från Helvetet på Världens Ondaste Arbetsplats.

Book review: THE COSMIC PUPPETS by Philip K. Dick

THE COSMIC PUPPETS (1957) by Philip K. Dick.

One of Dick's lesser-known early novels, so short it's nearly a novella, but well worth a read - and full of the weirdness that became his hallmark.

The protagonist visits his childhood small town Millgate, and finds an alternate-reality version of it - where he no longer should be alive.

Millgate has split in two - the town he remembers, and the different, decaying version that seems to have replaced it. (Or has it?)

Eventually it becomes evident that Millgate is the battleground of two vast, competing forces - one good, the other one evil...

Parts of this novel are reminiscent of Stephen King (if King had known how to write with fewer words) - an American small town haunted by a great supernatural evil, kids with magical powers... but it's unmistakably a Philip K. Dick story.

I wish more novels were as brief as this one! Perhaps the ending is a bit weak, and the story is a little too simplistic, but the novel as a whole works and would make a pretty good Urban Fantasy movie.

Recommended for its entertainment value.
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Book review: "THE MECHANICAL BRIDE: Folklore of Industrial Man" by Marshall McLuhan

THE MECHANICAL BRIDE: FOLKLORE OF INDUSTRIAL MAN (1951) by Marshall McLuhan.

Marshall McLuhan was called "the prophet of the digital age." He predicted the social and psychological effects of electronic media before anyone else, and coined the phrase "the global village" to describe the new interconnected world we live in today.

But before that, he was a Canadian professor of literature who began to study mass media - before "media theory" existed as a serious subject matter.

McLuhan's lectures on the subject formed the basis of THE MECHANICAL BRIDE. This book picks examples of media from the 1940s and 50s - newspaper front pages, magazines, comic books, gossip columns, advertising (old ads look very silly today), and picks them apart with an intellectual scalpel.

 One of the ads that McLuhan picks apart in this book.

(Note how ridiculous old ads often seem when viewed with today's eyes - but when they were new, they might have been effective!)

McLuhan's lectures on the subject formed the basis of THE MECHANICAL BRIDE. This book picks examples of media from the 1940s and 50s - newspaper front pages, magazines, comic books, gossip columns, advertising (old ads look very silly today), and picks them apart with an intellectual scalpel.

Please note: McLuhan is not a moral crusader. His tone is detached, witty, only occasionally condemning the cynicism of advertising agencies and their manipulation of the public mind.

Most of all he probes, asks questions, provokes the reader to think consciously about media:
 
- Why are Clark Kent and Dagwood (in the comic strip BLONDIE) popular, despite the fact that they are both rather pathetic?

- Why are ads using symbols to push products?

- How does a right-wing newspaper (the Fox News of its time) combine different news stories to create a "narrative" that pushes its agenda?

We may be more media-savvy today than when this book was new, but it is still thought-provoking, and McLuhan has a bit of "angry young man" in him here that is absent in his later works.

It is possible that this book inspired the writers of MAD Magazine to poke fun at ads, because THE MECHANICAL BRIDE is both clever and funny. Recommended!

Also recommended are McLuhan's books UNDERSTANDING MEDIA and THE GUTENBERG GALAXY.

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Book review: LE MORTE D'ARTHUR - KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE

LE MORTE D'ARTHUR
- KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE (1485)
by Sir Thomas Malory.

Reading this took some time - 550 pages of densely packed print!

Please note that the "author" of this work was mainly a translator and editor, who turned an existing body of books, poems and folklore into a prose narrative - probably the first printed novel in English.

So should LE MORTE D'ARTHUR be read as a novel in its own right, or as a collection of legends? I did both. (Malory keeps repeating the phrase "as the French book saith," thus pointing out that he is merely retelling a story.)

There are things about this book that will frustrate a modern-day reader. For example, Malory obsessively details every joust and duel like a nerdy sports fan - it gets repetitive.
But he often rushes through events that are unusual or interesting if they have nothing to do with fights or jousting.

Other details about this book may surprise you. Merlin is killed off very early in the story; the villain Mordred gets very little plot space; the Quest for the Holy Grail just pops out of thin air; the fights are gory as hell; there are no dragons.

One thing in particular strikes me: the heroes are very violent men trying to uphold a code of civility in a fiercely tribal honor culture. They are devoutly religious but their tribal ways clash with Christian ideals, and there's a constant tension between the knight's lifestyle and his faith.

This edition features 19th-century illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, but frankly I don't like them. They are often done in a sloppy manner and most of them have nothing to do with the plot.

Recommended for readers (and writers) who like to study the source material of modern fantasy and popular culture.

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Book review: FACTFULNESS by Hans Rosling

FACTFULNESS (2018) by Hans Rosling

This book is dominated by statistics and graphs, showing the positive trends of development and social progress in recent times.

Boring? Not at all.

The late Hans Rosling used statistics, and his personal experience, to argue - forcefully - that the current pessimism about our future is misguided. The state of the world really has improved, and keeps improving.

Was Rosling overly optimistic? Or was he essentially a realist? Whatever becomes of our future, you need to read FACTFULNESS as an antidote to unthinking pessimism.

Recommended for people who need cheering up.

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