Today's writing: what if Doctor Phibes murdered and impersonated Max, owner of the KitKatKlub, in order to run an elaborate sting against Doctor Mabuse—film recap, starring Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Charlotte Rampling, and Peter Cushing.
Ochagavia was always a favorite. The first cover I saw by him was in 1979 when Plague of Demons came out from Pocket. That really knocked me out! Thirty years later, in 2009, I was fortunate to track down his family member and verify that he was the same "Carlos Victor" who painted the original Illuminatus trilogy covers for Dell. Great artist!
Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet.
In the last few months, the constant flood of algorithmically generated junk content has kicked into an AI-powered overdrive, and it is cutting a swath of destruction as it overwhelms search engines, filters, and moderation systems
Call it Gresham's Law 2.0: bad content drives out good.
I'm starting this thread to document it, because there is a lot happening all at once.
McQuay wrote an interesting cyberpunk / Arab culture novel "Jitterbug." Doesn't really stand up to the work by George Alec Effinger along the same lines, but it has some edge to it for sheer inventiveness. A bit too violent for my tastes, and I seem to have similar recollections for Lifekeeper.
"IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that countries need to shift some $7 trillion in direct and indirect annual subsidies for fossil fuels to help finance the fight against #ClimateChange.
Georgieva told the World Economic Forum that the total #FossilFuelSubsidies include $1.3 trillion in direct government subsidies as well as indirect subsidies that include failure to price carbon emissions, adding that this price needs to be set at $85 per ton by 2030."
hear, hear! yes, absolutely. "stop throwing money at the planet wreckers." think about it. we are the generation of humans who will either change course or be blamed for the extinction of life on Earth...
#WritersCoffeeClub 11 Jan: Do you use dream sequences in your work? How do you feel about them?
I do, but I try not to overdo it; I'm totally not a Freudian or Jungian, so their usual role is when some Big Boss wants to drop a very confidential briefing on a protagonist (with a hint to the reader that the Big Boss has some deeply scary abilities, b/c able to tamper with the protagonist's mind directly).
I tried to post this last night but apparently this domain or whatever had crashed from Just too Much (I've had to crash from just too much, myself, in years past) - anyway it couldn't be gotten onto last night so here it is now:
2 Much X on Xmas Eve
by Marc Laidlaw #videogames fans will know him as co-creator/ writer of Half Life - also he's a novelist - by X he means the drug.