This site is updated Thursday at noon with a new article about an artistic pursuit generally considered to be beneath consideration. James Schellenberg probes science-fiction, Carol Borden draws out the best in comics, Chris Szego dallies with romance, and Ian Driscoll stares deeply into the screen.
While the writers have considerable enthusiasm for their subjects, they don't let it numb their critical faculties. Tossing away the shield of journalistic objectivity and refusing the shovel of fannish boosterism, they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions about these oft-enjoyed but rarely examined artforms. Click here for the writer's bios and their individual takes on the gutter.
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100 + 100 + 100 = 850
When I first took the screen beat at The Cultural Gutter, I
vowed never to do a list article. But promises, like Corningware, are made to
be broken.
Around the 5th time I read my nephew The Cat in the Hat, I started thinking. Sure, I might have been overthinking my thinker and overpuzzling my puzzler reading the book 15 times in half an hour and cutting it with The Cat in the Hat Comes Back!, but I think the Cat in the Hat is the Devil.
So you've written a book that fits the current vogue perfectly - let's say it's a grimy cyberpunk novel in the mid-1980s - does that mean you've guaranteed long-lasting fame for yourself? Probably not. But don't worry, a lot of your compatriots are suffering the same fate.
Oh, and I just happen to have an example at hand: George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails, a perfectly fine book in its own right, and one that happens to have come back into print in a gorgeous trade paperback. But for some reason, I started having melancholy and/or realistic thoughts about the writing life after reading it.
I ran across a poster in my neighbourhood advertising Decoder Ring Theatre, and boy, do they deliver the goods! Check out their old-timey radio serial podcasts featuring Red Panda, Canada's Greatest Superhero. It's a pretty dead-on pastiche of '40s dramas like the Green Hornet.
"Science Fiction Serving the National Interest." I don't even know what to say about the crazy reported here in National Defense Magazine. (via Fusion Dispatches)
When I first took the screen beat at The Cultural Gutter, I
vowed never to do a list article. But promises, like Corningware, are made to
be broken.
Around the 5th time I read my nephew The Cat in the Hat, I started thinking. Sure, I might have been overthinking my thinker and overpuzzling my puzzler reading the book 15 times in half an hour and cutting it with The Cat in the Hat Comes Back!, but I think the Cat in the Hat is the Devil.
So you've written a book that fits the current vogue perfectly - let's say it's a grimy cyberpunk novel in the mid-1980s - does that mean you've guaranteed long-lasting fame for yourself? Probably not. But don't worry, a lot of your compatriots are suffering the same fate.