Press Release Your Luck | Imagining the Truth

With the British Genre Fiction Focus on hiatus over the holidays, and most of the kids I teach in real life relaxing anywhere other than the education centre that employs me, I've had a fair bit of time to play with, lately. I don't want to tell you yet what I've been doing with it yet—I just don't want to jinx the thing before it's finished—but suffice to say this project has been as much of a time-suck as the columns I curate for Tor.com.

Long story short, I've been neglecting my inbox for a bit, so I spent a few hours picking through it this morning, in the course of which I came across a recent press release from the Institute of Art and Ideas, informing me of an event in which Jasper Fforde and Adam Robots—I mean, ah, Roberts—joined forces with Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis to ask and answer questions about the imagination.

This is the pitch:

We believe reason is our best tool for acquiring true knowledge of the world. But Picasso said "art is a lie that tells the truth," and many others before him have made similar claims. Are they right? Can imagination lead us to truths hidden from the rational mind, or is this romantic hogwash?

And this is the video:

It's worth a watch.

If the embed above isn't working... well. That'd be because Blogger is being a bother. But what can it do to disrupt an old-fashioned link like this?

Now I'll be knee-deep in seekrits for the foreseeable, but I do solemnly swear to keep a closer eye on my inbox going forward, so if anyone needs me, that's how to make the magic happen.

Toodles for the time being!

I Tube | Kara: A Quantic Dream

Just so you know, this news is not news. It's months and months old - from way back when in March 2012 - but until very recently, I'd managed to completely miss it. Maybe you had too.

I suppose the reason I overlooked it initially was a case of crossed wires. After all, Kara purports to be a tech demo from the team at Quantic Dream — who developed Heavy Rain, one of my favourite games in recent memory. But be that as it may, I've been burned by tech demos often enough that I've taught myself to turn the other cheek when they appear... even when they come from top-notch developers, as in this case.

Kara, however, is as much a movie as it is a tech demo. A short movie, admittedly. That the whole thing's running in real-time on a PS3 is impressive, certainly, but come to Kara for the title character and the heartbreaking narrative rather than some aspirational demonstration of the quality of tomorrow's graphics or performance capture.

Kara put me in mind of nothing so much as The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang, which I reviewed here on The Speculative Scotsman a year or so ago. Set seven minutes of your grind aside and you'll surely see why:

To my mind, this so-called tech demo attests to the storytelling prowess of the creative leads at Quantic Dream at least as much as it does the engine they're building their next game with... whatever it is.

Tell you what, though... after Heavy Rain, and this minor magnificence, I have my fingers firmly crossed we'll hear more about the team's next project in a few short weeks at E3.

Which reminds me: what are you hoping to see revealed at this year's expo?

Give me Bioshock: Infinite, Half-Life 3, GTA5 and a bit of Bungie's next project, and I'll come home a happy camper.

Remember, I tube so you don't have to!

But I Digress | An Education in the Arts

It feels like just yesterday I was starting out at Uni.

It wasn't. It was, oh... ten years ago I guess? Maybe more. Maybe - I'd like to think - a little less. In any case, my four year degree course ended ages ago, so it must have begun even before that.

I studied English and Film & Media.

It was lots of fun. I look back on the experience more positively than I felt about it at the time, in fact. But however much I enjoyed it, or however much I convinced myself I did, the qualification it was all for has been of... shall we say very little use to me in the years since.

Then again, I don't care to pursue employment in a field that stresses educational achievement. Perhaps if I did, it'd be different. I won't know for a fact until I've given up on my dream once and for all, and then, well... it'll hardly matter, will it?

But enough about me. There's a whole new breed of would-be purveyors of art out there, a whole other generation's worth, and the other day, geek-god Neil Gaiman blessed them with his presence.

By now you'll have been tempted by this video somewhere else on the internet, I bet, but it's 20 minutes long, and if you're anything like me you'll have kept it in an open tab until your computer crashed, then promptly forgotten all about it. I'm embedding it here on The Speculative Scotsman precisely because that's what happened to me, until I was rudely reminded of it.

This, then, is your reminder. 

You'll be glad of it too, as I assuredly was. I've had the pleasure of hearing Neil Gaiman talk in person on a couple of occasions - whenever he's come to Scotland, obviously - but his commencement address to the graduating class of Philidelphia's University of the Arts is leagues more inspirational, dare I say uplifting, than any amount of Q&A.

The author has some stellar advice to share, and anecdotes aplenty to illustrate his experiences. I'll admit some of his sayings seem slightly misguided - optimistic to put it politely - but even these are illuminating, because of course you need a little luck as well as a lot of talent to make it in the arts. Or vice versa.

If I had all day, I could go on about the value of an education in the arts for all of it. But I don't! So I'm just going to let you watch this video, wherein Neil Gaiman is funny, smart and self-effacing, as ever:

Mountains, my friends. Mountains.

What's yours? And here: if you're completely honest with yourself, are you getting any closer to it, doing what you do on a day-to-day basis?

I'll show you mine if you show me yours! :)

Smash Hits | Portal Zombie Gnomes

So this one time - not at band camp, I was way too old for that then - I was out on the town, you know. Now the town's not what it was before the apocalypse. But it does. Hell, there's nothing else to do!

Anyway, there I was, shooting zombies in the face, as you do... meleeing the rotten motherfuckers whenever they got too close for comfort, and what do I come across but this funny little gnome. So I pick him up, right? 'Cause he reminded me of another gnome I used to know, and suddenly I'm in this weird... I don't even know how to describe it! Like a testing facility? Or something?

And there's this crazy robot lady's voice coming through the speakers, and she's all 'Oh. It's you. It's been a looooong time. How have you been?' Hella weird.

Wait, what? 

Have I died and gone to video game heaven?! 

Apologies for the odd little bit of roleplay there. But just... fangasm much? :D

In this clip from what I have to say is a very competent-looking user-generated campaign downloadable for Left 4 Dead 2 for free, Left 4 Dead... meets Portal... meets, ever-so-briefly, Half-Life.

Words cannot communicate the awesome.

God what fond memories I have for that there gnome. Anyone else out there carry that beardy so-and-so all the way through Half-Life 2: Episode Whatever like I did? To infinity and beyond, by way of one the rocket ship?

Good times, man. Good times...

***

Source: Kotaku

Tubing the You | Stephen Fry and the Pedantry of the Senses

Found as per a blog post from fellow Scot, clever clogs and Book of All Hours author Hal Duncan, this is absolutely bloody priceless:

I think I remember hearing this on the its first go-around, on a show British national treasure and sometime Hugh Laurie collaborator Stephen Fry does from time to time for British national treasure and sometime Hugh Laurie collaborator BBC Radio 4. Though I could of course be mistaken.

In any case it's brilliant. To my eternal shame, I've always been a bit of a grammar Nazi. Noting the inappropriate appropriation of impossible apostrophes on shop signs and business cards in particular has been a source of some pride for me, in the past. Rather less so after watching this bit of "kinetic typography," so-called.

But what it the world does "heterodox" mean anyway? And is "sound-sex" a real word, really?

Or am I quite missing the point? ;)


Take it upon yourselves to Tube the You and you're sure enough to find a whole host of other examples of this kinetic typography thing, if you're interested. I found a few pretty decent scenes from The Dark Knight and V for Vendetta, for instance. Admittedly they were less awesome than the clip I've embedded above, but then, they didn't have Stephen Fry in, and life is significantly less worth living during those dry months between seasons of QI when there's no Stephen Fry fun to be had.


As we all know.


So who else among us will be man enough to stand up and be counted as a dirty great punctuation pirate?

News Flashing | I Am Not Spartacus

Spartacus: Blood and Sand was one of my greatest guilty pleasures last year.


In fact... no. I take that back. It was only a guilty pleasure to begin with: after a couple of hours of daft action and borderline offensive sex, the untold origin story American cable network Starz proffered up during the Summer of 2010 really picked up. By the halfway point, right about the time my interest in most shows tends to sag, I was utterly gripped. And by the end - those of you who saw Blood and Sand will know what I'm talking about - there was simply no going back.


Except back is exactly where they've gone. See here:

"This house offers many pleasures," says Batiatus of the Ludus in which we watched Spartacus become the warrior history recognises him as. "With more yet to be presented," adds Xena of the coming prequel miniseries - equal parts, one presumes, an opportunity to spend a little more time with two of the most memorably treacherous characters television has seen in decades, and a chance to let lead actor Andy Whitfield recover from his treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma.


Sadly, Whitfield's condition hasn't been so easily brushed under the rug, and the rising star has had to give up the role that helped make him. Hollywood waits for no man, not even a leading man, it seems, so in a couple of weeks we'll be hearing all about our new Spartacus - delete as appropriate two of the following: Canadian actor Stephen Amell, British player Aiden Turner and Aussie contender Liam McIntyre. "Hmm" with me.


For the very moment, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena will act as a fine measure as to whether the show-runners of Blood and Sand can capture the impact and the intrigue of that series without him. As to that, the above trailer certainly leaves me hopeful.


Most of you lot will be able to judge for yourself come January 21st, when Gods of the Arena begins airing on Starz in the US. Who knows when (or indeed where) we'll see it here in blasted, behind-the-times Blighty.

I hate you all. :/

News Flashing | E-Reading E-Volved

Twice in December, on two separate occasions, I bought and paid for a 16GB model of the Archos 101. This was to be one small step for a Scotsman, towards e-reading, and I hoped it would open doors not only to e-books, but also to digitised comics.

It was not to be. Neither of the companies I made my orders with came through in a reasonable time frame, despite assurances to the contrary. And with the lattermost of them, I had to wait a full month for my £300 refund. This did not make me happy.

But I'm kind of glad to have been put through the wringer, now. Because this just happened:

"Made for tablets, by tablets."


Or something.


I'm not usually one to get all excited for firmware, but to hell with the Archos 101 and its half-assed Android 2.1/2 OS: Honeycomb looks to be the true future of e-reading - at least it does from my vantage point. Because I want pictures, as well as words. Perhaps even moving pictures... a big ask, I know! :P


No idea as yet which of the next wave of 10" tablets sporting Honeycomb I'll drop the big bucks on - nor, indeed, do I have any clue when we can expect to see them start hitting store shelves - but when the dust of CES has settled, I mean to see where the chips have fallen and get a pre-order for my favoured device in quick smart.


And then... then The Walking Dead. And Locke and Key. And Ex Machina.


At long god-damn last, am I right?

Mister Sandman Introduces Stories: All-New Tales

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the one, the only... Neil Gaiman.

"Hello to everyone who has clicked on a widget and now has me talking to them," he begins. Back in the good old days, when there was more than one bookstore in Glasgow or Edinburgh prestigious enough to have authors stop over for readings, I attended a few Neil Gaiman events - the one I remember most clearly was for the release of Coraline (I have a mouse scribbled in my proof copy to show for that) - and then, as now, he was every bit the humble English gentleman.

He's recorded a few minutes worth of introduction to Stories: All-New Tales, "a huge book of stories by wonderful writers... and me" coming from Headline Review on June 15th. Not soon enough, eh? I was lucky enough to get my hands on a manuscript of the collection earlier this month, and what a collection it is. Not a dud in the bunch. I'll say no more till my review, which you can look forward here on The Speculative Scotsman sometime next week.

In the interim, let me turn the floor over to the esteemed Neil Gaiman:

Time to get excited, am I right?

So who's looking forward to what most? For me it was the Joe Hill and the Neil Gaiman - obviously - but I'll say this: they're great stories, but my favourites have been the surprises. The Roddy Doyle, the Al Sarrantonio, the hypnotic, Sunshine-esque Gene Wolfe entry... and so many others.

Do stay tuned!