Recommended Web Comic: Freak Angels
Filed Under: Recommended Media, SF Comics
Warren Ellis is the mad SF prophet of the comics industry. The man lives on the edge of the now, and has a voracious appetite for new things. This makes reading his blog a must. His comics range from gonzo SF future stories like Transmetropolitan to noir detective stories like Desolation Jones. And right now, you can read his latest piece, Freak Angels, for free.
Freak Angels is about purple-eyed psychic people who ended the world when they were teenagers. Now they hold a small civilization together in Whitechapel London. This is a quiet and thoughtful comic, moving at a very leisurely pace, and I love it. I love the hints at their powers and I love the steam tech. There are hints of very bad things to come. One of their former members is out to kill them all. Did I mention that London is under water?
It’s free, and it’s good, so you should read it, okay? Let me know if you like it or even if you don’t. I’m curious to see what others think of it.
Fantastika
Filed Under: Speculative Fiction
Fantastika
Today, in his email newsletter, Warren Ellis offered this word as the Russian equivalent of speculative fiction: fantastika. I love it lots for reasons I cannot explain. The word has the mouth-feel that I want from a word describing what I do. Would it be pretentious of me to adopt this word as my genre? Probably so. I will try it out for a while anyway. To see if it fits.
Been doing writing most days on my lunch break from the day job lately. It’s about all my poor tired brain can stand, maybe 45 minutes of sustained work. The problem is, the piece I am working on is lacking in the gonzo imagination that I want. I’ve been thinking too much inside the greater box. I need to break out and really go sideways with this one. For instance, I was writing a small interrogation scene, and I ended up writing it straight cliche. I realized that most of the story was coming out that way. I wasn’t thinking hard enough. I shall go to dinner now and talk it over with Sarah and see what I can do to break free of my own mediocrity this time. I’ve done it before. I know it can be done. I just need to motivate myself.
