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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Philip K Dick features in various canons, and The Man in the High Castle is high up in his extensive canon. I read it when he were nobbut a journeyman sci-fi writer but its subsequent adventures are worthy of note.
According to Wiki the BBC wanted to/did make a series out of it back in 2013. But I couldn't track this down. Amazon then took the project over and I remember (I think) joining Amazon Prime specifically to watch it. I vaguely remember it started well, but got a bit silly. And I cancelled my Amazon Prime presumably after the first series.
However I am surprised to be told that all four series (duh?) are to be shown on Netflix, starting tomorrow. Which is odd, them being a competitor of Amazon in the streaming business. All very Philip K Dickish.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I read Ubik and one called The World Jones Made for parochial reasons. While I didn't then become obsessed, I do remember respecting the man's game.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I read Ubik and one called The World Jones Made for parochial reasons. While I didn't then become obsessed, I do remember respecting the man's game. |
I have no idea why this is showing up as Mick's post. Mick would never say this (I assume). Perhaps the AEL is actually what has gone rogue and will kill us all, not AI.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I do not recall either Ubik or The World Jones Made for any reason. But a rogue post under my name is a worrying first. Anyone know what may be going on?
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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I definitely was the original poster. I'm just baffled when it would apply your name and Doc Holiday(?) avatar to the post
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Oh, I see. That's not much to worry about. You used my entree once to get into the AEL innards. But maybe play about with things to see how it arises.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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I think you could have written this, Mick. Its a good example of turning daily life into an anecdote. It also has a few thoughts on animal instinct and revisionism:
Taken Doubly: The White-Tailed Hornet
By Robert Frost
The white-tailed hornet lives in a balloon
That floats against the ceiling of the woodshed.
The exit he comes out at like a bullet
Is like the pupil of a pointed gun.
And having power to change his aim in flight,
He comes out more unerring than a bullet.
Verse could be written on the certainty
With which he penetrates my best defense
Of whirling hands and arms about the head
To stab me in the sneeze-nerve of a nostril.
Such is the instinct of it I allow.
Yet how about the insect certainty
That in the neighborhood of home and children
Is such an execrable judge of motives
As not to recognize in me the exception
I like to think I am in everything—
One who would never hang above a bookcase
His Japanese crepe-paper globe for trophy?
He stung me first and stung me afterward.
He rolled me off the field head over heels,
And would not listen to my explanations.
That’s when I went as visitor to his house.
As visitor at my house he is better.
Hawking for flies about the kitchen door,
In at one door perhaps and out another,
Trust him then not to put you in the wrong.
He won’t misunderstand your freest movements.
Let him light on your skin unless you mind
So many prickly grappling feet at once.
He’s after the domesticated fly
To feed his thumping grubs as big as he is.
Here he is at his best, but even here—
I watched him where he swooped, he pounced, he struck;
But what he found he had was just a nailhead.
He struck a second time. Another nailhead.
“Those are just nailheads. Those are fastened down.”
Then disconcerted and not unannoyed,
He stooped and struck a little huckleberry
The way a player curls around a football.
“Wrong shape, wrong color, and wrong scent,” I said.
The huckleberry rolled him on his head.
At last it was a fly. He shot and missed;
And the fly circled round him in derision.
But for the fly he might have made me think
He had been at his poetry, comparing
Nailhead with fly and fly with huckleberry:
How like a fly, how very like a fly.
But the real fly he missed would never do;
The missed fly made me dangerously skeptic.
Won’t this whole instinct matter bear revision?
Won’t almost any theory bear revision?
To err is human, not to, animal.
Or so we pay the compliment to instinct,
Only too liberal of our compliment
That really takes away instead of gives.
Our worship, humor, conscientiousness
Went long since to the dogs under the table.
And served us right for having instituted
Downward comparisons. As long on earth
As our comparisons were stoutly upward
With gods and angels, we were men at least,
But little lower than the gods and angels.
But once comparisons were yielded downward,
Once we began to see our images
Reflected in the mud and even dust,
’Twas disillusion upon disillusion.
We were lost piecemeal to the animals,
Like people thrown out to delay the wolves.
Nothing but fallibility was left us,
And this day’s work made even that seem doubtful. | |
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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"Everyone has a theory until they get punched in the mouth"
- Mike Tyson, or close enough
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Everyone has a career until someone cries 'rape'.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. Partly from overfamiliarity and partly because I find anything Victoriana-ish off-putting. But I have been enjoying listening to the short stories being read by Hugh Bonneville https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0k9tzr0. Seventy-three in all so I'm catered for for the foreseeable.
However, I keep having the odd experience of the Great Man visiting obscure places that happen to be stamping grounds of mine. Not Baker Street or Kensington, familiar to everyone, but like Lee in Kent (then) where I went to school (later). Or, like last night: Sydenham, Lewisham and Chislehurst. It's eerie, unless everyone has this experience.
PS Holmes regularly uses applied epistemological techniques.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Comedy has its canon and, surprisingly, there is widespread agreement as to who is in it. Surprising because comedy is, allegedly, such a personal thing. We are able to say 'George Formby is in the canon' without personally finding George Formby funny.
But that is because of the march of time. Nobody today would find George Formby other than a charmless twerp lacking any originality. We are prepared to take our forebears' word for his exalted status.
But you have got to have heard of the dude. Pete Jones told me his favourite comic was George Carlin. He was shocked when I said I'd never heard of him. I was pretty shocked myself when he outlined Carlin's place in American comedy. My vaunted reputation for polymathy had taken a severe blow.
But I was surprised rather than shocked when I watched a coupla Youtubes of Carlin at work. He was definitely suffering from George Formby syndrome. So for homework I told Pete to listen to the Goon Show (which he hadn't heard of despite being a know-every-word aficionado of Monty Python).
I hope he comes to the same opinion as I did.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I hope he comes to the same opinion as I did. |
If humour is so personal why do we judge people on the basis of what humor they like?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One of my favourite homilies is "Beware success, there's no way past." Albert Finney, Britain's best actor of the post theatrical-knights generation, confirmed this during an interview of his younger self I was watching yesterday.
He was asked why he turned down the lead in Lawrence of Arabia. Because, he explained, it would have turned him into such box office boffo he would be spending the rest of his career playing Great Parts in international co-productions that each took five years out of his life. He turned down Gandhi for similar reasons.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Then he turned to me and said, "I didn't mean avoid success all your life."
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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I just finished the fourth (of twelve) Anthony Powell novels (Dances with the Sound of Music, I think). I think I have to cry "Uncle."
If you don't know, the near-silent narrator describes British people going to parties and country estates and having conversations about other people's lives. To my ear, it's like a nature documentary with a voiceover describing the wildlife. There are some interesting characters, but only the most broadly comic one (Widmerpool) holds any interest for my Philistine American mind (he's literally wildlife, described constantly in piscine terms).
It's odd reading a book (series) for months, finding yourself compelled to continue mostly by the fact that you just know you are missing something and you really want to finally get it. When I realized that the something I was missing was a British upbringing of my own, I decided it was senseless to keep going.
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