only forward

[freckles_and_doubt]

Michael Marshall Smith! Who knew? The man is a storyteller - pace, character, amazing world-building. He is also:

1. Batshit insane.
2. Lateral, off-the-wall, surreal, and blackly, ironically funny.
3. An acute and satirical social commentator in a post-cyberpunk mode, like a less pretentious Neal Stephenson with an edge of slightly more comprehensible and good-natured Murakami.
4. A fellow cat-fancier whose respect for the species I have to salute.
5. Batshit insane.

I think I may be in love.

In other news, the PhD comic currently has an extended gag depicting academic supervisors as Doctor Frankenstein, which, given the combination of my employment woes and a recent round of Mary Shelley lectures, is making me giggle helplessly and suspect that Jorge Tam has been subjecting my so-called life to covert surveillance, in which case I can only say that I'm glad someone's getting some use out of it.

Also, my sentences are too long, but I blame the end of term.

Comments

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Revenge of the Sneak Killer Attack Lateral Subject Lines!

I just finished Only Forward, actually. It's even weirder than it was halfway through, and considerably up there in the twisty department.

Which other novel of his would you recommend I track down next, if I particularly loved the half-assed digs at cyberpunk, the weird Neighbourhoods and the personalities of the gadgets in this one? (Total paroxysms of joy over the over-eager cleaning bots dashing to catch falling leaves in the techie neighbourhood. Also, the smart-ass bug-scanner).

Also, apparently that bastard Michael Bay ripped The Island off Smith's novel and screenplay which the studio subsequently decided not to buy only to produce a suspiciously similar "different movie" a year later.

[pinkthulhu.livejournal.com]

Actually The Island goes back to the 70s:

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/25090

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia Strikes Back! They insist: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Marshall_Smith)
In 1996 his second novel, Spares, was released, the film rights to which were purchased by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. While the rights lapsed, Dreamworks did produce The Island, whose plot had strong similarites to Spares, though Michael did not consider it worthwhile to pursue legal action over the similarities. He now considers it unlikely a Spares film will ever be made.[1]
The footnote gives the URL of a discussion on the MMS forum on his website, which I can't currently access.

Actually, it sounds as though Dreamworks wanted to make a movie with that theme, and when the rights to Spares lapsed, they simply remade an older film with a similar plot.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

yah, though Never let me go approaches the same subject from a completely different angle, so it's not that original.

Which books? there are only three; in order of the impression they made in me: Only Forward, One of Us, Spares.