Return to Treasure Island
[See also here, here, here and here]
In Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates Harry Ritchie remarks, a propos the legends of Kidd’s lost treasure, ?the idea of burying loot on a tropical island would have struck[…]

The Literary Mind by Mark Turner
A deceptively titled book. It’s about the nature of thought and grammar, and proposes that we invert the way we think about the origin of language, and more specifically the skeleton of concepts underlying langu[…]

Metafiction in Astro Boy
I’ve just read Astro Boy #14, which contains some of the most remarkable and untrammelled breaking of the traditional boundaries, not just of the comic artform but of any narrative form, that I’ve encountered. Fir[…]

Reports of Alan Moore’s retirement seem a touch premature. Look, now he’s writing those old gnarly IPC characters – Steel Claw, The Spider, Doctor Sin. Of course these characters mean nothing to me (where is Martin when you need him[…]

Wordcount
(via Auspicious Fish)
This site has delayed me hugely today. I love its conceit. Here for instance is the word science proof of WHICH MUSIC IS BEST:
Rock – 1,511th
Metal – 2,185th
Dance – 2,293rd
Pop – 2,753rd (next […]

ON NAMING
back when Gibson’s Neuromancer wz just out, i recall my colleague d4vid qu4ntick getting into a strop abt the fact one of its characters is called “Quine”: he argued – he may be right – that the ONLY reason fo[…]

Pulp It
Bob Mizer is a good photographer, an interesting formal experimenter,a master at the boring, the sexual, the banal, the aspirational, thejoyous and the all American. He isn’t really a pornographer, though his work has mostly to do with […]

Samurai Executioner

Lone Wolf & Cub is one of my all-time favourite comic series, and I’d recommend it very highly, especially to anyone who likes Kurosawa’s samurai movies, as it seems a very close equivalent to them, except with a[…]

Alexander Walker’s bequest to the British Museum
The late film critic left a stack of works, the majority prints, to the British Museum, and they are currently displaying a lot of them in the print room (4th floor at the back) until January 200[…]

“I’ll wager xwaxboz quatloos on the newcomer“: [v.long post alert]
Aliens in SF movies are mostly humans in rubber suits for a good practical reason. But since humans read books to find out about themselves, aliens in SF novels are[…]