Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore takes up prose writing
11 October 2022
British comic book writer Alan Moore, whose credits include the Watchmen series of stories, and work in the Batman and Superman universes, is swapping graphic novels for prose writing.
Speaking with Guardian writer Sam Leith, Moore makes some blunt observations regarding superhero comics, and the part that a thirst for such comic books among adults, rather than children, has contributed to the current state of the world.
I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s — to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional — when things like Watchmen were first appearing. There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’. I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way.
It’s well worth reading the full article.
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Alan Moore, graphic novels, literature
Psalms For The End Of The World by Cole Haddon
10 October 2022
Psalms For The End Of The World, written by Australian-American author Cole Haddon, and published by Hachette Australia, is a novel aptly titled for the times. For more than one reason.
The first, and most obvious, is the end-of-days gloom permeating global affairs presently. The other, of all things, relates to the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize for physics. That’s because for the overt references to the end of the world, Psalms For The End Of The World also includes — among other things — physics and quantum entanglement in the mix:
It’s 1962 and physics student Grace Pulansky believes she has met the man of her dreams, Robert Jones, while serving up slices of pecan pie at the local diner. But then the FBI shows up, with their fedoras and off-the-rack business suits, and accuses him of being a bomb-planting mass-murderer.
Finding herself on the run with Jones across America’s Southwest, the discoveries awaiting Gracie will undermine everything she knows about the universe. Her story will reveal how scores of lives — an identity-swapping rock star, a mourning lover in ancient China, Nazi hunters in pursuit of a terrible secret, a crazed artist in pre-revolutionary France, an astronaut struggling with a turbulent interplanetary future, and many more — are interconnected across space and time by love, grief, and quantum entanglement.
With a timeline spanning centuries, and incorporating the stories of multiple characters, Psalms For The End Of The World seems to have something for everyone, be they fans of crime, science fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction.
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Australian literature, books, Cole Haddon
How can nothing unreal exist in a not locally real universe?
10 October 2022
In addition to Annie Ernaux being named the Nobel Prize literature laureate , John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger, received the Nobel for their contributions to physics this year. I studied physics in high-school for an ill-fated year, and struggled to make sense of any of it. Way too mathematical. And maybe way too weird.
All the more so, given the Nobel award winning work of Clauser, Aspect, and Zeilinger, effectively “overthrows reality as we know it.” This outcome spans the previous study of a whose-who of household names in the realm of physics, including John Stewart Bell, Boris Podolsky, Nathan Rosen, John von Neumann, and of course, Albert Einstein.
Quantum mechanics’ problem of nonlocal realism would languish in a complacent stupor for another three decades until being decisively shattered by Bell. From the start of his career, Bell was bothered by the quantum orthodoxy and sympathetic toward hidden variable theories. Inspiration struck him in 1952, when he learned of a viable nonlocal hidden-variable interpretation of quantum mechanics devised by fellow physicist David Bohm — something von Neumann had claimed was impossible. Bell mulled the ideas over for years, as a side project to his main job working as a particle physicist at CERN.
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Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets, a film by Yaniv Raz
10 October 2022
James Whitman (Lucas Jade Zumann) is a troubled sixteen year old. With only one friend, Kwane (Odiseas Georgiadis), who sees the friendship as a social experiment more than anything else, James’ life is in turmoil following the disappearance of his older sister Jorie (Lily Donoghue), a month earlier.
If things were bad at home before Jorie vanished, they’ve taken a turn for the worse since. His father, Carl (Jason Isaacs), whom James refers to as “the brute” is an angry ex-navy officer, who won’t hesitate to hit his mother Elly, (Lily Donoghue) when he loses his temper.
Elly meanwhile is disillusioned with her life. In her younger days a promising career as an artist in New York City beckoned. But she was forced to abandon these ambitions because Carl wanted to move to a small town and open a sushi restaurant. Or so she tells James.
A ray of light arrives in the form of James’ classmate Sophie (Taylor Russell). Sophie is the editor of the school’s literature zine, and asks James if he can track down a poem Jorie promised to submit for publication before she disappeared. Sensing Sophie may be seeking more though, he’s happy to oblige.
While searching Jorie’s room — which Carl had placed out of bounds — for the poem, he instead finds a photo of Jorie with some friends, a few of whom James recognises. Believing they may know her whereabouts, he sets off with Sophie, who has agreed to help him, to locate his sister.
Despite its comedy billing, Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets, trailer, has more than a few dark moments. James is not as well as his father likes to believe, and as the pressure builds, James begins unravelling.
Light relief in the form of the titular Mr Bird, a pigeon voiced by Tom Wilkinson, who dispenses wisdom to the downtrodden James, lifts the mood. As do the musings of James’ hero Walt Whitman (voiced by Michael H. Cole), along with nods to the work of Wes Anderson, who is clearly a hero of director Yaniv Raz.
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film, trailer, video, Yaniv Raz
Today is World Homeless Day
10 October 2022
Today is World Homeless Day.
The purpose of World Homeless Day is to draw attention to the needs of people who experience homelessness locally and provide opportunities for the community to get involved in responding to homelessness, while taking advantage of the stage an ‘international day’ provides — to end homelessness through improved policy and funding.
Homelessness is an issue that seems to have been placed in the too-hard basket by many nations, Australia included. Yet solving the problem may not be as difficult as is believed. Finland, for example, has found an effective way to combat homelessness.
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Kurzgesagt explores the realm of the minute and subatomic
8 October 2022
Kurzgesagt ventures to the most extreme place in the universe… a whole ‘nother universe, or microcosm: the realm of the minute and subatomic.
The universe is pretty big and very strange. Hundreds of billions of galaxies with sextillions of stars and planets and in the middle of it all there is earth, with you and us. But as enormous as the universe seems looking up, it seems to get even larger when you start looking down. You are towering over worlds within worlds, within worlds — each in plain sight and yet hidden from your experience.
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Love Your Bookshop Day 2022
8 October 2022
Today is Love Your Bookshop day.
Love Your Bookshop Day 2022 is an annual celebration of everything local bookshops do from fostering expert staff and curating fabulous ranges to creating events programs to celebrate authors, readers, and the books they cherish.
Bricks and mortar bookshops may not be so abundant anymore, but they are an integral part of the writing and publishing industry. In addition to being a source of work for their staff, and a haven for book lovers, bookshops are also vital in helping new authors develop some profile.
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books, literature, novels, writing
The Stranger a film by Thomas M Wright with Joel Edgerton
8 October 2022
Daniel Morcombe, a thirteen year Sunshine Coast boy, went missing in December 2003, as he set off to do some Christmas shopping. In August 2011, after an extensive police investigation, and a sting operation, Brett Peter Cowan, who would later be convicted of Morcombe’s kidnapping and murder, was arrested by detectives.
The Stranger, trailer, directed by Thomas M Wright, is a dramatisation of the police operation to apprehend Cowan, and is based on the 2018 book, The Sting, by Kate Kyriacou. But The Stranger is not a direct re-telling of Morcombe’s disappearance. Instead it focuses on efforts to bring the person responsible to justice.
Australian actor and director Joel Edgerton stars as Mark, an undercover police officer, who befriends a man named Henry Teague. Teague is suspected of committing a serious crime, but police lack sufficient evidence to charge him. Mark sets about gaining Teague’s trust, and he hopes, an admission of Teague’s guilt.
A friendship forms between two strangers. For Henry Teague, worn down by a lifetime of physical labour, this is a dream come true. His new friend Mark becomes his saviour and ally. However, neither is who they appear to be, each carry secrets that threaten to ruin them and in the background, one of the nation’s largest police operations is closing in.
The Stranger is currently screening in Australian cinemas.
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film, Joel Edgerton, Thomas M. Wright, trailer, video
The Small Press Network Book of the Year Award 2022 shortlist
7 October 2022
The Book of the Year Award 2022 shortlist was announced on Tuesday 4 October 2022, and features seven titles this year:
- No Document by Anwen Crawford
- Friends & Dark Shapes by Kavita Bedford
- Hometown Haunts by Poppy Nwosu
- Permafrost by SJ Norman
- Gravidity and Parity by Eleanor Jackson
- Theory of Colours by Bella Li
- Sexy Tales of Paleontology by Patrick Lenton
Also known as the the BOTYs, the award is an initiative of the Small Press Network, an organisation representing some two-hundred and fifty small and independent Australian publishers. The winner will be named on Friday 25 November 2022.
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Australian literature, literary awards
Annie Ernaux named Nobel Prize Literature laureate 2022
7 October 2022
French writer Annie Ernaux has been named the Nobel Prize Literature laureate for 2022. In selecting Ernaux, judges cited “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”
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