Books and Literature – Page 10

Casting out Ghosts

Yes, it’s one of those “who would play so-and-so” entries…

Woke up this morning intending to have a shower, shave, put a load of washing on and get into some much needed cleaning of the apartment. All of these aims have been frustrated by the revelation that I have no water.

There’s a lot of banging coming from the apartment next door, so I suspect they’re doing bathroom renovations and have managed to switch off my water along with their own. I’m tempted to head out to the… what do you call the place where all the pipes and taps are? A tap cupboard? That’ll have to do. I’m tempted to head out to the tap cupboard and start messing around in the hopes of restoring my water while leaving theirs off, but I’d probably screw up and spray scalding steam all over the renovators – not that that’s a completely unappealing idea in my current waterless mood.

Anyway, of late I’ve been indulging in my Imperial Guard fetish (oh man, that doesn’t sound good does it :)) by reading my way through Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series. They’re bloody good reads (often summarised as Sharpe in space) and I’ve caught up all the way to Blood Pact, which I will commence upon as soon as Amazon gets its act together and actually delivers it.

When reading a sprawling novel series with a cast of dozens I generally find it useful to consider who I’d cast if I had an unlimited budget to produce a movie or TV series of it. This helps me keep everyone straight in my head. I’ve done this with some of the Ghosts, and – since this is my blog, I can do what I like with it and I’ve got nothing better to do while waiting for the water to be reconnected – I thought I’d list them here.

(I should note that this list is rather strongly influenced by one that I stumbled across online, lest anyone accuse me of casting decision plagiarism. I’d link to it if I could find it again)

Colonel-Commisar Ibram Gaunt: Daniel Craig. As far as I’m concerned Daniel Craig is Gaunt, which makes the current crop of James Bond films rather odd viewing 🙂

Major Elim Rawne: Eric Bana. I think he could easily pull off the combination of charisma and menace required for Rawne.

Master Sniper Hlaine ‘Mad’ Larkin: Hugh Laurie. Not an obvious choice but I reckon Laurie would make a really impressive Larkin. Everyone thinks of him as House of course, and as far as personality goes you couldn’t get much further apart than the domineering doctor and the mentally vulnerable sniper, but Laurie is such a gifted actor that I think he could do it, and do it well. You’d just need to give him a different accent (which you’d be doing anyway) and haircut so everyone doesn’t think “House!” any time he appears on screen.

Sergeant Agun Soric: Bob Hoskins. Another casting choice that just seems to work for me. Hoskins is Soric.

Chief Scout Sergeant Oan Mkoll: Robert Carlyle. Another from the casting list that I stumbled over. At first I thought it was a ridiculous idea, as Carlyle looks nothing like the Mkoll in my head, but after watching his performance in this week’s episode of Stargate Universe I’ve reversed my opinion. He’d make a great Mkoll.

Eszrah ap Niht: Jason Momoa. Momoa seems to be the go-to-guy for big menacing dudes in sci-fi/fantasy at the moment. I can’t recall if Eszrah is meant to be particularly big, but he’s certainly menacing, which makes him seem big 🙂

Major Gol Kolea: Tahmoh Penikett. He’s probably a bit young to really be (former) family man Gol Kolea, but I reckon he’d do the job.

Ayatani Zweil: John Hurt. If he wasn’t willing to commit to an ongoing role, Hurt would also make a great Lord Militant General Noches Sturm.

Trooper Brinn Milo: Colin Morgan. Get rid of that ridiculous haircut and he’d make a great Milo.

Sanian/Saint Sabbat: Ellen Page. Now that’s a casting completely out of left field I know, but I suspect that if she could handle the role, she’d be fantastic in it. Put her on the audition list and see how she goes.

So that’s where my casting list stands at the moment. Yes, it leaves out a bunch of important characters, but I simply haven’t decided who should play them yet. I know I did have a great idea for Varl, but can’t remember who it was. So, roll on the pilot episode people! Let’s get this underway! ;D

Creepypasta

Not for the faint of heart

Recently all of us at the office put together a big, combined order from Amazon. Included in mine was some Warren Ellis, some Warhammer novels and a few bits and pieces including a book about weird things in American history by one Robert Damon Schneck named The President’s Vampire.

This proved to be a damn good read. I was familiar with several cases he covered (I mean who hasn’t heard about the phantom attackers of colonial Gloucester?) but there were several new to me. And the final case covered, well.

As the start of the last chapter says, people of a nervous disposition or those prone to obsessive thoughts would probably be better off not knowing about the case. So if you’re one of those, tune out here…

Still here? Good.

OK, the last chapter covers a very strange and downright creepy series of events encountered by a friend of the author who started playing around with a ouija board. Over the period of several months he and his friends made contact with some “entities” (a catch all term for whatever it is you contact via a ouija board, be they ghosts, demons, elementals, aliens, dolphins, the NSA or fragmented sections of the sitters’ subconciousnii) who eventually (quite reluctantly) supplied them with information about a malevolant being whose name I shall not repeat here, because (so the entities claimed) if you know his name he’ll come and hunt you down.

A series of very weird and eerie events followed, including one of the group having an inexplicable late night encounter with something that may or may not have been the creature in question.

After relating the events Schneck goes on to present a very well thought out (although – as in the best stories of this kind – ultimately inconclusive) analysis of the case. You can (and he does) come up with a perfectly rational explanation for it all, as long as you’re willing to accept the subconcious-action theory of the ouija board, but it’s still downright weird – and I speak as someone so well versed in the paranormal that I don’t count things as weird until crop circles start appearing in solid concrete.

Now, just out of idle curiosity I googled the name of the murderous being spoken about via the board. And to my surprise I discovered a simplified account of the case being circulated around the net as creepypasta!

(What’s creepypasta? Get with the program man! It’s the 2010’s for crying out loud! :))

This is strangely cool. Creepypasta is generally assumed to be complete grabage but here we have a case where it’s based in truth. I don’t know if Mr Schneck is aware of this, but I may drop him a line and tell him.

For the brave of heart, creepypasta accounts of the case may be found here and here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

A Universe Built on Bad Puns

For Tanith! For Verghast! For cold and flu relief!

In the next Gaunt’s Ghosts novel Dan Abnett should have the Ghosts face a Chaos cult called the Histi.

That way they could fight them with anti-Histi-mines!

(Yes, yes, I’ll go drive over my head with a chimera now…)

Pearls of Wisdom

A priest asked the Master, “What is fate?”

No time to write anything myself today, so I thought I’d share one of my favourite passages from Kehlog Albran…

A priest asked the Master, “What is fate?”

The Master answered:

It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.

It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.

It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.

“And that is fate?” said the priest.

“Fate… I thought you said Freight”, responded the Master.

“That’s all right” said the priest, “I wanted to know about Freight too.”

There endeth the lesson. Think on it. Think on it.

Signs You’ve Been Reading Too Much 40k…

No such thing!

1: You find yourself saying “feth” all the time.

2: You read an article about bikie gangs and keep reading “Police Commissioner” as “Police Commissar”

3: You see a bright yellow car and think it must belong to the Imperial Fists.

I’ve read six Gaunt’s Ghosts novels in the last two weeks, and am halfway through a seventh. I’ve done all of the above. Maybe I should take a break…

The Crawling Chaos

The throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly…

My sleep last night was disturbed by a truly odd array of noises floating in through my bedroom window. To wit…

Strange electric guitar warblings, sounding as if Jimmy Hendrix had taken some really bad acid.
Tuneless, repetitive piping on a recorder.
The sound of something large and metallic being dragged around the carpark.

It was positively Lovecraftian. I expected Nyarlathotep to manifest at any second.

Hearts and Parks, Bows and Crows

Vale

Two great losses this week with the passing of author Ruth Park and musical-oddity extraordinaire Captain Beefheart.

Playing Beatie Bow was on the year nine syllabus when I was at school, so I read and studied the crap out of it. A lot of books suffer when you’re forced to do that to them, but Beatie Bow stood up. I haven’t read it for the better part of twenty years but I still recall vast swathes of it – it’s one of those books that gets into your head and changes it a bit so you’re never quite the same person after reading it.

More recently I obtained a copy of Ruth Park’s Sydney which provides a brilliantly written (if it wasn’t so pretentious I’d even say “sparkling”) history of the city via a series of walking tours. It’s clear that she had an incomparable love and knowledge of Sydney, and the book is going to be the first thing going into my case when I pack for my (Sydney departing) cruise in early 2012.

Captain Beefheart – well, what can you say about Captain Beefheart? A musical genius and provocateur without compare (unless it’s to his buddy Frank Zappa). I’ll let him speak for himself with the 1982 video clip of Ice Cream for Crow – a film so weird that a terrified MTV refused to play it, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York rushed to add it to their permenent collection.

Vale Ruth Park and Don Van Vliet. We’ll miss you both.

Micturition

You know it’s bad when the most authentic version featured Ted Danson…

Saw a preview for Jack Black’s version of Gulliver’s Travels this week. It’s kind of ironic that the only bit that looks authentic to the book is the one bit everyone would assume isn’t in the book.

(If you don’t get what I mean then go out and read it you phillistine!)

On the Lighter Side

Clench!

I always thought it would be amusing to draw a picture of Thomas Covenant jumping wildly up and down in baggy pants with brightly dyed hair, waving glowsticks in the air, while a confused and frighted Lord of Revelstone asks “Lord Covenant, do you rave?!”

C’mon! It’s as least as funny as Clench Racing!

The Language of Gormenghast

The recrudescent malkins of the calid garde-manger

Last week I stopped into the second hand bookstore that’s opened down the road and purchased the copy of Titus Groan that’s been taunting me in the shelf by the window. Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy is something I’ve meant to read for years so I figured that with a copy of the first book so convenient I might as well get on with it.

The somewhat eccentric bookseller (despite being a new establishment the store is doing a very good job of being rambling, cramped and musty with a slightly gnome-like proprietor – the way all bookshops should be!) reminisced about the first time he read the book while looking for my change. He told me not worry about words I couldn’t understand because I should be able to figure out most of them from context.

As such I was somewhat primed to watch for words I didn’t understand, and have kept a list of them as I go. I’m about halfway through and have hit six of them so far, which I think is pretty good going. The list (and the definitions) are as follow…

Recrudescent – My first reaction to this word was that it could mean almost anything. The actual definition is “breaking out again” or “renewing”.

Calid – I guessed that this means ‘clammy’, it actually means ‘hot’. Which makes sense when you think of the words ‘calorie’ and ‘calorific’ or perhaps the Italian ‘caldo’.

Fumid – I assumed this meant ‘full of fumes’, which in fact it does. Excellent!

Garde-Manger – My sketchy knowledge of French, combined with context, led me to assume that a garde-manger is a pantry. It’s actually a cool and well ventilated area of a kitchen used for the preparation of cold foods – although it seems more commonly used to refer to a chef that works in such an area.

Ichadbod – I am of course familiar with the name Ichabod, but in the book it’s used to describe a semi-ruinous section of the castle. I can’t find a definition online supporting this use, but I presume it’s a reference to the Hebrew meaning “the glory is departed”. Nice one Mr Peake!

Malkin – From context it was clear that this means ‘cat’.

Expect an update to this list when I’ve read some more – assuming I run into any other new words that is.