Chris Mitchell With the popularity of the World Wide Web these days, it’s easy to forget that the Internet has other tricks up its telephone wires. MUDs (Multi User Dimension) and MOOs (Multi user dimension, Object Orientated) are burgeoning virtual reality communities tucked away in the backwaters of cyberspace. My Tiny Life is Village Voice […]
Julian Dibbell: My Tiny Life
Chris Mitchell With the popularity of the World Wide Web these days, it’s easy to forget that the Internet has other tricks up its telephone wires. MUDs (Multi User Dimension) and MOOs (Multi user dimension, Object Orientated) are burgeoning virtual reality communities tucked away in the backwaters of cyberspace. My Tiny Life is Village Voice […]
Douglas Coupland : Polaroids From The Dead : Ueber Furcht bis hin zu Ewigkeit
Chris Mitchell mailte Douglas Coupland und sprach mit ihm ueber Ruhm, die Zukunft und die Probleme mit amerikanischer Schokolade. German translation by Boris Haenssler You can read the English version of this interview by clicking here. Douglas Coupland ist kein durchschnittlicher Romanautor. Seit der Veroeffentlichung von Generation X im Jahre 1991 wurde er dank seiner […]
Don DeLillo: Underworld
Gary Marshall Starting with a 1951 baseball game and ending with the Internet, “Underworld” is not a book for the faint-hearted. Elegiac in tone and described variously as DeLillo’s Magnum Opus and his attempt to write the Great American Novel, the book weighs in at a hefty 827 pages and zips back and forwards in […]
P.J. O’Rourke: Eat The Rich
Gary Marshall P.J. O’Rourke has never been afraid to tackle big subjects. Previous books have attempted to explain the entire US Government, refute the arguments of the environmental lobby, and describe the bits of the Gulf War that CNN wouldn’t broadcast. With his latest book, “Eat The Rich”, PJ sets his sights on possibly the […]
Douglas Coupland: Lara’s Book Lara Croft And The Tomb Raider Phenomenon
Chris Mitchell Well, it had to happen. Lara Croft, star of the Tomb Raider videogames, gets the coffee table treatment in her own glossy picture book. In an attempt to give this tome some literary gravitas, “Generation X” author Douglas Coupland has been drafted in to provides thoughts about the Lara phenomenon and a story […]
Kimberly S. Young: Caught In The Net
Chris Mitchell Dr Kimberly Young has made something of a name for herself in the last few years with her research into the phenomenon of Internet addiction. Having set up the Centre for On-line Addiction and written numerous papers about Internet addicts over the last three years, Caught In The Net is a distilled account […]
Scott Adams: Dilbert Seven Years Of Highly Defective People
Chris Mitchell Dilbert is rapidly becoming enough of a cartoon icon to rival the fame of Disney’s most enduring creations. Chronicling the trials of a hapless IT engineer battling against the absurdities of corporate life, the Dilbert comic strip appears in over 1500 newspapers worldwide. Seven Years Of Highly Defective People is creator Scott Adams’ […]
John L. Casti: The Cambridge Quintet
Chris Mitchell When world chess champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue II last year, it provoked a renewed popular interest in the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Kasparov commented that he felt he was playing “an alien intelligence”. But was Deep Blue really thinking or simply number-crunching at a incredible speed to produce […]
Geoff Ryman: 253
Chris Mitchell Despite appearing in print for the first time this month, Geoff Ryman’s 253 is not a new book. This self-styled “interactive novel” has been available on the Internet since 1996 at http://www.ryman-novel.com, and its electronic success has prompted the “print re-mix” version to be published. The original Internet version of 253 was not […]
Melanie McGrath : Hard, Soft And Wet: Doing It For The Kids
Chris Mitchell meets Melanie McGrath, chronicler of the Digital Generation The days of travel writing being produced by someone wearing a pith helmet and clutching a pink gin are thankfully over. The new generation of travel writers are increasingly venturing into uncharted territories, as Melanie McGrath’s new book Hard, Soft And Wet demonstrates. No, it’s […]
Joey Anuff, Ana Marie Cox: Suck: Worst Case Scenarios In Media, Culture, Advertising and The Internet
Chris Mitchell Suck has long been the sardonic scourge of the internet. Under the slogan “a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun”, the Suck website serves up a free daily dose of mordant satire, analysis and “buzzsaw journalism” about the most recent media occurrences. It’s a recipe which has made Suck popular across the […]
Mark Slouka: War Of The Worlds: The Assault On Reality
Chris Mitchell If Mark Slouka is to be believed, we are losing our grip on reality. With the proliferation of technologies that allow us to immerse ourselves in artificially created worlds – from radio and television through to virtual reality and cyberspace – the line between real reality and artificial reality is blurring. Soon, Slouka […]
David Lavery: Deny All Knowledge: Reading The X-Files
Chris Mitchell Just what is it that makes The X-Files so popular? The television show which revolves around the investigations of FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully into all things paranormal has become incredibly popular, narrating their quest for the ever-elusive truth through a combination of police drama, gothic horror and science fiction. Deny […]
J.G. Ballard : David Cronenberg’s Crash : Future Shock
Chris Hall finds out why J.G. Ballard thinks Crash is the first film of the 21st century One week before David Cronenberg’s Crash opened in the UK at the beginning of June, the normally reclusive author J.G. Ballard appeared at a regional press conference and pre-screening of the film in Wardour Street, London. Cronenberg’s film […]
E.M Cioran: To Infinity And Beyond
Stephen Mitchelmore explains why the writing of E.M. Cioran refuses explanation “Nothing is more irritating than those works which ‘co-ordinate’ the luxuriant products of a mind that has focused on just about everything except a system.” What is there to know about Emile Cioran? He was born in Romania, in 1911, the son of a […]
Nicholas Blincoe: Jello Salad: John L. Williams: Faithless
Jason Weaver sees two very different sides of London in Nicholas Blincoe’s Jello Salad and John L. Williams’ Faithless What is there to say about Jello Salad by Nicholas Blincoe? Well, there’s a bit of sex, and a lot of drugs and even more violence. Blincoe’s characters do things to the body that will never […]
Timothy Leary: Design For Dying
Chris Mitchell Even in death, Timothy Leary is still trying to shatter society’s taboos. Design For Dying appears eighteen months after the former Harvard psychologist turned LSD guru passed away from prostate cancer. Written during his last months, Leary’s book attempts to dispel our fear of death by suggesting that technology increasingly lets us orchestrate […]
Jeff Noon: Nymphomation
Chris Mitchell After giving Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland electric shock treatment last year in Automated Alice, Jeff Noon’s new novel Nymphomation returns to the near-future Manchester of his first two books, Vurt and Pollen. While Automated Alice was an audacious exercise in seeing quite how far he could push reinventing a classic, Nymphomation sees […]
Trainspotting: The Play : Expletives Repeated
Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspottinghas taken the theatre world by storm. Chris Mitchell discusses censorship, sincerity and swearing with the director. [Note: this interview is about the original stage production of Trainspotting in 1996. Spike also has another interview with Harry Gibson on the 10th anniversary stage production of Trainspotting in 2006.] […]
Marie Darrieussecq : Pig Tales : Shelf Life
Chris Hall gives the lowdown on Marie Darrieussecq Who’s Marie Darrieussecq? The 28-year-old author of debut novel Pig Tales, which has taken France by storm. The book took just 24-hours to be accepted after she sent her unsolicited manuscript to publishers Big deal. Well, quite. It’s sold a staggering 250,000 hardback copies and has been […]
Toby Litt : Beatniks : Shelf Life
Chris Mitchell gives the lowdown on Toby Litt Who’s Toby Litt? “Britain’s answer to Douglas Coupland“, according to various critics. “If you don’t want to be him or have him, you’re dead” drooled Julie Burchill with her characteristic understatement Our very own homegrown Generation X guru, then? Last year’s debut short story collection Adventures In […]
Bertie Marshall : Psychoboys : Text Maniac
Chris Mitchell meets Bertie Marshall, the original psychoboy When does a debut underground experimental novel featuring a stomach-churning mix of depraved sex, hideous death, wanton coprophilia and insane genetic mutation gain critical praise from the mainstream likes of i-D, Time Out and The Big Issue? When it’s written by Brighton author Bertie Marshall. Psychoboys is […]
Liz Evans: Girls Will Be Boys: Women Report On Rock
Jason Weaver Now, here’s a conundrum. Liz Evans has edited a volume of journalism on contemporary rock music written exclusively by women and here am I, a man, sent out to review it. Ideologically thin ice. I have to confess, I’m tripping over every nuance. A wrong-footed phrase is going to sound like an alibi, […]
make up: it’s not only rock N roll but I like it
Jason Weaver on the musical impact of rock’n’roll band make up The Marxist project was about the conditions of work. Parasites grew fat on the labour of those who worked only to stay alive, an imbalance based on the arbitrary division of society. Marx phrased this situation as an equation, a mathematical formula, an argument. […]
