Christopher Johnstone

Another Art Post

2009-12-17T00:17:50Z

I just stumbled on Larry MacDougall via tor.com, and all I can say is, um, wow. Looking over the works, it feels like Larry must be the closest thing we have today to a living Arthur Rackham. Artists' works often have King Charles Heads* involved somewhere, and for Larry it seems to be movement, tea, riding and relationship of the carrier and the carried.

Matt Gaser is also sort of nine dimensions of amazing. I mean, just look at the image below... just look at it. And the other pics in his personal work gallery are enough to make the brain go into seizures of wonderment. Again, picking a King Charles Head, juxtapositioning of large and small, of differing sizes in general, dramatically or across spectra... I suppose.

I also spent some time recently drinking in the dark fairytale art of Linda Bergkvist. A touch more gothic than the previous two artists: moody, shadowy and other forms of darknessy.

* From Dickens. There is a character in one of the books (I forget which) who wants to write a book, but despite trying not to, he keeps coming back to the execution of Charles I over and over. A King Charles Head is a thing that one comes back to repeatedly.

Slushiness

2009-11-30T21:42:29Z

There's a very nice article here by Geoff Willmetts on the problems most commonly seen when reading through the slush pile. The pointers start out simple and work towards the somewhat more complex. Well worth a glance over.

Dog-Headed Men

2009-11-30T10:55:14Z

My story Cynocephalus has gone online at NewMyths. You can read it here.

NewMyths seems to be collecting quite an impressive list of authors with impressive awards attached to their names*. I've been watching NewMyths ever since its inception, stopping in now and again, and I have to say that Scott T. Barnes et al. have been doing a really good job with the site.

And of course, everyone else's articles and stories in this issue look interesting, as always. I'll have to make some time to give them a read over.

* EDIT: Note that this doesn't include me. I am neither impressive, nor am I attached to impressive awards.

Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody

2009-11-25T21:39:36Z

I've lost track of who's posted this and who hasn't. I nabbed the link from the GWlist.

Very much fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY

To Each a Song and other musical things

2009-11-23T22:05:45Z

One of my stories, To Each a Song, is now online at the fiction magazine, A Fly in Amber. You can read it here. I've mentioned before that I think the good people at A Fly in Amber are putting out an excellent online magazine. I won't belabour the point except to say it again (which I have).

Some thoughts post-concert...

I've had a couple days to look back on the concert now, and have tried to decide what I thought of the whole experience. I think, on balance, I enjoyed it, but in a detached observer sort of way. I found myself watching the crowd and noticing how the people in the back arena section were much more actively dancing than the front arena section for some reason (we were seated so had a good view of the general admission arena people).

Often, I found myself wondering to what degree the people on stage had moved on with their lives in the same way I felt about the whole 90s era thing. Ben Harper looked old and tired and played other people's songs much more enthusiastically than his own. Pearl Jam performed well, but the act felt like it was being held together by Eddie Vedder. Occasionally, I found myself wondering what might have happened if Vedder had dumped Pearl Jam about 8-10 years ago and gone solo. I know he's produced a bit of solo work anyway, but I expect we would have a larger, more interesting and more modern body of work from him if he had completely gone his own way.

The song Alive was a masterpiece of grunge rock showmanship. A few classics were avoided; Better Man wasn't even glanced at. There was a lot of material I didn't recognize or (I'm afraid) particularly like much. When Pearl Jam got collaborative on stage with Ben Harper and Liam Finn the show really shone, but there were too few of these moments.

I know it's cliché and has been talked about before ad museum, but one thing that really kept striking me over and over was how the whole rock/pop experience is such a strange mixture of religious fervour and rampant sexual signalling. This was made even more palpable by Eddie Vedder's frequent be-kind-to-everyone, the-band-is-a-brotherhood sermons in between waving around those phallic guitar things. I was reminded of that strange 60s/70s Moorcockian vision of a future in which organized religion, government and even the interstellar public service is replaced by a towering pillar of secular/sacred* rock culture (Peace, Love and Mung Beans, Baby**).

Presumably such a world would be plagued by just as many dogmas as today's real religions. The person unwilling to dance would be a religious/social outcast. The would-be politician who has no rhythm would fail to win the confidence of the people. And so on. Perhaps there would be an underground secret society of heretical accordion and harpsichord players.

* Doubletalk has under-appreciated utility. Must remember to use/not use more often.
** I was going to link to a short ad from NZ that used this line as a sign-off among starship officers in what seemed to be an Interstellar Federation of Rock. Alas, the ad was not easily locatable on the internet and after five seconds of searching I gave up.

Pearlescent Jamming

2009-11-19T22:13:24Z

Strangely, bizzarely, am off to see Pearl Jam and Ben Harper tonight. I say 'strangely and bizzarely' because this is how I feel about the experience. I never did see either act live on stage when they were huge, when I was younger, when all my friends and me were into Pearl Jam (and to a lesser extent Harper).

It feels sort of... indefinably wrong to be seeing them now, years on, with them and me now older, and with them and me having left those crystallized, perfect years behind long ago. I think of Pearl Jam and I think of music that I used to listen to almost by default. I liked them, yes, but I don't think I even owned one of their albums. I knew their songs through listening to them at friends' places, at parties and in music videos. Times, they have a changed.

Pearl Jam date from before a time when I really thought about music or even went a little out of my way to listen to music. My teenage years were oddly absent of music. And it's a strange thing to think about--to look back on--but there was a very long period during which I was, I suppose, almost afraid to get into music too much because I suspected I liked the wrong type of music. High school can do strange things to a person. Now, I don't think there is a wrong type of music. Music just sort of is, and what one likes is (to some extent) ingrained in the substratum of early experience, but it took me a shockingly long time to figure that out. It also took a long time to figure out that adults do not care what other people's musical tastes are and will not harass or pariah a person on the basis of said tastes. And my tastes aren't even all that strange (a few, possibly not completely representative examples: Heartless Bastards, North Atlantic Explorers, Greg Brown, The Ditty Bops, A Fine Frenzy, Bob Dylan). Ah well.

Perhaps I should go home early tonight, read Death: the High Cost of Living, work on an RPG and play Risk on the computer and relive all my teenagehood...

Changing topic entirely, I have a paper that should be ready to submit to a journal today. I've been working on the thing, polishing it into a shiny gem for about six months now. The journal (PBZ) has a pretty high immediate rejection rate though, so here's hoping it isn't rejected this time next week, because that would make me sad.

Ivor Cutler (genius)

2009-11-17T21:47:01Z

So I suspect most people will know all about Ivor Cutler... but a few folk may not. I've liked Ivor Cutler for a while but (strangely) never thought to check whether there were videos of his songs floating about. Turns out, of course, there are...

Ivor Cutler- Shoplifters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gacGge-_cQo

Ivor Cutler - Walking to a Farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ueXjIn8riI

...and one of my favourites...
Ivor Cutler - The Shapely Balloon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ERR7TrCVg

...and another favourite...
Ivor Cutler - Looking for Truth With a Pin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay_0_nWu8rw

(Also posted to the GW list)

50k

2009-11-15T02:12:26Z

I just tipped the 50,000 words mark on the novel I've been working on this year (working title: I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marbled Halls). This is not, I should hasten to add, an amazing and stupendous NaNo performance. I started the novel sometime around February this year.

But, 50,000 is half-way to a real and complete novel. This will be the first novel I've completed since about five years ago, so I feel happy. Between 1998 and about 2005 I wrote two stand alone novels and a trilogy (all of it unpublishable hackery). I then switched focus to short stories because deep down I could see that my writing wasn't very good and much much much practice was needed.

I clearly won't be finished this new novel by the end of the year, but I never thought I would. Two years is about right for a novel. I think... who was it who said this? I'm pretty sure I've heard it attributed to Salman Rushdie: "No good novel has ever been written in under two years"... and to be honest, I think that this little gem of writerly cold, harsh advice is a good general rule. There are always going to be exceptions, but I suspect they apply to better writers than me...

(P.S. Date stamp issues made me attempt to post this about half a dozen times... hopefully this doesn't result in half a dozen identical posts).

Very Short Post

2009-11-14T07:53:43Z

I've spent a few hours this afternoon updating the fiction and podcast page that I (very occasionally) use a a Voice-piece of Me. As I'm putting the whole thing together myself, it looks quite amateur, but all-in-all, I like the nice, simple, clean look that Nvu can achieve.

I've added a gallery area (though so far there is only one gallery) and added image links to three short stories (so very, very old now, so very written long ago and published long ago too) that are online (The Green Man, Lapis Excillis and The Old Oxford Charm). Plus, I've added a page linking to other writing podcasts and tidied things up generally. I also updated the blog, which I'd neglected for a while.

The index page is here and from there you can navigate around to pretty much anywhere on the site.

If you do happen to wander around and find a link that's broken or a missing image or something else that's missing, let me know.

Right. Now I need to do something that doesn't involve staring at a screen.

Día de muertos

2009-11-02T06:53:32Z

I wish I had a camera.

The Mexican postgrads at uni have constructed an elaborate ofrenda (altar display) complete with colourful skeletons, fruit, food and skull cookies. The shrine is dedicated to Charles Darwin and has his photo at its heart. Apparently if we were to forget to build a shrine to Darwin on Día de muertos, then Darwin would torment us by manifesting as a ghost and pulling our legs.

Pesky ghost of Darwin.

Back in the land of Melbourne

2009-11-01T05:55:06Z

Well, we returned last night, winging our way into Melbourne on all hallows eve. It's been an long, interesting, varied and wonderful holiday. I'll post some photos once I've sorted the chaff from the thousand or so digital shots I have.

Meanwhile, I've just worked through 200+ unopened emails in my gmail account and now need to start in on my university account. As such, I have some tabs that need closing. A lot of these are links that people sent me a while ago, and you may already be aware of them or even using them actively. More than a few are things I intended to post about a long, long time ago, but never got around to.

In case you're not using these or similar sites already, Biblioz and Abebooks good book buying sites that provide a pleasant alternative to Amazon.

Here, you can see a short clip on a working model of the Antikythera Device.

The Magic Portal has been around a while, but if you haven't seen it, it's strange, interesting and weird and, well, magical.

A friend is still putting cartoons up for the general entertainment of passing Richmondsonians. Round 3 of entries appears to be closed, but I'm sure there will be another round of submissions for those of you with a cartoonist spark.

I found myself quite liking Tame Impala's sample songs, especially Sundown Syndrome. I need to listen to them more to decide whether I'd want to get hold of a whole album, or, um, I guess EP, as that seems to be more or less all that is currently available.

Here's Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawkins and Arthur C Clarke discussing stuff.

I have little or no time to play computer games these days, but Machinarium may well change my mind about that. Beautiful. Evocative. Surreal. All this, with cute, rusty robots.

And this clip of Stephen Fry revisiting Douglas Adams's Last Chance to See is possibly the funniest thing I've seen in... um, well, maybe ever. I presume that the poor unfortunate bird has to had too much exposure to humans during captive rearing and now thinks its a person, or thinks people are kakapos or something along those lines...

Chris

Ghostly dogs and Birds that Sounds like Falling Trees

2009-10-04T04:06:13Z

We're in Alice Springs. Did Uluru, The Olgas and King's Canyon yesterday. All of it was amazing. We had dingoes skulking around the hostel at night, being quiet and secretive, acting more like ghosts of dogs than anything else. Saw some amazing birds and lizards in the outback. In one of the deep, strange, eerie gullies of the Olgas we listened to a western bower bird mimicking eagles and honeyeaters and rocks falling and tree branches cracking. It sounded like someone had hidden a tape-recorder in the scrub.

The whole landscape is amazing and wonderful and too big to describe

Some Beauty

2009-09-30T11:29:24Z

This is beautiful. The talk is on creativity and creatives and creative issues and stuff. But, really, it's just beautiful.

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

And remember those haunting mugshots I posted about earlier? It seems that other people thought they were haunting too, including Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, both of whom pointed out the following site where there are more shots.

http://www.atimetoget.com/2009/07/early-sydney-mug-shots.html

Edit: I'm off to the Top End tomorrow at an ungodly early hour of the morning. I haven't packed. I'm still at uni finishing up work on a manuscript. I doubt I shall be sleeping tonight. -sigh- Onward!

Dead Souls Anthology

2009-09-27T00:38:50Z

The first review for the anthology Dead Souls has been spotted. The reviewer seems to have reasonably liked my story in the anthology, The Unbedreamed, which is nice.

Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews looks like a good review site in general. Worth checking out.

That feeling

2009-09-21T09:24:06Z

You know that feeling you get when you're so tired that your throat hurts because breathing has become painful?

That's about where I am at the moment.

However, unfortunately, I need to stop complaining and get back to marking undergrad assignments. Sigh.

Dogs Who are Human-Bodied

2009-09-02T06:03:03Z

It looks like I may have sold a story, Cynocephalus, to the fiction magazine NewMyths.

NewMyths is one of a number of relatively new online fiction sites that I've been keeping an eye on and like the look of. The site has been unfolding and growing nicely since its inception.

Way back when...

2009-08-31T06:44:21Z

It seems that back in the day, when Sydney police were first toying with the idea of taking mugshots of criminals, they perhaps didn't have a good feel for how said photos should be taken. As far as I can tell, what they appear to have done is called in a professional portraitist and had him snap shots of various arrestees as they were lingering around a cement holding yard.

The result is a collection of strangely pathos-laden photos with the destitute or the criminal either posing for the camera, as if it were a Victorian family photo, or looking dejected, as if perhaps they were guessing that the photo would likely come back to haunt them. I guess, at the time, it may have seemed novel for some of these people. Some of them may never have had their photo taken before, and so they posed, smiled and tried to look their best.

You can see a few of these photos here at the ABCr/n site. I haven't put a lot of effort into tracking down more of them, but there is presumably a archive source online somewhere.

And moving from the sublime to the mildly funny, go over to www.DLmap.notlong.com and hope that you get there before the UK National Rail fix this. What you will find yourself looking at is the location of the 'Dublin Ferry Port', which the National Rail will deliver you to for a modest fee. "But", you say, "The Dublin Ferry Port appears to be in a big blue square. Is that the ocean?" Now zoom out.

I thought this was hilarious and laughed and laughed. But, I've been marking undergrad essays all day, so that could just be creeping insanity.

PL Travers

2009-08-29T22:40:28Z

I've always intended to go back and re-read some of the Mary Poppins books, though have never quite got around to it. I think this photo of Pamela Lyndon Travers (found on the ABC radio national site) dressed as A Misummer Night's Dream's Titania just moved the Mary Poppins books up the reading pile a bit...

Continuum and a Sale

2009-08-12T23:28:47Z

So, it looks like I've sold a short story to A Fly in Amber, an online magazine of fiction you can visit here. Aside from just liking the name of the magazine a lot, I like that they provide a range of fiction in YA, SFF and general literature categories. I think as readers we often become too wrapped up in our favourite genre comfort blankets, so it's nice to a see a market providing more of a range. I like the idea that a devoted high fantasy reader might easily pop across and read some general lit or SF instead, and find that they quite like it too.

The story, if you've already read it in a workshop forum, is To Each a Song (the one about the young woman who works in a library and can hear the songs of the dead). It'll be published in the November issue online.

Also, I thought I'd quickly post my (very short) list of panels etc I'll be up for at Continuum in Melbourne. Hope to see you there.

The Scientific Consideration of Life on Other Planets
SATURDAY 10am Fire Space
How possible is it that there may, in fact, be aliens in our universe?
Peter Fagan, Chris Johnstone

Reading
SUNDAY 12.20pm Sun Sphere

Do you have to be a scientist to write GOOD science fiction?
SUNDAY 3pm Fire Space
Science Fiction is all about imagining the science of another time and place and applying those elements to a story. Does it help to have a science background in order to produce decent science fiction?
Grace Dugan, Chris Johnstone, Sean Williams

chrisjohnstone @ 2009-08-10T16:59:00

2009-08-10T06:54:06Z

I think this is just lovely. Would it be crazy to have one of these in my living room? I can't decide if I'd work furniture around it or just leave the room empty except maybe for a coffee table and a few cushions. Of course, a giant teacup would help make it feel more homely too I guess.

Kim Graham has a whole lot of other lovely sculptures here too, and she also sells digitigrade leg extensions in case you were wanting to buy some but didn't know where to get them from.

Back in Melbourne

2009-07-20T06:08:47Z

Well, I made it back. Which means that I'll be at the MWF Coraline event tomorrow.

Right now I'm relaxing, listening to Bob Dylan's Modern Times, catching up on emails and considering whether I feel awake enough to do some work on a paper.

Meanwhile, I know a few of you are in Adelaide and I'd like to wave a hand towards an really stunning, evocative Adelaide artist, Shane Devries. I'm seriously thinking about getting Where Robots Come From as a print. And maybe Desert Singers. Or Awkward Trio. Or all of them. Shane's site is at www.shanedevries.com and his blog is here. He has exhibitions too.

Or not...

2009-07-18T12:55:58Z

Yes, that's right. The people, the summer heat, the great tea... I couldn't stay away.

I am in fact posting from China. Again. Still.

-sigh-

Apparently there is a monsoon that is stopping our flight from heading to Melbourne. We are (hopefully) leaving tomorrow morning, but this depends on the monsoon dissipating I suppose.... unless... hold on... I don't know much about monsoons, but don't they last for weeks?

But that's definitely what the staff keep telling me. Unless they mean typhoon.

Ok. So now I'm checking weather maps.... checking... and yes, there is a massive weather system sitting right on top of Yangjiang. I guess that's the puppy. I've no idea if it's a typhoon or something else, but yup, that'd maybe ground flights out of Shanghai.

I guess I'll be back in Melbourne in a day or two.

Maybe.

Homeward bound

2009-07-18T01:15:46Z

Well, it's been a busy, mad conference. My talk went well, had a few questions and some comments. There was one very excited Chinese primate scientist, but otherwise not too much in the way of post-talk mobbing crowds.

I've really enjoyed attending talks, and there have been more than a few that I was surprised by... talks that didn't look amazing from the description, but turned out to be really interesting.

Not a lot else to report. I visited the Summer Palace yesterday, tried to find the Empress Dowager Cixi's favourite fishing spot, but got lost and ended up at the Black Gate instead (clearly, not the one in Mordor, that would be surreal and a little worrying). Then went to the Forbidden City and took that in very quickly. Both the Summer Palace and the Forbidden city are extensive and amazing and deserve at least a day each. I was pressed for time, but know what to put some time aside for when I'm next in Beijing (whenever that may be).

Had a bunch more short story rejections. All of them were personalized from editors, so I think I might be slowly creeping into the radar screens of the editing community at least. I know some magazines at least seperate out the 'semi-pro' authors from the slush, and maybe I'm siddling into that category now.

Regardless, the comments are always encouraging and useful, even when the editor really didn't much like the story.

That's about it. I need to do a final check and make sure I haven't missed packing anything, then it's to the checkout and off to the airport.

I'll see many of you at the Coraline MWF launch with Shaun Tan on Tuesday. For those of you who haven't got tickets, there may be some still available, I'm not sure. You should see if you can get hold of a ticket, it should be quite a night.

Beijing and ET

2009-07-10T00:34:16Z

So, it turns out that one advantage of staying overnight in an expensive airport hotel is free internet access.

Almost didn't make it to Beijing, as it turned out. The flight crew found someone with a fever on the flight shortly before reaching Shanghai. The person in question was shuffled off to a curtained isolation area at the back of the plane.

When we landed we had about five or six messages, one after the other, saying to please stay in our seats, quarantine officers are on their way. I was joking with the person next to me that we'd know if we were all going to be spending the next week holed up in hotel rooms if the officers arrived in full biohazard suits.

Which of course they did. It was all very ET with the officers moving down the plane measuring everyone's temperatures with infrared devices. Eventually, though, they let us go, apparently were undecided about quarantining the 3-5 rows around the sick person, but let those people go too as well.

So, here I am. In the Beijing Capital Airport Hotel. It's nice, though has that feeling of a hotel that was established in the 70's and never updated. The carpets are new, I think, but the glamor-shots of airplanes are definitely original vintage. Look at that sexy classic DC10 taxying down the runway.

Not sure when I'll have internet access again, but will try to post before I'm back in Australia.

China, China so far away... hmmmhmmhmhm

2009-07-08T10:03:56Z

Right. Well, I'm packed and off to the Society for Conservation Biology meeting in Beijing tomorrow. The talk is all finished and based on my repeated practice-sessions, I have about 30 sec leeway if I deliver it quickly and concisely (needs to be under 12min)... of course I need to be understandable too, so I can't speak crazily fast and I may be cutting some more waffle from the talk before I'm up in front of the crowd.

The novel I'm working on at the moment tipped 30,000 words yesterday, which is nice. That's a third of a way to a full manuscript, although it might come in somewhere in the 100-110k mark when done. Still in first draft and needs a lot, a lot, a lot of work.

And I (finally) managed to put up a couple more podcasts. They're not very good, but, y'know, I guess I enjoy doing them, so it's nice to get a couple more out there.

Right. I think that's everything. I have rejection slips piling in for short stories, but that's pretty much my normal state of affairs. Also running around like mad on the PhD, also my usual state of affairs.

Ok.

I'll see you all in ten days or so.

Zaijian!