Giant Squid Creations

A couple of decades and four sequels late, I finally watched Jurassic Park the other day. I don't know why it took me quite that long but it did. Aside from being a bit dated, and screaming 'Spielberg directed this' from the first sequence (not in itself a bad thing), it was a good movie. I can imagine seeing it in the cinema in its day would have provoked the desired shrieks and gasps. I played the Lego game of the first four movies last year, so a few spoilers, but with some obvious gaps in my understanding. What I found myself thinking about after watching it was the characters and how they might have been in the novel. One of the few things I know about Michael Crichton as a writer is that several of his books have ended up as movies, which he also writes the screenplays for. For some reason I cannot explain, that put me off reading anything he wrote. Some irrational bias I had I guess, tall poppy maybe. But from the movie I sensed a lot of depth to the characters wh...

Today one of the Squid's old friends came by. He's a part-time archaeology teacher with a fedora and a bullwhip, you know the type. Nice abs. He taught me that X never marks the spot, but sometimes the Roman numeral for 10 may, but only in medieval European libraries. Anyway, he told me he'd seen signs indicating there was a way to ascend buried in my backyard. Not one to scoff at the ideas of a friend of the Squid I joined him on an expedition. He told me he knew the best digging team in Cairo - of course, in Hobart that's not much use, so he let me do the digging. Some blackberries had to die, but that had to happen anyway so it was a gain really. And after what felt like hours, but was probably less than one, it lay bare before us. The surface was still covered in dirt so we couldn't make out any secret markings if there were any, but the structure was plain, and from where I was standing there could be no doubt about, we had excavated a true way to ascend. ...

I get sentimental about the most random objects. Recently, a mug got a crack in it, coffee leaking slowly out through the whole height of it. I liked that mug. It was a good size for a coffee, and a red colour that wasn’t too bold or too pink. It was a Kris Kringle present from years ago, the job before my last one. It came filled with Lindt chocolate balls. I used it at work for a bit then took it home where it became my main coffee mug after the tragic death of the blue funny face mug I’d bought to match my green funny faced tea mug. Writing this I realise it’s mugs that seem to interest me, but I can’t say why. Right now on my desk are two mugs, both had coffee in them, I’m a slacker and forgot the first one. It’s a white one with the words ‘I’m silently correcting your grammar’. My niece gave it to me a few years ago, and everyone seems to find it most apt. I do do it silently. The other is a Star Wars mug with pretend posters based on The Force Awakens. It was from my wife a...

It is with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to Brian W Aldiss, a stalwart writer and scholar who passed away on the weekend aged 92. I think the first book of his that I read was Billion Year  Spree, his history of science fiction. It's a fascinating read and influenced me greatly. I was doing my Honours at the time and his definition of science fiction, particularly that it is set in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould, shaped my thinking at the time and infiltrated my whole thesis, even if it was off topic. My ideas on genre have shifted in the last couple of years, and I do not hold so closely to Aldiss' own, but they're still influential, and I wouldn't be where I am without them. I haven't read his most famous fictional works, the Supertoys stories that Spielberg's movie AI was based on, or the Helliconia series, but I have read a couple of others. The first was Frankenstein Unbound. It took me a bit to accept what was going on and for a while I probably wou...

In preparation for the next semester (or trimester as DU calls them), I read two introductions to books introducing the various voices within literary theory, both of which asked that essential question, what is literature? Of course, the answer is vague, partly because it's a debatable point and partly because they were introductions and they can't give it all away. But it made me think about what literature is or has been to me, which is something I probably should think about if I'm studying Literature. The first thought I have is remembering the many times I rearranged my books in my teens. It was something I did at least once a year I think. I would take every book off the shelf and put them into piles according to how I wanted to organise them, then work out the best way to arrange them all on the shelves. I could make a joke here about how much of a nerd I was/am, but, as I think about it, I'm not going to wear that label over this - I love books, I always have...

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan My rating: 4 of 5 stars I just spent the better part of two days reading this so I figure I should write something about it. I'd like to say I did that because it captured me completely, but the truth is I powered through it because of an assignment and because I'm not at work this week. Not that it didn't capture me and I'm glad I read it in such a consolidated period. It's a very well written and quite sumptuous story cycle, the interconnections are laced through ever-so neatly down to a pair of pants I presume one character bought second-hand after another had given them to charity. Numerous lives are wound as threads through this tapestry, covering a good fifty or so years. It could be argued the last story ties up too many of those threads, but the resolution is still ambiguous and the way the characters come together is not convenient plot wrangling like a melodrama but a clever device, itself a metaphor for the ...

I had some time to kill while near my local bookshop, so, like any sane person, I went in. I wasn't after anything but thought I'd see what H.G Wells they had. I didn't expect much, just the latest Penguin or Wordsworth edition of The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds tucked away in the Classics section, but there was always a chance of The Country of the Blind and Other Stories , which I'm considering buying in physical form. There was no trace of any mention of his name whatsoever. It had never occurred to me that there would be a bookshop without at least one title of his in stock. This disappointment I could have borne if not for the second shock I received today. I went to the local library to pick up some reserved items, including two books on Mr Wells' life and work. The librarian, as she waited for the computer to catch up, looked over the covers then asked, in all seriousness, 'Who's he?' She had to repeat the question, I couldn't co...