"We are all in the gutter, but some of us..."

"...are looking at the stars."
-- Oscar Wilde

Guest Star Archive

Our So-Called "Expert"

This site is updated Thursday at noon with a new article about an artistic pursuit generally considered to be beneath consideration. James Schellenberg probes science-fiction, Carol Borden draws out the best in comics, Chris Szego dallies with romance and Ian Driscoll stares deeply into the screen. Click here for the writers' bios and their individual takes on the gutter.

While the writers have considerable enthusiasm for their subjects, they don't let it numb their critical faculties. Tossing away the shield of journalistic objectivity and refusing the shovel of fannish boosterism, they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions about these oft-enjoyed but rarely examined artforms.

Recent Features

The Nature of the Hero, Rowling-Style

A few months ago, I decided to take the plunge: I would burn through the Harry Potter series, now complete, all in one go. It's been... interesting. I've discovered all kinds of things I had not realized before, including the fact that Harry is - to put it diplomatically - not a particularly effective hero.
Continue reading...

All I Want For Christmas Is A Few Good Books

In the spirit of the season, here are ten, in alphabetical order by author.

ONE TRILLION AND ONE LEANING TOWERS

1. Overture Island
On December 4, 2008, the future ended. The event that marked its end was the death of a 92-year old man from the not uncommon cause of heart failure. It would not have been an epoch-ending event save for one detail: the man’s name was Forest J Ackerman.

Continue reading...

Forgetful?

Guest Star Category

The Fine Art of Dreamthieving

Michael Moorcock’s latest, and last, fantasy trilogy winds different strands of his fiction together intointertwining, virtually meta-fictional narratives reflecting on mythic and heroic archetypes and the power of stories to create new realities. If you like Moorcock, you will enjoy these books. If you don’t like Moorcock, they probably won’t change your mind. And if you’ve never read Moorcock, these could be a magnificent introduction to his writing or they could completely turn you off; maybe both. Either way, they are heady stuff.

By Gutter Guest on January 16, 2008 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Why Aren't You Dead Yet?

Just how many times do I have to kill this guy? It’s a question I’ve certainly asked myself while playing various games, along with Why aren’t you dead yet? and How many damn heads does it have anyway? Everybody’s version of tedium is different, but endlessly dodging around waiting for some gargantuan horror to blink so I can poke it precisely in the left eye 11 times definitely makes my list. But a game where you have to walk down the hall to the kitchen, get some matches, walk back up the hall, take out several candles, light them, and close the curtains before some creepy old woman will tell you what the hell is going on? Apparently that appeals to me. Continue reading...

By Gutter Guest on December 18, 2007 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What's the Matter with Runescape?

I recently had a conversation with my ten year-old son that I had been longing to have since before he was born, since before I was even sure I really wanted to have kids. We were well into the eleventh hour of a game of Risk that had seen the empires of my wife and seven year-old come and go when my elder boy said the words that not only made me proud, but assured me that he would grow into a fine young man, that my work as a father was practically complete and a resounding success: “You know what I don’t like about RuneScape?”

By Gutter Guest on November 21, 2007 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Would You Let Your Daughter Marry Godzilla?

When Godzilla first waded out of the ocean to trample Odo Island in 1954, he was a monster for the times, serious as radiation poisoning. Japan was still rebuilding in the wake of WWII. Wartime traumas were still fresh. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only nine years past, and there was a new social class in Japan: the hibakusha.

By Gutter Guest on October 28, 2007 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Games Through a Comix Lens

The book Understanding Comics, published in 1993, was comic writer and artist Scott McCloud’s attempt to deconstruct, demystify, and lay out the magic of the sequential art form. Written in the form of a comic itself, it was one mechanism by which comics rose from the shadows of culture to become a more accepted art form.

What McCloud didn’t anticipate was that video-game developers would adopt Understanding Comics as an instruction manual for their industry.

By Gutter Guest on October 4, 2007 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hopped Up on Speedrunning

Keeping up with the Joneses in the fast lane

Shortly after 2 pm on the afternoon of May 18th, 2005, Brandon Erickson stepped back from the Star Wars arcade cabinet he'd been playing continuously, with no deaths, extra credits, or nap breaks, for the past 54 hours, having failed to break the Twin Galaxies record of three hundred million points in 49 hours established 21 years earlier by one Robert Mruczek. Perhaps these records of scale are best left in the distant past: all the golden age games had to offer a master player, after all, was more, more, more of the same. Let marathon play sessions in pursuit of the biggest score be consigned to the ashbin of the '80s along with the big cars, big hair, and shoulder pads in power suits; the fashion of our times dictates that minimalism is the new bombast.

One thing game-players in 1993 were not wondering was how quickly they could blast through DooM -- no, they lingered over every atmospherically-flickering alcove, marveling at its unprecedented immersiveness. It was not until its maps had been fully savoured that they would raise the bar, culminating in a powerhouse drive to excel and trump their friends' achievements under curious self-imposed limitations by doing the same, only faster.

By Gutter Guest on May 31, 2007 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Down and Out in the Mushroom Kingdom

Urban outdoorsmen rejoice! No longer must your vocation go overlooked in favour of the glamorous professions of Space Ranger, Secret Agent, Ace Pilot, and Ultimate Fighting Champion: 2006 saw the high-profile self-proclaimed first video game ever to be released featuring a homeless person as its protagonist -- American McGee's "Bad Day L.A." Its premise is that a series of catastrophes befall the metropolis -- and when the infrastructure of society crumbles away, who would be in a better position to thrive than the resident indigents?

By Gutter Guest on April 12, 2007 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I Am A MechWarrior

"...if Brian is watching the movie Babe, we don't say, 'Brian is a pig.'"

--Jesper Juul, "Introduction to Game Time"

~~~

I am a MechWarrior. I am a soldier on Halo. But I am not Lara Croft, although Tomb Raider is my favourite game.

Since my hand-me-down PS2 died years ago I haven't been playing games, but recently my friend Jim gave me his Xbox, and a copy of MechAssault and I liked it immediately. Tramping around inside my giant robot made me feel like a kid again. For an unskilled casual gamer like me the learning curve was nice and shallow. I was able to get gratification early by blowing up helicopters and taking out communication towers with generous graphic explosion rewards. In MechAssault, when you knock things down they go "boom." It's as satisfying as kicking apart your little brother's sand castle.

By Gutter Guest on April 5, 2007 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Godzilla vs MechaRealism

Yes, it's a guy in a suit. No, that doesn't mean it's bad. A while ago I watched some Godzilla movies with some people who don't exactly appreciate the aesthetics of suitmation / kigurumi, or, in less technical language, a guy in a rubber suit. One of the things I like best about Godzilla movies is that as soon as I glimpse Godzilla rising from the depths or appearing behind the mountains, I'm forced to suspend my disbelief.

By Carol Borden on October 10, 2006 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Dead Body Politic

The adage has it that truth is stranger than fiction. I swear that's true in Mexico. One of my favourite writers, hardboiled crime novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, has to struggle to keep up with the absurd plot of his beloved nation. Although Taibo is a fine writer, I come to him more for his cynical but humanist view of Mexican society, which lends itself perfectly to the private eye genre.

By Gutter Guest on September 14, 2006 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Hero's Return

Some may regard the birth of the superhero as June, 1938 with Action Comics #1. But while the fantastic popularity of the Man of Steel did have a profound effect on how "Hero" stories were told ever after, there were supermen already at work, protecting the dark alleys and gas-lit streets of Depression-era America with pre-comics-code rough justice. Doc Savage, The Spider, The Avenger, Operator #5 -- each patrolled the coarse-paper world of the Pulp Magazine. Each brought their own brand of law to the lawless, often with a .45 barking in each clenched fist. And perhaps the greatest of them all was The Shadow.
Continue reading...

August 31, 2006 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Catwoman: Silicon-Injected

In 2001, Catwoman was everything I ever wanted in a comic. I admit I was a sucker for her new look. A woman's stompy black boots are her pride and Catwoman's boots were stompy, black and flat after years of thigh high Pretty Woman stilettos. Not to mention that zippers with rings, black leather, kitty ears and experimental night vision goggles are just cool, way cooler than purple latex. The art by Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart and Mike Allred was loose, expressive and playful. Ed Brubaker's writing was hardboiled, but took after Raymond Chandler's fragile and battered humanism rather than Dashiell Hammett's breezy amorality.

By Gutter Guest on August 16, 2006 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

An Adept Adaptation

A Disease of Language (Knockabout - Palmano Bennett, 2005) reads like Alan Moore's application for the position of Official Ambassador to the Far Flung Realms of The Conscious Psychedelic Multiverse of Probability. And at the end of it, one is left with the distinct feeling that Moore is a very strong candidate for the position.

By Gutter Guest on July 20, 2006 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The CanConspiracy

Ancient castle ruins on North American soil, secret societies scuttling Atlantic exploration, and a grail tradition in Canada stretching back seven centuries? Canada is at the heart of a North American grail conspiracy. Or so says Michael Bradley, author of the popular Holy Grail across the Atlantic: The Secret History of Canadian Discovery and Exploration (1989) and in two recently published sequels. Bradley draws heavily on the work of alleged experts who claim that the Grail—or San Graal—is not just a chalice or cup but a family lineage, a dynasty, protected for centuries and traced back to the tribes of Benjamin or the children of Jesus. He carries the reader from a now-familiar account of European Grail tradition, to our own purported entry into the mystery: the alleged founding of a New World royal refuge in Nova Scotia in 1244. Whether you are a cynical skeptic, railing against leaps of logic and lack of solid historical research, or you are a fan of grand conspiracies, Bradley offers a strangely compelling anti-establishment history lesson that alleges Grail followers founded a clandestine royal refuge in Nova Scotia in 1244, Samuel de Champlain was a Grail secret agent, and finally Tommy Douglas should be recast as our uncrowned once-and-future king.

By Gutter Guest on March 30, 2006 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Happy Bloody Holidays

True crime isn't new. It wasn't invented by Truman Capote for In Cold Blood, although Capote certainly raised the bar for many crime writers. True crime has evolved from 19th century police procedural nonfiction, popularized in weekly journals like the Police Gazette, and later in crime pulps of the 1930s and 1940s which depicted the glamorized lives of contemporary criminals. True crime books, like popular mysteries, combine page-turning depictions of violence, the tribulations of a fictional or real investigator on a case, and obsessive rants on the nature of human evil. What better antidote to excessive family cheer than wondering if the relative you're passing the Christmas turkey to is actually a serial killer?

By Gutter Guest on December 22, 2005 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the Mouths of Babes

Almost as if Mitch knew what would follow, she held the top of the sheet back while Leda moved down and lightly kissed Mitch's breasts. A soft sigh broke free from Mitch's throat and evolved into a plaintive cry. Leda pulled herself up and her lips found Mitch's and crushed them, burning and moist.

"Mitch." Leda whispered, and they held each other fast and hard. "Mitch."

--From Vin Packer's Spring Fire (1952)

Everything I've learned, I've learned from lesbian pulp novels.

By Gutter Guest on November 17, 2005 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Author abducted by Aliens!

Aliens rarely abduct the authors of mass-marketed paperbacks. Once in a while, though, a writer drives along an Interstate highway or recklessly vacations in a remote mountain cabin. Whitley Strieber, the author of The Hunger and most-recently co-author of The Day after Tomorrow, was one of the first to capitalize on the alien abduction memoir to create his bestseller Communion: A True Story (1987). Before Communion, abduction stories were most often offered to readers in surprisingly banal transcribed interviews of abductees, usually sandwiched between "eye-witness" sketches of insectoid aliens and blurry photographs of saucer ships. In the 1980s, Strieber distorted the genre's themes to pen his self-declared autobiography as an American survivor traumatized by alien kidnappings, involuntary medical experiments, and memory tampering.

By Gutter Guest on October 13, 2005 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Romance Done Right

This week's piece on a maligned artform is by Chris Szego.

I read, on average, ten books a week. Seriously. In fact, I consider reading a physiological necessity like sleep, or chocolate: you can skimp on the proper amount for a while, but sooner or later, you have to get enough, and in the meantime, you're irritable and a little crazy. I own far too many books to keep them in the same building, let alone the same rooms. But no matter where I live, there's one book that's always on my shelf.

Most of us have one, a story we know by heart. A truly beloved book, the one that comes down from the shelf when life is tense and frustrating and we require a little something extra to get through the toughest bit. Mine is an old, battered ex-library copy of Eva Ibbotson's gorgeous romance novel, Magic Flutes. It's about music, family, love, and home, and was so beautifully written that I took German, so as better to understand Mozart's opera.

By Gutter Guest on August 18, 2005 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Paw through our archives

Science-Fiction ~ Comics ~ Romance ~ Screen ~ Videogames ~ Movies ~ Main

Every month we feature a guest star writer who has written a thoughtful 800 word article about a cultural form generally considered beneath consideration. Please send one or two line ideas to this address. We pay $80 on publication.

Of Note Elsewhere

The sound of electricity, the sound of water. Artist Atsushi Fukunaga creates sculptures with giongo or manga's onomatopoeic sound effects. ( via One Inch Punch and thanks, Mr. Dave!) ~Did you know Ursula Le Guin worked on an Earthsea screenplay with Peeping Tom and Black Narcissus' Michael Powell? I didn't. There's more in her Vice Magazine interview. (via Kaiju Shakedown) ~Origin Museum director, Joe Garrity, writes the Artful Gamer about building Richard "Lord British" Garriott an Ultima reagent box: "The Reagent Box ended up to be a 2-year effort in finding the individual reagents and binding each to a velvet base with brass wire, presenting them with a 19th-century-scientific look."
~

Every day is fun day at Kaiju Shakedown. This time: chibi Watchmen, awesome criterion-type designs for Chinese movies and a trailer for Cat Head Theatre's upcoming samurai film.

~American Elf James Kochalka is stuck in Vermont. Watch it. ~"No doubt the audience in the plush seats of the Tivoli was enthralled. For the first time in a feature film, they could hear the creaking of the stairs, the ghostly wind and the voices of the characters. Even the credits were spoken." Eric Veillette writes about The Terror and talkies in Toronto. ~View all Notes.
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