Mimsy Were the Borogoves

Book Reviews: From political histories to bad comics, to bad comics of political histories. And the occasional rant about fiction and writing.

Now podcasting FlameWar!

Jerry Stratton, January 1, 2006

Flamewar Introduction (416.7 KB MP3 file)

View audio.

Good evening. It’s 6:16 in California and this is Jerry Stratton podcasting on hoboes.com on Mimsy Were the Borogoves. It is the first of the first, two thousand and six.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be presenting you with FlameWar: The Passion of the Electric Messiah. Each installment will be available on Sunday evening at just a little past quarter after six.

FlameWar takes place in the near to mid future, mostly within the United States--or what we today call the United States. For the rest I’ll let the story speak for itself.

If you enjoy FlameWar, you might also enjoy the Walkerville Weekly Reader and It Isn’t Murder If They’re Yankees. FlameWar itself is currently unpublished. This is the most recent draft.

Have a pleasant evening.

You can either subscribe to the Mimsy RSS feed to get the podcast, or you can subscribe just to the FlameWar podcast.

November 26, 2007: FlameWar podcast removed

I’ve just removed the FlameWar podcasts. The book has changed a bit since last year, and I’m about to start sending it around to agents. So I didn’t want an older version on the web site.

Thanks for listening, and have a pleasant evening.

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July 16, 2006: One week left to buy FlameWar

There’s one more week to go before I pull the post-podcast draft of FlameWar from Lulu. I’ll be pulling it down on July 23, taking a short rest. Then I’ll give it another reading (private, this time) and start sending it around to agents. Wish me luck.

On the topic of Lulu purchases, Henry Baum’s North of Sunset comes highly recommended by POD-dy Mouth:

The story is rough and angry and profane—but it sure is compelling. I was one paragraph in before I realized I needed to make myself comfortable (granted, the first paragraph is a page and a half long.)

The writing is stellar—and I’m not just saying that because I finished reading 121 crappy books in a row. There are probably a whole bunch of influences here: Bukowski, Chandler, and of course the mandatory reference to Chuck Palahniuk. But once you’ve finished reading this book, I think you’ll agree it is not so much who influenced the writing; it is who this writing will influence.

I haven’t read it yet, but it is in my shopping cart.

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July 9, 2006: What else can I buy from Lulu?

There are a lot of interesting things happening on Lulu.com. If you want to buy the post-podcast FlameWar but are interested in averaging out the shipping over more than one book, I can strongly recommend some of them.

If you’re into William S. Burroughs or Grant Morrison, check out Steve Aylett’s “reprint” of the September 1975 issue of The Caterer•. I don’t know if they made the whole thing up or just the dialogue, but this is an amazing piece of work.

Faculty office. How may I help you?

I need a coffee pot in the shape of my own severred head. The coffee should come out the nose. Or out a gill-like frown on the forehead. Pick me up by my ears. Do it. Pick me up by my ears. And all these glories must be delivered in five of your earth minutes. Yeah—

This is the school faculty office, sir.

The art is in a late sixties, early seventies style, with some great seventies-style advertisements thrown in for good measure.

The Caterer is a companion piece to Steve Aylett’s “biography” of the author, Lint•, which I have not yet read.

If you’re a fan of illustrator David Hartman (Bubba Ho-Tep) you might find Sideshow Monkey interesting.

If you enjoy games, you might look at Donjon or The Shadow of Yesterday from Clinton R. Nixon, or my own Gods & Monsters.

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