Cloverfield

Gavin talked about it a little while ago and now Apple have a trailer for it up - personally I’m thinking some sort of Godzilla movie but the idea that it somehow ties into the Cthulhu Mythos is an interesting rumor that I keep hearing.. Though I do have to wonder how you could possibly transfer H.P. Lovecraft to the silver screen - I mean, Lovecraft’s horror is and has always been based on what you don’t see not anything else…

Michael Moore’s TV Nation (man I wish this theme capitalised words in the post title’s)

I’ll admit straight off the bat that I like Michael Moore - I know all the points for claiming that he gets in the way of his own story, that his portrayal of the facts in question has been called to account and so on. And yet, despite this I find that his targets often deserve a lot of whats coming to them so….

Strangely after reading this book seems I have to say that while this book does not lack a lot of these flaws (in my humble opinion) its not as bad, maybe because its from somewhat before Moore became the household name he is today. The book covers a number of the various segments that Moore did on the show ‘TV Nation’ along with a bit of the story behind the book and some parts about the show after it finished. If your in any way familiar with Moore’s style the content of this wont be that surprising - the basic strategy is ”absurdity + corporate jerks/injustice = mockery and entertainment”. Though to be fair, that’s not all of what this show was about and its a bit unfair to label it as such.

Some of the segments cover small things - like how the residents of Greenwich used the fact that they were rich to get away with closing a public beach for their own private use or setting off car alarms outside the car alarm company’s CEO’s house. Others, despite their absurdity have a much more serious point - Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken is a ridiculous concept yet the stuff he fought against in the show - unsafe baby-walkers, lead pollution and the use of ’scab’ labour are all serious issues and their being addressed was worthy of note. Among my personal favorites in the book were the visit to the former USSR to try and buy the nuclear missile that was aimed at Detroit and the ‘health care Olympics in which Moore compares the health care systems of Cuba, Canada and America - Cuba wins but the network changes it to Canada. All of which makes you wonder how many other news/documentary pieces are changed because ‘we can’t say that (for political reasons) on TV’. You also see the genesis of ‘Sicko’ in that particular piece btw.

The final chapter on the show itself covers the censored episodes - one about extreme anti-abortionists (as an aside Louis Theroux of the ‘weird weekends’ fame was the reporter who covered that segment) and again just referencing the ‘health care Olympics’ again, part of the reason that clip was censored was no advertiser wished for the piece to air near their ads. The ’savings and loan scandal’ - where they find out that nearly none of the men who had robbed all the money suffered for it at all and a few other clips.

The last bit I want to quickly talk about is the TV Nation opinion polls - which are vaugely absurd alright but do give you an insight into many Americans mindset - such as not wanting Puerto Rico to become a state becuase it would ‘mess with the flag’ to the fact that 15% of Prozac users wanted Dan Quale back because ‘Al Gore wasn’t funny enough and that while only 16% of Americans believe that ‘people are out to get them’, 46% of those own guns.

On a final note regarding the ‘fact checks’ heres a rebuttal to the ‘fact checks’ done by CNN lately…

Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern

Read this book a few weeks back by John Gray (of the Straw Dogs fame) and have been meaning to write a post on it since. The title of the book gives you a pretty good idea of what its supposed to be about and the back cover blurb gives a fairly detailed description;

”… as we become modern, we will become more reasonable. Nothing could be further from the truth… Al Qaeda is a product of modernity and of globalisation and it will not be the last group to use the products of the modern world in its own monstrous way.”

It’s a pity the book fails to live up to its own title and idea however. It does have many positives; its short (119 pages, 145 if you count the references and index), its easy enough to read because the chapters are fairly short and Gray’s writing style isn’t that bad, if perhaps a bit too academic.

But what exactly does he talk about? While the title and blurb would indicate that this would be a discussion on how Al Qaeda uses modern technology and media to both spread its message and commit attacks and how this is descended from similar groups like the Anarchists of the early 1900’s who did the same thing thats not the case. Yes, these things are studied, but Gray spends the bulk of the book on a philosophical discussion on what the word ‘modern’ actually means.

Which isn’t all bad in fairness. The opening chapter (and probably the best) ‘what Al Qaeda destroyed’ talks about how 9/11 was a blow against the idea that as the world develops we’ll all become more alike (’more modern’ in the parlance of the book) and how the idea that Al Qaeda is ‘medieval’ is a complete misnomer - having nothing to do with the facts and trying to diminish the links Al Qaeda has with the like of the Anarchists or Enlightenment thinkers. He draws very good links between the like of the positivist thinkers - who believed that you can ‘make’ the world the way you want it and Al Qaeda’s desire to make the world a ‘Muslim one’.

The problem is that shortly after this in the book, the author moves away from this talk to an extent. Instead he focuses on philosophical arguments about ‘where’ exactly these thinkers connect. While parts of this are interesting - the idea that Al Qaeda is a ‘Christian world’ creation based on the observation that only Abrahamic religions believe there is a purpose to history driving events and how similar behavior can be ascribed to modern Muslim fanatics being a good example.

There are many elements of Gray’s arguments that I just find hard to believe - mainly because he seems to be somewhat of a relativist. I’m not too sure why I get this feeling - going back on the book I can’t find a passage where he identifies himself as such but he seems to rubbish all ideas of ‘how the world should be’ - economic, scientific and religious. Now given that they are the main ways that the world has been organised, what else is there?

But again, the main flaw in the book has to be its focus on people who even in their own time were ignored - he spends nearly a chapter on a group of French Positivists from the 1850’s to whom he seems to attribute the Holocaust, Nazism and a number of other horrors.

However, despite these flaws, there are some great insights - his argument as to why the United States cannot continue as a global power is interesting - (basically, their economy is dependent on foreign investment, this allows their military might, once the foreign investors lose faith in the US a power they will pull out their money and voila! No more US ability to wage war)…

Towards the end of the book he does come back to the main idea of terrorism - and his basic idea is that Al Qaeda cannot be defeated. It is not an army and it has no center (despite the literal meaning of the name). Essentially, it will die once the majority of its number lose faith or join other causes. In many ways it is a phantom and no more substantial for that.

Anyway, for its size and if you are interested in this topic this is not a bad place to begin. Just don’t pay too much attention to the back cover blurb.

Ozzy Osborne, July 3rd the point theatre and my two days in the big schmoke…

Hmmmm, I don’t really know how I’m going to get into writing this. There’s a part of me that is inclined to do this is a bullet point way but sure to hell with it, I’m going to do it in bits and pieces.

The gig itself was only ok to be honest. I’ve been to 4 gigs so far and this was definitely the worst. I’ve also been right by the barrier at every one of the gigs I was ever at and that was the first one where I actually had to leave from there because of the crowd. I mean, its two days later and I’m noticing that my back and my ribs still hurt.

The music itself wasn’t that bad though. The opening act were some guys called ‘X-Space’? I’m not sure of the spelling or if thats even the right name of the band - they were greeted with cries of ‘who are you?’ and the lead singers attempts to impress by threatening members of the audience who were taking the piss just made him look like an ass. Also, while I know that no singer can remember all the songs by the band, if you can’t do a 20 minute set without having to look at the prompter at your feet every few lines of the song … well your in the wrong business.

Following them we had the ‘Black Label Society’. They were really the highlight of the gig for me - they were really into the music and the crowd were very into them. The only thing was that the problems I had with the crowd began here - most of us were shoulder-to-shoulder and ass-to-front crammed together, yet there was a good few people who insisted on moving and jumping like there was loads of room! I’m not a small person but when I’m being knocked over by a very fat 16 year-old (least I think he was 16, I couldn’t really tell) there is something very wrong. The band did about a 45 minute set which was cool.

The first 20-odd minutes of Ozzy Osborne I don’t really remember. This was becuase of the fact that after what happened while BLS were on-stage my friend and I decided to move somewhat back towards the barriers - which were for some reason like the kind of things horses jump over spaced randomly across the floor nearest the stage. I think they were supposed to stop mosh pits forming. Well they were absolute failures. But anyway. If I thought that the crowd were bad for BLS they were even worse for Ozzy. We had our backs to the barriers and we actually still couldn’t move. What I think happened is that even more people pushed forward from the back because thats the only explanation that makes sense. And again, with the ‘many people at this gig were stupid/cunts or both’ some guy and I, who were using the railing-thing in order to, you know stop falling down in the middle of a mosh pit were bitched at by some tart over her not being able to put her hands on the barrier as comfortably. After the two of us told her where to go and used the barriers, she started pushing against us. I’m fairly sure I caught her in the face with my elbow though so it’s all good…. But after the 20 minutes of this I just couldn’t take anymore. I mean, when your not a big fan of a band and your starting to feel like your ribs are being crushed. Well, that’s when I say enough is enough. I watched the rest of the gig from the seating area. About Ozzy himself, well he’s much more energetic than one would think onstage. Also, more of his music sounded like rock-ballads than I expected. And his set lasted and hour and 40 minutes which isn’t bad.

To be honest the highlight of my weekend was the visiting of the various bookshops around Dublin. At the moment I’m trying not to think of how much I spent on books over the five days I was off in Cork and Dublin. It’s rather depressing.

On the other hand, I finally completed my collection of the final issue of ‘Wildcats: Version 3.0′ that I was missing.
(Is it bad that finding this comic made me very happy?)

I also picked up several issues of the old 2000ad spinoff comic ‘Crisis’ which is actually very good. Beyond that, it was mainly just books that I was already interested in like the ‘Grendel’ hardcover by Matt Wagner collecting the early issues of his very excellent series. The latest ‘Fables’ book from Bill Willingham was a treat as usual and I got the second ‘Showcase; House of Mystery’ book - here’s hoping its as good as the last one…I was also quite interested to see that in Neil Gaiman’s career as a big novelist these days they’re collecting his old work for the masses too… I ended up with a bloomsbury edition of ‘Signal to Noise’ by himself and the always interesting Dave Mckaen as well as the fact that ‘Mr Punch’ by the same duo is also available from this crowd… I do wonder how exactly this works, as the amazon.com listings say that Dark Horse comics are bringing out the next edition stateside, so I suppose it must be a UK deal. Still though, if you come across a copy get it - I haven’t even read it myself but thats how much faith I have in these guys. I loved ‘Violent Cases’ by them so… And also, for the comic fan out there trying to convince a friend that comics aren’t just superheroes in stupid costumes, these guys are a very good place to start.

Also, the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while was two Dublin knackers and their mother(?) arguing over whether 80 and 60 = 140… I assume they were talking about change but still… Idiots.

And speaking of idiocy, my friend insisted that we get the train which cost 30€ -18€ more than the bus (I think, at least 15€). As it turns out, the train is so crowded that you have more legroom on the train and seeing as you have air-conditioning on the bus that you control, your also more comfortable on than on the train where you have no control at all. And to add insult to injury, the tickets on the way back were never checked so I’m rightly pissed.

Still though, a nice few days away. And I’ve just realised that this is probably the longest post I’ve ever written. So, if you read the whole thing, thanks!

The Wheel of Time : Abridged Version

One of those things that most fans of this will have possibly already seen but just in case - a sampler;

”Perrin Aybara was the blacksmith’s apprentice. He might have been a blacksmith himself by now, except he kept getting left back. He had muscles like steel cables, including where his neck should have been. On one of his scarred hands was scrawled a reminder: WHITE HOT METAL — DON’T TOUCH! COLD METAL — OKAY TO TOUCH.”

The rise and fall of ecw

Just read this book over two days (more than two days ago though because finding the time to write posts is getting troublesome) and realised when I saw it that the DVD ‘the Rise and Fall of ECW’ was the exact same thing word-for-word nearly. Well, at least the clips of it I saw seemed to be. D’oh! But anyway, I have some notes on it that apply to either (though I would recommend the DVD - wrestling is a visual entertainment so…). The book by Thom Loverro is pretty good overall I have to admit - apart from a somewhat weird piece at the start which links Greek/Roman/etc. traditional wrestling games with the modern version (technically true but… seriously like) the book gives a very good history of what Paul Heyman then moves onto his work in Eastern Championship Wrestling before it morphed into Extreme Championship Wrestling.

In general Loverro has a pretty good feel for the work and the people involved and through the many interviews really manages to flesh out the feelings of the people involved and what happened at various points. There are the odd moments of confusion though which is kind of annoying. A major example that I couldn’t get my head around was how the NWA was double crossed by Paul Heyman - I get that right after spitting in their faces (metaphorically anyway) getting Dennis Coraluzzo (on behalf of the NWA to agree to some of the things he did agree to looked bad for the NWA but double-crossed? The general explanation may make more sense if your a major wrestling historian but… The same happens later regarding Mike Awesome and his departure - how exactly was he involved in a title match barely weeks (which is what the books timeline seems to suggest) after he left the promotion under very bad terms? Again, someone who remembers this from the time or is a major, major fan may know but given that ECW is in many ways better known in death than life it seems a bit much….

The other major fault with the book seems to be in its assertion that ECW could never have been big - while I understand that a book dealing with the people (and written to tie into a WWE production) would never be too critical the book never quite explains how ECW went ‘wrong’. There a few obtuse references to bad decisions by Paul Heyman on a business sense but these come out of nowhere and are never really gotten into.

Despite these flaws the book is still pretty interesting and gives a fairly good feel for the whole thing so for any wrestling fan looking for some good reading for the summer (wonderful as it has been in Eire) I can happily recommend it…..

Another fantastic book cover

somewhat related to this book cover..

summer reading

‘Inspired’ by my friend Cethan and his bebo blog on summer reading I decided I’d give the same idea a shot. For those of you who have never been in my room at home (the vast majority of you I hope) there has been a pile of books by the radiator beside my bed for several years - it is a very big pile.
the pile of books 2

Now, I’m not certain that trying this will actually work but what I’m going to do over the summer is try to read as many of these books as possible… Given that I start a new job Monday and will be working all summer (hopefully) whether I’ll even make the halfway mark is open to debate. But I’m going to give it a shot.

The List.
I’m mostly going to be reading these in whatever order I feel like. Let us know if anything is quite good. As an aside (read) beside a book means I have already read it but for some reason (either its very good or I’ve forgotten the bulk of the book) I’m rereading it. (*) beside a book means I started reading it (and didn’t finish it for some reason) or it’s short stories and I’ve only read some of it or its a history/politics book and I only read parts the first time around. As a last bit of list making I’m going to break the list into three - comics, fiction and non-fiction.

Fiction
1) Shadows - edited by Charles L. Grant
2)Right on time - Pauline Mclynn
3)Rumors of the undead - Steve Niles
4)Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
5)Collected ghost stories - M.R. James
6)Modesty Blaise - Peter O’ Donnell
7)Fear and loathing on the campaign trail ‘72 - Hunter S. Thompson (read)
8)Captain Outrageous -Joe R. Landsdale
9The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
10)Earl Aubec - Michael Moorcock (*)
11)Trevayne -Robert Ludlum
12)Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein (read)(also one of the best books ever written)
12)Time enough for love -Robert A. Heinlein (*)

Comics
13)Flash Gordon Vol 1. - Mac Raboy (*)
14)The Spider - King of crooks - Jerry Siegel (he of Superman fame)
15)A distant soil - vol 3. - Colleen Doran
16)Ghost World - Daniel Clowes
17)Buddy go home! - Peter Bagge
18)Buddy’s got three moms - Peter Bagge
19)Buddy bites the bullet -Peter Bagge
20)Excelsior! - Stan Lee (not actually a comic but aimed at comic readers so…)
21)X-men Legends - Stan Lee (editor)
22)The Frightful Four
23)Epileptic -David B.
24)McSweeny’s Quarterly Concern - Issue no.13. - Various
25)Definitive Shi Vol.1 - Billy Tucci
26)Essential Thor Vol.2 - Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (*)(appearently - I don’t remember starting this at all)
27)Essential Incredible Hulk - Stan Lee and Herb Trimpe
28)Showcase Presents Justice League of America - Mike Sekowsky, various.
29)The chickens are restless - Gary Larson (read)
30)Random Acts of management - Scott Adams
31)Essential Astonishing Ant-Man - Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Don Heck
32)Micky Parade Geant - Various (this is a French Disney comics collection gotten for me by an ex, oh about 3years ago now.. its actually kind of sickening as a comics fan as its 300 pages in a format about the size of a normal novel and it sold for 3,90€ in France - paying 5€ for some single issues of comics that are 22pages in Ireland these days…)

Fiction
33)The lake house - James Patterson
34)Bad Men - John Connolly
35)Exploring English -Gill and Macmillan
36)Bare Bones - Kathy Reichs
37)The Trojan Women and other Plays - Euripides
38)The Aeneid - Virgil
39)The Odyssey - Homer
40)The War of The Flowers - Tad Williams
41)The Nature of the Beast - Frances Fyfield
42)Resident Evil - Genesis - Paul Anderson and Keith DeCandido
43)V for Vendetta (the book of the film) - Steve Moore
44)Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
45)Harvest Home - Thomas Tryon
46)Alchymist - Ian Irvine
47)Chimaera - Ian Irvine
48)The Soprano Sorceress - L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
49)Darkness Rising - L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
50)The Shadow Sorceress - L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
51)The Devil you know - Mike Carey
52)Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
53)The ‘Caine’ Mutiny - Herman Wouk
53)Sister Alice - Robert Reed
54)I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
55)Isaac Asimov’s Robot City 5 -Rob Chilson
56)Isaac Asimov’s Robot City 6 - William Hu
57)The Garden of Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
58)Cradle - Arthur C. Clarke

Non-Fiction
59)White Mughals - Willaim Darlymple
60)Branded - Alissa Quart (*)
61)Fat Land - Greg Critser
62)The Middle Mind - Curtis White
63)Stalingrad - Joachim Wieder
64)Political Philosophy - Adam Swift
65)Nothing Is Impossible - Christopher Reeve
66)Twentieth Century Ireland - Dermot Keogh
67)Politics in the Republic of Ireland - Coakley and Gallagher
68)The Diary of Ma Yan - Ma Yan
69)This is Paradise! - Hyok Kang
70)Balthasar’s Odyssey - Amin Maalouf
71)After Daybreak - Ben Shephard
72)Secret War Heroes - Marcus Binney
73)The Great Philosophers - Brian Magee
74)In the time of madness - Richard Parry
75)The Longest Battle - Richard Hough
76)The Rise of Western Christendom - Peter Brown
77)An Army at Dawn - Rick Atkinson
78)The First World War - Malcolm Brown
79)World War 1 - Various
80)From Weimar to Wall Street - Various
81)Depression and Dictatorship - Various
82)Europe - a History - Norman Davies (*)
83)The Globalization of World Politics - Baylis & Smith
84)History’s Great Untold Stories - Joseph Cummins
85)Introducing Machiavelli - Patrick Curry (read)
86)U.S Diplomacy since 1900 - Robert Schulzinger
87)The KGB in Europe and the West - Christopher Andrew and Vasli Mitrokhin
88)No Logo - Naomi Klein (*)
89)The Boer War - Thomas Pakenham
90)Concise History of the Modern World - William Woodruff
91)The Bolshevik Revolution - E.H. Carr
92)The War of the World - Niall Furguson
93)American Government and Politics - Robert Singh
94)The Shackled Continent - Robert Guest (*)
95)Unspeak - Steven Poole
96)The Vote - Paul Foot
97)America, Russia and the Cold War - Walter LaFeber

Fiction (again)
98)The Reality Dysfunction - Peter F. Hamilton (*)
99)The Neutron Alchemist - Peter F. Hamilton
100)Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
101)Coalescent - Stephen Baxter
102)Phase Space - Stephen Baxter (read)
103)Paycheck - Philip K. Dick
104)Minority Report - Philip K. Dick
105)Stardust -Neil Gaiman
106)Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
107)Accelerando - Charles Stross
108)Thunderball - Ian Fleming
109)Dr. No - Ian Fleming
110)Mars 3 - Fuyumi Soryo
111)Tokyopop sneak peaks 2005 vol 1 - various
112)Tokyopop sneak peaks 2005 vol 2 - various
113)Monument - Ian Graham
114)The Endymion omnibus - Dan Simmons (*)(I’ve not been mad about this - hence its unfinished nature, but The Hyperion Cantos which Simmons did is genius - one of the best books I’ve read in years)
115)Dante’s Equation - Jane Jensen
116)The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction - Mike Ashley(*)
117)Best New Science Fiction 16 - Gardner Dozois
118)Best New Science Fiction 18 - Gardner Dozois
119)Paranoia - Joseph Finder
120)Ken Macleod - Engine City
121)The Cornelius Quartet - Michael Moorcock
122)Heartfire - Orson Scott Card
123)Shadow of the Hegemon- Orson Scott Card
124)Shadow Puppets- Orson Scott Card
125)Shadow of the Giant- Orson Scott Card
126)The Portable Door - Tom Holt
127)In Your Dreams - Tom Holt
128)The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer
129)Congo - Michael Crichton
130)Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde

Non-fiction (Again)
131)Bears Can’t run downhill - Robert Antwood
132)Micro-Nations -lonely planet
133)The paupers cookbook - Jocasta Innes

Update: Right I’ve had quite a while and so far my list has been progressed by seven books, at the rate I’m going this may be finished in two summers time… Possibly. Books I’ve actually gotten off the list are in italics now

A side of Iran you don’t really hear about these days…

As part of my summer plans I have a load of reading to get through (I’ll probably post the list later after my friend did the same - it’ll be a long list). But I also have a good few old magazines to read and while I was reading ‘BBC History magazine’ (August 2006 edition) I came across an ‘events in context: Iran’ article which sought to explain why Iran has been behaving the way it has. Its interesting stuff and gives you a fairly good idea why Iran is so distrustful of the west; In summary its the following - repeated interventions over a century and it has a genuine history as a nation (rather than many other countries of the Middle East which are either ‘made up’ or have changed so much over centuries that there is no sense of continuity).

A line that caught my eye began

Persia/Iran has therefore been an independent, sovereign ‘nation state’ for the past 500 years. There is no other country in the Middle East with a sovereign identity of similar length. The nearest rivals for such status would be France, Britain and Spain far to the west, Russia to the north, China to the east and Abyssinia/Ethiopia to the south. Even Turkey would not really qualify becuase its political predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, was a huge multi-national empire of which Turkey was a relatively small part. In the Moslem Middle East, pride in the eternal territorial, political and cultural concept of Iran (Iranzamin) is unique.

It then goes on to point out that Iran has a different language, religion and culture (Farsi/Azeri, Shia and Persian) which tends to lead to the sense of being ‘different’.

The thing that caught my eye most on the first time reading though was the following lines

… another difference between Iran and most of the rest of the region and indeed the world, for Iran is a heady mix of democracy and theocracy. It is arguably more democratic than other major Middle Eastern Islamic countries apart from Turkey. Even its theocratic assembly which appoints the country’s supreme leader is elected by popular suffrage - a fact which gives it some popular legitimacy.

The article then points to how the interventions in Iran meant that the only method of organising resistance to the Shah was through the Mosques meant that the growth of political power for the clergy was inevitable in a way, using the example of how many farmers were dispossessed of their lands in the 1960’s - resulting in them having to move to the cities where the only aid came from the clerics and not the state.

But in general, and especially for those who simply wish to see Iran as ‘evil’ I would imagine that this sort of thing is what they should be reading - this article manages to make the Iranians demands seem less unreasonable and shows why they might feel the way they do.

Peace and War

The last few days I read this ‘trilogy’ by Joe Haldeman - consisting of his famous book ‘The Forever War’, it’s sequel ‘Forever Free’ and its companion ‘Forever Peace’. They’re well worth a read - especially if your a fan of military science-fiction.

I didn’t read ‘the Forever War’ this time as I had read it fairly recently - a few months ago anyway, thing is though I’m now tempted to go back and do so… Simply because it’s that good. But the other two novels are pretty good too - ‘forever free’ is fairly short and in many ways reads like a short story, especially in its scope. Though the end of it takes the book to fairly extreme places. Despite this it is still a good book and the ‘Deus Ex Machina’ elements are… acceptable I guess.

‘Forever Peace’ is probably the more interesting of those two though. In many ways there are elements that will relate to modern readers best of all three books. While ‘the Forever war’ dealt with a society that was changing so quickly that depending on when you left you may have had a hard time accepting the ‘next generation’ as even being human, removed from the Vietnam context that element doesn’t have the same kick it used to. However, the idea of a war being fought between the ‘First world’ and the ‘Third world’ with the first world fighting from a distance and only not winning outright owing to a lack of desire for casualties (at least on our side) it will be disturbingly relateable to those of us around today.

Anyway, you can get the trilogy edition of the books for about 13quid so….