Another lousy book which made great movies.
Stephen Boyd played the villain Messala as a jilted gay lover of Heston’s title character. Heston was unaware at the time.
3 Likes
Gibson had been hospitalized recently for a fall (he broke some bones–important bones). He spent several days in and then continued his convalescence in a rented hospital bed in his home.
He mentioned it on his Twitter account, here’s a very brief and insufficient thread using Twitter’s advanced search function (I just used “hospital” as a keyword, he tweeted a lot more than what is listed on this results page, but those tweets didn’t have that word in it):
I haven’t seen No Maps… but I’d loved to get my own copy of it, especially to play during road trips. Thanks for reminding me of it.
6 Likes
Thank you. I bet the unusual winter weather in Vancouver is challenging with all the hills
1 Like
That is brutal.
1 Like
Lovecraft is definitely unbelievably super-racist; but the twist with him that I like is that he’s racist in a profoundly haunted, paranoid, deeply-non-triumphalist sort of way.
You’ve got your basic sorts who think that the anglo-saxon protestant is the apex of humanity and sufficient application of eugenics, the Maxim gun; and a blue eyed Jesus will serve to handle the rest so long as we take up the white man’s burden with sufficient masculine vigor; Lovecraft has roughly the same outline of human superiority; but knows that all measures will prove irrelevant when we are ourselves consumed by our blasphemous miscegenate ancestry and turn into a horrible fish/frog.
None of this is intended to be exonerative, nor is it; but it does make Lovecraft something of a break from the more earnest and optimistic brand of super-racists; despite his being no better than the rest of them.
2 Likes
His whole point was “race mixing” WAS the blasphemous thing that would bring white people down…
4 Likes
Sandy Peterson (creator of the Call of Cthulhu RPG) did a super deep dive on Lovecraft’s racism a while back.
1 Like
Sems to me that just because someone’s white supremacist ideology is weird doesn’t somehow make it better or more intriguing than other kinds of racism.
6 Likes
And honestly, at the heart of the thing, I just don’t think it is that weird. 
4 Likes
im somewhat behind the times, but that is the only book i regret reading this year.
granted, im not generally a fan of his and it was a loan from a friend, but i really didn’t get the point of retelling genesis especially when none of the rules of science or a simulated experience made sense?
ah yes, i will agree to an afterlife where i can see in advance online that i will become a literally mindless drone of some narcissistic god dude. yes, sign me right up please
the chapter and a half or so on ameristan though? yeah, definitely. that was almost a great short story and had hints of a solid novel
i hadn’t liked his more recent books, but then: peripheral? that was maybe the novel stephenson had been trying to write. it was good, almost cyberpunk again. scifi tech as a way to look back on now. maybe there’s sequels at this point? i should look
i had no idea about his accident. yikes
3 Likes
The short story is an underappreciated form
Usually the same number of ideas as a novel but it doesn’t string us along for 400 pages first
5 Likes
Agreed
I still like most of the ones in that famous collection by this guy.
1 Like
You’ll be happy to hear that there is:
This (which takes place in a world where Hillary Clinton won and it is made clear that that was the turning point preventing a dystopia) and John LeCarée’s Agent Running in the Field which shits all over Brexit were two books that preserved my sanity in 2020.
3 Likes
Speaking of Lovecraft, his obsession with hidden madness and inhuman influences lurking in the blood makes a ton of sense when you realize his father went mad and died of neurosyphilis when he was a child, and his mother ended up in a mental asylum as well. Old Howard had a very personal anxiety about inherited corruption that could erupt at any time and make you go mad or degenerate into a wreck of who you were!
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
