Pornokitsch

List compiled by DavidBowie.com. 

I've seen this going around a lot, and it is one of the more interesting - and eclectic - reading lists. So I've stashed it here to mull over properly.

I've also cleaned it up a tiny bit to add publication dates and fix some small typos. Where the books are free online, I've added links to legal download sites.

A month or so ago, this exchange happened during a reddit AMA:

Reddit user vlatheimpaler:

Have you been surprised that there's such a strong interest in watching you play Fallout 4 instead of extra writing spent towards Doors of Stone? I figured it would be 50/50, or maybe skewed a little bit towards writing, but I was surprised that Fallout 4 wins every single day.

Patrick Rothfuss:

I think it shows pretty clearly that people who howl for book three aren't as interested in donating money to make the world a better place.

The context, in a nutshell, is that as part of Patrick Rothfuss’ annual (and very generous) fundraising for Worldbuilders, he let people pay to choose whether or not he would play Fallout 4 or spend extra time writing his next book.

There was a mild (and probably justified) kerfuffle about Rothfuss’s tone in this response, but then, the dude’s also raised $1m+ for charity this year. Let’s allow him a brief moment of crankiness. 

In the past, I've looked into the hypothesis that 'readers are better people', and found it (to my surprise), demonstrably (and gratifyingly) true. So in the interest of testing another hypothesis, let's look into this one: "Are the people demanding Doors of Stone less likely to donate money to make the world a better place?"

QUICK, TO THE MATHMOBILE!

A year in, we've succumbed to the lure of nostalgia and done a review show of all the One Comics to date. Which of the series we said we’d stick with did we follow? Where did we (very quickly) change our minds?

What is the secret to the perfect One Comic? (A combination of smut, Bex and Jared sniping at each other and a healthy disregard for received wisdom.)

As if a clip show weren't exciting enough, the technical challenges that plagued us at the end of the year affected the sound quality of the new parts of this. A fuzzy clip show! What else could you ask for?!

So many people with so many memories about Bowie and, yet, some things remain constant across generations, cultures, time and space. What seems to be said the most is that he stood with the freaks, the geeks, the weirdos; that he made it okay for us all to be those people who didn't fit, and who couldn't fit.

There's good Chambers and bad Chambers and The Moonlit Way (1919) is firmly in the latter camp.

This ponderous and preposterous tale - that of an American artist drawn into a Prussian plot in the early days of World War I - is mostly an excuse for rampant jingoism and patriotic drum-beating. Virtually every other page is given over to a lengthy rant about 'Teutonic conspiracies' and the 'porcine Hun', as well as notes about how Britain fights on the 'side of Christ' and 'pacifism is a type of sexual perversion'. The latter is a lengthy diatribe given by a fictional doctor, so you know it is true.

Garry, our square jawed artist/scion of a rich family, is a typically Chambersian character and is painted by route. Although wealthy, he's committed to his art, and The Moonlit Way begins with him in Paris, pretending to be an impoverished student and enjoying himself immensely. It is there he encounters the dancer Thessalie, a beautiful young noblewoman who is the toast of Europe and the object of many a skeezy lordling's fantasy. Thessalie has been bartered to a French politician by the Teutonic Illuminati, and, when Garry meets her, she's hiding from her future husband.

Pelagic red crabs have returned to Monterey Bay!

I don't know what this means, but there are worse things to get excited about. Plus, they're kind of cute. For crabs.

It’s usually some warped remix version that plays at the studio I work out at, but then, hey, aren't we all some warped remix version of ourselves when we work out?

The first to hit the news, of course, was Zombie Elvis. To the delight of loyal fans and conspiracy theorists, he emerged from his Memphis tomb looking very well-groomed for a corpse, hips dipping and swaying as he tried to walk. Security cameras and cell phones caught his first steps, right up until he began feeding.

Three old science fiction stories, liberated from the vaults of Project Gutenberg. Includes E.E. Doc Smith's "Tedric", Charles Dake's A Strange Discovery (his sequel to Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym) and C.H. Hinton's Scientific Romances. They're all... flawed... but very interesting.

"Tedric" (1953) and "Lord Tedric" (1954) by E.E. Doc Smith

"Tedric" is good ol' fashioned sword and sorcery novelette, bracketed by some science fictional wand-waving. Professors from the SPACEFUTURE see the Darkest Timeline coming about and, accordingly, fiddle about in the past to find a way of preventing it. Their roving time-eye lands on Tedric - an ironworker in a quasi-fantasy realm who is disgruntled with the whole 'human sacrifice' ethos of the reigning theocracy. The friendly professors pass Tedric the secrets of steelworking and the ironworker (6'4" and 200+ pounds of man-muscle) builds himself an Iron Steel Man suit and a big sword. A one man revolution ensues. 

I always wind up writing 3,000+ word versions of these posts, and then delete them: there are few things on the internet more annoying than bloggering (verb. 'to blog about blogging, at the expense of saying anything remotely interesting'). Rather than bore you with sixteen pages of cod philosophising and blithering self-aggrandisement: bullets!

Executive summary

• This is the year we went from 'a couple of people yelling into the void' to 'a dozen people yelling into the void'
• By the numbers, our most successful year ever. And growing.
• We published 260ish articles from a dozen regular contributors and a horde of guests. That includes 175+ reviews of books, comics, films, radio plays, games and stuff.
• Thank you, thank you, thank you. Being read feels awesome.