datajunkie: Schizo Re-Post Au Go Go Part 2!

OK, OK... i know you're wondering to yourself "When's that Skywald stuff gonna come down the pipe?", and rightly so. Well the answer is, not today - that's fer sure. Due to circumstances beyond our control.... balh, blah-blah, blah-blah......
Let's enjoy this revamped and enhanced slighty schizophrenic "Blast from the Past" from the ol' archives while i get a chance to remember to breathe.... Don't worry, it's all PRIMO stuff!
First - from the good old dependable right brain.....
John W. Campbell/ASTOUNDING Science Fiction/EXPLORING TOMORROW
Apart from writing many numerous stories & novels in the 1930s - including "Who Goes There?" adapted into "The Thing", first in the 50's in a watered down version, and WAY more faithfully by John Carpenter in the 80's, John W. Campbell was THE editor in SF in the 40's. As editor at ASTOUNDING Science Fiction (later Analog (!?!) he shaped the talents of many young tyros who later became grandmasters in the field. You name 'em, they wrote their best stuff for Campbell. Here's some swell covers from the 1940s...

...and i got word that this was a muchly desired repost - so here it is, a nifty collection of 50's Steve Ditko SF and Horror tales i put together all from the house of Charlton. Stories are (in no particular order) JOURNEY'S END, THE CONQUERED EARTH, THE DESCISION, STRANGE GUESTS OF TSARUS, SECRET OF CAPTAIN X, MYSTERY PLANET, JUGGERNAUTS OF JUPITER, ESCAPE & LIBRARY OF HORROR and come from various publications that fall well into the public domain.
Click here for - 50's Ditko Volume 1

... and now from the weird and wonderful left brain......GOTHIC ROMANCE!
More excellent stories and art by Steve Ditko and the usual suspects - Tom Sutton, Joe Staton, Joe Gill & Nicola Cuti!
Mid-70's Gothic Romance from the "Big C"! It don't get much weirder than this!

Haunted Love #4

Haunted Love #5
And last but not least - someone asked me about robots.... well, as Campbell said in the intro to the EXPLORING TOMORROW episode posted above... and i'm paraphrasing him here - If you go up to a person and tell him something and then ask if he understands what you mean he'll say yes... and he does but if you do that with a robot (or computer for that matter... hell, even some people i guess...) it will respond yes but it's usually not the case... because they're dumb! Anyone who's read Asimov or even knows his three laws knows that there's still gonna be screwups....

Robots shmoe-bots.... what are we gonna do about robots.

I'd almost welcome horny old "Zeke" here, but we don't get no humanoid or metal men, as we all saw in the movies, but automated vir(tu)al systems that replicate humans in some way or another. Self replicating, self sustaining , viral simulations that really get me mad.....

You know in some ways Phil Dick got it 100% right, and it's not getting any better... we're creating these homeostatic simulacra... "virtual people"... or virtual workers (and robot comes from the Polish word for worker, don'cha know - Kapek, R.U.R. and so on) ....anyway, simulated "people" who do stuff, but they're more than a little dumb and don't know what they're doing, because they're not alive or self aware as such, so it's kind of like a bad tape loop playing over and over... but like in Phils' story "Second Variety"... ultimately, they'll overwhelm us by force of numbers and our tendency to anthropomorphize anything that moves. Seeya later homo saps.....

Spam and voice-mail hell are two examples just off the top of my pointy little head... BAD ROBOTS... or for example those automated payment systems that send you email that "they've" GOT your payment, and will process it SHORTLY?!? *ARGH!* Robots, gumming people up and wasting our time, you and me and everyone else too... i'm sure there are LOTS more examples.....

Where's my wise-cracking but faithful robot sidekick? Where's the automated talking cars with plummy British accents that give you dating tips? Come back Rosie... all is forgiven! Hell, at this point i'd settle for a computer i could talk to that actually understood what i was saying instead of having to pound this 19th Century keyboard. Instead i get mail about hot chicks that want to meet or for me to check them out out their webcam, real estate and stock market scams from hell and of course, deals on viagra. And how do these "robots" know about my penis size anyway? What databank is THAT in? Huh?
OK... down boy..... no point gettin' worked up over all this madness... it is what it is..... and that's the problem i guess....
....i have seen the future - and it doesn't work!
..........oh well......

Over and out from your pal, hyper dave - that frazzled datajunkie artifact modulator man...

datajunkie

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Schizo Re-Post Au Go Go Part 2!

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