Much of the development of videogames passed me by, despite my early and continuing interest, thanks to my long voluntary…
Aesthetic symbols
Having been interested in comics for a very long time, I have of course been aware of manga. Until now,…
Not quite
Martin Scorsese has something of a reputation as a film maker who does movies about criminals in New York, but…
Central admixture
Having recently read and written about Quicksilver, the book which precedes The Confusion in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle trilogy, there’s…
Vivid conviction
Martin Scorsese enjoys making films about criminals. He likes representing their lives and their culture, and he often collaborates with…
Rhyming cinema
One thing I’ve had reinforced through watching the Rudolph Maté directed Robert Mitchum vehicle Second Chance (1953), is the total…
For the bakers
I’m fortunate enough to be closely related to someone (my mum) who is something of an authority on the state…
Light touch, heavy themes
I inhabit a timeline in which the definitive version of Michael Moorcock’s huge fantasy sequence is The Tale of The…
Mumbling in the pocket
On the last day of last year, the death was announced of one of the most enigmatic and under-recorded figures…
Surface is depth
Orlando is a very complex and sophisticated film based on a very complex and sophisticated book which I haven’t read.…
No conflict
The American economy has had its ups and downs—in the 1970s manufacturing crashed so badly that several large cities were…
Open worlds
Aladdin Sane was my first Bowie album. Not the first Bowie I heard, and not even the first of his…
Everything happens only once
My exploration of Kim Stanley Robinson’s oeuvre is proceeding in a kind of pincer movement, reading books alternately from either…
My grandfather’s hats
It’s a strange privilege to have had a grandfather who was, as he once put it, ‘world famous to five…
Oliver Arditi 