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What's this Kilmt exhibition you speak of, johnnystress?  The missus is a massive Jaws fan, and would love to see Ed's exhibition, but we need just a tad more pull-factor to brave the Irish Sea in these penny-pinching times.  Klimt might just tip the scales.

Paul's Prog Slog Blog currently has an excellent piece on the joys and horrors of Quality Comics, with plenty of stuff I didn't know:

//http://progslog.blogspot.com/

Run, Forrest, run!

I didn't know it was going to be a comedy!  That looks brill, especially Tony's gimpy little love-me grin.  I'm also delighted to see Newton as Rice, since I can't abide either woman - hate harmony.  And how many times has James Cromwell played the President now?  Is this the fourth or fifth?  It gets confusing.

I'll be a little annoyed if they belabour the fact that he was a drunken waster in his youth, that really isn't the point - it's that he's been a bloody menace as President that's the issue.  I feel a certain empathy for the drunken waster (apart from the drunk-driving bit), and harping-on about it borders on the hypocritical.  It's what he did with his political life that concerns me.

[The Engines of God]

Addendum, deserving of a post to himself:  the woefully underrated Jack McDevitt.  Every one a classic of adventure-SF, from The Engines of God to Deep Six and Omega, A Talent for War, Moonfall, The Hercules Text, Ancient Shores, he just keeps churning out light-weight gripping SF fun at Pratchett-like speeds.  

He's not the most brilliant writer there ever was, but boy do his novels rip along, peppered with disaster on a cosmic scale, xeno-archaeology, insane hard SF rescues, ancient weapons, the occasional good SF idea and plenty of unstoppable countdowns. If you read one of his novels where the fate of an expedition doesn't hang on a single dial veering ominously into the red or a tether that's two inches too short, you've skipped a chapter.  Perfect holiday reading.

[The Dispossesed]

Lordy, where to start!

The Dispossesed and Left Hand of Darkness, perfect companion pieces, both by Le Guin, and I just have to add the novella collections Four Ways to Forgiveness and  The Birthday of the World - in particular the incredible "Old Music and the Slave Women" short, which will move you to tears.  Not only is she original and thought-provoking, but she can really, really write.  

For first contact novels, Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky takes some beating, and its forerunner A Fire Upon the Deep has more weird well-thought-out aliens than you can shake a stick at.  He's not that prolific, but anything you can find by Vinge is good.

David Brin's long Uplift series lost its way a bit at some point, but middle entries Startide Rising and The Uplift War are fantastic novels of a complex inter-galactic civilisation.

Niven and Pournelle's gung-ho alien invasion novel Footfall is everything Indepenence Day should have been.  The human's solution to their devastated launch capability is astounding.

Fountains of Paradise.  As much a novel about Sri Lanka as a SF novel, this is my favourite Clarke book.

Asimov's first three or four Foundation books should not be missed, I forget which one you should bail out at, although to be honest I even enjoyed the endless prequels.  The early Robot books are also awesome SF mysteries, Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, and The Complete Robot.

On the Wyndham front, another vote for The Kraken Wakes and Triffids, but basically everything he ever wrote is worth a go.

John Christopher's brilliance doesn't stop with Death of Grass, I'd add personal fave Wrinkle in the Skin and The World in Winter.  Avoid 'The Caves of Night', though.  Gakk!

Moorcock's stunning Behold the Man and intriguing quasi-sequel Breakfast in the Ruins are his best 'SF', in amongst all his other wonderful psychadelic weirdness.

I always like to add Pohl's Merchants of Venus/Gateway/Heechee saga, in particular the incomparable second movement Gateway.  See also Man Plus.

If all these are a bit old-hat, you could do a lot worse than Ken MacLeod's Learning the World, another first contact corker, and I really enjoyed the Alastair Reynold sorta-generation-ship story Pushing Ice.

One not to miss is The Time Ships, Baxter's brilliant authorised sequel to Wells' The Time Machine, well worth reading both in one go.  Baxter's Titan and Raft also kick ass. Also good is Bear's amazing duology Hammer of God and Anvil of Stars - epic SF tragedy.

There's no need here to further endorse I Am Legend, The Stars My Destination, The Forever War or Flowers for Algernon - they're all classics that exceed expectations.

I equally feel no need to praise Iain Banks: as well as the awesome Player of Games and Use of Weapons, it's all good, with the possible exceptions of the conclusion-less "The Algebraist", drifty "State of the Art", and the "no-M" books "Song of Stone" and "Canal Dreams".  Everything else is superb.

I have to stop. I have work to do.

Hey Presto - free Meg !!

Brilliant!  Why not take three?  You'd increase the Meg's sales figures!  Oh, wait, morality - that bloody thing again.

The sequence [spoiler]in the zoo[/spoiler]is actually horrific - it's the first time I had to stop and fast-forward something my toddler was watching.  Having been drawn in by copying's Mumble's endearing dancing[spoiler]and Elvis-like dad, I found him watching as grim a meditation on captivity as I've ever seen[/spoiler].  I'd rather they'd found some resolution that avoided humans altogether, except as distant figures, and kept it as mild commentary on the value of individuality versus conformity.  Of course, that'd make it the same as almost every other kid's movie ever made, but at least it would have had well-animated penguins performing elaborate dance numbers [spoiler]rather than some utterly muddled eco-message ("be cute: or else", I think).[/spoiler]

'Sonia, your sister is dying.'

Bizarrely that same monotonic catchphrase bedevilled my own circle of friends back in the mid-80's.  When delivered with the correct intonation it could reduce any gathering to hysterics.

Judge Dredd would have made sure the city took responsibility for the monster, and had it captured or killed to spare innocent lives

Indeed, as he has done many times.  Not to mention missions against Dune Sharks, Giant Spiders, Regular-sized Spider Plagues, etc. etc.  Maybe this is a case where Dredd's famously soft-heart for animals (Dredd's Law against vivisection, for example) is in conflict with his oft-stated duty-of-care for the people of the Cursed Earth?  

Either way, nice dragon!

Yes, I could go to Barcelona if I wanted to, but it would force economies elsewhere that I don't want to make.

Well said, Ush.  I usually consider myself as reasonably well paid, even if my business and indeed industry are firmly on the rocks at present, but these days every single thing I touch has increased in price, many things I don't have much of a choice about: mortgage, health insurance, childcare etc. The Meg is something I do have a choice about.   I can't see myself shelling out more money for enforced reprint which I'm probably going to take down the charity shop/bring centre, even a few euro more, when there's a healthy pile of reprint I do want.  

That said, I'm sure Rebellion have looked very carefully at what they have to do to keep the Meg a viable proposition (this doesn't have the ring of despair earlier kill-or-cure changes have had), and I honestly hope it works.  I will put my toe in the water for a few months, but while 2000AD is non-negotiable for me (I'd skip meals to pay for it), a Meg burdened with material I already own sadly is not.

Ooops sorry buttonman, just realised this is supposed to be a fun thread you started:

+ Learn telepathy, so you can beam your letters directly into Tharg's brain rather than wasting money on stamps (this would probably result in the closure of Paisley post-office).

S'true, there's a fine line with anthropomorphism.  My favourite animated movies tend to walk it - Jungle Book, for example - the animals are all 'human' in attitude and behaviour, but are still limited in their actions and settings by being animals (if you exclude Baloo's Josephine Baker disguise); ditto Toy Story.  

To put it another way, it actually matters that the characters are animals/toys/robots, in the way that it really doesn't matter that Mickey is a mouse.

I don't know where to place the horrid Happy Feet, which at one level is rooted in its penguin-ness,[spoiler]but then all logic falls apart when the humans show up, and it appears that we are to believe that the penguins actually do perform crappy little pop-ditties and soft-shoe sets (rather than the metaphor for individuality we suspected these things were), thus marking them as suitable for Conservation[/spoiler]. Or something.

Not sure why I gave Happy Feet spoiler tags - it's a movie that spoils itself.

This will only work if Bridges plays the older Flynn as The Dude.  Although I expressly forbid Boxleitner to play Tron as Captain Sheridan.

It's not the sandals that concern us here. ;>

Mmm, Rose McGowan, with that endearing little chin-cleft thing. She's literally the only reason I can stomach even 30 seconds of the unending Charmed re-runs.

Can't imagine those weedy little arms lopping many heads, though.

Pessimistic comic at the link...

//http://www.agreeablecomics.com/therack/?p=310