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Haha. Verbosity is clearly an alien idea intent on invasion (Eureka (Prog 325) 5 pages Script: Alan Moore, Artist: Mike White)

Jerusalem does sound rather fun. I'm all for batshit crazy.

That Google street view stuff puts me in mind of City of Glass, when Stilman Sr attempts to physically map a new prelapsarian language by walking the streets of the city, spelling letters out by his route as viewed from a top down view. I've not read the novel (probably too verbose for me) but the Mazzucchelli and Karasik adaptation is well worth a look.

Oh, god, I learnt so much writing it. Really enjoyed it.

Wondering whether to read Jerusalem now. I've previously thought of Moore as a great writer of comics, not prose (which is not to say that the prose within his comics isn't vivid and evocative) so haven't bothered with his novels. I'm not a fan of verbose writers, you see - there's the rub. But there's clearly so much intertextuality in his work, principally surrounding the psychogeography and fourth dimensional hyper-moment, plus so many autobiographical elements, that it seems an increasingly attractive proposition.

We need lots more of your wonderful artwork, Peter. Get well soon, mate.

Monty
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I finished writing this a month or so or ago and, after I'd shown it to a few people, someone suggested that with a few modifications I could probably get it published as an academic paper!!! Colour me surprised.

I'm not overly bothered either way, but I think it may need to have never been published anywhere else to qualify. So I'll let that play out before I post  a link here.

Monty

Good info, thanks Sheridan.

I've written about 4000 words so far. One surprising area that's emerged is the influence of British TV sketch comedy. If anyone has any anecdotal info about TV viewing habits in the Moore house as Alan grew up that would be most apposite.

There wasn't an awful lot to watch in those days. so if the TV was on the family would more than likely be viewing a couple of the same big shows half the nation watched: Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies etc. Mum's and Dad's chose the channel, especially in the evenings, and kids either joined in or amused themselves while it rumbled on in the background. Though I don't want to make too much of that while it's merely conjecture.

Cheers

Cool! Did he do that in prog 1 then?

I can see that Barney says Tharg's first appearance in 2000ad, i.e. in a story not the intro and letters pages, is prog 24. (Tharg and the Intruder 1 episode (Prog 24) 3 pages Script: Kevin O'Neill, Artist: Kevin O'Neill, Letters: Peter Knight) But knowing Tharg as I do, I suspected he might have popped up in something else and started talking to readers or characters in a meta-fictional kinda way. MAch 1 could be the first time, eh.

Cheers

Monty

Something that's come up - The first 2000ad story to have Tharg break the fourth wall. Anyone know?

I'm having enormous fun writing this analysis. It's doing what I hoped, which is shining a new light on Moore and revealing all kinds of issues and themes I hadn't thought about in this context before like retro-futurism, meta-fiction and the surprisingly profound influence of British sketch comedy TV. And of course these stories are one long homage to the history of science fiction itself, which is a wonderful world to revel in. You can see the echoes of his 'underground' cartoons and his later masterworks throughout many of the Shocks.

Finding the time is the thing, but I did another 1000 words yesterday so I'm on the final straight now

Needless to say, everyone that's helped here gets a credit (by their forum name unless you want to message me your real name.)

As you like, sir.   I'm all for photos of comics not being print quality, but it would cool to see what some of that dialogue on the first page says.

It's all readable - though I've just finished lunch and have to get back to work, so can't transcribe it right now :-(

Clearly, I need new glasses

As you like, sir.   I'm all for photos of comics not being print quality, but it would cool to see what some of that dialogue on the first page says.

Thought this might be of interest to you Monty; it was originally published in 'The House of Secrets' #86 June/July 1970 issue. Apologies for the really crappy photo.

That's extremely interesting, thanks so much for uploading. Did you take the photo yourself?

I was just writing about this very issue. I've found a few patterns and themes that people might find surprising.

Should have something posted at the end of this week.

Thanks a lot. Were they specifically presented as Future Shocks i.e. with the FS header?

I figure the simplest thing is to just go with what 2000ad itself deems a Future Shock.

A Holiday in Hell is (it's even got Tharg in it), Southern Comfort isn't.  I get the impression it had been hanging around in a drawer for quite a while before it saw print, too.

'A Holiday in Hell' was also Alan Moore's first every printed 2000ad story, 1st June 1980 , just beating the Ro Jaws Robo-tale 'Killer in the Cab' which came out in prog 170, 26th July 1980.

Moore mentioned that changes were still being made to his scripts when writing Skizz in 1983, and it's tough to say with certainty which lines or even plot elements in his Shocks came from editors and not him. Though we can often make an educated guess, when it's not been explicitly stated.

Cheers, Joe.

Started reading through the Shocks now: very amusing. It's striking how well the very short  'throwaway' ones work. Unless the joke's not funny. I'll post up my thoughts soonish.

Found this on comics beat, getting into the science fiction writers Moore likes. I'm guessing he'll have read most of this stuff by the time he started submitting to 2000ad.

"Alan Moore: Well, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR the year was the year that, with the commencement of WATCHMEN, I was entering into my own totalitarian nightmare that would, of course, end with my head in a cage with a starving rat, or some other appropriate metaphor for the movie and the prequels. NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR the book was thus a much cheerier proposition, and I've been a huge admirer of it since I first read it as a fifteen or sixteen year-old. For a while I thought that [George] Orwell's suggestion that we would be brutalised into submission, the stick, seemed less likely than [Aldous] Huxley's proposal, in BRAVE NEW WORLD, that we would be led willingly into slavery by the carrot of drugs and games and entertainments. Of course, since the May [2015] elections I've realised that there's no reason why an administration shouldn't use both at once by beating us to death with a gigantic carrot, which probably has all nails sticking out of it and everything. So, George, Aldous, there's no need to squabble: you're both right. No, it was a wonderful book, and it proved very useful in filling in some interesting post-WWII parallel world history in THE BLACK DOSSIER. We were even able to explore Orwell's implication – Airstrip One is clearly dominated by America and has the dollar as a currency, but is just as clearly a communist state – that the USA itself, after the war, has become a communist country. Jess Nevins dug up some Soviet S.F. with a wistful, utopian story in which a communist with the endearing name of Mike Thingmaker becomes America's President, which we able to reference in LEAGUE 1969 by way of a mash-up with Robert Thom's WILD IN THE STREETS.

As for your question about my favourite S.F. novel, I think I've said elsewhere that I have real difficulties in thinking about things in terms of favourites, and that any book upon which I did confer that status would have probably been deposed by five minutes more thought. What would probably be more useful – if I may presume – is to give a list of various books that I really like, and to do my best to only name books or authors that were neglected the last time I compiled such a list, which was a couple of weeks ago.

In September 2015, in an online Goodreads interview, Moore was asked 'What is your favorite science-fiction novel of all-time?' He answered:

'Muller-Focker EffectI don't tend to think in terms of favourites, as that would make my otherwise enjoyable tastes in relaxation into something of a competition. A (very) brief and changeable list of recommendations, in no particular order, would be Mike Moorcock's Cornelius quartet, Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, John Sladek's The Müller-Fokker Effect, Brian Aldiss' Hothouse (one of the first science fiction novels I ever read), [Alfred] Bester's The Stars My Destination, Mike Harrison's The Machine in Shaft Ten, [JG] Ballard's The Unlimited Dream Company, Phillip Bedford Robinson's Masque of a Savage Mandarin, Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, [Harlan] Ellison's short stories, Judith Merrill's anthologies, [Thomas M] Disch's Camp Concentration, [Norman] Spinrad's Iron Dream, anything by Steve Aylett, and so on, potentially, forever.'

[End of the foregoing]

So, in no particular order, how about IN WATERMELON SUGAR by Richard Brautigan with its writing like pieces of coloured glass; absolutely any book at all by the marvellous and ingenious Barrington Bailey, but especially his short stories and a special recommendation for 'Sporting with the Chid' as a striking introduction to his wildly various world; similarly, anything by the [GK] Chesterton-influenced R.A. Lafferty... THE REEFS OF SPACE, NINE HUNDRED GRANDMOTHERS, FOURTH MANSIONS ...for a near-psychedelic tour through a very odd and inventive mind; the work of former OSS operative Paul S. Linebarger under the name Cordwainer Smith for its odd poetry and the suspicion that often his stories were created around their captivating titles like 'Drunkboat' or 'The Dead Lady of Clown Town;' a special mention for Linebarger's fellow sometime-spook on this side of the Atlantic, Eric MindswapFrank Russell, whose WASP was one of the first SF books I ever read, and which remains a fascinating anarchist's primer and an interesting source of insurrectionary tradecraft; Robert Sheckley, whether for collections like THE PEOPLE TRAP or novels like MINDSWAP, just because when it comes to the area of humour in science fiction (amongst his many other stylistic accomplishments) Sheckley is seriously owed; Phillip José Farmer for short stories like the groundbreaking 'Strange Relations' and 'New Riders of the Purple Wage,' and novels like the brilliant TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO (which sadly tended to lose some of their novelty and energy when they were extended into trilogies), along with brilliant oddities like A FEAST UNKNOWN, BLOWN, TARZAN ALIVE and the strange pseudonymous publication of imaginary books from other authors, like VENUS ON THE HALF SHELL by [Kurt] Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout or SHE'S THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS, BUDDY, which is one of the splendidly-titled imaginary books from the reverse-library described in Richard Brautigan's THE ABORTION: A HISTORICAL ROMANCE 1966; Kurt Vonnegut, obviously; Steve Aylett's SLAUGHTERMATIC, just because it was the first book of Steve's that I ever picked up, and because it has the funniest and most inventive guns; B. Catling's astonishing and game-changing THE VORRH, if that isn't veering into the separate domain of fantasy; and lastly (just because it's getting late here and I'm selfishly putting my indolence before your enthusiasm), even though I've already elsewhere recommended everything of his from BEHOLD THE MAN through the Pyat and Cornelius quartets to MOTHER LONDON, can I just urge everyone to read THE WHISPERING SWARM, which easily merits the five stars it received in FORTEAN TIMES, and which is not only one of the most sublime things that [Michael] Moorcock has ever done, but which is also the truest and most poignant meditation upon the life of an energetic pulp fantasy writer that I've ever read. And his beard may be better than mine, as well."

Moore ruminates on the nature of his 'inspiration' for the first Abelard Snazz (an R.A. Lafferty story he had completely forgotten) in the rambling interview that is George Khoury's Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore (2003). I find it a bit unconvincing, but only because he mentions the creative process behind several other 'inspired' Future Shocks in the same section but fails to make any similar 'confession'. He does however say surprisingly nice things about the value of the Future Shock process in learning his craft, and of course about Alan Grant.

Any idea which Lafferty story it was?

That Khoury book was very interesting. Thanks.

Monty

Then I'll include The Return of the Two-Storey Brain in the grand Alan Moore's Future Shock analysis, but not the others. A Future Shock is a Future Shock, after all. Though whether the decision to run it as such was largely arbitrary I don't know. Maybe I'll discern a reason.

I think the first Time Twister, thus named, was Alan Grant and Eric Bradbury's 'William the Conkerer' in prog 294 11th December, 1982? (If I've read that, I've forgotten it.) Whereas the Return of the Two-Storey Brain ran in prog 204, over a year and a half earlier (prog 209, 25th April 1981).

Great info, thanks.

If anyone knows of any other similarities or references between Alan's future shocks and sci-fi of the time, do post. The hivemind is a wonderful thing.

I listened to the Stuart Lee/Moore interview last night, which was great, and picked up a couple more books about Alan's comic work from the library which I'm working through.

I don't think the Snazz stories ran as Future Shocks, though they're certainly interesting.

Cheers

Monty