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Thanks a lot - I'll give it a try on this thread.

Much appreciated mbanners!

Hi - a quick question;
Can anyone tell me how I post a jpeg into one of these notes ?
I'm hoping to do a bit of self promotion.....for a good cause...in the coming week and would like to 'paste' a picture along with it.

Thanks in advance.

Each to their own - absolutely.

One thing I'm sure most would agree is that Excession perhaps is not the best Culture novel to start on - its a bit abstract.

I think if you are coming from a background of more conventional novels, the best book to start with would be  the player of games - it feels like a more complete and approachable story (it doesn't suffer from some of the excesses of Excession)

I read Phlebas first and just found some of the descriptions and set pieces quite awe inspiring - such as the orbitals, and the escape through the the giant Culture ship (whose name escapes me).

Still unsure as to the inferences of the final pages of that book though - remember having a big group discussion on this one and no two people could agree.

Excession put me on a downer with Banks that I have yet to recover from.
I thought Consider Phlebas was great (and would make a brilliant film - some very cinematic moments in there), Player of Games was very good - and I even liked Use of Weapons AFTER I had finished it (i thought it was a bit of a struggle at first - but the ending made it worth it).

But Excession.  Oh my god. I also made the mistake of giving it to my wife to read as her first Iain M Banks book BEFORE I had read it.  

Whoops.

Anyone else finding it tricky NOT to come up with;

a.  A bad ex-Judge witgh a grudge.  Judge Grudge.
b.  A crazy robot. Call-me-homicidal-Harry.
c.  A cursed earth mutant who wants to live in the big city.
d.  A hit-man/hit-woman. From a foreign city.
e.  A psychotic child.  Genius. Bouncy-ball.
f.  An alien bounty hunter with dogs.
g.  A psychotic mutant cyborg judge who has a grudge and wants to live in the big city. With his/her alien bounty-hunting dogs.

....it should be easier than this.....

I think I'm going to have a go.  Just don't know what angle to come at it from.

I'm thinking that for a 5 page strip it would have to be a fairly basic character with instantly explainable back story, with a fair bit of physical presence (to present any kind of menace).  My hunch would be that they can't really go for too subtle.

Just got to work all that in and be entirely original. Always a catch.

I notice it doesn't say anything about limited number of entries....so do you think we could submit more than one (not that I have one idea yet....)

Simon.

I shall be looking after my little baby (because that child takes some looking after!!!).

DIY - as I have decided to sell my house now that the housing market is in such great shape (??!).

I shall also be continuing my quest to find 5 free minutes to draw something!

Simon.

If you google 'Just1Page' you can check out their website.

Of course I'm plugging this because it's all for a good cause.......not because I managed to get in it!

Simon.

I'm going for the mid-200's ( Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, Nemesis...the usual) to the mid 500's.
The apocalypse war started the classic era for me - and I think things had gone a bit downhill when we approached the 600's.

They killed off Johnny Alpha - I still hung around a bit, Rogue Trooper ran off in to the distance in a Winter special - then 'Judgement day' was the final nail in the coffin.

I think things began to improve again about 4-5 years ago!

RE: John Hickleton....

How abot the taking a chainsaw to Thoth sequence - I found that shocking at the time I read it.

Ok...maybe the acting was a bit (?) wooden, but it still had the spirit of Star Wars for me.
There was more lacking from the Phantom Menace - although again i think it had defining Star Wars moments (the sequence with the two jedi at the beginning was a wow-moment as was the all-to0-sadly-cut-up duel between the Jedi and Darth Maul). It took things a little further.  Unfortunately there was Jake Lloyd and the Gungans.

Episode two had an excellent flying opener on coruscant, a great cloning planet, Jango Fett, the Death Star, two-sabre fighting, Yoda in maniac mode, lots of jedi, lots of clone troopers and an asteroid belt. Unfortunately there was Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman on a bad day.

Wooden acting or not - its good enough for me!

I'm going to come out of the Star Wars closet here.
I can't wait for the third film....and actually loved Episode 2 (ok, there were ropey bits, but on the whole I thought it was cool).

I think the new Star Wars films get a really hard time on the grounds that 'they aren't as good as the originals'.  Could anything really live up to the experience that a lot of us had as kids seeing these films for the first time?

Of course, you could disregard my opinions on the grounds that I'd watch pretty much anything if it had lightsabres in it.

Sigh....8 weeks 5 days to go....

Sorry your Lordship - just sent you an e-mail!!

I've had a great response to this thread - thanks everyone its much appreciated.

Simon

Thanks for the replies everyone (and to those of you who e-mailed me).

I am actually waiting on a script from Zarjaz - I just don't think Colin has recieved anything suitable as yet (as far as I know).

So was looking for something to play with in the meantime (and also in case nothing Colin does'nt come up with anything for me).

Thanks again.

Howdy.

Haven't posted any comments on the board for a while - sorry - this has been 101% due to my three month old girl who has been politely described as 'demanding'.

This is a plea to any chariatable writers out there.......

Basically, I'm REALLY keen to draw a Rogue Trooper strip (classic Rogue - not Tor Cyan or Friday) - but have tried in vain in to come up with anything passable myself (without it ending in 'war is hell'....which I think they exhausted in some of the earlier strips).

I also suffer from the classic 'artist who writes' problem of just drawing a load of posey big panels with no substance'

Would anyone out there have a decent short script (4 pages??) knocking about that I could play with in any spare time that I may manage to find over the next 18 years?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Simon.