I still haven’t read his Iron Man graphic novel. Long out of print now, though I’m amazed Marvel haven’t reissued it. It’s a little piece of history and they’re certainly not shy about caning their back-catalogue in the wake of the Iron Man movie.

Donna Matrix is more like it. Full 3-D rendering: a bit blocky and sub-Lara Croft but not at all bad for fifteen years ago. And who can argue with a messed-up, tooled-up sexbot who wants you to spit-shine her boots?

Is it not remarkable? Simple oil of cloves, and how amazing the results…

Firstly, “is it safe?” And secondly, thanks for that info. I love Saenz’s graphics in the Semiotext(e) anthology — they seemed to tap into all sorts of semiological signals. Sort of like state-sanctioned pictograms with subliminal intent. I’ve been looking forward to finding out more about his work, so those titles you’ve supplied will come in handy. Cheers.

By the way, I’m not a doctor — my thesis is still under examination.

Bruce Sterling and I first met at the UofTexas at Austin SF Fan society, ca. 1975. I attended a few of the legendary “Turkey Cities” of us beginning wannabe-writers and even got to see and critique the first-draft typescript of Bruce’s 1st published novel, *Involution Ocean*. In the early 90s his support for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and his “Hacker Crackdown” book were invaluable. I remember him throwing that book out as fistfuls of disks to a whole seated ‘hacker undeground” convention, HoHoCon in 1992. He had inserted a clause with his *Hacker Crackdown* publisher enabling him to do that w/o breaking his publisher’s rights to his work. So they had bought SOME (but not ALL) of the copyrights to it.. (A copyright is best thought of legally as a BUNDLE of separable rights, the splitting of the Bundle limited only by your thoughts – and what 2 parties can agree on…)

A brave, tenacious, and very wise man. And of us all, only he made it to a REAL career as a gen-U-Wine SF Writer! A complex man, and we have enjoyed a complex – but geo-far-off – relationship for many decades now. With his permission, I distributed samizdat-made copies of his story “Green Days in Brunei” when I lived in 2 yrs. in Brunei (see: Borneo, N. Coast) and the Bruneians were blown away that such a great writer had so – umm, honored their country. In return, I sent Bruce a Brunei Dollar. I believe he still has it.

His blog at WIRED = http://blog.wired.com/sterling/ “Beyond the Beyond”. A Professional Futurist!

And he spoke the Truth… yes, ALL of us were Ballardians even back then, not fit to polish the Man’s boots. And so we both remain. Each tributing JGB in our own ways. 33 years now and counting.

Simon, this was the post I was waiting for. THANKS, DOCTOR Sellars!

Crashman – 0 degrees of separation from Mr. Sterling since 1975-6.

‘Tallis became increasingly obsessed with the pudenda of the Presidential contender mediated to him by a thousand television screens’.

‘Tallis’, of course, is one of the names by which T- is known and the ‘Presidential contender’ is of course Reagan. The ‘thousand television screens’ is another clear indication that Blumlein was homaging Atrocity.