Wednesday 1 March 2017

What The Hell

The works discussed here take us everywhere in the imagination:

other planets;
alternative histories;
the end of the universe;
supernatural realms -

- including Hell.

Prose fiction is enjoyable but it is good to alternate it with the visual media of graphic fiction and screen drama. We want to see Poul Anderson's and SM Stirling's works adapted and dramatized. If Game Of Thrones can go onto TV, then so can the King of Ys and Emberverse.

Recent encounters with Hell in other media

In Smallville: "Escape," a Banshee escapes from the Underworld;

in Hellblazer: Original Sins (New York, 1992) by Jamie Delano, yuppie demons invest the City of London, "intangibles in perpetuity" means an immortal soul and, in the financial district of Hell, Belial, deceived by a bluff from John Coinstantine, telephones, "Sell all UK stock immediately. Move into Catholics or Moslems. Do it now before the news panics the exchange." (p. 16)

A very different take on Hell from Steve Matuchek's raid into the Low Continuum in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

For me, the alternative to prose narratives of the kind written by Anderson, Stirling, Turtledove, etc., would be poetry rather than comic books/mangas or screen adaptations. Such as, in this context, the collection of poems by Anderson called STAVES.

But I certainly agree on the desirability of screen versions of novels and stories by Anderson and Stirling! I wish SOME movie director/producer would try filming some of the Dominic Flandry stories.

And the bit about buying and selling "stocks" in souls on the stock exchange of Hell was amusing! Needles to say, the vision of Hell given us by Anderson in OPERATION CHAOS was grimmer and more truly hellish.

Sean