Ellis Will Do Anything

Warren Ellis debuts a new column on Bleeding Cool.

"I have the head of Jack Kirby in my office.

I built it myself. Which means, this being the late-postmodern 21st Century, I stole it from someone else and then tinkered with it until it became a transformative work. What I actually did was steal the Hanson Robotics-designed android head of Philip K Dick off an airplane, resculpted the front and filled its brain with the work of, interviews with and anecdotes about Jack Kirby. Like the original Philip K Dick head, it now does the work of an oracle of that mysterious time, the 20th Century, and of the seminal years of a 20th Century art form. In the case of Phil Dick, this was the science fiction story. In this case, it is of course the comic book."

Read the entire thing here.

Robochompocalypse

'I plan to invest in anti-carnivorous robot security' by Warren Ellis:

"The future is a moving target. It’s not predictable like the weather – and even weather forecasting misses the odd devastating hurricane. Science fiction’s never going to tell you what you’ll be doing next year. What it really does is use speculation to examine the present-day condition – but it can, however, warn you about possible futures."

And earlier in the column is a funny bit about the Wachowskis and their failure in warning people of the coming Robochompocalypse.

Ellis and Abrams are Wired

From Warren Ellis' Wired UK column:

"This is the problem with writing fiction in the early 21st century: the real world outdoes you for madness every day. You’d be overdoing it, as a fiction writer, if you had Congolese bushfighters eating their enemies’ flesh during an ebola outbreak… except that it’s happening as I write."

Read the entire thing here.

And that Wired issue guest-edited by J.J. Abrams is very interesting and very fucking expensive.

Ellis Interrogation

"I don't like anything I've written, a half hour after writing it."

"I like the games where you kill people and they scream. I liked SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, because you could shoot people in the throat and they'd thrash and choke and drown in their own blood. Also you could shove knives in their balls and they wouldn't die immediately, but lurch away from you shrieking."

"I come from the old school where a writer is a person who sits alone in a room and beats on a keyboard with their fists until the machine surrenders and spits out the story they wanted."

More here.

FreakAngels

The first installment of Warren Ellis' webcomic FreakAngels is up. It's free so go read.