Re: Bye Bye, Life/Goodbye, Happiness/Hello Loneliness/I Think I'm

On Feb 11, 2:10=A0pm, jdnic...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (James Nicoll) wrote:
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 This is from the other Roy Scheider movie people are
likel=
y to
> have seen, ALL THAT JAZZ. ATJ was Bob Fosse's tribute to his favourite
> artist, Bob Fosse [1]. In it, we see episodes from the life of
protagonist=

> Joe Gideon as he literally flirts with Death (played by Jessica Lange).
=
=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 I'm torn between using this to talk about Death as a
seduc=
tive
> or at least sympathetic creature or self-destructive artists. Ah, the
> artists can wait and if they can't wait, they should know better than
> to mix booze and pills with amateur bomb-disarming: that's a bit of
> Jackson Pollock art you only get to make once per lifetime.
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 I don't really understand where the idea of death as
seduc=
tive
> comes from. I've never seen a dead body that looked happy, even the ones
> that did it to themselves. Nevertheless, Neil Gaiman's perky gothchick
> Death is popular amongst readers and so is Pratchett's more traditional
> Death.
>
> 1: Which isn't to say that Fosse felt any need to make his analog a
> heroic figure. Joe Gideon has personal flaws the way I have scars.
> His flaws don't matter because Joe Gideon is very good at the one
> thing he is supposed to be good at, which is being Joe Gideon,
> talented and doomed choreographer and director. =A0

Dragging this thread kicking and screaming to r.a.sf.WRITTEN,
there's an upcoming anthology:

http://www.machineofdeath.net

in which authors write stories based on
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000675.html

The premise is that there is a widely available
device which, cheaply and quickly, can tell you
(very briefly) how you will die, based on a small
blood sample. No date, no details, just 'cause of
death' in a few words.

I've heard one of the stories; it looks interesting.

Peter Trei