By Warren Ellis \u2013 Okay, so I get to write about what I like and what in\ufb02uenced me then and now. Fair enough. Shut up at the back there.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m attracted, in my reading, to use of language and interesting ideas. Nobody uses language quite like Hunter S. Thomp\u00adson\u2014like an iron bar on your kidneys and dangly bits, hitting you until you either give in or pee blood for the rest of your days. He\u2019s a journalist, though he behaves more like some violently hallucinating idiot savant slumped in a gutter, and his was the \ufb01rst journalism I ever enjoyed just for its writing. Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail \u201972<\/em>, originally written as reports for Rolling Stone<\/em>, not only makes politics interesting for even the most unpolitical reader, but funny as hell too. Also seek out the blistering Hell\u2019s Angels<\/em>, the \ufb01rst honest book written about bikers, and the collections of his shorter pieces. The Great Shark Hunt<\/em> is probably the best place to start, and Better Than Sex<\/em> will educate those who saw Oliver Stone\u2019s Nixon<\/em> as to what a criminal, disgusting, and genetically wrong piece of \ufb02esh Richard Nixon really was. Or you could try the only piece of admitted \ufb01ction Thompson\u2019s written, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas<\/em>. Learn exactly how many drugs you need to take to see the American Dream clearly. (Lots.)<\/p>\n It seems that the older I get, the only ideas that really grab my interest are the strange and horrible ones. In this regard, I must recommend The Fifty Greatest Conspiracies Of All Time<\/em>, by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, a read that explains itself and is by turns very funny and very scary. Foucault\u2019s Pendulum<\/em>, by Umberto Eco (who also wrote The Name Of The Rose<\/em>, \ufb01lmed with Sean Connery but not his wig) is crack-full of mad ideas, highly entertaining, and a big enough book to stun large animals with. Which can be very important.<\/p>\n Finally\u2014and before I bore you to absolute bloody tears\u2014I want to mention some novels I\u2019ve only recently discovered. These are the best crime books I\u2019ve read since James Ellroy (whose Black Dahlia<\/em> is essential, and whose recent American Tabloid<\/em> was brilliantly corrupt and horrible, by the way). I\u2019m talking about the Factory<\/em> series of novels by Derek Raymond. These \ufb01ve novels follow the cases of a detective-sergeant (who remains nameless throughout) who works almost alone at an obscure branch of the London Metropolitan Police called A.13\u2014Unexplained Deaths. These books are what Thomas Harris\u2019 clever and popular\u2014but mild and weedy\u2014Red Dragon<\/em> and Silence Of The Lambs<\/em> should have been. The books are incredibly, ingeniously horrific and startlingly bleak at times, but the horrors are counterpointed by the detective-sergeant himself\u2014a lonely, intelligent, damaged, and very human man. His presence is the promise of some kind of justice. Starting with the \ufb01rst in the series, The Devil\u2019s Home On Leave<\/em> (which opens with the discovery of the butchered and boiled remains of a man left in \ufb01ve carefully arranged shopping bags by the river), I was instantly addicted, and obtained the rest quickly by hunting and menaces. He Died With His Eyes Open<\/em>, How The Dead Live<\/em>, the stunning I Was Dora Suarez<\/em>, and the \ufb01nal Dead Man Up\u00adright<\/em>\u2014after which Derek Ray\u00admond had the cheek to go and die himself, allegedly of the drink. Mind you, if I\u2019d imagined books like these, I might consider dying of drink too\u2026<\/p>\n I\u2019m currently writing Excalibur<\/em> for Marvel. In June I start my run on Image\u2019s Storm\u00adwatch<\/em>; the \ufb01rst part of my serial \u201cAtmo\u00adspherics\u201d appears in Cali\u00adber\u2019s Calibrations<\/em> #1; and in July I\u2019ll be writing Caliber One-Shot: The Sussex Vampire<\/em>, a loose adaptation of the Sher\u00adlock Holmes tale by Arthur Conan Doyle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Warren Ellis \u2013 Okay, so I get to write about what I like and what in\ufb02uenced me then and now. Fair enough. Shut up at the back there. I\u2019m attracted, in my reading, to use of language and interesting ideas. Nobody uses language quite like Hunter S. Thomp\u00adson\u2014like an iron bar on your kidneys and dangly bits, hitting you until you either give in or pee blood for the rest of your days. He\u2019s a journalist, though he behaves more like some violently hallucinating idiot savant slumped in a gutter, and his was the \ufb01rst journalism I ever enjoyed just for its writing. Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail \u201972, originally written as reports for Rolling Stone, not only makes politics interesting for even the most unpolitical reader, but funny as hell too. Also seek out the blistering Hell\u2019s Angels, the \ufb01rst honest book written about bikers, and the collections of his shorter pieces. The Great Shark Hunt is probably the best place to start, and Better Than Sex will educate those who saw Oliver Stone\u2019s Nixon as to what a criminal, disgusting, and genetically wrong piece of \ufb02esh Richard Nixon really was. Or you could try the only piece of admitted \ufb01ction Thompson\u2019s written, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Learn exactly how many drugs you need to take to see the American Dream clearly. (Lots.) It seems that the older I get, the only ideas that really grab my interest are the strange and horrible ones. In this regard, I must recommend The Fifty Greatest Conspiracies Of All Time, by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, a read that explains itself and is by turns very funny and very scary. Foucault\u2019s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco (who also wrote The Name Of The Rose, \ufb01lmed with Sean Connery but not his wig) is crack-full of mad ideas, highly entertaining, and a big enough book to stun large animals with. Which can be very important. Finally\u2014and before I bore you to absolute bloody tears\u2014I want to mention some novels I\u2019ve only recently discovered. These are the best crime books I\u2019ve read since James Ellroy (whose Black Dahlia is essential, and whose recent American Tabloid was brilliantly corrupt and horrible, by the way). I\u2019m talking about the Factory series of novels by Derek Raymond. These \ufb01ve novels follow the cases of a detective-sergeant (who remains nameless throughout) who works almost alone at an obscure branch of the London Metropolitan Police called A.13\u2014Unexplained Deaths. These books are what Thomas Harris\u2019 clever and popular\u2014but mild and weedy\u2014Red Dragon and Silence Of The Lambs should have been. The books are incredibly, ingeniously horrific and startlingly bleak at times, but the horrors are counterpointed by the detective-sergeant himself\u2014a lonely, intelligent, damaged, and very human man. His presence is the promise of some kind of justice. Starting with the \ufb01rst in the series, The Devil\u2019s Home On Leave (which opens with the discovery of the butchered and boiled remains of a man left in \ufb01ve carefully arranged shopping bags by the river), I was instantly addicted, and obtained the rest quickly by hunting and menaces. He Died With His Eyes Open, How The Dead Live, the stunning I Was Dora Suarez, and the \ufb01nal Dead Man Up\u00adright\u2014after which Derek Ray\u00admond had the cheek to go and die himself, allegedly of the drink. Mind you, if I\u2019d imagined books like these, I might consider dying of drink too\u2026 I\u2019m currently writing Excalibur for Marvel. In June I start my run on Image\u2019s Storm\u00adwatch; the \ufb01rst part of my serial \u201cAtmo\u00adspherics\u201d appears in Cali\u00adber\u2019s Calibrations #1; and in July I\u2019ll be writing Caliber One-Shot: The Sussex Vampire, a loose adaptation of the Sher\u00adlock Holmes tale by Arthur Conan Doyle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,64,63],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recommended-reading","tag-august-1996","tag-issue-19","tag-warren-ellis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eacottdesign.com\/combo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}