InspirationAl
Audio transcripts
FantasticAl
Both as a child and well into my teens, I was only really fascinated by stories that had adventures in them and what would have been called fairy tales. I was certainly most influenced by Hans Anderson’s stories. Even though they’re called fairy tales there’s no fairies in any of them, that I can remember. But there are talking toys and creatures and animals and a most strong sense of loss that goes through them. Of time passing away. Which children are quite conscious of. And therefore stories which mention these things do make strong sense to them. Certainly did to me….h them onto a babysitter channel.
InspirationAl
“Glasgow is a magnificent city,” said McAlpin. “Why do we hardly ever notice that?” “Because nobody imagines living here,” said Thaw. McAlpin lit a cigarette and said, “If you want to explain that I’ll certainly listen.”
“Then think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he’s already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn’t been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.”
MonumentAl
The conjurer’s mouth and eyes opened wide and his face grew red. He began speaking in a shrill whisper which swelled to a bellow: “I am not writing science-fiction! Science-fiction stories have not real people in them and all my characters are real, real, real people! I may astound my readers by a dazzling deployment of dramatic metaphors designed to accelerate and compress the action but that is not science, it is magic! Magic! As for my ending being banal, wait ‘til you’re inside it. I ware you my whole imagination has a carefully reined-back catastrophic tendency: you have no conception of the damage my descriptive powers will wreak when I loose them on a theme life THE END.”
ExceptionAl
Munch, like adolescent me, was obsessed with loneliness, sex and death – his people look lonely, all his women are victims or vampires. He showed me great art can be made out of people and things viewed through personal emotion.
PoliticAl
Wells, being a socialist, was aware that in fact it was a grimmer business. The white colonists exterminated the native populations when they found them inconvenient and therefore he simply imagined his Martians doing the same thing with the human beings.
LyricAl
Who is all fire and wings and heart and seed?
Has never ended, yet always starts
afresh when the wind changes?
Who gave and changes everything we need?
Who, with all water, weather, ground and spaces,
and many coloured eyes of stone, leaf, star,
won’t let us rest in them, but instead
drops dead, stands attentive, raves and races?
Who makes all we joyfully, painfully love march away?
and will one day help us
out in a blink, before we are at last wise,
with a present too suddenly big to hold,
think of, or see, or say?
The grave colours of earth brighten toward an open book of light unstained by word.
DigitAl
The hat of tomorrow – an audio-visual helmet with or without the suit – will not only release you into an exciting world of your own choice; it will shut out the dirty, unpleasant future my wife keeps worrying about. It will give marijuana or heavy drug sensations without damaging the health. Of course, intelligent people like you and I, Mrs Chigwell, will use it for more than escapist entertainment. We will use it to talk to friends and entertain ourselves. Children of four will be fitted with helmets giving them the experience of a spacious, friendly classroom where beautiful, wise, playful adults teach them everything their parents want them to know. Schools will become a thing of the past and teacher too since a few hundred will scripted actors will be able to educate the entire planet. And think of the saving in transport! When the lesson stopped they could the helmet off and bingo – they’re home again. Unless the parents switch them onto a babysitter channel.