Ubik (by Philip K. Dick)

Philip K Dick's android head on the subway

Mr Philip K. Dick does not need our praise, but he’s going to get it anyway.     Written in 1969, Ubik envisages a 1992 in which there is no internet (thank goodness, it would have only slowed things down) but there are “Psis”, (telepaths, precogs, animators, para-kineticists) and their nullifiers, called “inertials”.  A powerful telepath (S, Dole Melipone (don’t bother, it’s not an anagram)) is no longer on Terra and does not appear to be on any of the world colonies, either.  The counter-Psis employed by Glen Runciter, of Runciter Associates (an “anti-psi prudence organisation”) lurch and lope into action.  It is their job to  know where every one…

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Machu Picchu

April 21, 2016 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | THEATRE, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

"I swear too much" (Lisa McCune as Gabby)

(Dir. Geordie Brookman) (SA State Theatre Company, 16 April 2016) (written by Sue Smith) By Guest Reviewer Emma Machu Picchu, a destination dreamt about at Uni and never realised.   Two young architects, who are madly in love with each other and the possibilities of life ahead, see their dream shattered and their love tested. The play starts with the couple projected about 25 years forward. Conversing while driving home from a health retreat, they reveal the complacency & irritation that comes with time spent together, the competing directions of their architectural interests, and the stresses of life. The romantic beginning and…

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Perpetual Rome

April 21, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | ART, HISTORY, TRAVEL |

The digs of Octavian (Caesar Augustus) on Palatine Hill (if you look carefully, is that the cave of Romulus nearby? No?)

21 April, 753 BC – The traditional date for the founding of the Eternal City.  That makes Rome 2769 years old, roughly.  And on this same day in 43 BC, Marc Antony was spooked to a draw by Octavian at the Battle of Mutina, which eventually paved the way for the Roman Empire (not so eternal).  Appian, in his The Civil Wars (Loeb edition) describes the game of chess the embryonic triumvirs played: Octavian and Antony composed their differences on a small, depressed islet in the river Lavinius, near the city of Mutina. Each had five legions of soldiers whom they stationed opposite each…

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Napoleon III For Me

April 20, 2016 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | ART, HISTORY, OPERA |

'Joyeux 208e anniversaire, mon Roi' (Napoleon III by Franz Xaver Winterhalter)

Happy 208th birthday, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte! He was a true Frenchman – his instincts on things that matter (except the defence of the Empire) were sound.  For example, he stood up for the artists against the salon.  Modern governments bleat about public infrastructure – he just did it.  Perhaps major infrastructure can’t be built anymore without an emperor. He also appointed an infrastructure guru, M. Haussmann, to rebuild Paris, which, overall, he did brilliantly. He was a fan of the arts! So what if he didn’t see the Prussians coming! He was a fan of the arts!  He oversaw Paris’ Palais Garnier,…

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The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

See "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" instead.

(by Umberto Eco). Umberto Eco may have been a gift from God (Ex Caelis Oblatus) but this novel is not divinely inspired.  Yambo (Giambattista Bodoni), the narrator, is fog-bound.  Following an ‘incident’ (a stroke?), he loses his episodic memory.  His doctor explains, “It’s episodic memory that establishes a link between who we are today and who we have been, and without it, when we say ‘I’, we’re referring only to what we’re feeling now, not to what we felt before, which gets lost, as you say, in the fog.” This concept is applied rather loosely by Eco in the service of allowing Yambo, now in his sixties, to…

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