Sorry about the dearth of posts lately. Other stuff on my mind. While rummaging through Amazon dot Com I ran across a book about books, specifically about the relationship between Japanese and American science fiction and more specifically about metafiction and the influences each way. The referenced authors - at least the American ones - are those I read a lot. Pynchon, Sterling, Gibson, Dick and on and on. Of the Japanese I've read a few - Hiroko Murakami, Ryu Murakami, Yukio Mishima - and I've seen several movies.

To make this work, the author, Takayuki Tatsumi, begins in the 19th century and moves forward, reverting here and there to clarify something not chronologically ordered. And yes, this being a meta-book, it is self-referential while talking about the quality of self-referencing. A lot like Goedel/Escher/Bach.

Leonard Cohen gets into it, as does Godzilla. And JFK and Hitler. And cyberpunk and steampunk and anime and Asian occidentalists as well as Western orientalists.

All this and I'm only on page 49 of Full Metal Apache. It's exhausting.

This is Toyie. I owe her many more pictures and she doesn't let me forget it. One roll developed so far. I have to tweak the development time a little and do two more rolls. And two after that. Soon. Real soon.