Jul 23
Chuffmunky Comments: The future’s so badass, I gotta wear shades (and a bandoleer of spikes, and a fisher-price cd walkman cabled to my chest for some reason).
Published 1989
Chuffmunky Comments: The future’s so badass, I gotta wear shades (and a bandoleer of spikes, and a fisher-price cd walkman cabled to my chest for some reason).
Published 1989
July 23rd, 2013 at 9:57 am
Oh, so we’re supposed to make fun of 80s pop videos now, is that it?
July 23rd, 2013 at 9:59 am
That’s some bad voltage, Harry.
I think we’re going to need a bigger voltmeter.
And other JAWS-inspired weak jokes.
Cool horizontal-stripey sideburn, Mister.
July 23rd, 2013 at 10:34 am
skull buckle accessory £1.99
July 23rd, 2013 at 11:26 am
By great Duncan’s moustache, I almost forgot the Skulls a-Poppin’ tag. Mr Herring would have my head for that, and rightly so.
July 23rd, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Yes children, drugs are bad. ‘Wired for speed’ and ‘Living high’ will make you ‘Crash hard.’ Just Say No! Oh, in addition to which it will lead you to residing in the municipal sewer, wearing ridiculously out of date clothes, with bad hair, and looking like David Bowie. But you will smell like poo.
Yes children, doing drugs will not turn your life into a Chemical Brothers video, it will trap you in a bad 80’s Near Future Sewer!
Little kids, run away!!
July 23rd, 2013 at 12:24 pm
Oh, and thanks feces flavored Bowie clone,(I do mean thanks). I now have Killing Joke playing in my head on an endless loop. Nice chanhe from Daft Punk.
July 23rd, 2013 at 2:01 pm
“Resistance is futile! I’m amped-up after reading Bad Voltage … a powerful novel which is currently sparking comments in the science fiction circuit … I’m shocked they didn’t charge more for this!” — Popular Electronics Magazine
July 23rd, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Man: (In heavy London cockney accent) Sorry Miss… you’ve got a case of bad voltage ‘ere…
Women: Bad… voltage… is that a thing?
Man: You bet miss… noww… lets talk about how much it’s going to cost to give ya some good voltage eh!
July 23rd, 2013 at 3:25 pm
“Wired for speed”?
“Living high…beneath the streets”?
I think this novel might over my head.
July 23rd, 2013 at 4:06 pm
So the book set in “tomorrow’s world” is “a science fiction novel”? Well, I never!
But is it an *original* novel?
July 23rd, 2013 at 4:24 pm
@RachelJ: It could be set in ‘Tomorrow’s World’, a BBC series from the 60s, and be about a streetwise gum-chewing estate agent from the 80s trapped in a studio with James Burke and Raymond Baxter explaining that books will soon be replaced by personal microfilm readers.
July 23rd, 2013 at 4:25 pm
So Graham Bonnet’s got a bandolero and belt of live rounds, a spark-generator on his wrist and a devil-may-care rictus.
And a jump-suit. I think this is tag-worthy. Jump-suits are the all-purpose 80s emblem of ‘the future’ and lead to everyone looking like Peter Powell or Sheena Easton. The surest sign of a ‘Just Say No’ campaign being needed was the band-photo of Toto on the back of the OST of ‘Dune’
I seem to recall sending this comment before. If it’s already posted and not showing, please ignore one or both.
July 23rd, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Amazing vision of the future. The futurisitc ability to shoot lightning bolts out of your arms is balanced by the simple rubber band holding the device to his wrist. BRILLIANT!!
@ James – true, nothing says bada$$ like 1.99 skull belt accessory. Just in case we didnt know he was bada$$, the skull lets us be certain!
July 23rd, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Was this the “inspiration” for the Duke Nukem video game? He sure looks alot like him….
July 23rd, 2013 at 6:17 pm
“I have shrunk ELO and their saucer-ship to the size of a saucer, and I shall carry them all away — no more My Blue Sky for YOU, puny humanity! Bwahaha!”
July 23rd, 2013 at 6:23 pm
80’s sewers and no mention of C.H.U.D. yet?
July 23rd, 2013 at 6:58 pm
Could this, by any chance, be a cyberpunk novel?
July 23rd, 2013 at 8:23 pm
Bowie’s little known 80s album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiderman of Mars was not a success.
July 23rd, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Oh and I am definitely shaving horizontal lines into my sideburns tomorrow.
That’ll look rad.
Right kids? Kids?
July 23rd, 2013 at 8:36 pm
I’m very interested to know what he’s doing with his left hand…it appears to be ‘turning it into baby carrots’ or some such.
July 23rd, 2013 at 10:14 pm
Attention Exceptionally Thinly Veiled Illegal Drug Use Reference Dept.:
The ‘kids’ inform us that ‘wired’ is synonomous with the use of ‘speed’.
Please make a note of this. We don’t want to appear square. Remembe, hip and groovy is what the kids dig.
Mgmt.
July 24th, 2013 at 12:03 am
Oh, hang on, this isn’t Nik Kershaw at all. Must have the same tailor.
July 24th, 2013 at 7:58 am
Are we sure this isn’t just the novelization of some embarassingly awful movie from the 80’s?
July 24th, 2013 at 11:29 am
Well it’s Littel’s first novel, and about the secret activities that take place in the real life catacombs of cyberpunk Neo-Paris, as I’m sure we could all instantly tell from the cover.
He didn’t rate it.
His second novel, The Kindly Ones, then went on to win the extremely prestigious Prix Goncourt and the French Academy’s Grand Prize for Fiction. Not bad, sir, not bad at all!
July 24th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
@Bibliomancer—the way to avoid the stress of so much bad voltage, obviously, is simply to go down into a sewer, find a nice, relatively dry spot away from rats and other vermin, tuck oneself into the Lotus position, close the eyes, breathe deeply and intone—”Ohm.”
Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm
Current thinking on Ohm’s Law holds that this will conduct you to a better point.
July 24th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
@B. Chiclitz — You da man (V=IR)
July 25th, 2013 at 2:23 am
Hmm…Bad voltage sounds like what happens when you plug in an American toaster in the United Kingdom. (“Oh, no, I forgot to plug in the converter!”)
Also, something about this cover makes me want to Rick-roll someone…I think it’s the shades.
July 25th, 2013 at 11:19 am
So apparently he wrote this when he was 21, right at the tail end of the cyberpunk rage, no doubt thoroughly impressed by it, trying to squeeze in his own novel before mirrorshades went out of fashion for good.
According to Wikipedia, he considers it a very bad SF novel. Or course, no one who has won the Prix Goncourt would ever admit to having written a good SF novel, so that’s okay.
September 30th, 2014 at 6:35 am
@Tat Wood. I remember seeing an episode of said show *cough* some years ago where they talked about e-ink. What happened to that stuff eh? And the good bacteria that were going to do away with toothpaste, obviously done for by the dentists.
November 25th, 2015 at 3:36 pm
A. Science. Fiction novel.
November 25th, 2015 at 7:06 pm
What — it’s a “SCIENCE FICTION” novel?
Well, I never.
February 4th, 2022 at 11:00 am
THIS is the Back to the Future sequel I wanted. Michael J Fox with mirrored shades and a Gay Pride disc man that can also apparently shoot depleted uranium porcupine quills. I can’t even begin to express how awesome this is.
February 5th, 2022 at 12:05 am
@JJY: Your idea is probably 1000% better than the plot of this book.
What’s coming out of his wrist-gun-thing? Amyl nitrate because it’s a giant popper?