This site is updated Thursday afternoon with a new article about an artistic pursuit generally considered to be beneath consideration. James Schellenberg probes science-fiction, Carol Borden draws out the best in comics, Chris Szego dallies with romance and Ian Driscoll stares deeply into the screen. Click here for their bios and individual takes on the gutter. Our Guest Stars shine hereWhile the writers have considerable enthusiasm for their subjects, they don't let it numb their critical faculties. Tossing away the shield of journalistic objectivity and refusing the shovel of fannish boosterism, they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions about these oft-enjoyed but rarely examined artforms. Contact us here.
 Recent Features
Small Press Combo Attack
 Time to check in with a few small-press books. This is where where a lot of people get their start, and it’s
also where the books can live quite happily apart from the concerns of multinational conglomerates.
Continue reading...
Good Things Gro-o-ow in To-ron-to
 Right.
So you’ve joined the RWA, and are enjoying the information and
advocacy your membership entitles you to. But National’s a long
way off, and RWA headquarters is in Texas, and you’re starting to
get a little lonely. So what do you do? You join your local
chapter. Where I live, that means the Toronto Romance Writers.
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VARIETY PAK
 It’s been just over a year since I became a partner in the Mayfair Theatre, Ottawa’s oldest operating cinema. We’ve shown a lot of films in that time (we average about 40 a month), and I’ve written the synopsis for almost every one.
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Forgetful?
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First Archives
DANGEROUS BECAUSE IT HAS A PHILOSOPHY
 In Videodrome, shortly before the arrival of the least sexy waiter in the history of cinema (no link for this, you’ll just have to go rent the movie), Max Renn (James Woods, no hyperlink needed) and Masha (Lynne Gorman, IMDb listing not interesting enough to link to) share the following exchange on the nature of the phantom Videodrome signal Renn is tracking:
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"DANGEROUS BECAUSE IT HAS A PHILOSOPHY"
Tags: Bob Newhart , cardigans , Dada , David Cronenberg , David Lynch , George Romero , guns , James Woods , John Woo , manifestos , memes , metafiction , postmodernism , seventh art , Tristan Tzara
Love For Sale
 It is an untruth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a romance novel must be in want of A) wits, B) a social life, or C) both.
I read romance, and frankly don't care what other people think that says about me. In fact, I think the bias itself says some pretty interesting things. There's a lot to unpack in the pervasive and persistent stereotype that surrounds the romance section of any given bookstore. I see that stereotype emerging from three directions: lack of knowledge of the genre and its readers; envy; and the belief that romances are badly written. But it could be argued that it stems from one source. Continue reading
"Love For Sale"
In the Sewer with the Alligators
 I’m tired of the two-camera, hour-long drama. I’m tired of the Oscar-oriented mainstream film. I’m tired of “literary fiction,” you know, respectable middlebrow art. I don’t enjoy everyday reality heightened with swelling strings. I’m tired of realism’s conventions; so I’ve been turning to comics, pulp fiction, cartoons and genre film.
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"In the Sewer with the Alligators"
Tags: Alan Moore , alligators , angry red planet , animation , C.H.U.D. , Chicago , comics , Cultural Gutter , Dethklok , giant animals , Julie Doucet , Metalocalypse , Mike Allred , Mike Mignola , movies , pulp , Venture Bros.
Even When They're Wrong, They're Right
What is science fiction good for? One answer: to speculate on what the future might be like. But I would argue that the game of science fiction is only sometimes about predicting the future. Sure it's fun to invent flying cars and moonbases, but as even these two examples show, the predictive track record of the genre is notoriously bad. The real year 2001 had relatively little spaceflight but rather astonishing advances like the Internet that even Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke didn't imagine when they made their little movie nearly 40 years ago. In another famous example, Ray Bradbury's book-burning society of Fahrenheit 451 has not yet come to exist (fingers crossed).
It's Bradbury's book, as a failure of prediction, which precisely illustrates why I think that science fiction is so important. Continue reading
"Even When They're Wrong, They're Right"
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke , dystopia , futurism , George Orwell , Margaret Atwood , Ray Bradbury , reality , science fiction , Stanley Kubrick
Gutter Thoughts
I have to admit, I'm not much of a cultural theorist. My grasp of our cultural gutter is about as sophisticated as a falling anvil — and it's nowhere near as funny. Which isn't to suggest I haven't myself reclined in the gutter and slurped up its spillings like the rest of us… but to try and define the thing itself, not to mention what attracts me to it, is like trying to catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks (if you'll pardon the pillaged metaphor).
In my defense, comics are a gutter-al artifact due mainly to misinformation — okay, so maybe their sensationalism (at least in their formative years, produced for a North American market of, mostly, young boys) played a part. But to claim that Craig Thompson's Blankets or Chester Brown's Louis Riel, to name just two in the recent spate of literary graphic novels to grip the medium, are indistinguishable from X-Force or the collected Heathcliff is too absurd for words.
Yet it remains the prevailing consensus in our culture: that comics can only titillate or distract, never provoke or inspire. Continue reading
"Gutter Thoughts"
Vive Le Gutter!
For a long time, I've always felt a little weird about the third question people ask me at parties.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a novelist."
"Oh! Really! Have you had anything published?"
"Yep, I have three books out there."
"What kind of writing is it that you do?"
"Well...it's kind of science-fiction influenced stuff."
You see the side-step there? Continue reading
"Vive Le Gutter!"
 Paw through our archives
| James Schellenberg lives in the Niagara Peninsula. He has been writing sf reviews for Challenging Destiny since its launch in 1997. He also runs a book website called BiblioTravel that keeps track of where fiction is set. For his particular take on gutter culture, check out Even When They're Wrong, They're Right.Raised by two international catburglars, Carol Borden turned her back
on her heritage to take up a life of art. Sometimes, late at night, she
regrets her decision. You can read some of her writing on movies at the Midnight Madness Blog and hear her read some of her writing at You Will Not Make It In Hollywood. For her particular take on gutter culture, check out In the Sewer with the Alligators. Chris Szego reads romance. Along with poetry, mystery, sf, non-fiction of all kinds, cereal boxes (but not horror, because she’s kind of a chicken). For her particular take on the gutter, check out Love For Sale. Ian Driscoll is the screenwriter of numerous gutter-level films including the Harry Knuckles series, Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter, The Dead Sleep Easy and Smash Cut. His day job is in advertising, which helps explain the drinking. And, because he apparently needed another thing to keep him busy, he recently became a partner in running Ottawa’s oldest surviving cinema, the Mayfair Theatre. If he had a band, he would name it Two-Panel Marmaduke. For his particular take on the Gutter, check out Dangerous Because it Has a Philosophy. Jim Munroe has written three science-fiction novels. His videogame column in eye is called Pleasure Circuit. His No Media Kings website is home to his projects as well as many do-it-yourself articles on movie and book making. He lives with his wife in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood but enjoys an occasional trip to Liberty City, where he's shot a lot of video. For his particular take on gutter culture, check out Vive Le Gutter! (Retired from the Gutter)
Guy Leshinski is a writer and editor, a slapdash cartoonist and bass player, and sometime bon vivant. His comics column, The Panelist, appears every other week in Toronto’s eye Weekly. For his particular take on gutter culture, check out Gutter Thoughts.(Retired from the Gutter)
Of Note Elsewhere
On a Quest?
Obsessive?
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