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THE FULL LID 
8th April 2022

Top of the month, time for a recap for our new joiners. Hello! Welcome to The Full Lid!

We do pop culture positivity: a collection of the interesting, new, weird or fun, direct to your inbox every Friday at 5pm. Reviews! Analysis! Recipes! Alliteration! Frequent deep dives into the thematic construction of theme tunes! 

Like email, but fun!

This week's interstitials are a celebration of Bruce Willis' cinematic career. We've never agreed with the man's politics but damn if he hasn't been in some of our favourite movies. Rest up, Bruno. And that album still hits by the way.

Now, shall we contents?

Contents

Here We Hugo Again!
The Entropy of Loss
Unexpected Guests
Signal Boost
Where You Can Find Us This Week
Department of Received Esoteric Print Goods
Signing Off / Playing Out

Here We Hugo Again!


Whoop! We did it again! It's Hugo finalist time, so please join us in celebrating this very fine assortment!!
  • TFL goes two for two in the Best Fanzine category! Gigantic thanks to everyone who nominated us. 'EMAIL, BUT GOOOOOOD!' is a weird rally crying but let's face it, it's our style. Thank you all!
  • Escape Pod and PodCastle are back in the Semiprozine finals! Congratulations Pod and Dragon!
  • Mur and Divya are up for Best Editor Short Form, a category they placed a neck-and-neck second in year year. This nomination means a lot to us as it's also Divya's last year with Escape Pod. Nothing would make us happier than to end her rotation at the Pod with a thoroughly deserved win.
And now the weird thing.  I am NOT a Best Fan Writer finalist for the first time in three years and I am sincerely, massively relieved.  Which is a very strange sensation to have about what many would consider a step back. But I am. 

The category is perennially in the crosshairs of Discourse, which takes an emotional toll I just did not expect. It's also increasingly a category that centers writing about fandom and that, my friends, is not only something I rarely enjoy doing, it's a space absolutely not in need of another cis white guy's opinions.

Would I like to be back in that particular running at some point? Sure! But in processing how I felt about this year's nominations, I realized the category has an unresolved connection with a LOT of negative experiences. Experiences that were making it hard to enjoy being a Hugo finalist. 

So I'm embracing the change and welcoming the break. Congratulations, Best Fan Writer finalists of 2022! I'm cheering you on from the sidelines!
The Full Lid Header in blue reads 'Books'
The front cover to The Entropy of Loss by Stewart Hotston

The Entropy of Loss


Editor's note: spoilers. Content warnings for body horror, death and dying, biological transformation (fungus and spores), and discussions of grief.

 
Sarah Shannon is a genius with no solution to the problem that matters: her wife Rhona is dying. The awful trudge of mortality is wearing everyone down. While Sarah and Rhona still love each other desperately, Sarah has found refuge in her work, and her colleague Akshai. Sarah, an Information specialist, has been running simulations on black holes. But the equations have changed. They have responded. Sarah has made a breakthrough, or perhaps, a breakthrough is remaking her.

Stewart Hotston's first novella embodies the principles that fascinates its heroine: the transmission of information and the communication it causes. But Hotston's line is subtler, and more dense, than the first contact at the heart of Sarah's lab. This is a story about the space where human and non-human life collide, the time-stretched moments of mortality and love, and the stages of grief, which Hotston deftly uses to map and structure his story.

At the center is Rhona, the fact she's dying is the black hole from whose gravity no one can escape. The process of her death and its aftermath carry powerful motifs as humanity's understanding of  the process evolves. Rhona, an artist, encodes a beat which is one part surreal, one part romantic and one part a 'gotcha' nose tweak into her final moments with Sarah. The fact a non-human intelligence is using an artist to communicate with a scientist is subtle and well-handled. Events too vast to comprehend, and too intimate and personal to withstand untouched, put Rhona, and Akshai, and Sarah through the wringer with clear-eyes and remarkable emotional honesty.

Hotston perfectly captures the 'stretched too thin but you wish it never stopped' sense of time imminent grief grants its pre-emptive sufferers. There are moments of language that fizz and pop like the spores of the fungal intelligence. Akshai and Sarah's romance hits as hard as the relationship between Sarah and Rhona, in different, braver ways. There's absolutely love there but also the spiky exhaustion and guilt of a survivor not sure she wants to, and a refuge who's increasingly convinced she deserves better. You care about all three of them, and the way the spores wrap them all up in their presence feels, at the risk of what may sound like a cheap joke, organic and deeply meaningful.

But Hotston crams even more into the novella's 114 pages. There's a delightfully sinister subplot involving Sarah and Akshai's nurturing boss who may have had experiences like this before and Adeola, the fixer sent to deal with it. There's a pair of action sequences which evoke Annihilation, Arrival, Roadside Picnic and Horizon Forbidden West while doing very new things with all three. My favourite of all, there's a constant tension between wonder and dread. Wonder at the incredible events unfolding in the office, dread at what they could mean, at what happens they stop. When they do, that's when Hotston plays his masterstroke, unveiling an ending that's as circular as it is neat, as poignant as it is hopeful.

Art and science, love and death, human and non-human. Each fighting the entropy of loss and finding something new within. A striking, elegant, kind novella from a major new talent.

The Entropy of Loss is available now from Newcon Press, and find Stewart online.
The Cinematic Career of Bruce Willis: The Siege

A cast this good isn't going to steer you wrong. While the movie feels like it's from a different time (and, well, it is) there's a lot that compels. I wouldn't say it's enjoyable, especially in the hellscape we all live in these days, but there's a lot to ponder.

Video description: The trailer for action movie The Siege starring Denzel Washington, Tony Shalhoub, Bruce Willis and Annette Benning.
The Full Lid Header in blue reads 'Movies'
The poster for 2014 movie The Guest, featuring Maika Monroe as heroine Anna and Dan Stevens as...let's say hero...David

Unexpected Guests


Editor's note: spoilers for The Guest (2014) which is rated US R / UK 15 with content warnings for profanity, sex, some drug use, and strong violence.


The art that changes your life you never see coming. In 2014 I worked for a site called Film Divider and remember reading a piece there talking about the second act twist in The Guest that turns the movie upside down. Up to that point, it's the story of David (Dan Stevens), a veteran who visits the family of a dead friend and decides to help them out. David's version of help is a John Wick-ian combination of astonishing violence and psychological warfare and for those two acts, its very much a slowburn slasher/stalker movie.

And then you hit that twist and everything snaps into focus.

The third act of The Guest is a different genre to the first two, and it can barely contain its glee at what it gets away with. Dan Stevens, the sort of Captain America you really wouldn't want to take your eyes off, has big fun in the first two thirds but when his cover is blown in the third? He goes full Downton Stabbey and it is GLORIOUS. Steven has a very complimentary energy to Jack Lowden in the excellent TV version of Slow Horses. Lowden plays River Cartwright as BLOODY FURIOUS he's not the hero. Stevens plays David as just existentially annoyed that he has to do awful things to people now. It's vanta black humour and I suspect plays very differently right now to seven years(!) ago.

The article did an excellent job of selling the twist without spelling it out. So good in fact it stayed with me for years. You see, I'm easy to entertain but difficult to surprise when it comes to narrative. And The Guest does a glorious job of showing you your card and distracting you from the awful things the man holding it has done.

(If you're up for an excellent action movie and haven't seen it, treat yourself. Better still, treat yourself to a double bill of The Guest and It Follows, both anchored by Maika Monroe as a female lead who is no one's Final Girl.)

The Guest is also fertile ground for a sequel, although one has yet to materialize. 

Until last week.

Sort of.
The cover for The Guest II features David the super solider in a cowboy hat, a mysterious group of hooded monks, one holding a metal three-eyed skull, a shadowy figure in what seems to be a wheelchair made out of a tank and Anna, the original movie's heroine, with a gun and a knife
The soundtrack for a movie that doesn't exist.
It's just too lovely an idea to not deeply charm me, just like I have been before.
Director Adam Wingard explains:
 
“Over the years, I've received more requests from fans to make a sequel to The Guest than any other movie in my filmography - I am now proud to say it has finally arrived. The Guest 2 is a first of its kind; an aural sequel to the feature film. Embedded within the song titles, the album artwork, and the music itself are hidden clues that lead the listener down the path a sequel would take. If you take the time to fully absorb this work, one could imagine how the story unfolds.”
 
Composer Steve Moore adds:
 
“For The Guest Returns I revisited some of the main themes I wrote for the original film. The idea was that this would have been a bigger production, bigger budget, so I've tried to expand on these themes in a way that gives them a larger scope. Lots of synths but also a heavy orchestral component, and new motifs that layer over the original themes."
 

A bigger budget! Larger themes! No actual film! Given the surprises at the core of the original movie, that's eminently fitting. But is it any good? Let's see what we can decipher from a select few tracks.
  • Moore's The Guest Returns is clearly David back on his murderous bullshit as the driving urgent beat pushes him and us out through the sort of desert Michael Knight would drive through. It's a clever, careful aesthetic: pseudo retro synths giving us that '80s tech-noir thriller vibe but crossed with the sort of soaring orchestration that modern movie soundtracks enjoy. Same David, different theatre of operations. New cowboy hat.
     
  • John Bergin's Carver's War Machine is, to quote a version of the Sorcerer Supreme, the moment where things get out of hand. It's all crunchy guitars and industrial keyboard lines, what seems to be actual cannon fire and an increasingly urgent sense of David being very out of his depth. Is this the colossal warchair on the front cover? Who knows! Probably! What's VERY significant is that Carver is Lance Reddick's character in the original movie and it seems likely he's eager for a rematch and, shall we say, in no position to not sign the odd waiver or two. This is fun, nasty, crunchy stuff, the sort of track that will make old school Nine Inch Nails fans happy. And I should know.
     
  • Xander Harris' You've Got The Amory, I've Got The Time feels like a gear-up montage. Low synth thunderclouds and rising storm heads speak of weird warrior monk armies being gathered. I detect a possibly wounded Darkest Timeline Captain America forming an unlikely alliance with the world's angriest ex-diner staff member and, just maybe, a partially cybernetic Lance Reddick. This is the sort of track that several Nicolas Cage characters have in their cars, nodding along as the stage is set for the final showdown. 
The Guest 2 track list on Spotify
The album is also available on Spotify
  • And speaking of final showdowns, Moore returns for David vs the Splinters of the Cross and what a title that is! Given the original movie's fondness for transhumanism, pitting David against what looks to be some form of conservative religious cult is a smart way of upping the ante and also showing us a new side to him. Or perhaps an old one. So much of The Guest is about the slow subversion of the Good Old American Boy trope and the chipping away of self and identity, which sets up nicely the kind of adversary David could face in a sequel. The track is Moore on top form too, orchestra and synth combining as David and presumably Anna team up to take down the Splinters once and for all. And maybe the metal skull? He looks fighty.

How close am I to the truth? Who knows! Only Adam Wingard, Steve Moore and co. Personally I think a sequel where David and Anna fight each other, then Carver, then team up to stop a black ops death cult from using David's genetic material to create a murderous Second Coming sounds like exactly my speed of fun. If we ever see the movie, it'll almost certainly be better. It'll also, just like the original and like this album, be a very unexpected and welcome, murder-y surprise.

The Guest is available on physical and digital release.
The Guest 2 Soundtrack is available from LakeView Records.
The composers are all linked so if you like electronic music, check them out.
Ave, Film Divider
The Cinematic Career of Bruce Willis: Die Hard with a Vengeance

Of course we have to talk about Die Hard. Except for the fact this, like The Siege, demonstrates that Willis' greatest strength is often as part of an ensemble. The partnership with Samuel L. Jackson here is perfect, Willis playing McLane as a hundred miles of hung over bad road. Also Leverage fans should keep an eye out for an impossibly young Aldis Hodge in his first screen role.

Also this was the last film I saw before moving off the Isle of Man and it was awesome. Also also? BEETHOVEN.

Video description: The trailer for Die Hard with a Vengeance in which Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis have the most fun / worst time ever.

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The Cinematic Career of Bruce Willis: Lucky Number Slevin

One of an absolute slew of more-literate-than-thou crime movies, Slevin has the advantage of a snappy script, some good performances and a zen-turn from Willis as assassin Mr. Goodkat.


Editor's note: My pick in this slot would have been The Jackal.


Video description: The trailer for Lucky Number Slevin, a deeply weird and often very funny crime movie.

Signal Boost

 

Featured Boost

Cover for Right Magic Items by Aidan Moher
Cover by Sara Alfageeh

Books

  • Spencerfleury sends word of their new book, How I'm Spending My Afterlife.
  • @jroberts1324 sent along details of their new book, The Heron.
  • RADennyAuthor says 'The alchemist's apprentice is not who the Puritans think she is. She wasn't sent by a London society to check on the mission among the Native Americans on Martha's Vineyard. She's not even a Puritan... Time travel/historical fiction. The Alchemy Thief. FREE on April 7.'
  • Friend of the Lid Dan Hanks says 'Could I recommend giving a shoutout to the wonderful STRINGERS by @ChrisJPanatier which comes out next week from @angryrobotbooks? It's a very, very funny book.'
  • April Vandermerwe says 'Recent children's book in a series: Pangolin Plays a Prank (Penguin Random House). Pangolin accidentally runs into Lion after a night of feasting on termites and ants. She has to think quickly to avoid being eaten by Lion, and discovers she has more friends than she realized.'
  • ReneeBianca says 'I have this novel I wrote (and the charity I’m doing with it)! Reborn on the Shores of Awakening is a novel about a trans girl in denial who’s about to get way too into her favorite MMO'
  • Juliette Wade says 'Inheritors of Power, the third book of The Broken Trust series, is out now.'
  • Long term Friend of the Lid Elizabeth Lupton says 'Don't forget @dan_hanks two books, Swashbucklers and Captain Moxley & the Embers of the Empire'.
  • Friend of the Lid Cheryl Morgan says 'The first of the #Outremer reissues will be available at Eastercon. Beautifully written and pleasantly Queer'.
  • Friend of the Lid Winged_Leo says 'My second novel "Tempest Blades: The Cursed Titans" will be on offer all of April. The offer is for the ebook version, 99 cents in Amazon, Apple, Kobo and B&N.'
  • Adam Christopher's Star Wars novel, Shadow of the Sith, is the Lando/Luke team up I didn't know I desperately needed until this moment.
  • Friends of the Lid Luna Publishing they're 'running a story bundle with Lavie Tidhar, on world SF, not sure if you saw it....You can see it here: https://storybundle.com/scifi.' 

Conventions

Hashtags and Shenanigans

  • This made me snort laugh.
  • And this just keeps on building. You think 'tescroceries' is the peak and it's just the foothills.

Podcasting

  • The Silt Verses says 'We've got a second season just launched (but only if you have space to mention it, Alasdair)!' and damn right we do!
  • Friend of the Lid and actual podcasting superhuman Erika Sanderson says 'Fool and Scholar have just launched @DontMindPod.' And also recommends #TheDragoning. What's that I hear you ask?
  • @MessengerTheatr are currently funding their second season of The Dragoning: an urban fantasy first person audiodrama in which women have become dragons.
  • Patterspod says 'Hello! We're a weird on purpose, dark comedy investigation #audiodrama about a scandalous suspense/thriller author who goes missing and the opportunistic, doomed ghostwriter who sets out to find him. "Finding Pattersby" starts crowdfunding APRIL 19!'
  • @NerdsAtChurch say 'We are a progressive podcast, cohosted by @rev_ewing and @romans821kjv , connecting the Bible to all things nerdery and have a lot of great episodes, including an important one driving into Passover coming up for Holy Week next week. We would love for more folks to know about us!'
  • The Fanscape Podcast say 'I have just released the second episode of FanScape: A FanFiction Podcast! its a new audio drama style podcast and could definitely use some help! This season is a fan fiction from the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe (but is great for newcomers to the series)'
  • jblumenfeld100 sends word of Star's End: A Foundation Podcast.
  • Dark and Stormy Nights say 'We're Dark & Stormy Nights, a podcast that aims to examine the first page--and only the first page--of every novel ever written. Our guests include writers, podcasters, critics, librarians, cartoonists, educators, and the occasional veterinarian!' Excuse me, just updating my podcatcher...
  • UncannyRobot say 'We turn AI-written stories into fully sound-designed audio dramas. Our latest episode is a send-off of a true crime podcast with surprise tributes to other movie and TV icons.'
  • Notorious Rich says 'I host a podcast called Staring Into the Abyss @IntoStaring... We're focused on round table discussions about dark genre fiction.'
  • The LEGENDARY Air Out My Shorts say 'rumours of aoms reboot .... real or hoax? taking temp= anybody actually want it back? ' And...yeah, we really do:)
  • Karinheim says 'My new sci-fi audio drama @chaikapod drops...April 8! Chaika is a tale of loss, isolation and hope, about a woman navigating a post-apocalyptic future.'
  • Elleturpitt says 'We have a new podcast - @EsbatBookish. Talking about SFF & Horror books written by diverse voices.'
  • 윤준@JuneYoon_ says ' I have a fun micro podcast called Final PUNchline - a long-form dadjoke podcast! xD Each episode is 3-5 minutes long and it's a 3-5 minute long story that ends with a dadjoke as the last line! ahaha xD Please enjoy! Shaggy dog 2.0! OMG!

Crowdfunding

Games and Movies

  • Unseenphil says 'Released a tabletop RPG on itch a week or two back called Underhills; it's about being hotel staff in a fantasy noir post-war Hollywood.'
  • KellyLynnKrause says 'I'd appreciate any support you & your newsletter could provide for my short horror film's @seedandspark campaign. STORAGE is a short psychological horror film that follows one man's isolated evening as he is forced to confront his past when a seemingly supernatural presence haunts his storage room...'

Trans Rights Are Human Rights

That's this week's Signal Boost! If you have a project you'd like to see here get in touch or check Twitter for my weekly call.
The Cinematic Career of Bruce Willis: 12 Monkeys

Gilliam's finest work, Willis' most internalized and careful performance, and an ending you will never forget. Watch it, then watch the short silent movie, La Jetee, it's expanded from. Then watch the TV show. They're all great.

Video description: The trailer for 12 Monkeys.

Where You Can Find Us This Week

 

Twitch

  • More space! archaeology in Outer Wilds! Where we learn the important life lesson 'Orbit first, THEN autopilot'.
  • Less dog politics, more art criticism, in Scarlet Hollow
  • And our very first sizzle reel!

All Things Fiction

  • The 30 Rock joke is DOWN. I repeat, the 30 Rock joke has LANDED.
  • Continuing to channel my inner Vince Noir.

Marguerite's schedule at Flights of Foundry

Podcast Land

 
PseudoPod 804: Flash on the Borderlands LXI: Dead Man’s Party (April Fools’ Version) And check out this bonus version, hosted by me! Two commentaries for the price of free!
The Cinematic Career of Bruce Willis: Hudson Hawk

AIRBAGS! CAN YOU FUCKIN' BELIEVE IT?!  Oh Eddie, you're the BEST.

Video description: The trailer for Hudson Hawk, arguably the weirdest work Willis has ever done.

Department of Received
Esoteric Print Goods


 
The front cover to Amoralman by Derek Delgaudio
Derek Delgaudio's special, which I reviewed last week, was flat out amazing. I can't wait to see what he does with prose.
The front cover to Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild And True History of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan
Massive thanks to Portal Bookshop for hooking me up with this account of the behind-the-scenes drama on one of the best actions movies of the 21st century.
A tiny model of Ludens, the astronaut mascot of Kojima Productions
I accomplished a Big Thing this week, so rewarded myself with this delightful little skull-faced astronaut from Kojima Productions. He's called Ludens and he is adorable.
A sheet of logos for organizatinons from the video game Death Stranding
You too can embrace the aesthetic of Norman Reedus, Post-Apocalyptic mail carrier and Infrastructure Repair Specialist! with these delightful Death Stranding stickers!

Find me on The Online

A drawing of Alasdair Stuart trailing pop culture wherever he goes
Image by the multi-talented Jen Williams
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Signing Off / Playing Out


Thanks for reading, folks!  I hope the week was good and that your weather settings were less stuck on 'fast forwarded mood board' than ours were! Sun! No snow! No rain, rain!

TFL returns next week. Check my Carrd for all the places you can find me, including the Twitters, where I found this simultaneously so pure and SO tense. Follow us on Twitch to be notified when we go live.

TFL is a free weekly newsletter. Here's how you can support it and me: And thank you!

Playing us out this week is little known indie artist Mick Jagger with this gloriously shabby, disreputable theme tune to the gloriously shabby, disreputable TV adaptation of Slow Horses

Have a better week than the inmates of Slough House please, not that that's difficult.

Oh and this?
is a Full Lid.

Video Description: The key art for Slow Horses, adapted for Apple TV from the novels by Mick Herron
Copyright Alasdair Stuart © 2022 -- All rights reserved

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Agathon Towers · Cheapside Road · Reading, Berkshire RG1 7AG · United Kingdom

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