Various media

These last few days I have experienced one movie that I should've seen long ago, one book I should've read long ago and one newly released CD.

The movie was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the story of the young couple Brad Majors and Joyce Summers who run into a bunch of very not straight space aliens. The plot didn't make any kind of sense at all, but it was great fun. Tim Curry did an amazing job of playing Frank N Furter, and Susan Sarandon wasn't half bad as Kristine Sutherland.

The book was Ursula Leguin's The Dispossessed. Which I've heard of for ages but never until now got around to read. I knew that it was an important work in the history of science fiction. What I had managed to miss is that it's also a bloody amazing book in general. Writing political SF is always a dodgy business. Writing political SF that not only works but still feels current three decades later? That's borderline genius.

The CD is Qntal's new album Qntal IV: Ozymandias. Which (horror of horrors!) does not have the same sleeve design as their first three albums. What has stayed the same, though, is the musical style. They still do electronic medievalism, a genre that seems to be entirely their own (if there are more, I want to know!). Ozymandias is more melodic than Qntal III: Tristan and Isolde was, and generally a much more even album. After two listenings, it doesn't seem to have any extreme high point like Ecce Gratum or Hymni Nocturnalis, but on the other hand only one or two tracks (out of fifteen) aren't really good (or better). So on the whole I'll consider this album a clear win over the previous ones, for the moment. We'll see how I feel after I've listened to it a few dozen times more.