I think its an interesting idea, sure, but what I'd rea[comment EXPLODES!!!]

Posted June 1, 2005 11:05 AM by Ray

What an awesome poem!

Posted June 1, 2005 11:20 AM by Tiger Spot

Far superior to my own proposal, "glamourstitial fiction", which is like interstitial fiction but with really pretty head shots.

Posted June 1, 2005 11:37 AM by Steven desJardins

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree
crushed beneath the treads of my
flame-spouting bulldozer.

Posted June 1, 2005 11:46 AM by Christopher

I'm proud to say that, in typical slipstream fashion, the Infernokrusher movement has been predated by its own splinter movement, the Infernodairy movement, which reviles Infernokrusher for its shallowness and absolutism and finds deeper truth in the yin/yang bifurcation of violent explosions and milk products.

The first Infernodairy poem, written to protest the eventual rise of the Infernokrusher movement, appeared nearly a year ago in Scalzi's blog:

Some say the world will
end in fire; some say in cheese.
But most likely, fire.

Posted June 1, 2005 12:06 PM by Steve Eley

Doesn't Sturgeon get credit for anticipating this movement, thanks to his "Killdozer?", and thus to the first film in this genre's canon? Or is that cannon? Cry havoc, and let slip the infernokrushers of war!

Posted June 1, 2005 12:11 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

Sturgeon's "Killdozer" is definitely anticipatory of the Infernokrusher movement. I would also mention Roger Zelazny's 1967 short story "Auto-Da-Fe" as a seminal work, along with the 1979 John Ritter movie "Americathon," in which the theme of Man's battle with the infernal machine is revisited as Meatloaf goes mano-a-auto with the last living automobile.

These latter two examples are not true infernokrusher fiction, however, but only proto-infernokrusher, reflecting as they do the awakening of the sensibilities that infernokrusher will later exploit--bot not yet having accepted the inevitability of the KRUSHING AND THE FRAGMENTATION AND THE DEATH.

Ahem.

Sorry about that.

Posted June 1, 2005 1:28 PM by elizabeth bear

Would that make Evan Dorkin's "Milk and Cheese" seminal influences on the Infernodairy movement?

Posted June 1, 2005 1:31 PM by Jesse

...and of course, how could we forget Christine?

Posted June 1, 2005 1:32 PM by elizabeth bear

Does Alan Dean Foster's "Why Johnny Can't Speed" count as proto-infernokrusher or just proto-proto-infernokrusher? (Perhaps it's pseudo-proto-infernokrusher.)

Posted June 1, 2005 1:38 PM by Christopher Davis

The Infernokrusher movement has already undergone its own deconstruction, in Waldrop's "Mary Margaret Roadgrader."

Posted June 1, 2005 1:48 PM by TexAnne

If we're looking for predecesors, then it all goes back to the Illiad. There's a giant horse and everybody dies or flees in disillusionment.

Posted June 1, 2005 2:00 PM by Keith

It’s good to see the young continuing the great work of literature.

I think you meant to say "the work of great literature," right?

Posted June 1, 2005 2:02 PM by Celia Marsh

Damn! Isn't that a wonderful story? Is Waldrop still writing? That's the only thing I've ever read by him, I think, and it's great!

Posted June 1, 2005 2:03 PM by adamsj

Quoth the pioneering infernokrusher critics on SCTV: "That blowed up REAL good!"

Posted June 1, 2005 2:23 PM by Rob Thornton

For that matter, Allen Steele's "Mudzilla's Last Stand" is Giant Robot Infernokrusher.

Posted June 1, 2005 2:51 PM by Christopher Davis

I have cronies? Don't anybody tell them.

Posted June 1, 2005 3:04 PM by David Moles

Of course you have cronies, Dave. :)

Posted June 1, 2005 3:07 PM by aphrael

Young Celia is perhaps unclear on the hermetic concept of the "Great Work".

MacGregor Mathers, to the white courtesy phone, please.

Posted June 1, 2005 3:28 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Waldrop's still writing and he's still awesome.

If you check Amazon, you'll find a whole pile of collections, of various shades of availability but unfaltering brilliance. His work is always worth seeking out, quirky and unexpected and well written and thought provoking -- I sputter into incoherence when I think how good it is.

Posted June 1, 2005 3:40 PM by Jo Walton

Top 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth

Posted June 1, 2005 3:46 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

Continuing the Waldrop aside, if anyone hasn't read "Mary Margaret Road-Grader," you can read it by following that link. (We reprinted it at Strange Horizons a few years ago.) It's the one that starts out "It was the time of the Sun Dance and the Big Tractor Pull."

Posted June 1, 2005 4:08 PM by Jed Hartman

And here I was thinking a Slipstream was a Interstellar highway...

Posted June 1, 2005 5:09 PM by Senseless

Both Waldrop & Steele will be at this year's Capclave (our host & hostess will be Fan GoHs).

http://www.wsfa.org/capc05/

I've never met Howard before, but Allen's easy to talk to.

Posted June 1, 2005 5:43 PM by Marilee

We would be happy to be "Fan GoHs," but that's not what either the website or the printed flyers say.

Posted June 1, 2005 5:47 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Howard Waldrop is also easy to talk to. Actually, easy to listen to, since you'll be laughing too hard to be able to say much.

I note that the UU Jihad compliments and confirms the Infernokrusher movement, demonstrating that the movement has a viability in synch with the times.

Posted June 1, 2005 7:01 PM by Sister Howitzer of Patience

Good to see your pixels, Sis.

Posted June 1, 2005 7:33 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Jay, surely the thing of the future.
It made me, and I can't even write one sentence of proper english, do this piece of Inferno-Krusher-Cosplay-Slash-Fanfic:

TinkyWinky ... <BOOM>
Dipsy ... <BOOM>
LaaLaa ... <BOOM>
Poooo ... <BOOM>

Posted June 1, 2005 8:04 PM by funnermentalist

We would be happy to be "Fan GoHs," but that's not what either the website or the printed flyers say.

Eh? What's that you say? You want portraits painted with a palette brush or something?

Oh, Fan GoHs!

Never mind.

Posted June 1, 2005 8:41 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

might a friendly mundane ask what slipstream does mean? I'm at sea here.

Posted June 1, 2005 9:30 PM by julia

MKK smiles happily and grabs some popcorn. She loves watching things blow up REAL GOOD.

MKK

Posted June 1, 2005 9:41 PM by Mary Kay

Huh, synchronicity in action. I was musing a few days ago that, if I were to start a new fiction magazine, a peachy-keen title would be "DETONATION: Explosive New Fiction".

(Not a musing likely to ever transmute into reality, alas, barring some unexpected windfall to pay off the mortgage and other mundane obligations.)

Posted June 2, 2005 2:11 AM by Bruce Arthurs

Infernokrusher...I take it that any allusion to fiction published by Games Workshop, and in particular its short-story magazine Inferno, is entirely accidental and not a cheap slam at a successful young publisher you don't work for?

Posted June 2, 2005 9:01 AM by James Wallis

My first, second, and third thoughts on proto-infernokrusher: some segments of Bill Watterson's work may well qualify.

Posted June 2, 2005 9:06 AM by sundre

I would like to retroactively nominate Death Race 2000 as the seminal work and entitled to a 'Splody(tm) award for best use of destruction in a major Infernokrusher picture for 1975.

Without this artistic piece outlining the need for science fiction to emprace death and destruction as key features in art, we wouldn't have the movement we have today.

Posted June 2, 2005 9:25 AM by Dave

I thought "slipstream" was the place behind somebody who's moving, where their aerodynamic drag is less. For instance, birds travel in a "V" formation because each is flying in the slipstream of the other to save energy by cutting down on aerodynamic drag.

In bicycle racing there is jockeying for position in terms of who lets who ride in ther slipstream.

So maybe "slipstream" writing would be when you try to get in on the coat-tails of another writer.

Posted June 2, 2005 9:47 AM by Erik Nelson

James Wallis wrote:
Infernokrusher...I take it that any allusion to fiction published by Games Workshop, and in particular its short-story magazine Inferno, is entirely accidental and not a cheap slam at a successful young publisher you don't work for?

Did you name your magazine after a monster truck?

Some people seem to have a genuine enthusiasm for taking offense at things.

Posted June 2, 2005 10:16 AM by Steve Eley

Shit. I just got back from Burning Flipside. Infernokrusher is neither fiction nor a joke. It's a way of life for some people.

I like fire too, and ask no forgiveness.

Posted June 2, 2005 10:37 AM by Adam Rice

Isn't infernokrusher sensibility just Chuck Palahniuk in bib overalls?

Posted June 2, 2005 10:52 AM by Jon

slipstream is what happens when you try to cross a small river and the rocks are smooth and wet and you lose your balance.

Posted June 2, 2005 10:54 AM by Greg London

Death Race 2000 sure, but Rollerball also came out in 1975 and had an unmistakable pre-protoinfernokrusher sensibility.

Posted June 2, 2005 10:54 AM by Larry Brennan

So what about the Rollerball remake? Heresy or revelation?

Posted June 2, 2005 11:14 AM by adamsj

Steve Eley wrote:
Did you name your magazine after a monster truck?

Not my magazine, though I do own shares in Games Workshop. (It's a publicly quoted company. Turns over in excess of £100m a year.)

Just, you know, it's a magazine that publishes SF/F (and outsells Interzone)... and if I was to write a manifesto for, say, the 'Locuspuller' movement for more SF/F revolving around cheap badly-written sex there might be an eyebrow or two raised.

Posted June 2, 2005 12:08 PM by James Wallis

In answer to Moles's initial question, it seems to me that the notion of Slipstream has always been entangled with literary class anxiety and that Slipstream has always tended in the direction of the kinds of literature that are like us but that get more respect, hence the tendency in the direction of such things as magic realism. (Can we have our Nobel Prize in Literature now?)

Posted June 2, 2005 12:43 PM by Kathryn Cramer

Mr. Wallis, I mean this in the best possible way, but you're completely off the rails. Doubly so because:

(1) when we coined the term we, as far as I know, had no awareness of Inferno [something I'll do my best to remedy if I have a chance to stop by the London Forbidden Planet on the way to Glasgow this summer], and because

(2) the Infernokrusher movement is about fiction that's fucking brilliant, not cheap badly-written anything.

Posted June 2, 2005 1:25 PM by David Moles

And yeah, Kathryn, I suspect there's at least a little reverse class anxiety involved here. :)

Posted June 2, 2005 1:26 PM by David Moles

Do you think there's a market for T-shirts that say "Sue Dante?"

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out what the other half of Robosaurus slashfic is.

. . .was there a line back there somewhere?

Posted June 2, 2005 1:54 PM by Sandy

Argh! inability to fix my tags after the fact. . . CRUSH DESTROY IGNITE BLAST REFORM.

link that should have been in there and wasn't

Posted June 2, 2005 1:58 PM by Sandy

Do you think there's a market for T-shirts that say "Sue Dante?"

Only if the wearers want to spend lots of time answering questions about when her next album is coming out, does her truck really have an 8-track that plays UMDs, and if it's true she was a teen groupie for the Dixie Flatline. (After . . . well, you know.)

Posted June 2, 2005 2:11 PM by John M. Ford

Robosaurus/Mechagodzilla?

Posted June 2, 2005 2:34 PM by David Moles

Robosaurus/Mechagodzilla?

Now that's slash.

Posted June 2, 2005 2:38 PM by John M. Ford

Mr. Ford, I am going to have to finish the work day with images of giant lizard monsters humping, running through what's left of my brain. (And I'm not sure if that comma should be there after humping, but it didn't make sense without it.)

Posted June 2, 2005 2:51 PM by Magenta Griffith

little reverse class anxiety

Yeh, I had picked up on that.

Posted June 2, 2005 3:06 PM by Kathryn Cramer

Also, perhaps I should have written "Nobel Prize in Lit-Richer," since that better described the subtext I was getting at.

Posted June 2, 2005 3:08 PM by Kathryn Cramer

THE INFERNOKRUSHER PARADOX

THE TRADITIONAL FORMS must be BURNED to MAKE ROOM for BRILLIANT INNOVATION

AND YET

THE INNOVATIVE IMPULSE must be SMASHED to PRESERVE our GLORIOUS TRADITION

how are we to resolve this?

SUCKA!

THERE IS NO PARADOX!!!
(now you must die)

THE TRIPLE-BARRELED BLACK SPIKY GRENADELAUNCHER CHAINSAW FLAMETHROWER OF INFERNOKRUSHER CLARIFIES SIMPLIFIES PURIFIES AND CLEANSES US OF ALL DOUBT!

Posted June 2, 2005 4:16 PM by Chaz

oh, and yeah,

SEX

Posted June 2, 2005 4:18 PM by Chaz

James Wallis, I hadn't been particularly aware of Inferno myself, but I now associate it with lameness. Doubtless this is unfair of me. I shall have to get a look at an issue, and so amend my opinion.

Posted June 2, 2005 4:40 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Hmmm, you're right, Patrick. (Of course, the flyer also has Electrolite separate -- I emailed Mike and he said he'd have it fixed on the website.) I specifically remember the announcement that you were going to be Fan GoHs, though. Ah, if I use the web archives thingy, I find Keith Lynch's original page where you're listed as FGoHs:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041013120601/http://www.wsfa.org/capc05/

Keith dropped off the concom (was webmaster) because they were using a Yahoo group and he's sure his spam will increase if he joins. I don't know who's doing the website now and if the change was accidental or new policy.

Posted June 2, 2005 7:18 PM by Marilee

I seem to recall a seminal InfernoKrusher work by Heinlein, called "And He Built A High-Torque, Two-Shaft, Rotary Shear Shredder".

As I recall the story it goes something like this: an architect builds an interesting house, and invites friends over to see it. Except the house is actually a giant shredder. During a tour of the house, a small tremor causes the shredder to power on, and all the people die shrieking in agony, reduced to bloody strands of tissue and chunks of gristle. Which then catches on fire.

Posted June 2, 2005 10:03 PM by Jon H

Can I have some soap and water for my mind, please? I'd like to be able to sleep soundly tonight, and this thread has decreased the chances of that in *ever* so many ways...

Posted June 2, 2005 10:23 PM by Julia Jones

Jon H: ...Which then catches on fire.

And explodes.

Posted June 2, 2005 11:04 PM by Larry Brennan

I'm about to start a massive rewrite of a script I wrote a few years ago. It starts off with my 8-year-old protagonist crawling along wearing this weird gear as he escapes from his summer daycare. When I first wrote that scene I thought I should have him blow the whole place up because every movie needs some explosions and some lovely fire and it would have really shown his distaste for the place.

Now I see that I should have absolutely listened to my instincts.

Posted June 2, 2005 11:52 PM by Georgiana

Georgiana:

"It starts off with my 8-year-old protagonist crawling along wearing this weird gear as he escapes from his summer daycare."

Didn't that get done in the Simpsons episode “A Streetcar Named Marge,” where Marge is forced to sequester Maggie in daycare while Marge rehearses for a community theater production. Maggie ends up at the “Ayn Rand School for Tots,” and in a spoof of The Great Escape?

I'm thinking Bruce Willis as Homer, Angelina Jolie as Marge, Brad Pitt as Bart, Tarantino directing, and John Fox or Drew Jiritano for pyrotechnic Special Effects. I think that the Ayn Rand School for Tots gets dynamited as in The Fountainhead. Boom!

Or how about "Kindergarten Cop" meets "The Terminator?"

Posted June 3, 2005 12:52 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

"When I first wrote that scene I thought I should have him blow the whole place up because every movie needs some explosions and some lovely fire and it would have really shown his distaste for the place."

I hate to contradict the One True Way of InfernoKrusher, but instead of blowing the whole place up, maybe something like blowing up the toilets.

An 8 year old would probably consider a poopsplosion to be the optimal sendoff.

Posted June 3, 2005 1:30 AM by Jon H

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a wimperer.

And there there is that issue of the terminal-ogy....

d, rlh

Posted June 3, 2005 3:06 AM by Paula Lieberman

Can I just say how much I like this new Movement? (And I want to claim "Iron Sunrise" as an early example coz in the first two chapters it does blow shit up real good.)

Incidentally, I think we lucked out on this one. Back in 2003 it took the combined weight of Gardner Dozois, Michael Swanwick, and Nellie the Elephant to press Cory Doctorow into conceding that maybe he'd be sending the wrong signal if he named the new movement "Nerdcore".

Posted June 3, 2005 9:55 AM by Charlie Stross

Not only does "Iron Sunrise" blow stuff up, it *describes* it. In great detail, and I fel this is important. Any work of art can mention big explosions in passing: infernokrusher art must *revel* in it.

I'm not sure about the krusher aspect, though: "Iron Sunrise" certainly manages the `inferno' part, but it's more a work of infernoplasma, or perhaps infernovaporation. You need, I think, more Giant Krushing Engines with Huge Teeth of Steel and Depleted Uranium for the krusher part.

(Perhaps the ReMastered could have Giant Krushing Engine specialists, or something, and invade worlds by long and patient subversion *and* Merciless Acts of Krushing decorated with big explosions.)

Posted June 3, 2005 11:02 AM by Nix

Scribble, scribble ...

Am making notes towards the next space opera. I was planning on doing one about Space Pyrates, although they were coming out unaccountably gray and John Major -like on account of all the double-entry bookkeeping to which that profession is prone; maybe if I add a Monster Truck drag, or two ...?

(How big can you make a Monster Truck, anyways? Hmm.)

Posted June 3, 2005 11:11 AM by Charlie Stross

Back in 2003 it took the combined weight of Gardner Dozois, Michael Swanwick, and Nellie the Elephant to press Cory Doctorow into conceding that maybe he'd be sending the wrong signal if he named the new movement "Nerdcore".

Well, that would be an overloading of aterm already used. Nerdcore Hiphop.

Posted June 3, 2005 11:16 AM by BSD

The opening of Iron Sunrise is, indeed one of the best explosions in all of science fiction.

Posted June 3, 2005 11:21 AM by David Moles

Charlie Stross:

"(How big can you make a Monster Truck, anyways? Hmm.)"

Take 4 Ringworlds as wheels. Insert shiny neutronium-plated hubcaps. Red Dwarfs (dwarves?) for brake-lights. Pulsar headlights. Now, for the fuzzy dice hanging in the cab...

Posted June 3, 2005 11:32 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

How big can you make a Monster Truck, anyways? Hmm.

I seem to recall that Howard Chaykin's American Flagg had some that were the size of large industrial plants.

However, I think that if you have to ask "how big?," you're thinking too small.

Posted June 3, 2005 11:34 AM by Dan Blum

I think I'm actually going to write a story like this. Already have the title: Fine Red Mist is the new Black.

Posted June 3, 2005 12:48 PM by Tim Akers

I believe pink mist is the technical term.

Posted June 3, 2005 1:06 PM by David Moles

Oh, and Nix, it's worth pointing out that the explosion in Sunrise is, in fact, caused by crushing.

Posted June 3, 2005 1:10 PM by David Moles

Do you think the Mythbusters are part of the Movement?

Posted June 3, 2005 2:06 PM by Serge

In the realm of Maximum Size for Teratrucks, one could start with the wonderful flatbed transporters that hauled Saturn Vs out to the pad. They were extremely slow, of course, but that was only because they had fragile stuff on them that we cared about.

There's a flatbed transporter system -- saw it on a Honking Big Machines documentary long ago, and have forgotten the maker -- that consists of flat decks with motors and fully articulated wheels below. The trick is that these can be plugged together in any desired configuration and controlled as if they were a single element (what us train guys call "multiple-unit control"). There would doubtless be some control lag in a skiffily big assembly, but nothing that mad science couldn't fix.

Hm. Combining vehicles. Maybe a fleet of Real Big rigid airships, with internal corridors, that can link up in midsky, Gerry Anderson-fashion. (Anderson's fascination with aircraft that are supposed to come apart is probably one of the key id-monsters haunting aircraft designers.)

A number of years ago Harry Harrison did a set of three books collectively called something like "Wheelworld," about a planet, where, at long intervals, the habitable zone went all funny and the entire population had to load their asses and their oxen into gigantic you-know-whats, powered by the cities' nuclear plants.

Posted June 3, 2005 2:21 PM by John M. Ford

John, the Saturn V crawler is still in use today -- they converted it to haul the Shuttle. (The Russians, being more sensible, just used railroad tracks and a launcher/erector on the pad. Spoilsports.) The combo transporters are also pretty big when you bolt them together, though. (And I've heard rumours about Airbus building a new Guppified Airbus based on a 340 hull to carry the wing sections of the A380 in place of the barges they currently use -- would a Guppy ten feet longer than a Boeing 747-400 count?)

Still. It occurs to me that the real use for a monster truck is on a planet with an insufficiently long day where you want to build a surface-to-orbit elevator. The elevator's groundside end needs to crawl, of course. Around the equator. All umpty-several million tons of it.

Posted June 3, 2005 2:43 PM by Charlie Stross

A number of years ago Harry Harrison did a set of three books collectively called something like "Wheelworld," about a planet, where, at long intervals, the habitable zone went all funny and the entire population had to load their asses and their oxen into gigantic you-know-whats, powered by the cities' nuclear plants.

The books were Homeworld, Wheelworld, and Starworld, collectively known (to the SFBC, anyway) as To the Stars.

Posted June 3, 2005 2:53 PM by Dan Blum

I think this ought to be the mascot of the InfernoKrusher movement.

The Saturn V crawler is probably comparable in size, but this has a massive toothed digging wheel, in addition to the house-crushing treads.

It'd look nice as a logotype on the spines of books in an InfernoKrusher imprint.

Posted June 3, 2005 3:07 PM by Jon H

Red Dwarfs (dwarves?)

Dwarfs. Unless they're ruddy-bearded Tolkien creations.

Someone was ranting, on a much inferior site, that the proper plural of 'roof' was 'rooves'! I essentially asked her what Bizarro world she'd wandered in from.

I bet she thinks the singular of 'grooves' is 'groof' too.

Posted June 3, 2005 3:19 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

It'd look nice as a logotype on the spines of books in an InfernoKrusher imprint.

It'd look even better as a powered model with the novel packed inside the cabin. It could have, say, a Sony Aibo-level brain, and a programmable attack instinct. Hold a foiled and embossed cover up to the CCD, and Igor go kill.

"Literary excellence through superior horsepower."

Posted June 3, 2005 3:36 PM by John M. Ford

Yes, that is certainly a manifesto, and so much more manifest than that almost polite Mundane manifesto! The krushing makes me so happy.

Posted June 3, 2005 3:52 PM by Jackmormon

See also Hal Duncan's Molotovs At Dawn: An Infernokrusher Response To The Mundane Manifesto.

Posted June 3, 2005 3:57 PM by David Moles

No, really. I really really love you guys. No place else has so many fun, twisted, sick, and demented people. Well, except maybe Worldcon.

MKK

Posted June 3, 2005 3:57 PM by Mary Kay

I, for one, welcome our new Infernokrusher overlords as they put us to work in their infernally-deep pulp mines. (Or do you strip mine pulp? Yeah, strip mines... you get cooler machinery that way...)

In fact, I now feel a burning need to go work on "Still Life with Chainsaw and Flamethrower"...

Posted June 3, 2005 4:39 PM by Anton P. Nym

Mr. Wallis has missed a great resource in angering this community such that it must KRUSH and destroy.

I mean, what is Warhammer 40K if not an Infernokrusher template, an unstoppable vision of space orks and chainsaw hands and cybernetic monster trucks?

"In the grim future of Hello Kitty, there is only war."

...oops...wrong link.

Posted June 3, 2005 4:58 PM by Sandy

Mr. Wallis has missed a great resource in angering this community such that it must KRUSH and destroy.

I mean, what is Warhammer 40K if not an Infernokrusher template, an unstoppable vision of space orks and chainsaw hands?

"In the grim future of Hello Kitty, there is only war."

...oops...wrong link.

Posted June 3, 2005 5:00 PM by Sandy

I mean, what is Warhammer 40K if not an Infernokrusher template, an unstoppable vision of space orks and chainsaw hands?

It's also incredibly naff, and gives crazed adolescent power fantasies a bad name? Or is this a trick question?

Posted June 3, 2005 5:07 PM by Dan Blum

I think this ought to be the mascot of the InfernoKrusher movement.

I'll bite; what the heck is that thing?

Posted June 3, 2005 5:48 PM by Dave Schwartz

I'll bite; what the heck is that thing?

I think it's some kind of mining machine.

I also think it's GORGEOUS. I WANT one. I sneer at paltry Sport Utility Vehicles; I can consume eons of fossil-fuel deposition with this thing JUST BY PICKING UP GROCERIES!

And I could KRUSH all those annoying cars between me and the supermarket doors, too. KRUSH them into an INFERNO of twisted metal! YEAH!

(Do they take Visa?)

Posted June 3, 2005 6:15 PM by Anton P. Nym

I'd just like to point out that Charlie Stross was already thinking quite specifically about Monster Trucks in SF contexts, even before these infernokrusher parvenus came along.

You see, earlier today I was reading his story "Elector" (from the September 2004 Asimov's), and I came across the following in the "FAQ memeplex":

"Money exists, and is used for the usual range of goods and services, but the basics -- food, water, air, power, off-the-shelf clothing, housing, historical entertainment, and monster trucks -- are free."

Even after the Singularity, there will be Monster Trucks.

Posted June 3, 2005 6:37 PM by Peter Erwin

I believe it is a coal mining excavator. There is a shallow coal seam running through Germany that is excavated with a similar machine. Whole villages are removed from its path, and then rebuilt after it has passed, leaving no scars in the countryside.
mark

Posted June 3, 2005 7:23 PM by gaukler

Gaukler is correct. I think its proper name is "Bagger 288".

It just occurred to me that, having seen Return of the Sith last night, nothing in that film gave me the sense of wonder and awe which this mining machine gives me.

Posted June 3, 2005 9:03 PM by Jon H

You are not a beautiful or unique monster truck.

Posted June 3, 2005 9:24 PM by Bill Blum

"You are not a beautiful or unique monster truck."

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a Transformer.

Posted June 3, 2005 9:28 PM by Jon H

Here is a night photo or two of this rather large machine: BIG MACHINE
mark

Posted June 3, 2005 9:48 PM by gaukler

Maybe the definition of slipstream has drifted because Sterling's original definition, as quoted here anyway, is so vague as to be meaningless.

Posted June 3, 2005 11:31 PM by Mary Dell

Jon H: really? I saw Sith last night. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it nearly as much without the revelations of Infernokrusher. I was able to ignore most of the wonky dialogue and concentrate on the shiny bits.

Posted June 4, 2005 12:15 AM by sundre

"Two paths diverged in a wood, and I-
I rode my bike off the path
That was awesome!"

--Robert Fire

This is entirely too much fun. Can someone help me figure out where irony ends and sincerity begins?

Posted June 4, 2005 1:26 AM by AJ

AJ writes:

This is entirely too much fun. Can someone help me figure out where irony ends and sincerity begins?

It may be twenty years before the boundary is apparent. Such is the way of literary movements. It's a risk you take when you jump into one.

Turning to another matter, Road & Track reviewed the Shuttle crawler a long time ago.

Posted June 4, 2005 1:59 AM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

Excerpt from
Most Voyager Fails To Incite Wonder, SciFiWeekly Letters:

Once upon a time, Star Trek meant solid writing, character development, and there was hardly a single episode that didn't provoke some serious "Yeah, what if?" on the part of the viewer.... Now, though, it seems that Trek episodes are for sale to the highest bidder. I (thankfully) missed the most recent episode (the wrestle-fest), I wish I'd missed "Virtuoso" (Robert Picardo deserved better), and now there's discussion about a MONSTER-TRUCK episode?

Rick Berman and Paramount must think the fans are as stupid as the storyline writers who came up with these ideas. I can see it now: A series of Titan-sized MONSTER-TRUCK are turning some planet's ecosystem into earthen road kill, and it'll be up to Seven of Nine to figure out whether to a) remotely slash their tires, b) transport sugar into their fuel tanks, or c) get Neelix to grow enough jumbo-sized bananas to make exhaust-pipe stuffers.

... With ideas like what we've been seeing, it's no wonder that the majority of the series is taken up by episodes that have all the punch of a flat tire (monster-size, of course).

Bruce Lane
kyrrin@bluefeathertech.com

Oh, Brucie, baby, your complaint is SO pre-Manifesto!

Posted June 4, 2005 3:13 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

And what was the point of the following film, with them having neglected to hire a SFWA member who adheres to The Manifesto? I mean, we KNOW that Billy Bob Thornton can do Sci-Fi!

"Wakin' Up in Reno," a potential debacle (or delight) starring Billy Bob Thornton, Charlize Theron, Patrick Swayze and Natasha Richardson as two trashy couples who travel to Reno to see a monster truck show. Yes, that really is the premise. And the director, Jordan Brady, disturbingly lists his CV credits as having played "Frat Guy" on "Dream On" and "Teen Boy" on "Baywatch...."

Baywatch could have been so much better if they just blew lots of stuff up, and maybe had the robot shark from Jaws, maybe with frickin' machine-guns strapped on...

Posted June 4, 2005 3:27 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

And for the Christian Right:

Jesus: The Monster Truck

This would be so cool if Satan took the bait, and manifested his baddest Monster Truck, for a Demolition Derby with Jesus. I mean, that dude with horns and hooves knows monsters, right? And the exhaust pipe could belch sulfur fumes, heck, it could burn a slurry of sulfur in nitromethane. Emperor Bush could fly over in Air Force One, escorted by the Blue Angels, and Satan would like shoot missiles at them, or maybe be flying AF1, doing a Bin Laden voice imitation to crack up his buddy Bush and annoy Ashcroft. And the heavy metal soundtrack alone would be, like, awesome! Crank it up to 11, dude! Or maybe 13. Or, I know, set the amp on 666! And then there would be, you know, Armageddon, which has an infinite amount of stuff blown up, and burning to a crisp, and all, while guys like me are Left Behind...

Posted June 4, 2005 3:38 AM by Jonathan Vos Post

Actually, for the benefit of the Christian Right, I'm already working on my cut-up and fold-in of the Book of Revelations. See, there's a point in it where some angel says, a pox on he who adds any words to this book, and on he who takes any words away from this book (or words to that effect). Says nothing about tearing the goddamn text into little bitty phrases and putting them back together in a different order so Satan wins.

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA!

Posted June 4, 2005 10:19 AM by Hal Duncan

Maybe the definition of slipstream has drifted because Sterling's original definition, as quoted here anyway, is so vague as to be meaningless.

Not to be serious or anything, Mary, but that's one of the things we were discussing in David's original thread. Er, before we demolished it.

Posted June 4, 2005 11:34 AM by Dave Schwartz

Hal Duncan: See, there's a point in it where some angel says, a pox on he who adds any words to this book, and on he who takes any words away from this book (or words to that effect).

Well, shouldn't the pages be contaminated with antrhax or smallpox or something, then? Sheesh - the angel did say a pox. Gotta give them kiddies literal scriptural truth, or they might grow up to be biologists or something similarly ungodly.

Posted June 4, 2005 11:43 AM by Larry Brennan

I say burn it. Burn it all!

Posted June 4, 2005 12:06 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

A Tank of One's Own

It's part Return of the Jedi sail barge, part 19th-century battleship. "The goal was to make something tanklike, relatively inscrutable, and slightly menacing," says Neal Ormond, who spent three months building what he calls the JL421 Badonkadonk after studying design at Stanford. The 1,000-pound 'donk (hip hop slang for "bodacious backside") can hit 40 mph and holds a crew of five, flamethrower optional. Ormand, who now runs a graphic and Web design firm in Palo Alto, is offering the vehicle for sale on Amazon.com in the Everything Else category. No sale yet. "The people who would be willing to spend $20,000 on it are usually not the people who have $20,000," he suspects. But the producers of Wildboyz, the spinoff of MTV's Jackass, caught wind of the Donk and plan to use it in an upcoming episode. Sounds more entertaining than Revenge of the Sith.

- Tom Vanderbilt

Posted June 4, 2005 3:22 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

Jon H, having read ML and then settled down to the news last night, I was surprised by pictures of the same machine on NBC Nightly News. It was in a bit about scam coal mining which is here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8088541/

And it looks like it will show you a video of the machine working in the picture on that page, but I'm not willing to install all the MSN crap to do it.

Posted June 4, 2005 3:46 PM by Marilee

I've always liked trucks. There's a street in our city which is mostly car dealers (and the city is planning to change that to residential/office) and Battlefield Ford has a lot with these really cute little dump trucks. I can't afford one, don't have anything to do with it, probably couldn't get up in it, but I stop by every now and then (usually with a convenient child) to look at them.

Posted June 4, 2005 3:52 PM by Marilee

And it looks like it will show you a video of the machine working in the picture on that page, but I'm not willing to install all the MSN crap to do it.

Not much of it, alas, just a brief glimpse of the rotary scoop in action.

I would like to offer this photograph from c.1990 in Hamilton as a possible alternative trope to the "Monster Truck" in infernokrushing. Simulated delivery of incendiary ordnance by vintage aircraft, thereby INFERNOing and KRUSHing hapless steel drums with squib-ignited kerosene to the thrum of radial or rotary engines, should also qualify.

Posted June 4, 2005 4:25 PM by Anton P. Nym (aka Steve)

Here's the perfect chair for readining infernokrusher lit.

Posted June 4, 2005 4:45 PM by Larry Brennan

A tree explodes in the forest
but there is no one left to hear it
It's too much for human ears anyway
only scientific notation
can do it justice
Perfect in itself
undistorted by human conception
it -- Hey you! Buzz off!
Give a bomb some privacy, willya?
Go read something else.

--

Where light meets death
the witnesses lie
If they weren't vaporized
they weren't really there

Posted June 4, 2005 6:08 PM by Eb Oesch

This is great! I spent most of last evening talking to a friend and tossing around dialogue for an infernokrusher radio play about Satan having a bad day and trying to figure out how to work in the whole Jesus at the pawn shop motif. Now I see that we are all really tapped into the infernokrusher collective unconscious and we're grooving on the whole Jesus/Satan/Monster Truck possibilities together. Sweet!

Posted June 4, 2005 6:58 PM by Georgiana

JvP writes: "This would be so cool if Satan took the bait, and manifested his baddest Monster Truck, for a Demolition Derby with Jesus."

Have you ever seen the movie "The Car", where the Devil manifests as a badass black car with black tinted windows, that drives through houses and stuff?

At the end, it goes over a cliff (stupid Devil!) and the ensuing cataclysmic fireball is shown assuming a devil-like face shape.

Posted June 4, 2005 8:21 PM by Jon H

Michael O'Donoghue once wrote the guide, "How to Write Good", in which the most significant trick was to run everyone over with a truck when all else fails.

In "American Flagg", they worked their way up to a truck the size of Chicago...which then proceeded to crash into Chicago (leaving Reuben stuck in Russia at the mercy of the daughter of the international mædia mogul Rupert Khan), showing that Howard Chaykin can write really good when he cares to.

Posted June 4, 2005 9:29 PM by Michael Turyn

JVP wrote:
"Wakin' Up in Reno," a potential debacle (or delight) starring Billy Bob Thornton, Charlize Theron, Patrick Swayze and Natasha Richardson as two trashy couples who travel to Reno to see a monster truck show. Yes, that really is the premise.

Along similar lines: "Steelyard Blues" with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, and Peter Boyle. Sutherland plays an obsessed demolition-derby fan and driver, whose goal is to smash up one of every model of car, and only has one left to make his list complete.

Do Keith Laumer's Bolos fall into infernokrusher territory? How about Hell Tanner's vehicle in "Damnation Alley"? (The original Zelazny novella -- NOT the movie -- it hopefully goes without saying.)

Posted June 5, 2005 1:12 AM by Bruce Arthurs

Theme of giant mining machines: You're so vein.

=======

Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus,
Sitting on the dashboard of our monster trucker...

Posted June 5, 2005 2:19 AM by Paula Lieberman

I like it. INFERNOKRUSHER may be what finally gets me into science fiction, like volcanoes did with geology with that special eruptive way of theirs.
Although not on a planet-sized monster truck scale the folks at survival research labs at least have a start with robots, fire, and destruction.

Posted June 5, 2005 2:50 AM by Greg Horn

Until you have your own giant robot flamethrower fists to crush and burn, this may have to do, and this, and this, and this.

Posted June 5, 2005 3:11 AM by Greg Horn

Infernokrush or Deviationism?

Posted June 5, 2005 3:08 PM by Matt McIrvin

Of course, the movement's anthem would have to be "Jesus built my Hot-Rod", by Ministry.

Posted June 5, 2005 7:17 PM by Charlie Stross

The ultimate InfernoKrusher event would be to have the Bagger 288 run rampant in the boneyard, assuming all the airplanes in the boneyard were fueled up and lightly armed beforehand.

Posted June 5, 2005 9:07 PM by Jon H

I was thinking more along the lines of a Disaster Area concert.

Let's see ...

For a floor show, hand the keys to the Bagger 288 to Mark Pauline (Survival Research Laboratories) and, of course, run riot in the boneyard.

The band's synth section consists of one instrument: the Large Hot Pipe Organ. That's all it takes. The concert has to happen in Nevada so that Los Alamos National Laboratory can provide percussion. For lighting, we'll invite Dave Caulkins to stage his delayed Millennium Meteor Fireworks Project (warning: PDF).

I'm still looking for a bass guitar big enough to stand beside this lot, but I figure we can probably make it work if we can just get hold of six surface-to-orbit elevators.

NB: how much of the biosphere will be left standing after this concert is anyone's guess.

Posted June 6, 2005 10:48 AM by Charlie Stross

I missed this thread for several days, so I'm not sure if anyone's yet posted the following Monster Truck Porn:

http://www.fys.ku.dk/~mdn/hamers.htm
(second photo down)

Posted June 6, 2005 1:00 PM by Julia Jones

Dance Dance Immolation has got to be the definitive InfernoKrusher party game.

Posted June 7, 2005 11:23 AM by Georgiana

The Rods from God
Are kinetic-energy weapons the future of space warfare?
by Michael Goldfarb
06/08/2005 12:00:00 AM

BY CHANCE, the same day that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was released in theaters across the country, the world learned of the Bush administration's plans to weaponize space. So while critics speculated about the parallels between the Evil Empire and the Bush administration, pundits debated the merits of "space superiority"--the allies it would alienate, the treaties it would violate, the billions it would cost. The irony was not lost on Teresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, whose insistence that the world would not "accept the U.S. developing something they see as the death star," was carried in the pages of the New York Times.

[Now, the HOTRODS from God, that would really kick ass! That Sith thingie wimped out, because nothing here on good ol' Terra Firma got stomped.]

The GBU-28 was designed to destroy underground bunkers, but there have been doubts about whether it can actually penetrate Iran's buried facilities. Pike says they would--"like a hot knife through butter"--and that this misperception may have been intentionally fostered: "to lull the mullahs into a false sense of security. THE RODS may indeed be more science fiction than science....

[Now you're talking Infernokrusher! I say lull them mullah towelheads and penetrate them bunkers like a hot knife through butter -- and let's have some extreme close-ups of exactly what that hot knife does to some of those so-called "students" who kept 'murcans captive for 444 days. If MY finger was on the button of a Red White & Blue Deathstar, you can bet that I'd start ticking off checkboxes on this little list I got of losers itchin' to be snuffed.]

Posted June 9, 2005 9:53 AM by Jonathan Velocity-Weapon Post

nothing new .....
T.S.Eliot - the Waste Land:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a
KZAPPABBBOOOWAAACHCHCRRRBLUMMMNNGGGKRSHTGRRRDNGGG

Posted June 13, 2005 3:40 AM by steve what does this button do creagh

Hey, an InfernoKrusher birthday cake Make a wish!

Posted June 14, 2005 10:45 PM by Larry Brennan

cherry blossoms fall
I breath the sweet, cool breezes
your head is on fire.

the seeds you sow
will now blow up
explosively

Posted June 14, 2005 11:53 PM by ben lehman

Higglety pigglety
Alfred B. Nobel sat
Munched on a sausage and
Drank whiskey neat.

Never expecting that
Trinitrotoluene
Soon would make dynamite
Near obsolete.

Posted June 15, 2005 1:09 AM by James D. Macdonald

The band's synth section consists of one instrument: the Large Hot Pipe Organ. That's all it takes. The concert has to happen in Nevada so that Los Alamos National Laboratory can provide percussion.

That's for the 2012 Overture, right?

Back when I was doing pulsed laser propulsion work, there was a paper that calculated the sound output from a launch: 1 megajoule laser pulses ablating ice at 100 Hz. Something like 113 dB SPL at 10 km from the vehicle. I did suggest making the pulse rate variable so we could use it as the bass line in a rock concert....

Posted June 15, 2005 3:40 AM by Jordin Kare

Infernokrusher
Puts trinitrotoluene
In the middle line.

Explosive endings are
faux-Infernokrusher tropes
And are deprecated.

Infernokrusher
puts the "cannon" in "canon"
for haiku stylings.

Who needs seasonal
references? There is no
season without "boom".

Posted June 15, 2005 9:47 AM by Anton P. Nym (aka Steve)

Let no man weep, no woman cry in fear;
the sun is just the flame to scorch the day.
The fire burns to beat the dark away.
Let's step behind this submachinegun here.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat,
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

Posted June 15, 2005 11:18 AM by Casey Bennetto

Brek e ke kek ko ex?

Posted June 15, 2005 12:37 PM by Tom Whitmore

a bugblatter beast
is a ravenous creature
keep a towel close

Posted June 15, 2005 1:41 PM by Greg London

I begin to percieve the attraction of the Berserkers.

(Berserkers of Saberhagen would be a good name for an Infernokrusher rock band...)

Posted June 15, 2005 6:09 PM by Patrick Connors

Jordin Kare:

The proposal that I submitted to you (through Talandic Research) in the pulse laser propulsion work, with the "solid fuel" ablation propellant mixed with proper lengths of optical fiber to get the optimal temperature gradient, had its nonlinear wave equations strongly praised by Edward Teller, you told me, just before you told me that the funding had collapsed. Can you get me something in writing about that? And what followup there was to the technology that I invented and disclosed in that proposal?

Posted June 15, 2005 6:15 PM by Jonathan Vos Post

[From Verona Total Breakdown (Liebestod), a forgotten early Infernokrusher work by Bill "Hoist This Petard" Shakespeare . . .

Ro-Mo. Your windows are still mirrored; taunt me not,
But show your colors, dare to challenge me,
These lips are two shaped charges, primed and hot,
That wait the go-code for delivery.
J-Cap. The flag is to the deadly, not the loud,
Yet aim as well as posing show in this;
The worthy throwdown’s always to the proud,
And hammer down is how the hard girls kiss.
Ro-Mo. My draft is stopped; I struggle toward the clutch.
J-Cap. And would a charge of nitrous make thee run?
Ro-Mo. Too much; but what else is there but too much?
Let me take arms, and elevate the gun.
J-Cap.Small arms but hint what demolitions say.
Ro-Mo.Then, gunner, gimme one round.
J-Cap.On the way.

Posted June 15, 2005 8:23 PM by John M. Ford

Greg Bear's collected-novells "Strength of Stones" features a theocratic planet of mobile cities. While the mobility relies on the organic cities breaking down into modular parts and waddling about, the original (?) paperback cover featured much-much cooler spiky monster-truck cities. Newer covers are just so much boringness.

If anything should be used as a justification of building Monster Trucks "religion" is certainly an interesting excuse.

The Tzar Battle Tank (click on "The Tzar Tank" -- it won't direct-link) was an early not-really-successfull-nor-put-into-production weaponic version of the Monster Truck that was 10m high.

Posted June 23, 2005 1:09 PM by the Other michael

And does "The Space Child's Mother Goose" have any InfernoKrusher sentiments?

The Hydrogen Dog and the Cobalt Cat
Side by side in the Armoury sat.
Nobody thought about fusion or fission,
Everyone spoke of their peacetime mission,
Till somebody came and opened the door,
There they were, in a neutron fog,
The Codrogen Cat and the Hybalt Dog;
They mushroomed up with a terrible roar-
And Nobody Never was there-No more.

Frederick Winsor in The Space Child's Mother Goose (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958).

Hrm. Nary a vehicle, and this direction would tend to imply that all nuclear-apocalypse fiction is includable. Nevertheless, magnificent explosions in children's lit is an interesting side-line.

Posted June 23, 2005 1:15 PM by the Other michael

This Is Just Decay
by Walter Carlos Williams

Planetary death
caused
by nuclear
explosions

brought by
infernocrusher
monster
trucks of doom

along
galactic roadways
filled
with your fire

Posted June 23, 2005 4:19 PM by handdrummer

Since it's still alive . . .

Infernokrusher e. e. cummings pastiche, followed by a true proto-IK cummings original (if you pay attention to line 12).

i(a

bo
mb
fa
ll

s)
nfe
r

nokrush!!!

------------------------------------------

the boys i mean are not refined

the boys i mean are not refined
they go with girls who buck and bite
they do not give a fuck for luck
they hump them thirteen times a night

one hangs a hat upon her tit
one carves a cross on her behind
they do not give a shit for wit
the boys i mean are not refined

they come with girls who bite and buck
who cannot read and cannot write
who laugh like they would fall apart
and masturbate with dynamite

the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss

they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

Posted June 24, 2005 4:59 PM by rm

W00t! Here is my very first opportunity to officially review an InfernoKrusher novel, which just happened to be Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

rm - that line sounds exceedingly painful.

Posted June 24, 2005 6:28 PM by Georgiana