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Evil Machines
Price: £20.00
This is a darkly funny set of 13 linked tales by the legendary Python. How do you feel about your phone? Or your car? I bet you don't think about them much, except when they go wrong. But what if they go really wrong and turn properly bad...evil, even?
Join Terry Jones on a journey into the dark heart of machines. Meet the lift that took people to places they didn't want to go, the vacuum cleaner that was too powerful, the terrifying train to anywhere and Mrs Morris, a little old lady from Glasgow, who turns out to be a very resourceful heroine...Brisk and cheerful on the outside but as dark as Roald Dahl's finest within, Terry Jones' collection of thirteen cautionary fables will make you look at the 'helpful' inventions that surround you in a very different way.
"Evil Machines" is charming fable suitable for Luddites of all ages or anyone those who like a bit of Pythonesque edge to their silliness.
Reviews
reviewed by Nicalas Boardman November 14, 2012 10:46
you have certain expectations when you pick up a book written by a favourite actor or author. For me I have watched and enjoyed Terry's writing from Monty Python, Ripping Yarns, the Python films, Crusades and his Douglas Adams based idea S.S Titanic.
From the first page of this beautifully binded read more...
The Video
On Python & BBC
The Pitch
How do you feel about your phone? Or your car? I bet you don’t think about them much, except when they go wrong. But what if they go really wrong and turn properly bad… evil, even?
Join Terry Jones on a journey into the dark heart of machines. Over the next six months you will get to lounge in Terry’s shed as he writes about the lift that took people to places they didn’t want to go, the vacuum cleaner that was too powerful and the terrifying train to anywhere. Brisk and cheerful on the outside but as dark as Roald Dahl’s finest within, Terry Jones’ collection of thirteen cautionary fables will be finished for November 2011.
Fortunately, this is just before Christmas, so you may want to order the beautifully stitched, bound and illustrated Hardback edition (if we can find a non-evil printing press to play ball). Early-bird patrons can even get a personal dedication from Terry.
In the meantime, here’s the beginning of the very first story, 'The Truthful Phone'. If you would like to listen to Terry reading the second ('The Nice Bomb'), you’ll find it in his shed once you've made a pledge.
November 2011
Fiction (suitable for all ages. Particularly good for Luddites or those who like a bit of an edge to their silliness)
The Excerpt
You might think that there was nothing particularly evil about a Truthful Phone. It simply told the truth, which is, of course, “A Good Thing To Do”. But the way this particular telephone told the truth was not at all good. In reality the thing was evil from the tip of its mouthpiece to the end of its cord.
The Author
Terry Jones is a legend. Not in the sense that he’s a long-dead or semi-mythical figure about whom stories are told around roaring log fires (although that might still happen). No, Terry Jones is a legend because he’s achieved more than ten men might reasonably expect to do in a lifetime. And because we know attention spans are short, here are ten Jonesian highlights:
• Being unable to stop laughing when doing the read-through of the sketches he and Michael Palin wrote for Monty Python’s Flying Circus (he was the one usually in a headscarf or a bowler hat).
• Co-directing Monty Python & the Holy Grail (1975), a film so funny it made all subsequent films set in the Middle Ages seem like comedies.
• Directing The Life of Brian (1979) a film so funny it was banned in Norway (according to the Swedes).
• Writing his adaptation of Starship Titanic (a game devised by Douglas Adams) entirely in the nude.
• Allowing his son Bill to do the Director’s Son’s Cut for the DVD of his movie Erik the Viking (he’d originally written the book for Bill in 1983).
• Convincing us Chaucer himself was murdered by a naughty Bishop, and that the oh-so-perfect Knight in the Canterbury Tales was a rotter.
• Allowing his love of real ale to lead him to set up us own brewery, Penrhos, in 1977 (it’s inaugural ale was 'Jones’ First Brew').
• Reminding us that you can’t force an abstract noun to surrender in Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror (2004).
• Becoming a father for the third time in 2009, when he was quite a lot older than people who do this tend to be.
• Writing and directing The Doctor’s Tale (2011), an opera in which he imagines a dog that has trained and now practises as a doctor.
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