Science Fiction Blog

Another Look Again, or Re-Re-View

2006-06-16T21:43:00.000-04:00

Wow, this place is dead. Deader than dead...I'm beginning to feel like an EMT, holding defibrilation paddles over the corpse of the SFB. OK, I know, web sites don't have corpses, and running electric shocks through servers is a very bad idea, but you get the image.

But this post isn't about the SFB, as much as I may feel like a fledgling necromancer of the Internet. I'm here with another book review. And, no surprise, it's a sequel...someone must have liked my review of the first Kitty Norville book, because I got an ARC of the next one.

So, here you go.

Kitty Goes To Washington
Written by Carrie Vaughn
Published by Warner Books

Well, this is a definite improvement. I said of Kitty And The Midnight Hour that it felt very much like a first novel: rough around the edges, inexperienced...you know what I mean. This time around, Carrie Vaughn isn't making those amateurish mistakes. For one, she's distanced the plot of the novel from the nomal Gothic-Punk tropes, by setting it in a place rarely seen: the halls of Congress.

Quick plot synopsis: Kitty Norville, host of the late-night radio show The Midnight Hour and the most well-known "outed" werewolf in the country if not the world, has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Senate to testify as an expert witness on vampires, werewolves, and everything else that they've only recently become officially aware of. Meanwhile, she encounters the Washington D.C. underground, including the local vampire Mistress, an entire community of lycanthropes (including a very attractive were-jaguar); and also the Washington D.C. aboveground: faith healers, Bible-quoting senators, and government branches with hidden agendas. Frankly, the aboveground is scarier.

As this is a sequel, I have to talk about it in those terms. I'd definitely recommend reading Kitty And The Midnight Hour first, because this book takes place roughly a month or so after that one, and the events from the first one still play in big-time. But this one's a much better novel. One of the largest complaints I had about Midnight Hour was the way Vaughn integrated several of the Kitty Norville short stories she wrote, which is to say, rather poorly. The stories, which took place in the radio booth and were about what Kitty did during certain shows, stood out. I get why it was necessary, or at least one of them (Kitty's outing) was, but it still didn't quite fit. Here, Vaughn dodges the bullet: where it's relevant, she puts in the radio show. Where it isn't, she writes around it, and in the back--at least, in the back of my ARC, but I hope it's in the final published copy too--she puts the story itself. That works rather well, and I liked this short story. It has to do with music, its effect on people, and demon-possessed punk rockers.

Vaughn seems to also have taken steps--positive ones--to weaken the comparisons with Laurell K. Hamilton and other writers of her ilk. For one, there's less sex in the book, and what is present isn't about animal sensation--this time, it feels like a relationship, not pure copulation. Similarly, there are fewer, and shorter, scenes from the wolf's perspective. Where the last book was about the human coming to terms with being a werewolf, and with other werewolves, this one is about the human trying to get "normal" humans to accept her, a werewolf's place in human society, and the importance of still being human, even when you're a werewolf, or a vampire, or the like.

From my own perspective, the book was interesting for another reason. You see, I just moved to the DC area to start a new job, so it was funny to read about Kitty sightseeing (of course she sightsees) at places such as NASA and the Washington Monument. Granted, I haven't had much time to do my own sightseeing yet, what with moving in, unpacking, buying lamps and food and bookshelves...you get the idea. But the irony hit home.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the book is perfect--there are flaws. A few places where I'm left wondering about the flow of events, some of the characters are a bit too flat, the plot and resolution is a little convenient, and several of the characters who made the jump from the previous book are changed around a bit more than I'd expect. But it's a very solid book generally, a worthy return to the universe. Apparently, Vaughn is planning a third novel. I'm looking forward to it.

Whither SF A/V, or The King Is Dead, Long Live...?

2006-01-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

Lately, flipping through TV channels in search of SF, I have come to realize that SF on TV and movies is at a crossroads. For the first time in my lifetime, at least, the two great names of SF film are silent. The last Star Wars movie has come and passed, and while I keep hearing rumors about the television series, I haven't seen anything yet...and I think the oddsmakers are predicting three episodes[1], tops.

Meanwhile, Star Trek is taking a well-deserved[2] break from television entirely. After the disappointment of Enterprise--which, by all accounts, certainly improved in its fourth season, but there's definitely a taste of "a day late and a dollar short" in the air.

Firefly and Serenity are out and done, and it's clear that Joss Whedon is moving on; he's also done with Buffy and Angel; though he does have a few films in the works, including Wonder Woman, he's moving on, not back.

Check out Meanwhile, The Comics Podcast by Dave Belmore and SFB founder T Campbell for the latest on comics movies; suffice it to say, there's a lot in the pipeline, but there's not much actually out now.

So what's left? Well, Battlestar Galactica, which I'm told by reliable sources is an excellent show: apparently it is good for all the same reasons Babylon 5 was, with higher production values. Then there's Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Now, don't get me wrong, I've given both of those shows a fair watch, and while I agree that they have potential, they never hooked me. Plus, SG-1 has been on...what, ten years now? And
how many times have they changed foes? Enough's enough.

Then there's the networks. Lost seems to have some subliminal message in its broadcasts, but I wouldn't be surprised if Surface, Threshold and Invasion don't get
renewed. It's obvious they were picked up on the heels of Lost, and we all know that rarely works.

(However, if you're looking for a show that isn't quite SF but is still excellent and worth watching, allow me to plug Veronica Mars. If you like the Whedon oeuvre, you'll like VM.)

But that's about it: three Sci-Fi Channel shows[3], one network sort-of show, a few cheap imitators. The field is actually pretty wide open, with no huge behemoth to scare off potential investors or networks. There's no sense that Star Trek is a non-repeating phenomenon, and there's little chance of confusing anything with Star Wars anymore.

So, what's next?

Scanning the IMDb for Upcoming Movies gives a few smaller SF flicks such as Night Watch[4], so maybe one of those will have a chance to break out and become big. I don't know what's coming up for the 2006-2007 television season, but with the first wave of Lost imitators out of the way, maybe we can get some real, original SF on TV. Just don't put it on FOX. Their track record is beyond awful. I don't know what's coming up. But I'm looking forward to it.

Time for the Succession Wars.

[1] Especially if George Lucas writes the romantic dialogue...
[2] Read: "desperately needed."
[3] Not to say that's bad, but it's a self-selecting audience that way.
[4] Not based on a Pratchett book.

XXXterminate

2006-01-06T05:40:00.000-05:00

The New Year is a good time for making plans for the future. It is also a good time for introspection and examination of things past.

Bold new directions; thoughtful essays — these are the stuff of which "End-of-Year" and "Start-of-Year" posts are made.

Unfortunately for you, what you're getting, instead, is something so utterly brain-devouring that I find myself compelled to get it out of my head and into yours at once, lest it burst forth from my skull like some tiny alien Athena:

Lesbian Dalek Bondage Porn.

On DVD.

(Now that the lawyers have descended, it can be found in the nooks and crannies of the internet; but that's only to be expected, of course)

The Year is 2005, The Place Is http://www.babylon5scripts.com, or The Babylon Project Was Our Last, Best Hope For Good TV

2005-10-30T01:51:00.000-05:00

Allow me the comfortable cushion of believing that just about everybody here has seen Babylon 5. If I'm wrong, you might as well stop reading now, hie thee to your TV, and start watching. Everything's on DVD now[1], so you really have no excuse. Watch the show.

Anyway. Now that we've disposed of those poor uneducated souls, I'm spreading the word about what may be the coolest post-B5 project ever: J. Michael Straczynski is releasing his scripts. All ninety-two JMS-written Babylon 5 episodes, plus the scripts for The Gathering and In The Beginning. Plus bonus material. Fourteen books in all, two released per month, not counting the special fifteenth book...

Go to http://www.babylon5scripts.com/ for details. But as a confirmed Babyloniac, you can bet I'll be buying.

[1] Well, except for "To Live And Die In Starlight," but that's not that much of a loss...

Look Again: A Re-View, or I Couldn't Wait Until The Midnight Hour

2005-10-17T23:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like the SFB has been a little quiet of late. Maybe this will jolt it back to life: the first SFB Book Review.

Kitty And The Midnight Hour
Written by Carrie Vaughn
Published by Warner Aspect

Carrie Vaughn is going to get compared to Laurell K. Hamilton. This is inevitable. Hell, even the promo quotation on the cover calls Kitty And The Midnight Hour "vintage Anita Blake meets The Howling." Talk about a blessing and a curse: on the one hand this will probably get a number of the Anita Blake readers to pick up the book, but on the other I know any number of people who have gotten sick and tired of the Anita Blake series. Besides, Vaughn is funnier.

I've identified the exact moment when I knew we needed some new vampire/werewolf cliches: when White Wolf sued Universal for making Underworld. But Vaughn, in this novel, shows that there is still some life in the Gothic-Punk[1] universe.

The basic plot is as follows, lifted from the back cover: "Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station--and a werewolf in the closet. Her new late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged is a raging success, but it's Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew..."

Now, this punches up some of the Anita Blake-comparison bits (especially "sexy werewolf-hunter"), and doesn't talk about some of the more interesting and creative parts, such as the werewolf sense of community and the reactions of the rest of the world. Unlike Blake's world, you see, here vampirism and lycanthropy and the like aren't so public yet; the discussion of who knows what and how much and the governmental response is a little more interesting than Hamilton's "Vampirism is legal, and that's that" opener.

Vaughn's style is new and clean, easy to read, and it kept me interested. Scenes written from the perspective of the werewolf as opposed to the human were done creatively, shifting from first person to a close third, which gives the right feel of Kitty being outside herself. The take on the pack dynamic makes sense and, more importantly, works in context, so I can't complain.

She's also funny. I liked her humor, her jokes and backhand lines, and especially the occasional swipe at those good old cliches. The advantage of setting Kitty as a talk-show host is that the callers can ask the dumb questions. The vampire who wonders where the "vampire orgies" are and the "werewolf trapped in a human's body" were probably my favorites. Then there are the normal humans in the story, like Kitty's mother and father and the staff at the radio station, who provide the right sense of outsiders looking in.

I'm not saying the book is perfect. This is a first novel, and it has some of the hallmarks. Vaughn feels to be still developing both her style and her world. For example, she'd already written a couple of stories about Kitty, and then found she had to put them into the novel as scenes. As a result, those scenes--even though they're rewritten to not reintroduce concepts--stick out. The plot is predictable in spots; not a huge deal, but typical for a first novel. In addition, the narrative has a few places where it hiccups; new characters get introduced less-than-smoothly, the prose stutters a few places, and then there's the question of sex.

Ah, yes, sex. Now's where the Blake comparisons are hitting their stride. Don't worry, the book isn't like what I'm told later Blake books become, but when you're talking about the pack/wolf mentality of werewolves--alpha males, alpha females, et cetera--you're guaranteed to get some sex scenes. I didn't find that the sex or near-sex in this book were too much, and I even thought her take on the werewolf's sexual reactions were interesting, but it's worth mentioning as a possible source of negative commentary.

In all, I'd say this book is a good first novel; if I'd bought it, I would have felt my enjoyment was worth the money for a mass market paperback. It's not an incredible, change-the-paradigm novel--we're not looking at the next J. K. Rowling--but it's solid and entertaining, and I want to keep an eye on Vaughn.

If you want to, check out Vaughn's web site, http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/CLVaughn/. It also happens to have a Kitty Norville short story on it, so you can gauge her style for yourself.

[1] Yes, I'm calling it by the White Wolf name. I just like the term, that's all; I'm not passing judgement on whose universe it is.

Best Week Ever

2005-10-01T17:00:00.000-04:00

While we're on the subject of Neil Gaiman, his glad tidings and large headlines are not limited to the Joss Whedon co-interview and the opening of MirrorMask; there's much more.

For one, The Onion's "AV Club" has two very detailed parallel interviews with Gaiman and his longtime friend and MirrorMask collaborator, Dave McKean; if that weren't enough, the interviewer's LiveJournal has outtakes and deleted scenes from the interview, for even more Gaimany goodness. In addition, the Los Angeles Times has a pretty good piece on the making of MirrorMask.

But that's not all! Gaimania continues with the news that, after many long delays, the version of Beowulf that he and Roger Avary wrote finally began filming last week, with a cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Ray Winstone as Beowulf, and Crispin Glover as ~~The Beaver~~Grendel. Neil has relayed reports that Glover is already speaking exclusively in Old English (which would be, actually, one of the least unusual things he's ever done).

Oh, and what better way for Neil to wrap up the week than with the discovery that his brand new novel, Anansi Boys, will debut at #1 on the New York Times' Bestseller List next week?

One movie opening; one movie filming; and the #1 book in the country.

Best. Week. Ever.

Smoke and Mirrors and Masks, or The Other Geeky Movie This Weekend

2005-09-29T18:06:00.000-04:00

Unless you've been living under a rock, which is hard to do with an Internet connection, you probably know that this is a big weekend for geeky movies...for one, Serenity opens tomorrow, satisfying the dreams of millions of Browncoats. I don't think I have to tell you about this any more.

But that's not the only one. Tomorrow, Mirrormask opens. For those of you who don't know, Mirrormask is a movie, cowritten by Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman, produced[1] by the Jim Henson Company, and directed by McKean. Even better, according to this brilliant interview by TIME of Gaiman and Joss Whedon, the Henson Company went to Gaiman and McKean, and said, "Here's $4 million; make a movie, and we won't interfere at all."

There are many, many ways in which this is sweet, not least that Gaiman and McKean are masters of their crafts. But all of those are offset by one minor problem: Sony Pictures is bringing it out in limited release. According to the film's web site, the closest it's opening to me is New York, which while close enough to be feasible, is far less than optimal.

Besides, the history of Gaiman's work with movies, especially limited releases, is not what I'd call a smashing success. He did, after all, write the English script for Princess Mononoke, which (and stop me if you've heard this story...) opened in three places: New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. It did well on the coasts, but since it bombed in the Twin Cities, the Powers That Be decided it wouldn't play in Peoria, and it didn't get a really wide release. Thankfully it seemed to recoup a lot of that from DVD...and, though this is just my speculation, I think that softened up the ground for Spirited Away to do as well as it did.

Anyway. Mirrormask is opening tomorrow, and the best way I get a chance to see it is to get as many people I know who live in the active areas to see it, so Sony Pictures brings it out nearer to me. And hey, I just happen to have this rather large mouthpiece of the Science Fiction Blog. So...

Here's a list of places the film will show, and dates it'll open; here's a link to the trailer, which certainly sold me on the film; go forth and watch!

[1] Or at least funded. I'm not sure what the distinction is.

The Power Of Positive Mass-Emailing, or But They Still Can't Get It Right, Now Can They?

2005-09-21T22:47:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have heard that in late July the call went out to Firefly fans the world over: Email Fox Music and ask them for a Firefly soundtrack.

Well, the call was answered, but apparently Fox didn't really listen. According to a friend of mine (the proprietress of Cult Of Lincoln[1]):

[T]hey just grudgingly eke out a selection of tracks Greg Edmonson recorded years ago, and what they do release is choked with DRM so thick that Mac users can't even play the songs with the current version! And anyone that can download it will have to burn it to CD and rip it back to their computer if they want to play it on an iPod or any other WMA-unfriendly device. And apparently the Fox store only takes credit cards with American addresses, effectively eliminating the international market.

Speaking as a Linux user, looks like I'm using methods best left unspecified in public. Dear Fox, you really just don't know a good think when you see one. Not that this is news.

[1] I wonder if this'll boost her name recognition?

Edited 22 September, 22:26 EDT: According to an email I just received from Fox Music, now they offer .mp3 versions of the soundtrack. Still needs IE, though. *shakes head*

Put the Message in the Box

2005-09-15T23:45:00.000-04:00

A couple of days ago, I gave you fair warning that I was going to be putting up a "Suggestions Box" for Science Fiction Blog (I also gave you the uncomfortable mental image of Larry Niven naked, but let's move past that, shall we?). To that end, I have set up a GMail address for feedback, figured out how to get it to cooperate with my e-mail software, and sent myself lots of cutesy test messages to make sure that it all worked. Yay, me.

As a result, let me introduce to you our brand new site feedback address:

SFBlogFeedback@gmail.com

So: What do you want Science Fiction Blog to be?

What sorts of things would you like to see more of here, or even less of? Should we concentrate more on News, or Reviews, or Commentary and Essays? Should we focus more on TV and Movies? On Literature? On Fandom itself?

And what about subjects which don't necessarily involve Science Fiction, per se, yet still fall within the generally recognized ambit of Science Fiction Fandom: Comics, Anime, Gaming, Science, History, and generalized Gothery, Geekery, and Slashdottery?

What features are you interested in? Would you like Comments to be enabled? Categories? Picture Galleries? ~~Fancy Whirling Animated Musical Flash Games?~~

And finally, in the almost certain event that you know more about doing this sort of thing than I do, could you give me hints on how it's done? Especially if you are suggesting something which will be difficult to do in Blogger, now would be a good time to clue us all in to that fact, and to any other options which exist out there on the internets.

Keep Watching the Skies!

2005-09-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

It has been a week, now, since I got back from Dragon*Con, the world's largest Thing That Calls Itself a Science Fiction Convention¹. I am still working my way through more than 20 Gigabytes of pictures from the convention, even as the more than 20 different flu bugs I was exposed to at the con work their way through me. I'll try to slap together some sort of gaudy and ill-conceived photo essay (i.e., "a bunch of pictures with captions or something") on the subject in the coming days, but, in the meantime, I wanted to say a few words about the massive and earth-shattering changes afoot here at Science Fiction Blog².

I know that it's hard to imagine any changes which could possibly be more radical than those which have already overtaken SFBlog since my sudden coup d’état, but we want you to try.

To that end, I'll be putting up a "Suggestion Box," so to speak, in a day or two.

What do you want out of Science Fiction Blog? What things, aside from naked pictures of Larry Niven, would make this a more interesting place to visit? Put on your thinking cats (after you've fed them and changed their litter boxes, of course) and get ready to give us an icky grey piece of your mind.

¹ I say this because, given the amount of media SF programming it hosts, Comic-Con could have the title any time it wanted.
² Two words: "Pantsless Thursdays"
³ Made you look!

Drugged golden robots of the lost trilennia

2005-09-10T06:07:00.000-04:00

Today's featured article at Wikipedia: Space opera in Scientology doctrine. It is truuuuuuly fascinating reading. Boy, was RLH fond of trillions.

Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon

2005-09-04T18:14:00.000-04:00

Another Katrina charity effort worth a look-in: the Blank Label Comics co-operative is hosting a Webcomic Telethon in the week of September 12th.

Heavy Weather

2005-09-03T23:57:00.000-04:00

It's very easy to feel like an ass, blogging about festivities and ephemera at a time when bureaucratic incompetence and mismanagement have turned one of the world's most congenial cities into a horrific real life Snake Plissken movie. Still, there are some things worth mentioning which are both topical and relevant.

Closest to home right now, here at Dragon*Con, there are numerous charitable efforts underway; from media stars who are donating their proceeds to the relief effort, to blood drives and dozens of other, smaller, efforts. Further afield, from Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light comes word of SCA deployments to help with relief efforts around the South, as well as a touching memorial to New Orleans' most beloved SF writer.

Dragon*Con 2005

2005-09-02T21:49:00.000-04:00

So the big plan was to blog live from Dragon*Con, using the miracle of wireless internet access to upload timely reports and exciting photos of the goings-on.

However, given that Dragon*Con is perilously close to being a full 24 hour per day convention, I'm not entirely sure, in retrospect, just when, exactly, I thought I was going to be able to do this.

Still, I will try to catch up with the current of events before it has passed us completely by.

Alaskan Fire-Spewing Robots and Cancelled TV Shows

2005-08-31T13:52:00.000-04:00

Here is a Wired Magazine blurb about a guy that built his own Mech.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/start.html?pg=11

Wired also has a short timeline on how dedicated fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly television show helped get a movie made for a show that had been cancelled.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/play.html?pg=1

Volkswagens in Outer Space!

2005-08-31T13:32:00.000-04:00

Although hopefully not fiction, there is a pretty good article in the September issue of Discover about the private space rocket company SpaceX and its hopes to build a rocket that will not only go beyond SpaceShipOne's record, but result in a cheap (well relatively cheap at $6.5 million) alternative to launch 1,400-pound payloads into orbit. The article says that the current cost for getting similar payloads to orbit is roughly $30 million. The company hopes its cheaper rockets will do for spacecraft what the 1960's Volkwagen Beetle did for oversized and overpriced cars.

I hope they come with an FM radio.

I, For One, Am Our New Bloggish Overlord

2005-08-29T21:17:00.000-04:00

It was almost dawn when the doorbell rang.

The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead camel as I threw on my third-best robe and stumbled out into the hall. Peering down at the faceted glass of the front door, I could just barely make out a figure, or figures, waiting in the crepuscular gloom of our front porch.

Carefully avoiding the big momma cat on the top stair, I made my way down the front steps into the foyer, still trying to see who had woken me. For a moment, I thought it was a pair of young girls, but by the time I made it to the landing, I was sure that the nearest figure was male. He was wearing a dark outfit of some kind — a suit, maybe? Some government agent and his adventurous sidekick, perhaps?

By the time I made it to the door, I could tell that the "government agent" was just a regular guy in jeans, and that what I had thought was a dark and sexy Suicide Girl standing next to him was actually some kind of large gnarled staff in his right hand. He looked at me as I opened the door, and said "WheeeeOOOOOOOP! Whoooop Whoooop WHOOOOOOOP! WheeeeOOOOOOOP! Whoooop Whoooop WHOOOOOOOP!"

Realizing my mistake, I waved my arms at the stranger in a wild, vague gesture, and ran into the kitchen to turn off the burglar alarm.

Returning to the foyer, I finally got a good look at my guest. He was young, with a pleasant face and a sly intelligence in his eyes; under his wizard's cloak, he had a simple black t-shirt with the word "Believe" written on it.

"Raymond Radlein," he intoned as the end of his staff burst into flame. "I am here to Pass On the Torch. It is time to Claim Your Destiny! I am here to bestow upon you the Power of Blog!"

"The pow—" I began to ask, only to be cut off.

"The Power of Blog is the Power of The Future!" he proclaimed, shaking his staff around like a spear of burning gold. "It is the Power of Inter-net! With Blog, all ideas are possible! You make thought here, it winds up there! Your thoughts, they fly around the world! The poor goat farmer on a lonely mountaintop in far-off Kansas-land can read your words as easily as the trendy businessman waiting for his rocket-taxi! Your powers will be beyond dreams!"

"Can I share information about new developments in Science Fiction?" I asked.

"Yes! Yes!" he enthused. "This you can do, and more!"

"Can I discuss Science Fiction Fandom, conventions, and other fannish activity?" I asked.

"Yes! Yes! Discuss them like the mighty wind, you can!" he cried, sweeping the flaming staff through the air in a great arc.

"Can I pull a new word out of my ass and get it into Wikipedia?" I asked.

"No, so sorry," he said, "you cannot. But you can pull other things out of your ass!"

"I'll do it, then!" I shouted, as he thrust the torch at me. "I will seize my Destiny!"

"WheeeeOOOOOOOP! Whoooop Whoooop WHOOOOOOOP! WheeeeOOOOOOOP! Whoooop Whoooop WHOOOOOOOP!" said the alarm system, as our curtains went up in flames.

Rat's Nightmaretrix

2005-08-10T13:32:00.000-04:00

The worrying thing is, I can see this catching on.

How To Improve George Lucas' Dialogue!

2005-08-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

Backstroke of the West.

Speaking of Hugo Gernsback...

2005-08-07T20:10:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've had any Interaction with you, so this is a good time to mention that the final results of the 2005 Hugo Awards are now available from this year's Worldcon.

Highlights include Susanah Clarke's widely-expected Best Novel victory for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Dave Langford's dual win for Best Dave Langford and for Best Semiprozine ("I can't help but say how semi-professional I feel," he enthused), and Battlestar Galactica's Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form victory for the episode "33," which defeated, among others, the series finale of Angel.

Looking over the detailed voting breakdown [PDF File], the closest contests were Best Fanzine, where Cheryl Morgan's Emerald City lead eventual winner Plokta all the way up until the final round of balloting, at which point the Plokta Cabal received the vast majority of the rollover votes from third place finisher Banana Wings; and Best Web Site, where Locus Online similarly lead eventual winner SciFiction until losing by one vote on the final ballot.

In other Awards news, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer went to Elizabeth Bear, and the Sidewise Awards for Alternate History went to Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize winning The Plot Against America (Long Form) and Warren Ellis and Chris Wesson's Ministry of Space (Short Form). The Prometheus Awards for Libertarian SF featured a Best Novel win for Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, and a Hall of Fame Award for A.E. van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher.

Since last year's Worldcon ratified a move from a three-year site selection process to a two-year site selection cycle, there was no voting for the location of the 2007 Worldcon conducted this year, given that it had already been awarded to Yokohama during the final three-year balloting at Noreascon 4 in Boston.

The other significant bit of Worldcon business that took place in Glasgow was the preliminary decision, by a vote of 51–6 at the Business Meeting, to split the Best Editor category into Best Editor (Short Fiction) and Best Editor (Long Fiction). This differs slightly from the initial "Books vs. Magazines" proposal, in that editors of book-length anthologies of short fiction would compete with editors of magazines (actually, many of them are the same people), leaving editors who primarily work with novels (such as David G. Hartwell or the Nielsen Haydens) to compete against each other on the basis of the quality of the various novels which they brought to market during the previous year. The measure would still have to be ratified at LA Con IV next year before it could become official.

Gernsback Continues, or Space Flight: The Next Generation

2005-08-02T05:46:00.000-04:00

The New York Times reports that NASA is beginning a redesign of its spacecraft and abandoning the principles that went into the space shuttle, while keeping some of the components (allowing them to keep their contractors and technologies).

They also include mockups of the vehicles. The general principle is to separate the cargo-hauler from the crew vehicle, and make both of them more like traditional rockets.

As a professed space freak, as well as a pulp SF nut, I'd like to first say that I like the new look. All we need is to plate the entire thing in chrome, throw on some fins, and we're set.

More importantly, the fact that they're coming out and saying "Look, the shuttle didn't work, we're building something that will, and we're going back to the principles that got us to the Moon" is encouraging. This is the first sign that my fears about the space program may not all come true. Next, we need the next generation of space jocks, who won't abandon launches over the failure of one of four redundant gauges...

(P.S. Dear NASA: I'm interested. Email me if you need people.)

Comics Fans, READ THIS.

2005-07-26T08:18:00.000-04:00

(Cross-posted.)

Wondering why this "manga boom" isn't really hitting your local comic book shop?

Dirk Deppey pretty much hits the nail on the head here, though I thought Mary Jane was at least a nice try. I'm slowly coming to share his opinion of mainstream American comic books-- I still like that shiny superhero sheen, but not so much that I'm willing to bury my head in the sand.

Google Goes Interplanetary, or One Small Step For Search...

2005-07-19T19:06:00.000-04:00

Google Moon.

Quite possibly one of the finest Google products, if not in usability than in cool factor.

(Be sure to zoom all the way in.)

Get Your Dragons Out of My Spaceship and an Emmy for BSG?

2005-07-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

There is a pretty good article (via Newsday) on the reasons why television shows with science fiction and fantasy elements have a hard time being taken seriously. It also gives a little hope in its explanation of some recent changes in how Emmy ballots are structured.

Side Rant: I have never liked the way science fiction and fantasy have become so intertwined that articles, like the one cited above, can start with a premise about science fiction and end up pointing to shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer as examples. Just yesterday I was browsing at a book store and I noticed a couple of science fiction anthologies that looked interesting. They had science fiction themed cover art and the words like "Best science fiction" in big bold letters, yet a closer look revealed a large portion of stories about dragons, etc. Now, I also like fantasy but I have never understood the need to link these too genres so closely. So, in the end, I did not buy the book because, at the price, I would have been buying half a book. Ironically, I am sure some marketing person thought that mixing the two genres would attract more customers.

Bionic Electrician, or I Wonder If It Really Cost $60,000,000

2005-07-10T16:55:00.000-04:00

Jesse Sullivan from Tennessee in the US is the world's first 'bionic man.'

The BBC is reporting that a man who lost his arms to an electric shock has been successfully received a bionic left arm and can now do everything from shave to play catch. The science of "neuro-engineering" is looking to be quite impressive.

The article does not, however, say how long he's been dealing with the arm (he has a normal prosthesis on his right side), but implies it's been a while.

I think this is interesting for many reasons, and an encouraging sign. I'd like to see some more experimentation, but this being human trials the only way to do it is really slowly.

(CWCID: The Weasel King found this one.)

Screenings Round 3, or Propogating The Signal

2005-07-10T05:51:00.000-04:00

Rumors have reached me that Serenity is going to have another pre-screening, this one on July 28 with tickets going on sale July 14.

While nothing is verified yet, say with a message from Joss Whedon himself, it will have been about a month, so it may be due.

The official site for tickets is cantstopthesignal.com, which at this time merely shows the listings for the June 23 screening.

Also, I'm throwing this in as a token note, because it's really not news anymore, but the Sci-Fi channel has picked up "Firefly" for airing--all the episodes, even the unaired ones, starting July 22.

(CWCID: Cult Of Lincoln for the screening heads-up.)

Kaboom!

2005-07-05T12:20:00.000-04:00

Deep Impact (no relation to the movie)

Boy, We Hate Being Right Sometimes, or Fox Goes Outside

2005-07-03T14:51:00.000-04:00

"[The Inside has all the ingredients of] a compelling, entertaining, intelligent drama which Fox will cancel after four episodes."

I wish I could say differently, but we pretty much called it.

Short form: The Inside is effectively dead, though not declared as such; Tim Minear suspects he'll end up with six unaired episodes (not counting the two unaired pilots), and he's already plotting for the DVD set.

You know, at this stage, can we call it the Curse of the Mutant Enemy?

(Credit where credit is due: link pulled from Cult Of Lincoln)

Dog of the Bride of the Reanimator?

2005-06-30T10:05:00.000-04:00

It seems a Pittsburgh medical research facility has successfully reanimated a dog by draining its blood, replacing it with a cold salt water fuild, and then putting its blood back after the dog was clinically dead for three hours. Apparently, the dogs were fine and did not suffer any brain damage.

This Australian website felt compelled to refer to the dogs as "zombies" and picked a nice picture to go along with the article.

It's always good to hear that America leads the world in "zombie" technology.

Greetings Hairy Ape People of the Past

2005-06-28T10:30:00.000-04:00

In the July issue of Wired there is a item about an MIT gathering welcoming time travelers from the future. Despite the invitation, it seemed no one from the future showed up (or did they?). Apparently, the lack of future travelers proved that time travel is impossible. However, the article goes on to list possible reasons for a lack of time travelers, including everything from future disasters to general uninterest in the people of our time.

Here is a picture of one of the attendees.

Interestingly, the idea came from an online comic strip.

CONSUUUUUUME!

2005-06-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

Surprisingly, a study by the Sci Fi Channel suggests that advertising on the Sci Fi Channel is a good idea.

However, this study might have a few implications for others serving the same advertising demo.

4th of July Fireworks

2005-06-27T14:19:00.000-04:00

Don't forget about the Deep Impact mission this fourth of July. Hopefully it will go better than Cosmos 1. Our national experience with blowing things up bodes well for this mission.

Who Needs that Fiction Part Anyway: NextFest in Chicago

2005-06-27T09:20:00.000-04:00

So, I decided to geek it up over the weekend and go to Wired's Nextfest here in Chicago, a sort of new technology exposition. I thought it deserved coverage here because many of the things on display fell into that zone between the technology we are used to seeing and the stuff dreamed about in science fiction.

While there was a fair share of hoe-hum items, here are just a few I thought were note-worthy included:

Robots Everywhere: There were a awful lot of these, including the Robonaut (a space-walking robot, Robolobster (a DARPA-sponsored robotic lobster for detonating mines), The Packbot Scout (a backpack size robot for military scouting), R-Gator (a military robot for patroling a perimeter), The Philip K. Dick Robot (a robotic version of guess who? how aprapo!), Hubo and Chroino (fluid walking Japanese robots), Stinky (the high school student built robot that beat out robots from MIT last year), and two industrial arm robots (programmed to DJ in unison).

Mars Airplane: A prototype of a surveilance airplane probe designed for Mars.

Solar Sail: It was strange to see this on display, given the recent failure of Cosmos 1.

Input Devices Galore: A large number of the items designed to interact with a computers in more interesting ways, including a child's rocking horse, a trendmill for playing first-person shooters, devices that control a game by you blowing into them, and a tiled floor display for playing a pong-like game by walking on it.

... and for some reason there was also a display of the Senseo (a coffee machine) and the Dyson vacuum cleaner (non-suction).

Look Out, SF Market!

2005-06-27T09:14:00.000-04:00

Here comes Finland!

Tim T's Stellar Miscellany

2005-06-23T16:06:00.000-04:00

Evidence that the space-gods just don't like solar sails.

Evidence that someone really, really should have looked for a hotter volcano.

And evidence that our hearts will always have a place for those grand ol' metal milking-stools. Seriously, Ian Edgington and D'Israeli's online comic looks very promising indeed. Their printed sequel to Wells' story could be worth a look too.

Is Stargate Hiring Every Out-of-Work Sci-Fi Actor?

2005-06-23T11:44:00.000-04:00

You may have already noticed that the new season of both Stargate shows have meant quite a few new additions. The changes, however, have left me wondering if Stargate is trying to hire every out-of-work actor with a science fiction show on their resume. You may have already noticed the addition of Ben Browder and Claudia Black the title actors from Farscape. Now, comes news that Lexa Doig, the computer avatar from the show Andromeda will play SG-1's new medical officier.

Andromeda and Farscape were two shows that I never watched regularly. While Farscape seemed like a show I would enjoy, every time a caught an episode it seemed that the cast had changed. What seemed to be frequent changes to what should be relatively stable parts of the show meant that I felt there was simply too much investment in keeping up with the show. Andromeda on the other hand just seemed too flakey.

Julianne Moore Gets Her Sci-Fi On

2005-06-23T11:00:00.000-04:00

A recent blurb in The Guardian mentions that Julianne Moore is in talks to play the last pregnant women on earth in the film version of the P.D. James novel Children of Men. Speaking of book adaptations, I always try to read the original book before a movie burns its own imagery into my brain. I have always felt that part of the enjoyment of reading is the trigger it provides to the imagination (What does this character look like?, etc.). Science fiction seems to have even more fertile material for the imagination than your average book. When I read a book after I have seen a film version, some of the enjoyment is gone because I can't get the film's visuals out of my head. So, if you are considering reading Children of Men before the film is released here is the New York Times book review.

Getting back to Julianne Moore, she is also cast in Next a film based on the Philip K. Dick story The Golden Man. The story involves a man who can see into the future and change it any way that he wants. This movie presents me with a dilemma because it also stars Nicholas Cage, an actor who has starred in so many bad movies (Con Air, 8MM, Snake Eyes, Face/Off, Gone in Sixty Seconds, etc. ) that I have made a promise to myself to avoid any movie in which he was cast. After enjoying many of his early films, I have had to break that rule only once recently for the Charlie Kauffman film Adaptation. Until I see a trailer, I am not sure that the powers of Philip K. Dick and Julianne Moore are enough to get me to break the my promise once again. If only I could see my own movie-going future?

If You Read One Onion...

2005-06-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

...make it this one. (Warning: features sound.)

My favorite is the horoscope.

Crossing Out Borders, or America The Obsolete

2005-06-19T13:32:00.000-04:00

Charles Stross recently released his new novel, Accelerando, under a Creative Commons license. Details and copies may be found at the book's website, also called "Accelerando!"

The book, from what I have gleaned from a brief skim of the beginning, the website, and the person, is near-future nanopunk (is that a word? It should be--and if it isn't, I may have to pull a Bethke) that describes itself as "a fictional depiction of a possible Technological Singularity lying in our near future."

However, like many near-future SF books written in, oh, the past fifteen years, one of the first bits of worldbuilding Accelerando establishes is a general collapse of the United States as a world power. Here, the action takes place in a Europe filled with "American exiles." For other examples of the form, see Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash or just about anything by Cory Doctorow--most notably the short story I, Robot.

This brings up, to me, an interesting question--how has America changed to science fiction writers, and what does this mean?

Let's start in the 1930s. E. E. "Doc" Smith writes the "Lensman" series, which centers on a world that is, somehow, both very American and very not. The stars of the series are the ultimate Our Heroes, strong, smart, and idealistic, and therefore In Charge--by virtue of their being strong, smart, and idealistic. The election Smith features in First Lensman is, for the first time in American history, completely pure--because of Our Heroes, who naturally go on to win. The bad guys represent the corruption, the graft, the special interests--well, not the last one, but still. It's a whitewashed, sparkling-clean, super-idealistic America, of the type epitomized in the surface culture of the 1950s. Communism gets described in a throwaway line in that same book--it's "yet another government that failed."

Moving on to the Golden Age, America gets a pretty good rep--sort of. Most of the reputation of America in this book follows from Smith; Robert Heinlein continually envisioned America as the optimal government of the future, but the USA itself was usually irredeemable, so he moved it. Red Planet and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress both depict the New America. Asimov centered on New York City in the "Robot" series, and if you've ever heard anything about Asimov you know that his vision of New York was actually a paradise--if, like Asimov, you're claustrophilic. Again, there is the vision of America as is, and the vision of America as could be--the Medievalists indicate this best. The country itself may be lost, but the spirit lives on.

Jumping ahead a little to the 1960s, the American frontier spirit is reborn. Buck Rogers took American ideals to the 25th century, where he fought for freedom against a crushing totalitarian regime. Superman was everpresent in the popular culture, fighting a never-ending battle...you know the rest. Star Trek was the world where the world got better, healed its ills, and humanity didn't fight with humanity anymore; later versions of Trek show that America was at the center of it all. There's a president, there's a Council; the Federation is a working, Utopian America of the future. Phillip K. Dick's The Man In The High Castle showed us what would have happened if America lost World War II and told us all: "Here, but for the grace of God, go we."

In the 1970s, the totalitarian regimes worsened. Star Wars told the story of the defenders of the Republic, who were destroyed by the Empire, and the survivors forming the Rebel Alliance--more properly the Alliance To Restore The Republic. I'll let you draw your own additional conclusions--but remember, the Alliance was made up of alien races and all manner of humans, while the Empire was all white, male, British-accented admirals, generals, and Moffs. Harken back to an older generation, all ye viewers, and know that America is the land of the Republic.

The 1980s were mixed. Cyberpunk showed us a world without borders, and the rise of computers gave birth to a new era of Japanese interest. William Gibson's America was home to the East Coast, the Sprawl, the center of the universe even in cyberspace; but the back-dealing was moved to Japan. At the same time, Orson Scott Card created a world where nobody gave a damn about country--the planet was under attack. However, the moment the war ended, all the countries were at each other's throats...

Now we're coming up on the 1990s and the modern day. America is a dead land, destroying itself through economy, or war, or isolation (Orson Scott Card's "Shadow" series comes to mind, showing us an America that just won't play ball with the rest of humanity and gets left in the dust because of it). But unlike the previous eras, there is no rising Phoenix. Star Wars talks about how greed, manipulation, and politicians bring down the greatest and most civilized society ever. Neal Stephenson just starts post-America, and doesn't even bother to explain what happened--except for references to "hyperinflation."

America is a lost cause, say the writers. The Wave of the Future has passed it by. Naturally, the question comes: Science fiction is the mythology of the scientific-technological culture. Can America escape what is written?

I don't have an answer. If I did, I might write a novel about it.

(Of course, not all the stories of the future are doom-and-gloom. Read some military SF for a vision of an American-influenced, more positive, future. David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series is rather more British than American, with a sleeping giant of future-America with the usual corrupt politicians, but even there we see an American spirit of unity and tolerance. John Ringo's books, to give another example, border on jingoism.)

"Science Fight" Just Doesn't Have the Same Ring to it as "Food Fight"

2005-06-18T10:29:00.000-04:00

It seems science fiction writer, Ron Miller, has jumped into a gay marriage debate in a local Virginia newspaper after a previous letter to the editor attempted to quote various science facts about planet earth (apparently proving that god made the tides to tell us that John and Bob should not be married). Here is the original letter.

Miller is pretty rough on the guy in his response but he probably deserves it for using some very poor science "facts." One of my favorites is when the guy says that the "ocean floor is at a depth that gives us oxygen" and Miller mocks him for thinking oxygen comes from the bottom of the ocean floor. Along with "Never go up against a Silician when death is on the line" and "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" should be "Never quote science to a science fiction writer."

Atwood Needs Science Fiction

2005-06-18T08:45:00.000-04:00

Margaret Atwood has a short article over at The Guardian on some of the reasons we need science fiction. She gives a list of things that science fiction can do that realistic fiction cannot do, but I probably would have added a couple things to her list.

One example, she fails to mention that science fiction not only explores the impact of new and proposed technologies, it can guide technology's direction by suggesting whole new technologies. Although it is a rarer type of science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke and the communications satellite comes to mind. How many other technologies were originally inspired by an engineer's favorite bit of science fiction. Atwood's article makes science fiction sound more like an uninvolved social critic (akin to someone who might be a movie reviewer). Yet, I always thought of science fiction (at least a part of it) as part of the process of technological advancement. Isn't that why we are pissed that there are no flying cars?

I am new by the way--So, hello.

So Be It...Geek, or Adventure. Excitement. A Geek Craves Not These Things--What Am I Saying?

2005-06-17T15:03:00.000-04:00

Neal Stephenson has written an editorial for the New York Times.

While most of the article is devoted to the dichotomy of geeking out versus vegging out (which Neal uses to explain why the prequels are so different--read, worse) he veers off at the end to draw some...interesting parallels to modern America.

While I'm not sure about his conclusions (though I love some of the imagery), the article is rather thought-provoking and worth a read.

(Credit where credit is due: I got this from BoingBoing.)

Invisible Whistling Octopus Online Library

2005-06-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

The works of H P Lovecraft are now free on the Net, courtesy of Dagonbytes. I'm not sure what the copyright situation is with HPL now, so maybe you'd better take advantage of this while it's there.

In other news, the reborn Dr Who is getting its third series.

The Appeal Of Gaiman, or Time To Crash Yahoo's Servers!

2005-06-14T11:54:00.000-04:00

As reported on Neil Gaiman's blog, Yahoo! Movies has an exclusive teaser trailer for Mirrormask that went live...about twenty minutes ago.

I'm almost surprised the servers weren't too clogged for me to get it, but I did. My reaction?

September 30 is going to be a big day for geek movies.

Batman Begins...Not To Suck Again (credit: John Kovalic), or I...Am...Batman!

2005-06-13T17:51:00.000-04:00

Peter David, Writer of Stuff ("Stuff" here includes a brilliant and canceled-before-its-time kids' sci-fi TV show Space Cases, several episodes of Babylon 5 and Crusade, some of the better Star Trek and Babylon 5 novels, an entire Star Trek line, New Frontier which I highly recommend, a small fortune of comics credits including the upcoming Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and--most importantly for the moment--a blog), has posted a review of Batman Begins. To quote his opening:

"Sturgeon's Law is that 90 percent of everything is crap. So the obvious corollary to that is that 10 percent of everything is gold.

Since no less an authority than Isaac Asimov stated (to me, in fact) that Sturgeon's Law is immutable, then we can assume that 90 percent of everything done with Batman in the past seven decades is crap, and 10 percent is gold.

So what would happen if someone went through and cherry picked all the stuff from that ten percent?

Well, you'd have Batman Begins..."

There are some spoilers, which probably only qualify as real spoilers for the true and complete spoiler virgins, the type who don't watch trailers; and PAD does see its flaws (indeed, the rest of the sentence I stopped at quoting discusses two problems with the film), but...

Dude. It's about time.

Saving Science Fiction, or To Change The Literature Of Change

2005-06-11T21:59:00.000-04:00

From the AP through the Kansas City Star:
University program blasting off to save science fiction

I think the creators of this are, well, a little biased, but they're making a few good points. For one, there really isn't enough science fiction in classrooms. (If I had my way every kid in the country would read Ender's Game before the age of fifteen, but that's just me.) And science fiction does have a problem of losing ground to the "general" market.

However, I don't think I like the idea of centralizing the science fiction landscape. One of the most beautiful parts of science fiction are the people, and the ways that they find each other and form groups.

I suppose we'll see what this brings...

You Do Indeed Count For Something.

2005-06-11T17:04:00.000-04:00

The look is softer, and the main character's name is no longer that of a popular brand of vibrator.

Loonatics II: Do You Hate Us Slightly Less Now?

Daleknapped, or Exterminate! Exterminate! Ex--snap Ow.

2005-06-09T09:12:00.000-04:00

Dalek 'kidnappers' demand Doctor

Given that this was apparently an original prop, I'm glad the thieves took care not to damage it, but the real gem of the article is this: "The police think it was probably taken by kids or students, but there is also the idea that it could be heading to Edinburgh for the G8 protests."

A Dalek at a G8 protest. I don't know: are they going to try to unleash its destructive fury (good luck, you removed the weaponry), or are they trying to send a message about the G8's power or authority--"they are conquering the world"?

I don't know, but I think I'm going to be keeping an eye on the protest...

(Credit to the find goes to The Weasel King.)

My Name's T Campbell...

2005-06-09T07:42:00.000-04:00

...and I approve this comic-book adaptation.

Blink and you'll miss Crispin Freeman

2005-06-08T20:50:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I was privileged to attend a preview screening of Howl's Moving Castle. Americans, you have no excuse not to go see this if it's opening in your city this weekend. None. None.

The usual caveats regarding a Hayao Miyazaki film stand firm, of course. There is a certain amount of black, oozing, moderately anthropomorphic evil. (Several of the lessons from Princess Mononoke are in play here, particularly around the hench.) You will believe that Nausicaa is making a walk-on.

We'll cope.

The dub is near as dammit exquisite. There are one or two run-together dub lines you know the kinds where they don't quite get the period in the right place there was a lip flap problem you see, but I do mean "one or two" and not "one or two dozen." I was a bit frustrated that Sophie and her sister managed to have the only two British accents in a sea of Americans -- this struck me as a wasted opportunity to engage a variety of disparate British regional accents; at the very least, the Rimmer/Lister dichotomy would have worked here -- but, well, American dub. And Sophie is very well portrayed, particularly in her oldest form. I'm not 100% certain that Billy Crystal was the way to go for the fire demon, but he certainly wasn't dissonant in the way Phil Hartman's (admittedly well-executed) Jiji was in Kiki's Delivery Service. These are nits.

Go. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

No, I did not catch a screening in the UK; first chance I know of that you'll have to see it there is at Worldcon this August. I'm in America this month.

You Just Can't Stop That Signal, or Post-Pre-Screening Screening

2005-06-08T16:24:00.000-04:00

Another round of Serenity screenings has been announced. 35 different cities have been lined up for this round, and--amazingly--apparently only one of them has been marked as "Sold Out."

Head over to Can't Stop The Signal to see if you can get lucky with the tickets, or if the list of tickets available is merely very out of date.

(Oh, and...Hi. I'm new.)

Last Chance to See

2005-06-08T14:44:00.000-04:00

A small programming note: Tonight marks the premiere of The Inside, Fox's new FBI Profiler drama.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Ooooh! Another FBI Profiler / Serial Killer Drama! What a unique and precious thing this is, utterly unprecedented in the long history of June 8, 2005!"

Well, sure, the whole genre has been done to death, repeatedly, in a ritualistic fashion; but take a gander at the names associated with this one: Tim Minear, Ben Edlund, Jane Espenson, David Fury, and Howard Gordon.

That's more than half of Team Whedon right there; if they could figure out a way to include Marti Noxon and David Greenwalt, they'd have pretty much the full set.

Throw in Adam Baldwin and Wonderfalls' Katie Finneran, and you have all the ingredients for a compelling, entertaining, intelligent drama which Fox will cancel after four episodes. So hurry up and get on board now, so that you can be crushed by the inevitable disappointment later!

"My College Is Cooler Than Your College."

2005-06-08T10:12:00.000-04:00

"Oh yeah? My college has the world's first website dedicated to science fiction research AND a master's degree in the subject."

"Uhhhhhhhhhh... well... our football team kicks... uh..." (falls silent in humilated defeat)

Thanks to A.G. Hopkins for the tip.

I Have A Guess. It Involves Effigies.

2005-06-07T16:26:00.000-04:00

"It's going to be fascinating to see what fandom does when faced with this stuff."

The above sentence is NEVER GOOD NEWS.

It's nice to see that the end of Star Trek and Star Wars hasn't kept us from finding new ways to torture fans.

"Let's jab red-hot knitting needles into their eyes. It'll be fascinating to see what they do."

I know, I know, wait till we see it, everything can be fixed in post, Brett Ratner's really a nice guy, I know.

I wonder if these horrible-sounding rumors are a marketing ploy to make the actual film look like ten kinds of brilliance by comparison...

First kite in the wind from the sun

2005-06-07T14:03:00.000-04:00

Cosmos 1, first ever solar-sail spacecraft, is going up on June 21st.

Ancient Greek SF

2005-06-06T21:18:00.000-04:00

Rock on, Dr Ni-Mheallaigh.

Return of the Ram

2005-06-06T14:01:00.000-04:00

After having to stop work on the comic, Brian Daniel is continuing his Saga of the Ram as a text story:

Tales of the Ram

Dairy sports

2005-05-30T16:46:00.000-04:00

Not science fiction exactly, but an indication of the wonder and strangeness of the human world:

Three hurt in cheese chasing race Guardian May 30th.

I desperately need to see this documentary.

2005-05-30T14:32:00.000-04:00

Hotel Torgo is a short student documentary on the making of Manos: The Hands of Fate.

Googling for useful information on the film, amusingly enough, turns up some posts by Hal Warren's daughter.

At least cool to mangle his grammar, thinks it he doesn't

2005-05-30T12:47:00.000-04:00

Matt Shepherd has been raiding Lucas' cutting-room floor. Meanwhile, Tragic Lad fears the power of the Dark Side.

Mmmm. Bester. Bester's hot -- Oh, wait.

2005-05-27T22:19:00.000-04:00

Walter Koenig is appearing in a Star Trek fan film which takes up where TOS series 3 left off. He's not the only one from the classic series participating in the effort, either.

Welcome to Uncanny Valley Aquarium

2005-05-26T19:23:00.000-04:00

Two from London:

London Aquarium is taking on steel-collar staff.

The big bicycle-wheel on the Thames, starring in new Dr Who ep 1, has been in some difficulties.

Do you know where YOURS is?

2005-05-25T17:34:00.000-04:00

Carry your absorbtive fabric rectangle with pride.

In other news, Jeffrey Rowland is attempting an auto-crossover.

Convalescent bloggist seeks snappy post-title

2005-05-23T06:30:00.000-04:00

Kristopher Straub launches his new daily strip Starshift Crisis today. Checkerboard Nightmare isn't ending anytime soon, though, regardless of smart-aleck guest artists.

Back from my sick-bed with diverse news

2005-05-22T12:45:00.000-04:00

Apparent evidence that shopping trolleys can stray in time as well as space has unfortunately proved to be fake.
The old dream of robotic surgeons is at last coming to fruition.
The Mars Odyssey probe is showing signs of boredom.
Oh, and there was some film or other.

Submitted without comment.

2005-05-06T10:07:00.000-04:00

Samuel Jackson in "creative collaboration" with Gonzo for a Spike TV anime series.

(Except to say that what?!)

(And, also, do they speak Japanese in what?!)

(And... what?!)

Meanwhile, on planet Spoiler Whore

2005-05-06T09:34:00.000-04:00

Just in case you wanted to read about Serenity's Rosebud, the preview posts are starting to come in now.

No, not like that.

Like I Told You

2005-05-05T22:55:00.000-04:00

...Ain't it Cool News has a metric buttload of Serenity reviews from the test screenings. I got the sense that the last couple were spoilerific, so I averted my eyes.

Caveat lector.

As Cat & Girl said, you technically just need one

2005-05-05T17:01:00.000-04:00

Time Traveller Convention May 7th at MIT.

After May 7th this post will of course continue to be an open invitation to the event for any time-traveller reading it. The link above will be dead in less than a year, so I'd better include the full temporal and spatial details:

The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

Enjoy! :D

I Just Can't Get Enough

2005-05-04T18:26:00.000-04:00

Hey — remember last week, when I gave you links to the brand new trailer for Serenity? Wasn't that fun? Ah, yes. Good times.

So how about I give you links to two more trailers for Serenity?

But wait — these aren't just any old trailers for Serenity, no sir: They're the same exact trailer you saw last week.

Only bigger.

Much bigger.

As in, 80 MB of 1280x544 widescreen 48KHz stereo in the first case, and 130 MB of 1280x544 widescreen in 1080p HDTV format in the second case. The second one requires Quicktime 7, which is currently available only for Mac OSX 10.3.9 or higher. It is possible that other programs, such as VLC or Nero ShowTime, which understand both Quicktime and the H.264 video standard, might be able to play the file; but I haven't managed to do it yet, so I can't say for sure.

Of course, if you foolishly believe that there is more to life than trailers for Serenity, Apple's HD Gallery also has trailers for Batman Begins and The Fantastic Four. The Batman Begins trailer was downloadable last night when I downloaded it, but it doesn't appear to be downloadable any more (I don't know if the change is temporary or not — the now-invalid download link was simply commented out in the page's HTML source).

And stay tuned for tomorrow's inevitable Serenity article when all the people who attended tomorrow's preview screenings write in to Ain't it Cool News with their opinions.

Peasants-With-Torches 1, Frankentoons 0

2005-05-04T16:25:00.000-04:00

Warner Bros. are yielding to fanpower over the Loonatics.

Speaking of animation nightmares, Platinum Studios are starting on a computer-graphics horror movie, Bonesaw.

My May Media Madness

2005-05-02T19:01:00.000-04:00

Fans of obscure SF TV shows, rejoice! Both Earth 2 and Cleopatra 2525 have been announced for R1 DVD release in July. I'm not sure about Earth, but Cleo has been available in R2 for a while, which certainly makes up for the fact that so many other things take so long to get to R2. Right, Wednesday?

Anyway, I can't speak for anybody else, but I thought that Earth 2 was a decent little show; and I thought that Cleopatra 2525 was entirely more enjoyable than it had any right to be. Now if only we can get Strange Luck or its Fox predecessor, VR.5, on DVD...

In the meantime, of course, the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise comes out on DVD tomorrow, along with a "Collector's Edition" of Spaceballs.

Finally, let's wish a happy 80^th birthday to John Neville, a wonderful actor who played General Staedert in The Fifth Element, and has appeared in such SF TV series such as Peter Benchley's Amazon and Odyssey 5; he also memorably played Isaac Newton opposite the actual Steven Hawking on Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, the two SF roles for which he is best remembered have all of those beat, hands down: He was "The Well-Manicured Man" on The X-Files; and he played the title role in Terry Gilliam's magnificent The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

The truly impressive thing? All of the above roles came more than twenty years after he was awarded an OBE in 1965 for his illustrious acting career.

Orbituary

2005-04-26T19:29:00.000-04:00

People — myself included — tend to think of "inventions" as big, significant things. The telegraph. The electric light bulb. The combination orbital radiation detector and cat-flap controller.

But, of course, that's not the case: Literally everything man has created is an invention; everything there is was first thought up by someone somewhere, and every idea or object was first given its current form by someone. The more commonplace a thing is, the more delightful it is to me to learn the story of how it became commonplace, passing that threshhold from unique idea to obscure notion to ubiquitous presence. It's one reason I love James Burke: Anyone who can do an entire television program, tracing the history of Western Civilization to show how it all leads inexorably to the creation of the corn flake, is my kind of guy.

All of which leads me to this very well-written and thoughtful AP obituary, from Editor & Publisher, of Howard Benedict, the chief AP correspondent on aerospace issues for more than 30 years, from the dawn of the space age to after the Challenger explosion. In addition to a long and worthy career informing the public about space flight and related issues, he is, evidently, the reason why we call them "orbits," instead of "revs" or "revolutions," which was NASA's preferred term.

The word "orbit," in its astronomical sense (as opposed to its older anatomical sense), dates back to the 17^th century; its use as a verb dates to 1946; so clearly he didn't, as the obit headline asserts, "coin" the term. Nevertheless, he's the reason it became ubiquitous: He felt it was a better word than the one NASA was using, and the English language seems to have agreed.

So let's all give thanks to Howard Benedict: Without him, John Glenn would not have been the first American to orbit the Earth; without him there would be no Orbital Mind Control Lasers; and without him, our aforementioned "orbital radiation detector and cat-flap controller" would have just been another plain old ordinary combination radiation detector and cat-flap controller — and where's the fun in that?

As It Was Written, So Mote It Be

2005-04-26T13:34:00.000-04:00

The glorious event that Wednesday told us all about on Saturday has come to pass: The Serenity trailer is available online (here's a direct link to the large version, all 21 MB of it; the full-screen version is, as usual, only available through iTunes).

While you're soaking in the Whedonesque goodness, you might want to check out the trailers for Save the Green Planet and Night Watch (NOCHNOI DOZOR), a couple of intriguing foreign SF films. From the trailer, Night Watch seems to have elements of Wicked City (or even Wicked City) about it; Save the Green Planet, on the other hand, seems remarkably indescribable from its preview.

To make this a full-fledged Media... er, Tuesday, I'll go ahead and remind everyone that Blade: Trinity and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events come out on DVD today, and also wish a happy birthday to Tom Welling and Jet Li.

New suit, same as the old suit

2005-04-25T16:54:00.000-04:00

Bryan Singer's taking no liberties with steel-boy's costume in Superman Returns. Meanwhile, Tailsteak has been thinking on the guy's life.

Dude.

2005-04-22T20:42:00.000-04:00

"Trailer. Serenity. Tuesday." -- Joss

Suspended Animation: They're getting there

2005-04-22T12:51:00.000-04:00

New Scientist reports that hydrogen suphide gas can put mice into suspended animation.

Ten Bucks Says Someone From Sweatdrop Wins

2005-04-20T19:01:00.000-04:00

Tokyopop UK are launching a British-specific Rising Stars of Manga competition, opening 1 May.

I remember this one bit at the UK Web and Minicomics Thing last month where someone on the print panel -- I'm afraid I couldn't tell you which -- maintained that the market/demand was too small for British manga-influenced stuff to be worth drawing attention to in its own right, rather than just as something glommed onto the greater English-speaking market. I figured he was wrong; looks like Tokyopop do too.

Tim's Pointless Trivia, or I'm Not Dead In Case You Were Worrying

2005-04-18T19:33:00.000-04:00

Best supervillains' getaway ever.

David Tennant is the new Tardis-jockey, confirmed and definite.

Jeffrey Rowland has returned Butter Dimension Quad to the back of the refrigerator - The Tinkles have conquered their maker.

Miniature Media Monday

2005-04-18T15:44:00.000-04:00

House of Flying Daggers comes out on DVD tomorrow. So does Primer, Mabaruho vol. 1, and the penultimate disc of the Read or Die TV series.

However, all of this pales in comparison to the really big news, the news that will set the world of webcomics criticism on its ear: 1st & Ten is coming out on DVD this August. Starring O. J. Simpson as the aardvark, and Delta Burke as Jaka.

Eric can thank me later.

Ping

2005-04-17T20:00:00.000-04:00

Crypto: 0 Language path: Optima From: Society for Irrational Instigation Date: 0.8 MSec since loss of contacts Text of message: I have still not recovered contact with any network site known to be spinward of me. Apparently, I am right at the very edge of a catastrophe. If you are receiving this ping, please respond! Am I in danger? For your information, I have no trouble reaching sites that are antispinward. I understand an effort is being made to hop messages the long way around the galaxy. At least this would give us an idea how big the loss is. Nothing has come back yet — not surprising, I guess, considering the great number of hops and the expense.

Eclipse Notes

2005-04-08T06:04:00.000-04:00

Assuming Blogger actually lets me post this (ha ha, it is to laugh; ho ho, it is to be amused), I figured I'd take advantage of this unexpected break in the metaphorical cloud cover and share with you some info about today's hybrid solar eclipse:

The always-helpful folks at NASA give us this handy chart of major cities all across the United States, giving details of times and coverage amounts for the eclipse. Here in Atlanta, for instance, the eclipse will run from 5:35 PM until 6:59 PM local time, maxing out at 21% of the sun's diameter. Down in Tampa, where I grew up, it runs longer, and reaches almost 40%.

Further south in Miami, though, some kind of freakish miracle must occur, given the "I do not think that word means what you think it means" headline from today's Miami Herald: "Solar eclipse should be visible Friday night"

Media Monday (Mostly)

2005-04-04T18:49:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have Doctor Who in your Rotisserie Television League, the ratings from Saturday night's second episode are in; and although it lost 2.6 million viewers from its premiere, it still managed to clobber Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway (which featured the musical comedy stylings of Tony Blair). Ladbrokes, refusing to be deterred after predicting an opening week win for Ant and Dec, had tipped Ant and Dec at 8/11 to win the rematch.

Will they predict another loss for Doctor Who next week? It's hard to say, but their lack of success in that regard hasn't stopped them from jumping in to the fray with odds on Christopher Eccleston's successor. While David Tennant remains the overwhelming favorite, as we mentioned last week, other prime candidates include not just Bill Nighy and Jonathan Creek's Alan Davies, but my own new favorite, Sean Pertwee.

In the meantime, Doctor Who keeps making off-screen headlines. In the wake of the Sunday Mirror's claim that Christopher Eccleston had told the BBC that he wanted to do more than one series comes word that Eccleston's quote about being afraid of typecasting was basically made up by someone in the BBC's PR department, and that the BBC had known for some time that he was not returning, and had agreed not to divulge that information yet.

Finally, the BBC have still been unable to work out a deal with the Terry Nation Estate to allow the Daleks to appear in the second Doctor Who series.

Whew! Well, cheer up, Doctor Who fans: It's not The End of the World.

Well, since I don't want this column to be all about The Doctor, let's do a couple of movie trailers.

The first is for a new Jennifer Connelly movie called Dark Water. It is based on a 2002 Japanese film called Honogurai mizu no soko kara, which was, in turn, based on a novel of the same name by Kôji Suzuki, the man who wrote Ringu (aka The Ring), which, to date, accounts for eight movies and one television series in Japan, Korea, and the United States. There are also several volumes of Ring manga, as well as a Dark Water manga. Unlike the Ring manga, the Dark Water manga was actually written by Kôji Suzuki.

For a change of pace, lurking on the horizon is the most improbable of all things Holywood: A Phillip K. Dick movie adaptation that seems to really want to be a Phillip K. Dick movie.

I'm speaking, of course, of Richard Linklater's upcoming movie version of A Scanner Darkly. A lot of people are going to see Keanu Reeves in it and think "Matrix Redux," but Linkleter's use of advanced rotoscopy (a technique he first used in Waking Life) looks like it will really help capture the fluid nature of reality in Dick's work. Plus, how can you not root for a movie about drug-fueled paranoia that features both Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr.? Not to mention an actress named Kafka?

Tomorrow's DVD releases include Elektra and season two of Greatest American Hero, as well as the fourth season of Alternate History favorite The West Wing.

Finally, let's do the birthday thing, again, and extend our fondest wishes to Roar star Heath Ledger, Lexx lovely Xenia Seeberg, A Scanner Darkly's Robert Downey, Jr., unexpected Doctor Who guest voice Graham Norton, Babe: Pig in the City star Hugo Weaving, and, last but certainly not least, the late Andrei Tarkovsky, director of the One True Solaris.

New anime from Cartoon Network

2005-04-04T11:12:00.000-04:00

Cartoon Network have teamed up to make an original anime series that will air on Cartoon Network's Toonami block (see the press release). The series is IGPX, a continuation of a series of five minute shorts originally aired on Toonami in 2003. Everyone involved is gushing with excitement, of course, but it remains to be seen just how good this will be. It's set in a city in which people race mecha. Um, yeah.

Meanwhile, Toei Animation, Aniplex, and Cartoon Network announced a Japanese-animated anime series based on the Powerpuff Girls. Really. It'll be called "Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z," and here are two posters that are good examples of the proposed artwork. Really.

The Part About Greg Egan? They're Not Kidding

2005-04-04T03:49:00.001-04:00

From the Locus magazine web site comes the best story from last Friday's news.

I, for one, welcome our new posthuman readers.

Naughty Bits Removed

2005-03-30T23:29:00.000-05:00

The manga fan community has been wrestling recently with a spate of censoring, in which manga publishers are editing out fanservice in various ways, from digitally drawing a bra over a girl's briefly exposed breasts to digitally zooming in on an inoffensive bit of a panel during a sex scene.

It started with DC CMX's edits to Tenjho Tenge (the petition includes samples of the edits). In Tenjho's case, though, none of these edits compromised the story at all. One prime example is a scene in which extra clothes are added to a girl who's clearly having sex. The added clothes don't hide the fact that she's having sex; they just hide some of the nudity. T himself gets in some good discussion of this on his Meanwhile podcast.

Now, Anime on DVD reports that Viz has added stars on top of the bare nipples shown in I"s and that another character was completely removed from a sex scene in Descendants of Darkness.

I sympathize with DC CMX's censoring, as it removes potentially objectionable content and doesn't really impact the story. But something about Viz's edits bothers me.

Please, Mr. Anthony Head. We will give you money. Please.

2005-03-30T21:37:00.000-05:00

And that's what I have to say about the de-Ecclestoning.

The person responsible for the dissemination of "Rose" has been sacked. I still hold out that there's some sort of plausible deniability thing going on here -- the buzz the show got from that leak was amazing. Besides, for crying out loud, inconsistent much?

Who's Next

2005-03-30T14:03:00.000-05:00

Fresh off of the stunning success of the first episode of the new Doctor Who series, the BBC announced today that they were commissioning a second series of Doctor Who for next year.

Fresh off of the news of the second series of Doctor Who, actor Christopher Eccleston announced tomorrow that he was quitting Doctor Who, rather than continue the role in the second series.

Billie Piper is already slated to continue her role as Rose; at the moment, the leading candidate for the next Doctor is actor David Tennant, currently slated as Barty Crouch, Jr. in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie. Among the few other names being put forward are Bill Nighy, who plays Slartibartfast in the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, and Richard E. Grant, who has already played the Doctor in both an animated BBC special, and in the Comic Relief special Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death.

Best. Fic. Ever.

2005-03-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

'The ponies didn't find Aziraphale's accent at all strange as they, like many other brightly coloured species, simply assumed that anyone who spoke with an inexplicable English accent was "the smart one."'

Haven't Seen Nemo, Either

2005-03-30T09:16:00.000-05:00

Drawn -- you do all read Drawn, right? -- link to a nifty and quietly powerful ReadyMade interview with Brad Bird. Oh yeah.

I'm so ashamed, actually; I haven't picked up The Incredibles up yet, which is insane. Simultaneous release and everything. Nuts.

Aw, man, T! Maaaan!

Too Much Intelligent Life Here!

2005-03-30T00:30:00.000-05:00

Seriously, this blog is too well-covered with too many intelligent contributors for distracted little me to add any more.

I hereby announce my retirement from this particular stage. Those who want to hear from me can do so here.

I'll keep sponsoring the blog and looking in every so often, because it's worth it.

Call It "Monday Plus!!!"

2005-03-29T04:08:00.000-05:00

Or "Monday++", at any rate; but, since I don't think I'm going to be Tall Tale Capable later, I might as well at least do the whole Media Madness thing now.

Let's start by revisiting an earlier topic: The first episode of the new Doctor Who series, "Rose," was finally broadcast somewhere other than the internets this weekend. It appears to have done quite nicely for BBC1 in the ratings department, exceeding expectations and trouncing rival ITV1.

It might be my imagination, but I think that they did at least tweak the worst bits of the incidental music that both I and Warren Ellis hated so much; and they also used a brand new version of the main title music (the leaked screener copy re-used one of the old versions of the theme music for the opening credits). Their other major innovation with the sound track was to accidentally overdub parts of the broadcast with sound from another new BBC series, Strictly Dance Fever — with the result that, during the tense moments of her initial confrontation with peril, Billie Piper's character, Rose, appeared to be stumbling around a darkened basement, menaced by the unseen hordes of Graham Norton and his studio audience.

"At last!" thought viewers throughout the United Kingdom. "An adversary truly worthy of the Doctor!"

Fans of Masamune Shirow have had a pretty good run the last couple of years. Sure, there's still no sign of the long-awaited fifth volume of Appleseed; on the other hand, there was a recent (and, by all accounts, superior) remake of the OAV which had been ripp'd untimely from the womb of volume two once upon a time. At last word, production was already underway on a sequel, with a third movie planned as well.

And as for Ghost in the Shell, well, it's been difficult to swing a Fuchikoma without hitting two or three different sequel projects: There's the Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface manga, which finally made it to America; there's the unrelated Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence movie; and there's the even more unrelateder Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series, with two seasons under its belt in Japan already.

Needless to say, that's still not enough! Our boundless hunger for Masamune Shirow and all of his works will not be satisfied so easily! We demand more!

Just in time, then, comes word of Tank S.W.A.T. 01, a brand new version of Dominion: Tank Police (or, to be more precise, Dominion: Conflict 1 (No More Noise), its sequel). Unlike the orginal two OAV versions of Dominion, this new one appears to be cell-shaded CG animation. The animator is Romanov Higa, who first made his mark with Urda, a short science fictional World War II spy thriller set in Germany, which he designed, wrote, modelled, and directed himself, posting new chapters on the internet as he finished them. The curious can download a trailer for Tank S.W.A.T. 01 in a variety of sizes and formats, from 2.9MB WMV to 17MB MPEG.

Well, there's only so much madness we can stand in our media, so I'm going to wrap things up now with a couple quick bits of additional information.

Let's start with some DVD news: First, today sees the release, at long last, of The Lone Gunmen: The Complete Series on DVD. But even bigger than that (to me, at least) is the impending release, in America, of the first two seasons of Danger Mouse on DVD. Ah, bliss.

And finally, let's all wish a happy birthday today to Lucy Lawless, Marina Sirtis, and Christopher Lambert.

Hugo Award Shortlist 2005

2005-03-28T05:18:00.000-05:00

Interaction, the 63^rd Worldcon (to be held in Glasgow, August 4–8 of this year) has just released the shortlist for the 2005 Hugo Awards.

From a quick once-over, it looks like Charlie Stross has reasons to be cheerful; like the same writers who fight it out for "Best Short Story" every year are doing so again; and like the folks at Interaction must have some dark, sinister agenda towards the "Best Fan Artist" and "Best Dave Langford" awards, because they bolded the titles of all of the other awards but those.

Oh, and shock horrors, no Enterprise episodes made the "Best Dramatic Presentation" shortlist.

Yeah, I know. Cheap shot.

Hey, one day we won't have Enterprise to kick around any more; so we'd better kick now, right?

Oh, No. It Will Be Just Like Now, Where We Do Not Have A Hobbit Movie.

2005-03-27T09:32:00.000-05:00

Peter Jackson will be doing The Hobbit, but not for another three or four years. I think that we will be able to cope with him not rushing onto the project like a person who is rushing onto a project.

Between one thing and another, I'm sure we'll be fine. Adaptations have been the new black for long enough at this point that something else is probably the new black. That said, that something else is probably, itself, an adaptation, such as Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman. Then again, central London is rife with bus posters claiming that lime is the new black, so I wouldn't really be the person to talk to here.

I should apologize for relative inactivity over the past little while -- between one thing and another, there's been some distraction. Will you ever be able to forgive me? I love you too. Let's go for margaritas.

Good Friday Fan Fiction

2005-03-25T13:07:00.000-05:00

How's that for a scary title?

Don't worry, though: I'm leaving the Jesus Slash to Mel Gibson for now (although the absolute best live performance of Jesus Christ Superstar that I've ever seen did feature a pair of lesbians as Jesus and Mary Magdalene). No, I'm going to try to ease my way back into the swing of things with some fan fiction that won't scar you for life. You know, good Friday Fan Fiction.

We'll start with a pair of Sandman stories with impeccable credentials: They were written, more or less, at the behest of Neil Gaiman, for the Sandman: Book of Dreams prose anthology back in 1994. There were some wonderful stories in that book, and some wonderful authors: Even if the actual story didn't quite live up to the premise, for instance, George Alec Effinger's cross-polination of Little Nemo in Slumberland with the Sandman mythos may well have been one of the greatest ideas in SF since Philip José Farmer had William S. Burroughs, rather than Edgar Rice Burroughs, write Tarzan in "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod."

On the other hand, many of the authors were far from happy with the treatment they got from DC during the production of the book. Several of the prospective authors withdrew their stories, filed the serial numbers off, and reused them; other were unwilling or unable to do so. Two of the authors in question have since posted their stories for free on the web: As a result, Sandman afficianados can now read both Karawynn Long's Delerium story, "The Voice of Her Eyes," and Michael Berry's "Merv Pumpinhead's Big Night Out."

In a radically different vein of Sandman fan fiction, the Oxford University Douglas Adams Society has, for some time, combined two passionate pursuits: LARPing, and pub crawls.

One of their interactive dramas is a Sandman pub crawl, involving a series of meetings at pubs around Oxford that take place across the centuries, from 1294 to 1594 to 1794 to 1994. Hob Gadling is there, of course; as are Dream, Death, Desire, Despair, and Delerium. John Constantine and Johanna Constantine are there, as are Mad Hettie, Coleridge, Roger Bacon, and Cain and Abel. Lucien and Lucifer, too, for good measure.

With the right group of people, this story of the curious and occasionally dangerous things which transpire when Morpheus discovers an artificial intelligence wandering in his realm could be quite an astonishing experience; and who knows — it may even yield the long-awaited answer to Phillip K. Dick's most famous question.

"Bonk! Bonk! On the Head!"

2005-03-23T04:18:00.000-05:00

If you were to do a comprehensive survey of some sort, I suspect that you would find that this site gets a lot more of its stories from Slashdot or Warren Ellis than from, say, Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo.

Shocking! Well, what better occasion than William Shatner's 74^th birthday^* to begin to correct that imbalance?

And so, it is from Taegan Goddard's invaluable Political Wire that we learn of a Baltimore Sun profile of Diana Schaub, a Loyola College Professor of Political Science and member of George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics, an august advisory body charged with guiding the President's views on weighty matters of national policy which don't involve lowering the Capital Gains Tax rate or invading anyone (yet).

The Council is chaired by Dr. Leon Kass, a Harvard and Chicago-educated medical doctor and molecular biologist who is a professor in the rather ominously-named Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago. Among his other qualifications, Dr. Kass famously wrote, in The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature,

"Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone - a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive."

...which leads one to be thankful that he was not put in charge of the FDA or Department of Agriculture, at least.

For what it's worth, in the very next paragraph after that curious statement, he tackled other deep stains on the human character, saying "Not just the uneducated rustic but children of the cultural elite are now regularly seen yawning openly in public," before continuing on to target "...sneezing, belching, and hiccuping and even the involuntary bodily display of embarrassment itself, blushing."

Nevertheless, Dr. Kass is, indisputably, a doctor and a molecular biologist. By contrast, one may well wonder about the qualifications of Professor Schaub, who is neither an Ethicist nor a Biologist, to sit on the President's Council on Bioethics. Well, thanks to the Sun, we can now rest easy, secure in the knowledge that she has turned for guidance to two impeccable sources of wisdom: Abraham Lincoln and Star Trek.

She did keep her two influences separate, however, so we don't have to worry that she was talking about "The Savage Curtain," at least. Because basing national policy on the results of a battle between Good and Evil staged by a powerful lava creature would just be silly, wouldn't it? Plus, it's a third season episode — one of the very last, in fact — and we all know what that means.

No, we can all rest easy on that account — her touchstone for moral guidance on issues of scientific research is "Miri" — a first season episode about a planet full of children left orphaned for centuries by the results of a disastrous medical experiment designed to prolong the normal lifespan. The experiment killed all of the adults on the planet while simultaneously slowing down the aging process for all of the children to a crawl.

Now, before you go making fun of the poor woman for basing her views on scientific ethics around (a) a politician who wrote nothing whatsoever on the subject and died before antibiotics, and (b) a Star Trek episode which features a centuries-old prepubescent girl putting moves on Captain Kirk; consider this: Not only was this episode the screen debut of Phil Morris, who went on to play "Jackie Chiles" on Sienfeld; but it also featured the screen debuts of Dawn Roddenberry, Lisabeth Shatner, and Melanie Shatner, making it, like, the Star Trekiest episode of Star Trek ever.

Finally, if Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith had leaned on Star Trek for inspiration, would we have ever dared to interfere in the affairs of a pre-warp civilization?

^*Most of this was written on Shatner's birthday, at least. Anyway, he's Canadian, and their days are, like, equal to 18 of our hours, right?

SF&F webcomic news

2005-03-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

The start of Gossamer Commons, the promised comic written by Eric "Websnark" Burns and drawn by Greg Holkan. (The "About" description and the teaser pic in Websnark suggest fantasy elements, so I'm putting it in here.)

The return of Carried By The Wind, Mariner's saga of ancient tragedy, 20th Century possession and future disaster.

And the running of Tailsteak's 24-hour comic Sight, which looks like being a dark tale of card-magic.

EXTRA: Graveyard Greg's The Guardians is coming back April 4th with new artist Cara Judd.

Winging it

2005-03-20T13:34:00.000-05:00

Cartoonist Rob "Tragic Lad" Clark foresees a new doom upon Middle-Earth.

And Star Wars IV is remastered in Java ASCII animation.

Can You Hear Me Now?

2005-03-18T18:49:00.000-05:00

I've spent the last week or so more dead than alive, which is why you've all been mercifully spared my typical barrage of posts showcasing Japanese mud-wrestling game shows or electrogoth vagina dentata festivals from Berlin. You may even escape this week without a "Fan Fiction Friday" entry, just as you avoided a Tall Tale Tuesday and a Media Madness Monday; and my obituary for Andre Norton currently consists of: "Andre Norton (1912–2005)."¹

The question remains, however: Is it the fact that I've been half-dead, or is it just my natural affinity for these things that has lead me to share with you this latest evidence of our impending doom ²?

¹ Well, it's concise and to the point, at least, isn't it?
² Chain of custody: Here→Engadget→Bloghead→Nushworld

I Just Want Arcee, Dammit

2005-03-16T14:59:00.000-05:00

The Transformers live-action film continues its development apace. God help us all.