Thursday, April 30, 2009

 

Rooster Teeth's The Recording Session

Allison and I are just starting to reconnect with our old pals Burnie Burns and Matt Hullum, who in the time since we last hung out years ago have gone on to be two of the founders of Rooster Teeth, the outfit behind Red Vs. Blue and The Strangerhood and a million other things besides. But not content with being the kings of machinima, they've started doing some live action stuff as well. For instance...

This morning Allison forwarded me the link to one of their recent offerings, "The Recording Session." Sadly not embeddable, you'll have to head over there to check it out. But trust me, it's worth it.

 

More Grown-up Calvin & Hobbes

Following on last month's "grown-up Calvin & Hobbes," here's another entry from illustrator M. S. Corley.



Be sure to check out Corley's three-part Horrors of Literature series, which I think may been the stuff that lead me to his site in the first place. Or come to think of it, I may have stumbled on his site after he posted his "Penguin-esque" redesigns of the Lemony Snicket books. Either way, he's one talented dude.

 

Doc & Co.

Thanks to Evan Shaner's blog, I discovered this morning the blog of Scott Godlewski, one of the founders of Mysterious Adventure Magazine, which I'd not heard of before but will definitely be checking out.

Here's a recent commission piece Godlewski did featuring a few familiar faces...


There's lots more great stuff in the link.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

 

Auto-Tune the News

Why yes, I should be working, now that you mention it.

But nevermind about that. Here's the day's news in the form of song...



And again...

(Stick around to the middle of this one, where it really starts to groove.)


 

Secret Saturdays "manga"?

I was excited to read this news, about a partnership with Del Rey Manga and Cartoon Network to produce "Secret Saturday's manga," until I got to the bit about it just being repurposed stills from the show.

I don't know if you've ever tried to look at one of these things, alternatively called "cine-manga" or "film-comic" or various other permutations, but they don't tend to read terribly well. They look like, well, low-res screenshots with the script overlaid on them in word balloons. That kind of thing made more sense before the days of Tivo and DVD, when kids were hungry for anything that could recreate the experience of watching their favorite movie or show. I had loads of "movie storybooks" and such as a kid, and even grabbed any coloring books or picture book versions I could find of my favorite shows.

But now? Why wouldn't the kids just pop in the disc or boot up the Tivo and watch the show again?

Oh, well. At least my daughter might enjoy it.

 

Moore on Farmer

In the third part of a multi-part interview on Newsarama, Alan Moore is asked about Philip José Farmer and his influence on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Philip José Farmer was a seminal influence upon the League. I mean, I had read his Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, which had that whole “World Newton” family tree that connected up all the pulp adventure heroes. Although we’ve taken it a little bit further than that in the League, whether we would have ever thought of that without the primary example of Philip José Farmer, I don’t know.

I’ve still got a healthy collection of Phillip José Farmer’s work. He will be very much missed. He was a very important writer. He was one of the pioneers in writing intelligently about sex in science fiction. I can remember reading Strange Relations way back in the day, when I was still in school. It had a profound effect on me; it made me realize it was possible to write intelligently about sex without it being pornography or smutty jokes, and yes, science fiction was as good a place for it as anywhere else.

So many great works – “The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod,” a great mash-up of two writers named Burroughs. He would change his writing style for the job on hand. He wasn’t afraid to try anything new – I mean, his Riverworld books, the first couple were wonderful.

I think he sometimes he came up with brilliant ideas that maybe didn’t go as far as I’d hoped, but that’s the only criticism I can think of. And if you’re criticizing someone for being too ambitious, that’s not really a criticism at all. If only a few of our modern writers were as brilliant as Philip José Farmer, then I think the world of culture would be a much better place.
Moore also talks a bit about Iain Sinclair's "Prisoner of London," from Slow Chocolate Autopsy, who features in the latest LOEG series, Century.

 

Juanmanimation

Via Cartoon Brew, I was introduced this morning to the art blog of Juanmanuel Urbina, an animation director in Colombia. The highlight of "Juanmanimation" are the one-panel sight gags Urbina does, remixing familiar pop culture figures in jokes ranging from clever to hilarious.

Just check out the awesome:









There's loads more great stuff in the link. Check it out, won't you?

Monday, April 27, 2009

 

Monday Linkage

It's Monday, and here's a random list of things of interest I've noted over the last week or so:

Friday, April 24, 2009

 

My New Theory About Lost

Do you watch Lost? If not, what the heck is wrong with you?

But if you do watch the show (which is shaping up to be the finest long-form science fiction narrative on television to date), here's a little something I stumbled on last night, digging around on Lostpedia. This video clip was tied into last summer's Lost-related alternate reality game, sometimes called the "Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project," and I think it provides some interesting hints about where we'll be heading, either in the final episodes of this season or in the next (and, sadly, final) season.



Catch all that? It's clearly David Faraday behind the camera, as Chang talks about "Kerr Metric solutions to Einstein's Field Equations," and a "pinhole" that allows him to send a message thirty years into the future.

Anyway, that's not related to my new theory, but is just an interesting bit of awesome.

Here's what I'm thinking now. A couple of weeks ago we got the WTF moment of learning that bounty-hunter Ilana and passenger Bram, both of whom were on Ajira Airways Flight 316, knew something about the island that we don't know. The phrase "What lies in the shadow of the statue?", which Bram used on Sayid last week in the flashback, is clearly some Masonic-like passcode, used to identify other members of some organization. I originally wondered if this wasn't a third faction or group, in addition to the Others/Hostiles and the Dharam Initiative, out for control of the island, possibly connected with the island's original inhabitants. But Allison quickly convinced me otherwise, sure that they wouldn't introduce a whole new interest group this late in the game--her theory is that the "shadow of the statue" gang are the inheritors of the Dharma Initiative in some way, which makes sense to me.

But that got me thinking. We've seen now on two separate occasions the transition between one "Leader" of the Others/Hostiles and the next, first when Ben is put aside so Locke can take the lead, and then in flashbacks we see Widmore getting the boot when Ben takes charge. But in both cases, the predecessor is kicked off the island and then comes back to try to regain control.

We've seen Widmore as a young man among the Others/Hostiles back in the 50s (along with Faraday's mother, of course), but it seems clear that he was just part of the rank-and-file at that point. Alpert appeared to be in charge, but that's misleading, I think, because it's been established that his character is a kind of liaison between the "island" (Jacob?) and whoever is leading the group at any given point. So the question I had was, who was the leader of the Others/Hostiles before Widmore?

I think it was Alvar Hanso, the mysterious figure behind the Dharma Initiative.

Here, check out the orientation video from the Swan:



About all we learn on Lost itself about Hanso is that he was a "munitions magnate" who funded Gerald and Karen DeGroot's utopian project. But there have been loads of details about him released in the various alternate reality games and such. Check out the Alvar Hanso entry on Lostpedia and see what I mean.

So he's been around since the days of WWII, originally providing munitions to resistance groups in Europe. But it wasn't until the 1960s that he established the Hanso Foundation, and turned from weapons to more benevolent applications of technology. Then, in 1970, he funds the Dharma Initiative, who set up shop on the island. The Dharma folks have a fairly antagonistic relationship with the "Hostiles," and only the sonic security fence (intended to keep out the black smoke monster, surely) and the tenuous "truce" keeps them from open conflict.

We know that Widmore was kicked off the island for sneaking away covertly for years to the mainland, starting a family (cf. Penny Widmore) and quite likely a business (the Widmore Corporation). Ben self-righteously ousts Widmore and sends him packing. But by 2004, we learn, Ben has been doing much the same thing, with a secret compartment in his house filled with fake passports and contacts established throughout the mainland.

So here's what I think happens. Alvar Hanso was the leader of the Others/Hostiles in the mid-20th Century, possibly having been born on the island, the descendant of the Black Rock's captain Magnus Hanso. Throughout the 40s and 50s Hanso sneaks away to the mainland, without the others on the island knowing anything about it, supplying weapons to groups in Europe. In the late 50s or early 60s he's found out, gets kicked off the island, and Widmore takes over. Then another thirty years Ben kicks out Widmore for the same reasons, and then further on Locke takes over after Ben is ousted as well.

(There are hints in the "expanded Lost universe" stuff of tenuous connections between the Hanso Foundation and the Widmore Corporation in the modern day, which makes sense if Hanso and Widmore recognize in Ben a common enemy, and become allies for as long as their interests are parallel.)

All of the various groups that are vying for control of the island--Hanso and the Dharma Initiative, the Others, Widmore and the freighter, the "shadow of the statue" gang, etc--are not different groups, but different factions of the same group. This is a generational struggle for control of the island.

The writers of Lost simply love to mirror the themes of one character's struggle with another, or to use elements of a character's backstory as emblematic of larger issues. Think about how many characters have issues with their fathers, either antagonistic relationships or strained relationships that they struggle to mend. Locke. Jack. Kate (who killed her stepfather, after all). Hurley, certainly. Miles. Ben. Sawyer (whose father killed his mother, and who dedicated himself to hunting down and killing the man whose name he adopted). Sayid (who was driven to be a killer by his father, at least symbolically, and who acted out his father issues with Ben). By this point, basically all of the surviving characters have significant father issues at the core of their character arcs.

So Lost is really one big father-son struggle, at least thematically, with the various generations of the same group, an extended "family" composed of people who have come to the island through various means, vying for control.

What do you think?

Thursday, April 23, 2009

 

Mixel Pixel's "Monster Manual"

Behold! Dan Meth's video for Mixel Pixel's "Monster Manual," full of old-school rpg charm.


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

 

Cosmic Cats

Who doesn't love a good Fantastic Four gag?



Like it? Then go buy the book already. There's more where that came from.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

 

The State on DVD! Aw, yeah...

Rejoice!


 

Heliotrope's Moorcock Tribute

The Moorcock tribute issue of Heliotrope Magazine is now online (and available in PDF format, to boot). It features fiction and nonfiction on the subject of the great man himself by such notables as Neil Gaiman, Rhys Hughes, Paul S. Kemp, Lou Anders, Bryan Talbot, Hal Duncan, Catherynne M. Valente, and some other guy. Check it out, won't you?

Monday, April 20, 2009

 

Jack 'n' Apes

Behold (from DC's July 09 solicits):


JACK OF FABLES #36
Written by Chris Roberson
Art by Tony Akins
Cover by Brian Bolland
Featuring an untold tale of Jack’s past drawn by guest artist Tony Akins and written by guest-scripter and novelist Chris Roberson (HOUSE OF MYSTERY #13)! “Jack ‘n’ Apes” is the exciting true story of the time our hero found himself in equatorial Africa in nothing but his underpants, was taken prisoner by a bunch of talking apes, and in no time had set himself up as their king. That’s right, monkey fans, Jack was the real king of the jungle, so accept no substitutes. Kreegah!
On sale July 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • MATURE READERS
Yes, that is Brian Bolland drawing a monkey-themed cover for a story I wrote. How d'ya like them apples?

 

Monday Linkage

It's Monday, and here are a few things of interest I've noted over the weekend.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

 

A Full Dozen

Twelve years ago today, Ben Folds Five was in Austin playing a gig at the dearly departed Liberty Lunch. According to this site, the set list went a little something like this:
April 18 - Liberty Lunch - Austin, TX
Missing / Battle / Philosophy / Selfless / Polka / Kate / Alice / Brick / Steven / Snoop Doggy Dogg& Black Sabbath Medley / Pyser / Jackson / Dwarf / Ultimate / Freebird / Best / Fair / Dumped / Underground / Smoke / Jelly /Julianne

I wish there was a live recording, bootleg or legit, of that show. I was there, having just moved back to Austin the week before from San Francisco. I had a few grand in the bank, a crappy apartment under a highway overpass (literally), no job and no car, but I was back in Austin and already sure that I'd made the right decision to return. I didn't know many people in town, after a few years away, but having seen Ben Folds Five in Seattle a year or two before, I wasn't about to miss another show. I headed down to the warehouse district that night (back when there still were warehouses down there), paid the cover, and stood around on my own drinking bottles of Shiner and smoking Camel Lights. (Remember when you could smoke inside? Wasn't that great?) I ran into some guys I knew from when I was their R.A. at the UT dorms, and chatted with them a bit before the show started, and then ran into the younger brother of one of my friends from high school, who had an attractive young lady at his side. I figured that Dave was doing pretty well for himself to be out on her arm, but a few minutes later I turned around to see she was standing next to me, talking about comics. (She tricked me, of course, having pumped Dave for everything he knew about me, and then just casually started mentioning everything she knew about comics as though it was her standard conversational fare. Her plan was to trick me into thinking I was picking her up, and it worked.)

We exchanged numbers, and I waited a whole day and a half to call. We met at Trudy's for drinks on Sunday night, and then talked every night on the phone for the next five days. After our first "proper" date on the following Friday, Allison stayed the night at my place and never went home.

Twelve years, three houses (one rented, two owned), a few career changes, a wedding, a publishing company, and a daughter later, I'm still really damned glad I decided to go to that Ben Folds Five show by myself...

Friday, April 17, 2009

 

The Hunt for Voldorius

Mmm. The name of that author sounds strangely familiar...

(The new Black Library project is not the crazy good news I got this week, btw. The Hunt for Voldorius gig is merely slightly insane good news I got a month or so ago. This weeks news was truly insane...)

 

Allred and Gaiman's Metamorpho

Behold the awesomeness that is Mike Allred's art for the forthcoming Metamorpho serial for DC's Wednesday Comics (the same project for which Ben Caldwell is illustrating Wonder Woman), which is being scripted by some guy named Neil Gaiman.



Can Allred draw, or what?

 

Electric Velocipede Sale

If you haven't read Electric Velocipede yet, what the heck are you waiting for? John Klima, who edits the Hugo- and World Fantasy Award-nominated magazine, needs cash, so he's put together a special sale. Honestly, at prices like that you're losing money if you don't buy it!

 

More Interviews with (and articles about) Interesting People

I've got a dozen things going on in my head today--all of them good--and it'll be a struggle to think straight. While I try to collect my wits, enjoy these things I've found online.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

 

Hastily-Made Cleveland Tourism Video

(via) I'm still reeling from some ridiculously good news I got yesterday (but which I can't talk about for a few months, but it involves the words "ongoing", "creator-owned," and "comic series"...), so here's a hastily-made Cleveland tourism video.


Wednesday, April 15, 2009

 

Michael Chabon on John Carter of Mars!

(via) Ready for some exciting news? How about this?

Michael Chabon Writing John Carter of Mars! (Well, rewriting, actually, but still.)
Almost a week ago, and without any fanfare, Nikki Finke listed John Carter of Mars as one of Michael Chabon’s screenwriting credits; this was then followed up by a Chabon fansite, The Amazing Website of Kavalier and Clay, and they got the author himself confirm:
I’ve been hired to do some revisions to an already strong script by Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews. I wrote my original screenplay The Martian Agent back in 1995 because I wished I could do Burroughs’s Barsoom. So this is pretty much a dream come true for me.
Yes, please!

 

Agony Column on End of the Century

Rick Kleffel and Lou Anders talk about Steampunk, Victoriana, Elizabethan SF, and secret histories in the latest Agony Column podcast (mp3 link), touching on End of the Century along the way.

 

Riemann's zeta function and the building blocks of reality?

Okay, one more post and then I'm getting to work.

Last night Allison and I watched the episode of BBC's Horizon that aired the other day, "Alan and Marcus Go Forth and Multiply". An extremely well done introduction for the layman to some of the most interesting and mindbending aspects of higher mathematics. But right in the middle there is a discussion of Bernhard Riemann's zeta function, which in my (albeit layman's understanding) is concerned with predicting the distribution of prime numbers. And then it gets, for a moment, really interesting.

Mathematician and Oxford professor Marcus Du Sautoy takes co-presenter Alan Davies to a lab somewhere, where a quartz sphere has been hooked up to an apparatus which converts vibrations in the quartz into electrical impulses. When Davies is instructed to strike the quartz with a ball-bearing, the resulting electrical impulses show up on a meter. And Du Sautoy explains that the distribution of wavelengths on the meter are uncannily similar to the distribution of primes in Riemann's zeta function.

What?

He then calmly explains that the same correspondence has been found between the zeta function graph and the energy states of the electrons inside a uranium atom. Oh, and it shows up in various statistical models as well, like the distribution of buses in London and so on.

By this point, I'm up out of my chair. I'm an avid reader of math and science popularizations, despite the fact that I can't really do complicated math to save my life, and I've never even heard about this before.

A search online last night showed that I wasn't the only one, either. There was even some suggestion that the quartz-zeta function business was a hoax. But then I started turning up stories from years past that mentioned the connection with uranium, which had apparently been first noted by American mathematician Hugh Montgomery and physicist Freeman Dyson back in the 70s.

I'm going to be doing some more digging into this, and hunting down a copy of Du Sautoy's The Music of The Primes, but in the meantime I had to ask all of you nice people. Am I the only one who hasn't heard of this before? (Allison had a vague memory of running into the idea before.) And if I'm not, and this isn't widely known, why isn't it widely know?

 

137 Uncomfortable Plot Summaries

Thanks to Gerry Canavan for pointing out a Mefi post I somehow missed, on Uncomfortable Plot Summaries.

Here are a few choice examples Canavan has highlighted. More in the link above.
ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.
BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: Teenage serial killer destroys town in fit of semi-religious fervor.
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF: Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.
SERENITY: Men fight for possession of scantily clad mentally ill teenage girl.
GROUNDHOG DAY: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker.
HARRY POTTER: Celebrity Jock thinks rules don’t apply to him, is right.
JFK: Family man wastes life for nothing in crusade against homosexuals.
JUNO: Teen fails to get abortion, ruins lives.
JURASSIC PARK: Theme park’s grand opening pushed back.
KILL BILL: Irresponsible mother wants custody of her child.
LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.
RAMBO III: The United States provides arms, equipment and training to the terrorists behind 9/11.
RED DAWN: Despite shock-and-awe tactics, a superior occupying force is no match for a tenacious sect of terrorist insurgents.
STAR TREK: Over-sexed officer routinely places crew in danger.
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE - Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.
SUPERMAN RETURNS: Illegal immigrant is deadbeat dad.
TERMINATOR: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.

 

Interviews with Interesting People

My RSS feeds this morning are absolutely filled with links to interviews with interesting people, and I don't have time today to read (or watch) them all! I'll share them with you nice people, though, and hope that I find time later in the week to catch up.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

 

Talent is Hard Work

The latest wisdom from the Goodie Bag...


Monday, April 13, 2009

 

Sturges on House of Mystery #13

There's an interview on Newsarama with Matt Sturges about the forthcoming House of Mystery #13, a special issue of the ongoing Vertigo series that features the work of Sturges himself, Bill Willingham, Eric Powell, Neal Adams, Ralph Reese, Sergio Aragones... and me, of all people. (Guess who's drawing my story...)

I did an interview about my contribution, too, which is excerpted in a brief bit at the end of this piece. Not sure if the rest of it will be appearing in a separate post on Newsarama or not, but if it doesn't I may post my responses here at some point.

 

A Wonder Woman To Believe In

From Robot 6 I learn that Ben Caldwell will be doing the art for a Wonder Woman serial in the forthcoming Wednesday Comics, and is sharing some of the art and design work on his blog. This is terrific news, as there are few people I'd trust more with the character than Caldwell, and with good reason.

Along with Nina Jaffe, Caldwell was responsible for the best interpretation of Wonder Woman to date, the sadly underpromoted and unnoticed line of young reader and chapter books published by HarperChildrens in 2004.



I don't know how many of you have sampled the new Wonder Woman direct-to-DVD animated movie, but if you haven't, I have suffered for you. It's pretty unwatchable for adults, filled with some brain-hurty plot-holes and odd characterization, but worse still it's absolutely packed to the gills with gore and violence, with some pretty unnecessarily adult sexual suggestions throughout. Characters are decapitated and killed in the first few minutes, and before Diana has even left Paradise Island the body count has climbed pretty high, and we've been treated to a few choice moments of Steve Trevor, Sexist Asshat. Suffice it to say, it's not for kids (which, of course, begs the question, Who is it for?), and there's no way that I'm putting Georgia in front of it.

The character of Wonder Woman is pretty broken, I think, and some have suggested (I'm looking at you, Mr. Nevins) that she isn't fixable, if for no other reason than because the character was devised to advance the notions of Dr. William Moulton Marston--some of which were laudable, some of which... not so much--and shorn of that subtext the rest of the character becomes problematic. There have been some good reinterpretations of the character in the years since, notably George Perez's post-Crisis relaunch and Gail Simone's recent run, but they've had to dance pretty hard to keep it all hanging together. Perhaps most annoying, though, since the days of Super Friends and the Linda Carter series (with a brief hiatus during the days of Justice League Unlimited), there hasn't been a kid-friendly--and more importantly little girl-friendly--version of the character in a long, long while.

But in the early reader titles I Am Wonder Woman, The Contest, The Arrival , The Rain Forest, and the chapter books Wonder Woman: The Journey Begins and Wonder Woman: Amazon Princess, author Nina Jaffe and illustrator Ben Caldwell managed to synthesize the best of the original Marston version with the parts that worked from Perez and elsewhere, and came up with a Wonder Woman that worked, and more importantly was aimed right at the readers who really need the character most--four to seven year old girls. And the books are good.



The books were released in 2004, all in the span of a month or two... and quickly disappeared from view. I stumbled upon them in a bookstore, my eye caught by Caldwell's art, which I'd been admiring for a while (in Dare Detectives and elsewhere), but after leafing through just a few pages it was the story that really sold me. I snatched up all the titles on the shelf, which wasn't much (and as I recall they had only one copy of each), and had to hunt the rest of them online. I talked the books up to some booksellers I know, but by that time it was already too late. I don't know what went on behind the scenes, whether the licensing deal between DC and Harper fell apart before the books came out, or if there was an editorial sea-change that took place between the commissioning and the publication, or one of a hundred different explanations. What I do know is that the comics world was all but completely unaware that these books existed, and that dumped as they were on the market without much in the way of promotion or support, the book-buying world didn't notice them, either. I don't know if there were plans originally for more, but as it stood that initial wave of titles was all that we'd see of the Jaffe-Caldwell Wonder Woman. Which is a damned shame.

In a better world somewhere out there in the Multiverse, in another worldline of the Myriad, there are shelves full of new Jaffe & Caldwell Wonder Woman books and comics for my daughter to read. In this one, though, there are just the scant few titles I bought for her when she was an infant. And I'm hanging onto them.

(Images ganked from here.)

 

Monday Linkage

Happy Monday, everybody! Here are a few things that I've noted online over the last few days, that I thought might be of interest.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

 

Hang This Up in your Time Machine

(via) Worried about travelling back in time and not having access to modern convenience? Dinosaur Comics to the rescue.


As with all things awesome on the internet, there is a t-shirt available. I'm pretty tempted, I'll admit.

Friday, April 10, 2009

 

Nick Fury Was Right

If you've been following Marvel's crossovers the last year or two, or have sampled the new Secret Warriors series, this stencil by Joe D! will make complete sense. But even if you haven't, it's still a kick-ass design.


The designer is offering it on a t-shirt, if that's your kind of thing.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

 

Texas, Our Texas

Just when things are looking promising, and it's been a while since Texas embarrassed itself in the eyes of the world, something like this comes along.

(And honestly, yesterday I figured it would be this that would be the most cringeworthy thing to come out of the state this week.)

Think you can out-embarrass us, Florida and Alabama? Heck, no! Texas is here to stay!

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

 

Adepticon Revisited

I meant to post a quick note about Adepticon when I got home the other day, and in the hurry to get back up to speed on the current novel completely forgot. So here it is.

I had a terrific time, getting a chance to hang out with Vince Rospond of Black Library and fellow BL author Gav Thorpe (and fellow Solaris author Tim Akers), meeting Ross and the rest of the gang from Fantasy Flight games, and talking with loads of Warhammer and 40K gamers and BL enthusiasts. I even did a brief interview with Spencer and Scott of 40K Radio, which I'll link to when it goes online. Hank Edley and the rest of the Adepticon staff ran an incredibly tight ship, and the Lombard Westin was a splendid venue for the event. In short, Allison and I had a great time, and appreciate the warm welcome we got. Wargamers who haven't made the trek to Adepticon before should definitely put it on their calendar for next year.

 

Secret Saturdays are back!

As I've mentioned a couple of times before, Georgia and I are huge fans of Jay Stephens's current series on Cartoon Network, The Secret Saturdays. As as I've also mentioned at least once or twice, we've been hungrily awaiting new episodes for the last couple of months, and looking forward to the point in mid-April when new episodes would start airing.



As Stephens points out on his blog, the wait is finally over.
The Secret Saturdays return to Cartoon Network with new episodes beginning this Friday, April 10th at 8:00 PM. Because of where CN decided to break the season up, we come back with two irregular episodes, neither of which feature a cryptid of further the Kur Stone plotline. They are both pretty cool stand-alone stories, though! Because what would've been the next episode, "Eterno", is so particularly unusual, we decided to air it the following week, so this Friday will premiere "Black Monday" instead. They will revert back to the original sequence for future rebroadcasts and DVD collections.
And if that weren't enough, this week also sees the release of Cartoon Network Action Pack #36, which we'll be heading into town to get on Saturday (after a tasty meal of burgers and icecream at Phil's Ice House, of course).


Written by John Rozum, Tom Warburton and Jim Alexander; Art by Will Sweeney, Jay Stephens, Maurice Fontenot and Ethen Beavers; Cover by Jay Stephens

In a new Secret Saturdays story, Komodo is captured by Argost! Plus, Cryptipedia entries from the world of the Secret Saturdays, Samurai Jack shops for a way home, and the Kids Next Door face the masters of disguise!
  • Cartoon Network
  • 32pg.
  • Color
  • $2.50 US

On Sale April 8, 2009

That means that this Saturday morning we can look forward to new Secret Saturdays on the Tivo and in comic form, and burgers and icecream! Honestly, what more could you want?

 

The Cult of Done Manifesto

Via John Rogers's Kung Fu Monkey blog I discover the Cult of Done Manifesto, which is visually interpretted thusly by Joshua Rothaas.



I have to say I like this a lot. It aligns with my personal philosphy on creation in many ways.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

 

Red Rook Review on Set the Seas on Fire

Dallas-based novelist and poet Keith Harvey writes to let me know that he's started a new book review blog, Red Rook Review, and that the topic of his first review is my own Set the Seas on Fire. It's a terrific and insightful piece. As I told Keith by email, it's not every reviewer that can detect not only the influence of Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard, but also that of Jorge Luis Borges and Paul Auster.

Labels:


 

Name that Droid

Do you like to win things? Sure, who doesn't? How about books? Like those, too?

Well, have my new masters at Angry Robot Books got a deal for you...


Angry Robot is running a promotional contest, inviting readers to name their miffed little robot mascot (seen above). Head on over to the publisher's site anytime between now and May 6th, share your suggestion, and if your entry is picked you'll get copies of all 7 initial Angry Robot titles "plus a mystery prize". What do you have to lose?

Monday, April 06, 2009

 

Heliotrope 5

Check out the lineup for the forthcoming issue of Heliotrope.
Table of Contents
Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man by Lou Anders
Moorcock: Mastery and Mad Dance by Hal Duncan
One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock by Neil Gaiman (Fiction)
The Rhondda Rendezvous by Rhys Hughes (Fiction)
Confessions of an Elric Fanboy by Paul S. Kemp
Moorcock the author, Mike the man by Chris Roberson
The Moorcock Effect by Bryan Talbot
Epic Movie by Catherynne M. Valente
Mmm. I see a pattern emerging...

Thursday, April 02, 2009

 

Adepticon

In a few short hours I'll be flying out to Chicago, where I'll be appearing this weekend as one of the Guests of Honor at Adepticon 2009, along with fellow Black Library author Gav Thorpe. If you're in the Lombard area this weekend, stop by the Westin and say howdy, won't you?

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

 

BSG: What I Would Have Done

It's been pointed out to me that, in regards to SF Signal's Mind Meld feature on BSG, I didn't actually, you know, answer the question. That is, I didn't actually say what I would have done differently.

This is absolutely true. I have every intention of answering the question directly after a bit of blithering on where I thought the series as a whole went wrong, but by the time I got to that point I'd already rambled on for over two thousand words and figured it was time to call time.

So what would I have done differently?

Actually, I think that the whole series could have been salvaged in the last ten episodes. There was a way to address all of the mysteries that had been set up to that point, to explain what the Cylon's "plan" was, and just what was going on with the Six who was haunting Baltar (and the Baltar that was haunting Caprica Six). By the time the second episode of "Season 4.5" aired, it was clear that they wouldn't be doing anything like what I had in mind, so I just filed it away, figuring I might use it in a story myself someday.

But since you asked...

I won't go into all the details, but here's a few highlights of my "Alternate Season 4.5":
After that comes some time travel hoodoo, as a failed jump in the midst of a confrontation with the Cylons accidentally sends elements of both fleets, Cylon and Colonial, into the distant past. The remnants of both fleets find themselves in the vicinity of Earth, but this time a primordial Earth. Et cetera, et cetera. There were still some details to work out from that point forwards, but that's the basic structure of it.

So, what would you nice people have done differently?

EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to mention that Starbuck is the first Colonist to benefit from the consciousness uploading of Resurrection, and while she was originally human is now inhabiting an artificial Cylon body with all of her original memories intact. She was saved from certain death by God, who has decided that the unforeseen factors of recent years have necessitated a change in Plan...

 

Additional to the BSG finale

SF Signal's John DeNardo put this little gem together last week, imaginging what the DVD for the fourth season of BSG would look like if the studio decided to use a pull quote from my review.



 

Thoughts on the BSG Finale

The good people at SF Signal have put together another one of their "Mind Meld" features, rounding up responses to a question from various SF/F types. The topic today? "BSG has ended, and no one appears to be thrilled with the finale. What would you have done differently, if you could run the show?"

I was among the respondents. Curious to know where I stand on the BSG finale? (Hint, the second sentence of my response includes the phrase "steaming pile of dogshit"...)

Other respondents include my pals Paul Cornell, Lou Anders, Joel Shepherd, Chris Dolley, and Jayme Lynne Blaschke, among other worthies. I agree with a lot of what they say... except for you, Paul, but it's alright, I forgive you.

And as a bonus from the Onion, Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale.

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