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10:41 am
theinferior4
[pgdf]
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The Manchovy!
[Click to enlarge.]
Seldom does inspiration strike so potently as with--THE MANCHOVY!!!
I envision a suspenseful narrative along the lines of James Blish's famous "Surface Tension," in which our tiny Homo piscine hero and his clan battle an unforgiving environment.
SyFy Movie of the Week, here I come!
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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08:18 am
theinferior4
[lizhand]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/93443045/8170477) [Link] |
In the spirit of the season ...
Author Gregory Maguire (Wicked, Son of a Witch, etc.) has written a Christmas novel that's being given away for nought by the Concord Free Press — readers are asked to donate money to charity in exchange for the book. So far they've raised over $120,000, and the book ain't too shabby, either — here's my Washington Post review.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122203141.html
And here's the link to order a copy of the book —
http://www.concordfreepress.com/
For those content to read or reread something online, here's the serialization of my "Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol" —
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/201569.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/205008.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/208014.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/212679.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/219341.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/222191.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/223933.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/226329.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/228429.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/229565.html
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/230316.html
And finally, what's Christmas without the Ramones? Merry Christmas, everyone — safe travels and warm wishes from chilly Maine!
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10:39 pm
theinferior4
[paulwitcover]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/69441105/12568066) [Link] |
The rest is silence
I'm not sure about DiFi or Lisa, but I know that Liz writes to music, and I think Lucius does as well sometimes. But I need silence. Absolute, dead silence -- the smallest sound can and does distract me. I have the same problem when it comes to sleep. Recently I bought a white-noise generator, and while it is satisfactory for slumberous purposes, it falls short of providing the requisite sonic shielding that writing demands.
Then, a day or so ago, I thought to myself how cool it would be if somebody with similar needs had set up a white-noise generator online. I think there must be some kind of law to the effect that if you can think of something on the Internets, someone else has already not only thought of it, but implemented it. And such, thankfully, was the case here.
If anyone out there is like me in this respect, then hie thee at once to www.simplynoise.com, where silence comes in three flavors: white, pink, and brown. What, no black noise? Perhaps that would lead back into Lovecraftian territory, as in Lucius's post, below. In any case, brown works fine for me. Nothing gets through!
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03:52 pm
theinferior4
[lucius_t]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/60165698/11773443) [Link] |
Cthulu News
(click twice to make big)
Anyone else get an Old Ones, Mountains of Madness vibe off this?
Recently scientists completed an aerogeophysical survey of the Gamburtsevs, a mountain range buried beneath the Antarctic ice, mapping the ice sheet with lasers and the peaks below the ice sheet with radar, revealing a rugged landscape of high peaks and deeply incised valleys that have been worked in the past by both river and ice processes. The survey also revealed pockets of water at the base of the ice and scientists believe these pockets may be connected. They also believe the ice may 1.5 million years old. They are searching for a site where the ice can be drilled to retrieve information on the ancient climate of Antarctica.
Yeah, uh-huh. This is where the bad movie begins, you know. I can't wait for when that ancient info starts crawling up the drill hole, one tentacle at a time.
Leaving Cthulu for a time, airing on the BBC after Xmas is the two-part remake of Day of the Triffids starring Doughray Scott, Joely Richardson, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, and Eddie Izzard. Clips:
It's available on Region 2 DVD Feb 1 from amazon UK. I'm something of a Triffid fan, so I'm pretty stoked for this -- could be...shoud be the best Triffid ever.
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11:31 am
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
New Stuff at the B&NR
Here's my review of Cory Doctorow's new novel:
http://tinyurl.com/ycg53fm
Posted by Paul DiFi
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11:17 am
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
Arnold Stang, RIP
NYT Obit: http://tinyurl.com/ycugq7e
Posted by Paull DiFi.
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02:15 pm
theinferior4
[lucius_t]
[Link] |
10 Christmases
1--at the age of 13 I knocked my father out when he tried to beat me and hid from the cops in a Baptist Church under construction, which may have been responsible for me feeling that God had marked me for breaking a taboo. I spent the bulk of Christmas day in a holding cell at the county jail, where a middle-aged guy charged with manslaughter taught me how to make a cigarette rolling machine out of a plastic Gillette razor case.
2--aboard an Irish freighter in a storm in the middle of the North Atlantic, the ship tossed about by huge waves, heading for Belfast. Christmas night we drank with the radio officer in his cabin (he'd written several Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks, detective novels), watching a barometer suspended on the wall swing back and forth between two marks, coming to within an eighth of an inch away from each. I asked what would happen if the barometer touched one of the marks and he told me the ship would go over. I realized an eighth of an inch on the wall equated to far more in actual distance, but it brought home the notion (corny, but it has stood me in good stead ever since) that we're all an eighth of an inch away from oblivion at every moment of our lives.
3-on location, a Roman epic being shot in a valley in Asturias--my first wife and I were extras (I was a Goth, she was a camp follower) paid five dollars a day, living with hundreds of other extras in a tent city that doubled in the film as a Roman encampment. In the late afternoon we took a sleeping bag and climbed up on the hillside to get some privacy, and when we came back down at twilight we found that almost everyone had put on their costumes and were engaged in Bacchanalia.
4-a Belgian girl named Renee, with whom I planned to go to India, and I smoked ourselves stupid, watching the patterns on the blue and white tiles on our hotel room walls shift from one configuration to another. Around noon AM we took a streetcar out to the Cairo Zoo and sat drinking lemon sodas at a cafe in the zoo center, watching the crowds. That night we attended a party in the Khan Al Khalili bazaar at some rich Egyptian's place, an event of which I recall very little, only that I woke up back in the hotel with a girl named Tracy and that Renee had gone off with someone else. Two days later I asked Tracy if she wanted to go to India.
5-Outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, snowed in, my second wife, myself and my four-year-old son. We couldn't even get out of the driveway, and thus, with no demented uncles, racist cousins, or psychopaths of various stripe to interfere, we had our happiest Christmas ever in our little country cottage.
6-My band was stuck in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Xmas Eve because of a blizzard. We started drinking in a dive bar around six PM and were joined by a about a dozen men and women who had been laid off from a big department store, given their pink slips on Christmas Eve, and were in a foul mood. Their pissed off-edness and our depression meshed in a good way, and we kept the party going early into Chrstmas Day at our hotel. Nothing really changed, just the one night, but that was more than any of us expected.
7-Tibet. A village not far from Dolpo. Little twisting rocky streets, stone houses with slate roofs and black mastiffs barking atop them. Thunder and snow falling. My wife and I felt abandoned by the familiar and very far from home, so we went and drank beer with the Chinese cadre, the sole law in the place. We talked about America, we exaggerated its bounty and its villainy. He was so drunk he understood only about every fourth or fifth word, even though my wife spoke Tibetan. "Oh yes," he kept saying, and laughing. "Oh my, yes!"
8-A tiny mountain village in Morazan Province, El Salvador. Clouds had moved in during Christmas Eve and you could scarcely see a foot in front of you. Banana leaves stirred like feelers in the white mist. I sat outside a little whitewashed house, while beside me a 14-year-old girl cleaned her rifle and two gnomish children passed a paper sack back and forth, its bottom soaked with glue. It was like a dream someone else was having about the world I lived in.
9-Christmas day, I went with my girlfriend Katie to Siddha Yoga Dam temple on Staten Island to reclaim the last of of her possessions. She had been a cult member. The Swami, Swami Guruja, persuaded us to stay for dinner, which was very good--I have to say that religious fanatics in general make great cooks and interior decorators. During dinner the Swami became belligerent and started to call Katie "wanton." I began calling him Swami Kruckerman (He was a Jewish guy from Brooklyn) and threatened his life. Walking home, past the crack houses and hookers on Westervelt Avenue, there were so many empty crack vials on the sidewalks, it was like a kind of glassine hail we crunched underfoot. We stowed Katie's stuff in my apartment and went into Manhattan, where we found a room in a midtown hotel and drank vodka in a Russian restaurant in the Village until Staten Island was a distant continent and New York Bay an ocean.
10--Phnom Penh. Met friends at the world's greatest bar, The Foreign Press Club, which looks like the bar every Hollywood set designer assigned to a far eastern project has been trying to get right forever and keeps getting wrong. That evening had my fortune told by a famous fortune teller, his shop at Wat Phnom a masterpiece of kitsch, neon and day-glo Buddhas and so on. He advised me not to seek happiness, to strive for accomplishment instead. That night I ignored the advice and strived for both and a taxi girl stole my passport. Yet still I try.
Have a great one!
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02:37 pm
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
Clifford Simak on the Screen
This "trailer" went up 2 years ago, and has only had 800-some views. The actual movie's never been made. But let's imagine a time when Clifford Simak's fiction gets to the screen under the author's own name, instead of when James Cameron rips off "Desertion."
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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09:38 am
theinferior4
[ljgoldstein]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/94664186/23667009) [Link] |
Happy Solstice!
Wishing you a very merry Solstice
Mithra's won his fight
From now on the days grow longer than the night...
(I heard someone sing that while he was waiting in line at a bookstore I worked at.)
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12:37 pm
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
The Samsonadzes
The nation of Georgia attempts to rip off THE SIMPSONS, and instead illustrates what would happen if Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd, in their roles as the Czech Brothers, had learned to do Flash animation.
Read about it here: http://tinyurl.com/ygtk835
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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09:47 am
theinferior4
[ljgoldstein]
[Link] |
At the Oakland Airport...
Every ten minutes or so a voice comes over the P.A. system saying, "Please do not leave your baggage unattended. Unattended baggage is subject to search, inspection, damage, and removal."
I'm not in the habit of copy-editing public address speeches, but surely that "and" should be "or"? Or maybe you get back a really sorry-looking piece of luggage?
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08:03 am
theinferior4
[paulwitcover]
[Link] |
Curiouser and curiouser...
I will be curious to see what other Alice aficionados make of this piece from New Scientist, provocatively subtitled "Wonderland Solved." I found its contentions to be of interest, but the piece itself overblown in its claims and annoyingly myopic in its focus -- no mention of Martin Gardner, for example. But still, a new angle on Alice is always worth exploring...
Also from New Scientist, the winners of a flash-fiction contest, judged by Stephen Baxter, for stories describing the world a century from now.
And, finally, an interview with Jodie Holt, a professor of plant physiology who served as the botanical advisor on Avatar.
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10:40 am
theinferior4
[ljgoldstein]
[Link] |
Disappointing Week in the Senate
Well, it looks like we're not going to get any meaningful health-care reform. The Public Option's been taken out of the Senate bill, which now actually requires people to buy insurance -- an incredible give-away to the insurance companies, and an incredible hardship for poor families. (Subsidies are supposedly going to be available for the poorest, but this is still going to squeeze some people.) And in exchange we get some piddly reforms, like insurance companies can't turn you down for pre-existing conditions.
Yeah, I'm disappointed. I did expect more from Obama (shut up, Lucius). He had the opportunity to be a once-in-a-generation president, to have his face carved on Mount Rushmore, and instead he's another centrist, like Clinton.
If you're still up for some political action, you might want to call your senator and remind him or her that the majority still supports the Public Option. Unless your senator is Lieberman, in which case you might want to throw a pie in his face. Not that I would ever support such a thing ...
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12:58 pm
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
George Salter
 
I enjoy the work of I. B. Singer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Bashevis_Singer
So I am always on the lookout for his books. Last nite, in a dollar bin, I found a copy of his first novel, THE FAMILY MOSKAT. Sweet victory is mine!
But what grabbed my eye secondarily is the cover, by the famous George Salter. Perhaps you know his brilliant work from the early years of F&SF.
I found a link to nearly 200 of his gorgeous covers!
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/george-salters-covers
But as far as I can see, they don't reproduce the MOSKAT one. That gap is now remedied.
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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12:48 pm
theinferior4
[lucius_t]
[Link] |
Stuff and Nonsense
For Fans of Twilight New Moon:
Here's a beautifully written piece by Ted Kosmatka. A little nine minute reverie on working in a sinter plant. It's a bit stuttery on some computers so you may want to let it load before listening (tho it stuttered once on mine and played straight through.) it's well worth your time.
My Ten Best Scifi movies of the decade:
Donnie Darko
The Host
Moon
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Pitch Black
District Nine
Paprika
Primer
Avatar
Sleep Dealer
Thoughts? Additions?
Scratch Avatar, insert Code 46...
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12:22 pm
theinferior4
[lizhand]
[Link] |
King of Kings
Maine's National Guard has been deployed to Afghanistan. They'll be leaving next month, have some time off over the holidays but no money to fly here to be with their families. So Stephen & Tabitha King have donated 13 grand to pay for the bus to bring them back home for Christmas. Our friend and neighbor Josh Anderson is one of the Guardsmen shipping out — here's a picture of him from the Portland Press Herald's coverage of the unit's departure last week, along with SK's story.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=301013&ac=PHnws
http://www.limelife.com/blog-entry/Stephen-King-Personally-Donates-12999-for-Maine-Troops/28974.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/13/AR2009121301096.html
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11:09 am
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
Sarah Vaughan and "No Smoke Blues"
When a person becomes very famous in their later years, their older image tends to obliterate their earlier image. For instance, if the name Fred MacMurray means anything to most people, they recall his boring paternal stint on MY THREE SONS. But of course, his movies of the Thirties and the Forties portray an often dashing hero or villain.
Sarah Vaughan is someone I always thought of as a matronly diva. Great voice, but staid and respectable. So when I started listening to a boxed set of her very first recordings, I got a surprise.
Reading the accompanying booklet, I learned that she dropped out of high school around age 15 to hang with jazz musicians. She also liked her dope, grass and cocaine.
If this link below works, you can hear the twenty-year-old Vaughan sing "No Smoke Blues." "I've got men, I've got liquor, I've got everything else I need." And the conclusion: "This mess is driving me to reefers, cause they ain't half so hard to find."
http://tinyurl.com/yc5ukfv
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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08:48 am
theinferior4
[paulwitcover]
[Link] |
The Many Worlds Theory & the Beatles
 Okay, here's an interesting story. A guy has a freakish accident in the middle of the desert and wakes up to find himself being cared for by a dude from a parallel reality that has developed the ability to travel into some adjacent realities, such as ours. In his reality, among many other differences, some major, some minor, the Beatles never broke up.
So our intrepid visitor from the same planet, sort of, abuses the hospitality of his host by stealing a tape of a Beatles album that was never made in our reality, brings it back with him, and releases it on the Internets.
Now, some of this music may sound familiar to you -- but that is simply because the musical ideas that, in the parallel world, resulted in the album Everyday Chemistry, found expression in our world in the post-Beatles solo work of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
Makes perfect sense, right?
Whatever! Give the tunes a listen. Decide for yourself.
Me, I would have been too busy checking out the dude's bookshelf!
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07:34 am
theinferior4
[lizhand]
[Link] |
More E-book excitement
Stephen R. Covey, bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has switched the digital rights to that book and another backlist title from Simon & Schuster to Amazon. I've never read his books, or I might be more effective. And a 50% royalty is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you're so effective that you've already socked away a billion dollars by providing career advice from Ghengis Khan, Shere Khan, Khan Noonien Singh (he of The Wrath) and the like.
This does make me wonder: These books were presumably edited by someone at S&S many moons ago — but who at Amazon will edit books going straight to digital? Cousin Paul, what does your Magic 8-Ball say?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/technology/companies/15amazon.html?_r=1&hp
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03:55 pm
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
Five Picks for 2009
At the BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW, I nominate my five faves for the year among SF books.
http://tinyurl.com/ye5zv67
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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03:37 pm
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
Xmas Village
[Click to embiggen]
Yesterday, with the help of our two nieces, Deborah constructed this Christmas village, where an Abominable Snowman looms over terrified villagers. I added the Beatnik Chick in the upper right-hand corner.
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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05:11 pm
theinferior4
[lucius_t]
[Link] |
Last Minute Shopping?
This is a part of a live performance by Seattle's Abney Park, a pretty cool steampunk band I caught in Portland some time back. Not the best audio, but it gives you the flavor of their shows:
A few years ago I bought an Ann Coulter doll for a joke Xmas present from the Conservative Book Service and I've been on their mailing list ever since. The other day they sent me their Xmas suggestions for "gifts for dad" and i thought I'd share some with you.
First up is the Ultimate Man's Survival Guide. "Today's weak and pusillanimous Nanny state is anything but hospitable to real men," the copy reads, and goes on to say that the book "gives young men what they need to become not effete metrosexuals. skilled at the ins and outs of high fashion and cocktail chat, but well-rounded men who can fight off bears and alligators, create a tourniquet out of a T-shirt, set a dislocated joint and pick the perfect cigar and bottle of wine."
Huh. I would think if you were to fight off bears and gators, you'd need more than a tourniquet, but no matter. Let's see what else they suggest.
How about Mike Huckabee's A Simple Christmas? "The first Christmas was a simple one," Mike writes. "So simple that it had all the makings of a disaster. It's a miracle it turned out well at all. In fact, that's the whole point. It really was, and remains, a miracle--the greatest miracle of all time. And it really was simple."
Huh.
In deceptively simple pose, Huckabee "recounts 12 Christmas memories from his own life that illustrate the meaning of the Nativity and demonstrate that the simplest things are the most precious."
Here's a wowser. Intellectuals and Society, by "reknowned conservative thinker, Thomas Sowell." It offers a "unique introduction to the world of intellectuals, the thinkers of our society, many of them unknown to the general public, who mold our society both for better and for worse--usually for worse." He goes on to show how "this small group of people wields a baneful (sic) influence upon our nation and Western civilization as a whole."
So what I'm getting here is that this guy Sowell is some sort of quisling Braniac. Can such a man be trusted? I don't know, but I have some intellectual friends who may be able to tell me. Put me down for several copies.
Now this here is a good 'un. The American Boy's Handy Book. Most parents nowadays leave their kids to the evils of video games, but this book by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts, written in 1892, can be "a godsend." A classic manual of pastimes that includes plans for hundreds of fun projects, how to make "kites, sleds, fishing poles, and even a blowgun." Just the thing if Johnny's too young to fire an assault rifle.
And of course there's always...
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09:39 am
theinferior4
[paulwitcover]
[Link] |
e-books and backlists -- the past and future collide
This story in today's Times about the attempts by traditional publishers like Random House to claim exclusive e-book rights to backlist titles based on vague, intentionally ambiguous wording in old contracts reminded me of my brief stint at Time Warner, working as an editor for their iPublish brand. There were many good ideas in that sadly short-lived enterprise, and many duties that I performed with excitement and pride, but among them was not my responsiblity for locking down the rights to backlist titles by insisting to authors, their estates, and/or their agents, that wording in original contracts drawn up before e-book or print-on-demand technologies existed or were even contemplated gave us the exclusive rights to those books. Most agents, I'm happy to say, did not go along with this attempt to brazenly stake out new turf at the expense of their backlist authors. But as today's article shows, the problem has not gone away.
I personally think it's a mistake for any author to sign away e-book or print-on-demand rights without some kind of strict time and/or sales-figure limitation. Otherwise, the publisher will be able to make the claim that the book remains in print, and rights will quite literally never revert to the author--even if the publisher never sells another copy, physical or digital, of the book. It's unconscionable for publishers to try and trick or browbeat their authors into giving away such rights.
A strong writers union would help here. But, for so many reasons, that's just not going to happen. Writers, remember: the publisher is not your friend. The publisher is your enemy. You may make a truce, enter into detente, even temporary alliance -- but do not forget that they view their interests as distinct from yours, and they will fuck you over when it suits them to do so.
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02:19 pm
theinferior4
[pgdf]
[Link] |
Triple Hit
I believe I mentioned some time ago that I was looking forward to seeing a film titled SCHRODINGER'S GIRL, by my pal Huw Bowen. Well, the movie is finished, but not yet in general distribution. It had a screening at Comic-Con 2009, I know. Maybe it will play at a festival near you.
But you need to know it's been re-titled as TRIPLE HIT. And here's the new trailer.
Posted by Paul DiFi.
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11:18 am
theinferior4
[ljgoldstein]
[Link] |
Weather on Saturn
Here's some new Cassini photos showing a weird hexagon-shaped weather pattern on Saturn. I'm not enough of a science geek to write a story about this, but I'd love to read one.
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