Month: August 2008

• Is “Crippled scion of great family in militaristic society recently reintegrated into galactic communications makes name for himself” really such an over-used science fiction trope? I can’t think of any books off-hand that use it.

• On the plus side, Kevin McKidd is actually Scottish, which would be a welcome change for the title role in Highlander. (He’s also a pretty decent actor.) On the downside, though, another Highlander movie? Seriously?

• There’s a recent trend of using Twitter to post as fictional characters, mostly from television and movies, which seems a whole lot more interesting than using it to post as yourself. (Seriously, I remain unconvinced that Twitter is significantly better or easier to use than a regular blog.) Some of these have been sanctioned by the powers that be…and some not so much. I am amused by the idea of someone Twittering as a character from Mad Men, considering that the show takes place decades before the technology existed. I’m reminded of Bloggus Caesari, which purported to be the weblog of Julius Caesar.

• The Sci Fi Wire reports that Shia LaBeouf’s recent hand injury has been written into the script for Transformers 2. Now if only they could write “not sucking” into it as well…

• Arresting someone for a pair of overdue library books seems excessive until you realize she ignored “two phone calls, two letters and a citation that included a court date” and that her $170 fine works out (at 10 cents a day) to 1,700 days or four and a half years. Seriously, nobody should need that long to read White Oleander and Angels and Demons. And her “I’m not returning them now” just bugs me to no end. I sort of hope they arrest her again.

• Man, naughty British slang is just weird. “Hitching lifts in the nuddy”? I’m not sure how I feel about a morality clause for children’s authors. It seems a little silly more than anything. (Oh, and the link is SFW, but not the ones in the nuddy.)

• I read “Buffy blamed for an increase in paganism” as “Buffy blamed for an increase in plagarism.” I think that would be a much more interesting story, actually. Although I do like the IMDB’s phrasing — Gellar Blamed For Pagan Rise — which conjures images of the actress vacationing in Innsmouth, accidentally raising dread Cthulhu from the deep.

• “‘I feel like H.P. Lovecraft is associated with creepiness,’ says Kurtzman, a children’s book marketer.” Gee, ya think?

Finally somebody is standing up for the real victims of this troubled economy — the literati who can’t afford that summer home in the Hamptons anymore.

I am amused, though, that The Independent felt the need to explicitly define “the period that constitutes the summer in America” — lest their regular readers in the UK be all perplexed.

From the New York Times:

Getting a $150 million movie to succeed “is akin to having 12 Bulgarian jugglers land on 12 Bulgarian jugglers,” said Peter Guber, the chief executive of Mandalay Entertainment Group and the former head of Columbia and Sony Pictures.

Happy 88th to Ray Bradbury.

I may have to go re-read “Boys! Grow Giant Mushrooms in Your Basement!” In the meantime, via Jeff Ford, here’s a Soviet-era animated version of Bradbury’s story “There Will Come Soft Rains.”

• Spammers are getting craftier. Tell me you wouldn’t be curious about an e-mail labeled “Stephen Hawking defends Paris Hilton sex allegations”.
• Speaking of spam, Basil Fawlty just sent me some: “Don’t mention the war!” it warned.
• Wear your favorite film on your eyeglasses. I think my favorite part is when the optician and designer, Zakarias Tipton, says he “began testing all sorts of plastic until I found my father’s record collection, and then I started recycling those without his knowledge”. I’m sure dear old dad was pleased with that. (Unless this is the first time he’s reading about it. Oh, but wouldn’t it be ironic if his father couldn’t read about it because he didn’t have glasses?) The frames themselves are a little boxy and thick for my own personal taste.
• Keith Phipps wonders, “What does it mean when our dystopian fantasies have gotten even more pessimistic since the malaise-driven ’70s?” Whereas his colleague Nathan Rabin writes, “Satirists seemingly can’t go wrong by predicting that the world will grow ever more stupid and cynical, that it will plunge lower and lower in its zeal to reach the lowest common denominator. Hope and optimism inevitably look foolish and myopic, not their opposites.”
• You’ve probably seen this all over elsewhere — I have — but it’s really very funny: Selections from H.P. Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sampler Copywriter. “You must not think me mad when I tell you what I found below the thin shell of chocolate used to disguise this bonbon’s true face.”
• Ellen Datlow on proper manuscript formatting. It’s actually an interesting discussion (if you care about that sort of thing), and in the comments Datlow succinctly explains just why formatting submissions is an issue: “Why would a writer do something that COULD be misunderstood instead of something that couldn’t be misunderstood?”
• It’s funny: see a head mirror on a cartoon character, even a modern one, and we think “doctor.” But when’s the last time you saw an actual doctor wear one? [via]
• Hmm. Wifi while you fly? It’s unlikely to be available when I fly to Los Angeles next week — which is probably just as well. [via]
• “Barbie has always been on the tarty side and this is taking it too far.” The S&M look is apparently unintentional, as the character is based on DC’s Black Canary. Her S&M look, however, looks to be entirely intentional. [via]
• Making decisions tires your brain. Which suggests that, maybe, we should consider making those really important, life-altering decisions not too long after we wake up in the morning. But I’m not sure how much I trust any decision made that early. [via]
• Deep Hurting! “SCI FI Channel announced a slate of 36 new original action movies–up from 2008’s total of 24–slated for its SCI FI Saturday timeslot and a new Sunday-evening movie slot, beginning next year.” I wonder how late in the day they signed off on this…
• And finally, could we please declare a moratorium on the phrase “It’s not really science fiction“?