- I am shocked — shocked! — to learn that Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus actually might not be very good.
- Mark Sheppard — who you may remember from guest spots on Firefly or Battlestar Galactica — proves his serious geek cred. [via]
- Meanwhile, John Stamos — who at this point I think would be happy if you remembered him from anything — was, I’m sure, either kidding or misquoted, if the whole story isn’t just a lie. One thing the world does not need is a remake of Full House. (Nor any of the several dozen other remakes Hollywood has in the pipeline, most likely.)
- What it does need, however, are new Futurama episodes. I say that, of course, having never seen the last few seasons of its original run, or even the string of direct-to-DVD movies. (I own a copy of The Beast with a Billion Backs, but I hear very bad things about almost all of them.) Maybe this will give me an excuse to finally get caught up.
- And finally, you had me at Monkey Island. [via]
various
Tuesday various
- Glen on the myth of perpetual copyright:
Copyright hawks and lawsuit-happy professional organizations like the MPAA and RIAA have created a mythology of perpetual copyright, and it is destroying our ability to build on our cultural foundations
- Warren Ellis on digital magazines:
A digital magazine is something I can read on a netbook or, especially, a phone. A digital magazine is something that gracefully shifts down to embrace the equipment I’m trying to view it on. If you’re setting the technological bar at an immovable altitude that demands I go to a well-equipped laptop or desktop to view it, then it’s not a digital magazine at all — it’s a digital installation.
And that’s fine, But, you know, don’t bullshit me.
- Patrick Neilsen Hayden on writing and editing:
The point is that editors aren’t in the business of adjudicating what’s good; we’re in the business of acquiring and publishing material through particular channels and organizations, mustering the opportunities that actually exist. Of course, every so often in every editor’s career you get something that seems unsuitable for the magazine, or web site, or anthology, or publishing house that you’re editing for, but it’s so outrageously good that you wind up running around with your hair on fire demanding that reality change so that this thing can get published. Sometimes this even works.
I also Stanley Schmidt’s argument that “The story I most want to buy is one that I didn’t even suspect I was interested in until I saw it, and then it won’t let me go.”
- China Miéville on crime novels:
Detective fiction is a fiction of dreams. Not only is this no bad thing, it is precisely what makes it so indispensable.
- Joe Hill on the Twilight series:
The only thing more boring than reading about vampires having sex with other vampires is reading about vampires NOT having sex with other vampires.
I also like when he says, “My alternative to being a successful writer was being an unsuccessful writer.”
Wednesday various
- Does faking amnesia permanently distort your memory?
In other words, pretending to have amnesia doesn’t hurt your memory, but rehearsing the correct answers improves it. [via]
- A horror novel on toilet paper?
Here’s the spooky rationale behind the story: “Toilets in Japan were traditionally tucked away in a dark corner of the house due to religious beliefs. Parents would tease children that a hairy hand might pull them down into the dark pool below.” [via]
- Take the Amazon Statistically Improbable Phrase Quiz. I like it in theory more than practice, mainly because in practice I couldn’t guess any of them correctly. [via]
- Two zombie links: the Zombie Bible [via] and, in the scary real world, parasitic flies turn fire ants into zombies [via]
- And finally, not a new link — but it’s new to me — the case against Candy Land:
I realize that games of pure chance have a long history, but that doesn’t make them any less moronic. (And it goes without saying that Checkers, Chess, Go, and other strategy games are great tests of decision-making.) I take this as another example of how much more mentally challenging kids’ culture has become in recent years. The digital generation doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite for games structured around total randomness. [via]
Tuesday various
- “…midtown is basically broken. There’s just not enough space for people.” No argument here. I’m not yet convinced turning Times Square into one big pedestrian mall is the way to go, but I do like not waiting for traffic when crossing Broadway at 35th on my way home at night. [via]
- Elsewhere in the City that Never Admits to Having a Sleep Disorder, 5 Abandoned Stations of the New York Subway System. [via]
- Here are a couple of interesting art projects: photographs by blind photographers [via] and a draw yourself as a teen challenge. [via]
- “Here we illustrate the face mining concept for the TV series Star Trek. Specifically, we applied our state-of-the art algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition to 67 Star Trek episodes over three seasons. This process automatically extracts all visible face tracks, and clusters these into a small number of same-person groupings. Currently, we recognize frontal or near-frontal tracks. In the near future, we will extend our results to non-frontal tracks as well.” Interesting and actually pretty cool. [via]
- And finally, Microsoft wonders why people don’t like them? Have we learned nothing from the Sony rootkit troubles? [via]
Monday various
- Ursula K. Le Guin on “Calling Utopia a Utopia“:
To define science fiction as a purely commercial category of fiction, inherently trashy, having nothing to do with literature, is a tall order. It involves both denying that any work of science fiction can have literary merit, and maintaining that any book of literary merit that uses the tropes of science fiction (such as Brave New World, or 1984, or The Handmaid’s Tale, or most of the works of J.G. Ballard) is not science fiction. This definition-by-negation leads to remarkable mental gymnastics. For instance, one must insist that certain works of dubious literary merit that use familiar science-fictional devices such as alternate history, or wellworn science-fiction plots such as Men-Crossing-the-Continent-After-the Holocaust, and are in every way definable as science fiction, are not science fiction — because their authors are known to be literary authors, and literary authors are incapable by definition of committing science fiction.
- Theodora Goss gets at a problem I’ve seen with at least a couple of submissions to Kaleidotrope in her quick review of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes, calling it
…both gripping and dull at the same time. I wanted to know what was going to happen, but at the same time I didn’t care all that much; the narrative structure kept me going, but the narration didn’t particularly engage me.
- Gwenda Bond shares an interesting feature she wrote for Publisher’s Weekly on trends in the romance genre:
Let’s face it–romance is probably the most ghettoized, dismissed genre around and yet it’s full of smart writers and editors doing extremely interesting things, AND without romance to buoy sales the rest of publishing would probably sink like a stone. Romance readers will visit other sections of the bookstore without a blink, read tons of books a month, and yet face constant disrespect.
I read the article on the train last week, and it’s fascinating because romance is a widely popular and hugely profitable section of the publishing world, and I don’t think I’ve ever read a single book in it. I think we ignore and marginalize romance novels at our peril, yet honestly, I still don’t want to read any of these books. Is that wrong?
- I have to agree with Irene Gallo. This week’s New Yorker cover is distinctly unimpressive, even more so on the physical magazine than online. It’s certainly not a ringing endorsement for creating more professional artwork on the iPhone.
- And, speaking of The New Yorker, here’s an interesting tale from Dan Baum, who used to work there. It’s a story he told initially via Twitter, hence the sometimes choppy sentences, but it’s an interesting (albeit one-sided) insight into the magazine. I’m most fascinated by the work-for-hire nature of the employment: writers like Baum are exclusive to The New Yorker but receive no retirement or health benefits, just the prestige of working there. [via]
Personally, I’m a subscriber, but all too often I find myself not reading much of an issue. I often wish it was a monthly magazine.