May 16, 2012
Dress Your Marines in White
Murder in powdered form. What a life.
May 9, 2012
About Fairies
Some things happen whether or not you clap your hands.
May 3, 2012
At the Foot of the Lighthouse
I am American. We are all Americans.
April 25, 2012
Prophet
Some men are born monsters. Others made so.
At first, Dr. James Cutlass had thought his new job at NORAD was thrilling and full of opportunities, but that was before the demonstration… “Dress Your Marines in White” is the story of the terrifying choices surrounding a chemical weapons demonstration gone horribly wrong.
Emmy Laybourne is a screenwriter, lyricist, and actress who’s first work of fiction, Monument 14, on June 5th from St. Martin’s Press. You can also catch Jennifer out on the Fierce Reads tour next month!
We don’t even know what to call this. “Cumberbeach?” “Cumberbuff?” “Cumberbatch is in charge now?” In any case, it’s all very important, because this totally proves he’s been genetically engineered to destroy Captain Kirk us all.
Your offsite links know that social occasions are only warefare concealed.
Highlights include:
Gather your friends around, close the door, turn off the lights, and experience some epic tea-time with international treasure Alan Rickman.
The slowed down footage is from Portraits in Dramatic Time, a project from last summer where artist David Michalek photographed actors at high definition at 3000 frames per second. What you’re seeing here is about five to twelve seconds of footage slowed to seven minutes. This particular piece was displayed on the side of Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City in July of 2011.
“...Melissande’s declined the invitation. Something about the Crown Prince of Splotze and his wandering hands.”
“Oh,” said their mother, disappointed. “That’s terribly unobliging of her, I must say. As your friend she should be prepared for some trifling inconvenience if it means you could meet the right man.”
Wizard Undercover is the fourth book in the “Rogue Agent” series by K.E. Mills, an open pseudonym for Australian epic fantasy author Karen Miller. Miller’s other work includes the Godspeaker trilogy — whose first two volumes, Empress of Mijak and The Riven Kingdom, made the Tiptree honour list — as well as novels for the Stargate and Star Wars Expanded Universe franchises. The “Rogue Agent” series demonstrates her talent for combining humour and drama in a second-world fantasy setting.
And it’s really quite a talent.
In an installment of her wrap-up interviews for her run on BBC’s Doctor Who, Karen “Amy Pond” Gillan revealed that she loves stateside geek sitcom Community, loves the “Inspector Spacetime” spoof they regularly feature, and would not mind at all if Amy found her way onto the show within a show.
The admission made one of our office members lose his soft, gooey mind, so we must admit we are definitely behind the idea, although it’s missing a little Rory and The Doctor to make it truly perfect. Thankfully, the BBC is also behind this notion and is promoting the video with the hashtag #AmyMeetsAbed.
Your move, NBC/Dan Harmon/whoever’s in charge now.
Stubby the Rocket remembers the time Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Enterprise crossed over and how well it we... oh no. We thought we’d repressed this...
It’s often considered the misunderstood younger brother of tabletop gaming, a strange land of fake weapons, rock-paper-scissors and improv acting, all garbed up in strange attire and complex rules. Yet any given weekend, folks across the country gear up and head out to dress and act out the lives of characters they’ve created. I’m talking of course about live-action role-play, better known as Larp, and it’s come to the forefront as an oft under-appreciated hobby among gamers in the last few years. And while the world of Larp might intimidate some, one woman dove head-first into the costumes and characters to learn all about the hobby. Her name is Lizzie Stark and her research has made her one of the foremost voices in the exploration of LARP as both a gaming medium and a burgeoning art form. All of that research became the basis for her recently released book on Larp entitled Leaving Mundania.
In preparation for the Fierce Reads Tour, we’ll be showcasing four of the authors and their books this week! To kick it off, take a look at this excerpt for Jennifer Bosworth’s Struck:
Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.
Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.
Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.
“The Mind’s Eye”
Written by Ken Schafer and René Echevarria
Directed by David Livingston
Season 4, Episode 24
Production episode 40274-198
Original air date: May 27, 1991
Stardate: 44885.5
Captain’s Log: La Forge is en route to Risa in a shuttle to attend an artificial intelligence seminar — and he’s arriving a few days early for some R&R. While he’s in the middle of playing a word game with the computer to pass the time, a Romulan warbird decloaks, drains the shuttle’s shields, and beams La Forge over. He’s strapped down to a chair on the orders of two Romulans — Taibak and a woman who remains in shadow. Another human who looks somewhat like him puts on a fake VISOR and is told by Taibak to try not to have too much fun on Risa.
Taibak removes the VISOR and plugs the chair right into the little doodads on La Forge’s temples that the VISOR hooks up to, enabling him to force La Forge to watch whatever he wishes. The idea is to condition La Forge to the point where he’s their slave, which can be done in a manner that is undetectable thanks to La Forge’s neural implants.
The female commander Taibak is reporting to remains in shadow, but speaks with a very familiar voice.
If you feel a void in your reading it’s probably because you haven’t read a space opera story lately! Tor Books is pleased to announce a special ebook promotion for three select space opera titles. All the books are also the first in their respective series and $2.99 in the US for only one more week!
Pencils ready, WOTers! Because we’re back, and Wheel +Time + Re-read = FUN. Right? Right!
Today’s entry covers Part I of the Prologue of Towers of Midnight, in which numbers add up, dilemmas multiply, and equations are reduced by a different integer than we were perhaps led to expect. Though we shoulda oughta woulda known, if we’d only done the homework. For shame! *points*
Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general, including the upcoming final volume, A Memory of Light.
This re-read post contains spoilers for all currently published Wheel of Time novels. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.
And now, the post!
May is Zombie Awareness Month and to celebrate, Tantor Audio is offering 50% off all zombie titles and a free first chapter download of Mark Tufo’s Zombie Fallout, the first book in his Zombie Fallout series. The series is narrated by AudioFile Earphones Award winner Sean Runnette.
Anytime a novel starts talking about “the Empire,” I don’t default to thinking of the Galactic Empire of Star Wars, but rather of the Empire in Isaac Asimov’s shared universe, found in the Foundation and Robot novels. At this point, the only thing holding back the believability Asimov’s great and bountiful Empire is the dated “futuristic” technology. A Confusion of Princes doesn’t have that problem, and throws in dashes of Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein combined with fast-paced YA breathless prose.
In New Mexico there is a town called Truth or Consequences and it is weird. The Tor.com crew came across a mention of this small town last week and when it came up in casual conversation it seemed that everyone had a tiny tidbit of oddness to share about the area. The more we looked at it, the more random, seemingly unconnected bits of strangeness we uncovered; as if weirdness bubbles up from the town’s natural hot springs.
The name of the town itself (population 6500-ish) is just the beginning.
You can tell that an epic has left its mark on you when you continue to think about its world and characters long after you’ve read the last pages. In my case, the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson was that kind of epic. For many days after I finished reading the final book in the trilogy, I found myself looking at my pocket change with a sort of wistful longing, imagining what it would be like to “drop a coin” and flit through the mists, mistcloak billowing behind me.
When I start feeling wistful, the curious part of my brain starts asking questions. What if it were really possible to ingest metal, “burn it”, and have it affect you and those around you. How exactly would that work? Is any aspect of allomancy even possible in our world? It was these very questions that led me to start an informal review of the current state of scientific research regarding the abilities bestowed by each of the allomantic metals. What I found may surprise you.
The sequel to Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War, comes out July 17. Here’s a special peek at what’s coming:
In Ian Tregillis’ The Coldest War, a precarious balance of power maintains the peace between Britain and the USSR. For decades, Britain’s warlocks have been all that stands between the British Empire and the Soviet Union—a vast domain stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the English Channel. Now each wizard’s death is another blow to Britain’s national security.
Meanwhile, a brother and sister escape from a top-secret facility deep behind the Iron Curtain. Once subjects of a twisted Nazi experiment to imbue ordinary people with superhuman abilities, then prisoners of war in the immense Soviet research effort to reverse-engineer the Nazi technology, they head for England.
Because that’s where former spy Raybould Marsh lives. And Gretel, the mad seer, has plans for him.
As Marsh is once again drawn into the world of Milkweed, he discovers that Britain’s darkest acts didn’t end with the war. And while he strives to protect queen and country, he is forced to confront his own willingness to accept victory at any cost.
We couldn’t have been happier about the awesome 100th digital short from the Lonely Island guys at SNL. And while Gothamist was disapointed about the exclusion of “Narnia” from the retrospective, we couldn’t help but be sad about the lack of shout-outs to “Space Olympics.” (If someone sees one let us know.)
Your other offsite links will pay for your dry cleaning.
Highlights include:
The first collected volume of Andy Runton’s all-ages comic Owly, “The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer,” was released in 2005, but I ran into it much more recently than that — I snagged copies of this first volume and the third volume at a used bookstore, because the sight of that adorable owl-face with the little fluttery hummingbirds on the cover filled me with an indescribable joy. (To be honest, I may have actually clapped my hands with delight.) The series has garnered creator Andy Runton an Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent and two Eisner Award nominations with one win for “Best Publication for a Younger Audience.”
This comic is also so cute and so fun that I had to write about it and share the love.
I’ve put myself in quite the predicament, folks! As detailed in my last post, I’ve got a handful of live action roleplaying characters already in use, with more yet unrealized.
Just as I was starting to get the hang of divvying up weekends evenly between each role, Dana — my headstrong, stubborn, militarily active character — had to go and get noticed by her superiors! “What’s that? You want me to prepare for a potential leadership role? You’re going to be watching my every move to suss out my weaknesses? Me?”
There go all my other characters for the next 6 months.
As a deeply-rooted pessimist, I view dystopian fiction as the future we can most believably extrapolate from our present. We’re facing ecological crisis, economic crisis, overpopulation, constant war, killer drones, the internet killing all the things we used to love, Kardashians, unfair Wikipedia edits, obesity and, for Americans at least, the fear that our best days are behind us. These are downer times, so why will tomorrow be any better?
In that climate it comes as no surprise that dystopian fiction is the prevalent subgenre of speculative fiction crowding the marketplace today. From the oppressive state of 1984, to the neon-nightmare of Neuromancer, to the current Hunger Games wave, we have become very familiar with dystopias.
So familiar that you might wonder, has every good idea been excavated from the subgenre like ore from a sweltering deep-earth mine worked by gene-enhanced slave labor of the megastate? What’s left? What concepts haven’t been raided for dystopian reimagining?
Tor.com comics blogger Tim Callahan has dedicated the next twelve months to a reread of all of the major Alan Moore comics (and plenty of minor ones as well). Each week he will provide commentary on what he’s been reading. Welcome to the 29th installment.
Here’s an unusual case.
Before the preponderance of blogs and Tumblr accounts, the only way that you would have ever come across Alan Moore and Don Simpson’s 1986 short story, “In Pictopia,” is if you had chanced upon issue #2 of Fantagraphics Anything Goes anthology, or in The Best Comics of the Decade 1980-1990 Vol. 1, also by Fantagraphics, or maybe in George Khoury’s book-length interview/overview The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore.
