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.
This past week, Karen Gillan, who plays the long-running companion Amy Pond on Doctor Who admitted that she adores NBC nerd-king comedy Community and wouldn’t hesitate to do a guest-spot as Amy Pond in the show’s internal Who spoof “Inspector Spacetime.”
Neil Gaiman responded on his Tumblr that he would love to cross the nerd-streams even more and write the bit for the show.
Back in the 90s, Batman: The Animated Series redefined how many of us think of the caped crusader. In fact, you could make an arguement that the Christopher Nolan films owe as much to that show as they do the comics. As further evidience, take a look at this wonderful trailer for The Dark Knight Rises using exclusively footage from Batman: The Animated Series. Very cool.
[Via The Mary Sue]
Just so you know, it took us hours to put hand to keyboard just to bring this to your attention, that’s how brain-breakingly adorable the Doctor Puppet Tumblr is.
The Doctor Puppet Tumblr chronicles the adventures of the Doctor (Puppet) in his travels. His TARDIS appears to be on the fritz, so he’s spending a good amount of time in New York City.
Apparently we’ve been missing all of these wand-duels on the rooftops of New York City. It’s weird because one member of the Tor.com team has a time-turner, another one is capable of turning into a wolf, and still another eats a ton of chocolate. So we were pretty sure we were aware of all the magical stuff going on around us. Oh well, back to making a patronus in the shape of Andy Samberg.
Your offsite links are full of liquid luck.
Highlights include:
On May 24th, we’ll get our first bit of Doctor Who since the Christmas special last December. This is set to be a mini-episode like “Time Crash” or “Space” & “Time.” It is airing as part of Blue Peter’s Script-to-Screen contest, so it might be similar to the fan-written “Death is the Only Answer.” However, it has been reported the episode will be Olympic themed. Will Chloe Webber return?
Also with the invention of Draw Something, will Chloe Webber’s alien friends be more dangerous than ever?
[News via io9 from Life, Doctor Who and Combom]
Did you know Hawkeye’s original name was Night-Hawkeye, in honor of the Norman Rockwell painting? Well it was. [Citation needed.] Also did you see what we did with shawarma last week?
Your offsite links contain true facts, but no more shawarma.
Highlights include:
(Avengers/ Nighthawks via Gizmodo)
Serving as both a trailer and a behind-the-scenes feature for the new American version of Sherlock Holmes; Elementary finds Sherlock coming to New York City for rehab.
First impression: Jonny Lee Miller seems to be channeling a bit of Matt Smith rather than Benedict Cumberbatch. Also, Holmes’s father is alive? (Will he be played by Alan Rickman?) The music isn’t doing it much favors, but we’ll reserve full judgement until the fall. What did you think? (News via Bleeding Cool)
Hurry, Pac-Man! Speedy the ghost is heading straight for the Tor.com offices! Stop dawdling on 30th St. and set your power-pilled fury upon him!
The above image was created by artist Jamie Sneddon and photographer Kevin Rozario-Johnson as part of their larger 8-bitscapes series. You can see more of them (and buy portraits) at their site linked above.
SAVE US!
Stubby the Rocket would save you, Tor.com, but its lasers don’t affect ghosts.
Dim Horizons Studio recently staged a photo shoot assembling the three main ta’averen from the Wheel of Time series in costume and the results are pretty spot on. You can see The Shadow Rising ebook cover art re-enacted above, with James Atkins as Mat.
We’ve posted a few more of our favorite shots below, featuring Paul Beilaczyc as Rand, John F. Strangeway as Perrin, Paige Gardner Smith as a Maiden of the Spear, and an adorable puppy as a puppy. (Okay, it’s a full-grown husky as a wolf but... PUPPY!) The studio did a great job in really getting the feel of the Darrell K. Sweet covers, too.
The New York Review of Science Fiction is hosting a special reading next week on May 22nd featuring Charlie Jane Anders and Bryan Francis Slattery. We’re also pleased to announce this event is being guest curated by Tor.com/Tor Books’ very own editor, Liz Gorinsky.
Charlie Jane Anders is, of course, a co-editor of io9, as well as being an acclaimed short story author. Her novelette “Six Months, Three Days” here on Tor.com was just nominated for a Hugo!
Novelist Brian Francis Slattery has just released his third novel, Lost Everything, which you can read an excerpt of here. The New York Review of Science Fiction takes place as the Soho Gallery for the Digital Arts. Doors open at 6:30 PM and the event starts at 7:00 PM.
More information on the NYRSF website here, or on Facebook
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.
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...
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.
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 Prometheus website has released a clip from the upcoming Aliens prequel / pretty awesome looking science fiction Ridley Scott film. Here’s what they had to say about it:
In the distant future, two superpowers control Earth and fight each other for all the solar system’s natural resources. When one side dispatches a team to a distant planet to terraform it for human colonization, the team discovers an indigenous race of bio-mechanoid killers.
Now check out the awesome clip!
What if other queens had bat’leths? The Queen of Hearts would probably be the worst candidate of all queens to own one, right? Also, if the band Queen had bat’leths, it would make the whole Highlander “Princes of the Universe” video a lot better.
Your offsite links are full of honor.
Highlights include:
Science fiction and fantasy mothers are awesome. Not only can raise they kids in magical worlds, robot apocalypses, and seedy space stations, but women like Sarah Connor, Molly Weasley, ElastiGirl, and Keiko O’Brien all do it with some class.
But real life moms are even better, because they often put those magical worlds and seedy space stations into our brains to begin with. For Mother’s Day, we’re reminiscing about times we were just podlings and the ways our moms shaped our geeky tendencies.
Jennifer over at Not Your Momma’s Cookie just got to the end of Game of Thrones season one and worked through the shock of Ned Stark’s death by immortalizing the, ah, moment in cake!
You can check out her process and the recipe over at her blog. We never thought Ned Stark’s decapitated head would make us hungry....
The Tor.com post-credits scene has been revealed! We don’t want to reveal the specifics, but it appears that some Tor.com staff and contributors are kicking back after a hard day saving the world.
