One night I’ll wake up to find an apocalyptic movie scene being projected onto the bedroom ceiling. Suburban ceilings have the light-colored, canvassy quality that’s needed to accomplish this. I’ll note this fact, and the accuracy of the projector’s keystone adjustments in how the image’s corners neatly fill parallel the ceiling corners. The cinematic hell … I Don’t Know What This Is, Part 2
I can hear my heartbeat in my left ear. A heart can go at any time, and you’re gone. If you’re lucky, you expired on the sofa and your corpse can binge watch the next eight seasons of the Gilmore Girls Netflix revival. Spoiler: Rory will have a few dozen more babies out of wedlock … I Don’t Know What This Is
Probably the worst thing about Trump’s presidency is the perpetual onslaught of hand-wringing and fainting from writers. That series of essays, obviously, comes from elitist New York authors that that no one reads or has heard of but other elitist New Yorkers. Soon, look out for more accessible media like sci-fi films or endless stacks … Aftermath, Part 2
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook … Be An Insect
“I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it’s safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries…May I have the salt, please?” – Kira Alexandrovna Argounova, We the Living (Ayn Rand)
This stuff can be hard to write this kind of subtlety. There’s few who can pull it off well. Bradbury was one of them, as is Jill Domschot. Scott Adams went overboard in a fine way, in this regard; you could tell he was trying to drive the jokes home with an elephant gun. Forster … E.M. Forster’s Humor
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Moore, especially from his insider’s view, sees the writing on the wall. And the writing is getting bigger: “I think I have done enough for comics. I’ve done all that I can. I think if I were to continue to work in comics, inevitably the ideas would suffer, inevitably you’d start to see me retread … Alan Moore Bails Out of Comics
Saw this on Reddit and found it too good not to post it in its entirety, because I can. Enjoy responsibly. Second-to-minutes: major insanity within minutes at the emergence of Great Cthulhu all along the pacific region. Massive earth quakes in some regions. Madpeople world wide scream, some die, others attack their staff muttering strange … Cthulhu in Real Life
I don’t pay attention to literary awards, so the Hugos are off my radar unless someone I listen to already sends a signal through. Hence, Jill on the 2016 Short Story winner, “Cat Pictures Please,” about a self-aware search engine that tries to help people with their problems: See, the AI helps people by meddling … Zero Cat Pictures, Please
When a prequel is made with ultra-modern filmmaking technology—CGI and the like—the visual effects are “held back” when illustrating the in-universe technology to match its look and feel. This only seems to affect prequels, not sequels or reboots, since prequels necessarily take place in the in-universe’s past. I tried Googling some things, but I’m coming … Someone Give Me a Good Phrase For This
Every editor will tell you the first sentence in a novel is crucial. Most first sentences that are perceived as “good” are really first paragraphs comprised of short, punchy, humorous or incongruous sentences: “The earth ended yesterday. That wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen to me. But there’s no hiding it: I grew wings overnight.” … The Children of Men – First Sentence
A bookstore chain in Great Britain figured out how to please customers, and the big step was letting the individual operators use their space as they saw fit. Waterstones stores stopped selling shelf space to big publishers (emphasis mine): Next came the staff. [managing director James] Daunt shrunk Waterstones’ central office and fired half of … How to Sell Print Books
I was going to write a review of The Aeneid for Goodreads, but it would get rejected eventually since it’s not about the book itself but just a few lines about my copy’s previous owners. Reviews are highly patrolled there, more so than on Amazon, so it’s bringing owls to Athens to post this there. … Book Review: The Aeneid
I finally got around to reading Jill Domschot’s The Jaybird’s Nest and other stories (disclaimer: Jill is an Internet acquaintance of mine and has been my editor in the past). The seems ordinary but the stories are not: they are mostly absurdist sci-fi and fantasy, and there’s plenty of humor, mostly subtle or satirical, in … Book Review: The Jaybird’s Nest and other stories
Gillian Anderson is cool with being a James Bond incarnation, because the Internet brought it up: Anderson is on Tumblr under the name Chewie’s Girlfriend (a reference to Chewbacca from Star Wars). She recently answered a series of questions on the platform, one of which was “What’s the best rumour you’ve ever heard about yourself?” … Everything Has to Really Be Something Else
“Say, I really like Thing X,” said the private, who was Jewish or from a southern state. “That’s dumb. You’re dumb,” said the other private, who was the opposite ethnicity of the first private. “You’re such a racial epithet.” Later, after tossing around more ethnic slurs, they searched for food or booze, fooled around with … Every 20th Century War Novel
The Running Man is on Netflix. I re-watched it. It’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that missed the mark commercially, but it was the perfect blend of all of the more popular Reagan-era dystopian movies: Robocop, Tron, They Live, with a little bit of Total Recall foreshadowing. It wasn’t a bad movie, aside from Arnold’s lame … How to Make “The Running Man” a Better Movie
The 2015 Nebula Awards were announced today. Glaring inequality abounds* inside the sci-fi and fantasy world, and it’s not okay: Earlier tonight, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America handed out the Nebula Award in Chicago, and this year women have swept one of science fiction’s biggest awards. This year’s Nebula Award Banquet toastmaster … The SFWA Has a Gender Problem
I received this review of Pale Blue Scratch via email (beware…partial spoilers ahoy): So far enjoying this mysterious, exotic journey and love the relationship between the two main characters. REALLY appreciate the fact that you chose to make the main protagonist a strong, smart, independent woman… the equivalent of an undercover female ninja warrior/secret agent, … A Partial Review of Pale Blue Scratch