newnumber6

Continued from last post. First post of this whole series is here, for explanation purposes.

Before, I continue, a few comments on the last part that LJ didn't let me post cause it was too long:
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And on to the new:( Read more... )

Comments always welcome.

Here's my yearly entry for One Hundred Words of Horror... only a few, sort of ran out of time and didn't have much inspiration so they're not my best, but I do like the tradition and wanted to come up with something.

Prognosis

The surgery went very well. Your husband is responsive, and the new organs are functioning better than the old ones.

Prognosis is good. I had to remove more tissue than I anticipated, but the organs need room to grow. I just want to warn you he may not look much like the man you knew.

But he’ll live. That’s the important thing. Assuming rejection doesn’t set in, he can look forward to many, many years.

With a result like that, why worry over the little details, like that I didn’t get his consent.

Or that I’m not really a doctor.

-

Inoperable

They say hallucinations are a side effect of the tumor. But I know these aren’t hallucinations. Hallucinations don’t leave a trail of dead bodies.

They’re not just dead. Mutilated, like something exploded inside them.

You’re probably thinking like the police do, that I killed them, in a delusional state. But it’s not hallucination. I don’t see anything except the carnage, and they saw that too, just a little later.

I’ve figured it out. It’s not a tumor. It’s a transmitter. To some other dimension. Telling them to come. And they’ll be coming for you soon, unless you cut it out.

-

Little Bundles of Joy

Nobody noticed the loss of the children. The thing had devoured their souls, but they kept eating, sleeping, and even playing. You don’t really need a soul to play. It’s as biologically hardwired as hunger. Children’s souls are undeveloped, barely there. Replaceable.

So the thing lent them its motives, to lure others to that spot in the woods. Parents made better meals but poor tools. Their bodies were too accustomed to their souls, and without them, ran down, and soon died in squalor.

But the children would still play, and could always be adopted, smiling automatons waiting for new thoughts.

-

(Last year's entries can be found here).

If you do the One Hundred Words of Horror meme, feel free to post a link in the comments so people who are interested can follow up on people not on their flist.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Prisoners of Gravity links first:

Women
Women in SF, Fantasy, and Comics

Part One: Trina Robbins (on how she first got hooked on comics), June Brigman (on why women don't get into comics, and trying to change it using Barbie comics), Louise Simonson (on lack of things in conventional superhero comics for women to relate to), Kate Worley of Omaha, the Cat Dancer (on whether she's bothered by being in one of the few prominent female comics creators), Elaine Lee (on the difficulty of breaking into comics and the 'boys club'), Chris Claremont (on why he was renowned for good female characters and how it became a cliche for him)
Part Two: Steve Bissett (on why comics are so slow to recognize women, and some of the key roles women played in comics). Shift of focus to SF. Lois McMaster Bujold (on whether SF is a good platform for a treatment of women's issues, and her most 'feminist' book), Veronica Hollinger (professor on SF) (on who are the landmark female figures in SF and male writers who are most 'feminist'), Candace Jane Dorsey (on leaving out gender pronouns in her stories), Pamela Argent (on 'strong female characters' who are just men in women bodies), Gregory Benford (on the tension between the sexes as being a good thing and some of the difficulties on juggling everything in SF compared to toher fields)
Part Three: Leona Gom (on creating a 'last man' in an all female world), a story about James Tiptree Jr. (actually a woman under a pen name) being asked to leave a summit on feminism in SF. Lois McMaster Bujold (on if there are difficulties in writing male viewpoints). Switch in focus to Fantasy: Karen Wehrstein (on her own challenges in writing women characters), Tanya Huff (on whether fantasy has improved in terms of the women, and info about something she changed about her own work on realizing it was somewhat sexist), Terence M. Green (on how men and women are different), Trina Robbins (on the complaint about things that interest women being 'banal')

Leisure - May 2, 1991
How we will spend out leisure time in the future, according to SF
Part One: Lois McMaster Bujold (on mandatory zero-gee workouts and the physiological adaptations of zero-g), Andrew Weiner (on some of his leisure-centered short stories, in particular one about filling time in a permanent unemployment), Christopher Hinz (on the idea of recreational space colonies), Jack Womack (on leisure time, or lack thereof, in his Draco books), Gregord Benford (on the management of leisure, and passive leisure), William Gibson (on dismissing 'television' as 'empty calories' leisure, and the mystery of TV and media and what it's doing to us)
Part Two: Alberto Manguel (editor) (on television in the future according to Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, and how it's somewhat come true, Terence M. Green (on children raised on TV and creating a video literate world), Bruce Sterling (on what he thinks of TV and his 1991 view of future of TV, and Virtual Reality), Douglas Adams (about Virtual Reality and using it to save the world, and creating virtual reality IN reality). Candace Jane Dorsey (on a baseball story on Mars in a collection she edits), Mark Chiarello (on baseball's imagery, and drawing a baseball card collection on the Negro League), Todd McFarlane (on how Spider-Man hangs out when not working), Walt Simonson (on how Thor spends his leisure time)
Part Three: Neil Gaiman (on how Miracle Man recharges), Louise Simonson (on Superhuman not having any leisure time, except for being Clark Kent), Ty Templeton (on his theory on how Superman kicks back), a clip of Superman Song by the Crash Test Dummies, Fabian Nicieza (on whether he'll show Alpha Flight in their leisure time, and what leisure time says about us), Steve Bissett (on the 24 Hour Comic, as a sort of 'game' for comic creators, and other games of artists (the surreal corpse)).

Censorship - October 25, 1990
Part One: Comics facing obsenity charges. Interviews with Harlan Ellison (on the good messages in a lot of SF), Kevin Eastman (on how his characterss influenced a kid to hurt himself), Harlan Ellison (on how the censors are exposed to the 'corrupting material' constantly, and standing up to censors), Steve Bissett (on the Comic Code Authority and the congressional hearings that led to it), Frank Miller (on him feeling relatively free from censorship lately), Steve Bissett (on temporarily dropping the comic code for the Spidey drug issue, and Swamp Thing deciding to do away with the CCA permanently)
Part Two: Spider and Jeanne Robinson (on the problems with censorship of sex in SF, and a particular unsavory reference that an author slipped past the censors), Jack Vance (on some of the censorship he faced), Spider Robinson (on Callahan's Lady, taking place in a brothel, and not being get the stories in the same magazine as the rest of the Callahan stories), Jack Vance (on the basic choices of censorship), Maryanne Neilsen (on whether, as an editor, she's a censor), David Lloyd (on creative choice to leave our detailed of violence and sex in V for Vendetta), Denys Cowan (on being uncomfortable with drawing a lynching scene)
Part Three: Elaine Lee (on handling violence in Starstruck), Elaine Lee and Charles Vess (on a particular censorship blowup around a comic back-up story about a young witch that includes her first period, when the first story had so much violence), Harlan Ellison (about the comic Taboo, and how art should unsettle you), Clive Barker (on worrying about a backlash, another Dr. Werthem).

Next week: Utopia, Ecology, and Advice for wannabe creators.

Now that that's out of the way, TV wrapup for the week. Doctor Who... well, I've met Adric. For some reason, in my head, I always pictured him older, from the name. Seems nice enough so far, although probably not one of my favorites. Only a few episodes left before I can say goodbye to Four and get to Five.

What premiered this week? House... it was okay, but I thought it dragged on too long focusing on House, and I wanted to see the others. And the ending annoyed me. (spoilers) ( Read more... )

Heroes also premiered and... well, I suppose, objectively speaking, it's probably a little better than last year. But it's still hard to watch and take seriously. The Trust has not just been lost, it's been thoroughly shattered and the pieces each taken on a separate boat ride in a different ocean by a different man who dumps it into the ocean at some random time not in sight of land. It's hard to take anything seriously after the stuff they pulled last year, because there's the feeling at at any moment, they could decide to ignore some plot point they've already established. Slightly more spoilery behind cut ( Read more... )

Dollhouse also premiered, and it wasn't bad, although they seem to be slightly unskeevying one of the characters at the expense of extra-skeevying one of the relatively unskeevy ones. We'll see how it goes, though, the revelations towards the end could be interesting to go on.

FlashForward... it's okay. Needs time to find it's footing to judge for sure. Not sure the premise really works as a basis for a series, but it's got my attention for a few episodes at least.

Fringe: Okay... the second episode of the second season of X-Files was about a genetic mutant Flukeman. Is it just some wacky coincidence or intentional homage that the Second episode of Fringe's Second Season feels like almost the same thing, only, you know, less interesting (because Fringe is mostly a less interesting version of X-files)?

Otherwise, not much. This week: Stargate Universe, the last thing for... oh, about a month or so probably that I'm looking forward to.

February 28, 1991 - Marketing & Merchandising.

Not an especially interesting episode to me, but for completeness' sake, and there's a bit of interest here.

Part One: Spider and Jeanne Robinson on Marketing of SF and what audience to target, Jack Vance on how Dune had trouble getting published and how it gained its appeal and sequels, Spider Robinson on an autograph session and a particularly stupid distributor, Guy Gavriel Kay on the prevelance of fantasy and its commercial success and how success attracts hacks, Jim Baen on the crowded marketplace and the sales life-cycles of books, Terry Brooks on how he explains his sales.
Part Two: George R. R. Martin on whether he considers himself a "science fiction" writer and the difficulty of marketting writers who don't fit into boxes, Peter Straub on readers expectations of writers can cause problems, Bob Kane on the Batman marketting machine growing from the 80s movie, and the danger of overexposure, Kevin Eastman on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and how marketting made it a megabrand, James L. Brooks on the merchandising of the Simpsons, Sam Simon on whether think the merchandising is overwhelming the show
Part Three: Matt Groening on why the Simpsons show itself is popular, Fabian Nicieza on marketting of concepts and why certain comics (Todd McFarlane) get super marketting gimmicks). Bill Marks on the marketting of Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man and his invention of sealed bagged comics, and marketting to try to direct people to the good, and stangnation of the comic industry and trying to diversify the industry (in 1991)


April 11, 1991 - Villains in SF, comics, and fantasy:
Part One: General introduction and a quote about Villains by Mary Wollstoncraft, Comics first. Interviews with Max Allan Collins (on Dick Tracy's Villains), Montage of comic creators on what makes good villains and favorite villains (Archie Goodwin, Louise Simonson, Mike Mignola), Fabian Nicieza (on what makes a good supervillain and well-motivated villains, the remotivating of Lex Luthor), Gregory Benford (If the 'idea' in a SF novel is the hero, what's the villain), Nancy Kress (on creating villains in SF with complexity)
Part Two: Jack Womack (on the lack of real villains in his Draco books), Charles de Lint (on what makes a great fantasy villain), Tanya Huff (same topic), Ty Templeton (on favorite comic book villain, Luthor, and why, and also on how the Joker complements Batman so well), Kate Worley (on the lack of individual villains in Omaha, the Cat Dancer as opposed to corporate or systemized evil)
Part Three: Steve Bissett (on the more recent nuanced view of evil in comics, and his feelings on what caused it for him - Watergate), Neil Gaiman (the problem of villains, and how they're just people, with good and bad in them), and moving on to the Serial Killer as the last bastion of pure evil, with Peter Straub (on the fascination with serial killers in fiction compared with the almost mundanity of the real facts of them), Garfield Reeve-Stevens (on the power and appeal of the Joker)

January 31, 1991 - Voice/American Artform

Whether comic books and SF are international artforms or there's a strong 'American' voice to them, and a look at some other country voices.
Part One: Some extended jokes about a Canadian-voice Star Trek, Interviews with Nancy Kress (on how classic SF started as British, even if they weren't always marketted as SF, whereas American SF was ghettoized), Candas Jane Dorsey (on the origins of US SF and being extremely formulaic, and various phases of SF), Gregory Benford (on the US not being great on the traditional forms, and how the strength was in their 'invented' genres, and why good SF elsewhere in the world isn't widely popular), Jim Baen (whether there's still an American voice in SF, and what it is, and how the experience of Vietnam altered American SF's voice),

Part Two: Nancy Kress (on one of the persistant theme of American SF), Jean Giraud/Moebius (on whether SF is an American form, or an English-language form, and the differences in his (French) outlook and how it influences his work, and whether he feels comics are an American artform or European), Harlan Ellison (on comic books as one of the 5 native US artforms even though it's exploded wildly elsewhere), Will Eisner (on greater respect in Europe for comic artists than in the US), Denys Cowan (the view of American comics, in America, as 'trash'), Bill Sienkiewicz (on the new energy of comics in US and England, in the early 90s), Chester Brown (on his Canadian autobiographical comic Yummy Fur, and how much Canada influences his work and what Canadian readers get out of his story), some speculation on whether a canadian setting is enough to make something Canadian, and how Americans often write Canadian settings incomics like Alpha Flight.
Part Three: Editor of Canadian short SF Anthology "On Spec", Marianne Nelson (on the 'Canadian voice in Science Fiction'), Judith Merril (on how the looming presence of the environment in Canadian lives makes us more inclined towards SF even in mainstream works), Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens (on whether there's a particular Canadian voice in SF, and their view of no), Candas Jane Dorsey (on Canadian SF, and why it's so hard to recognize the Canadian SF community), Dave Duncan (the lack of the size of Canadian market making it hard to create a market for Canadian SF, but they do well across the border), Tanya Huff (about how Canadian settings are being a bit trendy), Spider Robinson (on his belief that Canadians are coming out of the closet), Guy Gabriel Kay (on it being okay to be a Canadian writer now, in general), Tanya Huff (on how we're between US and British styles)

April 18, 1991 - Ecology
Part One: Douglas Adams (on his non-fiction book about endangered species and how he came to write it, and some stuff about Madagascar), Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens (on why SF and Ecology are nothing new to SF, even if they're especially popular lately), Spider Robinson (about David Brin's novel Earth), Robert J. Sawyer (on Face of God, and a sort of eco-conscious aliens), Julian Grant on ecological themes in SF movies being as early as the 50s
Part Two: Steve Bissette (on Swamp Thing and how it evolved ecologically, and how DC lost interest in the ecological message after they left), Ty Templeton (on Clorophyll Kid and designing a terminally-ill Raccoon mascot for the Canadian government that wasn't looked upon too kindly), Gregory Benford (on whether technology and its waste byproducts will destroy us and why technology itself isn't a bad thing), Spider Robinson (on what he hopes from future technology and nanotechnology), Lewis Shiner and Larry Niven (on two competing ideas, why looking for technological solutions are a little wrongheaded, vs terraforming the Earth), Nancy Kress (on how the contradictory reports make it hard for the layman to really get a sense of how much, if any, danger there is)
Part Three: James Trefil (on how much science you need to know to understand the environmental issues), Gregory Benford (on why he feels people opposed to Nuclear Power usually aren't thinking things through). Pamela Sargent (on Terraforming, specifically terraforming Venus, and the moral issues behind it), Lois McMaster Bujold (on terraforming in Barrayar novels, and whether she thinks its too dangerous to try, and views on Nature, and whether smart is actually a survival characteristic long term), Douglas Adams (on sliding towards the edge of disaster, and whether humanity will go extinct, and his lack of despair at the idea)

Continued from last post. First post of this whole series is here, for explanation purposes.

Let's get right to it.
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Edit: Now continued here.

Finished: Weapons of Choice, by John Birmingham

Thoughts behind the cut. Short version: Enjoyed the premise, execution was a bit dry and uninteresting at parts. Not many plot-specific spoilers ahead beyond general plot outline. ( Read more... ) I'd read the rest of the series but I'm not salivating over it- I'll happily wait until I find it in a used bookstore.
Started and Finished: Sunstorm, by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke
Started: Tehanu, the Last Book of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (Nebula Winner, forgot to mention I got it Wednesday).

Thoughts on Sunstorm. Slightly spoilery for both it and the previous novel in the series, as well as for Stargate, by analogy. Short version: Okay, but a bit meh, and didn't even have the coolness of the first book. Probably would have been better off skipping it. ( Read more... )

Finished: Woken Furies, by Richard Morgan (reread)
Started: Ventus, by Karl Schroeder (reread)

Woken Furies is a reread, so I don't have much to say. Enjoyed it of course, and I probably will reread the series again at some point. I did make a bit of a connection to why the main character interests me, and I should have made it earlier, considering his name. (Some spoilers)( Read more... )

What else is new in my life? Not a whole lot, sadly. My life is pretty stagnant. Wake up, hang around on the internet wasting time that isn't at work, just making it through one day after another. Don't go out much other than work, shopping, and occasional grocery stuff. Don't even especially feel like my old hobbies like icon-making, and most of my discussion forums have disappeared, yet I haven't found anywhere to replace them, probably because most of them are comic related and I'm down to two comics a month now, and not as excited about either as I once was. Meh.

Speaking of, working a bit again, after taking something of a break, on my Runaways Vol 3 outline, thanks to a couple positive comments that energized me a bit. May post the outlines for issues #12 to 24 in the next few weeks, rocketting me right past where the real book is now.

TVwise nothing much is on, just reality shows (so I am watching Big Brother I guess), and downloading old Who's. (And man, Global, how many times do you have to air The Unit in one week... don't you have other shows to air?). Thinking of rewatching another old series, maybe Veronica Mars, to help fill the empty hours. SDCC's on now but no news has particularly excited me. New trailer for Stargate Universe looks interesting enough, but that's about it. But still a couple days left for it.

But overall, meh. I'd say I need a life, but the truth is I probably wouldn't know what to do with it is I had one.

Yes, it's time for another big long post that probably only entertains me, and I don't really expect anybody to read. But I've mentioned it offhandedly in a few posts, that I've been writing down my own sort of "alternate Volume 3 of Runaways", sort of a what might happen if, in some alternate universe, I was told to write Runaways instead of Terry Moore. Well, I've finished up to issue #12, and that seems like a good place to take a break and start posting it.

General introductory comments:( Read more... )

We begin:( Read more... )

continued next post, i write too much for LJ apparently.

Haven't done one of these in a while, and don't remember ever doing these particular questions, so what the hell. Stolen from angelophile...

What's the last thing you did, where you technically broke the law? ( Read more... )
Edit: Whoops, forgot to cut. Sorry about that.

This week I got two books:

Captain Britain and MI13 #11 (quite good, really enjoying the arc)

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

Also picked up at the used bookstore:

Book of the New Sun, the First Half of, by Gene Wolfe (since one half of the first half is a Nebula winner I haven't read)

and

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds

Wasn't too thrilled with Revelation Space by Reynolds, but this was cheap and I'm running low on new reading material so I figured what the heck, I'll give him another chance.

Work was okay, showed up only a few minutes after I did and decent load. And of course, since I had comics to get and the weather was fairly nice, I got some good reading time in. The weather was fairly nice, as I just said, but very windy. Which did make it a bit challenging to read at times, but I managed, except at a few points (like going under a train bridge that seemed to become like a wind tunnel.

What else? Some quick TV thoughts... BSG's moving slow and with what, only a couple eps left, I really don't have confidence that they're going to end on a satisfactory note. I happened to see a little preview for Caprica that looked good, though, looking forward to that when it comes, even if I'll probably have to treat it as a completely separate entity from BSG. Lost's been enjoyable (but what? Not on tonight?). Terminator _finally_ came through with a pretty good ep after a few weeks of stinkers (I mean seriously, how many times do we need people to be hallucinating/dreaming major parts of the episode, or for there to be fear that that's going on?). Dollhouse continues to, uhm... 'be', I guess.

Morena Baccarin is cast in the V remake. You know, I almost think the only way to approach the series would be to... not even Battlestar Galactica it, because BSG remained pretty close, plotwise, just modernizing it and making one major change (adding secret human cylons). For V, I think the best way to do it would be to also reimagine it, but go one step furthur... just use the title V, and the premise of aliens landing and becoming public to the world, and forget the lame (I'll cut for spoilers just in case you never saw any of the original) ( Read more... ). Reimagine not just the plot but the whole nature of the aliens, make the threat (if there even is one) a new one. Anyway, we'll see, Morena Baccarin in it might make me at least give it a look. Aw, who am I fooling, I'm a sci-fi geek, I'd probably give it a look regardless.

Been having a fair number of 'back in high school' dreams, or 'meet somebody from high school' dreams lately. And they usually involve rather random people, people I wasn't particularly close with (or negative with), just people who's name/face I happen to remember. Shrug.

Depressed of course (tis the season), and not really feeling inspired to do writing (though I've been meeting my quotas, it's been fairly joyless). And I'm still very lightly sick. Can't seem to shake it. So, meh all around.

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Noble Drifter in a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland. Does that count? I mean technically it doesn't exist yet (here).

For 'real' jobs, I think I'd go with Executive Producer of a long-running science fiction show or franchise. Get to do what I love, be famous enough that I get some of the perks but still obscure enough that I can go about in public, good money, and if I'm executive producer for a long-enough running series, even once it ends I should be able to get another such job fairly easily and explore different ideas. Plus I have a team of writers to collaborate with in instances where I have a good idea but can't really execute it.

Writing in a smaller capacity would also be nice.