February 2005 Archives
Charlie Stross's weblog always reveals some great insights into being a novelist. His latest post is an essential read for any aspiring writers (although it's a bit depressing).
Rebelscum.com are reporting that a Skittles competition will be giving away Star Wars themed iPods in April.
Loaded with all the soundtracks I hope?!
I've finished reading the quite amazingly wonderful River of Gods by Ian McDonald. If you hadn't already guessed I liked it a lot. It's exactly the sort of Science Fiction that I love, complicated, involved, absorbing.
Star Wars: Kids | Vader Takes the Cake: New from DecoPac
My birthday is soon, I want Darth Vader on my cake!
Via the Unofficial Battlestar Galactica blog (hey I guess BDO is one of those too?!), I've discovered that the full version of Season 1, Episode 1, titled "33" is online now here. It requires RealPlayer (booo! hisss!) and is pretty small but an interesting move.
Of course you have been alledgedly been able to get hold of this episode via some obscure load balaning filesharing protocol for some time. *nudge nudge, wink wink, bittorrent* and in an alledgedly much higher quality.
Still, small steps forward...
The Sci Fi Channel announced that the second season of its hit original series Battlestar Galactica will premiere this summer, with 20 new episodes.
And on Sky One first please, *pleeasssee*.
I think I've seen this around before but here it is anyway, a tutorial on Lightsaber Effect Rotoscoping In A Premiere Filmstrip. Using Adobe Premiere but Final Cut could handle it easily too.
[Via BoingBoing]
So film yourself and get a torrent up....!
Move over IMDB here comes Google Movie. Try Google Search: movie:science fiction.
Everyone is linking to this an immense SPOILERTASTIC picture story version of Revenge Of The Sith. However I have resisted the pull of the dark side. I am only letting myself read/watch spoilers released from the official site.
It's a fine line the spoiler thing. For The Phantom Menace I avoided all spoilers and then flew to New York to see the film two months earlier than in the UK. For Attack Of The Clones I gorged myself on spoilers. However I felt that too many spoilers took the initial wonder off AOTC, whereas TPM felt amazing. So for ROTS I'm treading the fine line between feeding my excitement and leaving some mystery about the film.
What about everyone else? What's your Revenge Of The Sith spoiler policy? In general do you search out spoilers for films/tv or not?
(It's funny how the concept of spoilers doesn't really seem to be a big thing for books).
For us mere non-Hyperspace mortals the Becoming Obi-Wan webdoc is online. Ewan comes across as such a cool bloke, lots of talk about him and Alec Guiness. Plus there some tantalising glimpses of THAT FIGHT! Oh yes watch ObiWan fight Anakin for two seconds (at a blistering pace) then rewind and watch it again...and again...and again...
ThisisLondon says...
The Cannes Film Festival is going to the dark side. After months of negotiations between George Lucas and festival officials, Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge Of The Sith will open the festival in the South of France in May.
Wow. Via Neil Gaiman comes illustrated versions of the text based H2G2 adventure game .
You are in a room it is pitch black.
> f*** off
I don't understand the word f***
etc...
About has an interview with Katee Sackhoff.
It includes the question...
Me: How about Number Six (Trivia Helfer)?KS: She may be the one to turn me. She's really cute.
err....no comment.
The trailer for A Scanner Darkly is up on [Via SFSignal].
There are bits of it that I thought were really cool, the atmosphere and style especially. Keanu annoyed me a bit though. Mind you it will be a tricky film to impress me because I really love the book. If they can pull off the ending then maybe I'll forgive any other misdemeanours.
Salon.com has an interview with Ian Banks [Via SFSignal]. I'm still waiting for The Algerbraist to come out in paperback.
Surely there is nothing better than Star Wars and Lego?
LEGO Unveils 2005 Star Wars Line, the picture gallery is here.
Locus Online has posted some Neil Gaiman interview excerpts. (He looks a bit ill in that picture!).
As usual he says some wonderful things. As a writer I find him a great inspiration. He also seems like such a nice bloke, the sort of guy you'd like to buy a beer and spend an evening in a pub chatting to.
Never heard of "Primer" before, but from this it sounds pretty cool. Here's the IMDB entry, here's a trailer. It probably didn't get a release over here?
A new short story from Ken MacLeod has been published online by Nature. It's very short but pretty cool, worth a couple of minutes.
I did a quick search on Google video and found this. Which is midly interesting. It would of course be better if I could watch the video. If not why can't I read the entire transcript? You can try searching for "a" and "the" but never seem to get the whole thing. Feature request please Google (although I'm sure they're on top of it).
USENT still makes Slashdot threads look sophisticated, check out Google Groups : alt.fan.starwars - The science fiction genre officially ends in May. Which starts with a discussion on the end of the Star Wars and Trek franchises and goes off on the sort of tangents that only USENET discussions can. Read, but don't get sucked in, don't post! You'll loose your life.
Scotsman.com News - Scotland - Edinburgh - Happy ending for fired book shop 'blogger'
Joe Gordon who got fired from Waterstone's after blogging a few rants has got a new job. Forbidden Planet has headhunted him - for a managerial role dealing with the online side of the business and book and graphic novel selection. Good one FP.
You see, blogging is good for you career!
The maker of my other universe (that's George Lucas) is going tomake a cameo as Baron Papanoida. Nice.
BTW if you follow the links to Mr. TBone's site beware SPOILERS, for he is one of the ancient guardians of the Star Wars spoilers.
SyFy Portal report that the second season of Battlestar Galactica will have 20 episodes. Lovely. Now hurry up and make them, I'm getting withdrawl symptoms.
Just found this Unofficial Battlestar Galactica Blog and it makes me feel that BDO is far too wide ranging, and hence lacks anything other than recycled news. Hmmm.
Just watched the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trailer at Amazon. It looks pretty good but I just can't shake the BBC tv serires out of my head, so everything looks a bit wrong.
Cory's newest short story I, Robot is online now at Infinite Matrix.
2004 SFWA Nebula Awards® Final Ballot
Novels --
Paladin of Souls -- Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct03)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom -- Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb03)
Omega -- Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov03)
Cloud Atlas : A Novel -- David Mitchell (Sceptre, Jan 2004)
Perfect Circle -- Sean Stewart (Small Beer Press, Jun04)
The Knight -- Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan04)
I've only read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" which I thought was okay.
I mentioned before that Free SF Online didn't have an RSS feed. Well now it does. Hurrah! Subscribe here.
Sci-Fi Ranter Girl: MTV 'Revenge of the Sith' Tickets Sell for $20K
A bit extreme even for me (have I mentioned that I flew to New York to see the Phantom Menance because it opened two months earlier in the US than in in the UK? Global releases have since saved me money!)
So I guess the big news last week must have been the renewal of Battlestar Galactica for a second season. Hurrah! Here's the announcement. I'd like to have said that I had no doubts it would be renewed given the outstanding quality of the whole series, however the entire ratings driven cutthroat American tv business seems a bit alien to me and I wasn't exactly sure what would happen. Over here in the UK it's still ratings driven (I guess) but seeing as the BBC is paid for by me (and any other tv owners) through the TV licencse tax we have come to expect a bit more risk taking. (Although some people would probably debate that). Anyway, I'm happy.
What else? Some links (mainly via BoingBoing)...
Tobias S. Buckell Online: How Much Does a Science Fiction or Fantasy Writer Make? A survey of sf writers earnings.
Analog's The Science Behind the Story "The Science Behind the Story" is a new forum in which we invite writers to show off some of that "behind-the-scenes" work.
Reason: Neal Stephenson’s Past, Present, and Future. The author of the widely praised Baroque Cycle on science, markets, and post-9/11 America
Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs" to become TV series. Oh no!
Star Wars Custom Window Coverings by 3 Day Blinds. Get some blinds with your favourite Star Wars poster printed on them
Some new Revenge Of The Sith pictures. Woohoo! [Via SFSignal]
This years Nebula nominations online
The new Doctor Who will have a remixed theme tune.... cue derderderder-derderderder-derderderder-derderderder-weeoooo-weeeelaoooooo etc.
I'm two thirds of the way through the awesome River of Gods, yet Ian McDonald had doubts "I sent it to my editor still undecided if it was the best thing I'd ever done or a pile of s--t"
Just back from a weeks skiing holiday. I hope everyone around here had a nice week.
So do you think we'll e seeing this image a lot then?
A big list of free fiction on the web. But no RSS feed that I could find, so I probably will never look at it again :-(
I probably should say something about Enterprise being cancelled, but I can't be bothered. I only watched a few episodes and quite frankly I thought it was rubbish.
Nice.
Wired has a list of The 10 visual effects wizards who rule Hollywood. Many of whom have ILM connections.
Some people have started playing LightCycles ala Tron with GPS in real life.
I always wanted to own a LightCycle.
The shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke award is out.
River of Gods - Ian McDonald
Iron Council - China Miéville
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Market Forces - Richard Morgan
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
The System of the World - Neal Stephenson
The Award is chosen by jury and is awarded every year to the best science fiction novel which received its first British publication during the previous calendar year.
This years judges are...
BSFA: Carol Ann Kerry Green, Mark Greener
SFF: Mark Bould, Justina Robson
Science Museum: Dave Palmer
Chair: Paul Kincaid
As usual I haven't read any of them (except the superb River of Gods which I'm a third through)
Even if you have no spare time to do nerdy, random stuff, someone on the internet always does. 'Revenge of the Sith' Opening Crawl Wallpaper
Hurrah for the interweb!
Now this is what I like to see.
