When I read today about the discovery of a giant asteroid impact crater in Antarctica my immediate amused thought was that they had discovered the Plateau of Leng. Everybody in the world has read At The Mountain of Madness, right? (If not, what’s your excuse? The story is online. Besides, if you haven’t read it then how are you supposed… Read more →
Category: Books
Poker Of The Beast vs Mysterious Readings
vs. So, you all realize tomorrow is 06-6-6, right? Hence, my normal Tuesday night poker game shall be transformed into the Poker Of The Beast. I’ll have to come up with a new game for the “crazy games” time at the end of the nightWe normally enforce a strict “no goofy games” rule for the first several hours: we normally… Read more →
Comics in Halifax
It’s been a big week in comic book news here in Halifax. First there was last week’s release of the third volume of Scott Pilgrim (by current Halifax resident & HGPA member Bryan Lee O’Malley). This was a big enough deal get coverage in a national paper (see a scan here). If you believe what you read on the Internets:… Read more →
Things that are pissing me off today
Well, Heather Reisman, the CEO of Canada’s nigh monopolistic corporate bookstore chain is marking up our country with her censor’s marker again. You might remember that in the past she’s banned such things as Mein Kampf (although, amusingly, not the “sequel“), books by famous whack-job David Icke, and gun magazines. None of them things I have any interest in reading,… Read more →
Elemental
Here’s how the contributor list reads to me: Brian ALDISS * Jacqueline CAREY * Arthur C. CLARKE * William C. DIETZ * David DRAKE * Lynn FLEWELLING * Esther M. FRIESNER * David “Where’s my damn Chtorr book” GERROLD * Joe HALDEMAN * Brian HERBERT & Kevin J. ANDERSON * Nina Kiriki HOFFMAN * Tim LEBBON * Kinley MacGREGOR (Sherrilyn… Read more →
Up late with Lenny
So, while I was out buying a new office chairTrish has reclaimed her office chair for her new PhD workstation, so I needed a replacement for my book-wrapping table. Don’t ask. today I happened to hear Shelagh interviewing Leonard Cohen, mostly about his new book. (You can actually hear the interview if you can deal with Real streams. It’s worth… Read more →
A bookish Sunday Miscellany
I’m not sure why, but for some reason book reviews written by authors whose work I like tend to carry more weight with me than reviews by almost anyone else. This is why I pay special attention to things like Paul Witcover‘s reviews at Realms of Fantasy and Sci Fi Weekly, or Norman Spinrad‘s review/essays in Asimov’s, etc. I was… Read more →
Recommended Reading (??): Lost Girls
Well, it looks like Lost Girls is finally going to be a published reality. As you could imagine, if you know me IRL, or if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m kind of a big ole’ drooling Alan Moore fanboy, so a new 240 pages graphic novel from him is a cause for some celebtration–especially… Read more →
…they all have a way of beginning in Lankhmar.
So, did you see that Dark Horse is planning to reprint the Lanhkmar books? And reprint the old Epic comic adaptations? And that they have the movie license? And that they’re going to do some comic adaptations? You can see how this came about: First, they are having a (surprising) success with the Conan comics, and they are actively searching… Read more →
Recommended Reading: Man Walks Into A Pub
Well, this will be a dramatically different kind of book recommendation from the last one. (Although I guess there is a tenuous sequitor, since Jeff Ford has been known to enjoy a beer.) I also wanted to take a moment to recommend to everyone the book that is currently my downstairs bathroom book: Pete Brown’s Man Walks Into A Pub:… Read more →
Recommended Reading: Empire Of Ice Cream
A lovely large box of books arrived on Friday, and amongst them was one I was terribly anxious for: The Empire of Ice Cream, the new short story collection by Jeffrey Ford. It might be a bit early, but I think I’m prepared to make the call that this will be the short story collection of the year.At some point… Read more →
Science Fiction Authors Say Smart Things: Sean Stewart
From the introductory page at Sean’s website: Art is fundamentally embarrassing. It requires you to expose how you truly feel. It demands that you admit the things that make you laugh and cry, that scare you or turn you on. And when you do that, there will always be people to tell you you’re sentimental, or perverse, or over-intellectual, or… Read more →
Adaptations
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of adaptations, in particular adapations to film, but also to other media. Partly this was brought on by my reflections on Wodehouse and how first person works necessarily lose something in the translation to filmI’ll probably, at some point, write up my thoughts on how the ideal medium for Jeeves &… Read more →
Living “Up” To Stereotypes
So, some concerned parents in Gwinnett County, Georgia are try to get Harry Potter taken out of school libraries. Sigh. It’s like they really want us to think of it as Jesusland…. Laura Mallory of Loganville filed an appeal last week to get the best-selling book series out of the schools’ media centers. She is an evangelical Christian who has… Read more →
Jealousy
Man am I jealous of Walter Jon Williams–not only is he a great writer, but he has one of those adventurous lives that I always wish I was living… But I’ve seen a lot more than a solar eclipse. I’ve seen the Dervishes whirl. I’ve flown in a balloon over the lunar landscape of Cappadocia. I’ve seen Our Lady of… Read more →
