Texas Book Festival: The Texas Comics Scene

This coming weekend, I am moderating a panel at the Texas Book Festival with four Texas comic book creators including our very own Paul Benjamin.

The Texas Comics Scene
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Time: 12:30 - 1:30
Capitol Extension Room E2.010

We've asked four of the state's hottest graphic novelists and comics creators - both writers and illustrators - to talk about their latest works and what's going on in the Texas comics scene. Come hear how Texas is influencing the comics world.

Authors:
Matthew Sturges
Terry Moore
Lea Hernandez
Paul Benjamin
Moderated By: Rick Klaw

If you've never attended a Texas Book Festival, you're missing out on a fun outing. Come check it out the wide array of authors including Sherman Alexie, Michael Connelly, Elmer Kelton, Joe R. Lansdale, Alan Cheuse and Jane Hamilton. While you are there be sure to drop the panel and say howdy.

Radio Free Albemuth movie?!?!?

This little gem comes from via David Gill and his Total Dick-Head blog:

In a sudden and exciting twist, John Alan Simon announced last night on the PKD litserv, that production had wrapped on a new cinematic adaptation of Dick's novel Radio Free Albemuth. WOW!
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Share the Zombie Love!

Joe Crowe over at Revolution SF sent me a CD he put together called "Songs in the Key of Revolution SF." It's hours of geeky fun, but the standout is this little gem from Jonathan Coulton. 'Tis the season and all, so I thought I'd pass it along to you. Enjoy!

So proud to be a Texan...

State report says Texas has too many reports

AUSTIN — The Texas State Library and Archives Commission is declaring there are too many state reports.

It says so in a 668-page report.

The project took 18 months and included the commission’s small team canvassing more than 170 agencies, and public colleges and universities, checking on all the reports they are assigned to do.

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Thanks to Bill Crider for sharing this “important” piece of news.

Norman Partridge interview and book review

Since Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest is our next book, my interview with the author and Peggy's review of the book should be of interest to y'all.

From the interview:

What made you decide to use a second person narrative in Dark Harvest? Is this a style you will continue using?

I'm sure I'll use it again someday, but it's not the kind of style that would fit every project. With DH, I really wanted readers to hear me talking from the other side of the page, the way you do when you listen to a campfire tale.

I wanted to yank them into the book and make them part of it, too. I had that intention from the first paragraph: "A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there." That was kind of the wham bam welcome to my world moment.

From Peggy's review:

I came to Norm Partridge's Dark Harvest with high hopes: I'm a big fan of his collection The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists, so I already knew he could write. But even having read him before, I wasn't prepared for how quickly this book sucked me in.

My Ecstasy Days

On October 27, I began my guest blogging stint for Jeff Vandermeer on his very popular Ecstatic Days. My tenure started with a reprint of my rarely seen 2003 Hellnotes self-interview complete with commentary and updates. My guest stint extends through November 11. I'm planning on continuing my presence here as well.

The Mist trailer

When I first read The Mist, perhaps Stephen King's finest short tale, some twenty years ago, I found it eerie and horrific. The trailer to the film version looks creepy, exciting, and therefore very promising.

Uncle Jay Explains the News

Each week Uncle Jay explains the news to kids. Ok, well the grownup kid in all of us that is able to vote and watches The Daily Show.

Here's the latest, October 22, 2007 edition



(Thanks to Bill Crider for the lead.)

Steampunk: The Anthology

On his blog, Jeff Vandermeer released a rough of the cover to his (co-edited with his wife Ann) forthcoming anthology Steampunk. Contributors include Michael Moorcock, Joe R. Lansdale, Neal Stephenson, Michael Chabon, Mary Gentle, and others. Actually one of the others happens to me. I've contributed an essay about pop culture and steampunk.

Table of contents:

• “Preface,” Jeff and Ann VanderMeer

• “Introduction: The Nineteenth Century Roots of Steampunk,” Jess Nevins

• “Steampunk in Pop Culture,” Rick Klaw

• “Steampunk in the Comics,” Bill Baker

• “Benediction: Warlord of the Air” excerpt, Michael Moorcock

• “Lord Kelvin’s Machine,” James Blaylock

• “The Giving Mouth,” Ian MacLeod

• “A Sun in the Attic,” Mary Gentle

• “The God-Clown Is Near,” Jay Lake

• “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down,” Joe Lansdale

• “The Selene Gardening Society,” Molly Brown

• “Seventy-Two Letters,” Ted Chiang

• “The Martian Agent: An Interplanetary Romance,” Michael Chabon

• “Victoria,” Paul Di Filippo

• “Reflected Light,” Rachel E. Pollack

• “Minutes of the Last Meeting,” Stepan Chapman

• “Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of the Tribes of the Pacific Coast,” Neal Stephenson

I'm jazzed about this book. Especially after seeing the cover and the people that are in the anthology. The piece I most look forward to is Jess Nevin's "The Nineteenth Century Roots of Steampunk." For the uninitiated, Jess produced the two amazing League of Extraordinary Gentleman companions (Heroes and Monsters and A Blazing World) plus the incredible The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana. Needless to say, Jess knows his stuff.

Look for the book in May, 2008.

The Stanley Kubrick Collection

Tomorrow Warner Bros. will release a box set which includes the late director's seminal science fiction and horror movies.



Great, as if I didn't have enough trouble salivating over the Ultimate Bladerunner coming out later this year...

Egan, Sterling in TR

Via Locus, Technology Review has just published new fiction by two of my favorite hard skiffy writers, Greg Egan and Bruce Sterling. (Requires registration, but it's free.)

From Greg Egan's "Steve Fever":

A few weeks after his 14th birthday, with the soybean harvest fast approaching, Lincoln began having vivid dreams of leaving the farm and heading for the city. Night after night, he pictured himself gathering supplies, trudging down to the highway, and hitching his way to Atlanta. There were problems with the way things got done in the dream, though, and each night in his sleep he struggled to resolve them. The larder would be locked, of course, so he dreamed up a side plot about collecting a stash of suitable tools for breaking in. There were sensors all along the farm's perimeter, so he dreamed about different ways of avoiding or disabling them.

From Sterling's "The Interpolation":

Yuri pulled his sons from school to watch the big robot wreck the motel. His wife had packed a tasty picnic lunch, but 11-year-old Tommy was a hard kid to please. "You said a giant robot would blow that place up," Tommy said. "No, son, I told you a robot would 'take it down,'" said Yuri. "Go shoot some pictures for your mom." Tommy swung his little camera, hopped his bamboo bike, and took off. Yuri patiently pushed his younger son's smaller bike across the sunlit tarmac. Nick, age seven, was learning to ride. His mother had dressed him for the ordeal, so Nick's head, knees, feet, fists, and elbows were all lavishly padded with brightly colored foam. Nick had the lumpy plastic look of a Japanese action figure.

Both promise to be chock full of sweet geekiness. Makes me wish I didn't have to work today.

Go read.

Shameless Plug

My latest Austin Chronicle review, Best American Fantasy, is in today's issue.

Editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer offer a wide range of tales, most of which do not appear in other "best of" collections, from publications as different as Alaska Quarterly Review, Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Georgia Review, Harrington Gay Men's Literary Quarterly, McSweeney's, New England Review, The New Yorker, Oxford American, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story. The VanderMeers chose their selections wisely.
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Take That Reviewers..

2007 Booker Prize committee chairman, Sir Howard Davies, used this week's award ceremonies to take a stab at the current state of book reviewing. He stopped short of accusing established novelists of using reviews to "scratch each others backs," but that was pretty much the underlying message.

...too many reviewers praised “every effort” by established writers while ignoring the newer talents. The latest books by Jeanette Winterson, Ben Okri and J. M. Coetzee received glowing reviews even though the works did not live up to their previous writings. “There appear to be some novels where people leave their critical faculties at home. They decide ‘so and so is a great novelist’ or ‘an up-and-coming novelist’, and give them the reverential treatment,...

His target was the UK novelists who review their peer's works - but I think it applied equally to the state of book reviewing on this side of The Pond too.

Check out this article in the London TIMES for more.

WSFA Small Press Award

Back in September, I announced that Paul Miles and I were finalists for the the Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press Award but that we didn't win. We had know idea who won or who the other finalists were. At the recent Capclave 2007, the winner was revealed as “El Regalo” by Peter S. Beagle (The Line Between, Tachyon Publications).

The complete list of finalists:

• “Ivy and Thorn”, Stephanie Burgis, Quantum Kiss
• “Moon Does Run”, Edd Vick, Electric Velocipede
• “A Penny a Word”, Rick Klaw and Paul Miles, Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard, Monkey Brain Books
• “Port Custodial Blues”, Vera Nazarian, Helix
• “Queen of Stars”, Bryn Sparks, Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest
• “Through the Cooking Glass”, Vylar Kaftan, Raven Electrick
• “Tonino and the Incubus”, Peg Robinson, Helix

Congratulations to Mr. Beagle and the rest of the finalists.

(Thanks to Science Fiction Awards Watch for the info.)

Calvin and Hobbes Creator Reviews New Charles Schulz Bio

The Grief That Made 'Peanuts' Good

By BILL WATTERSON
October 12, 2007; Page W5

SCHULZ AND PEANUTS: A BIOGRAPHY
By David Michaelis
(Harper, 655 pages, $34.95)

The comic strip "Peanuts" was more than a decade old when I started reading it as a kid in the mid-1960s. At that time, "Peanuts" was becoming a force of pop culture, with best-selling books and a newly burgeoning merchandising empire of plastic dolls, sweatshirts, calendars and television specials. The overwhelming commercial success of the strip often overshadows its artistic triumph, but throughout its 50-year run, Charles Schulz wrote and drew every panel himself, making his comic strip an extremely personal record of his thoughts. It was a model of artistic depth and integrity that left a deep impression on me. While growing up, I collected the annual "Peanuts" books and used them as a personal cartooning course, copying the drawings with the idea of someday becoming the next Charles Schulz.

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Gilded Lili Book Trailer Winner

Author Kelly DiNardo hosted a book trailer contest for her book Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique. The winning entry:



Here's a little sneak of my forthcoming Austin Chronicle review of the book:

The most popular burlesque star throughout the 1940s and 50s, St. Cyr influenced Marilyn Monroe, performed with Dean Martin, and danced well into her fifties. Author Kelly DiNardo recounts the fascinating life of “the queen of striptease” in the well-researched and superbly written Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique.

Shameless Plug

My review of Comics Gone Ape! is currently available on RevolutionSF.

As mainstays of comic book literature, apes and monkeys have appeared regularly in comics since 1939. Following the 1951 publication of the first ape cover on DC Comics' Strange Adventures #8, the comics industry realized that issues with simians on the cover sold more than those without -- a truism still evident in today's supposedly more sophisticated graphic novel market. In Comics Gone Ape!, Michael Eury lovingly explores this phenomenon and assembles a cornucopia of comic book ape knowledge for gorilla lovers.
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Horror novelist boils girlfriend's flesh

An aspiring Mexican horror novelist has been arrested after police discovered his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box.

Continued...

(Thanks to Mark London Williams for the link.)

Doris Lessing Wins Nobel!

Britain's Lessing wins Nobel for literature

By Sarah Edmonds and Niklas Pollard

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - British novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday for a body of work that looked unflinchingly at society's ills and inspired a generation of feminist writers.

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Lessing is the first writer, who actually wrote and was marketed as science fiction, to win a Nobel Prize.

Very interesting Harvey Blume interview with Lessing where they discuss her career especially her views on science fiction.

Doris Lessing:

What they didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time. I also admire the classic sort of science fiction, like Blood Music, by Greg Bear. He's a great writer.

Unlikely Movie Scientists (WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.10)

We've actually discussed this topic at several of our meetings and I know we all agree on number one!







Denise Richards, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Her character's name is bad enough: Jones, Christmas Jones. But it requires a quantum leap in logic to buy the scantily clad, blank-faced Richards as a nuclear physicist.

Check out the rest of the list!

Jeff Vandermeer's Pop Culture Report #1

The first in a new series of single-take review videos from the tireless Jeff Vandermeer.

In this installment, Jeff reviews Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, Brian Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland, Nicola Griffith’s And Now We Are Going to Have a Party (from the amazing Payseur & Schmidt), and the Star Wars Pop-Up Book.

So when does Jeff sleep?

Suddenly my new iMac seems a little less cool. . .

Check out this slightly modified PC as reported on Endgadget. I think it's fair to say that if you've got this on your desk, you've committed yourself to a certain lifestyle.

Airspeed Velocity of a Swallow

At first I was pleased when I ran across this fascinating paper that determined the answer to the penultimate geek question (the ultimate being "42"). Perhaps in comparison, I'm not that big of a geek, but then it occurred to me that the fact that I found this and thought it was way cool, makes me an even bigger geek! Ah well, nothing I didn't already know. (The reason I was looking in the first place.)

Edelman on The Bourne Paranoia

Fascinating post on David Louis Edelman's blog about the Bourne movies, which he calls "the most intelligent, well-crafted, thoughtful thrillers about American paranoia" that he's ever seen.

I just don’t believe this paranoid worldview is sustainable. And director Paul Greengrass doesn’t either. Like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart or Irving’s Headless Horseman, these things come back to haunt us. And for Greengrass, in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, that Headless Horseman is Jason Bourne.

Notice the look of fear in the eyes of the various intelligence impresarios that Bourne runs across (played ably by Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Joan Allen, and David Straitharn). Bourne isn’t just a renegade spy; he’s the twitch of conscience that you feel in the middle of the night, he’s the thing that haunts you after you’ve just violated international law in the name of the United States of America. Soil the Constitution, and Jason Bourne will get you.

(snip)

When does the American paranoia end? And who will stand up and apologize once it’s over?

Good question, Dave.

Go read.

Happy Birthday, Sputnik!

The Space Age was launched fifty years ago today. From VOA News:

Fifty years ago, on October 4, 1957, the former Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite into Earth's orbit, called Sputnik, which began a space race with the United States. While the intense competition that marked the early years of space no longer exists, experts agree Sputnik forever changed the perception of outer space and its possibilities. VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

With a diameter of 58 centimeters and weighing about 83 kilograms, Sputnik was about the size of a large, silvery pumpkin, with strange-looking antennae protruding from it.
And then there was the famous sound picked up by radio operators around the world as Sputnik orbited the earth.

A "Sputnik sound" might make a pretty cool ringtone, actually...

Shameless Plug

My review of Jeff Somers' debut novel The Electric Church appears in today's Austin Chronicle.


"Cyberpunk stereotypes abound with pop-culture jargon, computer-human interaction, near-future technology, and unsavory characters in an all-too-familiar tableau."


I read 'em, so you don't have to. Great cover, though.

Cellphone novels

Ring! Ring! Ring!
In Japan, Novelists
Find a New Medium

Budding Scribes Peck
Their Tales on Cellphones

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE
September 26, 2007; Page A1

TOKYO -- In Japan, the cellphone is stirring the nation's staid fiction market. Young amateur writers in their teens and 20s who long ago mastered the art of zapping off emails and blogs on their cellphones, find it a convenient medium in which to loose their creative energies and get their stuff onto the Internet. For readers, mostly teenage girls who use their phones for an increasingly wide range of activities, from writing group diaries to listening to music, the mobile novel, as the genre is called, is the latest form of entertainment on the go.

Most of these novels, with their simple language and skimpy scene-setting, are rather unpolished. They are almost always on familiar themes about love and friendship. But they are hugely popular, and publishers are delighted with them. Book sales in Japan fell 15% between 1996 and 2006, according to the Research Institute for Publications. Several cellphone novels have been turned into real books, selling millions of copies and topping the best-seller lists. "Love Sky," one of the biggest successes so far, is about a boy with cancer who breaks up with his girlfriend to spare her the pain of his death. It has sold more than 1.3 million copies and is being made into a movie due out in November.

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And they even have their own awards!

Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time

The method of ranking the movies by using both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB ratings created an interesting and fairly thorough list. While I have some quibbles with some of the rankings, overall it's fascinating reading.

(Thanks again to Bill Crider and his amazing Pop Culture Magazine.)