Harriet Klausner reviewed Quicksilver and gave it 5 stars. I know, how improbable is that. She never likes any book. Oh wait, that's John and Scott recommended books. Sorry.

Anyhow, I'll be picking this up in anticipation of the Austin trip and booksigning! Woo hoo!

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Posted by JP Frantz at Monday September 29, 2003 at 4:22 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

The Technovelgy site has a database of which SF authors invented which technology in which novel.

For example, there is the Time Dingbat, Diabological Armory and the Butcher Plant (A plant that grows steaks). Mmmm...steaks...

That's gotta be better than a pickle plant!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday September 28, 2003 at 11:38 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

So, I'm out trolling for newsfeeds and I see that one is syndicated by...Will Wheaton. Finally an answer to the question "Is there a way I can be notified about the goings-on in Wil Wheaton's life just seconds after they happen?"

One of his entries refers to an interview he gave to Millionaire Playboy. I know I shouldn't have, but I think I actually found the article to be entertaining.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday September 26, 2003 at 8:49 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

Straight out of Minority Report comes this article: 'Electronic paper' has potential to show movies

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday September 25, 2003 at 9:50 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

This article, The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002, is from...the SF Book Club. Oddly, they do not list the criteria by which selections were chosen. There is one title, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, that I've never heard of.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday September 25, 2003 at 8:13 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

See the Locus article entitled Singing the Body Electric.

And the scary part is, I actually own a copy of Edgar Winter's Mission Earth CD. Yikes!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday September 23, 2003 at 9:52 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

From rec.arts.sf.written Frequently Asked Questions

Pronunciation of Cherryh
C. J. Cherryh's original last name was Cherry. The terminal H is
silent. The H was added because her first editor thought that Cherry
sounded too much like a romance writer. Her brother, artist David
Cherry, retains the original spelling.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday September 22, 2003 at 12:05 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: A well written, humorous, action-packed story, if you ignore the parts dealing with the whole Sumerian legend stuff.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Near-future, sword-wielding pizza deliveryman/hacker tracks down the people who infected his friend with the ?snow-crash? virus.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Vivid writing; successful blend of science fiction and humor; cool vision of the near future; a quick read.
CONS: A bit heavy on the Sumerian mythology.
BOTTOM LINE: A fun, well-written read with some great action sequences.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday September 21, 2003 at 2:04 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

John posted this link earlier that lists the upcoming mid-season SF shows. Its part of SciFi Weekly's two part SF TV Preview. There's a lot of stuff here. I didn't realize how much SF is on TV, or how much of it is crap. Let's take a trip through the upcoming season and see what's what.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Thursday September 18, 2003 at 2:06 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

My sci if that is.

Check out Science Fiction Stories with Good Astronomy & Physics

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday September 16, 2003 at 11:17 PM
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...but I gotta say that in Episode III, Anakin is looking much less like he lives on Dawson's Creek. However, he is looking way more like an 80's rock star.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday September 16, 2003 at 9:40 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Science Fiction Weekly lists some interesting (but unscheduled) mid-season replacements for the upcoming fall TV season including:

GameSpy reviews Greyhawk Adventures: The Temple of Elemental Evil. Looks like it's a good game, but no multiplayer? Oh, maybe this will sway Kevin et al. to purchase the new 3.5 rulebooks!

Not....

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday September 16, 2003 at 4:12 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

SFRevu takes a shot at defining "space opera" as a genre, in Space Opera Redefined.
Looking at the list of the contemporary space opera books, I'd have to say that, IMO, those books are the ones I consider SF first, and space opera second, if at all. I'm not sure I'd classify The Book of the New Sun as opera. To me, space opera takes place in, well, space, and has characters flying around in space ships blasting the hell out of each other. Night's Dawn Trilogy anyone? In other words, action uber alle, story secondary, good characters and/or lack of SF cliches last. Of course, Night's Dawn is a heckuva series and very enjoyable. Even with the ending....

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Posted by JP Frantz at Monday September 15, 2003 at 12:53 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

So my Friday movie pick for the 4Q outing was Matrix reloaded. After hearing so-so reactions from others, I was expecting a so-so movie. But I gotta tell ya', I was loving it! It had cool SciFi elements and action to boot. The special effects were just pretty to watch. I was really enjoying it.

That is, until the projector broke with 20-30 minutes to go. I guess that's what you get for a buck fifty. Oh, wanna see the whole movie, that'll be eight dollars please. Bummer.

Golden Boy I am not.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday September 12, 2003 at 9:53 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Ain't It Cool News has a rumor that everyone's favorite penguin will be coming back for a weekly comic strip, starting in November, and in a movie. That's right, Berkeley Breathed will be bringing Opus, at least, back to life! Woo hoo! I wasn't a huge fan of Outland, but anything is better than the crap on the comics page now. Bill Watterson, are you listening?

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Posted by JP Frantz at Friday September 12, 2003 at 5:43 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

S2 Games | Savage: The Battle for Newerth is a new computer game I just discovered at Gamespot. It looks to be a blend between an RTS and FPS. And, I think, its multiplayer only. Now the cool part is, each side has one guy, the commander, who is in the RTS mode and commands everyone else, in FPS, to go off and do things. Your side gets points for accomplishing tasks and the commander can then allocate those points to the people under him. These points can be spent on armor, weapons or other stuff, like to ability to command other units. Sounds interesting and the very least. And, it looks really good too. And and and, its only $40. And! you can download it over the web and get a CD key as well. A practice more companies should go to as broadband access becomes more prevalent.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Friday September 12, 2003 at 2:39 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a novel by Cory Doctorow. I've heard good things about it and I put it on my Amazon Wish List.

Today I saw that Doctorow has made this novel, and his short story collection, available for free download! And, as if that isn't cool enough, Docotorow is also a blogger. Check out his site at BoingBoing.NET.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Thursday September 11, 2003 at 2:01 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Its that time again, my weekly (or thereabouts) roundup of Anime that I've watched. This time, I have only two that I've seen. I blame Stacy for not giving me more stuff to watch.
On with the show!

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Posted by JP Frantz at Thursday September 11, 2003 at 9:53 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

From Locus Mag:

Austin, Bookpeople (603 North Lamar)
Wed 1 Oct 2003, 7 p.m.: Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver) reads and signs

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday September 10, 2003 at 7:41 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

This site offers bibliographies and series sequences of SF and fantasy authors

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday September 09, 2003 at 10:24 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

As you can see, we've redesigned the site somewhat. Mostly, just the main page so far. We'll be working on the comments and such today as well. This will, hopefully, remove the rendering bug under IE 6 and the site will display properly. Or, rather, IE will display it properly. The site was coded correctly. :)

Comments and feedback appreciated.

The Management

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Posted by JP Frantz at Sunday September 07, 2003 at 2:31 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: Stories ranging from boring to excellent
MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Collection of ten war-themed short stories.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Some stories were hugely entertaining.
CONS: Some stories weren?t.
BOTTOM LINE: A good selection of future war stories

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday September 07, 2003 at 1:16 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

Enter the Matrix. And bring your ping pong paddle.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday September 06, 2003 at 1:38 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

Twiki from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday September 05, 2003 at 11:54 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Ever wondered where you'll end up in the afterlife? Well look no further! Dante's Inferno Test will tell you where you'll end up and why! Fun at parties!

And if you don't like the result, why Design Your own Hell!

Here's my very own:

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Posted by JP Frantz at Friday September 05, 2003 at 8:08 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

The Heinlein Society announces that a new book by Heilein is now available to purchase on Amazon. Its good to know that this is an early book and, therefore, won't be as woo woo as his later books. And, Heinlein now publishes from beyond the grave, just like Hubbard!

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Posted by JP Frantz at Friday September 05, 2003 at 2:03 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Ceres Storm is David Herter's foray into Space Opera style SF. As I really enjoyed Herter's first novel, Evening's Empire, I was looking forward to reading this book. Despite the negative reviews, the story sounds interesting.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Friday September 05, 2003 at 12:26 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

From scifiweekly:

An Arkansas mother was arrested after her 3-year-old daughter died sweltering in a closed car while her mother played EverQuest, police told the northwest Arkansas Morning News. Mary Christina Cordell, 36, faces a felony charge of manslaughter in the death of her daughter, Brianna Cordell, of Springdale, Ark., police spokesman Brian Simmons told the newspaper.
Cordell?who goes by her middle name, Christina?was being held in the Washington County jail on Aug. 25 awaiting a bond hearing, the newspaper reported. If convicted, she faces three to 10 years in prison and a fine up of to $10,000.
Authorities said Cordell and her boyfriend, Eric Long, 21, may have been so fixated with the online role-playing game EverQuest that she neglected to pay adequate attention to Brianna's whereabouts on Aug. 8, the day the child died, the newspaper reported. Brianna was found dead in the front seat of her mother's car at about 3:30 p.m. in the parking lot of their apartment complex.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday September 04, 2003 at 10:22 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

Stumbled on this website.

So, when is something deemed original? It seems that, given enough generalization, everything can be made to look like a very small set of original ideas. Someone (Garly, I think) once told me that he learned in writing class that all stories fall into 7 (or thereabouts) basic plots. One example is "fish out of water" (think Crocodile Dundee, or better yet, don't).

A brief survey of the web shows many sites devoted to the basic plot list, all with varying counts (See here and here)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday September 04, 2003 at 12:12 AM
© 2003 SF Signal

Kubrick 2001 is a Flash web site that purportes to explain what 2001 is all about. Its an interesting use of Flash anyway, even if I'm not sure I entirely agree with the interpretation of the movie....

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday September 03, 2003 at 9:32 PM
© 2003 SF Signal

Alrighty, its time once more for my impressions of the anime I have watched this past week.
I've only 3 this time as it was a slow week. I've been busy with other things. Sue me.

First up, Blood: The Last Vampire. This one certainly lives up to its name. Its got lots of blood (although not Ninja Scroll quantities) and its got vampires. Set on a USAF Base in Japan in 1966, the story is of Saya, and her mission to destroy the last remaining vampires.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday September 02, 2003 at 10:49 PM
© 2003 SF Signal