And no, they don’t use John’s method of no creases in the spine, or creases if the book is a quarter or less. The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America is a cool site to begin with, and they have a section on collecting books. Book collecting would be a hobby that I could sink a lot of money in if I let it. All I have to do to fight the urge is to remember John and his daily trips to the HPB stores in the area. And sometimes in other cities…..

Not that John trolls Star Wars sites, which is why I can’t figure out how he missed these pictures of Episode III concept art. The Annikin photo looks kinda nasty while the rest or kinda cool. Especially the circular battle thingy.

SCiFi.COM has posted the transcript of their chat with Ron Moore concerning Battlestar Galactica getting the go ahead as a limited series. Some interesting things in here.

For instance:

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This year’s inductees, as noted by the SFWA, are:

• Brian Aldiss
• Harry Harrison
• Mary Shelley (posthumous)
• E. E. “Doc” Smith (posthumous)

After this year the Science Fiction & Fantasy Hall of Fame drops the “fantasy” moniker and gets incorporated into the Experience Science Fiction Museum.

Beta test Ground Control 2 – GC1 was pretty good and here is your shot… And if you need the direct link…

Will email of the future have a caller-ID-like authenticating the mail’s sender? Will this truly stop spam? So says Billy G. is this CNN article.

A blast from the old laser gun to Gravity Lens for the link.

Monty Python MtG Cards is a great site for those Monty Python and Magic: The Gathering fans. It features a complete set, playable too, of Monty Python themed Magic cards. Very funny!

This year’s recipient of the SFWA ‘s Grand Master Award is Robert Silverberg. With an impressive body of work, he’s in good company.

Now get Tivo-like functionality for radio.Replay Radio – Internet Radio Recorder is a piece of software that lets use schedule and recorde internet radio broadcasts. You can save in a variety of formats and it will, if you want, automatically burn a CD for you to listen to in the car. You can also x-fer the files to an iPaq or iPod to listen as well.

The other piece of the puzzle is Radio Wizard. This software lets you do all the immediate time-shifting functions. Pause, rewind, etc. Used in conjunction with Replay Radio and you’re close to a Tivo for radio.

One big downside is that this is for internet broadcasts only, so if your favorite station or show isn’t on the net, you can’t record it. Second, I’m not sure how well these two pieces integrate. I’m looking for a piece of hardware, preferably with a large hard drive in it, that I can hook into my stereo or car radio, that lets me record and shift over the air radio. That would be cool. Make it portable so you can take it with you and listen else where, and allow people to upload their files to their PCs for burning to CDs. Heck, do that for Tivo as well….

As seen on Slashdot Appleseed is getting a remake (I know I posted a trailer up about a month ago), but the real news is that there is a Ghost in the Shell sequel coming too. All sorts of anime crunchy goodness here..

The Onion A.V. Club has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke. In it, Clarke talks about a variety of subjects from his long and distinguished career.

Is it just me, or does Clarke always seem to come across as trying to come up with some new and cool, catchy phrase? The article shows he’s still riding the “indistinguishable from magic” quote. Oh, sorry…that would be “magick”. Also, he’s seen quoting some professional or other every other sentence yet cannot remember a “collaboration” with Stephen Baxter (Time’s Eye). I say “collaboration” because a coworker swears that anything written in collaboration with Clarke is written by the other guy and Clarke just gets a paycheck for having his name on the cover.

I found this link to a new Japanese movie called CASSHERN. Check out the trailer. The movie has a definite Terry Gilliam feel to it with some David Lynch’s Dune look as well. It looks really cool. What’s it about? I dunno. But it has robots and really cool looking helicopter/Osprey-like flying machines. Of course, trailers are made to show a movie in the best possible light…

Update: My brother watched the trailer and was able to ascertain the following: “it seems to be about cloning, megacorporations, and of course the obligatory swordplay”. He can’t read Kanji so the web site itself is right out.

The main mail account here for SFSignal received an interesting piece of mail from TechTV today. Seems Anime Unleashed will be showing Last Exile! Cool. Here’s your chance to set your Tivo’s and watch it.

I’m actually interested in how/why TechTV decided to email us? Good news though!

The Rocket Company is an online seriel novel about the development of a reuseable launch vehicle. Its basically near future SF, heavy on the S, not so much SF. I haven’t read too much, but the ship looks sweet.

And lest we forget the cool things we could have, aside from Project Orion:

The Liberty Ship.

The Klausner-lovers over at Amazon have posted an excerpt from George R. R. Martin’s upcoming A Feast for Crows. Harriet read it in 0.02 seconds. Then she gave it 5 stars.

A CNN article talks about some goofy scholarships that are out there, including one for speaking Klingonese (or whatever it is that geeks call it). From the article:

Meanwhile, linguaphiles (and Star Trek fans) can make their passion pay off by entering the Klingon Language Institute’s $500 scholarship contest. Designed to “recognize and encourage scholarship in fields of language” the prize is awarded to one graduate and one undergraduate student majoring in languages, though familiarity with Klingon isn’t a requirement to win.

Now if only they had one for children of geeks who run geek blogs.

There is an auction on eBay right now, for an account on Star Wars Galaxies where the character is a Jedi Knight. The asking price? $600 smakers to start, with a buy right now of $3K! Wow! Who’s going to pay that much? SWG isn’t as populous as it once was, and I don’t think anyone would pay that amount for an account. Especially considering it would literally take years for someone to buy their own account and play before they reached $3K. I’d bet they would make a Jedi too. Just rediculous…

From the “People with Waaaay to Much Time on Their Hands” department, comes Memory Alpha, a site dedicated to all minutia Star Trek related. Its an impressive site chock full o’ Star Trek stuff. I don’t know whether I should be scared or not. On the plus side, its probably one of the best organized and easy to use Wiki sites I’ve seen. Not that I troll Wiki sites…. And just for the record, the Quicksilver MetaWeb site is a Wiki…

SciFi has a chat tomorrow night with, among others, Tim Powers. The topic will be Pirate stories, matey, arrrrrrrgh. Powers is one of the author’s on my short list of guys to read whenever they publish a new book, and I just recently finished re-reading his lose trilogy of Last Call, Expiration Date, and Earthquake Weather. Good stuff. I have read his pirate story, On Stranger Tides, and I remember being just ‘meh’ over it. I’ll have to re-read that one now…

An ABC News article talks about how robots and artificial constructs are becoming more humanlike and what that impact may be.

The second edition of The Internet Review of Science Fiction has been posted. Here’s the table of contents:

• Editorial – Television News and the Tyranny of Small Minds
• Feature – The Fan Fiction FAQ
• Sub-Genre Spotlight – Mars Science Fiction
• Criticism – Wandering in Bellona
• Essay – Mars and the Scientific Revolutions
• Essay – The Long, Weird Road to Fandom
• Review – Storyteller
• Review – Short Fiction from January & February

I just finished watching Geneshaft as part of my quest to watch more anime. My initial thought is, I’m glad there was only 12 episodes. It’s not that Geneshadft was bad, but it wasn’t too good, certainly not up to the same standards as Last Exile or Serial Experiments Lain (although for Kevin, that might be a good thing!).

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For John, and possibly Fred, in his(their?) quest to read a short story a day or so. Asimov’s Science Fiction has the complete text of the 7 stories that ran in their magazin that are up for a Nebula Award. How cool is that? And I don’t recall seeing these stories as being chock full of sex, drugs or molestations. Then again, my Asimov’s didn’t come in the mail in a brown wrapper…

The Nebula-nominated novella Breathmoss by Ian R. Macleod is available online for your perusal.

I just read it as part of the sf anthology The Year’s Best Science Fiction #20. I don’t know what it is about me and critically acclaimed sf (like Little, Big and The Left Hand of Darkness), but we just don’t get along. I did not enjoy Breathmoss at all…

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To increase our overall post count, I have taken it upon myself to post some links.

I found a link to a new Cthulu PC game. The website just launched today and I don’t have many details.

Also, the new Freedom Force game/expansion thing has some new screenshots on AVault. Also, PC.IGN has a Q & A with them about this game too. I really really like Freedom Force – its one of the less sucky superhero games out today. And I hope the sequel turns out to be just as enjoyable…