• BBC Newsround has a first look at the film adaptation of Philip Pullman’s A Golden Compass. [via Empire Online]
• OnOurTv points us to the Heroes comic, based on the TV show.
• The blog Dark But Shining interviews Joe R. Lansdale.
• Bryan Singer will direct and produce a sequel to Superman Returns expected to be in theaters in the Summer of 2009.
• Rich Horton has sold a new reprint anthology series, Space Opera, to Wildside Press for a late 2007 release. [via Sean Wallace]
• Jeffrey Carver offers advice on writing a media tie-in novel.
• Solar Flare presents The Greatest Show In The Galaxy #5.
• Count Pulpula (Emerson LaSalle) responds to Amazon reviewers.
• Last-minute Halloween costume suggestion: Zoidberg!

Boo!

It’s Halloween! Everyone has their own list of scary movies. (Or movie charcters, or horror villains, or scenes, or…)

What do you think are the scariest movies?

For me, it’d be The Exorcist, The Evil Dead and The Omen (original). I saw all of these when I was an impressionable, young whippersnapper. (As opposed to the stubborn old codger I am today.) These are the movies that I’d remember when I was home alone and the house would start making noises I never heard before. The bed moved! Was that the sound of a amputated hand crawling up the wall? Is that Damien in the attic?

I was never much scared by slasher horror flicks. I always found them to be amusing when I was younger; the bloodier, the better. My all-time favorite movie-going experience is still A Nightmare on Elm Street because the audience was so into it.

• New/Updated at Gutenberg: Key Out of Time by Andre Norton.
• The blog Spinning has posted a series of brief, as-I-read-it posts examining Anthony Burgess’ book A Clockwork Orange covering theme, society, voice and language, human nature and of media, social significance, government control, the American finale, the European finale and one more thought on structure.
• More from the Feminist blog: Dissecting Orson Scott Card, part 4
• Neth Space interviews Sean Williams, author of The Crooked Letter and the newly released sequel The Blood Debt.
• FYI: Diane Duane’s blog has ben added to the list of sf/f authors who blog.

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION
Which of the following is the coolest setting in sf literature?

RESULTS

This week’s poll sparked a few comments….

“Where the heck is Robert Heinlein? Starship Troopers? Future History? Have Spacesuit will Travel? Hello?” – Cory

“I’d have listed Peter Hamilton’s Commonwealth (Pandora Planet [I think Tim means Pandora's Star - Ed.] – Judas Unchained) rather than Night’s Dawn. The setting of Night’s Dawn (which I’m just starting to re-read, by the way) is damn cool, but, comn on! Railroads to the stars! Who could resist that?” – Tim M.

Please note that those responsible have been sacked, along with the bozo who gave voters an “out” by providing the choice of “Other”. [Looks up and to the left.]

Be sure to vote in this week’s poll on the coolest setting in sf TV and film!

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The story of what really happened at Roswell takes a turn as the aliens who crashed there return to Earth once more. This time 2 creatures live – one who proves friendly to man and professes a desire to help, and one whose goal is total elimination of life from the planet..

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Good overall UFO story, strong depiction of the US military and its future enhancements

CONS: Some ideas a little difficult to buy – the Roswell rehash can be tough to get through, and there are parts too similar to the campy film Tremors.

BOTTOM LINE: Fans of UFO fiction will find this a great read, and fans of military fiction won’t be disappointed either.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about the genre of creative works known as science fiction and its place relative to the total body of creative work and I feel the need to weigh in with my opinion. The recent discussion about literary sci-fi only made this more interesting to me.

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• SciFi Wire profiles Ben Bova and his new book The Green Trap.
• Sean Wallace is previewing the covers for the audio editions of The Dark Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, Volume 1 and Volume 2.
• About lists Top 10 Actually Scary Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movies for Halloween.
• The article Devotion, Expertise Help Genre Bookstores Battle Big Chains features Alan Beatts (see his SF Signal interview) of Borderland Bookstore.
• Feminist SF blog continues Dissecting Orson Scott Card with part 2 and part 3.
• More YouTube: 90 minutes of UCSD Alumni Science Fiction Authors David Brin, Gregory Benford, Nancy Holder, Kim Stanley Robinson and Vernor Vinger Vinge discuss why UCSD has cultivated more science fiction writers than any other university of our time. [via Brin]

I stumbled upon this Panopticist post of Robby Benson’s Star Wars audition (he reads for the part of Luke along with a mostly off-camera Harrison Ford). This led me to the YouTube profile of its source, Ghyslain. (Not the Star-Wars-Kid Ghyslain, although that would somehow be poetic, wouldn’t it?) Gyslain has collected a series of Star Wars audition videos.

His notes say there is 90 minutes of footage that features folks like Kurt Russell, William Katt, Fredric Forrest, Andrew Stevens, Charles Martin Smith, Amy Irving, and several others. So far you can see: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Lisa Eilbacher (from Beverly Hills Cop reading for Princess Leia). Here’s another one with someone reading for Leia I don’t recognize and does not identify herself in the video.

A post about Star Wars auditions wouldn’t be complete without including this Saturday Night Live skit (which we’ve posted before) showing Christopher Walken (awesomely impersonated by Kevin Spacey) reading for Han Solo, Richard Dreyfuss (Daryl Hammond) reading for C3PO and Walter Matthau (Spacey again) reading for Obi Wan. What we didn’t post about before was another SNL skit in the series shows Burt Reynolds (played by Morm McDonald) trying out for Darth Vader, Barbara Streisand (Ana Gasteyer) reading for Princess Leia and Jack Lemmon (Spacey again) as Chewbacca.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Anthology of ten stories with a supernatural element that originally appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: 6 stories good or better; two of them standouts.

CONS: 4 stories mediocre or worse. One story (“DikDuk”) is incomplete, but is fortunately available online.

BOTTOM LINE: A decent collection of stories with a supernatural element.

I’ve been collecting the books in the Isaac Asimov… anthology series for years and haven’t read them. (Insert biblioholism admission here. Treat self to new book for the courage to do so.) With Halloween just around the corner, I figured if I wasn’t going to read Isaac Asimov’s Halloween around this time of year, I never would. So I did.

The title Isaac Asimov’s Halloween may be misleading for those who don’t read the fine print. This anthology, like others in the series, collects stories that were originally printed in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. The “Halloween” in the title does not imply stories of the horror genre; Asimov’s is a science fiction and fantasy outlet, after all. But the stories do contain some element of the supernatural and/or inhuman (read: Cthulhu).

Overall, it was a decent collection. As usual in anthologies, stories vary in quality. There were two standout stories in the ten provided: the creepy “He-We-Await” by Howard Waldrop and the humorous “The Shunned Trailer” by Esther M. Friesner.

Reviewlettes of the stories follow.

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• Marvel offers a bunch of free digital comics. (Free registration is required to see the full issues.) [via Tyrant of the Seven Seas]
• SciFi Weekly interviews Terry Gilliam.
• The Feminist SF Blog is Dissecting Orson Scott Card.
• Friday YouTube: Award-winning sci-fi author David Brin speaks to the festival’s attendees during the Planetary Society’s Gene Roddenberry Tribute at Planetfest ’97.
• Why didn’t I think of that? A Cthulhu license plate! [via pharyngula]
• Real science from NASA: Uranus Has a Dark Spot. [Giggles uncontrollably.]
• NYT article: In Galactica, It’s Politics as Usual. Or Is It? DeepGenre responds.
• Michael A. Burstein, SF author and President of The Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet, will be interviewed about Pluto live (Sunday, October 29th at 11AM EST) on the EZHelp, You and More Internet Radio Show.

Another thought-provoking read from The Movie Blog’s John Campea – Lord Of The Rings – Why Fantasy Failed To Make A Resurgence – in which he says that Lord of the Rings: Return of the King made it more difficult for fantasy films to be produced. A sampling:

Many people suggested that the massive success of ROTK would OPEN THE DOOR to the fantasy genre for studios. Seems to make sense right? The problem for fantasy, is that ROTK was a little TOO SUCCESSFUL. ROTK didn’t swing the door open for fantasy…it slammed the door shut.

He does note the success of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (writing it off as fairy tale instead of fantasy) and the upcoming Eragon which he notes that people are already dismissing it as a LOTR knock-off based on conjecture.

Surely the Harry Potter films could be added to that list of successful fantasy films. As for Eragon, I’ve read it and while I thought it was a very entertaining book, it clearly uses the same plot outline as LOTR, and even Star Wars (as noted in the review).

• ChapterFeeds has posted Chapter 1 of The Baby Merchant by Kit Reed.
• S.M. Stirling’s latest novel, The Sky People, posits an alternate history in which Mars and Venus are habitable planets. [at SciFi Wire]
• Andrew Wheeler lists his favorite fantasy artists art.
• Jay Tomio offers some thoughts on vanity publishing.
• Subterranean Press has posted the 15th and final chapter of Cherie Priest’s “The Wreck of the Mary Byrd“.
• More pumpkin mashups: How to build a robotic Dalek pumpkin and Making a pirate Jack-O’-Lantern.

We’re a few weeks into the fall TV season and science fiction is making an impact on the television scene. I thought I’d go ahead and spell out what I’m watching SF-wise and give you my thoughts on those shows and where I think the are, or should be, headed. I’ll go in order by day, starting on Monday night. Afterward, I’ll look at a couple of other shows that are on or will be on that are of some interest to me. Be advised that I will not be avoiding spoilers so read at your own risk.

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As I quietly sidestep the endless debate to be had on what exactly is meant by “Literary” (I leave you to use your own definition), I was wondering: What do you consider to be your favorite two or three literary science fiction novels?

I’ll start the ball rolling by citing ones that that stand out in recent memory: River of Gods by Ian McDonald, The Healer by Michael Blumlein and The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis.

I might also add that my luck with enjoying literary novels, like my track record with sf classics, is mostly hit-and-miss. (For example, my least favorite literary sf novels are 334 by Thomas Disch and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin.) As a result, I tend to gravitate to what literary snobs would call the “lower” side of the literary spectrum…at least until my mood suits me otherwise. Therefore, much to my misfortune, I have yet to read some classics that are sure to be mentioned here, like Gene Wolfe.

What about you?

The Scar Stuff blog has mp3s of an old vinyl record album made by legendary uber-fan Forrest J. Ackerman. It’s called Music For Robots. (Not to be confused with the band.)

There are two mp3s from the album actually. In the first one, Forry reminisces about robot lore with lost of juicy classic sf references. Cool stuff! The second mp3 is the advertised “music”, which really is just a lengthy series of mostly-annoying electronic beeps and stuff.

[via Boing Boing]

Wired asked a bunch of genre writers to come up with a story of exactly 6 words. Here is a sampling:

• Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer? (Eileen Gunn)
• Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. (Joss Whedon)
• Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth. (Vernor Vinge)
• We went solar; sun went nova. (Ken MacLeod)
• Don’t marry her. Buy a house. (Stephen R. Donaldson)
• TIME MACHINE REACHES FUTURE!!! …nobody there… (Harry Harrison)
• whorl. Help! I’m caught in a time (Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel)

• According to SciFi Wire, the Hellboy: Sword of Storms cartoon premiering on Cartoon Network this week is more faithful to Mike Mignola’s comics universe than the movie.
• The George R. R. Martin Podcast, Episode 4: Tales of Hollywood offers Martin talking about his experiences as a Hollywood writer.
• Subterranean Press has A Few Words with Cherie Priest, author of Wings to the Kingdom.
• Humor: Aquaman, King of the Seven Seas, has had it with you, man. [via Gravity Lens]
• SciFi Wire has a profile of John Scalzi, author of The Android’s Dream, in which Scalzi cites Elmore Leonard as inspiration for the story, as also noted by one very astute reviewer. I’m just sayin’…:)

• Tom Disch is asking “Who do you think is the greater SF genius…Van Vogt or Asimov?”
• Locus Magazine’s Gary Westfahl reviews The Prestige, the adaptation of Christopher Priest’s novel.
• UkSfBookNews.net interviews Brian J. Robb, author of Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film.
• Machina Memorialis goes to great lengths to define science fiction.
• Scott Westerfeld goes back to school to talk directly with some of his readers.
• NPR podcast: The Universal Appeal of Battlestar Galactica. (5 minutes)

REVIEW SUMMARY: More of a story with ghosts than a ghost story.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Eden Moore uses her ability of seeing dead people to solve the mystery of Old Green Eyes.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: The wonderfully somber atmosphere; the ghosts play a more active roll here than in the previous book.

CONS: The mystery is not very complex. The steady pacing is perhaps a bit too slow.

BOTTOM LINE: A fine companion for a cold, quiet night.

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Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION
Which of these robots from literature, movies and TV is your favorite?

RESULTS

Perhaps its interesting to note that robots from literature received 41.7% of the votes, movie robots received 30% of the votes and tv robots got 28.3% of the votes.

Be sure to vote in this week’s poll on the coolest setting in sf literature!

R.I.P. Jane Wyatt, who played Mr. Spock’s mother on Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and also played, more notably, the mother on Father Knows Best.

See: Wikipedia entry.

• Website at the End of the Universe points us to the Grand Comic Book Database, where you can find all comic-related info, including cover galleries.
• Cinematical lists Imaginary Movie Gadgets We Want.
• Fast Forward podcast interviews Neil Gaiman.
• The first chapter of Peter Pan in Scarlet, the new authorized sequel to J. M. Barrie’s classic children’s story, is available as a download from the Audible Free Audio RSS feed. [via SFFAudio]
• Today’s heavy reading: The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism. [via Whedonesque]
• Cory Doctorow points us to a full-cast audio adaptation of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Hear part 1 or subscribe to the DaveFilms feed.
• Rudy Rucker shows off the John Picacio cover for the Monkeybrain Books reprint of his book The Hollow Earth.
• Real Science: The Pr0n Prawn Nebula. [via Eternal Golden Braid]
• Mark Chadbourn ponders The Slow Death of Science Fiction. Lou Anders responds to this and also to Charles Stross’s recent comments.
• Here’s how to make a classic Cylon Jack-o-lantern. [via Make]
• A humorous list: The Top 10 Excerpts From the SF Writers’ Guidebook. My favorite is #8: “Seven of Nine’s neckline is inversely proportional to last week’s ratings”.

Issue #904 (October 27, 2006) of Entertainment Weekly offers some brief reviews of science fiction and fantasy books. Here’s a snippet…

Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury

For Fans of: Sherwood Anderson and Bradbury.

Lowdown: Summer draws poignancy from the half-century dividing it from Dandelion Wine, but feels like an afterthought.

Grade: B.

The Toyminator by Robert Rankin

For Fans of: Douglas Adams, Mother Goose, and masochism.

Lowdown: Some clever running gags don’t make up for the self-conscious cheekiness or witless plot.

Grade: D.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

For Fans of: Brainy first-contact tales (Carl Sagan meets Umberto Eco).

Lowdown: Bursting with pungent historical detail, and Big Theme musings, this dense, provocative novel offers big rewards to patient readers.

Grade: A-.

Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster

For Fans of: “Johnny Mnemonic” (the Gibson, not the Keanu), Blade Runner, and Monsoon Wedding.

Lowdown: Foster’s world is convincingly thought-out, but there are too many plot threads (even a man-eating tiger).

Grade: B.

As a sidebar to their review of The Prestige (which they give a B+), Entertainment Weekly lists the Top 5 Movie Magicians:

5. Merlin (Excalibur)
4. Gandalf (Lord of the Rings movies)
3. Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter movies)
2. The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)
1. Yoda (Star Wars movies)

Adding to the recent (and forever-recurring) debate of Art vs. Entertainment, SF author Chris Roberson weighs in:

I don’t spend too much time worrying about this, myself. I came to the realization early this year that what I’m writing isn’t Art, but Entertainment. There’s meaning and substance lurking beneath the surface of everything I write, though how successfully encoded or thought out is up to readers to decide, but my principle goal is to craft smart entertainment. To my way of thinking, though, a successful work can’t have one without the other.

Entertainment without substance is nothing more than empty calories: it tastes good, but doesn’t do you any good. Substance without entertainment is bitter medicine: it’s good for you, but it’s too often hard to swallow. A successful work– one that provides both entertainment and substance — is good and good for you: delicious and nutritious.

Meanwhile, The Movie Blog’s John Campea opines (yes, I said “opines”) The Lack of Art in Entertainment.

To me, “ART” is what happens what an artist uses their gifts to EXPRESS something through their particular medium. ART is when an artist has something to say, a thought to express or a feeling to emote through their talent. ART then elicits a response from us, a reaction to the message, thought or feeling it conveys. Maybe joy or anger or fear… perhaps we approve or disapprove… but either way it is what art does.

Entertainment needs no message or feeling to accomplish it’s goals. A guy prancing like he’s on a horse with another guy running behind him slapping coconut shells together to sound like galloping hoofs isn’t art… but it is entertaining (depending on who you ask). Entertainment without art has value in and of itself.

It has a movie focus and an “audiences should demand more” bent, but it’s a good read with some correspondingly good comments.

UPDATE: Charles Stross says Let’s put the future behind us.