SF Signal: December 2008

(See Part 1 for 4 - 8)

But to recap, so far we have:

Futurama - "Roswell That Ends Well"

Star Trek Deep Space Nine - "Trials and Tribble-ations"

The X-Files - "Triangle"

Justice League - "Hereafter"

Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Yesterday's Enterprise"

And now, on with the countdown...

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday December 31, 2008 at 9:37 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

New Year's Eve is typically the day when we reflect on the year just passed and look forward to the year that is to come; time is on our minds. It's also a day (well, night) of countdowns, just ask Dick Clark. So what better day to countdown the best TV Time Travel episodes than today?

Time travel is a staple of science fiction, but recently it's been showing up on TV as an integral part of shows: The under-appreciated Journeyman, Life on Mars both the BBC and American version and the here then gone again Daybreak. Each uses time travel in a slightly different way, but they did/do bring time travel to the forefront for audiences. But time travel has been around for a long time on TV (think Time Tunnel so, in honor of New Year's , I'm going to countdown my top 8 time travel television episodes.

One caveat before starting: These are only the best of the episodes I've seen. I can't rightly rate those I haven't.

(Update: It seems that the original post was too long for Movable Type's liking, so it ate the last two entries. I have decided to split the original post into two parts.)

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday December 31, 2008 at 12:27 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Sean Rossall from BWR Public Relation asked us to relay the following to our readers:

JANUARY 4, 2009

Public Memorial Service for the Late "First Lady of Star Trek" Majel Barrett Roddenberry

Cast Members and Fans Come Out to Celebrate and Remember Roddenberry's Life

WHO:
Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of Gene & Majel Roddenberry and CEO of Roddenberry Productions, will host cast members, family, friends and fans to celebrate the life of his late mother. Fans are invited to come and pay their respects with the family and share their fondest memories of the late Trek icon.

WHAT:
Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry will hold a public memorial service for his late mother. Family, cast members, friends and fans will have an opportunity to remember the legendary "First Lady of Star Trek." Fans are encouraged to share their favorite memory of Majel from her numerous roles in Star Trek. Expected to attend include members of Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation and many others.

WHERE:
Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills
6300 Forest Lawn Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90068

WHEN:
Sunday, January 4, 2009
9:00 a.m. Press Check-in
10:00 a.m. Memorial to start

CONTACT:
Sean Rossall
BWR Public Relations
310.210.7586
srossall@bwr-la.com

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 31, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews and Profiles:
- The Nebula Awards website interviews Gene Wolfe (An Evil Guest): "The purely commercial writer writes for the editor. The purely artistic writer writes for himself or herself. I write for the reader."
- Blogging the Muse interviews Elizabeth Moon (The Speed of Dark).
- Walker of Worlds interviews Marianne de Pierres (The Parrish Plessis series, Dark Space, and Chaos Space).
- SciFi Wire profiles David Oppegaard (The Suicide Collectors).
- SFX interviews Sue Lange on e-publishing.

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
- Part three of the weekly web serial "Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire" is up
- Audio Fiction:
  - @Escape Pod: "Standards" by Richard K. Lyon, read by Frank Key.
  - @LibriVox: The Sea Fairies by L. Frank Baum, read by Judy Bieber.

Over at Tor.com, Irene Gallo looks at the history of illustrating Conan the Barbarian

SciFi Wire shares a bunch of Coraline featurettes.

Gabriel McKee at SF Gospel lists 14 awesome things about 2008. (Sadly, I am not one of them.)

Terry Pratchett...excuse me...that would be "Sir" Terry Pratchett has just been knighted. [via Post-Weird Thoughts via Cheryl's Mewsings]

Have a Happy New Year everyone! :)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 31, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: A great deconstruction of the superhero mythos.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A group of aging superheroes are called out of retirement when their former colleagues start turning up dead.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Excellent world-building; superior storytelling; realistic characterizations.
CONS: I could have done without the parallel fiction-within-the-fiction story of Tales of the Black Freighter. Nitpicky, I admit.
BOTTOM LINE: Totally engrossing and realistic.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 30, 2008 at 12:28 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The good folks over at Snowbooks have posted a free short story from George Mann called "The Shattered Teacup". It's subtitled "A Maurice Newbury Investigation" which means it's set in the Steampunk/Doctor/Who world of his awesome novel The Affinity Bridge.

Snowbooks has made the story available in both PDF and audio formats for your choice of reading and/or listening enjoyment. So, go forth and download and get a taste of why I'm going to name The Affinity Bridge as one of my best reads of 2008.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 30, 2008 at 12:11 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

In case you didn't know, there is a Star Trek MMO currently in development by Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes). They recently released an info sheet covering the first starship for the game, the NX-91001. I must
say it looks really sweet. In fact, their starship wallpaper I liked so much it's now in my background rotation. If the game approaches the coolness of this ship, it could be really good.

The New York Times has a nice article detailing how several shows are using 'webisodes' to bridge the time gap between fall and winter episodes. Included are Galactica and Heroes and it looks like NBC is using the web full-on in support of its shows. Too bad that isn't translating into ratings success.

NewTek once upon a time brought video FX to the masses with the Amiga-based Video Toaster. Now they are at it again, this time putting a full fledged TV studio into a $4000 box, perfect for amateur producers to make their own home made TV networks. The Tricaster sounds incredibly awesome and I can see how it could open up a whole new realm of vidcasts or even internet only TV stations made by the 'people'. Of course, most would look like cable access TV, but hey, you can't buy talent for $4k...

Way back in the mists of antiquity, a little show called Babylon 5 defied all odds and actually made it through its five year storyline. After each season, John Hudgens was commissioned to create a music videos covering the just completed episodes. Until now, the only way to see any of them was to attend various B5 cons. Until now. The Joe Store on CafePress has posted all eight videos along with two video tributes to Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs. Andreas' video is particularly moving, especially if you are familiar with his character, G'Kar. [H/T Sci-Fi Storm]

LOST-mas (Jan. 21st) is slowly approaching, but that gives ABC plenty of time to inundate us with new teaser trailers for season 5. Like this one!

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday December 30, 2008 at 12:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews & Profiles:
- Sci-Fi-London has a video interview with Neal Asher Interview (Shadow of the Scorpion).
- Enter the Octopus interviews Jeffrey Thomas (Deadstock and Blue War).
- @Bibliophile Stalker: Shaun Farrell and Sam Wynns of Adventures in SciFi Publishing.
- SciFi Wire profiles Elizabeth Bear (All the Windwracked Stars).

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
- @Feedbooks:
  - "The Curse of Yig" by H. P. Lovecraft (1929).
  - @Feedbooks: "Test Rocket!" by Jack Douglas (1959).
- @Fantasy Magazine: "Keepity Keep" by Carole Lanham.
- @Manybooks: "The Beginning" by Henry Hasse (1961).
- @Hub: "The Watchers at the Window" by Marie Faye Prior.
- Audio Fiction:
  - @Beam Me Up: "Toy Shop" by Harry Harrison, read by Paul Cole.
  - @LibriVox: Short Story Collection 035 with stories by Poe, Dunsany, and Lovecraft among the non-genre stories.

One for the writers: Odyssey SF/F Writing Workshop has a podcast of Nancy Kress talking about writing stories as a sequence of scenes.

Charles Stross tells us why SF and fantasy novels are the length they are: "If you want to bulk up an SF or fantasy novel, the easy (and lazy) way to do it is to add viewpoint characters and plot threads, small stories interleaved within the larger story that shed light on it."

Ray Bradbury has written "My Mars", the foreward for a recent issue of National Geographic that also features way-cool accompanying art by Michael Whelan. [via Futurismic]

Visions of Paradise chronicles seven waves of science fiction since H. G. Wells. James Wallace Harris wonders about the next new wave.

Charles Tan contemplates a year of Jeffrey Ford.

Joshua Palmatier (The Vacant Throne), Diana Pharaoh Francis (The Black Ship), Elizabeth Bear (Whiskey and Water), and Jim C. Hines (The Stepsister Scheme) are teaming and giving away copies of their latest book releases.

Speaking of whom, Joshua Palmatier has been added to the list of sf/f authors who blog.

Heather from The Galaxy Express is guest-blogging at Book Smugglers and presents her 2008 Retrospective: Birth of a Science Fiction Romance Community

Jesse @ SFFAudio tells us that fantasy/mystery author James Powell's latest story ("Clowntown Pyjamas") is in the February 2009 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and is set in a world where everyone is a clown.

Event update: there is a venue change for the Edgar Allan Poe 200th Birthday Celebration and reading.

Watchmen. Litigation. Delay. Sigh.

Lists:
- Science magazine names The Top 10 breakthroughs of 2008
- There's a handful of Best-of-the-Year lists (right when they should - at the end of the year - not in November. I'm looking at you, Amazon!):
  - Torque Control's Top Five Books of 2008.
  - Adventures in Reading's 9 Best Reads of 2008.
  - Bookgasm's 5 Best Sci-Fi Books of 2008.
  - @Pat's Fantasy Hotlist: 2008 Year-End Hottie Awards.
- Abe Books lists their Most Expensive Sales of Science Fiction & Fantasy Books in 2008.
- @Cracked.com: The 8 Most Misguided Sci-Fi Versions Of 2008.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 30, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: A tightly-plotted, intelligent time travel thriller.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A man travels back in time one hour and, for his own survival, must ensure that events are not changed.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Mind-bending treatment of time travel; some tense moments.
CONS: Because it deals with time loops, it's somewhat predictable at times.
BOTTOM LINE: A well-handled exploration of time loops, causality and paradox.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 29, 2008 at 1:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Here is the table of contents for the January 2009 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine:

NOVELETTES

"The Minutemen's Witch" by Charles Coleman Finlay
"Seafarer's Blood" by Albert E. Cowdrey
"Changeling" by Dean Whitlock

SHORT STORIES

"The Perfect Infestation" by Carol Emshwiller
"All in Fun" by Jerry Oltion
"The Monopoly Man" by Barry B. Longyear
"The Boy Who Sang for Others" by Michael Meddor
"An Elvish Sword of Great Antiquity" by Jim Aikin

CLASSIC REPRINT: "Rising Waters" by Patricia FerraraDEPARTMENTS

Books to Look For by Charles de Lint
Books by Chris Moriarty
Film: "Pride Goeth Before The Fall" by Kathi Maio
Coming Attractions
Curiosities by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 29, 2008 at 12:17 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Here's a list of the stuff we received this past week.

What was that I said about publishers slowing down over the holidays? :)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 29, 2008 at 12:12 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Tor's Art Director, Irene Gallo, is reporting that American pulp magazine illustrator Edd Cartier has passed away.

Cartier's work has been gracing books and magazines since 1939, including The Shadow and John W. Campbell's Astounding Stories, Doc Savage Magazine, Unknown, and Planet Stories.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday December 24, 2008 at 12:29 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

I think the jury is still out on the effectiveness of book trailers. In the meantime, I keep seeing more and more being produced.

Here are the latest two...

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 24, 2008 at 12:20 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

It's almost here! Even being forced to take off two weeks from work won't seem so bad when you see the excitement in your kids' eyes as they unwrap their gifts. That and Muppets. In this episode "Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo and the gang inadvertently misdirect three letters to Santa, so they decide to deliver them personally." Sigh, I miss Jim Henson.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday December 24, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

This holiday season, please try to remember the less fortunate...

[via The Genre Files]

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 24, 2008 at 12:11 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
- @Manybooks:
  - Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton (1960).
  - @Fantasy Magazine: "Merry Christmas" by Stephen Leacock (1914).
  - "The Jupiter Weapon" by Charles L. Fontenay (1959).
- Audio Fiction @Transmissions from Beyond: "The Last Reef" by Gareth L Powell, read by Bob Eccles.

Interviews and Profiles:
- SciFi Wire talks to Orson Scott Card about the Ender's Game sequels, film, and games.
- @The Nebula Awards: Ted Chiang.
- John Scalzi turns the Whatever mike over to Lesley Livingston, author of the young adult fantasy Wondrous Strange.

Author Edward Willett is quoted in the Winnepeg Sun on the magic behind Santa Claus.

The vivacious Heather Massey of sf/f romance site Galaxy Express is guest-blogging at Dear Author, where she talks in detail about the branding of science fiction & fantasy romance and discusses challenges and solutions. One solution: "Clearly establish SFR as a subgenre by releasing it from the paranormal umbrella...While there's crossover at times, wolves, vampires, and demons have little to do with aliens and nanotechnology." [via Lisa Paitz Spindler]

Larry at OF Blog of the Fallen offers An Outsider's Perspective of Reading Tie-in Fiction: "A well-written, well-developed tale that takes into consideration the reader's possible lack of knowledge of all the other related stories might succeed better than a fiction that is so full of references to other stories that it seems at times as though those other stories are the main overarching plot and not what is transpiring in that particular tale being read."

SciFI Wire asks: Which SF "Bubble" Shows Will Die?

I don't usually post book contract information, but SF Scope is reporting something that really piques my interest: "George Mann sold The Ghosts of Manhattan and an untitled sequel to Lou Anders at Pyr. Anders describes the book as a "steampunk superhero" tale." Suh-weet! I really enjoyed Mann's steampunk Sherlock Holmes/Doctor Who mash-up The Affinity Bridge, so the though of more steampunk from the same mind has me stoked.

How many classic SciFi televsion characters can you spot in dusty Abell's s awesome drawing of TV's Sci-Fi and Superheroes? [via Chris Roberson]

Cracked lists The 20 Most Ridiculous Batman Covers. [via Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine]

In hindsight, it's easy to see that the people who first thought of Steampunk Star Wars and the people who thought of Lego Star Wars were aiming too low. Behold: Steampunk Lego Star Wars!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 24, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

There are 3 new books in Baen's Free Library:

Earthweb by Marc Stiegler:

Someone Out There really hated humans. Twenty years ago Shiva I swept aside Earth's defenses and rained down destruction until a suicide squad boarded it and blew it to smithereens. Now Shiva V has entered the Solar System. Vastly more powerful than any of its predecessors, it has destroyed all fleets sent against it. There is only one way to defeat a Shiva: get inside and kill it. Once again, in the personae of five champions, four billion of us are about to do just that, linked and coordinated by -- The Earthweb!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 23, 2008 at 1:51 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

Indie production house Double Edge Films is producing a SF-ish movie releasing in 2009 called Ink. From the website, Ink is an allegorical tale about good and evil and those trapped in between. It involves two groups, one good, one evil, who battle over the souls of people while they dream.

It has a Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere feel to it and it has some genuinely creepy looking characters. See for yourself.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday December 23, 2008 at 12:22 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: A remarkable example of science fiction's many capabilities.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An original science fiction anthology of 14 stories by 17 authors.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: 13 stories good or better; 3 of those are outstanding.
CONS: 1 story hovering slightly above mediocre.
BOTTOM LINE: Not a bad story in the bunch.

Fast Forward 2 edited by Lou Anders is the second installment of his well-received new original science fiction anthology series. Looking at the lineup of top-notch talent contained therein, it's not hard to see why it's gained such positive praise. The author roster here contains mostly seasoned veterans, but it also includes some of the newer voices in science fiction with promising futures. And as if that weren't enough to grab your attention as a reader, then perhaps John Picacio's stunning cover art, which itself has a story to tell, will do the trick. (Some cover art is based on the book it graces. Picacio's artwork here demands to have it's story told.)

In his introduction, The Age of Accelerating Returns, Anders says, "science fiction is first and foremost entertainment and must be entertainment if it is to function effectively." Finally, concrete documentation about what should be obvious, but gets lost amidst so many discussions of capital-L-Literary merit. Anders also goes on to emphasize that it is, at the same time, much more than just entertainment and talks about the purposes of science fiction: to be predictive, preventative, inspirational, and be a forum for open-mindedness. The stories of Fast Forward 2 exhibit all these qualities, making the anthology itself a remarkable example of science fiction's capabilities. And yes, these stories do meet his preliminary requirement as well: every story in it is entertaining in some fashion.

Standout stories in this volume are:

"The Kindness of Strangers" by Nancy Kress
"Molly's Kids" by Jack McDevitt
"The Gambler" by Paolo Bacigalupi

A review of each story contained in the anthology follows...

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 23, 2008 at 12:28 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Many of you may know Alfred Hitchcock as a director of several classic movies (North By Northwest, The Birds, Vertigo) but the younger amongst you may not know he also created a half-hour TV series, much like The Twilight Zone, called Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Today we bring you "Santa Clause and the 10th Avenue Kid" where "an ex-convict department store Santa has his heart set on robbery until he meets and befriends a juvenile delinquent he hopes to reform."

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday December 23, 2008 at 12:20 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Eos is ending their "10 weeks, 10 giveaways" promotion with a bang: head on over and see how to win a complete Eos 2009 library.

Interviews & Profiles:
- SciFi Scanner interviews Battlestar Galactica's Ronald D. Moore, who says the big Cylon reveal will be before the final episode.
- Bibliophile Stalker interviews James A. Owen (The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series).

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
- @Strange Horizons: "Engines of Survival" by Larissa Kelly.
- @MindFlights: "Santa Is My Homeboy" by Rachel V. Olivier.
- Part two of the weekly web serial "Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire" is up.

There's a great conversation going on at Bowing to the Future regarding what the fantasy genre does that science fiction does not. Go forth and share your opinions!

Strange Horizons asks: Where is My Favorite Martian Hiding? "There was a time not long ago when the solar system was full of life."

At the group blog SF Novelists, author Marie Brennan (Midnight Never Come) looks at Monarchies in Fantasy: "I love my genre dearly, but I'm willing to grant that laziness and inertia are undeniable factors here; since many fantasies are set in monarchies, many fantasy writers will think of stories taking place in such settings, because that's the model in front of them." [via The Genre Files]

Jeff Carlson shares funny hate mail for writers.

Tor.com is posting The 12 Days of Zombie Christmas.

The mid-December issue of SF Site has been posted and contains at least 4 reviews of books I wish I had read.

Orbit Books has a cool Christmas card for genre fans.

At Pyr-o-Mania, Managing Editor Lou Anders gives us a sneak peek at some upcoming Pyr titles.

Ellen Datlow has posted pictures from the December 17th Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading.

SciFi Scanner sez: Move Over Arnold! Dennis Quaid Is SciFi's Favorite Action Hero. I don't know that I'd go that far...

Bored? try your hand at this Millennium Falcon Paper Craft. [via The Official Star Wars Blog]

Topless Robot names The Stupidest Lack of Tech in Sci-Fi.

Lists:
- Mike Brotherton lists 3 Simple Rules to Save Heroes. It's too late, in my opinion.
- J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings makes the Times Online list of 10 Books Not To Read Before You Die. [via MobileRead]
- io9 lists 8 Science Fiction Marathons To Get You Through The Holidays.
- The good folks over at Discover Magazine are naming The 5 Best Science Fiction Movies on Hulu.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 23, 2008 at 12:06 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The winner of the Timecrimes poster giveaway is...

Matt B. of Columbus, OH

Congratulations, Matt!

Thanks to all who participated. Be sure to try your luck at our current giveaway: Death Race on DVD!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 22, 2008 at 1:31 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

If you just can't wait till Dec. 25th, we here at the secret SF Signal treehouse/lair/corporate HQ in Houston would like to help you out. We'll be showcasing one video each day through Christmas day to help take your mind off the slow passing of time till you rip the paper off your gifts. To start with, the Psych Christmas special "Christmas Joy", in HD!

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Posted by JP Frantz at Monday December 22, 2008 at 12:25 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Here's a list of the stuff we received this past week.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 22, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews & Profiles:
- @FearZone: Nick Mamatas (You Might Sleep). [via Bibliophile Stalker]
- @Literary Kicks: Jeff VanderMeer (Fast Ships, Black Sails). [also via Bibliophile Stalker]
- At Tor.com: Douglas Cohen profiles author Clark Ashton Smith.

Free Audio Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @SteamPod: "Cold Duty" by J. Daniel Sawyer, read by Stephen Killbride. [via SFFaudio]
- @Beam Me Up: "Watching the Leaves" by Paul Cole and "Tis the Season" by Shaun Saunders.

Nick Mamatas responds to an article Dystopia and the End of Politics we linked to a few days ago.

Fantasy Book Critic's 2008 Review/2009 Preview continues with Liz Williams.

At Tor.com, Jo Walton discusses how to talk to writers.

It had to happen: John Scalzi's Whatever...baconized.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 22, 2008 at 12:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Have you been keeping up with Cartoon Network's Clone Wars? If not, you're in luck. Starting today, all 10 episodes will be streaming, for free, on Cartoon Network and at StarWars.com. New eps being on Jan. 2nd. I haven't really watched it but I know John finds it enjoyable enough. What say you?

The BBC keeps coming up with interesting genre shows. I've seen, and liked, the BBC produced Life on Mars, Primeval (ok, ITV not BBC), Hex (well, the first season anyway) and Hyperdrive. Now there's one more that I have missed: Merlin. It appears to be doing well as the BBC has ordered a second season for the show. Any of our British readers care to comment on Merlin?

If you didn't know, CBS owns the TV.com site, and they have re-designed the user interface for it. Not surprisingly, it looks a lot like Hulu. Unfortunately for CBS, TV.com is no where near as usable or intuitive as Hulu. And while it may have as many, or more, streaming shows on it, I can't tell because of its confusing interface. A nice try, but not good enough.

Fresh of his turn as Gort in The Day The Earth Stood Still, Keanu Reeves tells MTV that he has a desire to make a live-action version of the awesome SF anime Cowboy Bebop. Never mind that the animated characters show more acting range than Keanu, apparently he wants to bring a little Johnny Quest 'lips-only' moving action to a live version. They'll have to change the ending though to make it more 'Western', otherwise they'll alienate a lot of viewers.

For many children, waiting for Christmas is an agonizingly slow process. Many LOST fans would agree, as we still have just under a month to go until the premier of Season 5. To tide you over, here is a new S5 promo:

Please please LOSTmas, won't you arrive faster?

Lastly, here is webisode 3 of Galactica's 'The Face of the Enemy' as we also count down the days till the part 2 of Season 4.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Monday December 22, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Besides the holidays being a time for family and sharing (and gifts...let's not forget the gifts), they are also, for me at least, time away from work. My natural inclination is think that I'll use that extra time to read and catch up on movies, totally forgetting about all the other things I need to get done around the house.

My ideal sf/f holiday would have me dipping into Iain Bank's Culture novels, Mike Resnick's Starship series, Biohell by Andy Remic, one of Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40k books, Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box. This is all pie-in-the-sky, of course. There's little chance I'll be able to get to more than a couple of these books, let alone all the other ones that are on my shelf.

On the film side, I'm anxious to re-watch The Dark Knight, check out the Timecrimes screener we were sent, and even Death Race.

How about you? What science fiction and/or fantasy books and movies are you hoping to consume over the holidays?

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 21, 2008 at 12:36 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The Harlan Ellison story on which this film was based, was excellent. This 1975 adaptation starring Don Johnson and Jason Robards...not so much.

WARNING: This is Rated "R"

[via The Classic Science Fiction Channel]

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 21, 2008 at 12:20 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews & Profiles:
- In the latest Cult Pop video episode, Jim Hall visits the 2008 Comicon and talks to Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk TV Show), Cliff Simon ("Ba'al" from Stargate SG1), Walter Koenig ("Checkov" from the original Star Trek), The Ghoul, and Erik Estrada ("Ponch" on Chips). (Also: See it in HD!)
- SW Books interviews Matthew Stover (Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor). [via TheForce.Net]
- In the Fall 2008 edition of H+ Magazine, R.U. Sirius and Paul McEnery interview Charles Stross.

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- Audio Fiction:
  - @Well Told Tales: "Home For The Holidays" by Randee Dawn, read by Andy Catt.
  - @LibriVox: in Short Poetry Collection 073, "The City" and "Despair" by H. P. Lovecraft, read by Kane Perlic and "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, read by P. D. Wright.

Author S. F. Murphy has a new website and has been added to the list of sf/f authors who blog.

Here's a poster of Firefly Life Lessons. Shiny...

Today In SciFi lists The Top 5 Scifi/Horror Video Games.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 21, 2008 at 12:06 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

A new international trailer for Watchmen hit the web recently and it has a bunch more footage to feast your eyes on. Check it:

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Posted by JP Frantz at Saturday December 20, 2008 at 12:27 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday December 20, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

SCI FI Wire profiles R.M. Meluch, author of Strength and Honor

Suvudu has 5 Questions for Ken Scholes (Lamentation).

David Louis Edelman is interviewed by Fast Forward and Post-Weird Thoughts.

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
- Audio Fiction:
  - @Subterranean Press: "Thousandth Night" by Alastair Reynolds, read by Sam A. Mowry. [via SFFaudio]
  - Zombie Astronaut has two Ray Bradbury stories, "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "Usher II" read by Leonard Nimoy.
  - @The Classic Tales Podcast: "The Goblins and the Gravedigger" by Charles Dickens, read by B. J.
  - @Pseudopod: "Blood, Snow, and Sparrows" by Joshua Alan Doetsch, read by Ben Phillips.
  - @The Time Traveler: "Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas" by R.A. Lafferty, read by Gwendolyn Jensen-Woodard. [via SFFaudio]
- @Mindflights: "Gaming Real Life" by K.C. Shaw.
- @Afterburn SF: "Ismay's Run" by Joanne Hall.
- "Kat and Mouse: Guns for Hire" is a new, weekly web serial by Abner Senires about a pair of guns-for-hire trying to eke out a living in the 2042 in the California Free State metroplex of Bay City.

Jo Walton reviews C.J. Cherry's Cyteen.

Paul Cornell looks at Marvel Essentials.

Forest J. Ackerman did coin the term "sci-fi" and not Robert A. Heinlein, as detailed at File 770

Cheryl Morgan On Genre and Literature: "The real issue here is confusion of tropes with genre. There is a (perhaps understandable) tendency for people to assume that if a book is set in the future, has spaceships in it, or whatever, then it must be a generic science fiction novel with a hackneyed plot and poorly defined characters. Not only is this an unwarranted generalization, it also misses the fact that science fiction itself is not a genre." [via Jay Lake]

David Gerrold's long-suppressed gay Star Trek episode finally sees the light of day today. [via io9]

Jeff Somers shares a random musing about Battlestar Galactica and romance in sci-fi. [via Orbit]

Happy Birthday to Best Science Fiction Stories!

Ellen Datlow is looking for a "strong, catchy, evocative, serious title" for her upcoming horror anthology.

Lou Anders really likes Mark Hamill's Joker.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday December 20, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The contest for signed copies of The Pirate King and Stowaway is over and here are our winners:

The Pirate King

Benoit F. - Laval, Quebec, Canada
Gopakumar S. - Richmond, VA
Eric O. - Quebec, QC, Canada (I sense a conspiracy!)
Sara H. - Mukilteo, WA
David F. - Brooksville, FL

Stowaway

Misty M. - Rock Hill, SC
Douglas S. - Norfolk, VA
Clint A. - Euless, TX
Scott A. - Dublin, OH
Julia R. - Franklin, TN

Congratulations to our winners! I will try to get these books in the mail next week, but pending holiday issues, it may be the week after. The good news is I am on vacation for the next two weeks so getting to the post office shouldn't be a problem.

If you didn't win this time, there's still time to enter the Death Race giveaway and win a free DVD! After all, who doesn't like free?

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Posted by JP Frantz at Friday December 19, 2008 at 8:54 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

[via /Film]
The mathematicians over at Popular Science have determined that the 8 year-old James T. Kirk would have to had exerted a force of nearly 900 pounds with his fingers to stop from being flung over the precipice as seen in the trailer for J.J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot. (Actually, this is why the chicks dig him.)

While they are contemplating Star Trek, I thought I'd invite them to answer some other questions I have. So...here are:

9 Questions about the Star Trek universe I'd Like Popular Science To Answer

What is the coefficient of elasticity in Ricardo Montalban's fake chest in Star Trek II?

What were the chances that Kirk would have been hit with an asteroid in Star Trek V when he was singing "Row Your Boat"? How about a falling rock? How about if Spock and McCoy threw the rocks?

What was a Red Shirt's chances of survival on the Enterprise?

How much would it cost to erase the vocals from every existing copy of the Enterprise theme song ever recorded?

In Star Trek II, how loud would Kirk have to scream "Khaaan!" for his voice to travel around the newly formed planet?

How much energy would be required to move Deep Space Nine around so they could actually explore something once in a while?

In Star Trek IV, is the Enterprise physically capable of carrying whales *and* Scotty?

Same as previous question, but now add Riker.

Can you invent something that filters out the Dawson's Creek from J.J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot ?

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday December 19, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Until the nearly-awesome Benny Hillifier obtains the ability to speed up videos, we must satisfy ourselves with pre-made videos like this...

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday December 19, 2008 at 12:10 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews and profiles:
- @Omnivoracious: Holly Phillips (The Engine's Child).
- @SciFi Wire: Tom Lloyd (The Stormcaller).
- John Scalzi turns the Whatever mike over to Nick Stone, author of King of Swords.
- @Cool Sci-Fi: 10 Questions for Patrick G. Cox (Out Of Time).

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @The Author's Website: Scales by Anthony G. Williams.
- @Space Westerns:
  - "Le Grand Bazar" by Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon.
  - "Droidtown Blues" by Camille Alexa.
- @Beneath Ceaseless Skies:
  - "Dunasby, Fire and Ice" by Rebecca Lyn Shelley.
  - "The Dragon's Child" by J. Kathleen Cheney.
- @No Fear of the Future: Memory (part 29) by Jayme Lynn Blaschke.
- @BookSpot Central: An excerpt from Evil Ways by Justin Gustainis.
- Audio Fiction:
  - Zombie Astronaut has The Spaceship and Space Hacks.
  - @LibriVox: In Search of the Castaways by Jules Verne, read by many readers.
  - @Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "The Last Devil" by Sarah L. Edwards.

Over at Tor.com, Jane Lindskold talks about her book covers.

Chris Roberson's future Warhammer 40K book is...Sons of Dorn.

Why Isn't Greg Egan A Superstar?

Dark Roasted Blend looks at Jack Williamson's Legion of Space series and Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human.

Pyr Editor Lou Anders lists his 2008 favorites.

Starship Sofa has selected the finalists for The Sofanauts (The StarShipSofa Awards).

PS Publishing has a slew of 10th anniversary special deals going on now.

EVENT: Paul Cornell will be signing at Captain Britain and MI:13 Secret Invasion at the Forbidden Planet Megastore, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, on Thursday 15th January 6 - 7pm.

The SciFi Channel has a new Game Center, where you could play Eureka Sky Writer, Star Gem, Three Card Cylon and Name That Horrible Television Monster Movie. (OK, I'm kidding about that last one, but the others are real.)

Lists:
- @Not a Planet Anymore: Top 5 SF Remakes.
- @SpoutBlog:
- @LA Weekly: The Top 5 Space Cowboys from TV and Film.
  - 8 Free Classic SciFi Movies To Ring Out The Old Year.
  - The Day The Earth Stood Stupid: Five Things Don't Make Sense with the remake.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday December 19, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Sad news...

Yahoo News reports that Majel Barrett Roddenberry, the widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, has died of leukemia at 76.

Majel palyed Nurse Christine Chapel on the original Star Trek series, Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the voice of the USS Enterprise computer...a role she reprised for the upcoming Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 18, 2008 at 4:04 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

Today is the 69th birthday of living legend Michael Moorcock.

As Elric illustrator John Picacio suggests, the best birthday gift an author can receive is for fans to buy his/her books. And it just so happens that Del Rey is halfway through their reissue of the Elric omnibus editions (pictured here) which include plenty of extras and this is the gift-giving season. [Nudge, nudge :)]

Happy Birthday, Mike!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 18, 2008 at 9:50 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Artwork gold mine and community site Deviant Art has picked the best artists of the year -- one per month, based on the work submitted to the community.

There is really some stellar artwork here by artists Amir Salehi, Gabriel Gajdoš, Michel Merza, Jorik Dozy, Inga Nielsen, Josef Barton (twice selected!), Alexei Kozachenko, Marek, Andrée Wallin, Levente, and Ed Lopez.

As an example, check out this spectacular eye candy from Andrée Wallin:

(Used with artist's permission)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 18, 2008 at 12:28 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

We have 2 copies of Death Race to give away to 2 lucky SF Signal readers.

In case you are not familiar with this 2008 remake of the Roger Corman classic, here's a synopsis:

Terminal Island: The very near future. The world's hunger for extreme sports and reality competitions has grown into reality TV bloodlust. Now, the most extreme racing competition has emerged and its contestants are murderous prisoners. Tricked-out cars, caged thugs and smoking-hot navigators combine to create a juggernaut series with bigger ratings than the Super Bowl. The rules of the Death Race are simple: Win five events, and you're set free. Lose and you're road kill splashed across the Internet. International action star Jason Statham leads the action-thriller's cast as three-time speedway champion Jensen Ames, an ex-con framed for the murder of his wife. Forced to don the mask of the mythical driver Frankenstein, a Death Race crowd favorite who seems impossible to kill, Ames is given an easy choice by Terminal Island's ruthless Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen): Suit up and drive or never see his little girl again. His face hidden by a hideous mask, he must win the insane three-day challenge in order to gain freedom. But to claim the prize, Ames must survive a gauntlet of the most vicious criminals--including nemesis Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson)--in the country's toughest prison. Trained by his coach (Ian McShane) to drive a monster Mustang V8 Fastback outfitted with 2 mounted mini-guns, flamethrowers and napalm, an innocent man must destroy everything in his path to win the most twisted spectator sport on Earth.

Now here's how to win a copy on DVD:

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 18, 2008 at 12:22 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The nominees for the 2008 Aurealis Awards, given to works of SF, fantasy, and horror by Australians, have been announced:

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL:

Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait by K.A. Bedford (published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing)
Chaos Space (Book Two of The Sentients of Orion) by Marianne de Pierres (Orbit)
Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch by Simon Haynes (Fremantle Press)
The Daughters of Moab by Kim Westwood (HarperVoyager)
Earth Ascendant (Astropolis Book Two) by Sean Williams (Orbit)

BEST FANTASY NOVEL:

The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman (HarperCollins)
Amberlight by Sylvia Kelso (Juno Books)
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier (Macmillan Australia)
The Riven Kingdom (Godspeaker Book Two) by Karen Miller (HarperVoyager)

BEST HORROR NOVEL:

The Economy of Light by Jack Dann (PS Publishing)
Ghostlines by Nick Gadd (Scribe Publications)
The Seance by John Harwood (Jonathan Cape)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 18, 2008 at 12:20 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Chris Roberson bravely shares image scans of his handwritten "real" first novel, Space Crash, written when he was nine years old. There will be Rebel Gorillas...

Interviews & Profiles:
- @Wired: Timecrimes Director Nacho Vigalondo: "I've always loved science fiction. My favorite writer is Philip K. Dick. I wanted to make a film that had that kind of twisted stuff." I so can't wait to see this film.
- @Suvudu: 5 Questions for Vicki Pettersson (A Touch of Twilight).
- @The Future And You: Stephen Euin Cobb interviews writer, editor, talk show host, and cyberculture icon R.U. Sirius.
- @Agony Column Podcast: Geoff Ryman and Nalo Hopkinson.

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @Tor.com: "Firstborn" by Brandon Sanderson.
- @Revolution SF: "Stormsong" by John E Rogers, Jr.
- "Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol" by Elizabeth Hand. [via Locus Online]
- The first issue of Abandoned Towers is online with free fiction in many genres, by many writers. [via Dark Worlds Blog]
- Audio Fiction:
  - The latest StarShipSofa contains audio fiction and poetry by Mike Allen, Jeff VanderMeer, and Ben Bova.
  - @Maria Lectrix: Chapters Four, Five, and Six of The Ultimate Weapon by John W. Campbell, read by Maureen O'Brien.

CIO interviews Larry Niven, Robert J. Sawyer, Nancy Kress, and Charles Stross: "Science fiction isn't (as a rule) about predicting the future, and science fiction writers aren't trying to predict it." [via Locus Online]

Jeff VanderMeer's 60 in 60 blog, in which he documents his thoughts on reading one of Penguin's Great Ideas titles every day for 60 days, is Guardian's Site of the Week! Congratulation, Jeff!

Heavy reading for the week: Dystopia and the End of Politics by Benjamin Kunkel: "Both the neoliberal dystopia and the neoliberal apocalypse defend love and individuality against the forces threatening to crush them; the difference is that the clone novel sticks up for humanity from the standpoint of an implied or explicit critique of neoliberalism, while the apocalypse narrative (whether in prose or on film) tends to reflect the default creed of neoliberalism, according to which kindness may flourish in private life but the outside world remains now and forever a scene of vicious but inevitable competition." Yes, I've said that many times.

At Geekend, Jay Garmon tackles the term "Science fiction" vs. "Sci-Fi" levergaing the ever-popular Harlan Ellison video.

Justine Larbalestier talks about The efficacy of book tours

Beginning January 1st, under the management of editor Sarah Brandel, Apex Book Company will be introducing the world to the Apex LiveJournal Community.

Brandon Barker has posted Part 3 of his "Fantasy or Football" quiz.

Next year's MileHiCon 41 in Denver will feature John Pciacio as Artist Guest-of-Honor while Barbara Hambly and Nancy Kress will be the Author Guests-of-Honor.

Speaking of John Picacio (and when don't we?), he's showing off another fantastic cover...this time for War and Space: Selected Short Stories of Lester Del Rey, Vol. 1.

Winter is coming has posted a review of the pilot episode script of HBO's Game of Thrones adaptation of George R.R. Martin's acclaimed fantasy. [via Pat's Fantasy Hotlist]

Here are a couple of science fiction gifts guides from Heretical Ideas Magazine and Biology in Science Fiction.

The latest episode of SciFi Scanner's SciFi Dept features Christmas on Mars, the trippy brainchild of the band The flaming Lips.

At Locus Online, Gary Westfahl writes about 1958: Science Fiction Film's Sense-of-Wonderful Year.

Lists:
- Omnivoracious features Jeffrey Ford's Own Top 10 Books of 2008.
- SyFy Portal lists The Best Genre Episodes Of 2008.
- John Scalzi names The Best Movies of 2008.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 18, 2008 at 12:06 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

[via Trek Movie website]

And when you get over your initial shock, here are a bunch more...

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 17, 2008 at 12:20 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

American fans of the BBC version of Life on Mars received some good news yesterday: the follow-on series to LoM, Ashes to Ashes will be coming to BBC America in March! Ashes takes place during the 80's, but many of the regulars from Life, including Gene Hunt, are also regulars here. I've Ashes and while it's not quite as good as Life, it's still worth watching.

There are several connections between Heroes and the Star Trek franchise. Now you can add one more: Michael Dorn, Lt. Worf from TNG, will appear in the 'Fugitives' chapter starting in February. Sorry, still not enough to entice me back.

Jane Espensen says that the new Galactica webisodes, while not necessary to watch, will bring more understanding to the actions Lt. Gaeta takes during the last half of season 4. Webisode 2 has been posted, and here it is:

And for those of you, like me, who can't wait for January to get here, ABC has released a new clip from Season 5 of LOST (and one of the things I really like about the show, the music):

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday December 17, 2008 at 12:10 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- Scott Sigler has a new a free serialized PDF of his new book Contagious. (There's also an audio podcast and an online poster scavenger hunt.) [via Tor and BoingBoing]
- Volume 36 of The Edge of Propinquity is out featuring fiction by Jennifer Brozek, Rick Silva, James M. Sullivan, Ivan Ewert, and Eric R. Lowther.
- @Polu Texni: Part One and Part Two of "Running Free" by Mark Sherwood.
- @Viking Society Web Publications: The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. (PDF) translated by Christopher Tolkien (1960). [via The Cimmerian]
- Audio Fiction at PodCastle: "Gordon, the Self-Made Cat" by Peter Beagle, read by Barry Deutsch.

Interviews:
- Adventures in SciFi Publishing has a podcast interview with Lou Anders about his Fast Forward anthologies. [via Club Jade]
- The Nebula Awards website interviews Adam Rex.

Members of Book View Cafe have been invited to speak at the Library of Congress regarding new methods of publication and distribution of literature.

David Moody (Hater) has been added to the list of sf/f authors who blog.

What's the deal with Alternate Histories being classified as SFF?

Young Adult Dystopian Fiction and Its Impact: "How Anderson's Feed and Lowry's The Giver Affect Young Readers."

Fantasy Book Critic continues his survey of authors' favorites with this latest from L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

TTA Press is running a subscription special for a limited time: Get a free copy of Black Static #8 with a paid subscription while supplies last.

Paranormal romance author Diedra Knight is guest-blogging at penguin.com where she introduces the first book of her Gods of Midnight series.

Tor.com officially announces new features.

The makers of the Coraline movie (based on Neil Gaiman's book) have created an alphabet of Coraline cards and are spreading them across the web. (Here's "S".)

The overlords at Amazon UK are apparently slave drivers. [via Andrew Wheeler]

AMC lists 4 film superheroes with lame powers.

A long time ago, in a manger far, far away...A Star Wars nativity.

Something that needs no explanation: The Periodic Chart of Star Trek Babes.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 17, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The fine folks over at John's favorite new show, Fringe, have just released this Christmas-themed recap of the season so far. It's narrated by John Noble who plays more than slightly unhinged mental asylum refugee Walter Bishop to the same meter as the poem 'The Night Before Christmas'. If you've never seen Fringe, now you can get some feel for what the show offers.

Those with sensitive stomachs or weak constitutions are advised to watch with caution.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 2:50 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

This is just a reminder that we currently have two giveaways underway:

Win The Stowaway by R.A and Geno Salvatore and/or The Pirate King by R.A. Salvatore. Deadline is Wednesday December 17th, 2008.

Win a Full-Size, Signed Poster for Timecrimes. Deadline is Wednesday Saturday December 20th, 2008.

See each giveaway's link for details on how you can win some freebies.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 11:28 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: A good set of stories to satisfy your steampunk cravings.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An appetizing anthology of 12 steampunk stories.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: 10 good stories; 3 of them outstanding.
CONS: Two stories mediocre or worse.
BOTTOM LINE: A good anthology and the perfect scratch for your retro itch.

Steampunk is sexy. Call me silly (OK, call me deranged) but there's something I love about it. It tickles a retro itch like nothing else can. Enter Extraordinary Engines, an anthology of twelve steampunk stories to scratch that itch.

Like many themed anthologies, there's a certain amount of personal awe at how each author approaches the topic. Besides the obvious differences in plot, each author tweaks the stories by varying the dials to language, setting, and scope. What results is a fresh set of stories that does not overdose the reader. Because of this variance, some stories feel more like steampunk than others, but that doesn't mean that they're not enjoyable anyway. Extraordinary Engines is a good anthology and the perfect scratch for your retro itch.

The standout stories in this anthology were:

"Elementals" by Ian R. MacLeod
"Machine Maid" by Margo Lanagan
"Fixing Hanover" by Jeff VanderMeer

Individual story reviews follow...

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 12:24 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Still more free fiction linked to at Free Speculative Fiction. Some of these have already been listed in Tidbits posts, but what the heck...ain't no harm in listing them again...

Poul Anderson: "Territory" (Analog, June 1963)
Christopher Anvil: "A Handheld Primer" (Amazing, January 1978)
Christopher Anvil: "Cinderella, Inc." (Imagination, December 1952)
Christopher Anvil: "Is Everybody Happy?" (Analog, April 1968)
Christopher Anvil: "Roll Out the Rolov!" (Imagination, November 1953)
Christopher Anvil: "Rx for Chaos" (Analog, February 1964)
Christopher Anvil: "The New Boccaccio" (Analog, January 1965)
Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton: "Stark and the Star Kings" (Intended for Harlan Ellison's Last Dangerous Visions)
Eric Flint: "Islands"
Simon Haynes: Hal Spacejock
Elizabeth Moon: "Gifts" (Masters of Fantasy Anthology, 2004)
Elizabeth Moon: "If Nudity Offends You" (F & SF, February 1988)
Elizabeth Moon: "Politics" (The War Years Anthology #1, 1990)
Mike Resnick: "Redchapel" (Asimov's, December 2000)
Mack Reynolds: "Medal of Honor" (Amazing, November 1960)
Vandana Singh: "Three Tales from Sky River <...>" (Strange Horizons, January 2004)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 12:11 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews & Profiles:
- AMC's SciFi Scanner interviews William Shatner. Regarding the new Trek film: "Leonard [Nimoy] will not speak. And I've had him strapped to a chair, I've waterboarded him, and he almost told me... but at the last moment the door broke down and the FBI came in. 'Waterboarding is not allowed,' they told me. I think I've said enough."
- @Agony Column Podcast: SF in SF Steampunk Panel.
- OutNorthwest magazine has an interview with Doctor Who Executive producer Russell T. Davies. [via The Doctor Who News Page]
- Fantastic Artist of the fantastic, Todd Lockwwod, shares a step-by-step walkthrough of his cover painting for R.A. Salvatore's The Orc King. [via Suvudu]
- Speaking of cool art, Irene Gallo profiles the artists known as Razer.

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @Fantasy Magazine: "The Queen of Hearts" by Daniel Homan.
- @Mindflights: "The Void Test" by Therese L. Arkenberg.
- @Strange Horizons: "How to Hold Your Breath" by Meredith Schwartz.
- Audio Fiction @Transmissions From Beyond: "Heartstrung" by Rachel Swirsky, read by Heather Welliver.

John Scalzi reacts to io9's Power List: "...it's the sort of list you put out when it's the end of the year, and you need a list to bring a lot of attention to your site, i.e., a list tuned more for an argument than for reason...But it doesn't particularly mean the list is accurate..." Scalzi's version of the list includes "Dave Howe and Bonnie Hammer (Sci Fi Cable Network), Gabe Newell (Valve Software), Tom Doherty and Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor Books), Avi Arad and Kevin Feige (Marvel Comics/Marvel Studio), George Lucas (George Lucas), and the various studio heads about and around Hollywood."

Colleen Lindsay tells us that book sales may be down, but genre book sales are up.

EVENT: As part of the Fantastic Fiction reading series, Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Harvey Jacobs (American Goliath) & Catherynne M. Valente (The Orphan's Tales) Wednesday January 21st, 7pm at KGB Bar in NYC.

AUCTION: Rain Taxi is holding a benefit auction to raise necessary funds. It ends Saturday.

"Filmmakers recycle fan favorites instead of exploring new frontiers" So says, Geoff Boucher in the Los Angeles Times.

@SCI FI Weekly, Michael Cassutt says "The age of the sci-tec, the science detective, is upon us..."

Lists:
- @Unreality: 10 of the Baddest Fictional Movie Weapons. (Not to be confused with this one from a few months ago.)
- io9 lists Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF, not all of which are the advertised (and overused) "amazing".
- io9 also lists The 10 Worst Science Fiction Remakes (and gets the decade wrong for the original Planet of the Apes -- it's a 1968 classic, not a 1970's classic. Not that I'm in any way justified to call anyone on proofreading!)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 12:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Whoopi Goldberg (does anyone remember her anymore?) will be creating and starring in an online-only SF series called Stream. This show will go live on January 15th and will be available only on Fearnet.com. Now, the quick synopsis I've seen says Stream is about "a character who is trying to come to terms with her lifelong fears." I'm not sure what is SF about that, but then again there isn't much detail yet. And I can't believe that Whoopi has much cache anymore to get people to flock to the website to see her star in a new series.

Nielsen just released their list of Top 10 Timeshifted Primetime Programs for 2008 and genre shows own the top three spots: Heroes, Fringe and LOST. Not bad. The Mentalist also makes the cut at #9. I'd think it would be higher seeing as how you can't watch it online anymore...

Stargate: Universe has it's lead actor: Robert Carlyle (Gaz in The Full Monty). Inspired casting or not? I'll let you decide.

The Toronto Star considers whether Heroes may be beyond saving. I think most of us would chuck 'may be' and add 'is' and call it a day. Did anyone realize the Vol. 3 finale was last night?

Newsweek critic Joshua Alston says Battlestar Galactica is the one show that exemplifies what it's like to live in the 'age of George W. Bush'. I'll have to think about this some more as I'm not sure he presents any evidence to support the case. Unless he's trying to say 'W' is a Cylon...

And in case you missed it, here is the first of the new Galactica webisodes:

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Posted by JP Frantz at Tuesday December 16, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The trailer for TRAILER: X-Men Origins: Wolverine has just been released. What do you think?

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 15, 2008 at 12:48 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

Lots of people have started vacationing early, leaving me to feel like the last man at work.

What better time to kick back and enjoy The Last Man on Earth, the 1964 film based on Richard Matheson's awesome book I Am Legend and starring Vincent Price.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 15, 2008 at 12:28 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Here's the stuff we received this past week.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 15, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Good new for LOST fans: Season 5 will air uninterrupted! That means 16 straight weeks of LOST goodness, barring any unforeseen strike or the odd clip show. Sadly, there is nothing in the works to make remaining weeks until the premier go by any faster.

The Writers Guild of America has released their nominees for the 2009 Writers Guild Awards, and a couple of genre shows have made the list. LOST is up for Best Drama (which it is), while Fringe and Life on Mars are up for Best New Series. That's a more interesting question: Which is better, Fringe or Life on Mars? I'd have to give the nod to Fringe.

While Dollhouse is still going forward, it appears that the accompanying three-minute webisodes for each episode are not. Originally planned to be 'bonus material' for the show, due to the production problems Dollhouse has encountered, the webisodes have been shelved for the time being.

Speaking of Fox, they've gone ahead and ordered more episodes to accompany the pilot for the SF comedy Boldly Going Nowhere. Boldly is the new show from the same people who created It's Alway Sunny in Philadelphia. I've never seen Sunny, but have heard it's funny. And a half-hour comedy SF series just seems wrong. But maybe they can pull it off. I guess we'll find out.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Monday December 15, 2008 at 12:11 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Fast Forward video-interviews David Louis Edelman (Multireal).

Here's the latest report on the HelpVera fund raiser.

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]:
- For those who haven't been following this refreshing science fiction Holiday tradition, Jeff Patterson has been writing (and illustrating) a short holiday-themed story every year. The latest is "Trajectories". Check it out.
- Issue, number 128, of Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy is up with a ton of free fiction.
- Audio Fiction @ Beam Me Up: "Babel 3000" Colin P. Davies, read by Paul Cole.
- Audio Fiction @ RevCast Fiction: "3:06pm London, England" by Neil Carstairs, read by Matthew Bey.

SF Author Eric Nylund asks: Are pre-publication reviews cheating, or informative? My 2 pennies: The bottom line for anyone who reads reviews is (1) Do you trust the reviewer to be honest? (2) Do the reviewer's tastes match your own? These things take time to determine. Meanwhile, the day the review is released into the wild has little to do with whether a review is informative, useful, honest, or well written.

Mary Doria Russell writes in to tell us that Barnes and Noble is featuring her classic, The Sparrow in a "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" promotion this month. Also, her fourth novel, Dreamers of the Day, will be released in paperback on December 14th and is being featured at Target stores.

Nathan Lily writes in to let us know ablut Thaumatrope, a magazine for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror fiction under 140 characters, available via Twitter.

Several genre films (including The Dark Knight...gasp!) make the list of The 8 Most Ridiculous Film Plots of the Year. [via Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine]

The reviews of remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still are not very kind, including this one from Gary Westfahl at Locus Online: "A major part of the problem, of course, is the crucial miscasting of the consistently inept Keanu Reeves in the role of Klaatu." Ouch! That would hurt Keanu if he weren't made entirely of wood. Hi-yo!

Real science: Check out Neave's this awesome online planetarium. (And when you've had enough, check out their other cool apps.)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Monday December 15, 2008 at 12:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, or just aren't into games, you've heard that Bioware and LucasArts have teamed up to work on a new MMO game set in the Star Wars universe, entitled Star Wars: The Old Republic. Up to now, all we've had are screenshots and blog entries about the game, but that changed over the weekend when Bioware released a short 'documentary' about SWTOR and their ideas for the game.

The video below the jump (placed there because it autoplays) gives a bit more detail about the combat (with some fast paced footage), the focus on story, companion characters and the role of choice in the game.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Sunday December 14, 2008 at 4:25 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

I finally got to watch episode #10 of Fringe ("Safe"). Yes, I know, it's weeks old, but there was a glitch in the Tivo (I call her my daughter) and I just recently caught it online.

I'm still liking the show very much.

Here's why:

*** Spoiler Warning ***

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 14, 2008 at 12:26 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

This. Is. Awesome.

[via Poe TV]

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 14, 2008 at 12:20 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Just in time for the holidays comes this video from Books Are Great Gifts.

I like this video. It's like a Mind Meld. A pre-scripted Mind Meld, but a Mind Meld nonetheless.

BONUS FUN: There are lots of celebrities here. Watch it and play Spot the Genre Author! But lose 10 points if you flinch when you see the Toupee of Great Dread!

[via Grasping for the Wind]

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 14, 2008 at 12:11 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

@The Dragon Page's Cover to Cover interviews Jane Lindskold (Thirteen Orphans: Breaking the Wall).

Paul Cornell Mind Melds with authors in Christmas Movies of the SF Writers.

Free Fiction: "Thrilling Holiday Tales", story and art by Jeff Patterson.

Author L.E. Modesitt, Jr. asks: Does the publishing industry need saving? Does it deserve it? "...it wouldn't be such a bad idea if more leaders in the publishing field didn't ask themselves more questions about how they could improve the quality of their offerings and not just their bottom line."

Science Fiction Throughout the Ages and Into the Future: "...the biggest influence on scifi during [the past 50 years] are the events that occurred in the real world."

Mary Robinette Kowal traces The Evolution of Women in Fantasy Movies.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Sunday December 14, 2008 at 12:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

It's amazing what you can find on the Internets. For instance, take a look at this cool Celestial Globe made by Fascinations. By day it's an ordinary 8" globe of the Earth. But, when the lights go down, and thanks to an 'advanced optical sensor', the Celestial Globe switches over to a very cool, blue display that shows the 88 constellations. Awesome night light? You bet!

This is seriously made of WANT for me. So all of you looking to get me something for Christmas now know what you would make a great gift. But make sure to talk amongst yourselves, because, even though this is really cool, I don't really need more than one.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Saturday December 13, 2008 at 1:18 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Rich Horton has announced the contents of his latest anthology, Unplugged: The Best of Online Fiction, published by Wyrm Publishing:

"Air and Angels" by Beth Bernobich (Subterranean, Spring)
"Snatch Me Another" by Mercurio D. Rivera (Abyss and Apex, First Quarter)
"First Rites" by Nancy Kress (Baen's Universe, October)
"The Bitrunners" by Tina Connolly (Helix, Summer)
"When We Were Stardust" by Rebecce Epstein (Fantasy, February)
"Willpower" by Jason Stoddard (Futurismic, December)
"The Tale of Junko and Sayuri" by Peter S. Beagle (IGMS, July)
"Little Moon, Too, Goes Round" by David Dumitru (Aeon Thirteen)
"The Behold of the Eye" by Hal Duncan (Lone Star, August)
"Linkworlds" by Will McIntosh (Strange Horizons, March 17-24)
"The Girl-Prince" by Merrie Haskell (Coyote Wild, August)
"Not Enough Stars in the Night" by Brendan DuBois (Cosmos)
"A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld, May)
"The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away" by Cory Doctorow (Tor.com)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday December 13, 2008 at 1:14 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Book Launch & Signing: Ellen Datlow sends word about her latest anthology, Poe, a new anthology from Solaris celebrating two hundred years since the birth of Edgar Allan Poe. It's got "remixed and re-imagined" versions of Poe's tales by such talents as Pat Cadigan, Sharyn McCrumb, Kim Newman, Lucius Shepard, M. Rickert and Nicholas Royle. A free book launch and signing event, hosted by the British Fantasy Society, will be held Saturday January 31st at the historic Ye Olde Cock Tavern on London's Fleet Street. Ellen will be on hand to present readings by Pat Cadigan and Kim Newman with copies of the book available for purchase and signature.

G4tv's Fresh Ink has a video-interview with Todd McFarlane (Spawn).

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @Manybooks: "Unthinkable" by Rog Phillps (1949).
- @Manybooks: "Upstarts" by L. J. Stecher (1960).
- @Hairy Green Eyeball: "The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall" by John Kendrick Bangs (1894) in JPEG scans.
- Audio Fiction:
  - @The Dunesteef Podcast: "Framing And Mounting Fairies" by Kevin Anderson.
  - @PodCastle: "Intelligent Design" by Ellen Klages, read by M. K. Hobson.
  - @PodCastle: "Ancestor Money" by Maureen McHugh, read by Diane Severson.
  - @365 Tomorrows: "Retirement" by Ian Rennie , read by Duncan Shields.
  - @Pseudopod: "Iowa Highway" by Brendan Detzner, read by Ralph Walters.
  - Dr. Forrest's Cheese Factory shares the aural atrocity of retro-cheese that is Six Million Dollar Man Christmas Album. Click on the dancing cheese and the be afraid. Be very afraid. [via Cool-Mo-Dee]

Cover Pr0n @Pyr-o-mania: Kay Kenyon's A World Too Near.

"Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners, a survey suggests." [via GalleyCat]

Hyperpat's HyperDay sez: Special Effects Do Not a Good Movie Make. Agreed. Anyone who has seen a Star Wars prequel can attest to that.

The Website at the End of the Universe asks: Does letting kids read SF&F harm their mental health? Utter nonsense. Look how fine I turned out? Oh, wait...

The World in the Satin Bag asks: Should Science Fiction Be Taught in Schools? I wish they had a science fiction source when I went to school. Instead, I was force-fed Wuthering Heights. It tasted like Brussel Sprouts.

Lists:
- Science Fiction Brewed Fresh Daily has an awesome Steampunk Link Roundup.
- Sometimes movies with great scenes get left off of "best of" lists. The solution? SF author Matt Jarpe's 5 favorite fragments of movies
- @Popular Mechanics: 20 Must-Have Blu-ray HD Epics. Mostly (but not all!) genre films.
- There's a list of The 20 Movers And Shakers In Science Fiction at io9. Kathryn Cramer disagrees. Her more-book-oriented list includes Lou Anders, Jonathan Strahan, Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Gardner Dozois, Michael Swanwick, David Langford, Ellen Datlow, and Connie Willis.

Lou Anders, when he's not moving and shaking, is talking about Batman in The Brave and the Bold.

It's John C. Wright vs. Pirates. No...really!

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Posted by John DeNardo at Saturday December 13, 2008 at 1:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

The Battlestar Galactica webisodes leading up to the resumption of Season 4 started yesterday, see the first webisode here. WARNING: Spoilers for Season 4 so far. You have been warned! Sy Fy Portal has an interview with Jane Espenson, the writer, about the webisodes and a rather surprising revelation about one of the characters.

You know all the problems that Dollhouse has been encountering lately? Turns out Joss Whedon says, "It's all my fault!" Well, I would say it's really FOX's fault, for being so difficult to work with.

How difficult? The rumor is they've delayed Virtuality, Ron Moore's next series after Galactica. SF Universe wonders if it's because the suits at FOX don't 'get' the series, citing the dichotomy between spaceships and virtual reality versus 'mainstream'. I'd say that's a pretty good bet.

Did you know? - The new Trek film will also be released in IMAX. I guess the success of The Dark Knight is making IMAX more attractive. Sadly, Trek was not shot using IMAX cameras and will therefore need to be re-mastered into IMAX. This does not interest me that much. If it were shot completely in IMAX (damn the cost!), then I'd be there. Re-mastered? Not so much.

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Posted by JP Frantz at Saturday December 13, 2008 at 1:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Or, as Poe TV puts it, "HULK NEED 25 CENTS!!!"

If I recall correctly, the 2nd time he turned Hulk in this episode (as there were only ever 2 per episode) was when they didn't get his order right at McDonald's.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday December 12, 2008 at 12:22 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews & Profiles:
- InFrame.tv has a video profile of artist Shaun Tan. Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing is being made into a 15-minute CGI animated short by an Australian film company. [via About]
- @Suite 101: Margo Lanagan (Tender Morsels): "Censorship, and protests about dark or sexy books often seems to me to be fear parading as concern for children and young people. If you really respect young people you make yourself available to answer any question they pop up with, at whatever time it happens and in whatever circumstances."
- Pat's Fantasy Hotlist interviews George R. R. Martin and all the Wild Cards: Busted Flush authors.

Vera Nazarian expresses thanks to the generous genre community for helping out with the HelpVera campaign. [John Scalzi]

At Tor.com, Douglas Cohen looks at Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane character.

Hey Look! The Black Library has a blog.

John Anealio has another Sci Fi Song: "The Millennium Falcon for Christmas", a nostalgic remembrance of you-know-what.

John Scalzi names The Worst Science Fiction Movie of the Last Twelve Months.

Make has posted their 2008 Steampunk Gift Guide. I'll take one of each, please.

Lists:
- @Not a Planet Anymore: The Top 5 Famous Last Words in SF Films, Shows & Books.
- @Marooned: 10 Stories you wouldn't know are Martian Science Fiction (Volume 1)
- Cinematical lists The Best Sci-Fi Remakes.
- Meanwhile, Film School Rejects list 10 Sci-Fi Films That Should Never Be Remade, and 5 That Probably Should Be.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Friday December 12, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

[See also: Part 1]

"Best of the Year" lists start appearing as early as November, so we are perhaps a little late in asking folks around the community:

Q: What were the best genre-related books, movies and/or shows you consumed in 2008?

[We also added this note: They don't have to have been released in 2008. Feel free to choose just some of the genres (sf/f/h) or a subset of the media (books/movies/shows) as you wish.]

Here are their replies...

Andy Remic

Andy Remic is a hard-drinking, hard-swearing, fluffy bunny rabbit of a man, who enjoys kick-boxing, sword-fighting and mountain climbing. He's written some SF books, and some thriller books, too. His book War Machine is about an elite combat squad on a series of deadly high-octane missions through different colourful dangerous galaxies. It also has believable women characters. Honest. Remic's latest book BIOHELL has just been published the U.S. by Solaris Books, and is about what happens when vanity nano-technology goes horribly wrong, and turns a full planet of vain footballer's wives into quite horrific zombies. With machine guns. BIOHELL has believable zombie women characters. Truth. You can read more of the conundrum who is Andy Remic at www.andyremic.com and suffer his really boring pointless dribbling at andyremic.blogspot.com.

It's been a good year for media. I'm just finishing Joseph D'Lacey's The Garbage Man, which is excellent, unique and scary. Mark Newton's The Reef gave me a lot of smiles (but not as many as when I throw him off a mountain next February) and offered superb characterisation, and I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading Ian Graham's Monument, in my opinion one of the finest fantasy books ever written, with a totally ghastly anti-hero called Ballas who gets drunk, throws up a lot, and fights everyone. Proper hero stuff!!

I enjoyed Rochard Morgan's The Steel Remains, which I think put a new spin on Moorcock-type fantasy, and I also really enjoyed Iain Bank's Matter which saw a return to my favourite amoral good guys, The Culture. Gosh. And I just discovered Mario Puzo's The Godfather, which is such a brilliantly written book it's almost a crime against the Family to watch the movie- capiche? I was hugely amused, as ever, by the toffee-haired eco-hating rubber-faced human scarecrow who is Jeremy Clarkson, and his rabid spittle-flecked ramblings in The Daily Scrotum or whichever godforsaken rag he scribbles for, and once again was thrilled to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's new movie about bent politicians and the corrupt world of bent and dodgy politics. What? That was real? Never. Gok Wan produced another brilliant book about fat women looking less fat in bad clothes, and it was cool to see the man-idiot Russelly Brand the Unshaved and his plethora of tight trousers and cash-in tomes entitled things like My Spunky Booky and Other Dribble.

Movies! Movies were good. I really enjoyed (as did my little boy) Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Yeah yeah, there were moments of cheese (lead-lined fridges, anybody?), but this is Hollywood baby and they have the full Gorgonzola. Christian Bale was just orgiastic as Batman, in the Dark Knight film, and Heath Ledger's Joker was brill. Am I being predictable? What, no artsy shitsy French arthouse productions? Sorry. I don't watch that. My six year old boy wants entertainment, baby. As does his 12 year old father. I also enjoyed the Grindhouse films. They were fun.

Shows? I'm going to watch a Christmas pantomine, in which there will no doubt be lots of fat women. But that's cool, because I like fat women. Predictions? I think it will be cerebral.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 11, 2008 at 1:28 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Yesterday, as part of blog tour in conjunction with R.A. and Geno Salvatore, we posted an interview with the father/son author team. If you haven't read it, you should, because if you can answer the following question, you can win a copy of either The Stowaway or The Pirate King.

Q: Geno mentions three games that he plays. Name one of them.

How to win:

Send in your answer to 'contest (at) sfsignal (dot) com'

In the subject line, enter the name of the book you'd like to win. If you want both, you'll need to send in two emails.

Please include your postal address so we can ship the books out immediately when the contest is over.

U.S. and Canada only.

The contest will run through next Wednesday (December 17th) and we'll notify winners via email and on the blog.

Good luck!

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Posted by JP Frantz at Thursday December 11, 2008 at 12:22 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Today we have two Japanese trailers for your enjoyment. You can decide to thank me or not afterwards.

First up, Dragonball Evolution, which is a live-action version of the anime Dragonball Z. From what I can of the anime, it looks like it consists of a couple of minutes of fighting, crammed in between 4 episodes of exposition. Admittedly, I've never seen an episode completely, so I could be wrong.

Bad doesn't begin to do this 'movie' justice. Horrendous, fantastically awful and train-wreck come to mind. And is it just me, or was anyone else waiting for Chow Yun(Chew the)-Fat to say, "When you can snatch the dragonball from my hand you are ready."

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Posted by JP Frantz at Thursday December 11, 2008 at 12:15 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

[UPDATED 12/13. Be sure to check the original source for the latest version!]

John Ottinger is trying to get an updated list of genre book review blogs. See Grasping for the Wind for details.

Big-@ss list after the jump:

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 11, 2008 at 12:08 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Lot's of great stuff over at AMC's SciFi Scanner this week:
- First, they are giving fans a sneak peek at the making of their upcoming miniseries The Prisoner starring Ian McKellen as Two and Jim Caviezel as Six.
- Alex Zalben summarizes life lessons given by clones in the Star Trek universe.
- This week's episode of The SciFi Dept. looks at Five Freaky Frankenstein Flicks.

BookSpotCentral interviews Matthew Stover (Caine Black Knife).

Dark Worlds interviews Dave Tackett of QuasarDragon fame: "I love storytelling that inspires the imagination. My favorite aspect of SF, Fantasy, and horror is that, at their best, they take us beyond the ordinary mundane world and show us more than any human being can ever see."

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @Author's site: "City of Reason" by Matthew Jarpe (2005).
- @Manybooks.net: "A Scientist Rises" by Desmond Winter Hall (1932).
- Audio Fiction:
  - Zombie Astronaut has several audio stories up in MP3 including William Gibson's "Burning Chrome."
  - @Transmissions From Beyond: "Heartstrung" by Rachel Swirsky, read by Heather Welliver.
  - The latest StarShipSofa contains audio fiction and poetry by Joan D Vinge, Matthew Sanborn Smith, and Mark Rich.
- The tables of contents listings for Rich Horton's upcoming anthologies (Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2009 Edition and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2009 Edition) have been updated with free fiction links.
- Free Excerpt @ Penguin: Prologue to Princep's Fury by Jim Butcher.

From now through Dec. 31, all new/renewing Weird Tales subscribers in the U.S. will receive a free copy of The Neil Gaiman Reader.

At Futurismic, "Jonathan McCalmont suggests that repackaging the masterworks of the genre with a side serving of serious critical examination might add a cachet to science fiction which it has previously struggled to attain." It'd work on me. I don't know how many Masterworks volumes I bought even though I already own an earlier edition of the book.

Over at Ecstatic Days, guest-blogger K. Tempest Bradford has some tough love for genre fiction writers.

Lauren Panepinto, Creative Director for Orbit and Yen Press, shares some cool book cover art Still lovin' the Orcs covers.

The savvy authors over at Book View Cafe have teamed with PortableReading to make their stories available over the iPhone and through AnthologyBuilder. [via SF Scope]

Biology in Science Fiction deep-dives into The Biology of Creature From The Black Lagoon. That thing scared the begeezus out of me when I was younger.

Dark Roasted Blend offers a really cool Steampunk Extravaganza. [via Enter the Octopus]

Here's the latest update on the HelpVera Fundraiser. Way to go, sf community! :)

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Posted by John DeNardo at Thursday December 11, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

"Best of the Year" lists start appearing as early as November, so we are perhaps a little late in asking folks around the community:

Q: What were the best genre-related books, movies and/or shows you consumed in 2008?

[We also added this note: They don't have to have been released in 2008. Feel free to choose just some of the genres (sf/f/h) or a subset of the media (books/movies/shows) as you wish.]

Here are their replies...

Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal's short fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Cosmos and CICADA. She is the art director of Shimmer and a graduate of Orson Scott Card's Literary BootCamp. She is the 2008 winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

When looking back at the year it is always so hard to quantify what was best. Is it the best craftsmanship or what suits my tastes best. So as I was considering my list, I found myself choosing those things that make me go, "Oh, you must read this."

Thunderer by Felix Gilman, tops the list because I've just finished it and was taken completely by surprise. It's a powerful novel that's got a New Weird quality that reminds me of China Miéville except more approachable. I could not put the book down. It was full of rich detailed cultures that were completely believable but completely outside the real world.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson also took me completely by surprise by the scope of the vision. He managed to make the heat death of the Universe a compelling dramatic backdrop to a completely human story.

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. I'll admit. I'm a weeper and love stories that make me cry like a baby. Scalzi managed to do that at least three times in this novel. It's a wonderfully moving story of a very real teenage girl.

The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia. Remember me being a sucker for weepers? Add to that a story of a clockwork girl and you've got me. What I loved about this was how she captured what it would be like to be a creature that could break and to know your creator intimately. What it would be like to rely on someone to repair you instead of being able to heal. Beautiful and chilling storytelling here.

"The Oracle Spoke" by Holly Phillips is a short story in Realms, the First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine. Truly, I thought the whole anthology was wonderful, but this story has stayed with me. It is a deeply personal story about an oracle and it broke my heart.

"The Prophet of Flores" by Ted Kosmatka is a short story that blew me out of the water. Consider what it would be like to live today if the age of the earth were scientifically provable and only 6000 years old. Now take that world and find a crack in the theology. This story will take the top of your head off and put it back on in a different alignment.

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 10, 2008 at 12:55 PM
© 2008 SF Signal

We recently had the oportunity to question the father/son writing team of R.A. (Bob) and Geno Salvatore (The Stowaway) about various topics as part of their current blog tour. Here's what they had to say...

SF Signal: How did you divide the work on The Stowaway? What was work break down for the writing process? Did you see yourselves as colleagues and did the father/son relationship come into play?

Geno: I did most of the grunt work, as in the actual writing of the story, but my Dad was a great resource and surprisingly easy to work with. As far as the father and son thing, the only thing that came into play was that we knew each other so well that we didn't have to spend time learning each other's habits. That was a good thing.

Bob: I always viewed this project as Geno's story, and my role as that of hands'-on editor and adviser. I was there from the very beginning on structuring the story, for example, since I know better than anyone what pacing and structure my Drizzt readers desire. I also tried very hard to make sure that the whole "father/son" thing never came into play. Geno was my colleague on this, and while I could pull rank both as the guy who created Drizzt and company, and, I suppose, as his father, that wouldn't have been fair, and would have been very counterproductive to the creative process. As I said, this was Geno's story. I just helped him fit it into the larger context of my story.

And of course, there were a few scenes I wrote for the book - with one in particular, an old favorite that came straight from The Halfling's Gem, I claimed "dibs."

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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 10, 2008 at 12:25 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Interviews & Profiles:
- @Blogging the Muse: Tobias Buckell (Halo: The Cole Protocol).
- @SciFi Wire: Charlaine Harris (the Southern Vampire Mysteries series).
- @Enter the Octopus: Marie Brennan (Midnight Never Come) on the gentle madness of writing.
- @Penguin Blog: Jessica Andersen, author of Nightkeepers, blogs about her new Novel of the Final Prophecy.
- @The Nebula Awards site: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (The Shadow Speaker).
- @The Galaxy Express, Heather Massey profiles Samhain Publishing and interviews Executive Editor Angela James: "I've often said I'd do bad things to see a great science fiction romance in the vein of Firefly, with that Old West feel, amazing characters, romance and action."

Free Fiction [courtesy of QuasarDragon]
- @Manybooks:
  - "The Last Evolution" by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1932)
  - Border Ghost Stories by Howard Pease. (1919)
- Audio Fiction:
  - @Zombie Astronaut: The Steve Gallagher Trilogy by Piccadilly Radio.
  - @Maria Lectrix: parts two and three of "The Ultimate Weapon" by John W. Campbell, read by Maureen O'Brien.

Jo Walton looks at C.J. Cherryh's Merchanter novels.

Tor.com is offering new book cover art wallpapers from Gregory Manchess (In the Courts of the Crimson King by S.M. Stirling) and Dan Dos Santos (Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker).

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is one of the LA Times' Five Best Young Adult Books OF 2008.

B. Brandon Barker has a two part "Fantasy of Football" quiz: "Damon Aromashondu: Wide Receiver for the Indianapolis Colts or Leader of the Muad'Dib Death Commandos?"

Space Art Pron "void" at Gorilla Artfare.

"Fans of the 1960s series The Prisoner are getting more than the AMC remake: Real-life Rovers are also in the works." An all-terrain robot? Cool!

Google has added magazines to their book search feature.

Jane Espenson has said just about everything she has to say about writing for television. [via Whedonesque]

Kathie Huddleston offers this Open Letter To Television: "I'm afraid I'm going to be seeing other media. I know how much this will hurt you, but I have to do what's right for me. You just haven't grown and evolved the way I have."

Stuff for Firefly fanboys at The Samurai Gunslinger: Summer Glau and Morena Baccarin galleries. (And if Pete Y. is still reading...here's a Kate Beckinsale Gallery.) [Insert rolling tongue noise here]

Lists:
- B&N Review has Paul Di Filippo's Top "New Weird" Picks.
- Bibliophile Stalker lists Holiday Gift Suggestions for the Ultimate SF Bibliophile.
- @Coffee And Heroes: 5 Reasons to Write Science Fiction.
- @MovieFone: Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time.
- @Mental Floss: 5 Comic Superheroes Who Made a Real-World Difference.
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Posted by John DeNardo at Wednesday December 10, 2008 at 12:09 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

Fringe's Joshua Jackson has some interesting things to say about Fringe and The X-Files. First, he says that comparing Fringe to The X-Files is 'lazy', to which I say, "If by lazy you mean accurate, then yes." But then he goes on to say he wants Fringe, in later years, to be the show future new SF shows are compared to, the same way Fringe is compared to The X-Files. Well, Fringe has a long way to go to get there, and not being as big of a 'hit' as The X-Files doesn't help.

ABC has ordered a pilot of the DC Comics property, Fables, about fairy tale characters living in exile in New York. Having never read the comic, I have no idea if it's any good. Anyone?

Battestar Galactica returns on Jan. 16th and in effort to drum up more hype, Sci Fi Channel is releasing more webisodes leading up to the premier. There will be two a week for five weeks, starting on Dec. 12th. The storyline sounds kind of odd, considering a Raptor isn't that big so how could a 'killer' hide?

And in case you can't remember what's happened on Galactica over the past three years, Sci Fi has posted a handy dandy 13 minute recap video, "Catch the Frak Up!".

Apparently, the developer behind the Stargate Worlds MMO, Cheyenne Mountain, hasn't paid their developers in over a month, and yet they say the MMO isn't in trouble. If not now, certainly in a month or so when people start leaving due to not being paid. It's too bad, I was looking forward to this one.

Showtime is developing a new SF series called Syns, which "centers on a world in which humanlike synthetic organisms, known as Syns, are used for various purposes." Hmm, sounds rather like Dollhouse and to make the comparison stick even more, Syns used to be called Dolls' Hospital. I wonder why they changed? Is it just me, or does anyone else think that David Brin's Kiln People would make a good series?

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Posted by JP Frantz at Wednesday December 10, 2008 at 12:05 AM
© 2008 SF Signal

"To write fully believable, near future science fiction today, you almost need to be voracious antisocial polymath, deeply conversant in half a dozen technical fields, as well as familiar with ongoing social, economic, and environmental change."

So says Jason Stoddard when he talks about The Burden of the Modern Science Fiction Writer.

He makes an interesting point. If science fiction is all about science, then only a thorough understanding of science, or at least the particular science around which the story revolves, will result in a believable story. Otherwis