Description: Teal’C's mentor, Bra’tac arrives unexpectedly through the Stargate with shocking news: the Goa’uld Apophis survived the destruction of his ship and has now kidnapped Teal’C's son, Rya’C.

Short and sweet tonight since I’m tired. Apophis isn’t dead, apparently he can survive a spaceship blowing up. The throwaway line explaining how he survived is just so ridiculous I can’t believe it. We see Daniel gate out jut seconds before the ship explodes and we’re supposed to believe there was enough time left for Apophis to transport over, re-dial the gate and pop on out? Please.

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[via Poe TV]

Free Fiction and Stuff [courtesy of the valiant QuasarDragon]

• “The Valor of Cappen Varra” by Poul William Anderson. (Fantasic Universe, January 1957)
• @Beneath Ceaseless Skies:
  • “Blighted Heart” by Aliette de Bodard.
  • “The Prince’s Shadow” by Emily M. Z. Carlyle.
• Audio Fiction:
  • Escape Pod: “On the Eyeball Floor” by by Tina Connolly, read by Norm Sherman.
  • Beneath Ceaseless Skies: “Walking Out” by Harry R. Campion.
  • Well Told Tales: “The Gangster’s New Clothes” by George Wilhite, read by J.B. Goodspeed.
• Graphic Fiction:
  • @Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine: “Head Of the House” and “Monster” (1973).
  • @USA Today: “Superman” Chapter Four of twelve by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo.

• @Book View Cafe: Ursula K. Le Guin on Literary Bests: “I don’t believe there are three ‘best’ works of American or any other fiction of the last sixty years — or ten ‘best,’ or a hundred. Maybe a couple of thousand?”
• Patrick at Stomping on Yeti continues his profiles of Tomorrow’s Big Genre Stars, this time with Chris Roberson.
• Suvudu has parts 3 and 4 of a video interview with Patrick Rothfuss (Wise Man’s Fear).
• Neil Clarke: Save the Semiprozine Part 2 and Part 3.
• Abigail Nussbaum on io9, conflicts of interest, and banning: “You can’t review your own sponsor and expect to be taken seriously as a news source, though of course it remains an open question whether that is a state that io9 has ever aspired to.” Ouch! [via Niall Harrison and Graham Sleight]
• Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World: “Books are the last bastion of the old business model–the only major medium that still hasn’t embraced the digital age.”
• Nacho Vigalondo (director of the awesome Timecrimes) is working on a new Sci-Fi video game comedy called Gangland.
• Geekend asks: What are your Low-budget science-fiction film favorites?
• John Scalzi looks at SciFi’s Baddest Computers.
• Mary Robinette Kowal goes back to the future with Fantasy’s Top Ten Time-Traveling Devices.
• Jerry Bruckheimer buys rights to IDW’s graphic novel World War Robot.
• Topless Robot lists The 10 Lamest Star Trek Villains. Good call on the Probe from Star Trek IV.
• Movie Crunch lists 12 Children’s Movies That Adults Love. A sort of counter-list to my own 7 Sci-Fi Movies For Parents to Share with Their Kids.

Beat Poet Shatner makes another Tonight Show appearance, this time reading Sarah Palin’s tweets.

Your Mission (should you choose to accept it): Tell us which cover you like best and why. Go!

Books shown here:

• The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition by Ray Bradbury (Artist: Edward Miller)
• When the Sky Fell by Mike Lynch & Brandon Barr (Artist: Glenn Kim)
• Wireless (UK) by Charles Stross (Designer: Peter Cotton, art from Digital Vision and Shutterstock)

NOTE: Bigger, better cover art images are available by clicking the images or title links…

Free Fiction and Stuff [courtesy of your free fiction concierge, QuasarDragon]

• Abyss & Apex has a new issue out with fiction by Caren Gussoff, Richard A. Lovett, Michael J. DeLuca, Christopher Green, and Patricia Russo, as well as poetry and more
• @Book View Cafe: “Revenants” by Judith Tarr (1993).
• @Innsmouth Free Press: “The Statement of Randolph Carter” by H.P. Lovecraft.
• @The Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:
  • “Farewell Tour” by Keith Graham.
  • “A Planet Of Your Own” by David Agranoff.
• Audio Fiction:
  • @PodCastle: “Daughter of Botu” by Eugie Foster, read by Diane Severson.
  • @The Daily Tourniquet: “The Devil’s Playthings” written and read by Jeffrey Conolly.
• Graphic Fiction:
  • @Golden Age Comics: Flying Saucers (1952).
  • @The Bronze Age of Blogs: “Love Me…Love My Demon!”
  • @Killer Kittens From Beyond the Grave: “The Cry of Satan” (1952).
  • @The Horrors of It All: “The Man Who Steals Gravestones!” and “The Man Who Sold His Soul!”
• Serial Fiction:
  • @Tor.com: Cory Doctorow’s Makers, Part 11 of 81.
  • @Notes Toward Becoming A Better Writer: “The Time Idiot” Chapter eight by A.R.Yngve.
  • @The Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: “Sky Pirates” Part fourteen by John Shirley.
  • @Enter Three Witches: “Hesper’s Lament” by L. M. Bricker.
  • @Book View Cafe: Eccentric Circles Chapter Seven by Rebecca Lickiss.
  • @Book View Cafe: Laldasa: Beloved Slave Chapter Seven by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff .

• Interviews & Profiles:
  • @The Teeming Brain: Nick Mamatas (You Might Sleep).
  • @Suvudu: a video interview with Patrick Rothfuss (Wise Man’s Fear).
  • @The Nebula Awards website: Gwyneth Jones (Spirit).
  • Edward Willett interviews Robert J. Sawyer.
  • @Ghost in the Machine: Janny Wurts.
  • @Clarkesworld Magazine: An Mind Meld with Editors Lou Anders, Philip Athans, Victoria Blake, Paula Guran, Gabrielle Harbowy, James Lowder, John Jarrold, Susan J. Morris, Darren Nash, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Chris Schluep, Simon Spanton, Deb Taber, and Jacob Weisman.
• The Guradian responds to Adam Roberts’ Hugo rant: When democracy fails: the Hugo SF awards.
• At Omnivoracious, guest Mark Chadbourn (author of the Age of Misrule series) blogs about Real-World Roots of Fantasy.
• Clarkesworld’s Neil Clarke talks about Saving the Semiprozine Hugo.
• Torie Atkinson talks about Reader’s Block
• Del Rey Books will publish Pride and Prejudice And Zombies: The Graphic Novel, based on the New York Times bestselling book by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.
• Angry Robot signs two new authors: Guy Adams (The World House; Restoration) and Gav Thorpe (The Crown of the Blood). [NOTE: Guy and Gav have been added to the list of sf/f authors who blog.]
• Speaking of Angry Robot, their publicist Lee Harris talks about The Year Of The eBook over at the SFX blog.
• Dork Tower vs. the new SyFy Channel.
• Two words: Stormtrooper zombie.
• Entertainment Weekly lists 23 Sci-Fi Characters You Want on Your Buddy List.

Description: While exploring a now-dead planet, O’Neill and the SG-1 team find an orb that sends out electromagnetic signals. They think it is a time capsule of some sort and are intrigued by its power source, which seems to have lasted for millennia.

The mystery of the orb is the one interesting thing here and when we find out what it is, it’s rather anti-climactic. And why the addition of the guy with a crush on Carter? There’s not enough emotional heft here with O’Neill’s predicament that they had to add in some random guy we’ve never seen before (and don’t really care about) for Sam to worry over? Sure he shows up in later episodes, but for this episode, this subplot just seemed terribly extraneous.

Oh, and that pesky auto destruct, just laying around waiting to be hijacked by any random alien virus-like entity. Why did they set if three hours? Why not blow the mountain up immediately? That’s what I’d do if I were an alien virus.

This is a semi-interesting episode, but with major annoyances for me.

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I’m jonesin’ for some Doctor Who! Airing this week…

We’re a week out from Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, in my beloved Montreal.

Worldcons are fickle beasts, for the sole reason that there is just so damned much to do. We’re talking about thousands of people, hundreds of events, and every facet of this vast and ungainly thing we call “fandom” brought to light in some manner. Even after thirty years of attending cons, I still get little chills thinking about the singular experiences that never fail to pepper the long weekend: lucking into a Kaffeeklatsche; finding an unexpected pin next to my name on the Voodoo Message Board; encountering an author whose book I just happen to have on my person; having a wholly non-ironic conversation about broadcast engineering with a guy in an Elfquest outfit. Only at a Worldcon can you accidentally walk into a lecture about caring for your Stargate bobbleheads, wonder aloud why there are still Sailor Moon fans on the planet, and overhear extended passages from somebody’s “Me and Summer Glau Trapped on a Shuttlecraft in a Decaying Orbit” fan fiction while waiting for an elevator, all in one afternoon.

Even at their worst, Worldcons are magnificent.

I adroitly delude myself that I have the know-how and Con cred to efficiently maximize my enjoyment, but my plans, without exception, get tossed shortly after I grab my badge. Still, there are items and events that always tentpole the convention experience:

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Small Beer Press has posted the table of contents for Holly Black’s upcoming collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, which Big Mouth House will publish in February 2010:

1. “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” (Eternal Kiss)
2. “A Reversal of Fortune” (The Coyote Road)
3. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” (Troll’s Eye View)
4. “The Night Market” (The Faery Reel)
5. “The Dog King”
6. “Virgin” (Magic in the Mirrorstone)
7. “In Vodka Veritas” (21 Proms)
8. “Coat of Stars” (So Fey)
9. “Paper Cuts Scissors” (Realms of Fantasy)
10. “Going Ironside” (Endicott Journal)
11. “The Poison Eaters” (The Restless Dead)

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain. Why is he climbing a mountain? To make love to it, of course!

[via Poe TV]

Free Fiction and Stuff [thanks to the Herculean efforts of QuasarDragon]

• @Tor.com: “The Nostalgist” By Daniel H Wilson.
• @Manybooks: “The Leech” by Phillips Barbee (1952).
• Bewildering Stories has its latest issue out with fiction and poetry by Holly Day, Rudy Eiland, Pat Hauldren, Bertrand Cayzac, Noel Denvir, Glenn Gray, Sue Parman, Gabriel S. Timar, Viacheslav Yatsko, Thomas Lee, Joseph Smith, Danielle L. Parker, and Crystalwizard.
• @Book View Cafe:
  • “Dragon Treasure” by Phyllis Irene Radford.
  • “Kind Hunter” by Pati Nagle.
  • “Feather of the Phoenix” by Katherine Eliska Kimbriel.
  • “The White Dog” by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff.
• Audio Fiction:
  • @StarShipSofa: “Into The Blank Where Life Is Hurled” by Ken Scholes.
  • Age of the Zombies “an original drama podcast” performed by a full cast has up its second episode. [via Sidney Williams Journal]
• Graphic Fiction:
  • @The Horrors of It All: “Werewolves of the Rockies” and “In the Wake of the Werewolf.”
  • @The Bronze Age of Blogs:”Kaos the Slayer.“
  • @Hairy Green Eyeball: The Time Tunnel #1.@
  • @Crosseyed Cyclops: Beowulf: Dragon Slayer #1-6.
• Serial Fiction:
  • @Book View Cafe: Slave Trade Chapter Twelve by Susan Wright.
  • @Strange and Happy: “Eternal Franchise” 12.1 of 31.1 by Jason Stoddard.
  • @The Gherkin Patch: “Quest For The Hanging Glacier” – Part 7 by Lurkinggherkin.

Description: he SG-1 team returns to the planet Cimmeria after learning the Goa’uld have invaded. Previously, the SG-1 team destroyed “Thor’s Hammer”, the planet’s instrument of defense against the Goa’uld. The team makes some remarkable discoveries on the planet.

As the description alludes to, SG-1′s previous actions on Cimmeria left that planet wide open to an eventual Goa’uld return. And return they do, in this episode. That’ll teach O’Neill and company to destroy the de-Goa’ulding device when they could have blow a hole in the wall, but hey, if they did that, we wouldn’t have this episode.

It turns out that being a former host to a Goa’uld really isn’t a bad thing. Not only can you use your mitichlorians to sense other Goa’ulds, you also have the ability to use the hand thingies. It’s a little convenient for me but makes some sense internal to the story.

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• The New Yorker chats with Ursula K. Le Guin about The Left Hand of Darkness. [via Locus Online]
• The Vietnam News interviews the head of the VFSF, biologist and SF writer Vu Kim Dung. [via The World SF News Blog]
• Locus Online has the Scribe Award Winners, honoring the best in media tie-in fiction.
• Peter V. Brett’s debut fantasy novel The Warded Man has been optioned for film by the people behind Resident Evil.
• Tolkien’s heirs want production of The Hobbit stopped. [via Locus Online]
• Sez Joe Abercrombie: “RPGs have nothing like the wide cultural purchase they used to…” as evidenced by his neighbor’s lack of knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons.
• @ThGalaxyExpress: How Science Fiction Romance Can Reinvent Penny Dreadfuls Into Something Wonderful.
• For the nightclubbing geek: Red Shirt Star Trek Cologne. Smell your best on your last away mission.
• Warren Ellis is Scripting King Arthur. “It’s NOT an Excalibur remake, ok?”
• MentatJack lists The Chocolate and Peanut Butter of Noir and Speculative Fiction.

• Over the past several years we’ve seen just how important Comic Con has become, certainly to the movie and TV industry. How important? Important enough that the people behind LOST spent 4 months and over $25k dollars to put together the 1-hour panel. That’s nuts, but goes to show the power the ‘geeks’ among us have as influencers.
• A while ago, the cast of Battlestar Galactica was invited to the United Nations. According to Edward James Olmos, as a result of their visit, the U.N. changed their charter to no longer use the word ‘race’ as a synonym for ‘culture’. Did that really happen? So far, the U.N. isn’t talking. Maybe they’ve been taken over by robots.
• We didn’t post much about Chuck from Comic Con, but something did happen. A new fan-oriented site was launched over the weekend for the show. You can find it at Chuck Me Out. You can find the Chuck panel on NBC.
• Lost in all the hoopla from CC 2009 was Fringe. Their news didn’t seem to make a big splash, but with LOST going out in style, everything else would be in their shadow. Still, the Fringe panel did lay some interesting nuggets on us: it’s possible the cast will meet their ‘other’ selves (with goatees perhaps?) and that J.J. Abrams will write the season opening episode. I find Fringe works best when they get off the ‘monster of the week’ stories. I really want the war to heat up. We’ll see.
• Wired says Warehouse 13 needs to focus on more science fiction instead of using it’s devices only as episode-length McGuffins. I hadn’t thought about it that deep as I like it for what it is, but more exploration into the SF behind the warehouse would be cool.
• SyFy is also bringing back the Amanda Tapping starrer, Sanctuary. Here’s the trailer for season 2:
• Looks like Lucy Lawless will be returning to her sword and sorcery roots in Starz’ new fantasy epic Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the nude scenes in which forced her to hit the gym. Yes, you read that right (you can wake up now Tim). I’ll let producer Stephen DeKnights word say all that needs to be said: the show will have “a death toll like nothing you’ve seen on television before.” 300 meets Rome and Gladiator only on the small screen. Watch the trailer below and tell me the SFX are up to the task:

Palin’s final speech was a thing of poetic beauty…And who does poetry better than Shatner?

See? This is why we love Shatner.

REVIEW SUMMARY: A good collection of Stross’ short fiction.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A collection of 9 stories by Charles Stross.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Stross tosses around imaginative concepts with comfortable regularity.

CONS: His affinity for politics and economics weighed down some of the stories.

BOTTOM LINE: This is good representative sampling of Stross’ fiction; a must-have for any Stross fan and a fine introduction for the uninitiated.

Wireless, a short fiction collection by Charles Stross, collects eight previously-released stories and one story new for this collection (the time travel story “Palimpsest”). Readers who are familiar with Stross work know that his writing often includes politics and economics – two subjects that, for me, are story-killers more often than not; they’re just not the reason I read science fiction. So it’s probably no surprise that the more enjoyable stories in this collection dialed those particular knobs down. The only standout story in the bunch is the excellent “Down on the Farm”, but that didn’t stop many others from winning awards and generally being well-received.

Individual story reviews follow…

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Free Fiction and Stuff [courtesy of the magnificent QuasarDragon]

• @Subterranean: “Snow Dragons” by Elizabeth Bear.
• @Strange Horizons: “Bespoke” by Genevieve Valentine.
• @Fantasy Magazine: “The Integrity of the Chain” by Lavie Tidhar.
• @Book View Cafe:
  • “Escape Hatch” by Brenda Clough.
  • “The Rose, the Rich Man, and Mother Berchte” by Steven Piziks (1997).
• Audio Fiction:
  • @Maria Lectrix: “Song in a Minor Key” by C. L. Moore, read by Maureen O’Brien.
  • @LibriVox: The World Set Free by H. G. Wells, read by LivelyHive.
• Serial Fiction:
  • @Kat and Mouse: “Babysitting Blues” Part Six by Abner Senires.
  • @Enter Three Witches: “The Unicorn” Part two by L. M. Bricker.
  • “Bone Shop” chapter five by T.A. Pratt.
  • Makers by Cory Doctorow, Part 10 (of 81)

Description: While exploring planet P3R-636, the SG-1 team comes across a troop of Jaffa warriors and priests delivering Naquadah, an element treasured by the Goa’uld, through the Stargate, but are captured and forced to slave in the Naquadah mines.

I seem to have missed this one the first time through season 2, probably because the description does absolutely nothing for me. I’m not sure what to expect.

I see the people of this world use Mayan hieroglyphs instead of Egyptian. That’s cool. And Daniel certainly seems to end up in the sarcophagus an awful lot. Good thing it can bring people back from the dead or Daniel would be left back in season 1.

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• There’s a new King Kong prequel film coming, based on the book Kong: King of Skull Island by Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland.
• Mark Kelly posts about The Charles N. Brown Memorials.
• Interviews and Profiles:
  • @Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review: Tim Lebbon (Bar None and the focus of this interview, Hellboy).
  • @Books I Done Read: Margo Lanagan (Tender Morsels).
  • @I Should Be Writing: Mur Lafferty podcast-interviews Greg van Eekhout (Norse Code).
  • @Fast Forward: a video-interview with Michael Swanwick
  • @Bibliophile Stalker: Kaaron Warren (Slights).
• Mark Teppo guest-blogs at Electric Velocipede Blog.
• Tor.com is SFWA’s newest qualifying short fiction market.
• 8 More Pyr Titles Arrive on the Kindle
• Anticipation announces the WorldCon preliminary programme schedule [PDF].
• On Why Syfy is a Good Idea. [via Torque Control]
• io9 wonders What If Greedo Really Shot First? [via SciFi Scanner]
• I can’t even begin to tell you about all the cool stuff at tumblr blog Distracted by Star Wars.
• Video: The Making of a Star Wars AT-AT Loft Bed.
• Core Dump points us to this Science Photo Library.
• Mindless diversion that last for about 3 seconds: The Harry Potter Sequel Generator.
• Living proof that the comics of yesteryear were much less politically correct than they are today.
• The World in the Satin Bag lists Science Fiction’s Top 5 Leading Ladies.

Another reader writes in with a story description looking for a title.

Do any of our readers out there know the title of this story? Warm up your memories…this is a tough one with few details:

I’m nearly 60 years old, so the SF I’m talking about is pretty old. In any case, here goes: Many, many years ago, I read a book where a traveler to another planet wrote “2 + 2 = 4″ in the sand, and the sane shifted until the inscription read “2 + 2 ~ 4.” Any idea of the book I’m looking for?

- Steve O.

Can you name this story?

Free Fiction and Stuff [courtesy of the whiz-bang QuasarDragon]

• Free Speculative Fiction Online has updated their huge collection of free speculative fiction links.
• @Book View Cafe: “Misprint” by Vonda N. McIntyre (2008).
• @Hub: “Ticket” by J.R. Blackwell.
• @Manybooks:
  • “Warm” by Robert Sheckley (1953).
  • “Spirit Island” by Henry Toke Munn (1922).
• Audio Fiction:
  • @Beam Me Up: The conclusion of “The Star” by H.G. Wells, read by CrystalWizard and “Census Day” by Shaun A. Saunders, read by Paul Cole.
  • @Fear on Demand: “Cambion” by Brett Williams, read by Julie Hoverson.
  • @Cthulhu: Part two of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” by H. P. Lovecraft.
• Graphic Fiction:
  • @Grantbridge Street & other misadventures: “Dear Valentine.”
  • @Golden Age Comics: Planet Comics #47.

In the interest of full disclosure, and to give publishers a little bit of love for books they’ve sent, here are the books we received this past week.