A science fiction blog featuring science fiction book reviews and with frequent ramblings on fantasy, computers and the web.
The Harry Potter movie machine is winding down with the last two pics due this fall and next spring. Yes, you’ll have to wait several months between parts to see how it ends. Or you could read the book. Oh who am I kidding, you all ready know how it ends, you just want to see it on the big screen. But in 3D?
It’s time for another Book Cover Smackdown, where you (yes, you!) get to play art critic and pick your favorite cover. Here are the contenders…
Your Mission (should you choose to accept it): Tell us which cover you like best…and why.
Books shown here:
NOTE: Bigger, better cover art images are available by clicking the images or title links.
The winners of our giveaway of The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan have been randomly picked, notified, and possibly rubbed in garlic. They are:
Congratulations!
Thanks to everyone who entered.
Interviews/Profiles
News
Articles
If you saw and loved the anime classic Space Battleship Yamato (Starblazers in the US) you will probably salivate over this trailer for the live-action movie adaptation. Some of the CGI shots look awesome and I want to see this movie so very, very much. The trailer may be in Japanese, but the eye candy is pure awesome. The synopsis for those not in the know:
Set in 2220, the pic will depict the evacuation of 300 million people from Earth to avoid certain death from an expanding black hole. The Yamato, a space battleship, is leading the rescue fleet when it is attacked by an alien force.
[H/T Quiet Earth]
I saw this link over at Daring Fireball and felt that there was a time in my childhood where I would like an AT-AT from Kenner. Enjoy…
JP says: So cute and what a nice surprise at the end!
REVIEW SUMMARY: One of these stories is not like the other.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Two stories (set in the Warhammer 40K Horus Heresy timeline) about brother Imperial Primachs and their dealings with Imperial loyalty.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: World building expands my understanding of this universe; good vocal performance by Danny Webb; meaty subtext and exciting fight sequences in “Dark King”.
CONS: “Lightning Tower” is way too heavily weighted on world building at the expense of plot.
BOTTOM LINE: Good backgrounder for the Horus Heresy series of stories
Alkaline Trio is a punk rock band (according to Wikipedia) from Illinois, which explains why I’ve never heard of them. However, their single “Help Me” is incredibly catchy and the video for is pure steampunk goodness. You’ve got a supercharged steam-driven locomotive with a giant cowcatcher driven by a dastardly villain with a damsel in distress (Kat Von D) tied to said cowcatcher and a band of heroes with such cool devices as a monowheel, a jetpack and an airship. The graphics may be somewhat unimpressive but they certainly add to the comic book hero feeling of the story. I can’t stop listening/watching.
Enjoy!
“Birth of an Alien Nation” is the pilot episode for a new series of Internet science fiction called Alien in the Land of Bejesus. Author of the series, Sue Lange, will be publishing the series in the fall at Book View Café, but in the meantime, she’s offering a free sneak peak at her personal blog, Singularity Watch. In the coming months, new episodes will be periodically posted at Singularity Watch, which covers the convergence of technology and culture and is the perfect venue for this new satire which pits a lone alien against its technological world of Bejesus. Short and sprinkled with humor, the episodes are perfect for a quick Internet read.
More of Sue Lange’s free Internet fiction can be found at Book View Café. Her print published work (Tritcheon Hash, 2003, Metropolis Ink, and We, Robots, 2007, Aqueduct Press), can be found at Amazon. Her ebooks are available in the Kindle, Smashwords, and Kobobooks stores.
Interviews/Profiles
Sprunk
.Slatter interviews Kirstyn
McDermott.
Antosca
.News
Articles
Payne on Word
Repetition and Sundry.
Kind of Publisher to Choose, Traditional and Small Press
.Valente on Adventures
in Editing.
the Muse Slaps You
.About Twilight and Gender Dynamics Raised in New Book
.Gardner on It’s
About What’s Selling.
Traditore: translations, languages and cultures
.Charan Newton on You
Think SFF Debuts Have It Tough.
Beta, Cappa… Oh, Hell, I Was Never in a Sorority
.Yay, Administrivia!
Just a heads-up…Blog posting may be light over the next couple of weeks while I am on vacation.
Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, Inception, looks to be one of the bigger events of the summer and now 10 lucky SF Signal reader’s will be able to see it before it opens! The screening is scheduled for July 13th at 7pm at a theater in New York (full details will be emailed to the winners) so if you live in/near NY or can get there, this contest is for you.
Here’s how to enter for your chance to win:
Good luck!
Bonus trailer:
Subterranean Press has posted the Table of Contents for the upcoming collection Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance by Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan. (Dust jacket by Tom Kidd):
In the interest of full disclosure, here’s the stuff we received this week.
Fun for you: Based on these covers, which title do you want to know more about?
Interviews/Profiles
interviews M.K.
Hobson.
Robinette Kowal
(audio).Gaiman
(video).at 20:00) (audio).
Winner’s acceptance speech (Neil
Gaiman) (video).
Milošević
.Agony Column interviews Jennifer
Egan (podcast).
Goletz
.K. Wolfe and Jeremy Lassen
(podcast).News
Articles
Wessely on Judging
a book by its cover.
Gaiman says closing libraries would be ‘a terrible mistake’
.L.C. Jones on Dressing
Up Like a Girl: Two Guys Talk about Writing the Other.
Marmell on When
World’s Don’t Collide.
on Writing: Writers and Time
.Strikes Back
.Got Your Writer’s Block Right Here
.Linguistics Can Help You, Part 1: Articulatory Phonetics
.Hardy on Study Hall.
Locus Online has posted the The 2010 Locus Awards winners which were announced at the annual Science Fiction Awards Weekend, held June 25-27, 2010 in Seattle, WA.
Congratulations to all the winners!
See also:
In space, no one can hear you blog, especially when your blog has been hacked, like we were yesterday morning.
Unfortunately, I was unable to get to it until later that night as I was attending ApolloCon and having lots of fun meeting up with some familiar faces including SF Signal Irregulars Karen Burnham and Scott Cupp; Lou Antonelli, author of Fantastic Texas; Bill Crider (mystery writer and proprietor of Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine); fantasy writer Stina Leicht; A. Lee Martinez, author of Divine Misfortune (everyone who follows him on Twitter gets a free Chrysler Cordoba!); and Locus reviewer and avid book collector Lawrence Person.
I also got to meet others for the first time, including authors Catherine Asaro (The Skolian Empire series) and D.B. Grady (Red Planet Noir).
And, true to my biblioholic ways, I “treated” myself to a book purchase in the dealers’ room: The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1, which promises to be a name-dropping orgy of sf goodness.
Sadly, I was only able to attend on Saturday — too bad, I always have fun at ApolloCon!
There are only a few days left to enter our giveaway for a free copy of The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan!
See the original post for the ridiculously easy details on how to enter.
Interviews & Profiles
News
Articles
More Fun Stuff
REVIEW SUMMARY: A quest disguised as a coming-of-age novel.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An ordinary nine year old girl receives an unexpected birthday present: a whole new concept of “emotion(al) eating.” This is the story of how she copes.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Rose is an ordinary nine year old with extraordinary self-possession. The humanity of the Edelstein family is what makes them believable. The supporting cast is a good one.
CONS: A minor character or two seems thrown in, but this feels like a nitpicky complaint. The major complaint is that there seems to be a “hole” in the story.
BOTTOM LINE: This book gave me mental whiplash. This is the first time I have literally had a “so that is what happened!” 24 hours after reading a book. This one will stay with you.
Don’t look now, but we’re getting larger — and I’m still not talking about our collective waistlines.
SF Signal welcomes Ashley Crump to our ranks of wayward Irregulars!
By way of introduction (and not laziness on our part — nope, no way), we asked Ashley to talk about herself in the third person. This is what she came up with:
Ashley Crump has the requisite two black cats, but cannot seem to keep up with her broomstick. Thus, her travel is a little more limited than she’d like. She consumes science fiction and fantasy – along with renegade mystery novels – on the banks of a Louisiana bayou. Reading three or four books a week keeps her busy when she’s not teaching young minds how to manipulate the English language. She escapes to England when the stars align just right so that she can wander around London and luxuriate in the fullness of real bookstores. Maybe that’s where the broomstick is…
We’re happy to have Ashley on board to help pick up our reviewing slack.
Welcome, Ashley! Since you’re new around here, let me be the first to explain the longstanding tradition of bagelness. It’s customary in these parts that “New Irregular buys everyone else bagels”, so put down that book and make with the boiled pieces of tasty dough. I’ll have an Everything bagel, please. 
While Ashley is finding the nearest bagel shop — because everyone knows that the supermarket doesn’t have real bagels — check out her first review for : The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.
Up until recently, I was an ebook skeptic. I prefer the heft and feel of a book as opposed to holding some electronic device. Of course, the only two places I had read ebooks on were on my PC (can’t lie in bed with that or sit on the couch) and an iPaq Windows Mobile ‘smartphone’ (which has a really tiny screen and sucks to read on). I had written off the ebook thing, even with Amazon’s Kindle app for PCs.
That all changed when I received an email from my brother which went something like this, “I just bought an iPad, do you want my Kindle?” Of course, I said yes! If it’s free, it’s for me! In this case I received something (Kindle v2.0) I had only ever seen in pictures and never used. Well, I’ve been using it for about two months now and I really, really like it. It’s really easy to read books on the Kindle, even if the formatting may get a bit funky sometimes depending, and I love the Whispernet access and ease of downloading books to it. One click, turn it on, 20 seconds later, boom, new book! Plus I never have to bookmark where I am in a novel, the Kindle remembers for me. Plus, I have the option of entering notes for a book. I’ve never done that, but it’s there if I need it.
Predator is one of my ‘guilty pleasure’ movies. It has Arnie at the height of his badassness battling a hunter/killer alien in the jungles of Central America. Throw in Jesse Venture, Carl Weathers and pocket nukes and you have one hell of a body count and a fun movie. Fast forward to 2010 and Robert Rodriguez has seen fit to replace Arnold with…Adrian Brody? What the?
Anyway, the story is now that several humans have been abducted from Earth and sent to fight for their lives on an alien game preserve planet against, natch, the Predators. I’ll place 15 quatloos on Brody, but I won’t like it.
I dunno, this could either royally blow or be pretty good. I’ll probably wait to see what the reviews are first before seeing this. But I know what you’re thinking, what does Arnold think? Find out after the jump!
