Here’s an interesting interview from the early 1960s in which Sam Moskowitz discusses the ideas presented in Murray Leinster’s short story “A Logic Named Joe”. The story fortells the presense of “logics” (what we futurians call computers) and Moskowitz has some eerily prescient predictions.
UPDATE: Video removed by user 
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Tagged with: computers • interview • Sam Moskowitz
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Computers • Science and Technology
I have no idea what they are saying…but I love the look and the animation in this full trailer for Space Pirate Captain Harlock. The pop soundtrack near the end I could do without, though.
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Tagged with: anime • Captain Harlock • Space Opera • Space Pirate Captain Harlock • Trailer
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Movies
Considering that (1) I’m a sucker for Gollancz’s SF and Fantasy Masterworks book series, and (2) I’m a sucker for book covers, you could imagine how thrilled I am to see that Gollancz is rebranding the Fantasy Masterworks line with some beautiful art and design work.
The first titles coming from the relaunch include:
More titles will follow in 2014.
Tagged with: Fantasy Masterworks • Gollancz • Masterworks
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Art • Books
In this short animated film by by Iker Maidagan and Dana Terrace, a young Inuit boy reaches waters no one has ever reached before while trying to fish in the Arctic wilderness.
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Tagged with: animated • animation • Short Film
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Movies
A short retro-game-style animation tailored for the short attention span of the Twitter generation. Or, just a cool video. You decide!
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Tagged with: 8-bit • Star Trek
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Movies
Interviews & Profiles
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Tidbits
REVIEW SUMMARY: The latest issue of Clarkesworld features three original works of science fiction, two reprints and four non-fiction articles.
MY RATING: 
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Five solid science fictional stories examine cloning, life on the moons of Uranus, parallel-universe pest control, failing technology and one unenviable conundrum.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: No disappointments here; exciting storytelling; imaginative visions of the future; strong works of original fiction; high degree of accessibility.
CONS: While opinions will no doubt very, I find nothing of note to list as a con for this issue.
BOTTOM LINE: The June issue of Clarkesworld is full of enjoyment. Each work of original fiction features a different perspective with characters that are accessible to the reader and plots that will leave the reader contemplating the options presented to the various protagonists. The reprints are both strong choices which leave little question as to why editor Gardner Dozois chose them for the issue. It was nice to read and compare five stories that are very clearly science fictional in nature. While each story has interesting science fictional concepts, it is apparent in each case that the author set out to do more than just examine ideas by putting an emphasis on story. Each story is available right now on the Clarkesworld website and the first two original fiction offerings have accompanying audio podcast versions which are linked to in the post that follows.
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Tagged with: Clarkesworld • Short Fiction Friday
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Book Review
By
Derek | Friday, June 14th, 2013 at
12:29 am
REVIEW SYNOPSIS: Overly long, sloppily scripted, needlessly violent, with changes that need not—and in some instances, should not—have been made, Zack Snyder’s telling of the classic superhero’s origins, despite some good touches, never coheres into a unified whole.
MY RATING: 
SYNOPSIS: Kryptonian scientist Jor-El sends his only son to Earth as his own world perishes. The boy grows to manhood and learns of his identity and extraordinary powers as a renegade general from his home planet demands his surrender.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: Good cast, with strong performances by Russell Crowe and Amy Adams; incredible rendering of Krypton; small, standout scenes.
CONS: Muddy, redundant script; too much action; too little character development, with the main characters underfinished; a major change in the title character that goes against his primary image.
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Tagged with: Man of Steel • Superman
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Movies
Today over on the Kirkus blog, I talk about The Legend of Drizzt: A Neverwinter Tale by R.A. Salvatore.
From the post:
It’s difficult to imagine Dungeons & Dragons without The Forgotten Realms, a campaign/expansion setting created by Ed Greenwood in 1967, and brought into the D&D canon fully in 1987. The setting has proven a fruitful one for players and authors alike. At least twenty-four books have included R.A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf hero, Drizzt. Few authors have contributed as much to the Dungeons & Dragons canon as Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatore. I actually had the opportunity to chat with Salvatore for the SFSignal.com podcast, and we talked extensively about his Neverwinter Saga and Drizzt himself. The history and world building in that series is carried over and expanded in the comics which make up the new graphic novel.
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Tagged with: comic books • Dungeons & Dragons • graphic novel • Kirkus • Neverwinter • R.A. Salvatore
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Books
How might some of your favorite films looked if the Dark Knight starred in them?
Watch this video to find out!
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Tagged with: Batman
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Humor • Movies
There is still some time left for you to enter our giveaway for an Advanced Reading Copy of Crux by Ramez Naam…but hurry, time is running out!
See the original post for details on how to enter.
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Contest
There is still some time left for you to enter our giveaway for a copy of Angel City by Jon Steele…but hurry, time is running out!
See the original post for details on how to enter.
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Contest
Interviews & Profiles
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Tidbits
MY RATING:
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: On a Flat Earth, an alchemist’s desire for a magical substance draws an expedition to the edge of the world into conflict with dangers mundane and magical alike.
MY REVIEW:
PROS: An interesting high concept and some interesting worldbuilding ideas; fast paced; good use of proto-scientific method for magical researched. Beautiful cover art.
CONS: Stock, often uninteresting and unsympathetic characters; contrivances of plot are precisely that, contrivances.
BOTTOM LINE: A novel whose high concept and ideas do not quite live up to their execution.
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Tagged with: david walton
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Book Review • Books
Tales are not lies, nor are they truths, but something in between. They can be as true or as false as the listener chooses to make them, or the teller wants him to believe.
- Juliet Marillier, Son of the Shadows
The Princess and the Flamethrower: Feminism in Fairy Tales
by Faith Mudge
I don’t know if anyone else noticed, but I’m pretty sure 2012 was the Year of the Fairy Tale. There wasn’t an official announcement or anything, but the nod was clearly given in secret circles and the retellings spread outwards like ripples on the waters of speculative fiction. Novels such as Kate Forsyth’s Bitter Greens, Sophie Masson’s Moonlight and Ashes and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder were released, there were big movie adaptations Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman, there was even a TV series. Hell, there were two TV series! I’m a fiend for fairy tales; I was in paradise. And I was seriously impressed by the ingenuity of all these storytellers for finding something new to say about stories that have been retold over so many years.
But there was also a bitter aftertaste that’s been bothering me for some time. It was so subtle, and so pervasive, that it is difficult to pin down when exactly I first noticed it – in the reviews? The promotional interviews? The posts I read afterwards? What I noticed was this: that when people spoke about a fairy tale adaptation, the assumption was that it would be better than the original. Specifically, that the women would be better.
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Tagged with: Fairy Tales • Faith Mudge • Feminism • guest post
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Books
I’ve been reading a lot about reading recently, and it struck me the other day that a lot of the scientific research on the topic (at least, what I have read so far) doesn’t care much about the format of what is being read. Most experiments focus on individual words or short-form prose and are interested in either tracking identification of symbols or uncovering a psychological effect (such as Maya Djikic’s recent experiment with fiction and ambiguity). When genre or form are evoked the major criterion seems to be whether the selection is fiction or non-fiction. It seems to me that such an approach misses something about the act of reading by not considering the effect of formatting and presentation of the words, of the spatial and physical setting of the words.
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Columns • The Bellowing Ogre
Danie Ware is the author of Valkyrie, “Recruit” (in the Vivisepulture anthology edited by Andy Remic and Wayne Simmons), The Mumbling Man, Cure, and most recently, Ecko Rising, from Titan Books.
Danie was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about the new book, and more!
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Tagged with: Danie Ware • Ecko Burning • Ecko Rising • interview
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Interviews
Amazon has posted the cover art and synopsis of the upcoming novel Last to Rise (A Rojan Dizon Novel) by Francis Knight, the conclusion to the Rojan Dizon series, due out in November.
Here’s the synopsis:
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Tagged with: Cover & Synopsis • Francis Knight
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Books
