SF/F/H Link Post for 2014-03-22

Interviews & Profiles

• The Catholic Register interviews Noah Writer-Director Darren Aronofsky and Co-Writer Ari Handel
• Civilian Reader interviews Sarah Lotz, author of The Three.
• Director Alfonso Cuaron talks briefly about his new television series, Believe.
• Ginger Nuts of Horror interviews Robert Friedrich, author of Enlightened by Darkness.
• Gotcha Movies interviews with Jodorowsky’s Dune Director Frank Pavich.
• InkSpokes interviews Michael J. Sullivan, author of Theft of Swords.
• The IEET profiles Gregory Benford, “A scientist-author at the heart of hard science fiction.”
• Literary Escapism interviews Jennifer Chance, author of Rock It.
• My Bookish Ways interviews Will Storr, author of The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson explains to Rationally Speaking Why He Doesn’t Call Himself an Atheist
• Nicky Peacock interviews Wynne Channing, author of I Am Forever.
• Reddit is currently hosting an AMA with fantasy author Miles Cameron, author of Fell Sword.
• Reddit is accepting questions for an AMA for Max Brooks, author of World War Z, next week.
• Sarah Rees Brennan explains how much of Supernatural is in Demon’s Lexicon.
• SFFWorld interviews Brandt Legg, author of The Inner Movement trilogy.
• The Telegraph talks to director Caradog James and Caity Lotz, star of a new British film, The Machine, that explores the consequences of sentient artificial intelligence

News

• Captain America jets onto the UK’s red carpet

Events & Event News

• OMNI Reboot will be auctioning off 100 of the original 35mm slides in an auction on March 30th.

Crowd Funding

• Catacombs – a fantasy board game where players flick wooden discs through a set of rooms battling monsters and getting treasure.
• Skies of Fire – an epic comic featuring gigantic diesel-powered airships dueling in the skies.
• Michael – a short film about the lengths we will go to be reunited with the person we can’t live without shot by a group of hard-working students at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Articles

• Review: Bullspec.com reviews Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi and The Eidolon by Libby McGugan, “SF that didn’t peg the engineer’s baloney meter”
• Review: To prove their real fan status, Ana Grilo and Thea James (aka the Booksmugglers) review arguably Heinlein’s greatest novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and find it wanting. “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is without a doubt the most boring, soulless, stacked revolution I’ve ever read.”
• Review: The Verge reviews Divergent. “It’s hard to stand out when you’re exactly the same.”
• The 10 Weirdest Marvel Movies That Almost Got Made
• 15 YA Novels To Watch Out For This Spring
• The 100 Is Like BSG For Dummies, But We Love It
• Are Doctor-Lite stories the best of Doctor Who?
• Bookish has announced the results of its Character Bracket Lit Madness
• Chuck Wendig walks us through The Varied Emotional Stages Of Writing A Book, but somehow forgets the part where I weep silently in the shower over my complete lack of talent.
• Crime author reaps whirlwind after urging JK Rowling to stop writing: Lynn Shepherd sets off storm of protest by suggesting Harry Potter author has ‘had her turn’ and is harming others’ prospects. (I know someone who’s grateful the Avada Kedavra Curse doesn’t work.)
• Discovery News looks back at What We Think Martians Look Like.
• Divergent: Science vs. Fiction: Divergent deals with some future technology, but is more in the tradition of social science fiction, which trades in speculation regarding anthropology and sociology. Discovery take a look at some of the science — both hard and soft — behind the science fiction.
• Do realistic special effects spoil our sense of awe? Are we doomed to lives which pale before the awe-inspiring moments created by Hollywood?
• Her is the Most Important Movie You Will See This Year, the twilight of the human experience
• How we Will Dress in the Future, According to Hollywood [via Paul Di Filippo]
• The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies considers Science Fiction and Futurism.
• The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies reviews the Ethical Arguments for the Use of Cognitive Enhancing Drugs (Part Two)
• Jodorowsky’s Dune Is A Monument To Divine Madness And Doomed Beauty
• Kurt Vonnegut Once Sent This Amazing Letter To A High School
• May the Box Office Be Ever in Your Favor: How Divergent and The Hunger Games Avoid Race and Gender Violence. “As violent and militarized as these books are, the violence in their worlds bears little to no resemblance to the violence of the real world we live in. “
• Medium recalls The Strange History of Sci-Fi Super Fuels
• The Mumpsimus remembers Lucius Shepard: Art Out of Fantasy and Pain
• My Bookish Ways has posted its monthly list of Must Reads in SFF for April 2014.
• New series Technium explores how close sci-fi tech is to really happening
• Over at Book Riot, Cassandra Neace discusses My Fan Fiction Addiction. [via Paul Di Filippo]
• Ready, Set, Rant! The 100 is everything that is wrong with sci-fi today.
• Science fiction doesn’t predict the future, it creates the future: While most people believe SF’s power comes from the genre’s predictions, the truth is far more subtle
• Things YA Readers Are Sick of Hearing & How To Respond.
• Where do our ideas go? “Creativity inspired by SF&F writing” is a response to a very interesting discussion The Book Smugglers started about what makes something a “classic” of sci-fi.
• Who Chooses SF Classics? Who Chooses Our Required Reading?
• Why Everyone Needs to Read (More) Science Fiction. Want to think better, learn faster, kick more ass and save the world? There’s a genre for that.
• Why Sci Fi is so Important. They say money is the root of all evil, but it’s actually xenophobia.

Art

• Custom Storm Trooper Helmets on show at The Dubai Mall
• Doctor Who Fan Art Re-Imagines All 12 Time Lords As Dogs from Hartnell To Capaldi. I’m so sorry.
• Geek Art Gallery has a gallery of fan made movie posters for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar

More Fun Stuff

• Behind the scene photos from the set of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
• A bit of salty language, but this is a great example as to why practical ways of looking at things is almost a superpower when you’re partnered with Sherlock Holmes.
• Can We Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia? Only if the robots kill all us all first.
• Captain America’s to-do list includes Star Trek and Steve Jobs
• Discovery News delves into 13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens
• Read an excerpt of Irenicon by Aidan Harte at My Bookish Ways.
• Read an excerpt of Hollow City by Ransom Riggs at Scribd.
• So what happens when you pit a saw-wielding astronaut against a lamprey-snake monster? All sorts of gory fun, of course. Filmmaker Daniel Beaulieu made Malaise, a two-minute homage to Alien and ’70s interior decorating, for his final project for Vancouver Film School.
• Society Is Doomed, Say Scientists. You may now descend into anarchy. That is all.
• Stow Your Second-Hand Embarrassment and Watch Billy Dee Williams Do a Star Wars Cha Cha
• Superheroes scale the walls at Ontario hospital
• Watch a brilliant Animated Doctor Who Regeneration Tribute Video.
• Watch a trailer for the new BBC series The Real History Of Science Fiction on SlashFilm.
• When Robots Can Kill, It’s Unclear Who Will Be To Blame, and yet, every time I kick a Roomba I’m the one getting the dirty looks.