In addition to my long-time duties as a Kick-Ass Mystic Ninja, which of course outweigh any obligations to friends, family, or nation, I work as an associate editor at St. Martin’s Press, a book publisher in New York City.
St. Martin’s is a part of Macmillan, which in turn owns Tor, the biggest and baddest SF publisher around. And Tor has just launched Tor.com, a publisher-agnostic blog and community site for SF lovers, and I’ve joined the team of bloggers (which includes some really, really terrific folks who are far more interesting than me like Jim Henley, Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross, and more).
There’s also a gallery of SF art. And did I mention it’s a paying venue for new SF short fiction?
Currently, we’re all here at San Diego Comic-Con, blogging about the various geek-gasms to be enjoyed, but when we return the SF-related posts will continue 2 fast 2 furious, and I thought it might be up your Kick-Ass-enjoying alleys.
So go check it out, and let me know what you think of the site, both content and design. It’s in beta, so your thoughts are welcome and will be very much appreciated.
Tor.com: Science Fiction. Fantasy. And related subjects.
Ancestor, the newest book from Scott Sigler, is available now at Amazon.com. Go get it!
Brad of PodCulture writes:
I am sure you’ve already run across this news, but just in case I’ve included the text and link for the article. Thanks for a great show!
No, Brad, I actually had no idea this was happening. Can’t you tell from listening to the show that I don’t really know much of anything about science fiction? Summer and Joe knew all about it, I’m sure, but I rely on helpful listeners like you to keep me abreast.
That’s wonderful news, though. I’d heard that Lucas had no intention of ever doing this. It’ll be a real treat to watch Star Wars the way it was meant to be seen, with Han shooting first and no stupid T-Rex’s lumbering around in the back of every crowd scene.
Listener Brian sent us the following tip:
I thought you guys might want to see this pilot for a show spoofing Knight Rider and other similar classic scifi shows. It stars Jack Black as a NASA astronaut on the run with his talking motorcycle companion voiced by Owen Wilson.
Although the show would not be appropriate for a full KAMN podcast, I figured you and your listeners would enjoy this.
The complete pilot can be found here: YouTube link
Thanks, Brian. The pilot is hysterical, and definitely worth a look, although I think it’s more of a parody of The Incredible Hulk than anything else. Ah, what a fantastic show that was…
I’m incredibly pleased to discover that the New York Times has finally deigned to form a science fiction book review column. This is long overdue: Science fiction, as we all know, is just as valid a literary form as any other. The first review (link) is of David Marusek’s Counting Heads. You may recall that I reviewed that worthy book myself on the Dragon Page (link).
This is good news, I think. Science fiction’s already conquered television and film. It’s time that the brilliant books that provide all the source material and new ideas for those mostly lousy blockbuster films finally get a little respect.
Anyone out there as big a fan of the bionic TV franchise as I am? I’m talking The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, and all the various subsequent TV movies and potential spin-offs, including the failed pilot for The Bionic Boy. I couldn’t get enough of that stuff when I was a kid, but they all paled in comparison to Bionic Six.
Yes, I’m well aware that Bionic Six was a crappy Saturday morning cartoon that had nothing to do with Col. Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers and Max the Bionic Dog that was afraid of fire. But what a crappy Saturday morning cartoon it was! For those unfamiliar with one of the greatest crappy Saturday morning cartoons in history, Bionic Six was about a bionic hero, Jack Bennett, who has a wife and several children, two of which are adopted. An accident on a trip to the Himalayas forces Jack to give his family the same bionic surgery that transformed him in order to save their lives. A superpowered team is born, and so is a superpowered 80s theme song.
This show had some of the best toys around: die-cast metal with clear plastic limbs to represent the ones that were bionic. Only problem was the paint would chip off — same as the Silverhawks action figures. They all felt great in the hand, though.
Enjoy the opening sequence, and please continue the reminiscences in the comments, including Who to Cast in the Eventual Live-Action Film and What Limb I Would Lop Off and Make Bionic If Given the Choice.
In the spirit of Jack Mangan’s Duel of the Fates, Microsoft-Paint-tastic blog Puntabulous asks the question: (Who would win in a death match between Unicron and the Death Star?)
I have a question for us to discuss. What’s the deal with Underworld? I’d been under the impression that the movie sucked. I mean, sucked. As of today, it has a 30% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with Roger Ebert declaring: “This is a movie so paltry in its characters and shallow in its story that the war seems to exist primarily to provide graphic visuals.”
Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of great scifi movies out there that the fans love and the critics hate. And I love, love, werewolves versus vampires. Not werewolves alone or vampires alone, but werewolves versus vampires, that I’d pay money to see. But, leaving the critics aside, the word of mouth on this flick was terrible too.
So why is there a sequel? I mean, seriously? We never got Bladerunner 2, but this?
Here’s my theory: They’re trying to pull a fast one on us. Here’s how the scam works. A fan sees posters for a movie with a cool concept. It looks good, so the fan lets himself gets excited, but he’s been around long enough to know that the cooler the concept, the more unlikely that the filmmakers got the execution right, so he waits for the critical response. The critics end up hating it, but the fan’s been around long enough to know that the critics often hate what fanboys love the most, so he keeps his hopes level while he waits to hear the word of mouth from his even geekier friends who’ll shell out ten bucks to see anything with a futuristic babe in leather pants. But the word of mouth is lousy, too, so the fan scraps the whole idea.
Then a sequel appears. The fan starts to doubt his initial estimation of the movie zeitgeist. “Was that movie actually good?” It’s true that sometimes a movie just sneaks under our radar. Sometimes it seems like the movie that everyone seemed to hate last summer is now everyone’s favorite. Curious, the fan heads over to the rental store and picks up the first movie to see if it was actually any good. They wouldn’t make a sequel to a terrible movie, would they, the fan wonders? Sure, they’ll make a bad sequel to a good movie (Matrix Reloaded), and any number of bad sequels after that (Matrix Revolutions), but if the first movie is bad, why beat a dead horse?
The fan watches the first movie, and it stinks. Now the fan’s pissed, having wasted five bucks and two hours of valuable time. Worse, the fan kind of sort of has to go see the sequel now to see if maybe the screenplay was so much better than the first one that Hollywood simply couldn’t say no even though the initial film flopped. Lots of sequels are better than the originals, after all: Terminator 2, The Empire Strikes Back, Gremlins 2, etcetera.
Ten bucks later, the fan’s really angry, and Hollywood pats itself on the book for a marketing double-cross perfectly executed.
The worst part is, knowing all this won’t prevent me from renting Underworld tomorrow.
