If you’re asked for gift ideas by anyone flashing a bankroll with Woodrow Wilson on the bills, be sure to suggest The Authentic 1966 Batmobile from Hammacher Schlemmer. What a bargain for $200,000!
So accurate it requires almost a year to complete, this is the officially licensed, roadworthy replica of the Batmobile featured in the iconic 1960s TV show. Built on a custom Lincoln chassis, this crime-fighting cruiser comes standard with a 430-horsepower, 383 Blueprint Crate engine and a Monster TH350 automatic transmission. Though equipped with neither atomic batteries for power nor turbines for speed, a rear-facing propane tank creates the same afterburner effect as the original. The vehicle’s cockpit honors the gadgetry of the TV series with a blinking Batphone, switch-operated electric actuators that open the hood and trunk, and a rotating red beacon to alert citizens while in pursuit of fiendish criminals. Other intriguing, if less functional, accessories include a glowing detect-a-scope screen, a Batbeam ray that raises from a hood-mounted antenna, and empty rear parachute packs. The vehicle’s exterior bears all the hallmarks of its namesake, from bubble-canopy windshields to chrome “rocket” tubes behind the rear windshield. Though the original Batmobile lacked rearview mirrors, this street-legal model comes with clamp-on side mirrors as well as a rear video camera.
From the commercials I’ve seen, most drivers of cars with a rear video camera use them to avoid backing over toddlers on tricycles, which is hardly unimportant to Batmobile owners even if they’ll spend most of their time fantasizing about being chased by black motorcycles firing autocannon.
Let the opening phrase “it requires almost a year to complete” be a warning to last-minute Santas, but replica Batmobiles can be ordered any time of year direct from the maker, Fiberglass Freaks —
In October, 2010, DC Comics authorized Fiberglass Freaks in Logansport, Indiana, to build officially licensed 1966 Batmobile replicas. These replicas have been sold to customers in England, Italy, Canada, and across the U.S. One of Fiberglass Freaks’ 1966 Batmobile Replicas sold at an R & M auction for $216,000. Fiberglass Freaks’ owner Mark Racop has been a 1966 Batman fan since he was two years old, and he built his first 1966 Batmobile replica when he was seventeen.
For fannish gift-seekers with more modest financial resources Hammacher Schlemmer offers The Voice Activated R2-D2 for $199.95.
This motorized replica of the headstrong little “droid” from the iconic Star Wars films responds to voice commands, navigates rooms and hallways, and makes any home feel like it has been transported to a galaxy far, far away. R2 obeys more than 40 voice commands (“Turn around!,” “Move forward two units!”) and he plays games like tag, using an infrared sensor to search for people in a room. His sensor helps him follow behind you, or it can be set to detect motion, turning R2 into a room sentry that sounds an alarm when a secured area is invaded. R2’s lights, swiveling dome top, and distinctive happy and sad sounds faithfully mimic the real thing, right down to his occasional “bad mood.” (A simple command of, “R2, behave yourself!” snaps him out of it.)
There really needs to be a matching battery-powered C3PO to deliver the straight lines, don’t you think?
[Thanks to Steve H Silver, David Klaus and John King Tarpinian for the story.]
Syd Weinstein announces he has completed work on the LoneStarCon 3 DVD/BluRay discs. To order, see Sydweinstein.net/DVDs.
LoneStarCon3 Hugo awards – Available in Blu-Ray or DVD version
The Blu-Ray version is NTSC 720p High Definition as recorded on-site. The DVD version is a down convert to standard definition. Combo Packs include the DVD and the Blu-Ray copy.
LoneStarCon3 Masquerade – Available in Blu-Ray or DVD version
The Masquerade disc contains all of the presentations, including the young fans, as well as the awards and the two half time shows: Music with Leslie Fish and The Magic of Drew Heyen for over two hours of content. The presentations and the awards have been edited to add more views, stills, and complete credits for each costume.
The show’s not broken, but if HBO is at all concerned with its relative lack of buzz, I’m pretty sure I know how to fix it.
Two words:
Boardwalk Vampire.
That’s right. You heard me. You saw that I wrote those words in a one-sentence paragraph, which indicates that I am not kidding around. It’s time for this show to evolve from a period drama about the American criminal underworld of the 1920s into a period drama about the American criminal underworld of the 1920s in which the characters occasionally encounter the bloodthirsty undead.
I know what you’re thinking: “This is an incredible idea and I already agree with you.” But hear me out.
Michal Bodzianowski, from Colorado, won a national competition which called for proposals on experiments which could be conducted in space. But rather than examining the effect of zero-gravity on gerbils or making ice lollies using the freezing vacuum of space, he decided that astronauts might like to get a bit tipsy as they circled the Earth.
His proposal claims that the experiment is a trial for a “future civilization, as an emergency backup hydration and medical source”. The spaced-out brewer also suggested that beer was important for “both medical and survival reasons”, although we suspect neither of these capture the real reason astronauts might want to make a homebrew.
You trufans immediately realized, of course, how much quicker the beer can tower to the Moon will be finished if astronauts are doing their share of the drinking.
(3) “Has Isaac Asimov’s name has been mentioned anywhere around the new series Almost Human?” asks James H. Burns. “Ah, well… Perhaps someone rubbed it out, with BRILLO…”
(4) However, Asimov is getting his due publicity in a new Foundation manga adaptation. The rough translation of the Japanese title is "A History of the Galactic Empire" --
The first compiled volume of a manga adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation novel series was released on September 20. The manga (named Ginga Teikoku Koboshi after the Japanese title for the series), has illustrations by Uzuki and Keitaro Kumazuki. The original source material is translated by Hiroyuki Okabe, and is compiled by Side Ranch. The book is published by the Seldon Project.
An Ohio lawmaker and relatives of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster unveiled a new state license plate bearing the super hero’s image.
State Rep. Bill Patmon stood outside the Cleveland home Monday where Superman was created more than 75 years ago and unveiled the new license plate, alongside family members of the creators and members of the board of directors of the Siegel and Shuster Society…
Society President Michael Olszewski read a letter at Monday’s ceremony from Jerry Siegel’s daughter, Laura Siegel Larson.
“My father, his artist/collaborator Joe Shuster, and my mother would have been absolutely thrilled about this,” Siegel Larson wrote. “I can just imagine them driving around Cleveland and excitedly pointing out the plates as they spotted them.”
(6) Maybe Elon Musk will get Superman plates if he ever drives his new acquisition in Lake Erie? He bought the Lotus submarine car prop from a James Bond movie and plans to convert it into a real car that transforms into a sub — with the benefit of a Tesla electric powerplant.
(7) Sunjammer, the world’s largest solar sail, passed a key test for its 2015 launch. The mission is named for an Arthur C. Clarke story illustrating the idea.
A NASA plan to launch the world’s largest solar sail into space and unfurl it like a giant parasol has passed a major test as the mission moves closer to a planned January 2015 launch. Sunjammer mission successfully deployed part of its huge solar sail in a test on Sept. 30, revealing the craft should be ready to function successfully following its January 2015 launch.
While that tape with “The Slime People” et al had long since gone into the dumpster, I kept that copy of “The Wicker Man” through several moves as if it were some runic script on a piece of old parchment that had to be passed down from generation-to-generation. As VHS gave way to DVD, there were a few special editions of “The Wicker Man,” but all of them—even the 2-disc set from the reputable Anchor Bay—fell far short of the the version that I had preserved on a hand labeled videocassette.
Unfortunately, this newly restored version that’s making its way through a limited theatrical release right now is just 92-minutes long, dashing my hopes that I could retire that old home-recorded tape.
Nobody complained because not a second of Britt Eklund’s time onsceen was ever cut in any version.
There is only one proper way to watch the series, and it’s not from Episode 1 to Episode 6. There are lots of story arcs in the “Star Wars” saga that matter. The one that matters most, and every movie touches on, is the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, also known as Darth Vader, also known as Luke’s dad.
Because of that, the best order to watch the movies is the original “Star Wars,” then “Empire Strikes Back,” then the second prequel, then the third, and then the final movie in the original trilogy, “Return of The Jedi.”
Watched that way, you get a story that introduces a hero and a terrible all-powerful monster, reveals that the monster is the hero’s father, goes back in time to show how the father became a monster, and ends with the monster redeeming himself.
One interesting way to use a wiki is to document the details of your fictional universe in an interesting form on your website. You can choose to restrict access level to yourself and chosen editors, or you can crowdsource its creation and let your fans build it with you. The latter engages fans more deeply with your universe, which in theory should make them more eager to consume new books set in it.
Rambo lists Wiki resources, and also links to several examples, such as The Trek Initiative Wiki sanctioned by Roddenberry Entertainment, which hopes to unite all of the various Star Trek fan communities.
More of Rambo’s helpful and provocative viewpoints are available on her personal blog, including her surprising post “Do Writers Need to Blog? No.”
I keep reading articles that say blogging is mandatory for writers nowadays. That agents and editors won’t take you on if you don’t already have a platform. This is hooey.
Let me repeat that. Hooey.
Who can resist the flat contradiction of some widely-accepted bit of writerly wisdom?
(10) Let’s see, if I place a Vox Day quote right after one from the SFWA Blog will this post self-destruct? Regardless, I found his observation about Iain M. Banks’ “Culture” series pinpointed a seismic fault running through what I otherwise praise highly as a collection of brilliantly-written stories in an ingeniously-conceived universe.
The problem with the Culture series is the same problem that Star Trek has faced for decades. First, imagine that all the Earth’s problems are solved! Okay… so now what?
…It’s remarkable how much war and violence there is in these officially peaceful cultures, is there not? Why, it’s almost as if the alternative it literally too boring to imagine!
Because he was considerably more talented and imaginative than Roddenberry and his heirs at the helm of the Star Trek franchise, Banks’s Culture feels much more rationally credible than Roddenberry’s UN Stormtroopers in Space nonsense, but it is still, at the end of the day, an artistic and imaginative failure. In fact, it is a testament to the man’s skill as a science fiction writer that he managed to make such a comprehensive failure so interesting.
(11) Singer Lou Reed died October 27. “Wasn’t there some type of science fiction connection, aside from the avant garde, with Lou Reed?” asks James H. Burns.
Sort of. Here’s what I found in his Wikipedia bio —
In 2003, he released a 2-CD set, The Raven, based on “Poe-Try.” Besides Reed and his band, the album featured actors and musicians including singers David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Antony Hegarty, saxophonist Ornette Coleman, and actors Elizabeth Ashley, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe, Amanda Plummer, Fisher Stevens and Kate Valk. The album consisted of songs written by Reed and spoken-word performances of reworked and rewritten texts of Edgar Allan Poe by the actors, set to electronic music composed by Reed. At the same time a single disc CD version of the albums, focusing on the music, was also released.
(12) Continuing Snapshots’ music segment, if you’d like to hear an example of how ancient Greek music sounded, check this BBC article.
The music of ancient Greece, unheard for thousands of years, is being brought back to life by Armand D’Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University. He describes what his research is discovering.
The instruments are known from descriptions, paintings and archaeological remains, which allow us to establish the timbres and range of pitches they produced.
And now, new revelations about ancient Greek music have emerged from a few dozen ancient documents inscribed with a vocal notation devised around 450 BC, consisting of alphabetic letters and signs placed above the vowels of the Greek words.
The Greeks had worked out the mathematical ratios of musical intervals – an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, a fourth 4:3, and so on.
The notation gives an accurate indication of relative pitch: letter A at the top of the scale, for instance, represents a musical note a fifth higher than N halfway down the alphabet. Absolute pitch can be worked out from the vocal ranges required to sing the surviving tunes.
While the documents, found on stone in Greece and papyrus in Egypt, have long been known to classicists – some were published as early as 1581 – in recent decades they have been augmented by new finds. Dating from around 300 BC to 300 AD, these fragments offer us a clearer view than ever before of the music of ancient Greece.
It just might be world’s strangest, spookiest musical instrument. You can see it . . . you can hear it . . . but you can’t touch a Theremin.
“It’s like you’re fingerpainting in space,” says Rob Schwimmer. “Playing Theremin is like having sex with ghosts.”
…The Theremin is named for its inventor, Leon Theremin. Glinsky says his story is as mysterious as the instrument that bears his name, Russian scientist and musical savant Leon Theremin.
“Leon Theremin was a Russian scientist, [and] he was a spy,” said Glinsky. “And inventor of what is probably the most unusual musical instrument ever invented. You’re actually moving your two hands through two electromagnetic fields that are around two antennas.”
In 1919, 23-year-old Leon Theremin invented his namesake by accident.
“He was working in a laboratory in Russia as a young scientist, he was actually working on a gas meter to measure the density of gases,” Glinsky said. “So as he brought his hand closer to the gas meter, he heard kind of a higher squeal. And as he brought his hand back to his body and away from the machine, it was a slower squeal.
“And he started to play melodies on this thing. And lab assistants and his boss in the lab started to gather around and said, ‘Well, this is amazing.'”
Herman Melville also left the cannibalism out of his novel, but this being the 21st century I think we can count on hearing plenty about it in two movies now in production about the life and death aboard the Essex. One of them, The Heart of the Sea, is directed by Ron Howard and stars Chris Helmsworth and Cilian Murphy.
Hard to believe anybody starved to death with that much beefcake aboard.
Here’s the trailer for Nathaniel Philbrick’s nonfiction book —
[Thanks for these links goes out to John King Tarpinian, James H. Burns, The Chronicles of the Dawn Patrol, Petréa Mitchell and David Klaus.]
By John King Tarpinian: There was a gathering of past members of the Ray Bradbury Pandemonium Theater company this Sunday (October 27) at Mystery and Imagination Bookshop. The reason for the gathering was to reminisce about the good times acting Ray’s stage plays. Also, to do a cover-to-cover reading of Fahrenheit 451 in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of its publication. The true first was a paperback that first came out on October 19, 1953 while the hardback edition came out one week later, October 26, 1953.
Each reader took a turn telling how he or she first discovered Ray from books, felt honored to meet him in person and to perform for him on stage.
A couple of the actors are full-time professionals. Steven Wallenberg was the annoying neighbor in the George Lopez sitcom. Mageina Tovah has been in a couple of the Spiderman movies, and has a notable TV resume.
Mageina Tovah.
Steve Wallenberg.
Others invited to read included Arlene Martel (If you do not know the name then take out your wallet and tear up your membership in the Geek Club.) Arlene was Spock’s betrothed in the original Star Trek. She also played Consuela in the Harlan Ellison story, “Demon With A Glass Hand” on The Outer Limits with Robert Culp. Arlene took the honor of reading the opening chapter, her favorite.
The five-plus hours necessary to read the book went pretty quickly, mainly because I did not read, but mostly because everybody in the room was in one way or another affected by the book and the man that wrote it.
Robert Kerr, our host and one of Ray’s actors. He has appeared in everything from Iron Man to dozens of TV programs.
John Carpenter’s horror movie Halloween (1978), one of the most successful independent films ever made, was shot almost entirely in South Pasadena. That’s why the South Pasadena Library will hold a showing in the Community Room on Thursday, October 31 at 7 p.m. — with a very special guest. Tickets are $10 from Eventbrite.com. Seating is limited
Halloween catapulted Carpenter to a legendary filmmaking career and helped make South Pasadena a desirable location for the industry. The South Pasadena City Council has declared October 31, 2013 as John Carpenter Night because of the positive economic and cultural influence of his signature film on the city.
The event will be a fundraiser for the Friends of the South Pasadena Library and the sCARE Foundation which helps homeless teens The Community Room is located at 1115 El Centro Street. A giant screen and professional projection equipment will be used. This is an R-rated film and no one under 17 will be admitted without a parent.
Halloween stars Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis in her first major film role. It was shot in only 20 days and cost just $320,000. It has grossed more than $200 million in 2013 dollars. There have been seven follow-ups in the franchise.
5 Burning Questions recently posted an interview with legendary sf writer Bruce Sterling recorded during his tenure as Center for Science and Imagination’s inaugural Visionary in Residence.
Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination brings writers, artists and other creative thinkers into collaboration with scientists, engineers and technologists to reignite humanity’s grand ambitions for innovation and discovery. The center serves as a network hub for audacious moonshot ideas and a cultural engine for thoughtful optimism. We provide a space for productive collaboration between the humanities and the sciences, bring human narratives to scientific questions, and explore the full social implications of cutting-edge research.
Sterling also is listed as “the de facto spiritual leader for ASU’s Emerge” since its inception in 2012.
The first two questions Sterling answers are softballs – (1) What are you looking forward to in the future? (2) What are you dreading most about the future? – but you do get to see photos of him with blue hair.
SpaceVision, the largest student-organized space conference in the nation, takes place on the Arizona State University campus November 7-10.
This is also the national conference of the SEDS-USA, a branch of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) founded in the 1980’s by Peter Diamandis. SEDS-USA coordinates over 30 chapters with more than 1,200 students.
Explore strange worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before with the Center for Science and the Imagination and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Join us for a screening of the episode “Evolution” and a conversation about space exploration, nanorobotics, and the ethical and scientific dimensions of synthetic life.
The panel discussion features Phil Plait, a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer and Karmella Haynes, a synthetic biology researcher at ASU’s School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering. Ed Finn, director of the Center for Science and the Imagination, will moderate.
Waukegan Public Library kicked off the Eighth Annual Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival (and 30th Ray Bradbury Short Story Contest) tonight, October 25, with a reading of banned books reports SF Site News.
Also, Rena Morrow of the Waukegan Public Library announced that 19,300 pounds of Bradbury’s personal collection of books, manuscripts and other items from his estate, of which the library is a beneficiary, arrived October 23.
Professional storytellers will take the stage in shared support of the freedom to express ideas with stories that have been censored or targeted with removal or restrictions from libraries and schools. Hosted by the Waukegan Public Library, the award-winning festival presents two performances every year on festival day, a scary evening show for listeners age 12 and older, and a 10:30 a.m. matinee for school kids.
[Thanks to Steven H Silver for the Bradbury scoop!]
Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions shares the drawings, creatures, and ideas of things to come that fill the director’s private journals and filmmaking diaries.
Lavishly illustrated, the 260-page book also features an in-depth interview with the filmmaker conducted by Marc Scott Zicree, exploring the literary references, old films, and mythological figures that inspire him. And there is a tour of Del Toro’s second home, Bleak House, given over to his collections and working space.
Two pages of Del Toro’s artwork and notes from the book are reproduced in MTV.com’s “exclusive peek”.
The Cabinet of Curosities begins with a foreword where James Cameron tells readers how Del Toro —
fearlessly confronts life in all its beauty and horror. He sees with the wonder and stark terror of a child. His notebooks are a map of the subconscious, and his films doorways into the dungeons of our dreams, allowing us to confront our own individual hearts of darkness, to do battle and emerge victorious.
There is an afterword by Tom Cruise, and other contributions from Neil Gaiman, John Landis, and Alfonso Cuaron.
HarperCollins releases the book on October 29. Del Toro previews his creation in this video —
If you’re asked for gift ideas by anyone flashing a bankroll with Woodrow Wilson on the bills, be sure to suggest The Authentic 1966 Batmobile from Hammacher Schlemmer. What a bargain for $200,000!
