Chris Garcia and James Bacon devote the latest issue of Drink Tank to a discussion of GamerGate.
James says, “It is not good, and we shall not pretend it is not happening or ignore it, for it is already attacking things and people that matter.”
What was ostensibly an alleged scandal about integrity in journalism, turned out to be a lie, and evolved into a machine of hatred and abuse of women.
Chris Garcia and myself realised that this was rampaging amongst people we knew, cared for and who would not ever be expected to tolerate the things that have been said.
Can you imagine a Worldcon Area Head be told to: ”Go commit suicide’ or ‘Can’t you take a joke you stupid whore?’ – of course not, because there is a code of conduct, and people seem to be able to behave in public, yet with the anonymity of the internet, hatred, abuse, and threats have flourished.
The Nova Awards celebrate achievement in UK and Irish fanzines. Voting is open to all Novacon members and any fan resident in the UK or Eire who has read at least six of the eligible titles (many of which are available via eFanzines).
Marvel Studios has set release dates for nine movies, including Captain America: Civil War in which Cap will face off against Iron Man.
Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans participated in the announcement at Hollywood’s El Capitan theater on October 28. The movie also will feature Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman.
Captain America: Civil War — May 6, 2016 Doctor Strange — Nov. 4, 2016 Guardians of the Galaxy 2 — May 5, 2017 Thor: Ragnarok — July 28, 2017 Black Panther — Nov. 3, 2017 Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Part 2 — May 2018, May 2019 Captain Marvel — July 6, 2018 Inhumans — Nov. 2, 2018
DC Entertainment
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — 2016 Suicide Squad — 2016 Wonder Woman — 2017 Justice League Part One — 2017 The Flash — 2018 Aquaman — 2018 Shazam — 2019 Justice League Part Two — 2019 Cyborg — 2020 Green Lantern — 2020
Skylight Books will host William Gibson on November 1, reading from his new novel The Peripheral. The event begins at 5:00 p.m.
Where Flynne and her brother Burton live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran’s benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC’s elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there’s a job he’s supposed to do—a job Flynne didn’t know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her. The job seems to be simple: work a perimeter around the image of a tower building. Little buglike things turn up. He’s supposed to get in their way, edge them back. That’s all there is to it. He’s offering Flynne a good price to take over for him. What she sees, though, isn’t what Burton told her to expect. It might be a game, but it might also be murder.
The reading is free and open to the public (first come, first served).
Those who want Gibson to sign will need to purchase a copy of The Peripheral at Skylight Books in order to get a ticket for the line. Tickets can be obtained either in-store or by ordering online and leaving a ticket request in the “Order Comments” field. The store will also hold a ticket for someone who orders and pays for a book over the phone.
Skylight Books is at 1818 N. Vermont in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.
They’re just words and they engage only one of the five senses, so how is it that by placing them in the right order an author can scare the hell out of us?
“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” Harlan Ellison
Ellison’s 1967 cult classic is a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi version of hell, in which the last four survivors on the planet are tortured by a vindictive and all-powerful computer. Get ready for the future, humans.
2
“The Veldt,” Ray Bradbury
Bradbury has a number of scary stories to choose from, including the famous and existentially terrifying “There Will Come Soft Rains,” but I always come back to “The Veldt.” What’s more terrifying, the lions, the house or the children?
At number 12 is “Flowers for Algernon,” Daniel Keyes – one of the few selections I was familiar with that seemed out of place. I’d say that story is heart-wrenching more than it is scary.
Edgar Allan Poe doesn’t appear on the list until lucky number 13 — “The Tell Tale Heart.”
Poe is the stranger-king of gothic horror, and this is him at his best, with a murderous narrator being driven slowly mad by the beating of his victim’s heart under the floorboards
Whether fiction is scary is a highly subjective thing, however, I recommend Richard Wadholm’s novel Astronomy, a Lovecraftian homage. I read it a few years ago and it truly creeped me out. If that’s the experience you’re seeking this Halloween, get a copy and give it a try.
Halloween stretches all the way til November 4 at the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings, when curator Amy Goldschlager will present two accomplished horror writers.
Nicholas Kaufmann, past nominee for the Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award, and Thriller Award, is the author of General Slocum’s Gold, Chasing the Dragon, Hunt at World’s End, Still Life: Nine Stories, Dying is My Business, and Die and Stay Dead.
John Langan is the author of two collections, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (2013) and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (2008), and a novel, House of Windows (2009). His recent fiction has appeared in Ellen Datlow’s Fearful Symmetries (2014) and Ross Lockhart and Justin Steele’s Children of Old Leech (2014).
The NYRSF Readings take place at The SoHo Gallery for Digital Art / Gallery LaLa 138 Sullivan Street (between Houston & Prince St.) in New York. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., event begins at 7:00 p.m.
Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America will mark its upcoming 50th anniversary by publishing a special anthology, Architects of Wonder: Fifty Years of Nebula Award-Winning Short Fiction. Robin Wayne Bailey, the project’s editor, announced on Facebook that the book is expected to be available in time for the 2015 Nebula Awards Weekend next June.
The 2014 Pegasus Awards were given at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest last weekend. (The links below are to song lyrics and brief bios on the OVFF/Pegasus site.)
The World of Ice & Fire, the encyclopedic fictional history of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, by Martin and the webmasters of Westeros.org, Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson, officially goes on sale today (October 28).
Martin helped promote the book over the weekend at an event in Manhattan which Grantland’s Jason Concepcion attended and wrote a “We Went There” piece about. He sourly pointed out that this new book “is not the book that all his fans are waiting for.”
And when that book comes out, muses Concepcion —
The pressure to stick the landing, to arrange every word in just the right way, must now be incredible. And that’s without Martin’s fans wondering aloud if he’s going to die.
Despite being the one most involved, Martin seems to be the most phlegmatic about the outcome. He also seems to let off steam by engaging in the kind of tangential questions that come his way as one of the most fannish pros in history, something Concepcion reports but doesn’t fully grasp —
“Someone started an argument online recently; I got an email about it,” Martin explained, as a gorgeous illustration of Aegon the Conqueror riding Balerion was projected above him. “About if Drogon could beat Smaug.” Martin then goes on to explain that Drogon is too young a dragon, that Smaug can talk and therefore has “an intellectual advantage.” Anyone who complains about George not writing whenever he makes an appearance at a convention or an awards show, who wonders Internet sotto voce if he’s too fat to live and see the thing through, should also rail against whoever the fuck is emailing him Smaug vs. Drogon threads in hopes that he weighs in. Because he probably will.
Another set of collaborators, Brian and Wendy Froud, last month celebrated the release of their new book Brian Froud’s Faeries’ Tales, which follows in the footsteps of their earlier work, Trolls.
Humans throughout history have always had special relationships and bonds with faeries, whether loving and helpful or at times destructive. This new book explores that complex relationship and the liminal state between the human and faery world where interaction occurs.
Many of the stories are familiar to readers except here the “true” story is told by the faeries. An entertaining commercial shows some of the excellent visuals created for this volume.
When Empire Brewing Co., a brewpub in Syracuse, NY, applied to trademark the name “Empire Strikes Bock” the alarms went off at the offices of Lucasfilm’s legal staff. They promptly notified the government they were opposed to granting the mark.
Applicant’s EMPIRE STRIKES BOCK mark is virtually identical in sound, appearance, and connotation to Lucasfilm’s THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK mark, differing by only one letter in the respective last words “BOCK” and “BACK,” and the initial word “THE.”
Now that you point it out, there is a resemblance….
“We named it ‘Strikes Bock’ because we thought it was a clever pun,” said Monica Palmer, Empire’s director of marketing. “We weren’t trying to infringe on anything. We were just trying to make a nice beer with a funny name.”
Empire has been selling this beer for 7 years, with no objections from Lucasfilm. On the other hand, the brewer also let years go by before trying to trademark the name. Did someone get greedy?
