Monthly Archives: February 2012

Burstein For Congress

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Who will take Barney Frank’s place when he leaves Congress?

How about Michael A. Burstein? The award-winning sf writer, who lives in Frank’s district and already holds two elected offices in the city of Brookline, has declared his interest by creating the Burstein for Congress Exploratory Committee.

About 600,000 people live in the Fourth Congressional district of Massachusetts, which stretches from the Boston suburbs of Newton and Brookline to the small communities of Dighton, Westport and Dartmouth, and the cities of Taunton, Fall River and New Bedford.

Burstein was first elected a Brookline Town Meeting member in 2001 and he has served multiple terms as a Library Trustee.

The competition for the Congressional seat will not be trivial. Joseph Kennedy III has also announced an exploratory committee, and he may be moving to Brookline. Two other Democrats, Jules Levine of Brookline and Herb Robinson of Newton, are also in the race.

The full press release follows the jump.

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Before Watchmen – A Dissenting Voice

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In the graphic novel, society wonders who watches the Watchmen.

We know who won’t be watching their adventures in Before Watchmen — Pádraig Ó Méalóid, eminent scholar of the works of Alan Moore.

James Bacon captured Ó Méalóid’s heated opinions in an interview posted at Comic Buzz:

Pádraig Ó Méalóid: I think all the writers and artists on these new stories – and particularly the writers, for some reason – should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Alan Moore is regularly cited as the best comics writer of our time, and possibly ever, and certainly those writers and artists – in this instance I find it hard to refer to them as ‘creators’ – all get a much better deal because of how hard he fought for creator’s rights, and probably all call him an inspiration, but they know he’s against this, and they still go ahead anyway. In other words, they’re quite happy to piss all over him and his principles for money. Will I mention again how this is an excellent analogy for what’s wrong with the world?

Actually, it’s entirely possible I’m more angry about this than Alan himself is.

And when slagged in a comment about the interview, Ó Méalóid jumped in to deliver this roundhouse punch:

I’m still standing by my assertion that Watchmen is the most important work to come out of the comics field. I mean, you can disagree with me, but it’s just *rude* to suggest that I’m delusional, and certainly does *you* no honour.

Love Among the Robots

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Tom Digby is a fan writer without parallel. He’s quite literally a science fiction fan writer, who begins with an idea and teases it in every possible direction as hard sf writers do. The sf writer weaves those results into a story, while Digby uses his humorous extrapolations as trail markers in a meta-discussion about his imaginative process.

Here’s how Digby introduces one example in his latest Silicon Soapware —

I’ve been working on a story idea involving characters who get in trouble exploring the abandoned ruins of a wizard’s castle.  This led to thoughts of whether there should have been warning signs posted, and if so, what they might look like.

Then Tom insightfully classifies the kinds of threats players encounter in a dungeon game and the appropriate warning sign for each. Crazy and funny.

Tom was such an early adopter of electronically-distributed fanac that Silicon Soapware’s all-text format looks quaintly antique, as if it might be truly at home on a 40-column greenscreen.

That’s all the more reason for me to be intrigued by Tom’s new project – posted to YouTube, for goodness sake! – a series of animations (for certain values of animation) titled “Plergb, defined as a pair of Robot Musicians”.

Flower Head Robot and Moon Tune robot used to be ordinary robots. They had ordinary dull gray paint jobs with dull black serial numbers stenciled on their dull gray chests, and all they ever wanted was to do as they were told, dull gray day after dull gray day.

What happened to turn them into songwriters and performers is explained in two animated music videos.

In the “Robot Musician Introduction” song they sing:

“We weren’t always robot musicians / We used to be demolition robots… Since we were designed for tearing down buildings / Our musical abilities are somewhat limited.”

And in the “Singing About Love” song Flower Head Robot and Moon Tune Robot explain why they’re always saying they’re in love even though they have no idea what love is.

It’s a put-on, it’s a parody: in short, if you missed the Sixties be of good cheer – they are still in full swing at Tom’s website.

[Thanks to Dan Goodman for the link.]

Asimov on Science Channel

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Prophets of Science Fiction pays tribute to Isaac Asimov on February 15 at 10 p.m. —

He saved the future from Evil Robots! Faced with a sci-fi tradition where robots exist only to torment their human creators, Isaac Asimov dreamed a better future where we need not fear our own technology. With his breakthrough sci-fi story collection, I, Robot, Asimov laid the ground rules for robo-behavior both in fiction and perhaps one day in real life.

Update 02/14/2012: Corrected spelling of Science Channel per Bill Higgins comment. It had formerly been speloled Discovery Channel.

Ed Green Now Better Than Beethoven

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In a famous Peanuts comic strip Lucy asks Schroeder, “If Beethoven was so great, how come they never put him on a baseball card?”

Ed Green, who plays auto salesman Vince Petrelli in Carmind training program videos, spent the weekend in Vegas at the National Auto Dealer Association convention with the rest of the “Seven Car Club” giving out souvenir trading cards.

So whether Ed ever gets past playing “Chopsticks” on the piano doesn’t matter anymore – we know he’s great because he’s got his own card.

Warren: Frankenberry at LaCon

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After seeing Mark Evanier’s story about Forry Ackerman and monster-themed cereal, Bill Warren sent this related fannish memory:

At the 1972 Worldcon costume contest, Don Glut went as Frankenberry, pink with that huge head. It was scrupulously accurate. (Linda [Gray, who soon wed Don] went hubba hubba as “Conana,” with a sword she borrowed from Bruce Pelz, a few ounces of copper, a few hard of filmy yellow cloth.)

Don Glut as Frankenberry at the 1972 Worldcon. Photo by Al Kracalic.

McKenna Short Stories From Wizard’s Tower

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Julet E. McKenna’s short story collection A Few Further Tales of Einarinn will be her first work released by Wizard’s Tower Press under a new publishing deal.

Also coming soon is a re-launch of her website, including a wealth of background information about Einarinn. She’s already at work on her fifteenth novel set in this world.

The full press release follows the jump.

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Benford in Reason Magazine

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Gregory Benford came back from the 100 Year Starship Symposium agitated about sf’s diminishing attention to near future exploration of our own solar system. He voiced his concerns in Reason Magazine, and the essay is also on his blog.

The beleaguered community of scientists and dreamers working to make space travel reality can’t look to NASA for a vision, but there is still a handful of writers thinking about humanity’s first steps off this planet:

Science fiction writers didn’t predict the fade-out of NASA’s manned space operations, and they weren’t prepared with alternative routes to space when that decline became undeniable. Allen Steele, a journalist who once covered NASA and now writes award-winning stories and novels about it, remarks: “Those who equate NASA with space exploration can’t see any other options. They got scared away from writing about space, or else became cynical about the whole thing and claimed that space exploration is a failure.” This leaves us, Steele says, with a “small number of writers who foresaw NASA’s twilight and who have long advocated private space exploration.”

[Thanks to Dave Locke and Andrew Porter for the link.]

WFC 13 Adds Alan Lee as GoH

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Alan Lee, the Academy Award and World Fantasy Award-winning illustrator, will be Artist Guest of Honour at WFC 2013 in Brighton.

Sharing a studio with Brian Froud in the 1970s, together Lee and froud created the groundbreaking illustrated book Faeries. Other noted works include the delicate watercolour illustrations for Castles by David Day, Michael Palin’s The Mirrorstone (in collaboration with Richard Seymour), The Moon’s Revenge by Joan Aiken and Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson.

Lee’s fame is intertwined with that of J.R.R. Tolkien, as illustrator of the 1,200-page centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and many other works by and about Tolkien. Lee also won an Oscar in 2004 for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration for his work on Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King.

The artist is currently based in New Zealand, working again with Jackson on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again.

The full press release follows the jump.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

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