Supposedly one with the long lost “spider pit” footage. I’ll believe it when I see it, but that’s probably the second-most-famous missing footage from an existent film, behind only the missing reel of The Magnificent Ambersons.
You may remember this post on how a lot of science fiction was showing up in the public domain at Project Gutenberg (which was picked up by SF Signal, Io9, etc.).
Well, Greg Bear and Astrid Anderson Bear, his wife and daughter of Poul Anderson (whose works were among those put up by Project Gutenberg), are saying that Project Gutenberg screwed up:
After conducting legal research on the LEXIS database of legal cases, decisions, and precedents, we have demonstrated conclusively that PG was making incorrect determinations regarding public domain status in many, many works that originally appeared in magazine form. The Poul Anderson estate has been able to get one work, “The Escape”, that PG had firmly declared to be public domain, removed from their site. PG’s original reasoning was that since the magazine it appeared in had never actually filed for copyright, the work was unprotected. “The Escape”, printed in 1953, was the first half of Anderson’s well-known novel BRAINWAVE, which was published and properly copyrighted the following year.
However, even if ‘The Escape” had not been published as a novel, it would have remained under copyright protection until 1981 (28 years) and been eligible for copyright renewal. Authors of that era, and Anderson in particular, were very aware of the need to renew copyrights, and typically meticulously kept their copyright protections up to date. Copyright law for works created more recently is much easier: life plus 70 years. (Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 1998).
(snip)
In general, Project Gutenberg is doing a tremendous service by making available texts that have truly long since fallen out of copyright, but they are clearly overstepping their original mandate. They are not merely exploiting orphan works, but practicing a wholesale kidnapping of works that are under copyright protection. Authors and estates need to aggressively take back what belongs to them.
I would imagine that Project Gutenberg may very well be hearing not only from the estates of Philip K. Dick and Leigh Brackett, but from lawyers for the still-very-much alive Frederik Pohl, Norman Spinrad and Jack Vance…
I’m a big fan of Charlie Stross’ Laundry books. As Geek Cthulhu Mythos British Bureaucracy Spy Thrillers, they hit a lot of my personal pleasure centers, and the latest installment is no exception. Our Network Admin/Computational Demonologist Bob Howard starts off enjoying, for the first time in his career, a competent boss he likes. However, he’s soon sent out to a bit of fieldwork for his ancient, inscrutable “real” boss Angleton, whereupon he promptly bollocks things up, resulting in the death of a bystander and some mandatory leave. Meanwhile, Bob’s wife Mo (with her deadly Erich Zann violin) comes back from a particularly gruesome mission a mental wreck, and that’s before a possessed Russian agent shows up trying to kill them, Angleton disappears, and a top secret document goes missing. And if all that weren’t enough, not only is the clock ticking ever-faster on Nightmare Case Green (i.e., when the Old Ones come down from the stars to eat our brains), but cultists are actually trying to hasten the event.
In short: The usual.
If you liked the previous Laundry novels, you’ll like this one. The plot is compelling, the supernatural elements are darker and more disturbing, and this may have the best ending of any of the laundry novels. (Important Safety Tip: If you’re going to try to sacrifice a Computational Demonologist to powerful, malevolent, otherworldly entity, you better make sure you have your binding spell right…) But the reason The Fuller Memorandum isn’t any better than the The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue is that it suffers from flaws not found in those novels. For one thing, Bob acting like an idiot once is OK, but him acting like an idiot again, in exactly the same way, strains credibility given that he’s a pretty smart cookie. For another, if you’ve read “The Concrete Jungle” and “Pimpf,” you’ll figure out who the villain is entirely too easily.
Still, well worth reading and remembering come award time.
If it seems like I’m pimping Monsters a lot, it’s only because I am. It’s the sort of independent film that doesn’t have enough of an ad budget for people to hear about it without word of mouth. So I try to do my part to encourage people to see it if it’s playing in their area. Consider that a recommendation, and remember it for Hugo and Nebula voting.
Though I’ve been running this blog for a while, I only recently installed a page-hit tracking module. One of the biggest surprises is what the most consistently popular posts are: My piece on Denver airport conspiracy theories and…my review of Zardoz.
Conspiracy theories always exert a certain fascination, even if (or especially if) you don’t believe in them. But I must admit to being baffled as why a review of a bizarre science fiction film more than 35 years old continues to draw such attention.
I went looking for reasons for this inexplicable interest…and didn’t find any (beyond the usual fascination with cinematic train wrecks). But I did chance across this rendering of Zardoz as the opening of an 8-bit video game:
To bad he only did the opening. Just think of all the other Zardoz video game sequences you could have:
Shooting the Outlanders
Sneaking into the giant stone head
Arousing the Apathetics
Avoid the Renegades (every touch “ages” you one life)
Shooting the Hippies
The boss fight against crystal computer, ala the mothership in Phoenix or the flagship in GORF.
But Monster-a-Go-Go came out in 1965. The Creeping Terror (featuring killer carpet samples from outer space) came out in 1964. Prince of Space (which possibly shouldn’t count, since it was cobbled together from Japanese kiddie serials) came out in 1959. Laserblast (which sort of counts as an alien invasion movie) came out in 1978. All of those are, I assure you, much much worse than Skyline. Granted, most of those are available in a form in which Crow and Tom Servo are there to help ease the pain, but still.
The Brothers Strauss are perhaps the single most inept filmmaking duo working in the studio system today. There isn’t a moment here they get right, not a single decision they make that doesn’t end ridiculously. In fact, there are three chief moments in the film where they seem to be making bold, inspired choices, only to completely fuck it up each time. The film opens with light descending from the skies – the alien invasion beginning right there in frame one. Wow, you think. They sure are dispensing with the bullshit. There’s no foreplay, no dicking around; just aliens showing up to kick some ass. And then, a moment later, just as things are getting really interesting, the movie jumps back 15 hours to give us 20 minutes of needless exposition (that never amounts to anything) about wafer thin characters we never are allowed to really give a shit about anyway.
Honestly, who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to make an alien invasion movie that, rather than following around scientists or soldiers or reporters or anyone interesting, follows around a group of AFFLICTION wearing, narcissistic, LA douchebags “living the life” off of new money they have no qualms about throwing around? These aren’t the types of people we want to connect with – these are the first ones to die in every other film EVER MADE. They are every bit as hollow, vapid and unlikable as they are when they are *supposed to be* hollow, vapid and unlikable; only here they get to be the protagonists. And the Brothers Strauss have no idea how to make them in any way endearing. They are thoroughly unlikable and just plain annoying from beginning to end. So when they start dropping off like flies, you not only aren’t invested in them, you kind of wish they would die off faster.
But don’t let that excerpt fool you. He also has some negative things to say about it.
The period right around Halloween and the election was particularly busy, so I took a break from blogging here. To get back in the skiffy swing of things, here’s the latest list of books I’ve added to my library.
Books that I have available for sale through Lame Excuse Books are marked LEB (though some of those titles won’t appear on the stock page until after I send out my next book catalog, which will probably be late this month or early next; email me if you’d like to get on the mailing list to received it).
Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship-Breaker. Little Brown, 2010.
Baring-Gould, William S.. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1976. Two volumes, reprint.
Barker, Clive. Visions of Heaven and Hell. Rizzoli, 2005. Art book.
Bennett, Robert Jackson. Mr. Shivers. Orbit, 2010.
Bennett, Robert Jackson. Mr. Shivers. Orbit, 2010. Mass market paperback, inscribed by Bennett. (He was giving them away at his Armadillocon signing.)
Brackett, Leigh. The Best of Leigh Brackett. Nelson Doubleday (SFBC), 1977. Near Fine/Near Fine.
Bradbury, Ray. Dark Carnival. Arkham House, 1946. First edition hardback, good only, with lettering on spine almost completely worn away, spine lean, general wear, and lacking the dust jacket.
Bradbury, Ray. The Illustrated Man. Doubleday, 1951. First edition hardback, lacking the dust jacket.
Brunner, John. The Jagged Orbit. Ace (SFBC), 1969. (Book club, first hardback edition).
Chiang, Ted. The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Subterranean Press, 2010. Signed limited edition.
Chiang, Ted. The Lifecycle of Software Objects. Subterranean Press, 2010. Trade edition. LEB
Coover, Robert. The Public Burning. Viking, 1977. Signed by Coover.
Cullin, Mitch. Tideland. Dufour Editions, 2000. Signed by Cullin. Basis of the Terry Gilliam film.
Day, Bradford M. The Supplemental Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Arno Press, 1974. First hardcover edition, Fine, sans dj, as issued. Non-fiction.
Di Filippo, Paul. Roadside Bodhisattva. PS Publishing, 2010.
Harrison, Harry. The Stainless Steel Rat Returns. Tor, 2010.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Chatto & Windus, 1932. VG- only, lacking the dust jacket.
Kelly, James Patrick and John Kessel. Rewired: The Postcyberpunk Anthology. Tachyon, 2007. Trade paperback original.
King, Stephen. The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla. Donald M. Grant/Scribner’s, 2003. First trade edition.
King, Stephen. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Donald M. Grant/Scribner’s, 2004. First trade edition.
Kay, Guy Gavriel. Under Heaven. Roc, 2010.
Kunitz, Stanley J. & Howard Haycraft. British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary. H. W. Wilson, 1975. Fifth printing, an Ex-Library copy, otherwise Fine-, no dust jacket, presumably as issued. Non-fiction.
Kunitz, Stanley J. & Howard Haycraft. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. H. W. Wilson, 1982. Eighth printing, an Ex-Library copy, otherwise Fine-, no dust jacket, presumably as issued. Non-fiction.
Lansdale, Joe R. Deadman’s Road. Subterranean Press, 2010. LEB
Lake, Jay. The Sky That Wraps. Subterranean Press, 2010. LEB
Lake, Jay. Specific Gravity of Grief. Fairwoods Press, 2010. LEB
Lentz, Harris M. III. Science Fiction, Horror, & Fantasy Film and Television Credits: Second Edition: Volume 1: Credits. McFarland & Company, 2001. Ex-library copy, otherwise Fine-, sans dust jacket, as issued. Non-fiction.
Ligotti, Thomas. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Hippocampus Press, 2010. Non-fiction.
Lovecraft, H. P. Black Seas of Infinity: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft. SFBC, 2001.
Lovecraft, H.P. Collected Poems. Arkham House, 1963. VG/VG, with top inch of boards discolored and sun-fading to spine.
(Lovecraft, H. P.) Joshi, S. T. I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft Hippocampus Press, 2010. Two volumes, one of 1000 sets. Non fiction. LEB
Manvell, Roger, ed. The International Encyclopedia of Film. Joseph, 1972. Near Fine/Near Fine.
McDevitt, Jack. Time Travelers Never Die. Ace, 2009.
McDonald, Ian. The Dervish House Pyr, 2010.
(Moorcock, Michael) Bilyeu, Richard. The Tanelorn Archives: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography of the Works of Michael Moorcock 1949-1979. Pandora’s Books, 1981. Fine, sans dust jacket, as issued. Non-fiction.
Niven, Larry. Stars & Gods. Tor, 2010.
Oliver, Chad. The Wolf is My Brother. Herbert Jenkins, 1968. First UK and first hardback edition, a Near Fine copy in a Good+ only dust jacket, missing an irregular 3/4″ x 1/2″ ship at head, and shallow chipping and edgewear. I didn’t even know there was a hardback until I chanced across this copy (though it is in Currey).
Pohl, Frederik. The Best of Frederik Pohl. Nelson Doubleday (SFBC), 1975.
(Powers, Tim) Berlyne, John, editor Powers: Secret Histories: A Bibliography PS Publishing, 2009. One of 200 signed, numbered Slipcased copies in slipcase with companion volume, The Waters Deep, Deep, Deep, not included with the trade edition. Non-fiction with additional fictional material included.
(Powers, Tim) Berlyne, John, editor Powers: Secret Histories: A Bibliography PS Publishing, 2009. One of 26 signed, lettered Deluxe copies in slipcase with two companion volumes, The Waters Deep, Deep, Deep and bound, photographic reproduction of the original hand-written manuscript for The Anubis Gates, not included with the trade or Slipcased editions. Slipcase and Anubis Gates volume very slightly bumped, otherwise Fine/Fine. Non-fiction with additional fictional material included.
Reilly, John. The Painted Word: Paintings by John Reilly. Cross Publishing, 2008. Trade paperback original, NF, slightly bumped and bent in center. Art book.
Rucker, Rudy. Hylozoic. Tor, 2009.
Sadler, Jeff, editor. Twentieth Century Western Writers: Second Edition. St. James Press, 1991. Ex-library copy., otherwise Fine-, sans dust jacket.
Schmitz, James A. The Demon Breed. Ace (SFBC), 1968. First hardback edition, a Fine/Fine- with a trace of edgewear.
Silverberg, Robert. The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Five: The Palace at Midnight. Subterranean Press, 2010. LEB
Silverberg, Robert. The Last Song of Orpheus. Subterranean Press, 2010. On of 200 signed, leatherbound copies.
Summers, Rev. Montague. The Vampire: His Kith and Kin. E. P. Dutton, 1929. First U.S. edition, VG, lacks dust jacket. Non-fiction.
Stross, Charles. The Fuller Memorandum. Ace, 2010.
Stross, Charles. Toast. Wyrm Publishing, 2010. First limited edition and first edition thus, signed, with new material. LEB
Pringle, David, ed. The St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers. St. James, 1998. Ex-Library copy, otherwise NF.
Wells, H. G. The World of William Clissold. Published by Ernest Benn (UK) 1926. Three volumes, one of 198 copies signed by Wells on the title page. Full description here.
Vance, Jack. The Complete Dying Earth. SFBC, 1998. First omnibus edition.
Vance, Jack. Ports of Call/Lurulu. SFBC, 2004. First omnibus edition.
Vance, Jack. Sjambak. Wildside Press, 2010. Chapbook. (There seem to be multiple copies of this title from multiple POD publishers this year, so I’m unclear on the publishing precedence. I suspect that Vance failed to file a renewal, allowing the work to slip into the public domain, which is why it can be found at Project Gutenberg.)
VandeerMeer, Jeff, ed.. Last Drink Bird Head. Wyrm Publishing, 2010.