Posts Tagged ‘Howard Waldrop’

Armadillocon 2011 Photos for Friday, August 26

Saturday, September 10th, 2011


Mark Finn, rocking the cutting edge of FEZ NATION!


Howard Waldrop.


Dwight Brown gets the pre-convention lunch off to his usual facepalming start. What set him off this time was Todd saying “Look! We’re haircut twinsies!”


DUFF winner David Cake.


Early Turkey Citizen Joe Pumilia.

There was a picture of William Browning Spencer, but he has evidently grown disenchanted with his own visage, and asked that it be removed..


Al Jackson. For once I snapped a picture with his eyes open. Thanks for lunch, Al!


Dwight, mournful that his mama took his Kodachrome away.


Michael Sumbera, taking a break from assembling his retail sales empire.


Aaron Allston. Generally, I only see Aaron at: A.) Cons, or B.) Indian restaurants.


James Reasoner.


John DeNardo: “You know I hate having my picture taken.” Naturally, after he said that, I’m required to take his picture several additional times.


Like this one.


And this one.


Bruce Sterling was having a garage sale of books at the con. Here he is holding aloft the (true story) Rudy Rucker books I had pulled from the pile, refusing to sell them to me. Including the copy of The 57th Franz Kafka I had given him as a gift 15 years before. “I’ve got to donate these to UT.” Thanks a lot, Bruce.


Bill Crider, reenacting a scene from Daredevil.


Bill again, now with added sight.


Stina Leicht, with her hair in the traditional Blue Con shade.


Two people, both of whom complained that I took their picture too much. You can see how well those complaints worked out for them.


Rocky Kelley, artistic dandy and man-about-town.


Jessica Reisman. The camera is set properly, it’s just that Jessica lives her entire life in soft focus. Doctors keep doing tests to determine the cause.


Jasmina Tesanovic and Bruce Sterling. “It’s a 110° out today! I’m feeling pretty darn good about my Global Warming predictions!”


Derek Johnson. You can’t see it, but just below the frame of this picture, he’s clutching a snifter of brandy with one hand and stroking a white cat with the other.


Gretchen Peterson Johnston shows that she is totally ready for the Fetish Boot Ball.


Chris Nakashima-Brown n. Brown this guy I know.


Yvonne Daily and Phil Brogden, who you may remember from such hits as “Goddamnit, Lawrence, you sure take a lot of freaking convention pictures, don’t you?”


Robert Jackson Bennett, author of the spiffy first novel Mr. Shivers, copies of which can be obtained in the usual manner.


Bradley Denton assumes the now-traditional “Oh yeah? Then I’ll take YOUR picture!” position.


Jessica Reisman Redux.


Paolo Bacigalupi and Bruce Sterling, debating whose global warming future is more wretched and dystopian.


Rich Simental.


“NEVER MIND!”


The Space Squidians, shortly after freebasing some ink.


Brad Foster, with a Hugo that might seem familiar.


“You so naughty!”


Kasey Lansdale, mooning over Mark Finn. (I warned you, Finn! I said UNMARKED twenties!)


Scott Cupp, James Reasoner and Joe R. Lansdale, talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and why you can’t get good belt onions anymore.


Ben Yalow.


It was….the unnameable.

Three Trailers for Movies Howard and I Will Be Reviewing

Monday, July 18th, 2011

Since trailers for two of the films Howard Waldrop and I will be reviewing for Locus Online have recently dropped, I thought a trailer roundup was in order:

Cowboys & Aliens, directed by Iron Man‘s Jon Favreau, is up next on the guitar:

In November we’ll be reviewing Hugo (AKA Hugo Cabaret, based on Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret), a steampunk children’s fantasy from Martin Scorsese:

Which begs the question: Will Hugo be up for a Hugo?

Next year comes John Carter, AKA John Carter of Mars, AKA A Princess of Mars) directed by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton from a script written by Michael Chabon:

Howard Waldrop and I Review Thor

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Over at Locus Online.

The films seems to be getting good reviews overall. Howard and I are, ahem, less enthused…

Howard Waldrop and I Review Battle: Los Angeles

Monday, March 14th, 2011

Over at Locus Online.

Short description: Better than Skyline, but no great shakes in the SF department…

Howard Waldrop’s Review of the Decade of SF/F/H Film Now Up

Friday, February 25th, 2011

He took a little different approach than mine, just covering things we reviewed.

The Top 500 Books Sold at Auction in 2010

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

Here’s an article on the top book price realized at auction in 2010, topped by a first edition of the legendary Audobon Birds of America, which pulled in an astounding $11,321,215, or four times the price realized for the Shakespeare First Folio that came in at fifth place at a measly $2,315,273.

Not a lot of books of particular genre interest, but there is an inscribed first of A Christmas Carol, and I’m sure that Howard Waldrop will find this copy of The Book of John Mandaville, the most complete version in Middle English known, and which sold for $447,282, of interest.

And here’s the entire list in spreadsheet format for the hardcore.

Edited to Add: Top link should work now, though you’ll have to click on the article link there.

Edited to Add 2: Link now even more cromulent, thanks to the sleuthing of SF Signal’s John DeNardo.

Howard Waldrop and I Review Skyline

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Over at Locus Online. We were not impressed.

Sadly, Skyline 2 is already in development.

As the first post put it in this Fark thread:

Skyline was a bigger budgeted SyFy movie of the week. I am waiting for the sequel, “Skyline vs MegaHorizon”.

Not Going to the Austin Comic Con

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

As I’m going to be busy watching Skyline (another movie Howard and I are reviewing) and they didn’t have any literary SF guests, I won’t be going to The Austin Comic Con (though I have friends who are going). But they do seem to have rounded up a surprisingly large number of 70s TV stars (plus Chewbacca, Darth Maul, Billy Dee Williams and, err, the cast of The Film I Refuse to Name). (And I’ve already met Lee Majors, for certain values of “met” that include “have your hand touched briefly as you walk past in a line with 10,000 other kids and their parents at a Toys”R”Us opening in the 1970s.” Also “met” William Shatner that way. I wonder when Toys”R”Us stopped hiring TV celebrities for store openings?)

But I must admit I’m a little bit tempted to go just to meet Oscar Goldman.

Oh, and here’s a hint for the Austin Comic Con Webmaster: if you’re going to copy text out of a Wikipedia entry, it’s usually best to take out the “[citation needed]” bit…

Howard and I Rave About Monsters

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Over at Locus Online.

Read the review, but the short version is that we really liked it. Here’s the short trailer:

The problem with that trailer is that it makers you think the movie is something from the “BOO shock” school of horror films, and it really isn’t.

And here’s an interview with director Gareth Edwards:

If it’s playing anywhere near you I would encourage you to see it.

A Quick Tour Around the Hollow Earth

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

I can’t believe I missed this Jess Nevins piece over on No Fear of the Future talking about 19th century SF writer and astronomer Camille Flammarion (I have a couple of first English-language translations of his work) scheme to avert war by having all the armies of Europe dig a giant hole in the ground. This probably wasn’t the wackiest naive pacifist scheme to avert war in the 19th century (though it is even wackier than, say, teaching everyone to speak Esperanto; see Howard Waldrop’s story “Ninieslando” for more details on how that worked out…)

But I’m also fascinated by the Hollow Earth theories propounded by John Cleves Symmes, Jr., who in 1818 proclaimed:

I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking.

As wacky cosmological theories, this one had a lot going for it (and certainly more than, say, the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky). For one thing, given the state of exploration and geology extent in 1818, it wasn’t clearly wrong. For another, the idea of internal worlds, of delving deep into the earth, has always fascinated mankind, from the Greek and Sumerian underworlds all the way up through The Mines of Moria, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Minecraft. (Not to mention those Denver airport and Dulce base conspiracy theories.)

Not found in John Cleves Symmes' vision of a Hollow Earth

Symmes theories even inspired a novel. (Note: The person who put up that e-text of Symzonia says even reprints are rare, but this is no longer the case, as Amazon and Bookfinder are lousy with POD editions.) And Edgar Allen Poe would use some of Symmes’ ideas in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Another permutation of the Hollow Earth idea was Richard Shaver’s Shaver Mystery. Shaver claimed to hear voices in his head while using welding equipment, and claimed that “detrimental robots” (or deros) lived inside the earth and beamed mind control rays at the surface dwellers. For a while Amazing publisher Ray Palmer had every crackpot in America writing letters to add to the mystery in the late 1940s, just when when the first wave of flying saucer mania was reaching its peak.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series is set in the Hollow Earth, and an ever-growing number of science fiction writers have taken advantage of the idea, from Howard Waldrop and Steve Utley’s “Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole” to Rudy Rucker’s The Hollow Earth, which also features Poe.

Believe it or not, there are some who still believe in the Hollow Earth theory. (Of course, there are still people who believe in a flat earth as well. And they’re looking for new believers once again!)

For more information, I would suggest looking up Walter Kafton-Minkel’s Subterranean Worlds, but since Loompanics Press went out of business (the people currently using their website just picked up the domain name when it lapsed), it’s gotten a bit pricey. I have David Standish’s Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth’s Surface, but I haven’t read it yet.