Maybe as soon as tonight, as it’s just about ready to roll. If you want a copy and are not on my mailing list, drop me a line at lawrenceperson@gmail.com so I can add you. This time around there’s lots of new Joe R. Lansdale, Alastair Reynolds, Jack Vance, etc., and the usual selection of small press first editions, Award winners and rarities.
And in case you hadn’t noticed, the new Lame Excuse Books webpage is now at https://www.lawrenceperson.com/lame.html.
And Dwight has a problem with you.
(I should note that I too had a problem activating my iPhone, but that my problem was considerably less severe and I was in the Apple store at the time.)
“Mysterious Crate Arrives From London”
This is such a pitch-prefect amalgamation of everything from Dracula to Creepshow (with a hefty dose of many a Cthulhu Mythos tale) that I would totally read a story based on this premise…
Evidently it’s closing this Sunday.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, I’ve seen lots of interesting and occasionally great films at the Dobie over the years, including:
On the other hand, the actual theaters at Dobie were small and uncomfortable, and the equipment was far from state of the art. (Even though they had improved. Before they remodeled, I remember seeing a film there and realizing that I probably had a better stereo system at home than the one used in the theater.) If the parking garage filled up, the possibility of actually finding a parking space ranged from problematic to impossible. Finally, in recent years they had switched from being an art house to only having one or two art films with the rest being the usual Hollywood fare available all over town. I guess they figured they had a captive audience near campus, but their closing suggests otherwise.
The ideal outcome would be for the Alamo Drafthouse to buy the space and restore it to its former arthouse glory. Plus, since they’re right next to the food court, an Alamo kitchen selling food and drinks at lunch might make a very lucrative side business…
I’m a Calvin and Hobbes fan (really, who isn’t?), but the title and cover for the new Lio collection is all kinds of awesome.
Nirvana covers Terry Jacks’ maudlin hit “Seasons in the Sun.”
UGO offers up a list of every SF reference in Futurama. Though there are a few things to quibble with (occurrences of written SF predating some of the media citations they provide), overall it’s a fun list.
And as long as we’re talking Futurama, here are links to the reviews Howard and I did of the four Futurama DVDs:
In yet another worrying sign of the decline of printed books, Dorchester books has announced they’re going all digital.. Dorchester was also the distributor for Hard Case Crime, but not the imprint owner, which is mystery writer Charles Ardai (who, in “it’s a small world after all” fashion, is married to fantasy writer Naomi Novik). So Hard Case Crime (which has published a number of extremely interesting titles, including works by Stephen King, Roger Zelazny, and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt) will either disappear or move to another publisher; things are still up in the air.
Sadly, for a paperback publisher like Dorchester, this is probably the right economic decision. There may come a day when the only fictions books actually printed will be signed limited editions…
Movie: Silk
Director: Chao-Bin Su
Writer: Chao-Bin Su
Cast: Chen Chang, Yosuke Eguchi, Kuan-Po Chen, Kar Yan Lam, Barbie Hsu, Bo-lin Chen, Chun-Ning Chang, Fang Wan,
I can honestly say that this is the first horror movie I’ve seen using fractals as the main plot device.
A modestly-budgeted Taiwanese film, Silk follows a team of researchers using a Menger Sponge in an attempt to trap a ghost, ostensibly as part of government-funded anti-gravity research. More specifically, they plan to capture the ghost of a child trapped in a single room in a Taipei tenement, repeating the same actions over and over again. Hashimoto (Yosuke Eguchi) is the crippled leader of the team with an ulterior motive, while Tung (Chen Chang, the desert bandit love interest from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) is the “man of action” brought in because of his skills at keen observation and lip-reading. Naturally, as the research progresses, complications ensue. For one thing, the ghost really doesn’t like people looking at him, and he can reach into their chests and stop their hearts…
This harks back to a number of early SF works on scientific methods for capturing ghosts or the soul. The Menger Sponge functions as a sort of universal plot device: because of its ability to store different wavelengths of energy, not only does Hashimoto intend to use it as a ghost storage jar, but they also use special Menger Sponge film to photograph the ghost, Menger Sponge eye-spray to see the ghost, coat the walls of the room to prevent the ghost from escaping, etc. It has just enough of a veneer of plausibility to engage your sense of disbelief, and is certainly more plausible than the magic icky fluid in District 9.
This is a very solid, well-paced ghost story with some intellectual novelty, albeit one that owes a number of stylistic elements to recent Japanese horror movies like Ringu and Ju-On. While modestly budgeted, it doesn’t come across as cheap, and the special effects are simple but effective. (The only place where they fail is in the CGI for an SUV crash, which looks like it could have been rendered in the latest Grand Theft Auto. Even so, it’s still miles above the digital bloodshed in Ugandan action films.) Best of all, they’ve eschewed all the boo-shock scares that infest modern horror films in favor of a certain amount of depth and subtlety.
The DVD contains deleted scenes and outtakes that were properly excised. However, do watch the director’s original ending, which is considerably darker, more effective, and more appropriate than the one in the film.
Here’s a trailer:
Like all fractals, Menger Sponges engender a certain geeky fascination, so I’ve found a couple of videos that show various Menger Sponge animations and recursions.
Here’s a Menger Sponge recursion (which is far less disturbing than The Hasselhoff Recursion):
A level 6 Menger Sponge:
It is not, to my mind, as interesting as a Mandelbox:
