P.S.: As for the commenter that suggested that people who didn’t like the movie “don’t know what an old fashioned monster movie was or they just don’t want to see one”: Well, I’m not untutored in the genre, but you could certainly find more knowledgeable classic horror movie buffs than I. But if you actually want to suggest that Howard Waldrop doesn’t know/and or like old horror movies, then BEEEEP! I’m sorry, you lose, you get nothing. Good day, sir!
Cosey received an even greater tribute from the New York Public Library when, in 1934, with the dual purpose of educating the innocent and removing from circulation as many specimens of his work as possible, it set up, under Bergquist’s supervision, a special file known as the Cosey Collection, to which it has been adding ever since. Consisting principally of items the library has been able to prevail upon Cosey’s dopes to donate, the Collection now comprises seventy-eight documents—thirty-one Lincolns, eight Poes, five Franklins, five David Rittenhouses, four Mary Baker Eddys, four George Washingtons, two Edwin M. Stantons, two Thomas Jeffersons, two John Marshalls, two James Madisons, one John Adams, one Samuel Adams, one Button Gwinnett, one Lyman Hall, one Benjamin Rush, one Richard Henry Lee, one Patrick Henry, one Alexander Hamilton, one Walt Whitman, one Mark Twain, one Sir Francis Bacon, one Earl of Essex, and one Rudyard Kipling, the last three being rather unusual examples, since Cosey made few excursions into the foreign field. Bergquist started the Cosey Collection with two specimens he had more or less confiscated from the forger himself —a Lincoln legal petition and a draft of some notes Poe wrote in connection with “Tamerlane.” The latest additions—two Franklin pay warrants, probably copied from the one Cosey stole—were contributed in 1954 by Arthur Swann, a vice-president of Parke-Bernet, who weeded them out, with the owner’s approval, from a group of autographs the galleries were about to auction off. Although speculation is almost meaningless in such matters, one well-informed collector has ventured to guess that if its contents were genuine, the Cosey Collection would be worth about a hundred thousand dollars.
The issue is of particular interest to me because the anonymous nature of the Internet and venues like eBay have given rise to a boom in modern forgery. Though concentrated in sports memorabilia, there have been some notable recent cases in the book trade as well. This is why I won’t buy a Robert A. Heinlein or Philip K. Dick signature without provenance. (I currently have no signed Philip K. Dick and only a single signed Heinlein (an inscribed book club edition I bought from David Hartwell). There is a also certain online seller (whom we shall refer to as F_________) that my friends and colleagues are reasonably sure makes his living selling forged signatures (though mixed in with real ones, just to keep people guessing).
Something for Dwight’s “Art, Dammit, Art!” watch. Here’s Kirtsen Dunst dressed up as an anime character and signing The Vapor’s “Turning Japanese” in the middle of the Akihabara.
So, you think it’s a publicity stunt or she’s doing an album. But not, even though Dunst is singing and the video is directed by McG, this is actually a performance art piece called “Akihabara Majokko Princess” by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami.
O….K…..
Anyway, though I think she looks better as a red-(rather than blue-)head, she is quite fetching in that outfit…
{Note: Video includes real shots from the Akihabara, some of which fall into the NSFW category.)
An interesting essay from Bill Simmons of ESPN about what’s wrong with the NBA and how it should be fixed. His point is that for the season ticket holders of essentially 2/3rds of the NBA are screwed (the Houston Rockets are listed as one of the non-heinous franchises), and offers up some suggestions on how to ease their pain, including graduated mandatory slashing of season ticket prices every year if the team continues to miss the playoffs. They’re interesting proposals, but should be taken with the caveat that the person who wrote them has actually been a Clippers season ticket holder for the last six years, which suggests of level of stupidity and/or masochism that might well be considered prima fascia evidence of insanity in a court of law.
The subject of Epic Beard Man came up at the Saturday Dining Conspiracy. So, if you haven’t seen it already, here’s the original (NSFW) Epic Beard Man fight:
I actually like it better than “The Waste Land” (which requires a level of polyglot competence in ancient Latin and Greek (which I doubt I shall ever attain) to fully enjoy), though perhaps not as much as “The Hollow Men” or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
Howard Waldrop and I’s review of The Wolfman has finally been published over at Locus Online. As you can tell from the review, we were, ahem, not enthusiastic.
That brings up the question: if you have a hankering for some hairy, gut-ripping werewolf goodness, what should you watch?
Dog Soldiers: Director Neil Marshall’s first film, which shows British soldiers running into a pack of werewolves while on maneuvers in the Scottish highlands.
An American Werewolf in London: The first really good werewolf movie of the modern era. Also the first (as far as I know) to use the now-cliched “character wakes up from a nightmare only to find out they’re still in the nightmare” move, which worked brilliantly the first time, and less and less every time since…
Kibakichi: This was one of the themed previews they showed before the feature at the Alamo Drafthouse. It features samurai, werewolves, demons, and Gatling guns. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’d like to, as it looks completely insane (in a good way).
Ginger Snaps: Smart-ass teenage girls get the werewolf treatment. Another film I haven’t seen, but which I’ve heard good things about.
Don’t forget the original version of The Wolf Man.
Man, those 3D scenes where Hari Seldon writes the complex equations of Psychohistory on a blackboard are going to be awesome.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read them, but I seem to remember exactly one space battle in the first three Foundation book…and I don’t think any shots were actually fired, since the Foundation guys had pre-“hacked” the software they sold the bad guys. (Though that scene probably predates the first computer-related use of the term “hacking.”) This would not seem to play to Mr. Emmerich’s strengths in Big Things That Explode Real Good.
If we’re really lucky, they’ll get Patrick Stewart to play Hari Seldon. More likely: Will Smith.
In the Before Time, the Long Long Ago (i.e., before I started this blog), I would ask The Vast Wisdom of Usenet (i.e. rec.arts.sf.written) what books I should read this year. Now that I have the blog, I’m posting the question here.
Below are 100 books (or a more, counting multiple titles by a single author) of fiction I’m considering reading in 2010. With a few exceptions (like forthcoming books), they’re all books I already own in first editions. Most likely I’ll get to considerably less than 100. The first few are books I’ll probably get to (or have already read), whereas the rest are a little vaguer (and in alphabetical order by author). That’s where you come in. Tell me which of the books below I should or shouldn’t read, and why. If a book’s not on the list, it’s probably because I’ve already read it, or have no interest in it, won’t get to it this year, etc., so save your electrons instead of suggesting alternates (there are plenty of other places for that). And if I list Book #2 in a linear series, rest assured I’ve already read Book #1.
I don’t promise I’ll read all the highest rated works, but those most highly praised are considerably more likely to be added to the reading stack, which is what’s happened the previous years I’ve done this.
Gene Wolfe: The Sorceror’s House
John Scalzi: The God Engines
Joe R. Lansdale: Vanilla Ride
China Mieville: King Rat
Steven R. Boyett: Elegy Beach
Joe Hill: 20th Century Ghosts
Philip K. Dick: Collected Stories Volume II or Radio Free Albemuth
Michael Moorcock:The War Hound and the World’s Pain or The Final Programme
Greg Egan: Crystal Nights
Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor
J. G. Ballard: Crystal World
Iain Banks: Against a Dark Background or Matter
John Barnes: Kaleidoscope Century or Mother of Storms
Stephen Baxter: Traces or Mayflower II
Peter S. Beagle: A Fine and Private Place
Greg Bear: The City at the End of Time
Poppy Z. Brite: Plastic Jesus
Tobias Buckell: Sly Mongoose
Octavia Butler: Fledgeling
Jack Cady: The Night We Buried Road Dog
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
John Christopher: No Blade of Grass
Susanna Clarke: Ladies of Grace Adieu
Hal Clement: Iceworld
Avram Davidson: The Adventures of Dr. Esterhauzy or Limekiller
L. Sprague de Camp: A Gun for Dinosaur
Bradley Denton: Laughin’ Boy
Paul Di Filippo: Lost Pages or Fractal Paisleys
George Alec Effinger: What Entropy Means to Me
Harlan Ellison: Deathbird Stories
John M. Ford: The Dragon Waiting
Neil Gaiman: Fragile Things or The Graveyard Book
John Gardner: Freddy’s Book or The Wreckage of Agathon
Ray Garton: Night Life or Nids
Jane Gaskell: The Serpent
Joe Haldeman: The Accidental Time Machine
Peter F. Hamilton: Mindstar Rising
Robert E. Howard: Conan the Barbarian
Nalo Hopkinson: Brown Girl in the Ring or The Salt Roads
Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Lottery
M. R. James: More Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary
K. W. Jeter: Noir or Dark Seeker
Ha Jin: Waiting
James Patrick Kelly: Strange But Not a Stranger
Stephen King: Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass or The Colorado Kid
Russell Kirk: The Surly Sullen Bell (and yes, I’ve read the 2 Arkham House collections)
Henry Kuttner and/or C. L. Moore: Mutant, Fury, Black God’s Shadow or No Boundaries
R. A. Lafferty: Archipelago or The 13th Voyage of Sinbad
Fritz Leiber: Night’s Black Agents
Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
Jonathan Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn
Thomas Ligotti: Grimscribe, Noctuary, or The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
Ian MacLeod: Breathmoss and Other Exhalations
Ken MacLeod: Giant Lizards from Another Star or The Execution Channel
Gregory Maguire: Wicked
Barry Malzberg: Hervoit’s World
Richard Matheson: Duel or What Dreams May Come
Ian MacDonald: River of Gods
Maureen McHugh: Mission Child or Nekropolis
Sean McMullen: The Miocene Arrow
Larry McMurtry: Lonesome Dove
Ward Moore: Bring the Jubilee
Pat Murphy: The Falling Woman
John Myers Myers: Silverlock
William F. Nolan: Things Beyond Midnight or Wild Galaxy
Naomi Novik: Throne of Jade
Patrick O’Leary: Other Voices, Other Rooms
Chad Oliver: The Shores of Another Sea or The Winds of Time
Susan Palwick: The Fate of Mice
H. Beam Piper: Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen
Tim Powers: Three Days to Never or Pilot Light
Alastair Reynolds: Redemption Ark
Rudy Rucker: Master of Time & Space or The Secret of Life or White Light
Matt Ruff: Fool on the Hill
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children
Joanna Russ: The Female Man
Karl Schroeder: Permanence or Lady of Mazes
David J. Schow: Crypt Orchids
Michael Shaara: The Herald or The Killer Angels
Michael Shea: A Quest for Simbilis
Lucius Shepard: Floater or Aztechs or Viator
Lewis Shiner: The Edges of Things or Black and White
Dan Simmons: The Terror or Hard as Nails
Robert Sladek: Roderick
Neal Stephenson: Zodiac or The Big U
Charles Stross: The Fuller Memorandum (forthcoming)
Theodore Sturgeon: Microcosmic God: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Volume 2
Steph Swainston: The Year of Our War
Thomas Burnett Swann: The Day of the Minotaur
Karl Edward Wagner: Darkness Weaves
Howard Waldrop: The Moone World (forthcoming)
Manly Wade Wellman: The Sleuth Patrol, The Last Mammoth or Fastest on the River
Martha Wells: The Element of Fire
John Whitbourne: To Build Jerusalem or Binscomb Tales
Liz Williams: The Demon and the City
Jack Williamson and James E. Gunn: Star Bridge
Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Jack Vance: Star King, The Languages of Pao, or Ports of Call
