Look what I got for my birthday:
And here’s the Night of the Living Dead-esque shot:
I look forward to freaking out delivery people and other strangers who come by.
I have to say, it’s one thing to see a photo of it, it’s quite another to see it in your own backyard. It really amuses me to no end.
Thanks, Mom!
I just went outside to take out the garbage, and look what I found on my porch:
It’s sooooooo pretty!
Because I won! The KGB Fantastic Fiction Raffle I posted about last week has come to an end…and I won! This:
Pen & Ink drawing of an animal-of-your-choice by Gahan Wilson
Which, if I recall correctly, the description said the animal could be “real or imaginary.” So I’m thinking I want a zombie. If that doesn’t count as an animal, I’m going to go with a minotaur. Or what about a ZOMBIE MINOTAUR??
You can see all the winners here. Congrats to them all, including the fabulous Rhodi Hawk, who won an autographed copy of Wastelands!
In my recent post about music, I named Scar Symmetry as one of the top bands to debut in the last couple years. Their new album, Holographic Universe, just came out, and is, as expected, made of awesome. However, there’s a new song I’d like you to listen to that isn’t on that album, and in fact technically isn’t even one of theirs. It’s a “Nuclear Blast All-Stars” song (Nuclear Blast being a metal record label). To celebrate 20 years, Nuclear Blast put out this all-star complication. Basically, one guy wrote all the music and the instruments are played by the same crew, but the vocalist is different on each track. (For more details on the album, see the wiki.) This song, “The Overshadowing,” features Christian Alvestam from Scar Symmetry, and may actually be the best Scar Symmetry song–it sounds exactly like one, and really nails everything that they do well.
Note: For those of you who shy away from harsher metal vocals, this one’s probably not for you, though if you give the song a minute or so, you’ll see that the vocalist throws plenty of honest-to-god good singing in there as well.
In the Guardian, Gwyneth Jones has a Top Ten list of SF novels written by women. It’s an interesting list, though I note that only two of them are from the 21st century. Which is fair enough, considering it’s a Top Ten of all-time sort of list. But seeing the list made me wonder: What would this top ten list look like if we restricted the timeframe to books published in 2000 or later? So let’s hear it: What’s in your top ten? (Keep in mind we’re specifically talking about SF here, not fantasy.)
[Cross-posted to the F&SF blog. Please leave any comments over there.]
Scientific American has a cool (and spoiler-free) article about the plausibility of Batman. It’s presented as a Q&A with the author of Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero. It looks pretty cool–a shame, though, that it’s not coming out til October; they’re going to miss all this free publicity, though maybe The Dark Knight will be just about ready for DVD by then.
