I just wanted to thank whoever it was that’s been clicking on my various links to Amazon.com. My associates account just earned me a $15 gift certificate. Sweet!
I bought myself a CD–Rebirth of the Temple by Silent Civilian. I’m just bummed I have to wait for it to show up now. I’ve been spoiled by iTunes’s whole instant gratification thing.
My review of Everfree by Nick Sagan was just published in Science Fiction Weekly. I interviewed Nick too, and that should be published over there some time soon as well.
[Excerpt:] Readers new to Nick Sagan’s work probably have some lofty expectations. His father, the world-renowned Carl Sagan, was both a brilliant scientist and the author of many books, including the terrific SF novel Contact. So he clearly has the genes for good writing and smart science; the question is, does he live up to expectations? The answer is yes and then some, and luckily for SF fans, the younger Sagan has his father’s gift for storytelling, but has chosen to devote his life not to writing science but to writing science fiction.
Check out my story for SCI FI Wire about the conclusion to Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu Histories.
Check out my story for SCI FI Wire about Dark Horse Comics’ plans for new Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser comics.
By now, everyone has probably heard about Paramount’s plans to revive the Trek franchise with a new movie, which will be produced by J.J. Abrams (of Alias and Lost fame). I’m fine with that–I think that Trek needed some new blood, but the problem is that with the new blood, was the promise of returning to old ideas: the movie puportedly will focus on Kirk and Spock in their younger years, at Starfleet Academy.
This kind of seems like asking for trouble to me–how in holy hell are they going to get anyone to play those roles that’s going to live up to Shatner and Nimoy without resorting to doing impersonations of them? Me, I’m skeptical.
As for longtime Trek-runner Rick Berman, I’m kind of glad he’s not involved–he helmed the ship true for a while, but at the end he’d led it astray. By the end, it was as if Trek was stuck in a Menthar booby trap.
But anyway, since this Kirk/Spock plot was “leaked,” Abrams has since come out denouncing the idea as being untrue. (Can’t find a relevant link at the moment.)
Now, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen quite a lot over the years. At first, I thought that it was just rabid fanboys hearing a rumor then spreading it like wildfire over the internet, but now I’m not so sure. Could Abrams have deliberately leaked such an idea to see what fan reaction would be like? That way, if the reaction was bad (as it has been), he can step forward to deny the rumors and say that was never the plan to begin with? If so, it’s kind of sneaky, but hey, I’d rather he float his dumbass ideas out this way then have to see him kill Trek for good with such a stinker of an idea.
From David Gerrold this month comes [brain fart edit] a new story [/brain fart edit]; Bruce McAllister offers a brief tale of a pulp writer; Melanie Fazi (courtesy of translator Christopher Priest) tells the tale of two missing children; and Gene Wolfe takes the reader to the asteroid belt for a tale of futuristic documentary filmmaking. Also, just when you thought it was safe to stop sending us poetry, we bought a humorous poem from Sophie M. White.
SCI FI Wire just published a piece I wrote about horror writer Weston Ochse’s Stoker Award nomination for Best First Novel.
The June 2006 issue of F&SF is now on sale. It features the following stories:
– “Animal Magnetism” by Albert E. Cowdrey
– “Counterfactual” by Gardner Dozois
– “Why the Aliens Did What They Did to That Suburb of Madison, Wisconsin” by Tim McDaniel
– “Hallucigenia” by Laird Barron
– “The Protectors of Zendor” by John Morressy
– “Terms of Engagement” by C. S. Friedman
You can read reviews here and here.
