KGB Raffle is MADE OF WIN

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!

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Today’s Twittering

  • @tobiasbuckell Dude, talk about Seeds of Change! :) #
  • @PaulGrahamRaven Cosmonaut is like one of the best songs ever. Hell, Relationship of Command is one of the best albums of all time. #
  • @PaulGrahamRaven It’s a shame it caused them to implode tho. Mars Volta + Sparta doesn’t = ATDI. #
  • @PaulGrahamRaven I would agree with you based on their 1st album, but I just didn’t get them after that. #

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Scar Symmetry/Nuclear Blast All-Stars: "The Overshadowing"

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.

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Today’s Twittering

  • Does anyone ever get mail on Facebook that isn’t just spam from your friends? #
  • is standing in line at the post office with lots of new mommies in sweatpants. #
  • OMG I just read a totally awesome piece of Grand Theft Auto fanfic. #
  • @JeremiahTolbert Dude, that sucks! At least the car is still there. #
  • Yay, welcome back twitter! Oh, how I’ve missed you during those dark hours earlier today when I had but 6 followers and was following but 1. #

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Top Ten SF Novels by Women

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.]

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Tor’s free ebooks

By now most of you will have noticed Tor’s shiny new Tor.com website, which is chock full of geeky goodness. What you may not have noticed is that through July 27, you can go download all of the free ebooks that Tor had released via its Watch the Skies promotional newsletter over the course of the last several months. So go download before they’re gone forever!

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Worldcon 2008 Schedule

I’ll be attending Worldcon this year, which will be in Denver, August 6-10. While there, I’ll be on the following panels:

  • What makes a good SF film or TV show, and why are so many of them so bad? | Friday at 1 PM
  • Battlestar Galactica:  An Improvement, But Was it Also a Success? | Saturday, 1 PM
  • Mars through the SF ages:  ERB to KSR | Saturday, 5:30 PM

I haven’t seen program descriptions of these panels, but they sound pretty self-explanatory.

Also, on Worldcon Thursday, I won’t be at the convention itself, but will instead be going on a VIP tour of the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain, which, as you may know, features prominently in many SFnal stories, such as Stargate and War Games, not to mention Jerry Oltion’s story in Wastelands, “Judgment Passed.”

UPDATE: I begged off the above-mentioned Mars panel due to it conflicting with the pre-Hugo reception for nominees (or in my case, nominees’ designated acceptors), and the fact that getting from the panel to the Hugo ceremony by the appointed time for nominees/acceptors would make things difficult.

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