In my Wiscon post, I mentioned that I scored a bunch of free Prime Books from Sean Wallace. But since I had so little room in my luggage, I had to ship them back home. Now that I’ve got them, I can catalog my loot:

• The Grass-Cutting Sword by Catherynne M. Valente
• Best American Fantasy edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
• Best New Romantic Fantasy edited by Paula Guran
• Science Fiction: The Best of the Year edited by Rich Horton
• Fantasy: The Best of the Year edited by Rich Horton
• The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia
• In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss

Prime has got some of the best designed books coming out lately. Best American Fantasy and The Secret History of Moscow in particular have really beautiful covers that kind of scream “Read me!”  

As it happens, I probably didn’t really need to pick these up at Wiscon, as Prime was also at Book Expo America this weekend, which I also attended, so I could have picked these up then.

Although I was told BEA was a great place to score free loot, I actually found the pickings to be rather slim. It was probably because I didn’t go on Friday, and by Saturday most of the good stuff was already gone. But I did manage to pick up a few interesting things:

• Stardust by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess (I’ve read this, but only the book version; I’ve never seen this original illustrated version)
  
• The Anubis Murders by Gary Gygax (the first of a new pulp reprint book line from Paizo Publishing called Planet Stories)
• The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks
• Bloodline by F. Paul Wilson
• Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book (which is, strangely enough, exactly what it sounds like)
  

Read More

I was just watching the film The Departed. When I got to the end credits, I waited to see who it was written by, as I didn’t know. After Scorsese’s name comes up as director, it says that the screenplay is by William Monahan.

Well, if you know about film credit terminology, you know that “screenplay by” is not the whole answer to my question. A “written by” credit means that that person wrote the story and screenplay, that he is, in essence, the writer of the movie, as the credit suggests. “Screenplay by” means that that person wrote the dialogue and shaped the story for the screen, but someone else wrote the story (or at least someone else helped write the story). In some cases this is a result of a screenplay that was good in concept but bad in execution which gets rewritten, thus the “screenplay by” and “story by” credits are sometimes different, and when this is the case, the “screenplay by” credit will be shared; in most cases, however, a “screenplay by” credit means that the film was based on an existing property (i.e., a book, a video game, etc.). Typically, the “story by” credit or “based on” credit appears directly after the “screenplay by” credit.

In The Departed, however, it is not until after all of the producers, all of the actors, hell, even all of the stunt people are credited that the reason for the “screenplay by” credit is revealed: The Departed is based upon the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.

Come on, Marty. You’re going to make a very faithful English adaptation of a recent and not at all obscure foreign film, and then try to hide the fact from general audiences? Not cool. But hey, at least you’ve got that Oscar.

Read More

After I got off the plane in Madison this weekend, I hopped in a taxi with S. C. Butler plus one, and Rick Bowes to travel to the con hotel. On the way there, I checked my email on my phone and discovered an email from an editor who had commissioned some freelance work from me. The deadline was tight–June 1–but the work I had to turn in was very short, and so while I had done research and took some notes, I hadn’t written the pieces just yet. So I was rather surprised to discover an email from my editor in which he attached his edit of the two pieces I hadn’t written yet.

Obviously, I was concerned. I’ve been taking Ambien*, and when I woke up the other day I found my laptop in the fridge, so I wondered if I’d forgone sleep binge-eating in favor of sleep binge-writing. Actually, I was kind of hoping that was the case; if I were able to harness such a skill, it would be a great way to get some extra work done.

But alas, it was not the case. There was a mix-up, and this particular project was actually assigned to me and someone else, and this someone else was actually assigned the project first, so it went to him/her. Which is a shame, because it would have been a fairly lucrative opportunity for not that much work, but such is the life of a freelancer. However, my editor did promise to get me something else in the near future, which would likely be just as good if not better than this project. And in fact, he already came up with something for me: I’m to create a series of quizzes based on a certain entertainment property. It looks to be fun, and again pays pretty well for what seems to be fairly easy work, so I can’t complain.

* No, not really.

 

Read More

The new air conditioner I just bought came with a little remote control, which I thought was cool, being an occasionally lazy sort of person who might just want to turn on/off the AC without having to get up. But much to my surprise, it seems I didn’t actually need the AC remote: My Tivo remote seems to control it as well. Or rather it turns it on and off when I press the “select” button. This isn’t a huge problem, since you don’t actually have to use the select button very often, but still mildly annoying.

Now if I could only get the AC to record stuff for me…

Read More

A poster mysteriously named “Meow,” suggested a modest proposal after viewing my Grammar Hound post:

Who else thinks this calls for a LOLCAT slush bomb of FSF?

“He can has named Adam, and she can has named Eve.”

“I’m in UR zombie story, eatin UR brainz”

“Iz destoryed the evil emporerz. Now Iz eat tuna fish.”

 Please god, no. Don’t. Seriously. But that was funny.

Read More

Bunny

Originally uploaded by slushgod.

Read More

Dear Amish LOLCAT, 

Read More

Andy Cox, editor and publisher of Interzone, has announced that the May-June issue next year will be a special issue devoted to Mundane SF, guest-edited by Geoff Ryman. What’s Mundane SF? Ryman says:

What makes a story Mundane? A few simple rules:

– no FTL travel or communications

– no aliens

– no time travel

– no parallel universes

– no immortality or telepathy

We believe that these SF ‘inventions’ are powerful myths whose presence may be drowning out some very important ideas. They may be entertaining to write and read about, but could there be something else we are all missing? The time comes when someone has to throw these babies out of the bathwater and see if there is life besides.

No matter how strong your convictions are regarding the inevitability of one, or all, of the above so-far non-existent phenomena, you can still write Mundane SF if you set your story between now and when the first of these becomes possible within your own personal belief system. 

Sounds like it’ll make for a cool issue. Stories should run between 2,500-5,000 words. Deadline is October 31, 2007. Submit here.

Read More

• Shared Worlds: a new SF/fantasy workshop program for high school juniors/seniors, presented by Wofford College. This year’s keynote speaker is Greg Keyes.
• Mass Perturbation Fantasies: a new SF review blog. Check out the review of “Elegy” by Melanie Fazi (from F&SF).
• New Earth: the new Earth-like planet recently discovered just 20 light-years away looks a lot like a Chesley Bonestell cover. (via Quartz City)
• TV Links: a vast array of links to streamable video of your favorite TV shows.
• A Class Act: Marleen Barr writes to Locus and uses the VA Tech tragedy to pimp her book.
• Paper Cities: Matt Kressel, publisher and editor of Sybil’s Garage announced that his own Senses Five Press will be publishing a new anthology: Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia. It’ll be out in November 2007, but you can go read Catherynne M. Valente’s story, “Palimpsest,” right now.
  

Read More

A couple weeks ago, I posted an audio recording of the “Ask the Editors” panel I was a part of at Lunacon. Well, for those of you not auditorily inclined, Wendy Delmater of Abyss & Apex has transcribed the recording and published it in the latest issue of A&A.

Read More