Cheerfully Demented

Intellectual Honesty

2013-05-19T16:11:58Z

Boing boing has a new post that I think is intellectually dishonest.

The first commenter on the post seems to agree with me: "That was an over-the-top and misleading synopsis."

I say all this because I respect the author of the post and call him a friend and have read and enjoyed many of his works, and I visit boingboing many times a day to see what wondrous and marvelous things they have to share. That said, we have to be honest enough to call a spade a spade.

And if I am going to call out someone else on this issue, I need to call out myself.

Which leads me back to my post a couple days ago about the new "Star Trek" movie.

Because Brianna and I saw it again.

And I was wrong.

It's actually a very good Trek movie.

The problem is that it jumps around so fast and is so complex that major plot points only get a sentence or two of screentime and if you miss them, you're lost. But it's there. (I did, however, notice a couple new minor plot holes the second time, but overall, my opinion went up a lot the second time.)

But my point is that, upon a second viewing, Into Darkness is a really good Trek movie, and it's between that and First Contact for which ranks Number 3 all time.

Relatively spoiler-free review of Star Trek Into Darkness

2013-05-17T15:18:13Z

Bottom-line: STID is a fast, action-filled movie that's surprisingly dull and stupid.

I had the exact opposite reaction to ID that I did to the Trek reboot (hereinafter "Trek '09" or simply "09"). I went into 09 planning on hating it and being mad about all the changes (the Enterprise is built in space, not in Iowa; Kirk can't drive stick, as we know from "A Piece of the Action", etc.). The only think I've ever shouted out in a movie theatre was during a trailer for 09 when I said, "I withhold judgment!" Which got a big laugh. But it walked out of 09 in love with that movie. The alt timeline was a brilliant idea, the fan nods worked. Brianna and I spent hours discussing whether this or Wrath of Khan was the best ST movie of all time.

Opposite reaction for ID. Thought it would be fun, left disappointed and confused, a little angry and befuddled. There is a GREAT movie in there, struggling to get out.

The best part of some shows (I'm looking at you, UFO and Space:1999) is the opening credits, with exciting music and quick edits and lots of explosions and action. So why can't they make the whole show out of that stuff? Because Star Trek Into Darkness.

There simply isn't enough mortar between the action pieces to hold it all together. Ok, so why are our guys being chased by spear-throwing aliens on some planet? I dunno. There's no more explanation for this in than in the trailer. In fact, the whole sequence is barely longer than the trailer and thus provides no plot or substance. I am a fish and this movie is dangling the hook in front of it, but never sets it.

When I watch a movie, there's a moment - hopefully - where you forget you're watching a movie and become emotionally involved. I didn't get emotionally involved into ST IV (the one with whales) until Kirk said "Double dumb ass on you." I didn't get into the second AvP movie until that horrible pregnant lady scene - by which point the movie was almost over. Hopefully that falling in happens early - like the first moments in Predators when Adrian Brody wakes up - and he's dropping like deadweight through the air. Wow. This never happened in ID. In fact, I felt like ID was consciously trying to push me away several times.

Example - this next bit is mildly spoilerific but isn't really, because if you're reading this you've already seen a Trek movie. (Almost) every Trek movie is about Kirk becoming captain of the Enterprise. Again. TMP, where he takes command from Decker. Khan, where he takes command from Spock. III, where he steals the decommissioned Enterprise and then blows it up. IV, where they give him a new ship because they took away his old ship because he was rash and impulsive and couldn't take directions and then somehow saved the day because he was rash and impulsive and... You get the picture.

The fun of watching Kirk is getting to see a ten-year-old in charge of a huge war machine doing crazy non-sensical stuff and getting away with it.

So when a big part of the emotional center of ID is whether or not Kirk will (a) grow up and (b) get back his command, Is there really any dramatic tension? Really?

(In contrast, 09 did this really well, because Chris Pike sold it - Kirk, your dad saved hundreds of lives in fifteen minutes, I dare you to do better. Great line.)

Enough about heroes. Now villains. Why is the main villain (see how I am carefully not revealing who it is, if you don't know) fighting Kirk? After watching the movie, reading some reviews and spending hours discussing this with Brianna, I am still not sure. There was one scene in the movie where the action stopped and the villain gives a half-hour lecture to explain why he's pissed off and it made no sense. Villains drive the plot. Their motivations and goals need to be clear. And here a villain causes a lot of death and destruction in the last five minutes of the movie... Why? No idea. Motivations and goals, people. You left me on a dead planet. You killed my father. There's no personal enmity from the villain toward Kirk so... Hum.

No personal vendetta between the main villain and Kirk but there *is* between Kirk and the villain, because the villain hurt someone Kirk cares about. And then Kirk goes from being really pissed off about that to not really caring in ten minutes. And really horrible crap happens at the end of the movie and no one really cares - it's just background noise to the main fight. Horrible crap and five minutes later we have a happy ending. Mental whiplash. I mean, 9/11 happened and our country is still seriously f&&ked up a decade later.

All summed, this was an exciting, action-filled movie. I just feel no emotional connection to this movie whatsoever.

Do I have any desire to see this movie again? Not really. But I would like to see a version that's half an hour longer wherein they explain some stuff.

How does it rank?

Great Trek: Khan, 09, First Contact
Good: IV (whales), ID, III, Generations
Eh: VI, TMP
Omg no: remainder

Space and Time

2013-05-08T15:49:02Z

Also, in case you missed it, the new Space and Time, no. 118, is out, with my spaceship on the cover. (This is a reprint of art originally done for William Johnson's novel Earth 2.0: Prison Planet.

Dragon Child

2013-05-08T15:37:57Z

And now we're working on texturing the Dragon Child, another spaceship from "Revolution 60". Not totally done yet, but close - I think.

But... let me ask. Do you think this is too Tron? Do you think another color other than white might be good for the wingblades?

What do you think? Helpful criticism?

Oh God NO

2013-05-07T17:37:24Z

Ray Harryhausen's dead.

What is there to be said? Sadness, sadness, nothing but sadness.

He was an inspiration to me. I've tried stop-motion-animation a couple times in my life because of him, none with great success. But... but... the key phrase I associate with Ray Harryhausen's work is "body plan". Because his work was stop-motion animation, rather than, say, "suitmation" (a guy in a suit), you could have monsters and creatures which didn't look... like a guy in a suit.

You could have creatures with snake-like bodies or arms. Or octopi. Or caterpillar-like. Or creatures with no abdomen (like a skeleton warrior). Or lots of heads. Or extra arms which moved just as believably (or unbelievably). Or bodies so skinny no human could fit inside.

His work opened my mind to the idea of different, non-human body plans. Which makes it even more sad that, after he opened the door to creatures which weren't human, even decades later, few have followed, and we still have aliens who are aliens only because they have bumpy foreheads.

Maybe the reason I find non-human creatures (I've just ordered some books on pycnogonids) fascinating is because of Ray Harryhausen.

The main thing is...

2013-05-07T17:00:37Z

keeping the main thing the main thing. (Or something like that.)

So goes a quote from Coach A.L. Williams, for whom I briefly (one month) tried to sell life insurance back in the 80's, before I saw the light. (Apologies all around, but, hey, it was the 80's.) There's also some thoughts about storywritingfor you writers out there.

(MILD OBTUSE SPOILERS AHEAD, which don't really reveal much of anything)

This week in "Mad Men" writer Matt Weiner finally got back to the main thing. The lead character around which all the chaos swirls - and cause of much chaos himself - is Don Draper, and this whole season up to now has been Don being the incredible shrinking man. Not saying a word for the first ten minutes of the first episode. Reacting to events, not causing them. Even his most basic skills in adsmanship are faltering as he comes up with one dumb idea after another. Everything we loved and admired about him was vanishing.

But not this week, wherein Don does not one but two completely ballstastic things, the details of which I won't tell you. (END OF MILD SPOILERS)

Finally.

This season of "Mad Men" was becoming like that season of "30Rock" when the story shifted from Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin to characters appearing in the opening credits who've since proven so boring that whole episodes fly by without them getting a line. Sure, at some point the Simpsons will have an episode about Willy the janitor, but when this happens again and again... Really, do we benefit from knowing about Frank's on-going affair with his ex-teacher? Whoopee. It also felt like that season of "Malcolm in the Middle" when they lost the mom due to contract disputes - she drove the plot, people!

Yes, yes, minor characters can be a great way to introduce the background - Shakespeare did it all the time. But could you imagine all of "Romeo and Juliet" being about those two guys biting their thumbs? Ugh. What if they took Darth Vader or the Sith out of Star Wars? Oh, wait, they tried that, and every time they did a Sith-less scene in the prequels, IT SUCKED RUNNY EGGS. Let's cut off more limbs, people. THAT makes a good Star Wars movie.

So, anyway, thanks, Matt Weiner, for bringing us back Don Draper, swinging wildly from vine to vine. Because, well, we didn't tune in to watch Betty trying to talk to hippies.

Sexism...

2013-05-06T17:06:03Z

In a few days, we will be filmed for a documentary about sexism in the videogame industry. I suspect that sexism in the videogame industry isn't much different from sexism in the science fiction industry (though I could be wrong about this). (e.g., the fanbase skews male, there are fewer females than males in places of prominence as writers, directors, art directors, etc.) With one exception: There are more avenues for really cruel and horrible comments to be sent during gaming than, say, while sitting on a sofa by yourself watching a movie or reading a Scalzi book. Do you think there are other differences?

But I wanted to get input from other people on this:

What's the most horrible sexist incident or comment you've experienced/heard about?

A lot of guys like me think of themselves as "enlightened" or "not part of the problem" - people who would never say something sexist or grab someone's body part without permission - but what can we do to make the situation better?

What can we do to help?

I need a shot of vitamin R

2013-04-27T18:07:13Z

OK, Saturday, which means Making Revolution 60 geometry day. I need some awesome tunes to help me through. But they need to be long, ridiculously, over-the-top long. Because I don't want to be interrupted every three minutes to have to pick a new song.

As background, back many years ago, a 45 would be less than three minutes - if you take every Motown number one song from the 1960's, each one is between 2.5 and 3 minutes long. Every one. Until the Beatles realized, there's no reason songs have to be that short to be on a 45 - and they asked, what is the longest song you can put on a 45? And they discovered it was over 7 minutes. So they took a three minute song and added a four minute outtro to it, and voila, "Hey Jude" at 7:11. (And, of course, album tracks could be even longer.) But even "Hey Jude" is really short compared to some classics. And that's what I'm looking for today - really long songs to accompany me as I grind out some art.

I mean, "Slip Inside This House" by the 13th Floor Elevators would be great, but it's only 7:51. Doesn't cut it. Nor does "Won't Get Fooled Again" or "Stairway to Heaven", being at over 8 minutes.

Now... "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus (9:34), there we go. Or a live version of "Inside Looking Out" by Grand Funk at 13:43. Even better, "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground at 17:27 - with that song on repeat, I can get an hour of art done, only hearing it 4 times. I just got "Whipping Post" by the Allman Bros. (23:04) - an hour of art, only hearing that one song three times! Yeah!

Any other suggestions for awesomely propulsive but really really long, propulsive songs that will help us make video game art?

Memorial

2013-04-23T18:12:52Z

This last week hasn't been very productive, with all that's going on. But there are deadlines coming up. Those patents aren't going to write themselves.

To shake the blues (to lance the wound?), I walk the two blocks from my building to the site of the MIT shooting. There's a small memorial to officer Sean Collier there.

"Thank you for your service." "End of Watch, April 18 2013." "We love you, Sean." "God bless you, Sean." "We will miss you." "MIT STRONG."

I didn't know Sean Collier, never met his family, but I cry.

A block away is the 7-11 that the bombers stuck up before shooting Sean Collier [CORRECTION, as per Kevin's comment below: the 7-11 that someone else was robbing around the time that the bombers were bringing their carjack victim to a local ATM]. There's a new checkout girl being trained by her manager. Sheryl Crow music quietly plays. The Sports Illustrated on the newsstand has the marathon bombing on the cover. There's no overt sign of what happened a few days ago here.

In the block between the 7-11 and the site of the MIT shooting, we have a small cluster of buildings. Through the windows I see that my colleagues are back at work, developing new cures for cancer and treatments for liver disease.

Back to work.

We stop, we mourn and cry, and then we move on and remember.

Thurday night: Cop shooting. Tomorrow: Ice cream and backrubs!

2013-04-22T15:08:53Z

As I mentioned earlier, one of our buildings is right at the corner where the MIT shooting happened and a cop was killed. This is a building I go into all the time to talk to scientists about patent stuff.

So tomorrow... as part of the healing process, there is a three-hour window where they're having a free ice cream truck and free massages in the building to lure us back, and replace the bad memories with good.

Well played.

Also, please note: Boston's official slogan is now "Boston Strong", not "Yankees Suck".

Ok, now that the manhunt is over, we can get back to the business at hand...

2013-04-22T03:33:31Z

Of whining about Hollywood movies, no matter how good they are. (Aren't we spoiled? Everything is awesome and yet we're all a bunch of whiners.)

Today I will be whining about the new Tom Cruise movie "Oblivion," which was quite awesome and visually spectacular and well-acted and full of fun twisty plot points. Not that that would stop me from niggling about one incredibly inconsequential point (but don't worry, NO PLOT SPOILERS HERE).

Herein I will beg and plead for Hollywood to please do something for me:

Please stop pandering to me.

Yes, I am the quintessential person who can't let go of his love of the sixties and seventies. (I mean, really, has there been a truly classic rock album released since "Quadrophenia" (1973)? OK, maybe "The Wall" (1980). But since then?) And if I could go back in time and buy any car I wanted... well, it would be a mid-sixties Corvette.

Just like the one Jim Kirk inexplicably crashes in the 23rd century. But if you are pandering to me, please get it right - I would have preferred my Corvette to be a 427, four on the floor, blue shading down to silver as you hit the ground (so it looks like a shark, you know), with gill slits on the sides, and a hard-top not a convertible, without the split in the rear window. Not that I've thought about it at all.

Yeah, that's the kind of car I'd have. Or maybe a 1971 Dodge Challenger. Just like Hal Jordan drives in the 2011 "Green Lantern."

And so in "Oblivion" we see Tom Cruise's character Jack ~~Reacher~~ Harper, in the year 2077, happily listening to music a century old. He has a pile of LPs (LPs! Where did he get those?), including "Exile on Main Street" (1971) and "The Wall" (1980); the most recent seems to be Duran Duran. And his favorite song is Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967). And then he puts a record on the platter and plays the first song - and it's Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" (1969). I mean, come on, you Hollywood doofus! Anyone who knows that song - the exact audience you're trying to pander to - will know that neither side of "Led Zeppelin II" starts with "Ramble On" - it's buried in the middle of side two! If you're going to pander to me, please don't simultaneously insult me with your ignorance.

My point - and I do have one - is that even though I LOVE this stuff from the sixties, it is increasingly non-sensical (not that it made sense decades ago when Zefram Cochrane was playing Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby" (1956) in Star Trek: First Contact) for characters in the far future to love stuff from the sixties, just because Frank Wu does.

Today

2013-04-19T12:10:39Z

The shooting of the MIT police officer last night was two blocks away from my office. On that intersection is one of our buildings, where I go to meet scientists to talk about sekrit patent stuff all the time. Yikes.

Got a call half an hour ago NOT to come to work. Buildings are on lockdown as the manhunt for the bombers continues today. Madness, but we're ok. Yikes.

Brianna in "The Magazine"!

2013-04-10T22:59:01Z

Brianna wrote an article about what it's like to run an (almost) all-girl game development team, and it's just been published in "The Magazine"!

Check it out here. Unless you're already a subscriber, it'll cost you 2 bucks to subscribe (of course, I think it's worth it).

Meanwhile, Giant Bomb (a well-read video game website) has set up a wiki about Rev60! They don't this for every videogame, ya know.

Our publicity machine is rollin'!

Meanwhile, we just got in the mail the confirmation of our copyright - Pau 3-660-719, filed with the U.S. Copyright Office 12/31/12, including the script and a lot of the visual assets. A lot of pieces are falling into place.

BTW, this is one of the big posters we showed at PAX EAST, featuring the Xiezhi spaceship and the N313 space station designed by moi:

Mad Men: My predictions!

2013-04-10T01:23:23Z

My thoughts (SPOILER-FILLED) on what will happen at the end of this year's Mad Men season!

[Spoiler (click to open)]

... My guess for what happens at the end of this season of Mad Men: Roger dies, probably either falling down the stairs or over the railing from the second story of SCDP to its first floor.

Why do I think this? Last year, when Lane committed suicide at the end of the season, there were clues even in the premiere episode. Everything led to his death. Why did he do it? His financial woes led him to stealing from the firm, which led to his being canned by Don (who felt he couldn't trust him anymore), which led to Lane offing himself - to avoid the shame of having to return to England in disgrace. All this - plus the set-up to his eventual rejection by Joan, and Pete undermining him and opining on his uselessness - was planted in the first episode last season. His wary relationship with his home country, the difficulty of paying for his son's tuition.

And what hints did we get in the first episode this season?

Matt Weiner, the mastermind behind Mad Men, gave reviewers a list of things that they weren't supposed to reveal as plot spoilers. A big one was the state of Don and Megan's relationship. But also on the list was... the fact that SCDP had expanded to a second floor? Why was that possibly a plot spoiler?

It doesn't seem important (maybe it's a red herring?) - until we see the architecture. A big open staircase - where SCDP execs have their photos taken (I predict a dead Roger will have his foto taken at the bottom of that staircase at the end of this season).

All throughout this episode, there's a sense of dread and death (does Dante's journey down into hell parallel a fall down the stairs?). But why Roger dying, and not someone else? We can't kill off Don, because everything revolves around him (which is why so much of this first episode seems empty - because Don himself is lost). Can't be Bert or Stan, because, who cares? Or Pete, because everyone would clap and dance. No, it's got to be Roger. And it's Roger who talks about doors opening and closing in life, but this is all an illusion, because, he says, we move in a straight line. Roger's straight line is one of unending dispair, alcoholism, obsolescence, futility, frustration and emptiness. Does that not led inexorably to death? I picture the final shot being the camera tracking Roger as he opens the door of an office, walks in a straight line toward the stairs, and throws himself down in a drunk stupor.

Crazy Prediction No. 6762: My guess as to what happens at the end of this season of Mad Men?

2013-04-09T18:08:13Z

(POST DELETED, will FIX AFTER I GET BACK FROM AN ERRAND)

More awesome press on Rev60!

2013-03-31T12:50:58Z

ShortWaveRockin podcast had some really nice words about our videogame (and us!). You can hear the entire 2-hour podcast here (we are discussed toward the end), or just the snippet with us HERE! (They gave Brianna credit for bringing me a present while they were demo'ing the game!) "Everyone working on Revoltuion 60 was an absolute f+++ing sweetheart! We were all just wrapped up and wanted to be part of these peoples' lives.")

Groaking

2013-03-29T14:38:57Z

Pax East

2013-03-26T13:48:29Z

We showed off Revolution 60 at Pax East, a huge gaming convention here in Boston, this last weekend.

Amazing, simply amazing. 80,000 people were there.

It was a tremendous amount of effort getting huge banners made for the booth, business cards printed up, a demo of the game prepped, iPads acquired and set up so that people could actually play the game, press appointments arranged.... A huge amount of work.

This was the first time that people outside the dev (development) team and our immediate friends and family tried out the game. The first day we demo'ed it to hundreds of people (The first 144 got a numbered Rev60 sticker - we hope the low number stickers will be valuable one day, like low-number White Albums). We guess that there were hundreds and hundreds more on Saturday and Sunday that tried out the game, too. You, too, can see the demo (imagine this on an iPad) here.

While I was getting people into the booth, Brianna was doing press interview after press interview - maybe 40 in all. She was pretty hoarse by the end.

And now that there's been some time for press people to write up their experiences...

Jessica Nickel said: "One of my favorite indie games presented on the floor was Revolution 60, a game that will be coming out for iOS. I was officially the 48th person EVER to play the game so that was pretty cool, I will admit. Among the great features of the game were art, combat, and player interactions. Can’t wait to play through and review."

PhoneArena.com (the 600th most popular website in India) wrote a glowing review of our game here. "Now, one of Revolution 60’s strengths is found in the fact that it’s being developed using the gorgeous and glitzy visuals found with the iOS Unreal engine – so yeah, there’s no shortage of kicking 3D visuals with this one. In fact, based on our quick preview of the developing title, it doesn’t slow one bit with its gameplay and storytelling. In addition to the visual appeal of the game, it’s fully voice acted by none other than anime legend Amanda Winn-Lee, who some of you will know from the classic Evangelion."

Examiner.com: "Revolution 60 is a short, intense story where your morality choices, your conversations and your battle skills help to determine how your game ends, and even whether your friends live or die. It features some of the most expressive, immersive animation on the platform to date."

Dual Pixels: I have to say that the claims are true that Revolution 60 pushes the envelope on what’s possible with iOS mobile gaming. The game features animation that you would not expect from a mobile game. Detailed sets and spaceships are designed by four-time Hugo award winner Frank Wu.

Ninja School Dropout Studios: We played this game down at PaxEast this past weekend and it was a very exciting game. Great artwork and mechanics behind this game. Great work all around. Thank you for coming to PaxEast and allowing use the time to talk with you about your game. Keep up the great work.

Daniel Geer: Saw you guys at pax east, your game looks great

And best of all:

Evolveent.com: Our game topped the list of the best indie games (from independent game developers) at the entire convention! "Revolution 60’s story takes place in the future where an American orbital weapon has drifted away, leaving a team of female special operatives to steal a space shuttle and stop the weapon from firing. Head of Development, Brianna Wu, told us the reason why the game sported such amazing graphics was thanks to the use of the Unreal Engine. The best way to describe the title: a mix of Heavy Rain and Mass Effect."

Yeeeeeeeeeeehawwww!!!!!

How many snowflakes?

2013-03-12T22:00:38Z

A question for all you physics/astronomy types.

I am re-watching "Cosmos" and in episode 10, Carl Sagan is commenting on those huge radio telescopes and he says that they detect extraordinarily small amounts of energy. A distant quasar, he says, is a quadrillionth of a watt. In fact, the total energy picked up by all the radio telescopes on the entire planet in all of history is less than the energy of "a single snowflake hitting the ground".

Sagan said that in 1980. That was 33 years ago. How many snowflakes do you think we are up to now? Do you think Earth is maybe a two snowflake planet by now? And how many snowflakes do we have to be before we're technologically interesting enough for aliens to come and visit?

FOLLOW-ON:

Beamjockey went and asked Frank Drake his thoughts on this question. Drake's answer was that "we might be up to two snowflakes. He cautiously allows that it might even be three."

Yeah! We're a two snowflake planet, maybe even three! Come on, you sweet aliens, come see about us! Aren't we awesome?

Well... what if we paid you?

2013-03-07T17:17:45Z

There's been a lot of (quite legitimate) brouhaha about Random House's HYDRA imprint for science fiction. Basically, it's a vanity press masquerading as a legitimate press (weird that a famous and important house like Random would do this). Scalzi's been on about it, for example, and its evil clone, ALIBI, which similarly tries to take advantage of novice mystery writers.

The gist of the Hydra (or Alibi) contract is that Random House takes all your rights and gives you nothing. By taking all your rights, I mean that they get to print the book in any format in any language anywhere in the world forever, plus they own the movie rights, and right of first refusal (for the same terms) on any sequels. And as for "gives you nothing" I mean, actually, that they don't give you an advance, and demand that you pay for stuff that Random should be paying itself (printing costs, warehousing, etc.).

Sucks, right? They take everything and give you nothing.

But ... contracts like this - where the big corporation takes all your rights - exist in the real world and are signed all the time, but the big difference? They actually give you money. They're called "work for hire." They're quite common, for example, in Hollywood, when you're hired to right a novelization of a movie or a book in a series that might someday be made into a money. They take all the rights - BUT they give you a big lump sum at the front end.

Question for my readers: How much would you sell a novel for? If someone offered you a "we take all the rights, but we'll give you a single lump sum" how much would you accept? Would you demand something that would cover the highest possible gain you might get (e.g., if you sold it as a movie multiple times)? Or something more reasonable, calculating the probability that it would make it big (versus the probability that it would absolutely go nowhere in the marketplace and never be sold for a movie, foreign translation or anything)?

How much would you sell your novel for? (Or, put another way, how much would it take for someone to hire you to write a novel for their franchise, knowing that they'd take all the rights?)

The Art and Science of Spaceship Design

2013-03-04T17:47:32Z

Over at the Amazing Stories magazine blog, I just had an article posted about how I design spaceships (the first in a series).

(Here is a rough draft a spaceship I designed - made out of Nike shoe box! Read the article to see the final version)

So, please go check it out, join/log in (it's free), and comment. The second step (joining) is particularly important, as a way that Steve Davidson wants to keep AMZ going financially is to get as many people as possible to join, and then use that number to convince advertisers to give him money, which he can then use to pay writers.

Bucket list!

2013-03-01T18:27:12Z

Mike Brotherton over at the Amazing Stories blog, posted a SF fan's bucket list. I've checked off 18 out of 50 (f you're generous). How about you?

1. Attend Worldcon

2. Attend Dragoncon

3. Attend Comic-Con

4. Attend World Fantasy Con

5. Attend Fright Fest

6. Visit (and use) telescopes on the summit of Maunea Kea, Hawaii

7. Visit (and use) the VLA in New Mexico

8. Visit (and use) telescopes in Chile, California, Arizona, etc.

9. Use the Hubble Space Telescope

10. Visit Devil’s Tower (Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind)

11. Visit Stonehenge

12. Visit Loch Ness

13. Visit Bluff Creek, where the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film was made

14. See a UFO or cryptid animal that I can’t identify as something well understood

15. See the northern lights

16. See Dracula’s castle

17. Visit the Shire in New Zealand from the Lord of the Rings movies

18. Visit the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle

19. Publish a science fiction novel

20. Visit The Islands of Adventure theme park at Universal Studios, Orlando

21. See a space launch live (missed my shuttle opportunity)

22. See a comet in the sky with the naked eye

23. Ride on a hovercraft

24. Visit the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum

25. Visit the Catacombs under Paris.

26. Visit the Winchester Mystery House

27. See a meteor so bright it casts shadows

28. Visit the pyramids in Egypt

29. Visit the International Space Station or future equivalent

30. Ride into space

31. Vomit comet parabolic flight for at least the sensation of extended freefall (Does the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror count?)

32. Visit NASA’s Johnson Space Center or Kennedy Space Center

33. Volunteer and help on a professional dinosaur dig

34. Halloween on the QE2

35. Visit Carlsbad Caverns

36. Fly over a volcano (I assume a helicopter counts!)

37. Build a robot

38. Shop at Kevin Smith’s Red Bank comic book shop

39. Visit a particle collider facility like CERN or Fermilab (does SLAC count?)

40. See Soundgarden play “Black Hole Sun” and Blue Oyster Cult play “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”

41. Go see for myself what that “Thing” roadside attraction is outside Tucson on I-10

42. See an Avengers vs. X-Men movie

43. See a Batman vs. Superman movie

44. Build a 2001 monolith for my front yard

45. Drive (a version of) the Batmobile (does sitting in one and playing with the steering wheel count?)

46. Win a best costume prize

47. See a short story or novel of mine made into a movie or TV show (Yeah, Guidolon!)

48. Get a science fiction/fantasy/horror tattoo (I have a couple of stars already but want something more interesting)

49. Ride in a deep sea submarine/bathysphere

50. Talk with a non-human intelligence, whether that is alien or machine-based

Frank R. Paul for sale!

2013-03-01T04:44:17Z

This black and white Frank R. Paul interior artwork piece just went on sale on eBay for $750.

There is a little story behind this piece, which started, for me, when the seller emailed me out of the blue with this piece, wondering who the artist was. My first thought was that there was a spot of this painting that looked very much like Frank R. Paul. That was the bowl, where the white paint on dark gray gouache was exactly the style I'd seen from other Frank R. Paul pieces from the 1950's (specifically those in Gernsback's magazine "Science Fiction Plus"). The thing is that the faces seemed... so persuasively rendered. And Paul was notoriously bad at doing faces. At least ones that were meant to be human. I asked some of my pals like Lex Berman that are familiar with a stunning amount of art from a wide swath of artists. But he didn't recognize this at all. And I asked my pal George Morgan to look through his collection of Science Fiction Plus magazines to see if it was from there. Nope.

Then... I remembered. I had come across a near-complete run of Christmas magazines that Gernsback had put out over the years. And I had just the week before sold my set to... George Morgan. He is the only guy on the planet I would have sold these to, because I knew he would appreciate them, and they belonged with George, who has a copy of almost every science fiction magazine from the 20th century. And he flipped through them, and there it was!

It is an interior piece from Gernsback's 1954 magazine "Forecast" (released in Christmas 1953). And the credits said that the art was Paul's. I reconciled the well-painted faces by figuring that Paul must have worked from photographs given to him by Gernsback. Even back in the 1920's, Paul was able to do quite good portraitures of the writers of Amazing, when provided with photos. It was only when he was drawing from his own imagination that the faces were terrible.

The illo itself is for an article (which is shown in part in the eBay ad) which laments our lack of scientific knowledge about the universe. "We still clumsily poke around in a thick broth with a probe relatively as coarse as the top of the Empire State Building."

And thus the mystery was solved.

Indeed, a rare Frank R. Paul interior from 1953. Signed on by the back by Gernsback. And it could be yours via eBay.

White House petition: RETRIEVE A LUNAR ROVER FROM THE SURFACE OF THE MOON

2013-02-22T18:38:58Z

~~I want to submit a White House petition.~~
I just submitted a White House petition. Please go and sign it and tell your friends: http://wh.gov/vVl3

RETRIEVE A LUNAR ROVER FROM THE SURFACE OF THE MOON

In 1969, the United States landed the first man on the moon, one of the greatest achievements of all mankind.
More lunar landings followed, the last three each employing a lunar rover. These were purpose-built vehicles, largely made of aluminum tubing. They were lightweight (only 463 lbs.), powered with electric batteries and driven by a joystick. They were left behind when the astronauts returned to earth, the last in 1972. No one has been to the moon since.
We propose that an unmanned, robotic mission be sent to retrieve one of the three rovers from the moon, for study and display at the National Air and Space Museum next to the Apollo 11 capsule. Together they will symbolize our can-do spirit and inspire a new generation to develop new technologies and reach for the stars.

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What do you think?

Please let me know if I have any facts wrong or if I need to add anything (though I am butting up against the 800 character limit.)

Story identification

2013-02-14T20:38:36Z

This is a follow-on to my post a few days ago about alternative casting (btw, did you see that every action movie star in Hollywood was considered for the John McClane role in Die Hard - inc. Harrison Ford and Sylvester Stallone?).

There is a Tim Pratt story wherein he meets a girl from an alternative universe wherein all this alternative casting actually happened.

Anybody have any idea what that story is called?