Category: GENERAL

Help the Victims of Hurricane Ivan

Tobias Buckell is auctioning off some cool stuff with the proceeds going toward Grenada Relief in the wake of Hurricane Ivan. So help the Grenadans out and bid on a book or two.

Toby sez:

There are 4 copies of the WOTF XVI anthology with my story ‘In Orbite Mediavali.’

There is 1 copy of ‘Whispers From The Cotton Tree Root,’ with ‘Spurn Babylon’ in it, edited by Nalo Hopkinson

There are 3 copies of ‘Analog’ the June/July 2002 issue with my alternate history ‘A Green Thumb’ therein.

There is 1 copy of the latest anthology, ‘So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial SF&F’ with my story ‘Necahual’ in there, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan.

See Toby’s blog for more details.

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Comments on New Amazing?

Let your voice be heard!

Dave Gross of Amazing has posted a call for letters of comment. He says:

“Due to the surprising dearth of letters of comment, we’re without a full “Dispatches” for issue 606 and looking into the abyss of the deadline. Help! Send us your thoughts on issue 604, on Amazing Stories in general, or a recent book, movie, comic, or audiobook you’ve enjoyed–or hated.

“You’ll be glad you did, and we’ll be evuh so grateful.

“And you can send those to amazing@paizo.com. Don’t forget to include your city & state.”

P.S. Be sure to say you loved those audiobook reviews! ;)

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Chronicle

Has anyone seen the new issue of Chronicle (formerly Science Fiction Chronicle)? I’m not sure what the month on the issue is, but it’s got a picture of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson on the cover (and an interview with them inside). Anyway, I was with Gordon at the post office on Friday when it arrived and he looked at it and said that Brian Herbert looks like John C. Reilly. Which wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but what he really looks like is the reanimated corpse of John C. Reilly. Really, it’s quite a ghastly photo, definitely worth checking out.

If anyone can find an image of it for me online, please post it as a comment so everyone can see it. I looked for it, but couldn’t find it (DNA’s Chronicle website has the current issue listed as December 2003). In other DNA news, Warren’s new KISS magazine showed up the other day too, in which at least half of the articles are written by one Warren Lapine. Seemed kind of odd to see a table of contents with so many articles written by the same person. But the magazine overall looks much better than most of the DNA magazines, in terms of its production values.

Here’s that cover image, courtesy of Jon Hansen.

If this cover had word balloons, they would read:

Brian Herbert: "Brains!"

Kevin J. Anderson: "I’m going to kick some ass with my
zombie friend!"

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The Tolbert Cultural Index

Here are my responses to
The Tolbert
Cultural Index
.  My choices are bold; questions I abstained from
answering have been italicized.  Enjoy:

  1. USB 2.0 or Firewire
  2. The Smurfs or the Snorks
  3. Fraggle Rock or the Muppet Show
  4. Kerouac or Ginsberg
  5. Kansas or Boston
  6. Sally Mann or Diane Arbus
  7. Soul Coughing or Weezer
  8. Penny Arcade or PvP
  9. Orbital or Fatboy Slim
  10. Unreal Tournament or some WII crap
  11. BoingBoing or Metafilter
  12. Pirate or Ninja
  13. Beethoven or Bach
  14. Asimov’s or Analog
  15. Slacks or jeans
  16. Dandelions or carnations
  17. catfish or salmon
  18. Discordian or SubGenius
  19. D20 or GURPS
  20. BitTorrent or Kazaa
  21. Suicide Girls or Playboy
  22. Slashdot or Kuro5hin
  23. Tick animated or Tick live action
  24. Family Guy or King of the Hill
  25. Firefly or Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  26. highway or city (driving)
  27. Saturn or Kia
  28. Donnie Darko or The Matrix
  29. NTFS or FAT32
  30. drive-in theatre or cineplex
  31. Greek gods or Roman gods
  32. painful death by fire ants or 7th grade
  33. Warren Ellis or Grant Morrison
  34. Jugglers or clowns
  35. train or bus
  36. Movable Type or LiveJournal
  37. PHP or Perl
  38. School House Rocks or After School Special
  39. Transformers or Go-Bots
  40. Roger Zelazny or Neil Gaiman
  41. E.O. Wilson or Stephen Jay Gould
  42. Lake Monsters or Bigfoot
  43. Pajamas with feet or pajamas without feet
  44. The Iron Giant or Toy Story
  45. The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Brothers
  46. saturday morning cartoons or after school cartoons
  47. VH1 or MTV
  48. BiPolar Disorder or Schitzophrenia
  49. credit unions or banks
  50. ecology or molecular biology

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Most Wanted

I happened to catch a bit of America’s Most Wanted tonight, and they were talking about a guy named John Adams. I started to watch the show, to see what else they said about the guy. Some odd similarities emerged.

(1) He claims to write science fiction novels and screenplays. One web site said he claimed to worship the god RAH (others said Ra, the Egyptian sun god). Could RAH mean Robert A. Heinlein?

(2) He was a state trooper in Fairbanks, Alaska. My mom was born in Fairbanks, Alaska.

(3) His arrest warrant for kidnapping and murder was issued on July 31 (1998). My birthday is July 31.

(4) He claims to have studied UFOs. I took an anthropology/critical thinking class in college that was about debunking UFOs (among other paranormal phenomenon).

It was starting to get creepy until I realized his name wasn’t Adams, it was Addis. But still… if I was living in a fantasy novel, that would surely signify something.

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