Grasping for the Wind

GFTW Welcomes Jim Rion!

John Ottinger III — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:42:52 +0000

More and more columnists are joining the ranks in our never ending quest to provide you, dear reader, with interesting and worthwhile content.

Jim Rion grew up in small town Kansas, with the incredible good luck of a well-stocked local library. He grew up to love words of all kinds, and he eventually acquired a BA in German and Philosophy and an MA in Germanic Linguistics. He also came down with a terrible case of wanderlust, leading him from the fields of home to Japan via Oklahoma, Germany and Russia.

Now he lives in a small Japanese city on the Seto Inland Sea, with his amazing wife and manga-obsessed mother-in-law. He teaches ESP (English for Special Purposes, not that other thing), plays inexcusable amounts of PS3, reads (and tries to write) science fiction and fantasy, and collects straight razors and inordinately expensive Japanese whetstones. You can read more on his SF/F centered blog A Loss For Words, or check out his alter ego’s straight razor and traditional wetshaving blog at Eastern Smooth. You can also follow him on twitter @EasternSmooth.

We are glad here is her to give us his unique perspectives!

Jim’s first post goes live today at noon EST.

Free Reading: That Was The Millennium That Was by John Scalzi

John Ottinger III — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:21:44 +0000

Before he goes on a blogging hiatus for six weeks, John Scalzi has a little gift for all his readers.

A decade ago, I wrote a series of entries which I called “That Was The Millennium That Was,” chronicling what I thought were some of the best, worst and weirdest things of the last millennium. It was a pretty good series — good enough that I was able to repurpose some of the essays for resale and featured a couple others in Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. But the whole run of the series has been off the site proper for over seven years, which means that many of you haven’t seen most of these pieces.

So, as a parting gift, here’s the whole series as a free e-book, DRM-free.

FORMATS: epub, mobi

Giveaway Winners

John Ottinger III — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:48:02 +0000

The winners of the three contests I have been running have been chosen!

A Wild Light by Marjorie M. Liu

Meredith M. of Tampa, FL

Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong

Cara S. of Thornhill, Ontario

Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

Jim D. of Binghamton, NY

Stephanie B. of Abilene, KS

If you didn’t win this time, stay tuned for more giveaways in the month of August!

Geek Media Round-Up: July 30, 2010

PipeDreamer Grey — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:00:15 +0000

Art

24 awesome Star Wars cupcakes
Andy Schulman “makes treasures out of trash.” Specifically, he creates illuminated sculptures from “found art.”
Calvin and Hobbes: Inception.
Carl Vader And The Up Death Star.
Walyou has an excellent gallery of 19 Artistic Steampunk Masks and Helmets and another gallery of 16 Epic Lego Weapons.

Comics

Film

Interview: Los Angeles Times talks with Daniel Radcliffe about his tearful Harry Potter farewell and his scary acting future.
News: Guillermo del Toro to Direct ‘At the Mountains of Madness’
News: Neil Gaiman Completes “Anansi Boys” Screenplay
25 Movie Quotes To Live Your Life By
LikeMe reminds you of 10 Movies You’ll Force Your Kids to Watch Someday.
Merely Academic has posted this Open Letter to Joss Whedon.
Pleated Jeans is offering a Inception flowchart to determine if you’re in a dream.
Premiere has compiled a list of 10 Cute Movie Critters Who Want You Dead.
Rope of Silicon asks Are Comic Book Movies Prime for a Downfall or Have We Only Seen the Beginning?
Total Film names Film features: 14 Movie Kids Who Could Beat You Up.
What’s the next move for the young stars of Harry Potter?

Internet

Crap at My Parent’s House is an homage to the stuff everyone’s parents have.
Do you have what it takes to be a web designer? Check the flowchart.

Literature

Interview: John Scalzi discusses writing with Marjorie M. Liu and Kelley Armstrong Have a Conversation About Writing.
Interview: Suvudu interviews Marjorie M. Liu and Kelley Armstrong.
Kate Perry offers Fashion Dos and Dont’s for the Paranormal Heroine.

Science

ABC News looks at 9 Sensational Sci-Fi Ideas That Came True.
Motherboard offers this Brief History Of Obsolete Time Travel Paradoxes.

Technology

Amazon’s Kindle Gets a New Look.

Television

News: New “BSG” Series Coming
Comedy Central is offering clips of Colbert’s Best Star Wars Moments.
TV Economics 101: Why you can’t watch every show online for free.

Video Games

News: EverQuest II is now free to play!
ChaCha remembers 9 Memorable Sexual Innuendos from Video Games.
GamingBolt has an infographic that puts The Spotlight on Online Gaming.
Watch a StarCraft 2 Playthrough.

Want more? Check out Geek Art Gallery for more art links and eye candy. Visit Oneironomicon for more on book trailers, reviews,and writing links.

What Color is Your Magic?

John Ottinger III — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:04:54 +0000

I used to take those online quizzes all the time when I first started blogging. But once I realized no one cared and most of them were just silly, I stopped. But on the other hand, sometimes it is just a bit of fun, and when there is an offical one for a book you just read and enjoyed, you just have to take it. This quiz for the forthcoming new novel from Brent Weeks, The Black Prism even includes a section that is very like the magic test in the book. Not many of those online quizzes can say that.

I’m a green magic drafter!

Take the quiz at Brent Weeks.com

YOU ARE A GREEN DRAFTER
Green luxin is springy and flexible. The uses are as varied as the drafter is creative: from furniture to projectiles to shields to the throwing arms of war engines. Greens are wild, free. They don’t so much disrespect authority as not even recognize it.

The results from your color matching test have also shown that you are one of the elite, a superchromat. The magic you do will almost never fail. Satrapies will compete to recruit you, and you will have a wide latitude in what work you choose to do once you finish your studies. You can expect your patron to lavish praise and honors on you. As a monochrome, you will master your color, and only have to defer to bichromes and polychromes and, of course, the nobility and the satraps who support us all.

MAGIC IN THE BLACK PRISM
When a candle burns, a physical substance (wax) is transformed into light. Chromaturgy in The Black Prism is the inverse: A drafter transforms light into a physical substance (luxin). Each different color of luxin has its own strength, weight, and even smell: blue luxin is hard, red is gooey, yellow is liquid, etc. But even as drafters change the world, the luxin changes them too, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The color change of a drafter’s eyes is only the beginning…

Video: The League of Extraordinary Dancers: Robot Lovestory

John Ottinger III — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:29:50 +0000

I have been watching the Hulu exclusive show The LXD: The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. Each show is anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes long, and so far 7 episodes have been aired. The conceit is that dance is a superpower, and so Jon M. Chu, the director, uses various and sundry types of dances to set good versus evil. Basically, like all dance, the show tells a story, but instead of being limited to the stage, the horizon is broadened through the ability of cinematography to add another layer to our understanding and appreciation of dance.

When the watcher approaches the tale, he/she should not expect a celar cut story. It is like going to the theater to watch a ballet or an opera. Sure, there is a story, but that isn’t neccessarily why the viewer attends. You go to watch the dance. Chu was careful to have all of his dancers only do moves that are physically possible without the aid of wires or strings, though you will likely still say WOW!

Below is is my favorite episode so far. In “Robot Lovestory” there is no voice acting whatsoever. The dance is integrated with comic book text lettering that harkens back to the silent movies of the early era, while still being very hip and up to date in its dance and its presentation. You can easily watch this one without having seen the others, although it appears (due to the episode “Dark Doctor Deal”) that the story which begins here will be very important to the overall plot of the show.

Watch new episodes of The LXD every Wednesday at 12 AM EST.

Comic Review: Tales from the Comics Experience with Andy Schmidt

John Ottinger III — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:01:15 +0000

Tales From the Comics Experience is a collection of thirteen original stories from writers who attended Andy Schmidt’s comic writing workshop “Comics Experience”. Each of the authors found letterers and artists to depict their stories in black and white. Many of these writers have not seen publication before. As a result, the stories can be hit or miss on quality.

The first story is by Richard P. Clark. In “Star: Battling Slippage” a barely-dressed assassin who videotapes her kills and places them on the internet find that her videos are no longer number one in the charts. Frustrated, she turns to the one thing she had not yet done. Clark has written for Playboy, so you can imagine what comes next. Clark also provided the rather excellent artwork for his own story, this reader just would have preferred a story with more class.

George O’Connor’s “Mr. Awesome Saves the World …” is rather hard to understand initially. However, are-read reveals that the story is about a superhero who no longer wishes to be, and the friend who may be taking up his mantle. The blocky artwork by S. Griffin, with the lackluster and obtuse dialogue, make it hard to understand what is going on in the story.

“Far from the Tree” by Eric Drumm is a story of a father seeking redemption from his son, though this is not revealed until the end of the story. With artwork by Richard Clark, this story is allright, but not great. It lacks enough interest, and the dialogue is a bit wooden.

“Bugged” by Frederick Kim is a story of aliens, though there is twist ending. I like how Kim related phrasing and characterization from the beginning and reworked it into the ending. It made the story work as a whole, rather than being a just a vignette. The story is complete, and has nice artwork by Antonio Bifulco.

“Animal Control: Special Creatures Unit” by Rob Anderson is a comic book version of A. Lee Martinez’s novel Monster. In both tales, animal control employees capture fictional animals or creatures that others don’t see. Anderson’s story is about the working class, and some the troubles they find on the job. Nicely, done, if not anything new. Leandro Panganiban provided the realistc, “Mary Worth” style artwork.

“Sleight of Mind” by Kevin D. Lintz is the only sword and sorcery tale of the bunch. In it, a magician undergoing torture uses illusion to foil the plot of his torturer. The dialogue is pretentious in style, overworking itself into sounding ancient in such fashion that it undermines the story. It is also too heavily reliant on theHe-Man looking artwork of Dan Rive to tell the story, so much so that the two don’t seem to match. In essence the dialogue by Lintz is vague pronouncements, artist Rive gets on with telling an actual narrative.

Joe Sergi’s “The Prisoner” a tale of an agoraphobic who believes he is at the end of the world is a clever little device and a funny little story. This tale is one of the best of the collection, though I don’t think that Marc Jameson’s dot-matrix artwork did real justice to this narrative.

“Well Beyond Reason” by JD Oliva is a gothic tale of cathedrals, demons and cults. Rendered in very, very black (almost too black to see anything) artwork by Jesse Kornhardt, the tale is rather frightening, with a unexpected twist I did not see coming. Well done.

“Broken Blade” by Nic Wolfe finds that sometimes ones greatest enemy is each other. Set in a future where humanity is battling another race, the story take place between two soldiers from a unit that has been destroyed fighting over right and wrong. The story brings forth the question buy then leaves it open-ended. Rudolfo Buscaglia provides detailed work, though sometimes the figures in the scenes are a bit indistinguishable from one another.

“Gabriel’s Regret” by Dan Rivera is set in a post-apocalyptic future where a monk has taken a vow of solitude. There are some similarities to the movie The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington, though in the case of this protagonist, he makes the same mistake twice, though perhaps he will make good on it the second time. A good, solid story, one about whose character I would like to read more. Antonio Bifulco, provides more good art for this story as well.

“The Choice” by Neil Fisher, is set in a future where crystals help people survive. The protagonist, a pacifist, must decide between his principled or revenge when his child is slain by the authorities. Fisher’s story is a origin story, and I think that the tale has the potential to be developed into an interesting comic. Fisher establishes his world, his characters and his plot with just the right amount of dialogue, and works closely with the detailed art of Vincenzo Riccardi to make a complete and integrated tale of significant excitement.

“Glimmer” by Justin Heggs is an origin story about a telekinetic superhero. But her story is, sadly, like too many evne today, which grounds the unreal of the story in realism. Like the series when Iron Man becomes a drunk, as Glimmer shares the story of her family, the reader finds that human quality of the superhero. Nicely constructed, and the only comic of the bunch to use narration mixed with dialogue. Scott Kawalchuck seems to draw inspiration from Batman: The Animated Series for his artwork, an appropriate choice given the content of the comic.

“The Struggle” by Joshua Osborne is a standard narrative of a cop who regrets a past action. There is no original material or new presentation of story here, and I found the whole thing rather ho-hum. Branco Jovanovic’s art is a set of ideals, not detailed enough considering that much of the story is best conveyed through facial expressions, something Jovanovic does only in extremes. There is not subtely to expression in the characters faces, something that was needed in a story where the scenery does not change from panel to panel.

There are some good stories, some bad ones in this collection. I was not overly impressed with most of them, only wanting to read more from one or two of the thirteen authors.

COLUMN: Mythologically Speaking

Ashley Crump — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:01:01 +0000

Who am I, anyway? John has kindly agreed to let me hang around here on the 28th of each month and talk your ears off – mostly about mythology and its connections to science fiction and fantasy.

As you will have seen in my bio, I teach English. I can’t remember when I first started to notice that I was appalled with the novel selections that English teachers were “supposed” to use with classes. If you have ever been in an English class, as I wager most of you have – you know that a lot of the novels chosen for assigned readings are things that turn many people off reading for life.

It was a beautiful day for me when I realized that I could choose my own readings to assign. The first time I did this in a college composition class, it was a book called The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Have you read it? All I’ll say is that Jane Eyre gets kidnapped out of her book…

While I had the usual grumbles and complaints about assigned readings, I also had a few students who voluntarily went to the library and got a copy of Jane Eyre. I knew I was on to something.

Since then, my own reading tastes have broadened. As I’ve gone deeper into the world of science fiction and fantasy, I’ve gotten more interested in the connections that science fiction and fantasy has with mythology.

Here’s a preview of coming attractions:

Over the next few months, I’m going to look at a couple of books with you. Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys involves a lot of West Indian and Ashanti myth, not to mention adaptation of some trickster tales. I’m in the middle of reading China Miéville’s Kraken now, and while I have not yet discovered all of the hidden treasures, there are some interesting allusions to Egyptian mythology. The question of whether Miéville is developing a particular mythology that is London’s own is well worth exploration, too. Finally, Nnedi Okorafor’s work is influenced by West African mythology. I finished reading Who Fears Death not long ago, and have The Shadow Speaker and Zahrah the Windseeker on deck.

Now you know what I want to talk to you about. Talk to me. What do you want to hear from me?

When she’s not being herded by her cats or listening to her 92 year old grandmother’s stories, you can find Ashley Crump on Twitter as @ohthatashley and doing the occasional book review at SF Signal.

Free Audio Fiction: The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

John Ottinger III — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:00:20 +0000

Download the MP3 audiobook version of The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor today only at Audiobook Community. A download of the free audiobook software, OverDrive® Media Console™ is required, as is giving your name and email address.

Available only in: US & dependencies, Philippines, Canada, UK, EU, British Commonwealth

Geek Media Round-Up: July 28, 2010

PipeDreamer Grey — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:00:01 +0000

Art

Interview: Tor.com interviews the cover artist and model from the (really excellent) Mercy Thompson book series.
12 Awesome science fiction wallpapers
The CRAB Robot (Cybernetic Autonomous Remote Barricade) is a bit of conceptual futuristic 3D design by Jamie Martin. Be sure to watch the animation.