Gashlycrumb Star Trek (Recommendation)

Shaenon K. Garrity has drawn a brief adaptation of the Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" in the style of Edward Gorey.

Let Túrin Rest In Peace

I've just finished reading The Children of Húrin. If you haven't read or didn't enjoy The Silmarillion, this isn't a book for you. If you did enjoy The Silmarillion, then The Children of Húrin has little to offer you that you haven't already read in chapter XXI of The Silmarillion and in Unfinished Tales' Narn i Hîn Húrin. The dry prose is actually harder to bear in this more drawn-out form. Give it a miss.

I suppose Christopher Tolkien was bound by available texts, but this story seems like an odd choice to want to expand upon -- Beren or Tuor might have been better selections.

DKM Returns (Reblog)

Could it be true? Potentially exciting news for genre fiction aficionados... Daniel Keyes Moran claims that he's going to be publishing AI War after over a decade of time off blogging about the Lakers. In theory, that might mean a book available for purchase in 2008.

SF Quiz

This little SF quiz of a cartoon is from My Elves Are Different by Steve Wilson. Help me fill in the gaps?

Hey! But first, stop reading and do it yourself from scratch! No Internet!

1. I'm betting on the last son of Krypton.
   
2. ? Perhaps there's some bit of HGTG I'm forgetting...
   
3. This is Ms. Multipass from the The Fifth Element. Which I love. Shut up.
   
4. ? Perhaps I'm forgetting some bit from Dune?
   
5. Red Dwarf's Rimmer! I need to Netflix that series, I've only seen bits and pieces.
   
6. DS9's commanding officer. Too easy with a holosuite reference!
   
7. This is Mr. Groening's Mr. Rodríguez. I was lucky to have caught this particular episode.
8. Proto-Darth of course. Damn Lucas!
   
9. ? Thank God I don't know this.
   
10. ? On the tip of my tongue...

I think that's a solid 6/10, and I'm not sure I'm ashamed of any of those points.

Bite Me Fiction

There's a newish fiction genre in town, and thanks to EJB my wife is addicted to it. Amazon reviewers have apparently dubbed it "sexy supernaturalism", and from what I can tell from skimming an Anita Blake book, these books are basically romance novels with pointy teeth, and are perhaps inappropriately grouped with SF genre fiction. They are instantly identifiable from their cover art.

These things are really exploding right now... The list below is included for the benefit of the wife.

• Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (15 books by Laurell K. Hamilton)
• Sookie Stackhouse (7 books by Charlaine Harris, originally a mystery writer)
• Betsy Taylor (6 books by MaryJanice Davidson)
  
• Rachel Morgan (5 books by Kim Harrison)
• Victory Nelson (3 books by Tanya Huff, now the Lifetime TV series Blood Ties)
  
• Berkley Sensation (3 books by Eileen Wilks, originally a romance writer)
  
• Kitty Norville (3 books by Carrie Vaughn)
  
• Mercy Thompson (2 books by Patricia Briggs)
• Cassandra Palmer (2 books by Karen Chance)
  

More Posthumous Tolkien (Reblog)

Christopher Tolkien, working for years and years from notes left by his father, has just completed The Children of Húrin. It will be released on April 17.

SFBC & Me (Reblog)

I arrived at this circuitously through CMD's shared post from SF Signal about a cute plastic Cthulhu doll. The original is from Sara Howe. This is a Science Fiction Book Club list of the most significant SF novels from '53 to '06 with the instructions: "Bold the ones you have read, strike through the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love." Let's see how normal I am.

1. * The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. * Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. * The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. * The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. * Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. * The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. * More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. * Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. * Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Read: 40.

Read & hated: 6.

Read & loved: 9.

Started & did not finish: 1.

I'm genuinely surprised that I'm more of a lover than a hater! Although many of the books on the list I consider poor (Neuromancer) or quite poor (The Sword of Shannara), without actually being able to provoke by utter derision. I'm gratified that Dick, Sturgeon, and Wolfe all made their list.

He Made Me Eat Fascist Ideology

Alas, in much the same way I imagine it was difficult for Thyestes to judge the meal Atreus served him on its culinary merits once the ingredients were revealed, I now find myself unable to appreciate the books of John C. Wright, having exposed myself to too much of his blog.

Dueling SF Authors (Reblog)

These several posts make me want to quickly write some dystopic fantasy so I can start arguing in the authors' circle-jerk. Not all of them are very rigorous thinkers on their blogs (ha, like I am), but I do enjoy their books. I'll have to check out Jeff VanderMeer some more; I read his Veniss Underground and was not terribly impressed, but now I'll give him a second look.

No Wonder (Reblog)

Well, after the untimely demise of Firefly, I was really looking forward to Whedon's next project, a Wonder Woman film that he was going to write and direct. Alas, it is not to be. When not mired in angst (copious amount of BTVS) or concentrating more on serialization issues than tight episodic stories, I've really enjoy his television writing and directing.

John C. Wright's Blog (Recommendation)

CMD shared an item in his Google Reader feed today that led me to John C. Wright's blog. It is currently mostly filled with his thoughts on the difference between "great books" and "genre books", and whether there are any SF/Fantasy books that can be considered great. His blog is interesting reading, and I must thank CMD a second time (as he also gave me my first Wright book to read).

Wright is a worthwhile genre offer himself whose works I have enjoyed a lot recently, despite some sour Ayn Randish notes at the very end of his Everness dilogy. His books also contain nascent stirrings of some of the same misogynistic notes which Wright complains of in his blog about Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Of course, I forgive those tendencies in Gene Wolfe, and I find I can forgive them so far in Wright.

Wolfewatch

A new Gene Wolfe short story, "The Hour of the Sheep", has arrived in the anthology Fast Forward 1.