The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Stuff to Read for Free Online

zefra-9592566Harper’s magazine has an excerpt from Karl Schroeder’s Crisis in Zefra in their July issue, but the whole thing — a fake non-fictional account of a near-future African peacekeeping mission that Schroeder did for the Canadian army a few years ago – is also available online, in a form that makes it look creepily real.

Eric Flint posts “snippets” of all of his current novels on his blog – that sounds like little bitty things, but each day he posts good-sized chunks, and he does dozens of “snippets” for each book. For example, today there’s snippet 30 of 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, snippet 17 of The Mirror of Worlds, and snippet 52 of Pyramid Power.

John Scalzi (the most recent winner of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer) posted a list of his work that’s available for free online, which includes his entire first novel, Agent to the Stars. (Agent is pretty good, actually; it’s the first thing I read by Scalzi, and it made me want to track down his other books.)

Tobias Buckell has posted the first third of his current novel Ragamuffin on the ‘net for everyone to read.

BestSF.net has posted Jonathan Sherwood’s story “Under the Graying Sea,” originally from the Februarty 2006 issue of Asimov’s.

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Be a patriot! Support the First Amendment!

  • Uncategorized
  • July 4, 2007

Contribute to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund!

Sequential Tart’s Editor-in-Chief Katherine Keller has even made it easier for your money to go farther: if she gets forty people to kick up $25, she’ll match all of their contributions, $1000 bucks out of her own pocket, and Carl Rigney has volunteered to match her donation– so $25 from you means $75 to the CBLDF. She’s got ten more contributors to go as of this writing… but don’t think that you get off the hook if they hit the numbers, they need every dime that they can raise for the Gordon Lee fight. (Hat tip: ¡Journalista!)

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Monday’s box-office breaks records

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Don’t people have day-jobs?  Accordiing to Variety, Transformers made $8.8 million on Monday, playing on 3,050 screens around the country.  Today, it adds another 500 screens, and will probably make even more money.  The studios behind the movie (Paramount and DreamWorks) hope to earn more than $100 million by Monday, in what they describe as a 6 1/2 day weekend.

Ratatouille earned $7.5 million.  Live Free or Die Hard made $4.3 million.

Transformers stars upcoming ComicMixer Mark Ryan as the voice of Bumblebee.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy News & Links

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Mark Evanier shows off the cover to his upcoming book Kirby: King of Comics, and explains what this book is (a big, heavily-illustrated look at Jack Kirby’s comics work) and what his next book will be (a much longer, text-heavy biography of Kirby).

Columnist Alex Stein, in the Guardian, likes to argue with a friend about the use and importance of science fiction. (He’s on the side of the angels) Sadly, Stein seems to be content to argue that there’s some good stuff out there amid the dreck, rather than calling the friend on his category error – the unnamed friend stacks the deck by using the new Transformers movie as the SF exemplar and “some new French slow-burner about adultery” as his example of “real life.” The equivalents of a good serious “real life” movie are movies like Gattaca, or 2001, or Blade Runner; if you want a “mainstream” comparison movie on the same level as Transformers, you’ll have to dig up something like Monster-In-Law. Defenders of SF need to point out that there’s just as much “real life” dreck as fantastic dreck – and our dreck at least has cool pictures to go with the lousy plots.

The Baltimore Sun reports on an exhibition of Star Wars paraphernalia at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore. The materials are all from the collection of Thomas Atkinson, who runs the Star Toys Museum. (more…)

ELAYNE RIGGS: I want to believe

elayne200-6362335“We’re never gonna beat this if belief is what we’re fighting for.” – John Mayer

As Americans gather today to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence 231 years ago, many of us find ourselves in quite a different place than we believe our founders envisioned for this country.  Each day brings more tragic results of the radicals currently in power thumbing their nose continually at Benjamin Franklin’s observation that “Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security” and frightening the populace into constant submission so they can retain this ill-gotten power.  (Hang on — creating a climate of fear, isn’t that what terrorists try to do?  Guess that means They’re Winning.)  And without the assurance that our government will (or even can) do its job of seeing to the well-being of its citizens, many Americans do what people in their situation have done for centuries — they turn to institutions they believe will care for them, mostly institutions that “answer to a higher authority” in which they believe.

We’ve been talking a lot about perception and belief on ComicMix this past week.  First Mike Gold tackled how people misperceive personal threats to their way of life when no such threats exist.  For the life of me, I cannot imagine how these ideas get into their heads, and neither can anyone in the all-pervasive corporate-sponsored conservative-pandering media.  Then I talked more about subjectivity and how some folks amazingly find the exact “evidence” to support their pet beliefs, rather than the other way around (using actual scientific procedure to observe first and then create a theory based on those observations).  And the capper was John Ostrander’s column about dogma, rigid belief systems (whether religious or no) whose adherents will brook no dissenting opinions.  The danger of dogma is the same as that of any fanaticism — that subjective perceptions are suddenly presented as objective ones, and individual beliefs replace reason and compromise with authoritarian systems such as theocracies.

And it ought to be obvious that theocracies are not Good Things in pluralistic societies because they leave no room for diversity of opinion. (more…)

Science Fiction/Fantasy Podcasts

The new episode of The Future And You went up for the beginning of the month; it includes conversations with Battlestar Galactica cast member Bodie Olmos, Walt (The Bananaslug) Boyes from Jim Baen’s Universe magazine, and the authors Robert Buettner, Mike Resnick, Randal L. Schwartz and Stoney Compton. How can you not want to hear what a man named “Bananaslug” has to say?

Episode # 40 of The Sci Phi Show is an introduction to the books and stories of Greg Egan.

The Odyssey Fantasy Workshop has just posted a new podcast, featuring Terry Bisson talking about setting. [via Locus Online]

… Or Is It Donna The Bride?

Donna says According to the BBC, Runaway Bride star Catherine Tate is set to return to the TARDIS for the complete 13 week run of series four (a.k.a. season 30) of Doctor Who, reprising her role as Donna the runaway bride from last year’s Christmas special.

Previously, British media (including the BBC) reported Tom Ellis was going to stay on with the series, possibly in his season-ending role as Doctor Thomas Milligan. These reports have not been discounted – and, of course, it’s also possible that he would visit Torchwood, along with Martha Jones.

In any event, neither Donna the Runaway Bride, Dr. Milligan nor Dr. Jones are expected to be placed between The Doctor and the Titanic this year’s Christmas special. But, to quote Fats Waller, "one never knows, do one?"

Thanks and a tip o’the hat to our pal Lisa Sullivan.

 

Analyzing Amazing

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Marvel Comics announced recently that they will be canceling Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and Sensational Spider-Man, while upping Amazing Spider-Man from monthly to three times a month.

Editor Steve Wacker explained to WizardWorld, “It’s a chance to get more Amazing Spider-Man comics out there, quite honestly. It’s because we were already publishing three Spidey books, but what inevitably happens – and it’s happened for decades – is that the books that aren’t Amazing Spider-Man are the first ones that people drop when they need to re-adjust their lists. So the thought was combine what we’re already doing with three titles into one, make them each roll right into one another, almost like a weekly soap opera or television show, and so it’s one-stop shopping for your Spider-Man stuff. You know, historically, from Marvel Team-Up from Web of Spider-Man to Peter Parker to even the current books, no matter how good the stories were within there, they were rarely able to come to the same heights sales-wise as Amazing.”

Taking his lessons from running 52, the summer announcement over the creative team will likely involve key figures running the story and art with built in teams assisting both.  Who they are and how they work will remain to be seen.

But, is the theory a correct one?  Will Amazing, selling at over 100,000 copies a month work at that level?  Or will the average monthly sale be closer to the 50-55,000 a month that the canceled titles were averaging? The Back in Black theme to the three titles these last few months should have bumped Sensation and Friendly closer to the flagship title, but the disparity remains sharp.

Odds are, once the dust settles, some four or five months after the changeover, the title will sell lower, possibly splitting the difference.  If so, that puts it in the 70-75,000 range, which is exactly where Ultimate Spider-Man currently resides (down 50,000 copies or so from its first year numbers).  The title has been pumping out 18 issues a year for a while now and the sales have been steady.

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Vampire tour of New York City

  • Uncategorized
  • July 3, 2007

We get some strange mail here at ComicMix, but this one’s a bit more unusual than usual:

This July 13th, you can learn the history of New York City as you never imagined it! Count Dracula’s faithful servant, Dr. Jack Seward, will escort you through the Upper West Side of Manhattan, starting at Central Park and West 72nd Street. The late Dr. Seward will recount the history of some of the most famous spots, and how vampires played a role in that history! By the Count’s orders, he will reveal closely-guarded secrets of the vampire community. The Count may even join you himself; at the very least, he’ll be watching… $25 per person, payable on site. For full details, to register for July 13th, and/or to be added to our list for future tours, email Dr. Seward at glinzner@hotmail.com before noon on July 13th.

If you go, let us know if it bites or sucks.

MOVIE REVIEW: Live Free Or Die Hard

1559747260-1952543Well, after 12 years John McClain is back in full force with Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth sequel in the series, and the sixth sequel to come out this summer. I have to say going into the flick I wasn’t expecting much, especially after seeing the trailer, which only made me believe Ric Meyer’s micro-review in saying that this isn’t a Die Hard sequel, it’s actually the unwritten sequel for Unbreakable. So between that and the fact that this is the first Die Hard film to receive a PG-13 Rating, I was less than excited for it.

Having that frame of mind, I think I was able to enjoy the film much more. I wasn’t looking for a direct comparison to the first three movies, I just wanted a good John McClain movie, and that’s what I got. The biggest issue with Bruce Willis’ character is that Willis himself has so drastically changed his acting style in the last 12 years, that it’s like asking Walt Disney’s head to unfreeze itself and start drawing exactly like he used to. Granted the fun loving, swearing Bruce Willis that we remember from the first flicks is long gone, and we’re left with the bald, grumpy old man Willis who looks like he has to force himself to smile, but we all just have to change with the times, and even McClain has to age.

Following the formula of With a Vengeance, our hero is accompanied by a would-be sidekick, who fights spends a good chunk of the movie deciding whether or not this is a battle worth fighting, and of course breaking out of his mold by the end of the movie to become someone super cop John McClain can respect. This time around, we get Mac Boy Justin Long as the cowardly super hacker Matt Fuller. Long played the role just as any sidekick should, by accentuating the heroism of…well, the hero.

Also along for the ride were Maggie Q and Tim Olyphant as the evil duo. Everywhere I go, guys are falling in love with Maggie Q, and until checking out this movie I didn’t know why. She manages to play the seductive-yet-deadly henchwoman very well. And as per usual, Olyphant oozes charisma as the bad guy in this picture. I’ve been following this guy since Gone in 60 Seconds, and I’ve had nothing but good things to say about each of his roles.

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