THE COMING OF DARK INSPECTRE
New Pulp Author Jason Kahn has released the 64th installment in his In Plain Sight series.
You can read In Plain Sight, Episode 64: The Insurance Game here.
You can listen to the In Plain Sight audio here.
The Mix : What are people talking about today?
JONATHAN MABERRY WANTS YOU TO NAME HIS ASSASSIN
 |
| The Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry |
New Pulp Author Jonathan Maberry has announced the first of three contests for the upcoming Joe Ledger novel, Code Zero.
From Jonathan Maberry:
Joe Ledger/ CODE ZERO contest #1
I’m launching the first of (three) CODE ZERO contests.
THE RULES: come up with a name for an assassin. Male or female. No comical names. Something cool and compelling. Something memorable.
You may post as many suggestions as possible.
All suggestions must be posted on the contest thread on either of my Facebook pages [here and here]. (Twitter followers need to cruise over to Facebook to post your entry). Email and IM postings are not accepted. For duplicate names, the first posted entry will count.
THE PRIZE:
Three runners up will win signed 1st editions of the rare hardcover of ASSASSIN’S CODE and they will each be thanked in the acknowledgements page of CODE ZERO (scheduled for release March 2014).
The grand prize winner will have their character name used in the book; plus you will also appear in CODE ZERO (though it’s likely to be a short and painful walk-on). You’ll also get an ECHO TEAM coffee mug. And you’ll be thanked in the book’s acknowledgements page.
The Point Radio: Tim Olyphant Is More Than JUSTIFIED
Tomorrow night, FX rolls out the start of season four of JUSTIFIED. Series star Tim Olyphant tells us about the changes in his role both on and off screen, plus PSYCHO gets a prequel on TV and The Batmobille gets pulled into court.
Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app - and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.
HOLMES RULES 2013
 |
| Click for larger view. |
Airship 27 Productions‘ Ron Fortier shared the back cover for the New Pulp Publisher’s upcoming Sherlock Holmes anthology series, Consulting Detective. The new volume four is scheduled to premiere in late January 2013. Design courtesy of Rob Davis.
Also, Fortier will join other Holmes writers and fans on episode 145 of the Earth Station One podcast, coming later this week.
NEW PULP’S TOP TEN
White Rocket Books leads the pack this week on New Pulp Author Barry Reese’s weekly New Pulp Top Ten Bestseller List. Get the full story here.
1) The Golden Age by Jeff Deischer (White Rocket Books, October 2012) – 216,583
2) Prohibition by Terrence McCauley (Airship 27, December 2012) – 440,544
3) Prophecy’s Gambit by Nancy Hansen (Pro Se Press, January 2012) – 502,801
4) Sentinels: Metalgod by Van Plexico (White Rocket Books, December 2012) – 537,175
5) The Spider: Shadow of Evil by C.J. Henderson and J. Anthony Kosar (Moonstone Books, October 2012) – 868,197
6) Pro Se Presents # 15 by Various (Pro Se Press, November 2012) – 1,104,914
7) Horror Heroes by Various (Pulp Empire, October 2012) – 1,631,633
8 ) Helmet Head by Mike Baron (November 2012) – 1,755,536
9) Sha’Daa: Pawns (Volume 3) by Various (Perseid Publishing, October 2012) – 1,995,613
10) Monster Aces by Various (Pro Se Press, October 2012) – 2,144,926
Just missing the list were: Secret Agent “X” – Volume Four by Various (Airship 27, October 2012) – 2,244,756, Pro Se Presents # 14 by Various (Pro Se Press, October 2012) – 2,287,193 and Doc Claus by Various (Pulp Empire, December 2012) – 2,636,944.
Congratulations to those who made the list.
Eoin Colfer writes first Doctor Who Anniversary e-book
In the first event in association with Doctor Who‘s fiftieth anniversary, Puffin Books will be releasing eleven e-books in 2013, one a month, each dealing with a different Doctor. Writer of the Artemis Fowl
AIRSHIP 27 WRITERS AT WINDY CITY!
FROM AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS-
Three of the finest New Pulp Writers will be appearing at this year’s Windy City Paper and Pulp Show to autograph their new Airship 27 Productions titles on Saturday, 13th April.
Each of the three is a professional writer of note and last year released their first novels for Airship 27 Productions which will be sponsoring their appearances at the con.
DAVID C. SMITH – CALL OF SHADOWS – has written over twenty novels primarily in the sword and sorcery, fantasy and horror genres. He has written and co-authored eight pastiches featuring Robert E. Howard’s characters, including six starring Red Sonja with Richard L. Tierney. Smith, his wife, Janine, and daughter, Lily, live in Palatine, Ilinois. CALL OF SHADOWS is the story of a modern day wizard living in Chicago today and his struggles against an evil warlock obsessed with destroying him.
JOE BONADONNA – THREE AGAINST THE STARS – has published many short stories and a novel. He’s written several screenplays, one entitled “Magicians” is now in the hands of a director. He is a former member of the Chicago Screenwriters Network and has lectured on the history of science fiction, horror and fantasy in films. He recently sold a novella, “The Order of the Serpent,” to Weird Tales Magazine. THREE AGAINST THE STARS is a fast paced military sci-fi actioner set against the landscape of an alien empire and mankind’s struggles to secure a foothold amongst the distant galaxies.
TERRENCE McCAULEY – PROHIBITION – a New York resident, he has sold dozens of short stories for various anthologies and is a devotee of noir films particularly those set in New York. His protagonist in PROHIBITION is former professional boxer Terry Quinn, now an enforcer for the Irish Mob in Hell’s Kitchen. Later this year, a prequel story detailing Quinn’s fighting days will be featured in the highly popular New Pulp series, FIGHT CARD from editor/publisher Paul Bishop.
All signings will take place on Saturday April 13that the Airship 27 Productions tables.
The schedule is as follows –
David C. Smith – 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 Noon.
Joe Bonadonna – 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Terrence McCauley – 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Now in its 13th year, the Windy City Paper & Pulp Show is one of the premier gatherings of pulp, comics and paperback collectors in the country. The show runs from April 12-14. You can learn more about the con, its location and how to register at their on-line site. (http://windycitypulpandpaper.com/home/)
Airship 27 Productions was created six years ago by writer Ron Fortier and artist Rob Davis to support pulp fandom by producing new pulp fiction starring classic and new pulp heroes in both novels and anthologies. Since their beginning Airship 27 Productions has published over fifty titles featuring some of the finest professional writers and artists while at the same time providing a showcase for newer talent. Today their titles are available at Amazon, many on Kindle and they offer audio recordings several books. You can learn more about the company at their on-line site.
AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTIONS
PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!
REVIEW: Dredd
Despite Karl Urban uttering, “I am the law” his overall demeanor was just one of the many disappointments in the new film take on the classic 2000 AD hero, Judge Dredd. Dredd is out on home video this week from Lionsgate and it is amazing how bored I was watching it. The majority of the 96 film takes place in the Peach Trees Block and is effectively Dredd playing John McLane, trying to survive a sealed off building under siege.
It’s hard to watch this without comparing it with the Sylvester Stallone misfire of the 1990s. While the story sucked and the star violated the character by taking his helmet off a lot, it looked like the weekly comic come to life. The high tech, futuristic clutter of Mega City One was expertly captured, reminding us of how much the visual of Blade Runner derived from the British comic which has been around since 1977. Also, the costuming was perfect. Here, everything is scaled down and the Judge’s uniform does not look anywhere near as imposing.
Urban, no stranger to the genre, gets credit for playing the character accurately, keeping the helmet on and the upper lip and jaw prominent. On the other hand, he is not physically imposing as Stallone was or as Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra envisioned him.
We open with a voiceover setting the stage telling rather than showing and this vision is less imposing than the one in the comics. Somehow, the corridor from Boston to Washington has become this singular city with these 200+ story blocks that have become isolated communities. In this one, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), a drug-dealer/gang leader has become the distributor for a new drug and a routine case pits Dredd and the rookie Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) against an entire community out for blood.
This is more Anderson’s story than Dredd’s and we learn about her mutant ability is that of the most powerful psychic the Justice Department has ever seen. She is deemed ready for evaluation and goes out with Dredd and becomes embroiled in the case. Thirlby, a rising independent film star, is the best part of the film, but then again, she has the most to work with. Her interactions with the prisoner Kay (Wood Harris) give the film any sense of character.
Everyone else plays a type, from the stoic Dredd to the stereotypical Ma-Ma. Headey, a genre veteran, snarls nicely but has little else to do and seems not to care. Dredd is the most feared Judge of all but here, he lacks that reputation which diminishes the character.
The movie is a hard R with exceptionally graphic violence and gore courtesy of director Peter Travis. He’s done this sort of thing before and he handles it well, but doesn’t seem to know what else to do with the characters so has them run, hide, shoot, bleed, repeat.
The best of the extras is “Mega-City Masters: 35 Years of Judge Dredd” (14:27) where creators Ezquerra and John Wagner, accompanied by Brian Bolland, Mark Millar, Jock, Chris Ryall and others, discuss the uniqueness of the character and the opportunity the series has given the writers and artists for topical social and political satire. Everything that is just over the top enough to remain entertaining and amusing in the comics is absent from the film. Screenwriter Alex Garland is exceptionally talented but appears to have read a Wikipedia entry about the series before writing the script. This is perhaps the biggest disappointment of the film, which died at the box office, as much for inept marketing as a poor adaptation of the source material.
The other special features include “Day of Chaos: The Visual Effects of Dredd 3D” (15:21), although this is wasted on those of us who don’t care about 3-D; “Dredd” (1:53), “Dredd’s Gear” (2:31), “The 3rd Dimension” (2:00), about the film’s stereo, and “Welcome to Peach Trees” (2:33).There’s a little more Ma-Ma character substance in the motion comic prequel (2:57).
The combo set includes the 2-D, 3-Dand ultraviolet digital copy. This is the first combo set I have seen without a standard DVD version offered, a portent of the future.
Also included in this set is a digital copy of the film and an Ultraviolet stream or download.
Mindy Newell: The Culture Cult
I was listening to NPR the other day – I think it was Leonard Lopate’s show – and the guest was television critic Alan Sepinwall, who used to write for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger and now has a regular column discussing television on Hitfix.com. Mr. Sepinwall is the author of the just published The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers And Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever, in which he hypothesizes that the same old same-old television drama in which the hero wears a white hat, the bad guy is in black, and truth, justice, and the American way prevails by the end of an episode, with all elements of the plot neatly wrapped up with a bow and placed under the Christmas tree (or Hanukah menorah) and with no messy, lingering thoughts to bother the viewer – is dead, gone the way of the dodo bird.
I found the conversation extremely interesting, especially as the shows Mr. Sepinwall believes are responsible for the new landscape of television drama are those usually associated with the word cult.
Cult, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, has several meanings, but in this case the one that applies is: a great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad; (b) the object of such devotion; (c) a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion.
As in “the cult cop show The Shield.” Or “the cult science fiction show Battlestar Galactica.” Or “the cult teenage horror-fantasy show Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” Or “the cult late 1950s – early 1960s drama Mad Men.”
I think this usually means that the person describing these shows really thinks “I haven’t seen it, but my colleague/competitor is raving about it, so I’d better get on the bandwagon so I can sound just as cool and auteur as he/she does.” It can also mean “everybody is talking about it in the office, and I don’t want to sound like I don’t know what they’re talking about, so I’ll just go along with whatever they’re saying.” Or it can mean “I tried watching it, and I just don’t get it, but my wife/kids/best friend/boss loves it, so I better pretend like I do.”
It also usually means that the shows don’t have the greatest ratings, but the network executives love the prestige and the publicity and being thought of as brilliant by the television critics who rave about the shows. (Hey, who doesn’t love an ego boost?)
These are the shows that Mr. Sepinwall believes ushered in a new “golden age” of television drama:
Oz (HBO, 1997 – 2003)
The Sopranos (HBO, 1999 – 2007)
The Wire (HBO, 2002 – 2008)
Deadwood (HBO, 2004 – 2006)
The Shield (FX, 2002 – 2008)
Lost (ABC, 2004 – 2010)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (The WB, 1997 – 2003)
24 (Fox, 2001 – 2010)
Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi Channel, 2004 – 2009)
Friday Night Lights (NBC, 2006 – 2011)
Mad Men (AMC, 2007 – Present)
Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008 – Present)
Mr. Sepinwall also gives note to those shows he believes were the “building blocks” of this new millennial golden age of television:
Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981 -1987)
St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982 – 1988)
Cheers (NBC, 1982 – 1993)
Miami Vice (NBC, 1984 – 1989)
Wiseguy (CBS, 1987 – 1990)
Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990 – 1991)
Homicide: Life On The Street (NBC, 1993 – 1999)
NYPD Blue (ABC, 1993 – 2005)
The X-Files (Fox, 1993 – 2002)
ER (NBC, 1994 – 2009)
I never considered Cheers or ER or even The Sopranos cult hits. But reading the book, I understood why Mr. Sepinwall included them – all of the shows took chances, whether it was in the scripts or in the use of the production values such as camera work or even simple casting. I also found, as I read the book, that it was really not so surprising that so many of the people involved both behind and in front of the camera have intertwined histories, or that at one point or another in their careers they believed themselves to be “hamstrung” by the parameters of the shows with which they were involved, whether through executive interference or through mythology.
Ron Moore described the mythos of Star Trek as a “fly stuck in amber.” Bottom line, every single one of them, whether network executive or producer or writer or actor, had a desire, an eagerness, a need to break barriers. Sometimes it was because, as in the case of the WB and Buffy, a “what the hell, what have we got to lose?” attitude, as a network tried to establish itself as a viable competitor to the “Big Three” and cable. And sometimes it was because one executive believed in the vision of one writer, as in the case of Bonnie Hammer and Ron Moore.
If you’re a cultist like me (also known as a nerd or a geek), I recommend you read this book.
• • • • •
On a personal note… The Newells have been participants in an honest-to-God miracle.
My father suffered a stroke on Christmas Eve that progressed to continuous seizure activity. After four days in the hospital, with nothing left to do, we brought him home to die surrounded by the family he loved him.
On New Year’s Eve, he woke up.
He has no memory of that week. He has residual left side weakness, but he is getting stronger every day with the help of physical and occupational therapy. And he has the appetite of an elephant. Yesterday all he wanted was a pastrami sandwich on rye with mustard, which he ate vigorously.
He’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s got his throttle all the way open, and his nose up in the air and he’s pushing the envelope, chasing the demons that live in the sky.
TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis
