Heroes star Masi Oka will be serving as global ambassador for the non-profit One Laptop Per Child initiative headed up by MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, which has set out to design, manufacture and distribute laptops to developing countries for under $100 each.
The Brown University Math/Computer Science grad is a dual threat in the digital space, known not only as an actor but also as a SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic.
Comics Links
Eddie Campbell tries to define what a graphic novel is. (Illustration of Campbell deep in thought by Campbell.)
The LA Times has an article about the webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.
Publishers Weekly interviews Satoru Kannagi, writer of Only the Ring Finger Knows.
PW also reports on the massive Japanese convention Comiket.
Comic Book Galaxy interviews the always-sunny Harvey Pekar.
Comics Should Be Good takes their usual monthly look at Marvel’s December covers.
Newsarama talks with the creators of Punks: the Comic.
Comic Bloc interviews Mike Baron.
The CBC interviews For Better or Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston.
Comics Reviews
Dana of Comics Fodder reviews this week’s Marvel comics.
Sequart’s Rob Clough reviews three volumes of Graphic Classics.
Sequential Tart reviews the new The Spirit comic.
Reviews from The Savage Critics:
Time magazine, which manages to get so much wrong so much of the time, oddly is very accurate and interesting on the subject of LOLcats. [via The Beat]
Not science fiction, but only because it didn’t happen: the British military is denying sending giant, man-eating badgers to terrify the citizen of the Iraqi city of Basra.
The New York Times’s PaperCuts blog looks at the cover of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
David Louis Edelman, at DeepGenre, ponders The End of Science Fiction.
Paranormal romance writer Sherrilyn Kenyon is now listed in Cambridge Who’s Who, and sent out a press release to tout that.
The Readercon brain trust compiled the semi-official canon of Slipstream writing. Great! Now we can go back to arguing about what “slipstream” actually means…
If you happen to be in Luxembourg (and I can’t tell you how often I’ve found myself in Luxembourg without thinking about it), you might want to pop your head into the Tomorrow Now exhibition at the Mudam Luxembuorg, which “explores the relationship between design and science fiction.”
I’d expected something really weird from the Montgomery Advertiser’s reference to “Faulkner’s Narnia” — just think about that for a moment, if you will – but it turns out that Faulkner University is putting on a stage adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as Narnia. Still, the idea of a Prince Caspian/As I Lay Dying mash-up is still out there for the taking… (more…)
Interzone #211, a special Michael Moorock issue, will be published in a week, so TTA Press has posted its table of contents. Besides a new Moorcock story and novel excerpt, there are stories from Carlos Hernandez, Aliette de Bodard, and Grace Dugan, among other things.
Ansible has put out its 240th issue, full of the usual stuff – quotes that make people look bad, amusing anecdotes, dates, and so forth.
John Joseph Adams’s article about writing workshops, “Basic Training for Writers,” from the SFWA Bulletin, has been posted on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website as a PDF.
The BBC is reporting that Joss Whedon’s film Serenity topped a poll by SFX magazine as the best science fiction film of all time. The magazine polled 3,000 fans.
Star Wars came in second, and Blade Runner was third. Other films that made the list include Planet of the Apes, The Matrix, Alien, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator and Back to the Future.
SFX editor Dave Bradley said it was a "massive surprise" to see Serenity beating Star Wars. "The TV show may have been cancelled, yet the Serenity universe clearly struck a chord with fans, thanks to its likeable characters, witty dialogue and amazing special effects."
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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