Episode 4 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is now up at io9. In this episode we interview Marjorie M. Liu, author of urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels (and writer on the Marvel comics NYX and Dark Wolverine). Then stick around after the interview as John and I discuss superheroes.
Rue Morgue Magazine Reviews The Living Dead 2
Issue 108 of Rue Morgue magazine contains a “zombie anthology cage match,” which includes this bit about The Living Dead 2:
“I’ll be snagging TLD2 for one simple reason: there are tons of themes and riffs that I’ve never encountered before. This collection is recommended for zombiephiles of all stripes, albeit with the caveat that sometimes the stories by the biggest names are not the most original or compelling. But if you’re looking for a showcase for the subgenre’s versatility, or proof that short-form horror is the place to find true innovation, this is it.”
Four stories are highlighted, including my “The Skull-Faced City” (“freshest”). The other three are “Arlene Schabowski of the Undead” by Mark McLaughlin and Kyra M. Schon (“most terrifying”), ”Zombie Gigolo” by S.G. Browne (“goriest”), and “We Now Pause for Station Identification” by Gary A. Braunbeck (“strangest”).
The Levelator
All you podcasters out there may want to try The Levelator, a piece of software that smooths out variations in the volume level of your audio file. For months I’ve been poking around looking for a good way to do this. Really glad I saw this on Cheryl Morgan’s blog. This is going to make my life SO much easier.
New Short Story “Three Deaths”
Finished a new 4400 word short story, “Three Deaths,” for a TOP SECRET PROJECT. More details to come.
Kirtley, Texas
So I just noticed that there’s a ghost town in Texas named “Kirtley.” Here’s a photo:
And here’s a bit of local history: “The town, which is now divided into North Kirtley and South Kirtley (by Highway 71) is identified simply as Kirtley by one of those simple green signs. The town dates back to 1831 when it was owned by one William Barton. Part of Barton’s land was sold to William Primm by 1840 — and a community named Primm grew around the Barton Creek cemetery. The name is kept alive today by Pimm’s Lake — but many local residents are unaware that there had once been a town here.
Barton’s Creek, which is said to be named after Wayne Barton, veteran of San Jacinto, flows 11.5 miles from its source upward into Bastrop County and then returns to Fayette County to its mouth on the Colorado, 2.5 miles east of present-day Kirtley.
The lone store that had operated in Primm moved to the highway and the community became known as Kirtley (origin unknown). A post office had been in operation from 1902 through 1927. Due to the proximity to Smithville and La Grange, Kirtley was left in an economic limbo producing only sand and gravel — an operation which is still doing business alongside the railroad tracks. The extracted sand and gravel has removed whatever was left of Primm.”
In an odd coincidence, just like Kirtley, Texas, I too have been left in an economic limbo, except instead of producing only sand and gravel, I produce only short stories and podcasts. Spooky, huh?
Anyway, I was able to dig up a few more facts about the town on Wikipedia. This is really interesting:
I mean, did you know that the county seat is La Grange? I had no idea. Fascinating.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Here’s a cool podcast I’ve been listening to recently: WTF with Marc Maron.
Maron is a stand-up comedian who invites people over to the recording studio in his garage and conducts long interviews with them. Most of the guests are other comics, with a smattering of other folks in the arts & entertainment world. Maron is up front about his flaws, failures, insecurities, neuroses, and the all-consuming jealousy he feels toward his more successful peers, and he conducts frankly personal interviews that often deal with awkward topics such as “Why does everyone hate you so much?” Maron has been in stand-up for thirty years or so, and is friends and/or enemies with most of the folks he talks to. So far I’ve listened to interviews with Louis CK, Ira Glass, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Smith, and Bob Saget, all of which were interesting. The most riveting episodes so far have been the two in which Maron confronts Carlos Mencia over a range of grievances that his fellow comedians have against him.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Interviews Jennifer Finney Boylan
Episode 28 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy features an interview with Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of the middle grade fantasy novel Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror, about a school where monsters are taught to suppress their true natures. Jenny is also the author of She’s Not There, one of the first bestselling memoirs by a transgendered American. She’s appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, and The Today Show, been lampooned on Saturday Night Live, and appeared (as herself) on All My Children. She also teaches English and Creative Writing at Colby College, where she was named “Professor of the Year” in 2000, and where I was lucky enough to study with her. Then stick around after the interview as John and I discuss the role of monsters in fantasy & science fiction.
Podcast Squared Interview
John Joseph Adams and I are interviewed about Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy on Episode 32 of Podcast Squared, a podcast that reviews other podcasts.
What is David Barr Kirtley’s Middle Name?
So this page just popped up in my Google alerts. Geez, who spilled the beans?
100 Rogues iPhone Game FREE
My friend Keith’s awesome iPhone game 100 Rogues is FREE for a limited time. Grab it quick.
Teenybuffalo Lists Zombie Protagonists
Teenybuffalo lists her favorite zombie protagonists, and includes my story “The Skull-Faced Boy.” Here’s what she says:
“The Skull-Faced Boy” by David Barr Kirtley. I first read this one seven or eight years ago, but it wears well. Two college students die in a car wreck, and as it’s the night of the living dead they don’t stay out of the game for long. Horrible backstabbing and world domination ensue. I don’t think this one’s been made free online, but there’s a link to a podcast version on the right-hand side. I may have to give that a listen.
While looking for the above link: Oh god there’s a sequel! “The Skull-Faced City.” Free and on the internet. Haven’t read this one yet, but I will in about ten minutes I’ve read it. Be warned! It’s (a) not going to make much sense if you haven’t read the first one, and (b) gruesome in every. single. way. I had a ballpark idea of what to expect from Kirtley and zombies, and I was still stomach-churned. Not safe for sanity, but excellent storytelling and a good undead protagonist. A worthy successor.
Ann Cecil
I’m very sad to hear that Ann Cecil died a few hours ago, of cancer. Ann was one of our regular staffers at the Alpha young writers workshop, where she took great delight in baking platefuls of cookies for the students. She was also extremely diligent about reading student’s work and providing comprehensive notes, and was always saying stuff like, “It wasn’t until I read it the fourth time that I noticed that…” She was well-practiced at evaluating writing, as she owned a massive science fiction library and would write notes in each book analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. A lot of author friends knew this, and when they visited her home they would have to decide whether they dared take a peek at their own books and learn what she thought of them. There was about a two-year run at Alpha where Ann and I were in all the same critique groups, and I would give my critique and then she’d correct me and point out all these things I missed. It got to be kind of a running joke. Finally with one story I went first and gave my critique, having completely missed the fact that the piece was a retelling of a Bible story, and when the next person started talking I just groaned, and Ann laughed. She was always laughing, always smiling. She took great delight in reading and writing, in helping other people, and in fandom, which she was heavily involved with for many years. We’ll really miss her.
Retrospective: Rise of the Dragon
For whatever reason I just found myself thinking about Rise of the Dragon, a 1990 point-and-click adventure game developed by Dynamix (which at that point had recently been acquired by Sierra). This game takes all the best elements of Blade Runner and, uh, Blade Runner to present a nightmarish future vision in which Los Angeles is overrun with crime, drugs, and pollution, if you can imagine such a thing.
The game features cool graphic novel-style cut scenes to advance the story. In the first of these, we see a nice young woman taking some street drugs that function sort of like a nicotine patch from hell, killing and horribly mutating her.
Turns out this girl was the mayor’s daughter, and he doesn’t want it getting into the papers that she was mixed up in crime and drugs, so he hires you, private investigator Blade Hunter, to discreetly look into her death. Aside from two stupendously bad side-scrolling action sequences, the game is played from a first-person viewpoint and uses a drag-and-drop interface, which was cutting-edge stuff back then. One of the first things you do in the game is get dressed by dragging your clothes onto a picture of your character.
You can actually leave your apartment without getting dressed, in which case you’re immediately arrested for indecent exposure (and lose the game). This establishes a pattern that will repeat itself throughout Rise of the Dragon. You will lose the game. Over and over. A lot. Did you not say exactly the right thing to any character? Lose the game. Mouth off or pick a fight with anybody, anywhere? Get beat up and lose the game. (See that exquisitely muscled torso? Don’t be fooled. Anyone in this game can beat you up.) Fail to show prophetic insight into where you should be at any given instant? Lose the game. This game is INSANELY frustrating. Practically every puzzle requires that you fail (and lose the game) a few times in order to figure out what you’re supposed to do. You proceed by trial and error, and this game introduced me to the dubious pleasure of clicking everything on everything to see if anything happens. Lots of events in the world don’t happen until a particular time, which makes them easy to miss (and lose the game), so you spend a lot of time wandering around with nothing to do because some critical event hasn’t happened yet, and you’re constantly tempted to just let time pass and see if anything happens, but of course that risks missing the critical event (and losing the game). And of course, if you don’t make it back to your apartment by bedtime, your character will simply go to sleep on the sidewalk, where he is promptly mugged (and you lose the game).
So why would anyone ever play this game? Two reasons. 1) Because you’re an adolescent with nothing better to do and a near-pathological commitment to solving puzzle games, and 2) Because there is some cool, creepy, messed up shit in this game. King’s Quest this ain’t.
For example, you quickly track down the guy who sold the tainted drugs that killed the mayor’s daughter. This drug dealer’s associates in the Chinese mafia are displeased with him for bringing them to the attention of the mayor, so they express their displeasure by tying him up and covering his body with drug patches, which causes his skin to melt off.
You then find yourself at odds with a local mob boss. There’s also some prophecy about how you’re going to have to fight a dragon who’s been imprisoned for the last 5,000 years. An old wise man gives you three good luck charms: a book of ancient wisdom, a blessed stone, and a flak jacket. The book and stone are completely worthless, but the vest will stop bullets. That’s pretty funny.
Then the mob boss kidnaps your girlfriend, and you bust into his office building to save her. You find her strapped to a chair with a collar around her neck that in just a few seconds is going to inject her with fatally mutation-inducing sludge.
Failing to save her results in one of the most famously disturbing scenes in all of video games.
Oh what the hell. You’re curious, right? It looks like this:
Failing to save your girlfriend is actually one of the very few actions you can take in the entire game that doesn’t cause you to lose the game. You just end up getting the “sad ending.”
Anyway, shortly after you rescue your girlfriend (or don’t), you find yourself in a basement/cave where a bunch of cultists are worshiping the mob boss, who right before your eyes transforms into a frickin’ dragon, man. That’s also pretty creepy, the way it’s drawn:
Then you kill him.
So anyway, that’s Rise of the Dragon. The pros: Good graphics (for the time), cutting edge interface (for the time), pretty good story, and lots of freaky, freaky shit, man. The cons: Insanely frustrating, kinda short. Definitely one-of-a-kind, though.
All-Time Best Podcast Episodes Ever
Yale Professor Donald Kagan discusses the organization of Spartan society
Anti-cult activist Paul Grosswald discusses how as a college student he got mixed up in Scientology
Historian Garrett Fagan discusses myths and realities about Roman gladiators
Mike Duncan of the History of Rome podcast discusses the final years of the mad emperor Commodus
The Skellyman Scoundrel
There’s a cool new character class out (costs $1) for my friend Keith’s terrific iPhone game 100 Rogues. Check it out.
The Living Dead 2 Zombie Roundtable
Author Jonathan Maberry has convened a zombie roundtable, in which a bunch of contributors to The Living Dead 2 talk about our stories and why we like zombies.
Itty Bitty Titty Commitee Instant Download on Netflix
Just noticed that The Itty Bitty Titty Committee, a political lesbian comedy that features me as a pro-gay marriage protester, is now an instant download on Netflix. (I appear on screen and yell “Shut up! We’re not anarchists!” at around 47 minutes into the movie.)
Geek’s Guide Eligible for “Best Related Work” Hugo Award
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is eligible for the Hugo Award in the “Best Related Work” category. Here are the details:
This year’s Hugo Awards nomination ballot is now online. The 2011 Hugo Awards will be presented in Reno, NV during Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention (August 17-21). Deadline for nominating online is March 26, 2011 23:59 PDT.
Anyone who has a supporting or full membership of Renovation as of January 31, 2011 and all members of Aussiecon 4 (last year’s Worldcon) may nominate works. If you didn’t attend Aussiecon, and you don’t plan to attend Renovation,you can still nominate by purchasing a supporting membership.
Already registered? Go and nominate your favorite works.
OkCupid Questions
So I’ve been filling out questions to improve my matches on the dating site OkCupid. Here are a few representative questions. How do your answers compare? Maybe we’re compatible!
Irreplaceable
Dan Goodman mentions me on his blog:
I read some awesome anthologies and single author works this year, and have discovered some truly irreplaceable writers in short fiction, including Catherynne Valente, Saladin Ahmed, Caitlin R. Kiernan, David Barr Kirtley, and Ted Chiang.
Thanks, Dan! It’s nice to be irreplaceable.
…at least until IBM creates a fiction-writing computer. Then we’re all screwed.
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