Wow. This looks AMAZING. A sneak peek at the upcoming coffee table book The Art of Sierra: Defining the Graphic Adventure Game. See also the Facebook page.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy the #9 Literature Podcast … WTF?
So I went and checked out the Literature podcasts category over at the iTunes store to see if Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy would show up on the list anywhere. I figured it was a long shot, but I thought we might sneak in at number 197 or something. But this is what it’s showing me:
Is that for real? Are those results personalized for me or something? Anyway, move over Oprah, there’s a new media empire in town.
Ron Gilbert Penny Arcade Expo Keynote Address
On Friday Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy will be interviewing Ron Gilbert, creator of The Secret of Monkey Island and Deathspank, so I’ve been doing a bit of research on Ron, in the course of which I came across this keynote address he delivered last year at the Penny Arcade Expo. It’s hilarious and moving and definitely worth checking out. Here’s a sample:
So at the end of the day I would watch all the skiers come into the lodge. Some of them were covered in snow, others were clean and barely a speck stuck to them. I used to think it was the good skiers that were clean and the bad skiers that were caked in snow from falling down all the time. But what I came to realize was the exact opposite was true. It was actually the good skiers that were covered in snow from head to toe because they were pushing themselves, pushing themselves to the breaking point and then beyond it. These were the skiers that were skiing off the back side of the mountain, the skiers taking the jumps and wiping out nine out of every ten times. These were the skiers that were not afraid to fail.
ETA: Listen to my December 2010 interview with Ron Gilbert.
io9’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Interviews Charles Yu
Episode 24 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is now available, featuring an interview with Charles Yu, author of the new novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Yu was named one of the Top 5 Writers Under 35 by the National Book Foundation, and his story “Standard Loneliness Package,” about a world in which people outsource their unpleasant experiences to India, just went live over on Lightspeed. This episode also features John and me chatting about some of our favorite time travel stories.
PR2 Robot Fetches Beer and Plays Pool
Here’s a robot that fetches beer and plays pool.
My Short Story “Family Tree” Free to Read Online
My short story “Family Tree” is now free to read online over at the official website for the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard. This is a story where everything just really fell into place. If you only read one thing I’ve written in the last few years, read this one:
Illustration by Michael DiMotta:
Details:
Garrett, Elizabeth, Sebastian (baby), Bernard, Simon |
Malcolm, Meredith, Meredith’s mother, Nathan |
The Tree of Victor Archimagus |
Walking Dead TV Show Premieres Tonight
The TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s brilliant and shocking graphic novel series The Walking Dead premieres tonight! And it’s available through iTunes! Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy just interviewed Kirkman, and we’ll be including that interview, along with our reactions to tonight’s program, in Episode 25.
Turkish Sci-Fi & Fantasy Reviews My Story “The Skull-Faced Boy”
There’s a review of The Living Dead over at Turkish Sci-Fi and Fantasy. My Turkish is a little rusty, so I had Google translate the page for me. The result is a bit opaque, but it looks like they thought my story “The Skull-Faced Boy” was at least okay:
David Barr Kirtley have chosen to tell a story through the eyes of zombie. Also have a good, if you want to read the story of a successful work can be considered a zombie. The others a bit dull, but still a nice addition.
Google also translates the site’s subtitle as “Turkish Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Bashing.” If that’s actually the site’s mandate, I guess I got off easy.
John Joseph Adams to Edit Fantasy Magazine
John Joseph Adams just announced that he’ll be editing Fantasy magazine starting in March.
Hugh Hefner on Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont
Here’s Ray Bradbury and Hugh Hefner discussing Fahrenheit 451 (which was serialized in Playboy). Hefner also mentions this interesting bit about Charles Beaumont, which I wasn’t aware of:
The first original story to appear in Playboy was by Charles Beaumont and it was called “Black Country,” and it was about a black musician, and a year after that he brought us a science fiction story that Esquire had rejected because of its controversy … the title of it was “The Crooked Man,” and it was the story of a future society in which gay was the way of things and heterosexual was the aberration, and was persecuted, and in the 1950s that was a very controversial notion, believe me … And I was very proud to have published it, and Charles Beaumont had a long and illustrious — until his untimely death — connection to us, and for his contribution, along with the many things Ray himself brought to us, I am forever grateful.
Science and Faith in the Black Community
The lecture Dialogue of Reason: Science and Faith in the Black Community begins with Richard Dawkins explaining his T-shirt reading We Are All Africans. He notes that our ancestors emerged from Africa only about 100,000 years ago — no time at all to an evolutionary biologist. He goes on to note that:
If you look at the molecules of modern human races they are astonishingly uniform, and such variation as there is is mostly within Africa, so that suggests that the deepest divides of cousinship in our species are within Africa. The whole of the rest of the world is a very, very recent branch off the human species. If you look at the amount of variation within the human species genetically, it’s extremely low; we are a very, very uniform species, compared to other species, even chimpanzees. It’s been said that if you take two chimpanzees from the same forest in Africa, they’re likely to be more different from each other genetically than any two humans in the world.
Colorful India Photo by Poras Chaudhary
Wow! Check out this amazing photo by Poras Chaudhary: Colorful India. It’s a crowd in India watching a wrestling match at a local fair and is apparently not a collage.
Fair Game Movie Trailer
Trailer for Fair Game, based on the true story of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent whose cover was blown by Bush administration officials in order to punish her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, for revealing that the story Bush told in his State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein attempting to purchase nuclear materials from Africa was known to be untrue.
Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber and The Guns of Avalon Unabridged MP3 Audio/Audiobook Download
BEST AUDIOBOOK NEWS EVER! The first two books in Roger Zelazny’s classic Amber series, Nine Princes in Amber and The Guns of Avalon, are now available as unabridged MP3 downloads.
From the audiobook intro: “This was read by Roger Zelazny himself shortly before his untimely death in 1995. The original unedited master recordings of this unique performance, long thought to have been lost or destroyed, were located in 2006, and have been digitally remastered.”
You can listen to a sample of the audio on YouTube.
You might also check out my story “Family Tree,” which has a strong Amber influence:
Audiobook of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Here’s another work that I’m really glad to see is now available on audio: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick. This is the scariest book I’ve ever read, in spite of the fact that nothing overtly “horrific” happens in it. In fact, the book apparently scared the author so much that he wrote it in one mad rush and then refused to ever look at it again. It also made China Mieville’s Top 10 list, and he remarks, “I went for Stigmata because I remember how I felt when I put it down. Hollow and beaten. I kept thinking: ‘That’s it. It’s finished. Literature has been finished.'”
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Dungeon Siege 3 Art
This image, which I really like, has popped up in a few different places as a screenshot from Dungeon Siege 3. I can’t find any indication of who the artist is. Anyone know?
io9’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Interviews Catherynne M. Valente
Episode 23 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, featuring an interview with Catherynne M. Valente, is now available at io9.
A Taste of Starlight by John R. Fultz at Lightspeed Magazine
Just in time for Halloween, Lightspeed magazine has released “A Taste of Starlight” by John R. Fultz, about an interstellar voyage gone horribly, horribly wrong. The site warns: “The following story contains mature content, including violent and graphic imagery that some readers may find disturbing.” Believe me, they’re not kidding.
Realms of Fantasy Magazine Says Goodbye
Very depressing but not entirely unexpected: Realms of Fantasy magazine is shutting down. You can read goodbye statements from publisher Warren Lapine and editors Shawna McCarthy and Doug Cohen.
Gene Wolfe and China Mieville at Audible.com
For years now two of the series I’ve most wanted to get on audio were Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and China Mieville’s Bas-Lag books, and I’ve bugged Audible repeatedly to make them available. Well, I recently checked again, and the four volumes of Book of the New Sun are now online, as well as the first of the Bas-Lag books, Perdido Street Station. (Hopefully The Scar, which is by far my favorite of the three, will follow soon.)
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