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Not Less Than Gods by Kage Baker

articles, books, reviews, Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The SF/F field mourned the untimely death of Kage Baker on January 31. Baker, in a writing career of not much more than a decade, established a reputation as one of the most purely entertaining of writers, yet a writer with serious purpose underlying the fun. She wrote novels and stories in several series, both science fiction and fantasy. Her best-known project was collectively called “the Company.” Not Less Than Gods is another Company novel (though at least one more is coming). It is related to her recent stories about the Gentleman’s Speculative Society. The Victorian setting combined with the advanced technology the GSS secretly develops gives the book something of a steampunk feel. It stands alone fairly well, but undoubtedly readers familiar with the Company in general and the later career of Bell-Fairfax in particular will get more out of it.

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Transformers 1: I’m With Stupid

articles, Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Transformers Issue 1 (IDW Publishing)
Story: Mike Costa
Art: Don Figueroa
First things first, I have a problem. Actually I have several problems (in this way I am much like Jay-Z), ranging from the existential to the residential, but the relevant problem for today’s topic is this:
I am stupid for Transformers.
I am not talking normal stupid here, I [...]

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Lisa Hannett

Writing, Writing, Writing: Lisa Hannett

author spotlight, interviews, non-fiction, Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Once the plane righted itself, I started thinking about how our perspectives—literally, what we see when we look out at the world—influence the way we experience life. From there it was a quick step to: What if a character’s world view was mostly based on what she saw outside her window each day?

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Comic Reviews: Space Opera 101: Jake Parker’s Missile Mouse

articles, Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Depending on when you were born, you were introduced to the glories of space opera in different ways. I was born in 1976 and one of my first vivid movie-theater memories is watching Return of the Jedi with my cousin Billy and wishing he would just let me read the subtitles myself. I was an Ewok [...]

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Its Quaint Events were Hammered Out: “Alice in Wonderland”

movies, reviews, Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Tim Burton and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sounds like a match made in heaven. Burton’s history of quirky fantasy seems particularly suited to the story of a contrary girl dropped into an even-more-contrary dreamland. Unfortunately, Burton was all out of dark whimsy years ago, and his Alice in Wonderland is little more than a reminder [...]

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The New Dead: Christopher Golden, Editor

books, non-fiction, reviews, Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

The New Dead, edited by Christopher Golden, is an example of the “big tent” theory of zombie fiction. Instead of restricting the content to the classic Romero-esque shamblers, Golden threw the gates wide open and the result is a wildly diverse, inventive batch of stories that will please both hardcore zombie fanatics and more casual dabblers in the subgenre…a look at zombies that reaffirms the elements that allow them to maintain their grip on our imagination while showing how broad the possibilities for them are.

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lightbreaker

Mark Teppo: Of Men and Magick . . .

interviews, non-fiction, Friday, March 5th, 2010

“Mark Teppo suffers from a mild case of bibliomania, which serves him well in his on-going pursuit of a writing career. He also owns a pink bunny suit. Fascinated with the mystical and the extra-ordinary, he channels this enthusiasm into fictional explorations of magic realism, urban fantasy, and surreal experimentation. Maybe, one day, he’ll write a space opera. With rabbits.” An interview with Teppo, by Jonathan Wood.

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Author Spotlight: Nikki Alfar

author spotlight, non-fiction, Thursday, March 4th, 2010

What inspired your folk tale “Bearing Fruit”?
This is actually from the notes I’ve written for my upcoming short story collection:
I’m a folklore and fairy tale geek—not in any scholarly way or anything, but I’ve read lotsa shit from lotsa cultures, and it’s an abiding interest of mine. So one day, my friend Andrew Drilon and [...]

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Curiouser and Curiouser: Alice on Film

articles, non-fiction, Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published as a children’s book in 1865, has had a particular appeal to moviemakers since they were first able to crank out the film. The story’s vivid images were perfect material for this new medium, and the early movie adaptations especially did an excellent job of preserving the vignette-y, illogical narrative. (It helped that the films were silent, and so the focus was on the special effects and not so much on killer dialogue.) Below, nine adaptations of Alice that are good, bad, or downright curious.

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