Thanks to Robert Hood, I now know about War of the Worlds: Goliath, an animated direct-to-DVD movie that gives HG Wells' Martians another shot at Earth. Only this time the humans have giant, steam-powered robots to help with the fighting. It got its start as an idea for a Heavy Metal series, so don't expect it to be kid-friendly. In fact, director Joe Pearson's expecting an R-rating.
You can see more concept art - including the Martians' tripods - here.
I've been curious about Brian Wood's Viking comic Northlanders for a while now. I've heard mixed reviews, so I've been waiting for something to shove me towards it a little harder. Putting Valkyries in it ought to do the trick.
Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: Sequel or Remake?
This conversation Sci Fi Wire had with actor Doug Jones makes me question whether Guillermo del Toro's planned Frankenstein movie is going to be an adventure-sequel after all. Jones says that del Toro's "got a four-picture deal with Universal, so once he's done with The Hobbit, I think the first thing that's up on the docket will be Frankenstein. And reinvention is going to be the name of it, because he's going back to the Mary Shelley book and starting fresh with it."
We can't read too much into that though for a couple of reasons. Though "going back to the Mary Shelley book" sounds an awful lot like "remake" (the interpretation Sci Fi Wire makes) instead of sequel, maybe he's just saying that del Toro's using Shelley as his starting point (as opposed to Universal's other, more famous version).
Of course, even if Jones did mean to imply a remake, he also says that he hasn't even had a real conversation with del Toro yet about Jones' starring in the movie. Jones heard about it on the Internet same as the rest of us. He may have had other conversations with del Toro about the concept for the movie, but for all we know Jones is as in the dark as we are about del Toro's plans.
The ever-helpful Lynn Viehl has a whole gob of links for helping come up with story titles. That's something I've always needed a lot of help with, which is why I'm bookmarking it with this post.
Another rough year. Thanks to Grunge, Alternative music was becoming all about really pared down, under-produced sounds. As a fan of synthesizer pop from the previous decade, I had a hard time adjusting.
Even my usual favorite bands U2 and Tears for Fears put out some questionable albums this year. Tears for Fears' Raoul and the Kings of Spain is my least favorite of their albums, and though U2's (hooking up with Brian Eno under the pseudonym The Passengers) Original Soundtracks 1 is good, it's too experimental for me to really connect to it and call it great. It's best if I don't say anything at all about U2's other 1995 project: the theme from Batman Forever.
It's probably telling that my favorite radio station around this time was the Smooth Jazz station. I was close to abandoning Alternative music altogether.
Amongst all of this disappointment though, Garbage's debut album was exactly what I was longing for. It's well-produced, unique, and infectious. And I love albums where the songs I bought the CD for end up being my least favorite on the disc.
Singles: Deep Blue Something: "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Filter: "Hey Man, Nice Shot" Alanis Morissette: "You Learn" Simply Red: "Fairground"
You will be momentarily excited about having a book published, and in that moment you will tell everyone you know. They will naturally ask "What is your book about?", thinking they might be talking to the next David Foster Wallace. When you tell them your book is called "100 Tea Cozies You Can Knit," their faces will fall. "Oh," they'll be thinking to themselves, "so he's not really a writer." Eventually, you will be so shell-shocked and defensive about your book's subject matter, you will snarl and say "What's it to ya?" when anyone asks. --THE INTERN, on why you really don't want to get published.
I got to be so suave by knowing what the ladies like. And what the ladies like is... Sandman and Strangers in Paradise trades, amirite? --Mike Sterling, on his worldliness and sophistication.
JA Konrath has an excellent post on possible futures of the publishing industry. According to him, it's all based on whether or not publishers learn anything from the music industry's failure to adapt to the Digital Age. Though I'm usually wary of comparing strategies from very different industries, Konrath knows way more about this stuff than I do and I don't see any point in his argument that doesn't make complete sense.
Boiled down, his main point is:
The rules of supply and demand don't work in a digital world, because the supply is unlimited. You don't fight piracy with weapons. You fight piracy with cost and convenience.
If there were a central hub, where you could easily search for ebooks and get them at a reasonable price, there would be no need to pirate books.
But there's a lot more to it than that. Required reading if you're interested in publishing at all.
It's been a while since I wrote a Robot Review that wasn't also a Gorillas Riding Dinosaurs column, but I did this week. GRD is a column about adventure comics and Marjane (Persepolis) Satrapi's Chicken with Plumsisn't that. I call it a murder mystery in the review, but it's not a thriller. It's deeper than that. And far more touching.
It does have Azrael in it though and he doesn't whine once about not having Batman's respect.
