Not that I’m saying Billy Joel is one of the best artists of all time, but he’s a guy who can write songs and sing them and he cares about his work. Also important: Jimmy Fallon is completely sincere about the things he loves, which turns out to be what I wanted out of late night talk shows on the rare occasion that I watch them.
Many of us 80s children have fond memories of the first two Savage Steve Holland opuses, Better Off Dead… and One Crazy Summer. John Cusack’s amiable everyman teen demeanor was the perfect foil for Holland’s insane vision. His third movie, How I Got Into College had no John Cusack and generated few fond memories. But it’s on HBO Go until May 1st. Corey Parker, Lara Flynn Boyle, and a pretty crappy script. Savage Steve didn’t write this one. Philip Baker Hall in a bit part? Nora Dunn and Phil Hartman cameo? ...
Yo, Unknown USA people! Were you aware of Anais Mitchell’s folk opera, [Hadestown](http://web.archive.org/web/20160915135516/http://web.archive.org/web/20160915135516/http://hadestown.anaismitchell.com:80/ (original):80/) (original)? It’s just a folk opera retelling of the Orpheus myth set in a post-apocalyptic version of the Great Depression, no big deal. Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco are part of the cast. I may be the last person to know about this.
Quick notes from the 1 PM Novels You Should Have Read Since Chicon 7 panel. Any errors are wholly mine. Panelists: Elizabeth Bear (moderator), Willie Siros, and Jess Nevins. Any really outstanding books? Siros: Sea Change, S. M. Wheeler fairy tale fable, internal logic, compared to The Last Unicorn Nevins: Brian Catling’s The Vorrh fantasy that avoids the usual fantasy tropes Bear: Cassandra Rose Clark, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter SF, robot civil rights, riff on “Bicentennial Man” issues of climate change, peak oil, global cultural change as background elements Siros: Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata Nevins: Selvedin Avdic, Seven Terrors Horror, post-war Bosnia Bear: Toh EnJoe, The Self-Reference Engine picaresque novel - vignettes revealing greater story Siros: Shaman, Kim Stanley Robinson In dealer’s room – Larry Smith Bear: The Drowning Girl last year, but still good Nevins: Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker Siros: Peter Hamilton, The Great North Road Tighter than other recent Hamilton Bear: new Tales of the Beanworld hardcover, Larry Marder makes a good entry point into the series Nevins: Anna Tambour’s Crandolin medieval cookbook novel? Bear: Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series Good Man Friday historical detective novels Siros: Karen Joy Fowler: We Were Completely Beside Ourselves mainstream/slipstream Bear: American Elsewhere, Robert Jackson Bennett weird small town with small things going on that add up to something bigger Austin writer, writes books that are hard to summarize Nevins: Lauren Beukes, Shining Girls time travel, serial killer Bear: Ian Tregillis has finished his Milkweed trilogy Bitter Seeds, Coldest War, Necessary Evil alternate WW2, Nazis create super soldiers and UK turns to necromancy Siros: Neal Gaiman, Ocean At The End Of The Lane Bear: Karen Lord, Best Of All Possible Worlds planetary romance, not plot-driven, reminds Bear of Bradbury “a very relaxing book” Nevins: Koji Suzuki’s Edge quantum horror about California falling into the sea, Greg Egan-esque Bear: Seanan McGuire’s cryptid books lighthearted fun Jim C. Hines Libriomancer and Codex Born magicians who can pull things out of books they’re written in some books are locked off… the One Ring Nevins: The Last Policeman, Ben Winters policeman doing his job in a small town before the meteor hits Nevins: Deb Taber, Necessary Ill Siros: Devon Monk, Cold Steel and sequels steampunk Wild West, brothers who are lycanthropes Bear: Merrie Haskell’s Handbook for Dragon Slayers, middle school to write a handbook for dragon slayers, one must slay a dragon… Bear: Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson far future post-apocalyptic YA, set in Brazil Siros: Brandon Sanderson, Rithmatist math based magic, YA Bear last thoughts: Wesley Chu, The Lives of Tao Ramez Naan, Nexus and Crux The Incrementalists, Skyler White and Steven Brust coming in September Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead epic fantasy constructed like an urban fantasy which is a courtroom drama Siros last thoughts: Steven Gould, Impulse next in Jumper series The Thousand Names, Django Wexler historical fantasy/alternate world Evening’s Empire, Paul McAuley Nevins last thoughts: Hannu Rajaniemi, The Fractal Prince Audience Mira Grant, Blackout (Newsflesh trilogy) Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance David Levithan, Every Day, YA Daryl Gregory, Raising Stony Mayhall, YA zombie POV James S. A. Corey, Abaddon’s Gate, third in the Expanse series Allen Steele, Apollo’s Outcast, compared to Heinlein’s juveniles Anthology: Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, John Joseph Adams edited Paul Cornell’s London Falling, London urban fantasy verging on horror Year Zero, Rob Reed, humor The Golem And The Jinni, Helene Wecker, literary fiction set in 1899 NYC The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, sequel to The Long Earth
Susan and I will be hitting LoneStarCon 3 (original), aka Worldcon 2013. It’s in San Antonio, so we can take the whole week and spend a few days in Austin first. Mmm, barbecue. Mmm, breakfast tacos. Mmm. I have now poked my nose back into Worldcon site selection politics and am delighted to note that it’s still Worldcon site selection politics. By which I mean I’m relieved that I moved to California just when I would have gotten sucked into convention organizing in Boston. I dunno, Orlando looks good to me for 2015. ...
The first two issues of High Society showed up on Comixology this week. The first one was free, so I bought it. It’s really gorgeous: high-def, quality scans for the most part. There are one or two pages where the white on black text fills in a bit much, but given the unfortunate house fire which destroyed a bunch of the negatives recently, I am not unhappy about that. It’s gorgeous and funny and an amazing achievement and this is even before Gerhard came on board. Plus there are 30 or so pages of notebooks and historical stuff at the end. Issue two is only 99 cents, which is a bargain – at the rate of a couple of issues a week, I would have no financial qualms about buying all the Cerebus this way. ...
I like fiction delivered to a convenient and elegant place to read! So: Go to ifttt, log in/register/whatever Create a new task. Choose the Feed trigger. Choose New Feed Item. Use the Feed URL https://hilobrow.com/tag/world-shook/feed/, on the assumption that you want to read HiLoBrow’s H. Rider Haggard serialization. Feed it into Instapaper (or Readability if you like that). You can leave the default field values alone. If this is your first time using ifttt, you’ll need to register the channel first. Give it a description. Or just go ahead and use the recipe I made.
Cronenberg makes a movie without Viggo Mortensen. Note: violence aplenty in this trailer. Like, aplenty.
Last night I headed down to the new Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane location, since movie tickets were two bucks during this week’s soft open of the theater. It’s way out of the way for us, particularly coming from work, but seems reasonably convenient for South Austin peeps. Take Mopac south to the first traffic light and turn right, then immediate left. It took twenty minutes flat to come home at 12:30 AM. Kind of late? Well, cheap movies, so I caught a pair of them. Oh look, the title of this post is a bad joke. Look, they were both set in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it’d be way amusing to watch a motion captured Andy Serkis in an Oakland A’s uniform. ...
I won an award! I am the 2012 Rose & Bay Best Patron, which is pretty cool. I think mostly this means that C. E. Murphy has a lot of fans who listened to her when she said to vote for me because I convinced her to try crowdfunding, but I guess that implies I deserve some kind of credit for something. It wouldn’t have gone far if she wasn’t an awesome writer, though.