It looks like a terrific line-up of panels and guests, with many former GoHs in attendance. This year's Guests of Honor are Elizabeth Hand and Greer Gilman, and the Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday in the late morning. I really wish I could be there for the ceremony, but that just couldn't be worked out this year.
Stop on by if you can.
- Mood:
excited
a showing of Wrath of Khan (and maybe Search for Spock, too). Spock was cool, collected, super-strong, super-smart, and had the wicked nerve pinch everone I knew tried on their friends. In a lot of ways, he was more superhero than sidekick, despite Kirk's leading role.But when I was in middle school, I would catch Channel 38 or 56 or someone showing reruns of Mission: Impossible in the afternoons. Everyone thinks of Peter Graves (or, more depressingly, Tom Cruise) when they hear that DUM-dum-dum-da-DA-dant opening beat, but fans never forget Nimoy as Paris, mysterious magician and master of disguise, and way cooler even than Martin Landau's Rollin Hand. Once again, Nimoy's character seemed to possess powers beyond even his fellow super-spies.
Nimoy was also the voice of In Search Of..., a show that helped to cement my interest in the supernatural and horrific (along with Kolchak: The Night Stalker, issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and the films that showed on Channel 56's Creature Double Feature on Saturday afternoons). Everything sounded so plausible when intoned by Nimoy, his precise inflections and gravelly gravitas lending credibility to the most outrageous footage of voodoo, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and everything else. I ate that show up.
These three series are part of the backbone of my weird childhood, and Nimoy was at the center of each. So, you know, thanks Len.
Of course Nimoy's done a whole lot else in his career, and when I stumbled across "The 10 Awesomest Things Leonard Nimoy Has Done That Have Nothing To Do with Spock" at the Topless Robot blog, I just had to show my appreciation.
- Mood:
nostalgic
This map is amazing, though. I had no idea how incestuous the whole thing had become, or how horny some of these mutants and "meta-humans" were. No surprise that Dazzler was a tramp, though.
- Mood:
impressed
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
handful_ofdust has a rather interesting post on the inherent creepiness of Mary Poppins, which of course reminds me of the great YouTube mash-up that makes a trailer for the film as horror flick.Unrelated, but also interesting is
nick_kaufmann 's latest entry in his State of the Genre column at FearZone, tackling the unfortunately vocal minority of homophobes on horror-related websites. Great title, too: "The Monster Outside the Closet."Switching genres, the Steampunk Scholar (Mike Perschon) interviews the venerable Rudy Rucker at the 2009 Eaton Science Fiction Convention. I wonder if
cmpriest knows about that website.Paul DiFilippo, one of my favorite science ficiton writers, points out that bestsf.net--I site I've never heard of till now--has posted his 2001 story "Return to Cockaigne" for your reading pleasure. A persual of the site reveals a number of other stories by a variety of authors, and links to many more off-site.
And finally, a fascinating appreciation of 19th Century fantasist George MacDonald by Robert N. Lee is available at Fantasy Magazine.
- Mood:
tired
- Mood:
crazy
Here's the table of contents for the book, which I have to admit I'm really looking forward to despite my presence in it:
Hope everyone's summer is going well. Apparently at the beginning of June, Worcester, MA, was picked up by a giant tornado and deposited in the Pacific Northwest, as we've had four days of sun in the last thirty, and the temperature has barely risen above the high 60s. Even our mold is getting mold. Bleh. I did have extra sympathy for the protagonist of Michael Marshall's Bad Things, though, which I read a couple weeks ago.
The last month or so has been pretty busy, which accounts for some of the lack of posting. But there's also that inertia that comes from not doing something regularly. It's like putting off writing a response to a letter; the longer you wait, the harder it is to get started on it, to the point where you de-prioritize it entirely. And while I've been trying to stop in occasionally to catch up with my f-list, that's been sporadic as well. So if something important has happened or you've written a post you think I should have noticed, please let me know in comments.
Dead Reckonings #5 has arrived on my doorstep, in all its lemony-yellow glory. I have two feature reviews in it: one of the anthology British Invasion (Cemetery Dance), edited by Tim Lebbon, Christopher Golden, and James A. Moore, and one of Paul Tremblay's The Little Sleep (Henry Holt). I'll try to post a short review of Paul's The Harlequin and the Train tomorrow, if time allows, since I didn't get it done for the issue. Here's the complete TOC, reflecting 94 pages of reviewing goodness:
The Vampire as Action-Adventure Anti-Hero ....... June Pulliam
[Rio Youers, Everdead]
A Mask Made of Exposition ..............................Michael Marano
[Gene Wolfe, An Evil Guest]
The Pathetic and the Mundane.................................
[Quentin Crisp, Shrike]
Mythos and More Mythos ..............................Martin Andersson
[Richard L. Tierney, The Drums of Chaos; Asamatsu Ken, Queen of K'n-Yan]
Forget-Me-Nots? ........................................
[Ronald Damien Malfi, Passenger; Peter Atkins, Moontown]
A New Jungle Book....................................
[Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book]
Abandon All Preconceptions, Ye Who Enter Here....Sherry Austin
[Ellen Datlow, ed., Poe]
Williams One, Clark Zero ................................... Robert Morrish
[Simon Clark, Vengeance Child; Conrad Williams, One]
Mini-collections from Major Talent.........................Matt Cardin
[Douglas Smith, Impossibilia; Mark Samuels, Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes]
Ramsey Campbell, Probably: Listing Towards Horror
Paralyzed by Discomfort..............................
[British Invasion, ed. Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, and James A. Moore]
Passing the Baton ........................................
[New Dark Voices II, ed. Brian Keene; Jeremy C . Shipp, Sheep and Wolves]
Genius Loci ........................................
[Cherie Priest, Fathom]
Enter Ghost...................................
[Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle]
The Lovecraft Cult....................................
[Kenneth Hite, Tour de 5 Lovecraft: The Tales; Robert M. Price, Blasphemies & Revelations]
Two Unique Visions of Horror..................... Robert Butterfield
[Scott Nicholson, Scattered Ashes; Tony Richards, Shadows and Other Tales]
Living on a Powder Keg.....................................
[Joe Hill, Gunpowder]
Can You Murder a Dream?...................... John Edgar Browning
[Jeffrey Ford, The Drowned Life]
Doing Your Homework .......................................H
[F. Paul Wilson, By the Sword]
Waking to Nightmares..............................
[Paul Tremblay, The Little Sleep]
The Supernatural in Prose and Verse .......... Donald R. Burleson
[S. T. Joshi, Emperors of Dreams: Some Notes on Weird Poetry; S. T. Joshi, The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos; S. T. Joshi, Classics and Contemporaries: Some Notes on Horror Fiction]
The Perfect Museum Edition ......................... Darrell Schweitzer
[Henry S. Whitehead, Passing of a God and Other Stories]
The Weird Scholar ........................................
Capsule Reviews.................................
If anyone has a chance to read the issue, please let me know what you think. I was hoping to be able to attend Readercon with a box of them, but I have to be in Philadelphia for a work-related conference that same Sunday. A better bet for those jonesing for the new issue will be to order direct from Hippocampus or via Horror Mall, which I expect will have an order page up shortly.
- Mood: pleased
Guantanamo Detainee Ruled Not Mentally Fit to Testify About Psychological Torture
Sometimes, the satire, it burns.
And, I did want to mention that I'm headed to NYC tomorrow to attend the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. I'm particularly looking forward to the conversation between Mark Z. Danielewski and Rick Moody and several panel discussions, including something called "The Language of Fear" about literature produced under oppressive regimes.
Some of you may already be there attending things--the festival started this past Monday. Thanks to Jason Erik Lundberg for the heads up via Facebook. I knew having a Facebook page would pay off someday.
Also, and completely unrelated, the entire series boxed set of Angel is currently on sale, for today only, at Amazon.com. It's discounted 59%, so if you've been pondering the purchase, it looks like now may be the time. Personally, I can't justify the expense--mainly to my wife--so I'll have to go without. But it's a great bargain.
- Mood:
busy
Check that tag line one more time: "Sometimes you have to fight the undead with the half-dead...." Hawt.
And one just isn't enough--you know it has to be a series, right? Somehow I think the author's working on getting us from book to book with Xeno's Paradox, though. It would be great if the last book were titled something like All In, All Dead.
Oh, romance, you are a different world.
- Mood:
amused
Cascadilla
I went down by Cascadilla
Falls this
evening, the
stream below the falls,
and picked up a
handsized stone
kidney-shaped, testicular and
thought all its motions into it,
the 800 mph earth spin,
the 190-million-mile yearly
displacement around the sun,
the overriding
grand
haul
of the galaxy w/ the 30,000
mph of where
the sun's going:
thought all the interweaving
motions
into myself: dropped
the stone to dead rest:
the stream from other motions
broke
rushing over it:
shelterless,
I turned
to the sky and stood still:
oh
I do
not know where i am going
that I can live my life
by this single creek.
- Mood:
pensive
- Mood:
sad
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
The nominees for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards are:
NOVEL
Alive in Necropolis, Doug Dorst (Riverhead Hardcover)
The Man on the Ceiling, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries)
Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
The Resurrectionist, Jack O'Connell (Algonquin Books)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
NOVELLA
Disquiet, Julia Leigh, (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton)
“Dormitory,” Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool, Picador)
Living With the Dead, Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing)
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Stephen Graham Jones (Chiasmus Press)
“N,” Stephen King, (Just After Sunset, Scribner)
NOVELETTE
“Hunger Moon,” Deborah Noyes (The Ghosts of Kerfol, Candlewick Press)
“The Lagerstatte,” Laird Barron (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ballantine Books/Del Rey)
“Penguins of the Apocalypse,” William Browning Spencer (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, Subterranean Press)
“Pride and Prometheus,” John Kessel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
The Situation, Jeff Vandermeer (PS Publishing)
SHORT STORY
“68° 07’ 15”N, 31° 36’ 44”W," Conrad Williams (Fast Ships, Black Sails, Night Shade Books)
“The Dinner Party,” Joshua Ferris (The New Yorker,
“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account,” M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2008)
“The Inner City,” Karen Heuler (Cemetery Dance #58, 2008)
“Intertropical Convergence Zone,” Nadia Bulkin (ChiZine, Issue 37, 2008)
“The Pile,” Michael Bishop (Subterranean Online, Winter 2008)
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION
A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)
Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
EDITED ANTHOLOGY
Bound for Evil, edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press)
Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo, edited by Danel Olson (Ash-Tree Press)
Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Night Shade Books)
The New Uncanny, edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page (Comma Press)
Shades of Darkness, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called
The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on
Congratulations to all the nominees, with extra special kudos to my Worcester neighbor Jack O'Connell, whose The Resurrectionist was a long time coming, but worth the wait. This is a terrific ballot.
- Mood: pleased
When I was Young the Silk
When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:
The air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
high, so high
I want to touch down now
and taste the ground
I want to take in
my silk
and ask where I am
before it is too late to know
--A.R. Ammons (1926 - 2001)
- Mood: pensive
--Arthur Machen, from "The White People"
- Mood:
awake
pgtremblay )Currently Listening to:
Currently Teaching:
Satire--Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe, which I apparently got to just in time, as it looks like it's now out of print. C'mon, America, read more Tom Sharpe!
Japanese Literature--haiku from Basho and his school, from
AP Literature--selected poems by W.B. Yeats. Tomorrow we discuss "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Byzantium."
Recently watched:
Wow. After watching Chocolate by the same director last week (and more about that later), I felt like I needed to see the Tony Jaa stuff, too. Not that the stories are particularly original or that all of the actors are especially good (it's a mixed bag on the acting front), but the fight scenes. Holy moley. A great reminder of how wire-fu has mucked up Chinese martial arts films. None of that stuff here.
- Mood: busy
"Students can't light up a cigarette in the student union but can watch a hardcore XXX porn film. Occasional viewing of porn is more dangerous than occasionally lighting up a cigarette. If the movie is being shown for educational reasons, someone should be presenting the dangers too. Porn breaks up lives."
Seriously? Should triple-X DVDs come with a warning label about blindness and hairy palms? Are researchers working on a patch? And what are the dangers of second-hand porn viewing?
Personally, I think it's rather a stupid battle, and if the university refused to show the film on its own--that is, without the threat of losing funding due to some moralistic, repressed government official, I'd be fine with it. I don't think porn has anything other than a prurient appeal--in fact, I'm pretty sure that's the definition of pornography--and I think a college or university showing it is just cheapening their educational atmosphere. But that's an aesthetic and philosophical argument, not a moral one. I'm suspicious of any claim that it's "dangerous" or leads to some sort of health problems for viewers (for performers it may be a different situation).
I dunno--am I crazy here?
- Mood: confused
WRITING THE SMART PAGE-TURNER:
A 10-Week class in Genre Writing at Boston's Grub Street
The Class:
Exciting plots and larger-than-life characters are the cornerstones of so-called
"popular" or "genre" fiction, but in an era when Michael Chabon wins science
fiction's Nebula Award and Cormac McCarthy wins the Pulitzer for the apocalyptic
novel _The Road_, the lines between genre and literary fiction are blurrier than
ever. Whether you're writing romance, mystery, science fiction, erotica,
supernatural or suspense, the principles of writing popular fiction – clear
prose, characters we can empathize with, and a story that moves – are key, and
in this course, you'll learn ways to do that while developing a distinct
literary "voice". Classes will entail the workshopping of your stories and novel
chapters, exploring the terrain of the genres, the use of writing and
idea-generating exercises, and discussion of the magazines and publishers
looking for your sort of fiction. The goal is to give you a solid grounding in
the demands of popular fiction, and a better understanding of literary potential
of your favorite genres.
10 Weekly Sessions Sundays in Downtown Boston (by Park Street Station) begin
*April 19*.
*Registration Deadline is April 15th.*
*Scholarships are available for reduced tuition.*
The Instructor:
Mike Marano is a nationally syndicated pop culture critic on Public Radio and a
multi-award-winning science fiction, suspense and horror writer with years of
experience as a writing coach and teacher. He's currently also Fiction Editor of
the award-winning dark fiction publication _Chiaroscuro_. ( www.chizine.com )
"I've enjoyed Michael Marano's work for many, many years. He can be deadly
serious, he can be very funny. But no matter what his mood, very few know the
writing game as well as Marano. That's why we call him 'Professor Mike'."
--F. Paul Wilson, New York Times Bestselling Author of _The Keep_ and _Sims_,
creator of the "Repairman Jack" series
"Michael Marano is one of the best creative writing instructors I've ever had.
His teaching and critiquing draw on a wealth of writing, editing, and publishing
industry experience. His feedback on my manuscript was detailed and insightful.
It gave me an understanding of my strengths and weaknesses that might have taken
me months or years to figure out on my own. Michael Marano's teaching aims at
bringing out the unique voice and literary quality of students' work. He
encourages his students to write great fiction that transcends the label of
'genre.'"
--Testimonial from a "Smart Page-Turner" alum.
FOR MORE INFORMATION or for enrollment, call Grub Street at 617-695-0075 or contact Sonya Larson, Program Manager at sonya@grubstreet.org
SCHOLARSHIPS ARE AVAILABLE FOR REDUCED TUITION
To learn more about Grub Street: http://www.grubstreet.org
In my efforts to
But just the other day, however, I stumbled upon a show on Cartoon Network that combined slapstick and smack-em-ups with clever parody of action and superhero cliches. The League of Super Evil cracks up the whole family here at Chez Haringa, and I invite you to watch. Led by the Great Voltar, a cross between Magneto and the Brain (of Pinky and the Brain fame), this team of supervillains attempts to terrorize their suburban neighborhood, get recognized as truly evil by superstar baddies like Skullossus, and finally defeat Metrotown's resident superhero, Glory Guy.Voltar has his robot minions, just like any supervillain leader worth his salt, but his companions are equally notorious--or is that hilarious--in their support of his wicked schemes. There's the hulking and dim-witted Red Menace (who always wears green), Doktor Frogg (inept and ulucky genius inventor), and the demonic Doomageddon (a cross between Lockjaw and Nightcrawler, with a little Scooby-Doo thrown in).
The show ravages comics and action conventions in stories that play with the intersection of the fantastic and the mundane in a world where superheroes and supervillains are taken as part of the ordinary. When L.O.S.E. tackle the hard battles--getting their hands on a working air conditioner or delaying their pizza delivery man so the food will be free--the writers break apart sitcom staples to reveal the absurdity of that form of pop culture as well.
I'm afraid I might be building the show up too much; it's not brilliant social satire, and it's not looking to make deep statements about genres and the people who follow them--other shows do this well, and it's not a niche L.O.S.E. is trying to fill. But the show walks the fine line of the best cartoons, appealing to (a certain type of) adults and children both. It's worth a watch, especially if you're a comics fan.
- Mood: amused
