Clone Wars trailer

Hmm, the trailer for the next installment in the Star Wars franchise hits the web. More toys buy now, we must.

The animation has a rough feel to it, especially for the humans. The droids and ships look great, but faces have to yet to make the seamless leap into realistic animation. I still prefer this over the previous Clone Wars animated episodes from a couple of years ago. Let's hope the story also improves.

Prometheus Experiment

Releasing a first draft into the wild is never a sane idea, but I'm playing around with publishing some older issues of Prometheus online as PDFs. I'm open to any and all suggestions about the pages, keeping in mind I'm still formatting much of the text.

The PDFs can be found here which also is my first attempt at Apple's (not always simple) iWeb software. I'm used to coding html in BBEdit, which is all source code virtually all the time, so again, not perfect. This is more of a proof of concept design.

The content index is identical to the one over at http://www.lfs.org that I compiled over the years. I sent over the index of contributors in 2005, but it has not yet been posted there. Obviously, I need to update both pages at some point.

The url probably will change at some point, and I'll probably move away from the constraints of iWeb towards something more flexible.

Glasshouse

The real reason I logged on was to mention Charles Stross's novel, Glasshouse, a Prometheus Award finalist. I finished the novel today, and am now 3/5 of the way through the finalists. Until reading this novel I did not see a strong candidate, but now I have one, and it probably will take a lot for the next two novels on the list to change my mind. Next up, John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades. I've heard a lot of good stuff about Scalzi, but this is his first novel I've had the opportunity to read, so I'm looking forward to it. My only complaint about Glasshouse is that Stross seems to have spent a lot of time inside the head of his Merchant Princes series' main character, and she sort of jumped into another novel. The protagonist of Glasshouse is female for most of the novel, and acts and talks exactly like a Miriam Beckstein template. I feel like my head needs a cool plunge into The Jennifer Morgue next to shake off that feeling. I stopped reading The Clan Corporate 22 pages into that novel because I just could not take Miriam's voice any longer. Aside from that small (and probably isolated to my own views) issue, I think Glasshouse comes across as a superb science fiction novel, and contains hugely interesting political speculations and implications, and very much driven by libertarian (or classical liberal) ideas.

Moving to Firefox?

As a Mac user I know what it's like to be kicked around and forced to eat the table scraps in the internet wars. I have tried virtually every browser that runs on the Mac, but always fall back on Safari because a) it has all my bookmarks and b) it's the most elegant and visually pleasing browser to my eye. But Blogger no longer lets me spell-check on Safari, and now Preview stopped working. At the bottom of each posting window I see the shortcuts taunting me, as none of them work in Safari. I open the same Blogger posting page in Firefox, and everything works. I guess I should switch everything over to Firefox, though my new LiveJournal page works fine in Safari, and Firefox has just such a hideous interface. Ideally I should dump blogger altogether and figure out how to move the localhost version of my blog on Movable Type that I created as a lark in October 2005. It still works fine, and is loaded with far more features I like than either LJ or Blogger.

The LP is dead

As a non-voting voluntaryist, I haven't paid much attention to the Libertarian Party. For some reason it manages to limp along, sucking in libertarians and spitting out their burnt-out husks every few years. Still, the LP core usually has remained pro-liberty, though vapidly ineffectual. In 2006, a new group took power in a coup against principles, and gutted long-standing articles of freedom. In 2007, the LP officially died when Ron Paul declared for president as a Republican. His candidacy acted like a neutron star, pulling in libertarians left and right who saw Paul as their great new hope. Over at Reason's Hit and Run, Brian Doherty links to one of the current LP'ers bemoaning the former party of principle. I wonder when libertarians will realize that the LP now has no future, through the combination of this coup and Ron Paul. What I don't wonder about is why a Republican candidate enraptures so many libertarians. Politics seduces people, and Paul's candidacy is the most prominent 'libertarian' political candidate in many years, if not all time. I expect to see many libertarian sites cozying up to the new Republican dream (in fact, I think Lew Rockwell's site already is hard at work waving the pom-poms for Paul. I believe former LP presidential candidate Badnarik is working hard inside the Paul republican machine, which shows the pure expediency of politics.) Paul certainly shares many libertarian ideals, and is the only anti-war candidate on the right (but why do so many libertarians ally themselves with just the right?), but I do not believe liberty will be achieved through this political process, nor will the media connect the dots between liberty and Paul. This is a great delusion, and when Paul falls to Rudy McMittney, those libertarians who supported Paul will moan about the great anti-liberty conspiracy. But these are just my curmudgeonly thoughts on a Monday.

New Babylon 5 movie

Via Roderick Long's blog, news that a new, original B5 movie is mere weeks away from release. I've aleady added this to my wish-list at Amazon, along with a bunch of other things I plan to purchase soon.

Unrelated post

I've been checking Centipede Press's web page often, and today discovered the first mention of the new Michael Shea collection, along with the title. No price yet, but I'm sure I will need to start saving early. (This Shea is not related to the other Michael Shea in an earlier post below.) Shea is my favorite horror/dark fantasy writer for his powerful stories and baroque language.

Melinda Snodgrass blog

Sometimes I feel like I live under the proverbial rock. I just discovered Melinda Snodgrass's wonderful blog today via Victor Milan's own blog. She's a superb writer, known for her sf and fantasy books, her work in the Wild Card series, and also from Hollywood. The only Star Trek video that I own is an episode from The Next Generation, called "Measure of a Man," written by Snodgrass for the show in 1989. One thing missing from her website is a bibliography, but perhaps I just didn't see it out there. I would like to know more about those EDGE books she occasionally refers to...

Robert Shea novel freely available

A few nights ago I stumbled upon a PBS show, an episode in a vast series on the Inquisition. This episode focused on the Cathars, and the total and brutal suppression of this 'heresy' in the early fourteenth century by the Catholic church. Having read about this moment in history many years ago, I remained on the channel, and then one word fired off a strong association. The word "light" was mentioned as part of the Cathar belief system, and I remembered Robert Shea's novel All Things Are Lights. Immediately after the show I looked up Shea on Wikipedia, and sure enough that book did deal with the Cathars and Inquisition. (It's bad when you know it's faster to look up the book on the internet rather than search through your own shelves for your copy.) Lo and behold there's a link to an official Robert Shea web page.

Shea, which died in 1994, wrote my favorite historical novel, Shike. The external page on Shea is managed by his son, Michael, who's written fiction himself. If you haven't read Shea's hard to find historical fiction, the text for All Things Are Lights has been made available online at that web site, as well as an outline to the planned sequel to Shaman.

Finally!

The Spring issue of Prometheus is out the door, one month behind schedule, and on the last day before the monopoly raises postage rates. Of course, all the press stories all focus on how the poor Post Office is force to raise rates to compete. Apparently every other business model out there follows the same process, and all succeed in our landy of milk and honey. Nevermind.

This issue was on many levels frustrating, but in the end hopefully rewarding. When I started planning the issue some months ago, I sat staring at a dozen blank pages. I outlined what would be required to fill those pages, and started reading. I hoped that I would receive submissions from other individuals, plus I went out and sought a reprint. In the end, I wrote ten reviews and a couple of news items, which is far more than I wanted, but virtually in line with what I had planned. And all the work on Prometheus takes place late at night during a brief hour or so window in my day. Tough noogies, right?

Huge thanks go out to the other individuals who contributed to the issue, which let me push out at least four of my reviews to the Summer issue. I already have a few pages laid out for that issue, with the tables of contents planned and big goals in sight. As always, if you read this and wuld like to write reviews or articles for Prometheus, feel free to contact me -- editor@lfs.org. The newsletter appears quarterly, but I always wish it were less of a struggle to fill all the pages. I constantly marvel at The New York Review of Science Fiction which has been around ten few years than Prometheus, yet appears monthly with 24 pages per issue, and has produced over twice the number of issues than the LFs newsletter in that time.

EW's 25 best sf movies/TV shows

Lists always create controversy, and this one from Entertainment Weekly is no exception. The new Battlestar Gallactica at number 2? WTF? No Star Wars except for the decent (yet Samurai Jack inspired Clone Wars), not even The Empire Strikes Back? and where is Babylon 5 or Alien Nation? Most of the shows listed are fairly recent, except for weird selection of V: The Miniseries. Whatever happened to Logan's Run or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Or even The Incredible Hulk. And Lost? Another popular yet faddish choice. In a few years that show will have drifted off into obscurity, just like the show it mirrors, Twin Peaks: nice first season, then fell over the cliff and impaled itself on its own incoherence. I do agree with the number one choice, and still have vivid memories of the first time I saw The Matrix. Too bad the producers of that movie didn't stop there.

Victor Milan blog

Prometheus Award-winning writer Victor Milan has a new blog.

F. Paul Wilson interview

Brief interview over at Sci-Fi.com with F. Paul Wilson, discussing his novel Harbingers and a forthcoming YA series about a teenage Repairman Jack. Harry Potter sure opened up some new markets, and we're all better off as a result, if that means we get more FPW stories.

Poul Anderson

Nice story over at Yahoo (a reprint from 2001, the year Anderson died) about sf writer and multiple Prometheus Award winner Poul Anderson. One very typical quote from Anderson in this story:
"If I preach at all, it's probably in the direction of individual liberty, which is a theme that looms large in my work."
I did not know that Anderson didn't allow phone calls until after 6:30pm. One time in 1995, I actually called him up, having been given his number by another writer who knew him personally. Anderson that year had won both Prometheus Awards, and I was looking for some comment from him for the newsletter and award ceremony. I can't remember the gist of the conversation, or what time I called, but he of course had no clue who I was at the time, though he was quite cordial. I regret never having met him in person.

The Guardener's Tale

I'm hoping to review Bruce Boston's new novel, The Guardeners Tale for the Summer issue of Prometheus. One blurb opens like this "Brave New World. Fahrenheit 451. THX 1138. A Scanner Darkly. Bruce Boston's new novel, The Guardener's Tale, assumes its rightful place in this noble lineage of anti-authoritarian fables." Boston in an interview a few years ago said, " I am not a libertarian or an anarchist, but I do see government as it has existed as a necessary evil." He also views himself as somewhat left of center, but anti-authoritarian views come in many packages, and cares little for left or right. Read more about Boston at his website.

Regular activity to resume shortly

Now that I've completed the Spring issue of Prometheus, after a couple of delays caused by what my optician called a "corneal ulcer" in my right eye that made any bright light unbearable and migrane inducing, I have a little time for my irregular blogging. I'm getting ready to read through all the finalists for this year's Prometheus Awards. I read F. Paul Wilson's Harbingers when it appeared as the limited edition from Gauntlet Press, and am awaiting his latest Repairman Jack novel due out from that publisher next month. While I'm an FPW fan and like the RJ story and books, I don't see any libertarianism in Harbingers. I enjoyed Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End but not nearly as much as his two previous sf novels. Certain ideas and trends raised by Vinge are sobering, and I see his "You Gotta Believe Me" meme cropping up in another book, Justina Robson's excellent Mappa Mundi (not one of the finalists, but the US edition appeared in 2006, while the original UK edition was ahead of Vinge, in 2001). So maybe it's not Vinge's meme after all...

I have not yet read the other three books, but Charles Stross' Glasshouse is next on the list. I like Stross' work, and have read all his other novels published to date save the latest Clan Corporate novel. I haven't read anything from Orson Scott Card in many years, and nothing by John Scalzi, so those books will be interesting.

Sometimes I'm right there on the edge of new sf, but sometimes I'm way behind the times, staring over the fence at non-sf books. Currently I'm trying to finish Mark Shorer's biography, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life. I started the book last November, but set it aside to read a dozen sf books and review most of them. I'm also in the middle of The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Varlam Shamlov's Kolyma Tales (one of the many frightening results of Stalin's gulags), Nora May French's Poems, and Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism (which, for some reason, I feel as if I've already read, since I followed almost the same path 20 years ago when reading as much as I could about the history of libertarianism). I am compiling a list of fiction and non-fiction written under totalitarianism, especially the Soviet Union, possibly towards a long essay on the subject. Lest they are forgotten, writers are imprisoned and exiled for their work even now, in such countries as Vietnam, China, Cuba, Turkey and elsewhere.

Best book I've read so far this year: Adam Roberts' Gradisil. I have to inquire about the current Prometheus Award rules, since the UK edition appeared in 2006, but if the 2007 US edition is eligible, I'd say at this point that Roberts' novel is a shoo-in for the 2008 Prometheus Award. No freakin' contest.

Glorifying Terrorism

Today I received a review copy of this British sf anthology, with stories from such writers as Ken Macleod, Charles Stross, Ian Watson, Adam Roberts, and many more. Unfortunately, due to deadlines, I won't be able to run the review in Prometheus until the summer issue of that newsletter, but with the spring issue nearing completion, there just isn't enough space and time to get it into this issue. Looks very interesting through, and sure to cause controversy.

Smith's Forge of the Elders

L. Neil Smith has a long essay about the travails his novel Forge of the Elders went through in order to get published in full. Ther book is still in print, and can be ordered through online retailers or your local bookstore, and Smith hints at free goodies ahead when the current stock sells out. And if you haven't check out his work in progress at Big Head Press, I highly recommend the time and effort.

Blogging light - Prometheus heavy

This month is crunch time for getting out the next issue of the print newsletter of the LFS - Prometheus. I've been busy reading several long novels and trying to wrie reviews, and I'm happy to say I have several contributions from other individuals already. If you are interested in submitting material for this libertarian sf newsletter, please contact me - editor@lfs.org. Blogging for the next three weeks probably will be very light while I wrap up the issue. Tentative (link free)table of contents includes the following:

Contents:
* Prometheus Award Finalists - a listing of the finalists for the
2007 Prometheus Awards for best novel and classic work of fiction.

In Memoriam
Jesse Walker on Robert Anton Wilson (reprinted from Reason Online)
Brad Linaweaver on Chuck Hammill (possible)

Book reviews
Spider Robinson & Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star
Elizabeth Moon, Command Decision
John Varley, Red Lightning
Charles Stross, Glasshouse
Orson Scott Card, Empire
Sherri Tepper, Six Moon Dance
Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
Ken MacLeod, Giant Lizards from Another Star
Jack Vance, The Jack Vance Treasury
Jack Vance, Emphyrio
Justina Robson, Mappa Mundi
Mike Resnick, Starship: Pirate
Adam Roberts, Gradisil
T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

Film reviews
Sophie Scholl (possible)
F.Paul Wilson's Others (possible)

Other
Brief essay on Clark Ashton Smith's individualism

Roswell, Texas

Whoa! The Lamviin land in Texas.