chrisbutler

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/cdpHSYzM8uI/roboticist-daniel-h-wilson-sel.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/roboticist-daniel-h-wilson-sel.html

Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse is a cautionary tale of man vs. machine, and is being fast-tracked to publication at Doubleday, and to film at DreamWorks...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/gPYUbDJHbm8/del-rey-to-serialize-stephen-k.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/del-rey-to-serialize-stephen-k.html

Del Rey's comics imprint debuts with a 24-issue serialization of Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/fWyvw-YdL_4/2010-peoples-choice-awards-nom.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/2010-peoples-choice-awards-nom.html

The 2010 People's Choice Awards (well, the nominees) have an affinity for vampires, but haven't ignored other sf/f/h films, tv shows, and actors...

Can anyone recommend a good e-reader for reading documents (either MS Word docs or PDFs)? In the old days, I used to be perfectly happy reading long documents on my computer screen, but for the last several months, I've really struggled with it. I don't know whether to blame my CFS or just the fact I've been seriously sleep-deprived for the last 13 months, but by the end of the day, when I finally have free time, I just can't bear to read documents on my computer screen at all, because it hurts my head too much...

...and that's been causing serious havoc in my critiquing schedule. I am SOOOO humiliatingly late on a couple of crits for some really wonderful writers, and I hate it...but I just haven't been able to physically do it.

My iTouch works fine for reading published ebooks, using the "Stanza" program, but it can't handle PDFs or MS Word docs in any really usable way.

Do Kindles work well for those? Or Sony e-readers? Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated (by my crit partners at least as much as by me)!

I can't remember at all where I was when the Berlin Wall came down but I do recall being somewhat surprised, as I spent a summer in Berlin in 1988. It was at a centre in Wannsee, studying (of all things) cad-cam systems, an area in which I took no further personal interest, and my participation had been organised by the AI department at Sussex - I think it was some spare Euro money and a whole bunch of students were sent over, from the US, and all over Europe. The only other girl on my part of the course looked exactly like Claudia Schiffer but had no conversation and all the boys gave up on her after a few days and hung out with me and the American lesbians on the Feminist History module instead, who were a lot of fun.

We were just down the road from Glienicke Bruecke, where, IIRC, they used to exchange prisoners. The garden wall backed onto the actual Wall and the wooded nights of Wannsee were occasionally broken by bursts of machine gun fire as the East German police roared up and down on motor bikes. We couldn't swim, as there was a large sign just off the lake shore that informed us that we were 'now leaving the American sector,' in several languages. I bought a pair of shorts that said the same thing.

We visited East Berlin, the first (though not the last) time I was to visit a Soviet country. I remember the 1950s shop windows and the little Trabants trundling around, a big difference from the Mercs and glossy boutiques of the western city. We also went to the galleries and clubs of Kreuzberg and did a lot of cultural stuff, including a memorably awful evening at the opera where some avant-garde Italian composer's latest work was premiered. He'd been to talk to us about it the night before, and no one understood a word of it (it was in English). At the actual performance, half the audience walked out in the interval. I remember the composer sitting with his head in his hands, while fur-clad German matrons stalked past him.

A great, if fractured, city. C and I went back some years later and it was completely changed. I hope the inhabitants on both sides consider it worth it, but I know for a fact that some people don't - missing the culture rather than the senseless levels of repression, I think.

More books for sale from my friend: if you're interested in any of them, send me a message with your email address, and I'll put you in touch.

Hardbacks £4,

Angel Time, Anne Rice.
A Touch of Dead, Charlaine Harris.
Heart's Blood, Juliet Marillier.
I Am Scrooge, a Zombie Story for Christmas, Adam Roberts. (£3)

Pbs £2:

The Folklore of Discworld, Pratchett and Simpson.
The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld, Compiled by Stephen Briggs.
Legend, David Gemmell.
Mr Shovers, Robert Jackson Bennett.
The Gabble, Neal Asher (£1).

If you're needing feedback on a piece of fiction from a truly gifted story editor/critiquer, you should go and check out A.M. Dellamonica's contest, here. All you have to do to enter is acquire and read Indigo Springs (not a hardship! an awesome book), and then post a brief review and send her the link.

It would seem I share a birthday with Neil Gaiman and Sesame Street. (and Martin Luther, incidentally).

One step closer to fame and fortune

Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard

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Good news!

Sweden's first lesbian bishop. May she be wise and inspiring and the first of many.

The comments are best not read. Number 1 asks for a justification in the Bible for gay bishops, it doesn't get much better (with some exceptions of happy people) as you scroll down.

I went to the BBC News to find a comment-less article, but instead found this: The Vatican has published details of its plan to ease conversion for Church of England clergy unhappy about the ordination of women bishops. If I'm understanding this correctly, a significant number of Anglican clergy are so upset by female bishops, they're willing to become Catholic. The fuck?

Anytime, asshole-men, anytime you want to explain in reasonable terms why women are so terribly frightening or feeble or whatever that they mustn't be respected equally-- OH WAIT. Reason: you are not gifted with it.

Ugh.

I like this world a lot, why must so many people fill it with such hateful shit?

 

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/MAMTvp6bqtE/2009-new-york-city-horror-film.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/2009-new-york-city-horror-film.html

The New York City Horror Film Festivcal will feature 50 horror and science fiction films between 18 and 22 November...

• 22:35 @ecmyers Explosions! Guns! Downey and Law slash! Hot Victorian chicks! Sherlock Holmes as you've seen him... #
• 13:04 @ronwood77 Thanks! I hope you like it #

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He:

Listen. It’s not like she honored her part of the deal. Nothing happened when I summoned her. It was almost a week later, two weeks after John’s funeral, when I heard someone knocking on my front door. I must have just got home from work, because I remember I was still wearing a suit and tie as I went to the door.

It was rainy out. I mean, shit. Vancouver in late October. Of course it was rainy. Of course it was dark even though it wasn’t even six in the evening. I was renting this old house in east Vancouver, already twice broken into, so I went to the door with my phone in one hand, ready to call the police. I opened the door with the chain still on.

And there she was. A woman wearing a yellow Mountain Equipment Coop biking jacket waiting on the front porch. “Um hi,” she said. “My bike got a flat. I saw your bike on the porch and was wondering if you had a bike pump.”

She:

There. You summoned me and I came. No one twisted your arm. No one made you take your friend’s equipment. No one made you sign the contract with your blood.

Yes, I know that was the 5th, but, see, that's thing about this particular celebration. Bonfire night often falls on a week night and so it's become common for the bigger displays to happen on the weekends. Probably because the bigger displays tend to be organised by the likes of the Round Table or the Lions Club (social charitable organisations) and the organisers are volunteers and need the day to set up the event. So, as well as the actual day of the 5th (Thursday this year) when the Yeovil Town football club had a big fireworks event (because they had a home match on the saturday) and Friday the 6th when the Westlands (as in the Helicopter firm) Leisure club held a major do at the edge of the airfield in the centre of town - very nicely situated for viewing from my front bedroom/study window - I managed to locate a decent Saturday event. I dragged out my friends Jo and Carole to Sherborne castle where there was a Fireworks Extravaganza. Unfortunately, no doubt due to Health and Safety rules, the bonfire was a good hundred or more yards away from the crowd and the fireworks were mostly behind a screen of trees and on the far side of the (Capability Brown-designed) lake. But the biggest and best of the fireworks just topped the trees and the branches made an interesting screen through which to view the display. and it's nice to just be there with everyone else enjoying a major social event.

And then we came back for coffee and Carole and Jo enjoyed the sparklers they'd brought along ...

( Photos behind cut )

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/ru26v0DA6s0/clarkesworld-to-close-to-ficti.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/clarkesworld-to-close-to-ficti.html

Publisher Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine has announced that the monthly on-line 'zine will be closed to short story submissions from 1 December 2009 through 15 January 2010, because "slush readers deserve a vacation."...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/YC684bETAb8/top-box-office-grossers-first-27.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/top-box-office-grossers-first-27.html

With only one new film, the only real movement is at the top of the charts, but sf/f/h films, by and large, hold steady. One horror film falls, and another reappears on the charts...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sfscope/~3/XIMkXS3gK2I/most-popular-and-updated-artic-10.html

http://sfscope.com/2009/11/most-popular-and-updated-artic-10.html

The most popular SFScope articles during the last week, as well as those which were updated...

Happy birthday to Mike Munsil, Liberty Hall founder. Hope it’s a good one!

In other non-related news, here’s some linkage: the other interviews on SF Signal of the contributors of the Apex Book of World SF include French dark fantasy author Mélanie Fazi, horror writer and AR author Kaaron Warren, and Croatian Aleksandar Ziljak (whose story “An Evening in The City Coffeehouse, with Lydia on my mind” is up in the November issue of Apex Magazine).

Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard

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A few weeks ago, I linked to a very funny spoof of health and safety films, called: "Forklift Driver Klaus," and today on Failblog, I stumbled across Klaus' real life counterpart.

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