Heliotrope is a free quarterly magazine of speculative fiction that publishes stories, poetry and articles. This issue features a story by Neil Gaiman called One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock. There are also several articles about writer Michael Moorcock’s profound influence on the science fiction and fantasy genres. His most popular works are the Elric of Melniboné stories.
Fear on Demand is an excellent horror story podcast. Their latest offering is Room 412 by Michael Laimo. The narrator is Gord Mackenzie. When a man checks into a hotel during a business trip he is irritated by a constant thumping from the room next door. What’s making that noise? His terror mounts as the circumstances around room 412 become increasingly bizarre.
The story really had me sitting perfectly still with complete dread.
This story is not for very young listeners.
Listen to the Room 412 podcast.
Moon is a new science fiction film directed by Duncan Jones. It stars Sam Rockwell as a man administering a lonely moon base for a shift that lasts several years. The trailer looks pretty good, but I’m not sold on it. I do like to see a serious science fiction film getting projected in theaters after the horrific damage that’s been done to the genre by clever little men like George Lucas. In fact, I blame Lucas more than Tolkien for the fact that every bookstore loads its science fiction shelves with sword fantasy books. As soon as the idiotic Obi Wan Kenobi pulled out a lightsaber, the sci-fi film genre was doomed. But this thing looks from its trailer to be a mashup of homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running and Solaris. I just don’t get into ‘homage’ movies. A little subtle homage is fine. But this trailer is just packed to the gills with barely altered rips right out of these classic films. No serious science fiction director makes a movie that’s an homage to other movies. Stanley Kubrick would have choked on a chess piece if someone had suggested such a thing to him. So, I’m sure I’ll give this movie a chance and go see it, but I fear that it will be exactly the movie it appears to be in its trailer. The effects do have that wonderful super-reality quality to them that 2001 and television show Space 1999 had.
Well… it better not jam. That’s my two cents. But really this is a neat idea. A book printer. It lets a user download, print, and bind a real book in just a few minutes. The New York Public Library has one. I’m not sure if one is expected to return the books it prints, but if they think it’s a good machine, it probably is. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt has one. This is the kind of machine that makes online book printing services like Lulu.com really start making sense. Of course, the shops and libraries must keep themselves supplied with the right paper and cover materials. But it is quite obvious that the days of publishers shipping cartons of books to bookstores all over the world in such bulk are very numbered. Pretty soon there will be a book printer in many homes. That’s assuming that everyone doesn’t switch to ebooks. But with companies like Amazon building portable cash registers instead of real ebook devices, that will not happen for a long time.
I was very interested in a post about Henry David Thoreau at BoingBoing this weekend. I got into one of those wonderfully dignified arguments in the comments with other Thoreau lovers and haters. But one of the commenters posted a link to this fascinating podcast episode in which a Thomas Jefferson fan and expert named Clay Jenkinson discusses Thoreau’s masterwork and its connection to the thinking of Jefferson. It’s a great listen and has me all excited about Walden again. In fact, I think I’m going to do a full reading the book right here. Perhaps I’ll start it this week. We’ll see. But I certainly think it needs to be read with all the punkish attitude and brilliant observation that I see in the book. If you want to read Walden, you sort of have to become Henry David Thoreau for a while. Not an easy task.
Meanwhile, you really should listen to this marvelous show about Walden.
This is an illustration by Isabelle Arsenault for a picture book called Mr. Gauguin’s Heart, published in 2004. She is based in Montreal, Canada and has been a finalist for The Governor General’s Literary Awards in 2008.
I like the oil-painting approach and the way she evokes illustration styles from the past.
