The last few Star Trek movies have been uniformly awful. But this new one looks very promising. I think it was a great idea to go back and redo the original show’s characters as they venture forth on their first mission together. The main hitch would be if the movie misses the sly humor that made the original characters so interesting. But this looks like the first really fresh take on the old series in many years. Great trailer.
Marvel.com is posting all the original Spider Man television episodes for free viewing. They originally aired in 1967 on ABC. They are actually very good. Highly recommended. This is the first episode.
Amazing science fiction podcast site, StarShipSofa, is offering all the 2008 Nebula Award short story nominees for free download.
The world of sci-fi periodical publishing seems to be moving in the direction of excellent online podcasts. This is a prime example of the movement. I’ve enjoyed many short science-fiction podcasts over the past several years. This one is a real standout.
This is my poem offered in celebration of National Poetry Month. It’s called Alongside too Soon.
It’s National Poetry Month! That means that bookstores, publishers and bloggers all over the U.S. and elsewhere are celebrating poetry in all its forms. There’s a poem-a-day series that will email you one poem each day for the entire month. Poets.org has instructions for teachers trying to motivate students to enjoy poetry in the classroom and tips for bookstores trying to sell poetry.
The video is from W. W. Norton publishers who decided to ask eleven of their published poets what poetry is for. Their answers are incredibly bad, but it’s a good try. It should be abundantly clear from these poets’ answers that there is very little actual thought going on about what poetry is for.
Here’s my answer: Poetry is for bread.
But here’s a guy named Charles Bernstein who says that National Poetry Month is a bad thing. He says it encourages the most bland of easy-reading poetry available to make people think poetry is safe to read. He’s right. And so what? So people read some bland crappy poems. That is what most poetry is. That’s realistic. Perhaps a few of those people will have the energy to go out and find the real, hard, evolving, beautiful and terrifying poetry that would never even stoop to asking, ‘What is poetry for?’
I’ve found a fantastic online 3D animation service called xtranormal.com. You choose characters and settings, then you write your little script and choose facial expressions, movements, camera angles, and sounds. When you’ve put it all together in a simple list, you press a button and in a few moments you have a movie! I think it’s very well done.
I’ve made a little movie called Awkward Office Moment 1.
Cartoonist Matt Bors has posted a funny AIG cartoon on his blog. He’s got a whole site full of these. He was inspired for this strip by the AIG executive who recently resigned and whined about how the company was treating him. I guess I’d whine too if I woke up one day and realized I was evil.
Adventures in Cartooning is a book that teaches kids about cartooning and comics in general. The basic idea is that you can draw comics if you can doodle. It’s drawn like a doodle comic and it goes over drawing, laying out comic panels, storytelling, and having confidence in your own doodling skills.
There’s an online preview here.
Thanks to BoingBoing for posting this.
This is the first John Carter of Mars novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books. It was his first novel, published in 1917 and it’s a work of rip-roaring science fiction that has inspired many of the great writers in the genre. The story concerns soldier John Carter who is mysteriously transported to the red planet where he fights to protect his princess against impossible odds and many peculiar creatures. The book is very much a product of its time, with outdated ideas about the red planet and outdated social ideas. But if you can just go along for the adventurous ride, you are in for a sci-fi space opera swashbuckling treat.
You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.
Duration: 00:21:54
Read by Alessandro Cima
All audio stories are Copyright © Candlelight Stories, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Betty Boop stars as Cinderella in this 1934 cartoon from Fleischer Studios. This was Betty Boop’s only appearance in color.
Tomas Nilsson made this unique version of Little Red Riding Hood. It’s a modern isometric music video interpretation of the story. Very effective. He says he did it as a student assignment.
Here’s an excellent audio download of one of the old Tom Swift adventure books, Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X. The reading is by Roy Trumbull at the Story Spieler Podcast.
The Tom Swift adventure books are a series that began in 1910 and continue in some form today. This particular book was written in 1961. Tom is a young inventor who dreams up all sorts of high-tech devices and craft in order to win the day.
Apparently, computer developer Steve Wozniak grew up reading the books and credits them with inspiring free and open creative thinking.
Well, if this isn’t the most insane thing I’ve seen in several years! This is a simply unbelievable video of the Miniatur Wunderland model railroad in Hamburg, Germany. It is the largest in the world at 16,146 square feet with 10,000 railroad cars running on 6.8 miles of miniature track. Construction of the railroad is still underway, with a scale model airport due to open this year. Good grief! Total mind-blowing insanity!
Here’s a site that posts photos of incredible bookstores from all over the world. The picture here is of the third floor of Shakespeare & Co., in Paris. It’s got lots of books, a bulletin board, a ladder, and… a bed. How’s that for reading comfort? I bet shoppers are fighting over the bed everyday in Paris. I wonder if there’s a time limit on reading in the bed?
I have to visit this bookstore soon because I am a very lazy reader.
I found this on a wonderful literature blog called Conversational Reading.
Nicole Mitchell made Zoologic in 2007 and it won the 2008 Student Academy Award. It’s a humorous story of an overzealous zookeeper who meets his match in a penguin and gorilla who lead a comic revolt against him.
