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A week or so ago I finished reading Deathstalker by Simon R. Green as part of my space opera obsession. This book was a mixed bag for me — sufficiently positive that I’ll grab the next book at some point, but since I know the series has six or seven books in it, the quality will have to improve a bit if I’m going to commit to the whole thing. As our story begins, there’s a guy named Owen Deathstalker who lives on some backwater planet, where he’s happy to go along his everyday life and not worry too muchDown the rabbit hole….

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Jayme Lynn Blaschke has announced his candidacy for the SFWA. His platform seems interesting, but I must acknowledge that I have no dog in this fight, since I’m not a member of the SFWA and I doubt I’ll bother joining if and/or when I become a published writer. Consider yourself warned, John Scalzi! UPDATE: Having read JLB’s platform again, I declare myself solidly behind him. Now to start making campaign posters, and lining up hands for him to kiss and babies for him to shake…or is that the other way around…hmmm…. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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I’ve been reading quite a few graphic novels of late, and I have some more in the “to read” stack, seeing as how the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library actually stocks them to a nice degree. (If you live in or near a locality with a large public library system and you’re interested in graphic novels, give this route a try. I firmly believe that one big reason that graphic novels are seemingly forever stuck in that “on the brink” phase, where people are constantly saying things like “Hey, these aren’t the funny books you grew up with!”, isDown the rabbit hole….

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Apparently while I was offline, PZ Myers turned 50. And in doing so, he demanded that readers write poems celebrating him, or something. So here’s a tri-partite Fibonacci poem in honor of Dr. Myers: I. PZhas turnedfifty. Mayhe never meet anaxe murderer in overalls. II. Heisthe scourgeof I.D.,but his secret loveis ever the cephalopod. III. Foraguy whodescends frommonkeys, he’s oddlymild-mannered. Clark Kent o’ the Plains. (Anyone quibbling with my accounting of syllables will be subject to pistols at dawn!) He also provides the latest “Bold it if you’ve done it” meme-thing, this time springing from somebody’s list of “the mostDown the rabbit hole….

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All that reading of Shamus‘s blog has, as I predicted here, finally demolished my resistance. Today at Target I weakened and bought, from the “cheap computer games” section, Galactic Civilizations (which apparently includes an expansion pack of some sort) and Freelancer. And I saw a bunch of others I’d like to try at some point as well, including a Star Wars five-pack thing. (Shamus pleads ignorance here as to how this could happen, claiming that when he writes about games it’s mainly to rant and rave about them, but I know reverse psychology when I see it! He’s not foolingDown the rabbit hole….

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Back when I was soliciting space opera reading suggestions*, a reader e-mailed me (or maybe he commented, I can’t recall) about a book called Space Viking by H. Beam Piper. I saw a few copies on eBay, but never acquired one. Now, I see that I won’t have to. Viva Project Gutenberg! OK, all you geniuses, what’s a good gizmo on which to read e-books? (via) * Not that I’ve stopped soliciting space opera reading suggestions, folks. Feel free to keep those coming! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Over at AICN they’ve started running a series of articles that are apparently a tribute to 1982, which Harry Knowles bills as the “best genre year ever”. Now, I’m not sure about that, but it’s a personal thing — Knowles was twelve, which as we all know actually is the true Golden Age of science fiction. Anyhow, the first article he runs is about that year’s megablockbuster film ET: the Extra-Terrestrial. Here’s something about E.T., and only a few, few other movies… it gets childhood intrinsically, so completely RIGHT. High praise indeed for Melissa Mathison’s script, which has the cadenceDown the rabbit hole….

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A few days ago I finished Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, which is the first book in the fantasy mega-series The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I can’t say I loved the book, but I found it highly compelling, and I definitely plan to continue reading the series. Just not for a while. This is epic fantasy, no doubt about it. Boy howdy, is this book epic. The sense of scale in this book is, to my way of thinking, even more vast than in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. In fact, Erikson hasDown the rabbit hole….

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When Guy Gavriel Kay has a new novel coming out in the next week or two, don’t start reading a doorstop like Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon. My unopened copy of Ysabel, which came via Amazon three days ago, is giving me a big old guilt trip right now. (And man, is Gardens a dense read. I’ll say more about it when I finish it — right now I’m about halfway done — but so far, it seems to me that Erikson stands at the opposite pole from David Weber. With Weber, you get infodumps galore, whether you needDown the rabbit hole….