Magpie by Frank Gonzales
Check out this lovely magpie painting by Frank Gonzales!
I’ll have another Magpie Monday on Wednesday post this week, so do stop back by to have a look!
♦ VIEWERS’ PARADISE.
People, I am really excited that the third series of Luther is right around the corner. Just look at this trailer! Promises some good watching. Just go ask Alice: “Seems to me your conscience has killed more people than I have.”
10 TV writers and showrunners on their most controversial episodes is, as you’d suspect, a crackin’ good read.
Man of Steel flies into theaters on June 14th, and I can’t think of another superhero film in the last few years that had more riding on it than this one. Christopher Nolan’s generally well-received Batman trilogy wrapped up, and nobody really seemed to love Green Lantern (I haven’t seen it, so I don’t have an opinion), so DC’s been kind of floundering on that front. Marvel was very, very smart about how they approached The Avengers and the individual hero films leading up to it (not to say Marvel hasn’t had some missteps—you know what I’m talking about), but DC has seemed to struggle with figuring out how to proceed with their film franchise. If Man of Steel is a hit (or, I suppose, does reasonably well), then DC can breathe a little easier about that Justice League movie—and a Wonder Woman film, I hope! If Man of Steel flops, well, I don’t know what they’ll do next. But I have to say, this new trailer for Man of Steel is dynamite! The trailer’s score is killer, too. Here’s hoping the film’s as good. Warning: The trailer might give a lot away. If you need some more Man of Steel stuff, check out this 13-minute featurette on the making of the film.
In related comic-book movie news, Joss Whedon talks with The Daily Beast about “Shakespeare, female superheroes, and what pisses him off about the industry.” Here’s a brief excerpt:
Why do you think there’s a lack of female superheroes in film?
Toymakers will tell you they won’t sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, You see? It can’t be done. It’s stupid, and I’m hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift. It’s frustrating to me that I don’t see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, “My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,” and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”
And here’s a clip from Whedon’s Much Ado about Nothing:
Pics of actors laughing between takes are instant smiles—they are, they are, like the one below. Via.
Lots of commentary out there about who the next Doctor will be (see what I did there?), and a lot of fans strongly suggest a female Doctor while others are opposed to it. Neither argument is new, but I admit I’m curious as to how Doctor Who played by a female would be. If you are, too, check out Tom Hawking’s Doctor Who and the Fear of an Asexual Female Protagonist and Chuck Wendig’s Why It’s Time to Genderflip Doctor Who.
I like the poster for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. What do you think? Via.
I couldn’t not share this clip of the Ross Sisters singing “Solid Potato Salad” and then doing some crazy contortion work! I loved Cory Doctorow’s description of the trio: “like Cirque du Soleil crossed with Hee-Haw performed by the Andrews Sisters.” You’re welcome!
♦ THE WRITING DESK.
Lots of talk about gender in the SFF field lately; here’s a post by John H. Stevens, More than Warriors: Thoughts on Fantasy and Gender that talks about two well-written and thoughtful contributions to the discussion: Kameron Hurley’s “We Have Always Fought”: Challenging the “Women, Cattle and Slaves” Narrative and Django Wexler’s Female Warriors in Fantasy, both of which look, in part, at historical precedents for women warriors.
Emily Wenstrom on how to write a novel in three years or more.
Elizabeth Knox on the unexpected exotic: settings in science fiction and fantasy.
12 persnickety rules from The Associated Press Stylebook.
Smelly pencils designed to keep writers focused. If you write in pencil, that is.
Holy smokes—the new Haruki Murakami novel sets the record for advanced in Korea: $1.5 million!
Famous SciFi and Fantasy Authors in Their Workspaces: great photos of Isaac Asimov, Neil Gaiman, H.G. Wells, Andre Norton, C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, C.J. Cherryh, Ray Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Cory Doctorow, and Ursula K. Le Guin!
Kameron Hurley unpacks the “real writers have talent” myth.
Chuck Wendig offers 25 things you should know about young adult fiction.
Booklife says, Don’t listen to your peers (an admitted hyperbole).
♦ COVER TO COVER.
I am a huge admirer of book-cover art, as longtime readers of this blog know. Here are some covers I saw recently that just tickled my fancy:
First is the cover for Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block. I couldn’t track down the artist responsible for the cover (if anyone knows, please tell me!), but I love what’s done with the silhouette, the almost woodblock-print-style waves at the bottom (with a house caught in it), the butterflies flying out of her head in black and white silhouettes and the central Monarch. I also think the colors here are marvelous.
The next cover is The Returned, the debut novel by Jason Mott (he has published two poetry collections, though). The upside down photograph is great, but even more clever is that the title letters are made from the cover image rightside up.
30 of the most beautiful sci-fi book covers ever made. I wouldn’t put everything on this list on my own list of 30 of the most beautiful sci-fi covers, but I like a lot of them.
Okay, this might be the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long while: “Recovering The Classics is a crowdsourced collection of original covers for 50 of the greatest books in the public domain. All books are available for sale as both digital and softcover editions to support the artists involved. Recovering The Classics is a project of the Creative Action Network, a marketplace for connecting artists with the causes they care about, and DailyLit, a platform for delivering great fiction in short installments.” And some of these covers are really amazing! I’m particularly fond of Luis Pardo’s cover for Frankenstein:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, cover by Luis Prado
And Jon Cain’s cover for The Time Machine:
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, cover by Jon Cain
Via.
♦ SHE BLINDED ME…WITH SCIENCE!
Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby perform “She Blinded Me with Science” at the Smithsonian’s “The Future Is Here” conference. Bless their hearts.
Anatomy: Explore the internal anatomy of David’s head slice by meaty slice.
If I Were by Cao Hui
Arachnology: How many spiders do you really swallow in your sleep?
Astronomy: The beauty of space photography.
Futurism: What can we learn from the real superhumans among us?
Herpetology: A Cuban tree frog tries to eat a Christmas light. Via.
Photo by James Snyder
Medicine: The “Rapunzel Syndrome” is a little-known medical horror.
Neuroscience: Why music makes our brain sing (thanks to Liz Hand for the link on Facebook!); 5 mind-blowing ways your senses lie to you every day (thanks to Allen Butt for the link, also on FB!)
Oneirology: Could we record our dreams?
Psychology: When you have a story so unbelievable, everyone thinks you’re crazy; Couples who meet online tend to have better marriages.
Zoology: Research suggests that left-pawed dogs are just slightly evil; Wolf puppies! (via)
Photographer Kyle McBurnie won Best Overall in the 2013 Annual Underwater Photography Contest with this shot of a California harbor seal (click to embiggen). Via.
Best Overall 2013 Annual Underwater Photography Contest: a California Harbor seal near San Diego, CA, by Kyle McBurnie
♦ THE BOOK NOOK.
Jonathan Wolstenholme’s literary watercolors make me happy happy happy! Flavorwire has a great gallery of Wolstenholme’s work, but the one below might be my favorite.
By Jonathan Wolstenholme
I love Karen Inglis’ shelves!
Book Domino Chain World Record:
The Seattle Public Library launched the 2013 Summer Reading Program by setting a new world record for the longest book domino chain!
The books used to make this domino chain were either donated or are out of date and no longer in the library’s collection. They are now being sold by the Friends of Seattle Public Library to help raise money for library programs and services.
No books were harmed during the filming of this video.
Via.
♦ THE NINTH ART.
Two installments of Joey Comeau and Emily Horne’s A Softer World I really liked:
A nice companion to the fundamental rules of life I shared last week: at Zen Pencils, Gavin Aung Than adapts inspirational quotations into cartoons. I particularly like his take on Roger Ebert’s kindness quote, a thought much in line with my own. Click through to see the whole thing. Thanks to Jenn Brissett for sharing the link on Facebook!
Roger Ebert: On Kindness by Gavin Aung Than
This xkcd speaks to me:
♦ SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN.
Billy Idol—1 tub “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” Pepperidge Farms soft-baked Nantucket chocolate chip cookies. Photo by Henry Hargreaves, styled by Caitlin Levin
In the Band Riders series of photo-graphs, Henry Hargreaves (along with his stylist collaborator, Caitlin Levin) has some fun with the riders musicians put into their contracts (a rider, for those who don’t know, is a list of demands per- formers—musical, theatrical, etc.—set as requirements for performance). As you might imagine, some of these demands are kind of outrageous, or just odd to those not in the know. At left is a rider from Billy Idol (I wonder if he dips the cookies in the non-butter?) Slate has a great gallery of Hargreaves’ photos, all with captions quoted directly from contracts. Check them out! Via.
Aliette de Bodard talks about food in her fiction (writers, take note!).
Could Amazon dominate the grocery business, too? Apparently, AmazonFresh has been on a trial run in Seattle for the last five years, and Amazon is looking to expand (as Amazon does). As an introverted misanthrope, I like the idea of my groceries being delivered, but the control-freak part of me wants to make sure everything I buy is not expired (the local grocery stores have a bad habit of keeping some past-due products on the shelves for a ridiculously long time past their due dates—I’ve seen some canned goods that were three months past their expiration! Do read the labels, folks) and the aesthete wants to pick things myself (I touch and scrutinize a lot of produce). Via.
That’s Nerdalicious! shared Pop Chart Labs’ Charted Cheese Wheel, which is
A charting of 66 delightful cheeses from around the world, assembled into one wondrous wheel. The cheeses are broken down by the animal that produced the luscious milk, and then by the texture of the resultant cheese, forming a cornucopia of cheese that range from the mild to the stinky and from the rock hard to the silky smooth. The chart includes all-time faves like Cheddar, Brie, and Mozzarella as well as foodie faves like Stinking Bishop and Humboldt Fog.
Pop Chart Lab has 18″ x 22″ prints for sale; click the link above to find out more! But for now, just look at this Charted Cheese Wheel!
Time for tea: have a gander at these sweet teapots, the first of which I chose for Laura.
Lucky Skull Porcelain Teapot (via):
A BMO teapot! For the adventurous tea drinker, of course (via).
Need some recipes for various and sundry food items? Look no further:
Game of Thrones Honeyed Chicken Handpies
Deep-Fried Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco (he also made Beer and Bacon Battered Deep-Fried Doritos, so you know he’s serious). Via.
Five Ingredient Yum: Carrot, Zucchini, and Cheese Cupcakes (well, more like mini-quiches).
Two last recipes from Bite Club (Laura Jackson and Jack Howard): Alien-inspired Edible Alien Eggs and Chestburster Cake! They’ve also made Kryptonite Candy and Superman Fried Chicken in honor of Man of Steel. Via.
And grammar lessons with food from Pleated-Jeans—I love it!
♦ TURN THE PAGE.
Audrey Hepburn reads, 1953
Dig in with those hungry eyes!
From Lightspeed: Princess Lucinda and the Hound of the Moon by Theodora Goss
From Tor.com: The Arrivals (excerpt) by Melissa Marr; The Too-Clever Fox by Leigh Bardugo (her website’s very fancy); A Window or a Small Box by Jedediah Berry; B is for Bradbury: 5 Excellent Ray Bradbury Stories to Remember, compiled by Nancy Lambert; and The Fury (excerpt) by Alexander Gordon Smith
From Interfictions Online: The Thing Under the Drawing Room by Jedediah Berry; The Taming by Kiini Ibura Salaam; and two recommended poems: Bone Shadows by Rose Lemberg and all the houses on sesame street are haunted houses by Paul Jessup
From Apex Magazine (via The Mary Sue): Karina Who Kissed Spacetime by Indrapramit Das
Grace offers a reading list of Domythic Mythic Fiction
Flax-golden tales: Penguin Investigative Services by Erin Morgenstern
From Daily Science Fiction: The Bargain by Henry Szabranski; The Wheel of Fortune by Alexander Lumans (a South Carolina native, by the by); Jumbo Gumdrop Serenade by E. Catherine Tobler; Ghosts in the Walls by Shannon Peavey; and The Suit by Robert Reed
I enjoyed Lydia Davis’s acceptance speech (it’s short!) for the Man Booker Prize—shout-out for short stories, yeah!
Here’s Neil Gaiman reading a bit from his new novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane:
♦ If you read this far, you probably don’t need to read this article. 🙂
