rss info |
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
GOT YOUR FUTURE RIGHT HERE
posted 8:28 AM
As solid an icon of Progress as we've seen this year.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
"CENTRAL PARK"
posted 5:25 PM
I saw Cloverfield last night, and nothing about it bugged me more than those quotes around "Central Park" on the DoD evidence tag that opens the film. It immediately tells us that this film has not been made by native science fiction minds. If Central Park is no longer called Central Park, but is officially referred to as "the area formerly known as 'Central Park'", but the DoD still exists, we know that this is not a *far-future* evidence tag. So if Central Park is now known as "The Killing Fields", or "The Ghastly Black Glass Ocean", then *tell* us. Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing).

Very first thing in the film. Matters. Hugely.

O well. Did anyone else come home and Google Peter Watkins' The War Game and The Deadly Mantis ?

EAST ON SANTA MONICA
posted 5:19 PM
My thanks to the Remington Silvertips team. Have just finished the corrections to the proofs of the trade edition. (The Silvertips are now Winchester, which would seem to satisfy the greatest number of firearms enthusiasts, though there did seem to be some deeper otaku-grade debate going on, about that.

I think I got them all, except the second "Pete Townsend", which I couldn't find. We'll call it a typo.

You have all been a great help and I really appreciate it.

Thursday, January 10, 2008
SILVERTIPS AMONG THE GRAY
posted 12:38 PM
Thanks to the initiator of and contributors to the "Remington Silvertips" thread I suggested yesterday.

The depth and jesuitical complexity of Gun Stuff discussions never fails to stun me.

I am reminded of my own wonderment, as a boy, at Ian Fleming initially arming James Bond with the same little Beretta Jetfire .25 that my hometown Western Auto Store offered for sale in the showcase directly in front of the shelves of Monogram and Aurora model kits. Enough American readers eventually wrote in that Fleming upgraded 007 to a Walther PPK (albeit still a mere .32) and a stubby S&W .38 for still tighter corners.

The solution to the problem of exactly what was going to be done to the McGuffin (TM), and how, was very kindly (and brilliantly) provided by a friend of mine who is a medical doctor, an experienced hunter, and a practicing handloader (that is, a home builder of his own custom ammunition). He provided a couple of screen's worth of single-spaced and utterly precise descriptions of the various ingredients, and quite a lot of informed speculation re Corten steel, etc. I will try to find this, and check the existing text against it, but I suspect that the dissatisfaction of gun-fancier's, in this case, is the result of my having had to select very sparingly from among a wealth of expert material. Without myself being an expert, and limited by the viewpoint character's lack of firearms knowledge, the need to maintain tension, etc., etc.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008
SOMEONE START A REMINGTON SILVERTIP THREAD, PLEASE...
posted 12:07 PM
The proofs of the trade paper edition are on their way here, so this is the time to point out any factual errors. We did this with Pattern Recognition and it worked very well. There are evidently some gun-stuff errors, and at least one LA reader has had geographical quibbles...

Thanks!

Friday, January 04, 2008
HONK IF YOU LOVE BORGES
posted 9:51 PM
Karl Rove, answering Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire:

Who are your favorite writers?

In alphabetical order: Jorge Luis Borges, Gabor Boritt, Ray Bradbury, G. K. Chesterton, Winston Churchill, David Herbert Donald, T. S. Eliot, Joseph Ellis, Gary Gallagher, F. A. Hayek, Paul Horgan, Paul Johnson, Tom Lea, C. S. Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, John D. MacDonald, David McCullough, Merrill Peterson, Robert Remini, Andrew Roberts, William Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Evelyn Waugh, and Robert Wiebe.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

Travis McGee or Borges himself. (Was he real? Or not?)

Wednesday, January 02, 2008
I LIKE IT ALREADY
posted 8:47 PM
If Hubertus Bigend wanted to get into "science fiction" (whatever that means in 2008) it might look a lot like io9 .

Tuesday, January 01, 2008
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
posted 9:26 AM
And thanks to CuspTech for 2007's most locatively memorable shots of a copy of Spook Country !