Following the monstrous trend brought to life by bestseller success of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” Del Rey Books just bought Porter Grand’s “Little Women and Werewolves”–remixing the classic novel with a wolfish twist.

Editor-in-chief Betsy Mitchell acquired the title through Adam Chromy of Artists and Artisans. Ever since Quirk Books combined zombies and Jane Austen, we’ve seen more monster mash-up deals: “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” If you want to read the good-old-fashioned “Little Women,” Project Gutenberg has a free eBook version.

Here’s a description of the forthcoming werewolf version: “In this retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s classic, the beloved little women must keep not just the wolf, but the werewolves, from the door…and the kindly old gentlemen next door and his grandson may have some secrets to hide–or share with the March girls.”

Y’know, ten years from now, the literary community is going to look back at these books, much in the way I look back at the early nineties, grunge, and how I went there, and think, ‘I must burn the evidence, quickly.’

Link.

I finished up with season one of True Blood and decided that it was rather like the Bold and the Beautiful, in that there was lots of talking, hooks at the start and end of each episode, and an entire season could go buy without a person leaving a room.

I liked it, overall, however. The setting, the way people talked, and the characters worked nicely–though I do admit that, as is the case in the majority of these shows, my favourite characters weren’t the main two. The romance between Sookie and Vampire Bill is a little cheesy for me, and I was a lot more interested in the addiction to vampire blood that Jason had, the girl that introduces him to its pleasures, and Lafayette’s various enterprises. It was actually fairly fortunate that this was the case, since the underlying murder mystery of the first season was–to be polite–quite under used. It felt as if they got to the end and then, suddenly, a killer had to be named, and anyone would do. A back story could be added that would cover it. But the show continues to work for the most part, and I’ve watched about four episodes of the second season, which feels uniformly stronger, both on a humour, horror, and general writing and directing level. Also, Vampire Bill has a Vampire Child and I find that quite funny, at least for the moment.

I do have to admit, though, that the vampire culture that has been worked into the back of the series is a little at odds with the idea that vampires have come out into the open. The justice is violent, rough, and outside human law, and just doesn’t sit well in the series. One of the characters in the series, Eric, is the ’sheriff’ of the area, and thus is the law for vampires, doing as he pleases. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that (and the part is played well by Alex Skarsgard), but I thought it would have been more interesting, given the premise of vampires coming out into the open, to force the vampire laws and human laws to interact. Surely, I figure, it would have resulted in a scene that was a lot less interesting than a court being held in an abandoned lot and watched over by a vampire from the Inquisition. But, I suppose that’s just me, and the fact that ‘rough’ vampire justice is something that’s been done into the ground.

Which, of course, so has vampires.

Ah well.

I dug it enough to keep going.

I have the scifi wire feed on my blog, mostly for the amusement it provides me regarding cinema and literature. Today, for example, it informed me of a new Predator film written by Robert Rodriguez some fifteen years ago, and called Predators.

The intent is obviously to capture the sequel feel that Cameron’s Aliens had, though I suspect that this film won’t have it. There’s something about character descriptions that make the weapons they carry seem more interesting than the actual characters, plot, or anything else, that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. However, perhaps “Cuchillo, a Mexican enforcer for a drug cartel who has twin uzis strapped to his back” does it for you. If so, you’ll enjoy watching the Latino Review’s take on the script, which is apparently awesome, and features the Black Super Predator. For me, I just don’t know what to start poking at first: the fact that someone thinks Black SUPER Predator is awesome and that BLACK Super Predator isn’t automatically dismissed as a possibly racist thing, or the fact that I wrote a whole paragraph on this. The original Predator film was an alright B-grade action film that was mostly about homosexual men who can’t come to terms with their repressed sexuality, but I don’t understand why people want to keep making new versions.

Which, of course, brings me to the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street:

Sure, it has Clancy Brown leading lynch mob to kill a man, but–and perhaps it’s just me–the trailer makes it look like Freddy Krueger has been wronged, and now is out to get revenge. I’m sure it’s not, but, actually, that would be kind of awesome. Maybe there could be an exploding helicopter and Freddy could be in a wild car chase before he gets one of the teen girls.

Man, the more I think of that, the better it sounds. No one ever actually watched Nightmare films because they cared for the actors, or the protagonists–they watched it to see how Krueger was going to kill someone. Turning him loose on the teen starlets of Hollywood sounds like it’s the best thing ever. You could open the film with him sitting in his dream living room, watching some flick, and then he comes across a remake of a film he dug some twenty years ago, and they’ve basically jazzed it up, added some cute young jailbait, and put some dramatic music in it. Sitting there in his dream armchair, Krueger gets annoyed. He thinks, ‘Fuck me, why can’t there just be new things? I’m tired of living in this stagnate film Hell that Hollywood has created, this fake shell of creativity that supports its own rotten core. Someone ought to stop these people.’

Next thing you know, Krueger is taking a bus to Hollywood.

In Zurich, arriving there for the film festival and about to be given a tribute, Roman Polanski has been taken into custody by authorities remembering a 31-year-old arrest warrant. They were alerted by US authorities who have never given up on the case. Extradition is in the air, though it could take a few months. Is Polanski returning to the US? If he is, one of the those judges is going to have an awkward time.

Even in Los Angeles, however, the general public reading the news probably needed to be reminded what this was all about. The history of the movies, even its scandals, has receded a long way – it’s all “Chinatown” now, and the newspaper editors wonder whether they can let that remark go or does it need to be explained?

The explanation comes quickly. It needs no more than a single paragraph. On 11 March 1977, Polanski was arrested in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire hotel by Detective Philip Vannatter (a cop who would figure in the OJ Simpson case). The Polish film director was charged as follows: giving Quaaludes to a minor; child molestation; unlawful sexual intercourse with that minor; rape by use of drugs; oral copulation; sodomy. The girl was 13, though Polanski would say that she looked older.

The rape had occurred in the house of Jack Nicholson, a place Polanski used as he wished. In the legal negotiations that followed, Polanski never denied the charges, but they were dismissed under the terms of the plea bargain by which he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor. With a view to proper sentencing, the judge – Laurence Rittenband – ordered that Polanski be confined for psychiatric examination. That led to 42 days’ confinement in the Chino State Prison over the 1977-8 period. In that examination Polanski was passed as fit to stand trial. It was the director’s understanding that the 42 days in Chino would satisfy punitive instincts. There might be a fine, too, but he would be freed. Then, just before sentencing, Polanski heard that Rittenband was ready to break the agreement – because he feared public criticism of a verdict that seemed too lenient on Polanski. And so, fearing further imprisonment, Polanski broke bail and flew by British Airways to London in February 1978. He has never been back in the US.

Link.

Perhaps the thing I’ve found most fascinating about this case was the side note that most articles make, in which they state that Polanski’s wife and child were killed by the Charles Manson group in 1969. That probably reveals what I think about the case, but then, I suppose I’m not involved.

What Is Last Drink Bird Head?

That’s the catalyst editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer provided to over 80 writers in creating this unique anthology. The result? Last Drink Bird Head is a blues musician, a performance artist, a type of alcohol, a town in Texas, and even a song sung by girl scouts in Antarctica. Contributors include Peter Straub, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brian Evenson, Henry Kaiser, Gene Wolfe, Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Rikki Ducornet, Holly Phillips, Stephen R. Donaldson, K.J. Bishop, Michael Swanwick, Ellen Kushner, Daniel Abraham, Jay Lake, Liz Williams, Tanith Lee, Sarah Monette, Conrad Williams, and Marly Youmans. (See the ordering page for a full list of contributors.)

Pre-Ordering Makes You Feel Good Inside

Ministry of Whimsy, through Wyrm Publishing, has made the Last Drink Bird Head flash fiction anthology available for preorder at a $5 discount. All proceeds go to ProLiteracy, an organization that “champions the power of literacy to improve the lives of adults and their families, communities, and societies. We envision a world in which everyone can read, write, compute, and use technology to lead healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives.” Please note that if you plan to attend the World Fantasy Convention, you can preorder now and pick up your book at the Last Drink Bird Head Party (details on the party below). While we will be selling the book at the party, we cannot accept paypal or credit card orders there, so if you plan to pay using one of those methods, preordering is your best option. Just note that you want to receive the book at World Fantasy and we will have it there for you.

Link for my details and page samples.

Y’know, yesterday’s dust looked real cool, but today, when I realise it’s seeped in through the doors, that the car is covered in it, and there’s a whole lot of cleaning to do… I am less impressed.

Sydneysiders are being warned that a huge dust cloud will continue to affect the city through the day, after they woke to an eerie red dawn this morning.

The huge dust storm which has settled over the city was carried east overnight by gale-force winds of up to 100kph.

The dust reduced visibility across the city and large parts of the state, with callers to ABC Radio saying the scene looked like something from the end of the world.

The weather bureau says the severity of the dust cloud will ebb and flow during the day as strong winds continue to batter the state. But the dust is not expected to abate until winds weaken tonight.

Good morning, everyone.

Link.

I’d never heard of this before, but (even if no one sounds too confident about it existing) it sure is cool:

Nemesis is a hypothetical red dwarf star or brown dwarf, orbiting the Sun at a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU, somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. This star was originally postulated to exist as part of a hypothesis to explain a perceived cycle of mass extinctions in the geological record.

In 1984 paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski published a paper claiming that they had identified a statistical periodicity in extinction rates over the last 250 million years using various forms of time series analysis.[1] They focused on the extinction intensity of fossil families of marine vertebrates, invertebrates, and protozoans, identifying 12 extinction events over the time period in question. The average time interval between extinction events was determined as 26 million years. At the time, two of the identified extinction events (Cretaceous-Tertiary and Late Eocene) could be shown to coincide with large impact events. Although Raup and Sepkoski could not identify the cause of their supposed periodicity, they suggested that there might be a non-terrestrial connection. The challenge to propose a mechanism was quickly addressed by several teams of astronomers.

Two teams of astronomers, Whitmire and Jackson, and Davis, Hut, and Muller, independently published similar hypotheses to explain Raup and Sepkoski’s extinction periodicity in the same issue of the journal Nature.[2][3] This hypothesis proposes that the sun may have an as yet undetected companion star in a highly elliptical orbit that periodically disturbs comets in the Oort cloud, causing a large increase in the number of comets visiting the inner solar system with a consequential increase in impact events on Earth. This became known as the Nemesis (or, more colorfully, Death Star) hypothesis.

If it does exist, the exact nature of Nemesis is uncertain. Richard A. Muller suggests that the most likely object is a red dwarf with magnitude between 7 and 12,[4] while Daniel P. Whitmire and Albert A. Jackson argue for a brown dwarf. If a red dwarf, it would undoubtedly already exist in star catalogs, but its true nature would only be detectable by measuring its parallax; due to orbiting the Sun it would have a very low proper motion and would escape detection by proper motion surveys that have found stars like the 9th magnitude Barnard’s star.

The last major extinction event was about 5 million years ago, so Muller posits that Nemesis is likely 1-1.5 light years away at present, and even has ideas of what area of the sky it might be in (supported by Yarris, 1987), near Hydra, based on a hypothetical orbit derived from original apogees of a number of atypical long-period comets that describe an orbital arc meeting the specifications of Muller’s hypothesis.

The idea of periodic extinction rates is pretty neat, at least from No Chance It’ll Happen Tomorrow point of view (although, maybe 2012, if we’re all real lucky), and the whole idea of a giant, unproven, hidden star, only makes it slightly better. It’s a kind of mad science, the type of thing that results in bad, bad Hollywood films.

Link.

“His [Martin Pug] image of the Horsehead Nebula in Orion was awarded first prize in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009 from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The winning entry was taken over a period of 19 hours, over 14 nights, in a period of two months - of a subject 1,500 light years away.”

Out of idle curiosity, I watched the first two episodes of True Blood, the HBO vampire series set in Louisiana.

It’s actually not bad, I thought, though the episodes I saw drifted from being interesting to being cheesy, quite often in the same scene. Most of the latter was around Bill, the vampire who returns to where he has grown up, and Sookie, the poorly named, telepathic barmaid. Set two years after vampires have come out on national television, and can buy their blood legally and easily, Bill is the first vampire to come to the small town that Sookie lives in, and being unable to read his mind, she becomes fascinated with him. If not for the, frankly, laughable ways that Bill is introduced in the first scenes–queue dramatic music, brooding shots–the relationship between the two would be a lot easier to connect with earlier, but to the credit of Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, it does begin to work. It is another older man, younger woman relationship, however, and a part of me, while watching it, wondered what the interest was in having that as one of the staples for the vampire romance was? Or if it was some sort of commentary on society as a whole–you can be 200 years old, drink blood, and date eighteen year old girls if you’re a man, but if you’re a woman who does that, you’re nothing but some kind of ultra cougar, and thus evil as evil can be.

Well, perhaps not, but the line made me laugh.

For me, the series location, and the way it sits nicely with the concept of an exposed vampire culture, won me over quickly, though I am at a loss to explain how it works, other than I thought that the two sat nicely in the episodes. I’m not sure if that will hold up enough for an entire series, but I reckon I’m willing to give it a shot.