. . . noted Alternate History author S. M. Stirling?
Yes, it's true, at least according to a press release published last Thursday (March 24) by Conan.com. The rest of the press release is short on details, but does reveal that the novel - Conan: Blood of the Serpent - will serve as a prequel to the classic Conan adventure Red Nails - a personal favorite of mine due to its opening featuring Conan battling a stegosaurus.
It's not the worst place to slot a pastiche story - I'm not up on the ins and outs of the post-Howard novels, though I have read a few, so I couldn't say if this is going to conflict with anything written previously. I feel confident in predicting that Valeria of the Red Brotherhood will appear if not have a prominent role, since she appears in Red Nails and is well, a woman rather like Conan himself.
A few pertinent details about the novel can be gleaned from the Amazon page, including the October 18 release date, price and page-count. This last number, 496 pages, is slightly worrying - Conan as conceived by Robert E. Howard was the hero of short, tightly written novellas and short stories. Even advertised as a standalone, the page-count of a modern doorstopper stands in sharp contrast. That's not to say it can't still be the pulpy adventure Conan deserves, but much depends on the writer.
So, S. M. Stirling. Not the first name that comes to mind for Conan, but given the requirement for a certain level of name recognition I can think of several worse ones. I can also see the potential - as mentioned, he's primarily an alternate history author, but his most famous series takes place in the sort of sword-swinging milieus that resemble the Hyborian Age in reasonable facsimile. And at his best, his novels do echo the pulpy action that Robert E. Howard excelled at - I've even heard that Howard himself appears in a short story set in the world of Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers. At his worst - well, there's no need to dwell on potential disasters until we have more news. Sucess or failure, we'll know in the fall.
A big thank you to the DMR Books blog and their weekly DMRtian Chronicles posts for bringing this piece of news to my attention.
Whether from voluntary social distancing or official shelter-in-place orders, many of us are currently finding ourselves with more time on our hands than we're used to (others, of course, are in the medical field or grocery industry and working overtime to meet the current crisis, and I for one offer my sincerest thanks). Some of us, no doubt, are taking the opportunity to attack our tsundoku, but just in case anyone is in danger of running out of things to read, many authors are stepping up to fill the gap - at no charge.
The most prominent, at least in my Internet circles, is Corona-Chan: Spreading the Love, an anthology assembled in just a few days by David V. Stewart and many, many authors of the Pulp Revolution. I've talked about some of them on this blog before - Jon Mollison, for example, has donated his entire novel Adventure Constant, which I reviewed a few years ago and still recommend wholeheartedly. Other contributors include Justified's Jon Del Arroz and former and current Geek Gab hosts Brian Niemeier and Daddy Warpig. They are joined by a host of other independent authors, many of which have appeared in various issues of Cirsova magazine. And speaking of Geek Gab, their most recent episode has as guests contributors John Daker and Yakov Merkin:
If you prefer something a little more mainstream, gonzo techno-thriller writer Jeremy Robinson is offering a five-book package on his website, with a sixth offered for joining his mailing list. Now, I haven't read a great deal of Robinson, but what I have has kept me interested. Of the books in his bundle, I'm particularly interested in Flux, which sounds like it shares some premises with Eric Flint's Time Spike or 1632. The latter of these also happens to be free, from Amazon or Baen Books directly, although it's been so since long before the Wuhan Flu made its presence known. Come to think of it, the Baen Free Library is another great source in general for free things to read, including one of my perennial favorites - Larry Correia's MonsterHunter International.
To conclude, I'd like to thank all the authors mentioned above for their generosity in making their work available to the reading public during this crisis. Now let's do our part by keeping our hands clean and giving the coronavirus no chance to spread.
Most of the time, out there in the wilds of the Internetz, coming across something completely flabbergasting is a negative experience. About a week ago, however, I came across something that was definitely positive, if still flabbergasting.
Over at the Castalia House blog, one of their periodic posts highlighting recent releases in Indie and small-press adventure fiction caught my eye with a header mentioning the Man of Bronze, a pseudonym of the classic adventure pulp science-hero and superhero precursor Doc Savage. Now, on previous occasions Castalia House has highlighted the release of the new Doc Savage stories being produced by Will Murray and Altus Press, but this case turned out to be far more interesting.
Except for this one, which is replaced with the Dynamite comic adaptation cover.
In fact, somebody has released about a dozen of the original Doc Savage pulp stories as Kindle e-books, for about $3.50 a pop. The publisher is listed only as "Amazon Digital Services", and the text appears to be taken from the original 1930s - '40s magazines (complete with introductory illustrations), though the covers are the classic James Bama pieces from the Bantam paperback editions of the '60s - '70s.
With the sole exception of Doc's introductory adventure seen here, none of the specific titles are ones that I'm familiar with. On the strength of The Man of Bronze, however, I'm perfectly willing to recommend them to anyone interested in stories of adventure and heroics.
However, I'm still curious as to how exactly this cornucopia came to be. I'm pretty sure that Doc is not yet in the U.S. public domain (Steamboat Willie is older), yet besides the Castalia House piece I can't find any other references to them. They're not from Altus or the Radio Archives people, as far as I can tell, and I'm not sure who would own the copyright on them anyway. Conde Nast? The price seems way too reasonable to have been set by any major publisher. Maybe it's a stealth marketing campaign for the rumored upcoming Doc Savage movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
CAN YOU SMELL WHAT THE DOC IS COOKING?!
In any event, whether the rest of the 100+ Doc Savage stories are going to be hitting Amazon shortly, or whether these are actually pirated editions that will shortly be yanked, this is a great low-investment way to check out the original tales of a key figure in the history of pop culture.
One of my blogging goals for 2018 is to revisit and hopefully cap off some of the series of posts that have been left hanging in previous years. Of these, the most egregious is my planned re-read of the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, which spluttered out before I even got to the first novel. There are now fifteen novels in the series, along with the various short prose and comic-book stories, and while the release date for the sixteenth has not yet been announced, this summer will see the release of the second short story collection, Brief Cases. Whatever the real-life circumstances that have delayed Harry's adventures, at least we know Jim hasn't lost his touch in coming up with snappy titles.
But all of that is in the future - today, I'd like to highlight a neat resource for Dresden fans that has recently come online. This website is called Word of Jim, and is a compilation of forum postings, live interview responses, comments left on Amazon reviews, and other such ephemera made by Jim Butcher himself that drop hints at future books and explain or undercut various explanations for ongoing mysteries, or just wacky fan ideas. It's great fun to browse through, although I have yet to locate the place where he says that Ronald Reuel, the titular Summer Knight of Summer Knight, is not the same guy as J. R. R. Tolkien. However, another tidbit seems to support my theory that he is:
I’m sure it’s just one of those freaky coincidences. Tweed-clad old smiling ‘creator of worlds of imagination’ Ronald Reuel, Summer Knight of the Seelie Court does not look a thing like Tolkein.
Or, uh. Well he does, yeah.
On advice of legal council, I claim the right of the fifth amendment not to testify against myself…
On the other hand his statements that Justin DuMorne, Harry's guardian, was absolutely, no-questions, "D-E-D dead" (which I take as evidence that Harry's mentor is still alive*) are available, although I had a bit of trouble finding them since I was initially using "DuMorne" as my search term. Truth be told, some of the pages could use a bit of subdivision.
As we mostly-patiently wait for Brief Cases, as well as the next two novels, Peace Talks and Mirror, Mirror (which will be about exactly what you're thinking), I anticipate that Word of Jim will become a well-used resource by the Dresden fan community, and I thank the compiler "Serack the WoJ Guru" for his efforts.
*OK, here goes. Some years before gaining guardianship of the young Harry Dresden, Justin DuMorne was, by all accounts, an exemplary Warden (The Dresden Files' version of a wizardly police officer), who was involved in the takedown of a dangerous necromancer named Kemmler. Immediately after Kemmler's seemingly final demise, however, he absconded with a dangerous artifact (the yet-unnamed Bob the Skull) and, later, trained Harry as a wizard without any of the usual ethical instruction. Later Harry encounters a bunch of Kemmler's old hangers-on, including one with the charming nickname "Corpsetaker", who specializes in tactical body-swapping.
My theory, then, is that during that last battle Justin DuMorne was the victim of a similar body-swap initiated by Kemmler, and thus was killed in the necromancer's body while his own identity was stolen by Kemmler. Thus, DuMorne is, as Jim points out, as dead as Kemmler, in that they both half are and half aren't. Of course, if Jim never brings Kemmler back to face Harry again they might just as well be all dead, but at this point in Harry's career a legendary necromancer with the face of his hated guardian is just the sort of enemy he might encounter. And I have my suspicions about the mysterious figure called Cowl . . .
Happy 2018 to all my readers! As I do from time to time, I'd like to start this year of blogging off by highlighting a couple of crowd-funded projects I'm following.
The first is a card game called "The College Experience", put together by some folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Now, I have to admit a little bias, here - the artwork for this game is done by a very dear friend of mine, through whom I was able to get access to a play-testing copy. While not particularly complex, as a pickup game for a spare half-hour or so it does it's job well, especially in the endgame when the players are getting a little more desperate to fill one of the two victory conditions (either holding the "Diploma" card when the draw pile runs out or, in one of the games more elaborate jokes, getting all three of the other highest value cards at any one time. These three cards, of course, represent Good Grades, Enough Sleep, and your Social Life). With just a single day left in the campaign, the game has raised nearly 30% more than its original goal, which is a victory condition in itself.
Also crowd-funding this month - although it's really more of a subscription drive, the goal-meeting aspect is something of a formality, given the circumstances - are the next two issues of the excellent pulp fantasy and science fiction adventure magazine Cirsova. The magazine has apparently been doing quite well for itself, since the two-issue digital subscription is a whopping $1. With the back issues going on Amazon for about $3 each (for Kindle Readers, of course, the physical copies are more costly no matter which way you buy them), the magazine is practically being given away - and, if you still need convincing, most of the first three issues are literal giveaways at the magazine's website. But don't delay too long, the subscription is only open until the end of the month!
No matter if you're a reader, a gamer, or both, there's nothing quite like helping someone else fulfill a creative dream. Although the technology is only a few years old, it's amazing the kind of things that can be produced by crowd-funding. Both of the projects I've mentioned here have met and exceeded their initial goals, and I hope the successes of these projects inspire their creators for a long time to come.
Somehow I missed the initial announcement since he's already up to Chapter 2, but after what I can only assume was a rousing success with his pulpy gonzo space-opera web serial, science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright has announced his latest effort, Lost on the Last Continent:
And he wastes no time in getting to the stuff adventure literature is made of: UFO/space-plane chases, dogfights with dinosaurs, gunfights* with dinosaurs, treacherous landscapes, pithy inner dialogue - "He had two hands, after all. But only one Holland & Holland", - the works. And given that this is John C. Wright, I have no doubt that beneath all the spectacle will be a spiritual foundation both solid and thought-provoking.
Earlier this week the nominees for the 2017 Hugo Awards were announced, and while for the most part I can't really gin up much of a reaction I was quite gratified to see that Cirsova Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine has won a nomination (which, these days, is almost more prestigious than actually winning) for Best Semiprozine. Now, I've been an eager reader of Cirsova since it premiered on Kickstarter in January 2016, but have inexplicably failed to talk about it here.
And I'm not the only one who thinks so - shortly after the issue was published, Misha Burnett opened up the "Eldritch Earth" setting for other writers to use, and the just-released Issue #5 of Cirsova is reported to have several of the resulting stories. Alas, while I have downloaded the issue I haven't yet found time to read it, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.
Certainly the middle three issues have consistently met the expectations set by #1. While there's certainly an emphasis on science-fantasy stories of one sort or another, there's really something for everyone here. Just to give a quick idea, some of the other stories that impressed me the most included -
"Hoskins' War" by Brian K. Lowe, from Issue #2, a Weird American Revolution story.
"The Lion's Share" by J. D. Brink, from Issue #3, featuring a space pirate operating in the classic piratical mode.
"Blood and Bones: Caribbean 1645" by Jim Breyfogle, also from Issue #3, in which a young wizard pulls a fast one on both the colonial government and a pirate crew.
"The Lady of the Amorous City" by Edward Ermelac, from Issue #4, in which a not-yet-King Arthur fights a really weird knight.
And that's just a few of the dozens of stories that I found the most memorable - I haven't even mentioned the essays by Jeffro Johnson and others analyzing the older pulp stories, or the fact that Issue #3 was designated the "Pirate Issue", or hardly anything other than the surface of this fine magazine. And to top it all off, all the content from the first two issues is available free at the links above!
Even if, like me, you're a fan of science fiction or fantasy but don't consider yourself a short fiction reader, if anything would change your mind, Cirsova would. I really don't know of anything else (except maybe Skelos) like it.
Well, we've had some schedule slippage, which I apologize for, but I have a semi - decent excuse in that some personal life changes meant I was without ready Internet access for some of the last month. On the plus side, I was able to finish both Nine Princes in Amber and its first sequel, The Guns of Avalon. Before I get to my thoughts on them, however, I wanted to highlight a bit of (less than hot-off-the-presses) relevant news - The Chronicles of Amber appears to be in production as a television series.
As neat as it would be to see, the most interesting thing about the press release is the many comparisons to Game of Thrones, especially the ones that claim the Amber was an inspiration for Westros. Now, I have yet to read any of the books and have only seen a little of the show, but I can definitely understand where such comparisons come from, given all that happens in Amber in these relatively short books.
All the news that's fit to print, but maybe doesn't justify an entire post to itself.
First off, as we were just speaking of Atomic Robo, a month or two back the spinoff comic Real Science Adventures went live as a similarly presented webcomic - as of this posting it updates Tuesday-Thursday while Atomic Robo is Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Thus far the entirety of Volume 2 ("The Billion-Dollar Plot", one of Tesla's pre-Robo adventures) has been posted, along with the beginning of "Raid on Marauder Island", an all-new Kickstarter-funded prequel to The Flying She-Devils of the Pacific. No word yet on whether any stories from Volume 1 will be making an appearance, but I imagine it's only a matter of time until they're up, complete with covers imitating hilarious old men's magazines.
Also funding on Kickstarter is a new fantasy fiction magazine that I'm quite interested in. The chief draw of Skelos: The Journal of Weird Fiction and Dark Fantasy is the promise of a never-before-published Robert E. Howard fantasy piece. which would be quite a find after eight decades. As it turns out, however, "unpublished" doesn't mean quite the same thing as "unknown":
Even so, it still sounds like an interesting read, and at $3 for the first digital issue there's very little buy-in if it's all one's interested in.
Also in the pop-literary-criticism vein, the Sherlock Holmes Pastiche Characters website I mentioned last fall has added an index for Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers 2 to its list of Indexes to Classic Sherlockian Works (it's currently listed as a second Volume One, but it's definitely for Volume 2). This is a much-needed and sorely appreciated project, and I for one am very grateful that it exists.
Finally, the long-awaited followups to the Crossovers books are now available for preorder from the Meteor House Press website. Now called Crossovers Expanded, they look very comparable to the original volumes, and will be shipping sometime in the late summer. The new covers look particularly slick, and so of course Sean Levin has added them to the headers of his Crossover Universe blog:
But will they have indexes?
I know I'm greatly looking forward to these, they'll be great references for a couple projects I'm working on . . .
Thanks to a mention by Sean Levin over at the Crossover Universe blog, recently I have discovered a website that promises to be both entertaining and useful. It exists under the name Sherlock Holmes Pastiche Characters, although (as the introduction states) at this point it's really more an authoritative, if not quite exhaustive, guide to Sherlock Holmes pastiche works themselves. A remnant of the site's original purpose remains, however, in a list of "Historical & Fictional" characters - this last a great boon for the crossover researcher, especially in cases where more than one author has crossed Holmes over with the same character (perhaps not surprisingly, Count Dracula has his own page).
As if that wasn't useful enough, the site also hosts a number of specialized lists (the one recounting the non-canonical family members of Holmes and Watson is especially interesting), as well as the modestly named Indexes to Classic Sherlockian Works. This last may be the greatest page on the entire site, for two of the works that have been painstakingly indexed are none other than Crossovers I and Myths for the Modern Age. Just those two would be a find - taken as a whole, the site is a treasure trove comparable to the Agra treasure, and great thanks are due the hands that built it.
In some stunning news from Tesladyne Island earlier this week, the writers of the Atomic Robo comic announced that as of 2015, the comic will be transitioning from a traditional by-the-issue publishing model to a three-times-a-week webcomic. This means, among other things, that the entire 54-issue run of the comic thus far will be free to read - eventually, their plan is to release one issue a week until they catch up, starting today - and then continuing with the new stuff. Which, cleverly, they now have over a year to come up with, though as today was the expected release date for the Volume 9 trade it probably would have been about that long anyway.
Anyway, it looks like it's going to be an interesting year, to say the least, for Atomic Robo fans as things roll out. But there are still unanswered questions - such as, how long will the "Free Comics" page remain in its current form? Will the new paradigm work as well as the creators hope it will? Will it include the Real Science Adventures spin-off? Will Dr. Dinosaur ever top his firsttwo appearances?
A month or so ago, it was announced that Win Scott Eckert, author of the Crossover Universe Timeline books I was so enthusiasticabout a couple years back, is handing off that project to one Sean Levin, who will be producing a third and fourth volume of that work.
As if that wasn't enough, yesterday the two of them - well, mostly Levin - began a new blog to chronicle the further development of the Crossover Universe. This quite exciting, and I look forward to following the progress of this new project.
It's rather hard to believe, but today is the tenth anniversary of the release of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film, based on the Alan Moore comic of the same name. I never got a chance to see it in the theater, unfortunately (though I really wanted to), but once I acquired a DVD copy it quickly became one of my favorite movies, right up there with the Back to the Future and Indiana Jones films.
Sadly, the world in general does not appear to share my enthusiasm. I tend to attribute this to rampant Alan Moore fandom - he famously doesn't get on well with adaptations of his work, and LXG admittedly took rather a few more liberties than an adaptation can typically support.
But in this case, however, I think the changes work quite well. Certainly they don't distract from making the movie enjoyable to watch, in itself, and one of the chief delights of cameo- and reference-spotting remain intact.
Indeed, I credit The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen with helping to form my current interest in crossovers and shared universes, most notably the Wold Newton Universe (to which the League is tangentially related).
Anyway. I've always enjoyed the movie, and was quite disappointed a few years later when LXG2: War of the Worlds failed to materialize. Almost unbelievably, it seems that the concept might still have a chance - there are some early reports that Fox is developing the League as a television show. Details at this time are sketchy - not even to determine whether this is a reboot or a continuation of the film continuity - but I'm hopeful that whatever comes from he project will be at least as enjoyable as the movie is to me.
So yes, this is old news, but The Avengers is amazing. It takes everything that was good about the previous half-dozen Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, and concentrates it down into two-and-a-half hours of what may be the best superhero movie to date.
If I had to pick one word to sum up the film, I think I would choose balanced. There are several ways that this is relevant - in terms of spectacle vs. plot, for example, the movie manages to excel at the former without it being (as is too often the case) at the expense of the latter. Also applicable is the way the film balanced the hitherto unprecedented - so far as I'm aware - team-up of heroes who previously carried four individual franchises, a feat made even more extraordinary by its success. Each one got some time in the spotlight, simultaneously continuing their stories from previous outings and emerging ready to slip back into solo-dom with minimal disruption.
Iron Man, having had around 100% more prior movie time than almost any of his team-mates, seemed to me to be the most static in terms of development, though his introduction would certainly seem to indicate his relationship with Pepper has developed from what I remember. There was also that nifty armor upgrade, which makes a nice midpoint between the backpack-armor we saw in Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3's rumored nano-tech-armor. Finally, he did have a bit of a character arc in his response to Captain America's remarks about sacrifice, and I really liked the way he insisted on interacting with Dr. Banner as a fellow scientist rather than a potential Hulk.
Then again, Hulkbuster!
Speaking of the Hulk, in some ways he had the most to overcome, with his multiple actors and somewhat uneven prior films. In a lot of ways, however, he was the breakout star of the film - certainly he was responsible for many of the film's most popular moments (such as the punching the first giant robot dragon-fish, and of course his "Puny god" line). Would these moments be enough to carry a solo film? I'm sure we'll find out eventually, but in the meantime I'm looking forward to Hulk and/or Dr. Banner making cameos in his team-mates' movies. I'd like to think, giving him going off with Tony at the end of Avengers, that Iron Man III is the most likely candidate for this, but given the trailers and early reactions to III so far I'm not holding my breath.
Other solo sequels are sounding equally good. Despite the fact that Thor was not really my favorite of the "Phase One" Marvel films, I'm very excited about the direction that the sequel is taking. Of course, part of this is because I somewhat jokingly predicted this back when the first film came out, but hey - Space Elves are cool anytime. Thor's appearance in The Avengers itself was not quite that exciting, unfortunately - his biggest roles, it seemed, were facilitating hero-on-hero brawls and contributing secondary characters, namely Loki and Dr. Selvig. Not that either of those is unimportant, but they just didn't have quite the same focus as some of the other members. It didn't help that Thor was the one who delivered what I thought was the worst line in the movie - though funny, "He's adopted" was a rather out-of-character statement, in more ways than one.
Rounding out the "Big Four" of the team is Captain America whom, more than the others, ended his last solo film on a bit of a cliffhanger. He didn't get a whole lot of a chance to catch his breath and adjust to the 21st century, either, though there are a few signs that such an adjustment is taking place - note his mention of feeling at home on the Helicarrier. More than adjusting to the times, though, we saw Cap adjusting to being part of a different team than he was used to. This will be important later, as 2014's scheduled film Captain America: The Winter Soldier sounds like it will feature not only the titular Solider (no spoilers, but that title's a giveaway for something we all knew would happen), but also Black Widow and a new hero, the Falcon. How exactly this will shake out remains to be seen, but it can't be harder than Cap learning to work with Tony and Thor (the latter of whom, incidentally, prompted Cap to utter my absolute favorite line in the whole film: "There's only one God, Ma'am, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that").
For all the appropriateness of Black Widow appearing in Winter Solider, it does seem a shame that it probably means she won't be getting her own movie. Both she and Hawkeye, in fact, managed the jump from "secondary character" to "ensemble lead" quite well, especially considering the latter's post-production introduction into Thor. Spending half the film mind-controlled was perhaps a bit of a heavy-handed way to generate audience sympathy for a relative unknown, but revealing and drawing on a shared past with Natasha made his integration surprisingly easy. And of course the Widow herself had a great second appearance, being an effective Avenger even with a slightly out-of-genre skillset.
Finally, Agent Coulson. From the moment that Joss Whedon was revealed as the film's director, speculation ran rampant that Phil "First Name Is Agent" Coulson wouldn't make it through the film. It was such an obvious ploy that when it actually happened, I was actually a little surprised. That didn't make it any less meaningful, of course, either to the audience or the other characters - it helped that Phil had some great character-building scenes before getting killed, especially the ones opposite Captain America.
Happily, in true comic-book fashion it appears that the Son of Coul has cheated death (exact method unknown, though I lean towards the "Nick Fury exaggerated the extent of his injuries to give the team something to Avenge" theory) and will be taking the lead in a Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D:
Not quite the SHIELD movie I was hoping for, but it has promise. I'm especially intrigued by the idea of the apparently anti-SHIELD organization The Rising Tide. Other details are sketchy at the moment but I'm definitely willing to give this show a try.
In a way, The Avengers was really a transition point not only in the development of the MCU, but the superhero-film industry generally. The effects of showing that such an elaborate project could not only work, but work well, remain to be seen - but in the meanwhile, bring on Phase II!
EDIT: Typically, just a few hours after I posted this another, much longer promo for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D went up. My interest is not reduced:
About a month ago, news broke that the latest novel in the Dresden Files series, Cold Days, will be released on November 27th. Also revealed were the cover design and descriptive blurb:
HARRY DRESDEN LIVES!!!
After being murdered by a mystery assailant, navigating his way through the realm between life and death, and being brought back to the mortal world, Harry realizes that maybe death wasn’t all that bad. Because he is no longer Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard.
He is now Harry Dresden, Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. After Harry had no choice but to swear his fealty, Mab wasn’t about to let something as petty as death steal away the prize she had sought for so long. And now, her word is his command, no matter what she wants him to do, no matter where she wants him to go, and no matter who she wants him to kill.
Guess which Mab wants first?
Of course, it won’t be an ordinary, everyday assassination. Mab wants her newest minion to pull off the impossible: kill an immortal. No problem there, right? And to make matters worse, there exists a growing threat to an unfathomable source of magic that could land Harry in the sort of trouble that will make death look like a holiday.
Beset by enemies new and old, Harry must gather his friends and allies, prevent the annihilation of countless innocents, and find a way out of his eternal subservience before his newfound powers claim the only thing he has left to call his own . . .
His soul.
Well, that sounds cool1. Lots of questions are raised by this, such as who the immortal Harry's supposed to kill is, and whether they're someone, or even a type of someone, we've met before. And it's very interesting that the blurb is already talking about Harry getting out of being the Winter Knight - I would have expected that arc to stick around for another few books, or maybe even until the end of the series.
That cover art is pretty interesting, too - now, in the past the cover art has never tracked too closely to the plot of the novel (it's never been inaccurate, save for that hat, mind you, but trying to divine plot details from the art has usually2 proven futile), but for this one we have a fairly major shift in that Harry's carrying a rifle instead of his staff. So that could indicate that Harry's going to be switching up and/or expanding his tactical repertoire, especially if this immortal person is someone he can't get out of killing.
Anyway, I'm quite excited about this news - hopefully the preview chapters will be up sooner rather than later (rumor is the first to are in the paperback of Ghost Story - I'll have to see if I can scrounge one of those up).
In the meantime, I've been thinking for a while of giving the whole series a re-read, and this seems like the proverbial opportune moment. Hopefully it'll also make for some good blogging!
So, just in case there's anyone left on the Internet who hasn't heard the news, we have now seen a teaser trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:
I have to say, I'm pretty impressed, and my excitement for the movie has been upped by several levels.
There are few things more irritating in the pop-cultural world than a bad adaptation of a beloved work. One early warning sign is often that a period work has been moved to the modern day - this can signal that the producers either don't know much about the work beyond what can be gleaned from the title, or are attempting to make it more "relevant". Now, while a modernized work isn't always bad (V for Vendetta was originally set in the 1990's, after all), it does generate controversy amongst fans of the original work (not everybody liked V for Vendetta, and amongst those that didn't the most common reason seems to be that it wasn't enough like the comic).
Given all this, it is understandable why I was skeptical about Sherlock, a recent BBC production that brings Sherlock Holmes to modern London. However, the responses from viewers across the pond were mostly positive, so a few weeks ago when the first of three episodes season aired on PBS, I made sure to check it out.
That first episode, "A Study In Pink", turned out to be an excellent retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holes story, with just enough twists and reversals to make it both fresh and familiar to fans of the original. And not just in the actual mystery, either - from Sherlock's first complaint that it's "impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days" (not to mention his "three-patch" solution), it's clear that this Holmes is going to both keep everything that made the original unique, while not glossing over the things about the modern world that Holmes would have to adapt to.
One particularly interesting example of this from the first episode occurs when Sherlock, gleefully rushing out of 221B to the scene of another grisly crime, calls out to Dr. Watson that "The game . . . is on!" Of course, fans of the original Holmes would be expecting him to say, "The game's afoot!", but in a universe where there was no Sherlock Holmes until the late 20th century, there would be little reason for that phrase to stick in the public consciousness. Replacing it with "The game is on!" is not only a nice little reminder of the paradox involved in Holmes & Watson's temporal displacement, but another clever way to modernize the character.
The rest of the season, while not following any particular Holmes cases as closely as the pilot, do measure up to the high bar set by the pilot. The middle one, "The Blind Banker", is the least of the three, but I attribute this to it's being the only episode in the season that isn't a season premiere or finale. "The Great Game", that finale, introduces Sherlock's great nemesis, "Jim" Moriarty. The show plays up Moriarty's being Sherlock's opposite (a consulting criminal as opposed to a consulting detective) at the expense of what we knew of him from the stories (although, there's nothing to say that Colonel Moran wasn't at the other end of one of those laser sights . . . ), he was still very well done.
Of course, then the season ended with one of the worse cliffhangers since Captain Picard got assimilated by the Borg, but I understand that a second season will be coming . . . sometime next year. Sigh.
One last, tangential note. Apparently, Dr. Watson - or more accurately, his actor Martin Freeman - has been cast as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's long-awaited film version of "the Hobbit". Hmm - Bilbo, Watson, Arthur Dent - does anyone else notice a theme here?
As many of you are likely already aware, this week was the San Diego Comic Con, which, if not the biggest annual geek get-together in the world, is certainly in the running. For obvious reasons, many film studios and other companies take advantage of this concentration of nerdery to make announcements about upcoming projects, several of which I am quite excited about:
First off, apparently there was footage on display from next summer's sci-fi Western movie, an adaptation of Cowboys and Aliens. Now, a movie about an alien invasion of the Wild West would be amazing enough, but the two main stars? Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. That pretty much sells it for me. Although the footage itself hasn't leaked onto the 'net yet, we do have this single image of Craig's alien-tech-wielding cowboy:
As if that wasn't enough, it also appears that the director of Cowboys and Aliens is none other than Iron Man franchise director Jon Favreau. In fact, it's rumored that Robert Downey Jr. was slated for Craig's role, before scheduling conflicts forced him to bow out. Which brings us to our next bit of news:
Joss Whedon confirmed as "Avengers" Director (also via io9)
It's been rumored for a while now, but this week was the official announcement. Now, I haven't seen all of the stuff Whedon's famous for, but for all the jokes about The Avengers getting canceled halfway through or suddenly having a petite female fighter character, he's got a pretty good reputation. And the stuff I have seen - mostly Firefly and Dr. Horrible - I've liked, so this is a tentative thumbs-up. Part of me does wonder, though, who we might see as a cameo (like Bruce Campbell does in the Sam Raimi Spiderman films) - Nathan Fillion? Summer Glau? I'll make a Bingo card. And, hey, speaking of Bruce Campbell . . .
Is "Pirates of the Caribbean" the Next LEGO License? (via FBTB)
Given the sudden cancellation of the popular 2009 Pirates line, TLC's acquisition of a general Disney license, the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides , and this Jack Sparrow minifig in TLC's Comic-Con display . . . I'd say yes. Whether it'll be a good thing remains to be seen, but despite some knee-jerk criticism (the flesh-tone battle is over, people), I'm cautiously optimistic. And this means Stranger Tides is coming next summer, too!
OK, technically this has nothing to do with Comic-Con (save a tangential relationship involving the wearing of sci-fi character costumes), but this one was too amusing to pass up.
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