"Those pygmy Grays, though, the ones who keep trying to lasso you with piano wire whenever you do ketamine? Those little guys are bad mojo."

(William Gibson)

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A veteran—whether active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reserve—is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to The United States of America, for an amount of up to and including my life. That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

(Author Unknown)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"No space traveling man says aught is impossible."

(Andre Norton)

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"Oooh, Pizza! What group is this again?"

"Campus Crusade for Cthulu!"

"Oh, crap!."

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What would be a good method for building a base on the Moon or Mars? Most concepts involve rigid structures. However, as Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis I has proved (using technology originally developed by NASA), inflatables might be the answer. Here's a concept for such a lunar base, soon to undergo testing in some harsh Earth environments.

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ItÂ’s been a long time since IÂ’ve seen any fighting. I canÂ’t remember my last shootout: itÂ’s been months. The nightmare is ending. Al Qaeda is being crushed. The Sunni tribes are awakening all across Iraq and foreswearing violence for negotiation. Many of the Shia are ready to stop the fighting that undermines their ability to forge and manage a new government. This is a complex and still delicate denouement, and the war may not be over yet. But the Muslims are saying itÂ’s time to come home. And the Christians are saying itÂ’s time to come home. They are weary, and there is much work to be done.

Bet you won't be reading this story in the MSM anytime soon. Or hearing it from the House or Senate.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Probably the only thing about HDTV that has gotten me interested in the technology: stunning images of our Moon and planet taken by Japan's Kaguya orbiter!

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Is the Sloan Great Wall the largest "structure" known in the universe? There's a SF novel in here somewhere...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So my wife got into a very minor fender bender this past week. No damage to our fender (front), maybe a scratch to the other fender (rear). She exchanged license and insurance information with the other driver and they both moved on. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:25 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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(Reposted from 2005 and updated for 2007.)

I was rummaging through a list that I maintain of books that are yet to be published. I was amazed at the number of titles that we may never see. Whatever happened to... more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via the oh-so-fashionably Italian Virginia Postrel:

Your Inner European is Dutch!

Open minded and tolerant. You're up for just about anything.

Posted by: JohnL at 02:45 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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A day that will live in infamy? Why remake such a wonderful film? Why not do something new? (Yes, I know I've said it before. I've heard the standard reasons. But Hollow-wood wonders why they are losing an audience?)

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The mail brought me The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith. I've read fragments of Smith's poetry, but nothing quite as complete as this.

The book is also of interest as it has a couple of examples of Smith's artwork. In addition to fiction and poetry, he also did sketches, paintings and sculpture. Some of his work can be seen at The Eldritch Dark. This got me to thinking about other art associated with fantasy writing.

The style reminded me of Sidney Sime. Sime was an artist that did a lot of stuff for Lord Dunsany, a man who inspired H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and others. Unfortunately, before the internet, I never was able to see much of his stuff. He is mentioned often in reprints, even in Lovecraft's own tales (see Pickman's Model, for example), but until I got a Penguin edition of Dunsany's works, I never had a Dunsany book with his favorite artist! Here's a site that has several galleries of his work.

Another favorite "pulp artist" is Virgil Finlay. He did a lot of work for the stories of A. Merritt, H.P. Lovecraft and others. Some samples of his work can be found here. A friend of mine passed on the following quote by Algis Budrys regarding Finlay's amazing works:

To imagine Virgil Finlay painstakingly stippling a two-page illustrations, knowing in advance that it would be manhandled by the Street & Smith pressmen and printed on paper roughly equivalent in quality to Scott Towels, is to picture a man as his own tormentor.

Finally, there was Hannes Bok. Also associated with Merritt, to the point of co-writing some works (fragments, unfinished by Merritt at the time of his death) and producing a few works of fiction on his one with a strong Merritt-esque flavor. Alas, no site devoted to his works, but this Wikipedia entry has some samples.

The appreciation of certain authors is enhanced by works of art that are associated with them!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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...does anybody hear it?

Checking the news of late, you'd think the only labor action that has happened in the country is the current screenwriter's strike in Hollow-wood. They want a bigger slice of the pie, all well and good, but a lot of this amuses me. There is a fair bit of chest-beating over various shows. Will Heroes take a fall? Will we see Battlestar Galactica's final season? How about 24? Will The People, having been subjected to endless amounts of Reality Television desert their sets for other forms of entertainment?

I don't know about you, folks, but for me the train left that station a long time ago. Three years ago I averaged—maybe—four hours of television a week. Two years ago, it dropped. For the past year...about one hour of television. Period.

I'd rather read. I do watch shows, but more often than not, on a massively time-shifted sense of things (waiting for the DVD set for a season to come out and then watching when it suits me). I've spent more time online than in front of the television set (as you may have noticed from all the postings here!). Shows that I'm most interested in get shuffled, cancelled or just never come to pass.

And, did I mention that I'd rather read?

As television has become more and more fractured, either chasing smaller and smaller sub-sets of the audience or chasing diminishing returns on what was the latest hot trend...it has captured less and less of my interest. Seeing the ratings for shows before this strike, I can't be the only one. Are more people playing Halo than watching Heroes?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:42 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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As you'll see from this reposted 2005 entry, David Gerrold has been on a quest for many years to get his Starwolf tales onto the little screen...or the big screen (scroll down to "The Long March of Star Wolf"). All to nought, alas.

Looking at Gerrold's website, I noticed an entry from August and an entry from September of this year that talks about a new effort to bring the tales to the screen.

Meanwhile, there are other things percolating. A few years ago, we tried very hard to get The Star Wolf off the ground as a TV series. Couldn't do it. Too much competition from the 800 lb. gorilla. But ... now, the market has changed and we're back in business, only this time developing The Star Wolf as a movie. Some very good people are involved and it's possible that this time next year, we'll be in production. (August 11, 2007)

And while, it's a little premature to talk about the details of this, I do want to acknowledge that the successful shoot of "Blood And Fire" is the reason for the rekindled interest in the possibility of turning "The Star Wolf" into a movie or TV series. There's nothing to report yet, except that gathering together and updating all the presentation documents is one more thing on my plate. (Unfortunately "agent.exe" will not update my presentation files.) (September 15, 2007)

The reason I bring this up...is a sinking feeling that the project will be scuttled...again. As you are no doubt aware (and I'll have another posting on the subject), screenwriters are out on strike. Various productions are going on hiatus, no doubt more will be cancelled. It'll be a dang shame if this is one of them—again!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Phil Harrington, author of several excellent books for amateur astronomers, has released his equally excellent Touring the Universe Through Binoculars Atlas as freeware.

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It's amazing the stories that the mainstream media are missing...or ignoring.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Issue #244 for your reading pleasure.

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Here's what I've read since my last report:

Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert.

The Plot Against America, Philip Roth. This is the first one of Roth's books that I've read. I don't usually seek out bestsellers or "literary" authors, but my prior alt-history reading habits led Amazon to recommend it for me. I liked it enough that I now intend to check out some of Roth's other books. If you're a fan, are there any that you would recommend?

The current issues of Architectural Digest, Dwell, and National Geographic.

In progress:

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett. Dennett is a wonderful author, and I've recently discovered that he is on the advisory board of The Center For Naturalism.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens.

Still on deck:

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.

About seven months' worth of Analog magazine.

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