My friend Pete Young's pictures in various categories at Flickr. Various subjects, including SF author's with pending Big Works A'Coming.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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NASA's PlanetQuest website allows you to keep track of the discovery of exoplanets. Need a new setting for that epic space opera you are writing during November's novel in one month project?

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Omnibus review can now be found here.

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The John Grimes tales of A. Bertram Chandler.

Omnibus review can now be found here.

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Illusion TV interviews Syd Mead, an artist that gave much of the "look" to films such as 2010: Odyssey Two, Blade Runner and more. With the ultimate fanboy edition of Blade Runner coming later this year and a documentary on his work in release, maybe we'll see a comprehensive print edition of his work soon?

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Dark Roasted Blend, a great collection of space art from Russian, America and more!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just like to point out that Baen Books is offering a whole pile of fine works of science fiction, fantasy and more in their Free Library. Just in case you think Amazon has invented the world of electronic books. (And while you're at it, surf past the media hype and also look at Project Gutenberg, Memoware, Manybooks and other folks who have been on the frontier far longer than the Amazon effort. Heck, I recall downloading Project Gutenberg works for my Apple Newton!)

(There's no reason, by the way, to spend several hundred dollars on a poorly designed, hard to hold comfortably, overpriced, DRM-crippled reader. Some smart shopping in second-hand outlets can get you a perfectly capable laptop, eBook reader or PDA for far less.) more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:27 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A review of a direct-to-DVD film that sounds like it has a lot of promise. I'm seeing echoes of Clifford D. Simak's Grotto of the Dancing Deer as well as stuff by Lester del Rey and others here. The screenplay author, Jerome Bixby, was no slouch, either.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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"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)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 10:35 AM | No Comments | 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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(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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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!

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

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Via Zoe Brain, what not to do when you write science fiction.

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