thegeekcurmudgeon
The Geek Curmudgeon
Where opinionated geek Rick Klaw expresses his views
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From the trenches: Other Worlds 2019
Art by Lauren Kitching
As always, Austin’s own Other Worlds delivered a fantastic collection of top notch films. Of the 20 or so selections for this years festival, I managed to see 10 of them plus the live recording of the podcast Science Vs Fiction.
Here’s my quick recap.
Thursday
Dreamscape (35TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING)
LAUNCH FILM
The flawed, pioneering film, a staple of late 80s/early 90s cable, has aged well despite some terrible acting by pretty much everyone not named Sydow or Plummer.
Friday
Afterlife
The powerful, intelligent Dutch film Afterlife ponders the choices we make and the very perceptions of what we know to be true, while confirming that parents often make the most unreliable narrators of all. Sanaa Giwa delivers a virtuoso performance as the tortured Sam.
Afterlife also presages a common thread throughout the festival: the usage of time travel tropes.
Time After Time (40TH ANNIVER. SCREENING)
Another staple of 80s cable, Time After Time details the first ever fictional meeting of H. G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. The tense, intelligent film, deservedly so, is often lauded as on the true classics of time travel cinema. Malcom McDowell in one of his few heroic roles, David Warner at his creepiest best, and Mary Steenburgen in only her second screen appearance, ground the film with their excellent performances. Perhaps the only flaw lies in neophyte Nicholas Meyer’s direction, which at times feels like TV movie-of-the-week. Thankfully, his near perfect script overcomes any of the firs time director’s shortcomings.
The film was screened to honor Meyer, who was in attendance, with the Defender of the Universe Award. In the q&a following the film, Meyer revealed that Jenz-Luc Goddard’s legendary Alphaville served as an inspiration and scenes that were cut from the original screenplay showed up in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Lake Michigan Monster
A big disappointment, the ludicrous Lake Michigan Monster has some genuinely funny moments but as is often the problem with movies of this ilk, it goes on too long and the jokes get tiresome.
I actually walked out on this one, which I very rarely do.
Saturday
I Am Human
I Am Human has everything an excellent documentary should: a fascinating subject shown in an intelligent and respectable manner. Directors Taryn Southern and Elena Gaby share the origins of the world’s first “cyborgs.” We become immersed within three people whose lives have been irrevocably altered by brain implants. The hopeful movie serves as a nice contrast to our increasingly bleak dyspotic reality.
LIVE FROM OTHER WORLDS FILM FEST – IT’S “SCIENCE VS FICTION”
The live taping of the Science Vs Fiction podcast featured Time After Time and a discussion on time travel tropes. Film critic Scott Weinberg and Steven DeGennaro, a doctor of astrophysics, entertained and informed with film and physics tidbits. Both men enjoyed the movie but had some serious questions about the time travel elements. The interaction with the audience primarily dealt with naming time travel movies and various opinions.
Dead Dicks
One of the best films of the festival, Dead Dicks is a creative, top notch sci-horror hybrid filled with existential dread, humor, and a fascinating brother-sister dynamic. This superior Cronebergesque film offers an excellent meditation on depression. Highly recommended!
The Ascent
Any positive thoughts of the Saturday festival garnered by the first two films were quickly squashed by the terrible The Ascent. This soulless film breaks one of the central tenants of action filmmaking, it is dull. Littered with stereotypes and predictability, the action scenes all have the feel of a poorly executed video game, with excessive use of first person viewpoints and lack of clarity as to what exactly is going on. The ascent of the title itself delivers little originality either. Those you expect to die, do and those who you don’t, survive. The core “war is hell” message is clumsily and amateurishly delivered. Many, many films have delivered similar storylines with far superior results. Easily the worst film of the festival.
Volition
Thankfully, the next flick was vastly superior. Initially a noir about a man afflicted with clairvoyance, Volition morphs into a bug nutty time travel thriller. While things get away from director and co-screenwriter Tony Dean Smith, the viewer won’t care as the picture delivers the goods with some excellent and creative scenes. The flaws will largely go unnoticed until the final credits roll. A great way to end my Saturday.
Sunday
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
One of the most underrated of all Trek films delivered again. Preceded and followed by a lengthy discussion with Nicholas Meyer.
After the film, Meyer’s signed copies of his new Sherlock Holmes book The Adventure of The Peculiar Protocols.
After We Leave
Another disappointment, the meandering and seemingly pointless After We Leave joined The Ascent as one of the worst films of the weekend. The predictable movie was unmemorable.
As I was very tired, I almost decided to call it quits following After We Leave, but very glad I decided to return for a last film.
The Final Land
The German filmmaker Marcel Barion, in his first film, crafts an outstanding story, full of wonder and paranoia. Taking place primarily within the confines of a tiny old spaceship, conflicts erupt as two disparate men struggle to find a new home. The Final Land is a brilliant atmospheric film that incorporates the best of elements of science fiction, both hard and soft. Barion achieves magnificent, mindblowing vistas from outside the ship using only traditional effects. With nary a dull moment and an ideal science fiction ending, The Final Land comes highly recommended!
That’s wrap on another excellent Other Worlds festival.
Only about 350 days until the next one. Can’t wait!
From the trenches: Other Worlds 2019 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon
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The Other Worlds 2019 preview Day 4
Art by Lauren Kitching
Returning for a sixth exciting year, Other Worlds, one of the premier SciFi Film Festivals in the US, features some of the best and unheralded genre films. Beginning on Thursday December 5 at Austin’s Galaxy Highland 10, the four day event includes over 20 feature films, a slew of shorts, a screenwriting workshop, and the Mary Shelley Award. This year also features the return of Under Worlds, which brings the best of indie to Austin.
Not terribly surprising to anyone who regularly follows my writings, I’ll be there.
Here’s what to expect at Other Worlds 2019.
11:15AM AROUND THE SUN (Texas Premiere)
Oliver Krimpas | UK | 78 min
Writer: Jonathan Kiefer
Cast: Cara Theobold, Gethin Anthony
A film location finder is shown around a repossessed, crumbling French château. Over the course of the afternoon, he slowly falls for both the place and the owner’s flirtatious representative, as she recounts the story of a famous book set there. But is their present-day connection for real, or just a projection of the book’s 17th Century characters? As the scene plays over in different variations, the two almost lovers orbit around each other like a binary star system, forever circling but never quite reaching each other.
vimeo
11:45AM SciFi Shorts 1: Love in the Time of Robots
12PM The Old Dark House
(World Premiere OF NEW SCORE)
James Whale | USA | 73 min | 1932
Writer: J.B. Priestley (from the novel by) (as J.B. Priestly), Benn W. Levy (screenplay)
Cast: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart
A precursor to the genre of renegade young people getting stranded among older (and far more degenerate) adults in a remote location, THE OLD DARK HOUSE is a “pre-code” film and features some language and sexually suggestive material that would be banned from American screens until the 1960s. Boundaries will be crossed, reality will fail, and mayhem will ensue. The family our kids come across, this time, can also be seen as the grandparents of THE ADAMS FAMILY. THE OLD DARK HOUSE, is FRANKENSTEIN director, James Whale’s follow up horror film that also stars the previously unknown Boris Karloff and is a precursor to their final film together, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Like many films of the day, it was released with a “library score,” music not specifically composed for the title. Award-winning composer Jay Woelfel has composed a brand new 52-minute music score, the first ever done for the film.
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1:45PM Defender of the Universe conversation with Nicholas Meyer followed by a screening of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Nicholas Meyer | USA | 110 min | 1991
Writer: Leonard Nimoy and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal (story), Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn (script), Gene Roddenberry (creator)
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Jame Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei
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2:15PM The Ascent
Tom Paton | UK | 100 min
Writer: Tom Paton
Cast: Rachel Warren, Simon Meacock, Bentley Kalu
Special ops squad “Hell’s Bastards” are sent to infiltrate a civil war to retrieve intel. The unit soon find themselves trapped on a never-ending stairwell forced to climb or die. To survive, they must revisit their past sins if they ever want to get off.
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2:15PM SciFi Shorts 2: Crossing Over to the Future
4:30PM Nicholas Meyer signing The Adventure of The Peculiar Protocols
In Collaboration with Book People and Open to the Public
With the international bestseller The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer brought to light a previously unpublished case of Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Dr. John H. Watson. Now Meyer returns with a shocking discovery—an unknown case drawn from a recently unearthed Watson journal. After his Defender of the Universe screening on Sunday, Meyer will sign copies of his new book, which we will have on sale courtesy of Book People. Grab your own copy of the book The Wall Street journal calls “A gem … delightful reading for everyone.”
5PM Alien Addiction
Shae Sterling | New Zealand | 96 min
Writer: Shae Sterling, Melanie Price and Ricky Silvester
Cast: Jimi Jackson, Thomas Sainsbury, Harry Summerfield, Jojo Waaka, Ayham Ghalayini
Riko lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere (well, Waikato, New Zealand). Life is pretty normal, that is until two aliens crash-land near his house. Fortunately for Riko, the aliens like to get high and chill as much as he does and they develop an intergalactic friendship of epic proportions, as well as a strange relationship to human feces. However, unknown to the happy go-lucky visitors, alientologist Peter Mackintosh is hot on their trail and plans to capture them and reveal them to the world.
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5:05PM After We Leave (North American Premiere)
Aleem Hossain | USA | 82 min
Writer: Aleem Hossain
Cast: Brian Silverman, Clay Wilcox, Anita Leman Torres, Anslem Richardson
Jack returns to a bleak Los Angeles after abandoning his wife six years ago. There’s only one way to escape this high crime, dystopian world – getting a visa to an off-world colony, but it’s a couples’ visa and Jack needs his wife to use it. Jack dives back into the world of crime that he left behind in search of his wife and a way off the planet. Is Jack back because he wants to make things right or because he needs his wife to use this “lottery ticket” to a better life?
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5:10PM Long Shorts: Lingering Visions
7:40PM A Good Woman Is Hard To Find (Texas Premiere)
Abner Pastoll | UK/Belgium/Ireland | 113 min
Writer: Ronan Blaney
Cast: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson
Recently widowed mother of two, Sarah, is desperate to know who murdered her husband in front of her young son, rendering him mute. Coerced into helping a low-life drug dealer stash narcotics stolen from the local Mr. Big, she’s forced into taking drastic action to protect her children, evolving from downtrodden submissive to take-charge vigilante.
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7:40PM The Final Land
Marcel Barion | Germany | 113 min
Writer: Marcel Barion
Cast: Milan Pešl, Torben Föllmer
A runaway convict and his pursuer escape a prison planet in an old spaceship in search of a new home. As they search for a place to go, their separate paths to this moment become a point ofconflict, as well as the strange history of this derelict ship that they now drive. Then a strange signal gives them hope of a new future. In the grand tradition of 2001 and SOLARIS, THE FINAL LAND plays off the mystery of vastness of space and our still miniscule understanding of our place inside it.
7:45PM The Honeymoon Phase (Texas Premiere)
Phillip G. Carroll Jr. | USA | 88 min
Writer: Phillip G. Carroll Jr
Cast: Chloe Carroll, Jim Schubin, François Chau, Tara Westwood
Struggling young couple Tom and Eve lie about being married so they can enter “The Millennium Project.” Paying $50,000, this 30-day scientific study analyzes couples’ relationships while they reside in futuristic smart homes secluded in the woods. Run by a mysterious researcher and his associate, the experiment finds Eve descending into violent madness, questioning her lover’s trust and whether he is the man she thinks he is.
THE HONEYMOON PHASE caps off the 2019 Other Worlds Program with a love story covered in tension and drama. On top of the thrilling relationship ride, the film will leave the audience with plenty to contemplate and discuss until Other Worlds 2020 begins.
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The Honeymoon Phase Movie Original Pitch Video
The Other Worlds 2019 preview Day 4 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon
#a good woman is hard to find#after we leave#alien addiction#around the sun#boris karloff#james whale#nicholas meyer#other worlds#star trek iv the undiscovered country#the adventure of the peculiar protocols#the ascent#the final land#the honeymoon phase#the old dark house
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The Other Worlds 2019 preview Day 3
Art by Lauren Kitching
Returning for a sixth exciting year, Other Worlds, one of the premier SciFi Film Festivals in the US, features some of the best and unheralded genre films. Beginning on Thursday December 5 at Austin’s Galaxy Highland 10, the four day event includes over 20 feature films, a slew of shorts, a screenwriting workshop, and the Mary Shelley Award. This year also features the return of Under Worlds, which brings the best of indie to Austin.
Not terribly surprising to anyone who regularly follows my writings, I’ll be there.
Here’s what to expect at Other Worlds 2019.
Saturday, December 6
11:30AM SciFi Shorts 1: Love in the Time of Robots
11:30AM Dementer (Texas PREMIERE)
Chad Crawford Kinkle | USA | 80 min
Writer: Chad Crawford Kinkle
Cast: Larry Fessenden, Katie Groshong, Stephanie Kinkle, Scott Hodges
Katie begins to put her life back together after escaping a backwoods cult by taking a job in a home for special needs adults. Then the dark messages of her past tell her one of the sick patients needs more than just medicine. Dementer is an art house horror passion project that came to life when director, Chad Crawford Kinkle wanted to make a film with his special needs sister. Shot in an almost documentary style, the film embraces and properly represents the developmentally disabled, both in the script and in the actual casting, while still being both thrilling and disturbing.
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11:45AM I Am Human (Texas Premiere)
Taryn Southern, Elena Gaby | USA | 90 min
I AM HUMAN explores the co-evolution of humans and technology, focusing on a small group of people with different ailments that choose to use robotic implants to cure themselves. Diving deep into the current technology and where science could take us in the future, I AM HUMAN fills its frames with heart-warming stories of real people and their process of deciding to accept technology as a part of their bodies.
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1:50PM 1BR (TEXAS PREMIERE)
David Marmor | USA | 90 min
Writer: David Marmor
Cast: Nicole Brydon Bloom, Taylor Nichols, Giles Matthey
After leaving behind a painful past to follow her dreams, Sarah scores the perfect Hollywood apartment. But something is not right. Unable to sleep, tormented by strange noises and threatening notes, her new life quickly starts to unravel. By the time she learns the horrifying truth, it’s too late. Caught in a waking nightmare, Sarah must find the strength to hold onto her crumbling sanity…or be trapped forever in an existential hell.
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2PM SciFi Shorts 2: Crossing Over to the Future
2:15PM LIVE FROM OTHER WORLDS FILM FEST – IT’S “SCIENCE VS FICTION”
Scott Weinberg is a veteran film critic. Steven DeGennaro is a doctor of astrophysics. Every week they compare and contrast two noteworthy SciFi films on their popular podcast “Science vs Fiction,” where they discuss the artistic quality of the films, whether they get the science right, and whether or not that even matters. Past pairings have included ARMAGEDDON vs DEEP IMPACT, ALIENS vs STARSHIP TROOPERS, and JASON X vs LEPRECHAUN IN SPACE IN SPACE.
Other Worlds, they will open the massive can of worms that is cinematic time travel when they turn their talents on the 1979 classic (and Opening Night Film!) TIME AFTER TIME.
4:20PM The SciFi Lecture: The Old Dark Trope
“It was a dark and stormy night.” The couple’s car breaks down, blows a tire, crashes into a tree and runs out of gas. Yes, all at the same time. An ominous Victorian house at the top of the hill is the only refuge for miles and miles. They have nowhere to go and must seek refuge in THE OLD DARK HOUSE.
This year at Other Worlds, we are exploring the trope of the Old Dark House, how it originated, other tropes and stories that appear in within the Old Dark House, and how the trope has evolved and continues to be used today. Join Other Worlds Programmer and Screenwriting Director Eric Harrelson for a discussion and curated clip show curated by Other Worlds newest Programmer Wyatt Walker. Find out why old tropes never die, they just get subverted.
4:25PM Long Shorts: Lingering Visions
4:35PM Dead Dicks (US PREMIERE)
Chris Bavota, Lee Paula Springer | Canada | 83 min
Writers: Chris Bavota, Lee Paula Springer
Cast: Heston Horwin, Jillian Harris, Matt Keye
When a young nursing student named Becca receives a series of panicked messages from her older brother Richie, she rushes over to check on him. Following a seemingly successful suicide attempt, Richie, who suffers from mental illness, discovers what appears to be his own dead body. When Becca gets to his apartment, they find more dead versions of Richie as well as a strange hole in his bedroom wall. Together, they must figure why his suicide just won’t keep.
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4:20 UW Shorts: Dark Nights & Dark Thoughts
7:20PM Afterlife
Willem Bosch | The Netherlands | 93 min
Writer: Willem Bosch
Cast: Sanaa Giwa, Romana Vrede, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Jan-Paul Buijs
After her mother’s passing, teenage Sam takes up most of the household responsibilities. When she, too, ends up in the afterlife and finds out she can get a do-over, Sam gives life another try with the sole mission of saving her mother. A fantasy science fiction film, Afterlife tugs on the heart strings and deals with the hard realities of life and death.
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7:30PM The Ascent (North American Premiere)
(screens again Sunday, 2:15PM)
Tom Paton | UK | 100 min
Writer: Tom Paton
Cast: Rachel Warren, Simon Meacock, Bentley Kalu
Special ops squad “Hell’s Bastards” are sent to infiltrate a civil war to retrieve intel. The unit soon find themselves trapped on a never-ending stairwell forced to climb or die. To survive, they must revisit their past sins if they ever want to get off.
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9:45PM Doppelganger (Founder’s Choice)
10PM Volition (Texas Premiere)
Tony Dean Smith | USA | 91 min
Writers: Tony Dean Smith, Ryan W. Smith
Cast: Adrian Glynn McMorran, Magda Apanowicz, John Cassini
On a rain-soaked night in 1991, two cars collide, leaving all drivers dead on the scene, including the mother of the lone survivor – a child – James Odin. Seven-year-old James foresaw the accident happening two days prior and tried to prevent it, but who’s going to believe a kid who claims to see the future? Twenty-plus years later, James is a product of the failed foster care system, using his ability for petty crime and cheap thrills. But when a pre-sentient vision reveals to him his own imminent murder, James must go on the run and change a fate he knows is fixed.
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10:15PM Scare Package (Texas Premiere)
Under Worlds Centerpiece Film
USA | 103 min
Directors: Emily Hagins, Baron Vaughn, Noah Segan, Chris McInroy, Anthony Cousins, Hillary & Courtney Andujar, Aaron B. Koontz
Cast: Toni Trucks, Joe Bob Briggs, Dustin Rhodes, Chase Williamson, Baron Vaughn, Noah Segan
A meta Horror-comedy anthology film where each segment subverts a different set of Horror tropes, SCARE PACKAGE intertwines its components around the on-boarding of a mysterious new employee at a struggling genre video store: Rad Chad’s Horror Emporium.
This year’s Under Worlds Centerpiece film is very special for our programming team for many reasons. It’s an intelligent, creative look at the Horror genre that is both hilarious and scary. Furthermore, three of the segments were shot here in Austin by local filmmakers, one of whom is an Other Worlds alumni. The producing team for the film does a great job managing the tone of the anthology while still maintaining each director’s vision. It is rare to see an anthology film where connecting material is just as compelling as the individual parts, but the team has done it here.
The Other Worlds 2019 preview Day 3 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon
#1br#afterlife#dead dicks#dementer#i am human#other worlds#scare package#science vs fiction#the ascent
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The Other Worlds 2019 preview Days 1 and 2
Art by Lauren Kitching Returning for a sixth exciting year, Other Worlds, one of the premier SciFi Film Festivals in the US, features some of the best and unheralded genre films. Beginning on Thursday December 5 at Austin’s Galaxy Highland 10, the four day event includes over 20 feature films, a slew of shorts, a…
The Other Worlds 2019 preview Days 1 and 2 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon
#afterlife#alien addiction#austin#brandon christensen#das letzte land#dennis quaid#dreamscape#enhanced#film festival#lake michigan monster#nicholas meyer#other worlds#science fiction#spiral#the final land#time after time#z
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I edited this one
Take a gander at Joe R. Lansdale’s new Hap and Leonard book OF MICE AND MINESTRONE
A brand-new Hap and Leonard series collection chock full of Joe R. Lansdale’s inimitable blend of humor, mayhem, and insight, OF MICE AND MINESTRONE delivers never-before-seen stories, a selection of the boys’ favorite recipes from Kasey Lansdale, and an introduction from New York Times bestselling crime author Kathleen Kent.
Hap Collins looks just like a good ol’ boy. But from his misspent youth on, his best compatriot is Leonard Pine, who is black, gay, and the ultimate outsider. Inseparable friends, Hap and Leonard climb into the boxing ring, visit each other’s families, get in bar fights, and just go fishing—all the while confronting racists, righting wrongs, and eating a whole lot of delicious food.
So pull up a seat and sit a spell, and let master storyteller Joe R. Lansdale regale you with a new passel of tales about the unlikeliest duo East Texas has to offer.
Joe has decided to shelve the boys for a bit so this is the last Hap and Leonard for the foreseeable future. Or at least until Hap starts whispering to Joe again.
Available at all finer outlets in March 2020!
Keep reading
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What it would cost to build Trump's snake-and-alligator border moat
Earlier this month, we learned that one of the most enduring frustrations of Trump’s presidency is that no one will take his suggestion of building a moat filled with man-eating alligators and poisonous snakes along the US border (something he’s been talking up for at least 35 years!).
The editorial staff of Defenseone, presumably still stinging from being accused of being anti-Trump propagandists by a belligerent CBP officer at Dulles Airport, have decided to give Trump a little help by costing out the total budget for such a project.
They have to make some assumptions, of course – such as a minimum of 10 gators and 1,000 snakes per moat-mile – and they also count on making some cost savings by sourcing cheap gators from police auctions.
Here’s the bottom line, though: 19,450 border gators will run $40.4m, including shipping. 1,954,000 snakes, meanwhile, will cost $683.9m, a cost that must be reupped every seven years, due to the regrettably short lifespans of coral snakes and water moccasins.
Then there’s the feed issue: if the snakes and gators work, there will be a shortage of human border-crossers for them to eat, so that’s $291m/year for frozen rats and gator pellets. The accompanying zoologists will cost $135.7m/year.
Then there are the medical costs for border crossers who are injured but not killed by the moat-dwellers, ballparked at $1.3b/year (much of that is price-gouging by monopolistic pharma companies who have giant markups on their antivenom).
The total bill? $2.5b to set up and $1.8b/year to operate. But that’s before the beltway bandits get a chance to put in their no-bid, cost-plus contracts, so probably safe to quintuple that.
https://boingboing.net/2019/10/14/many-frozen-baby-rats.html
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Kickstarting a deluxe "Dracula" edition in a suitcase full of "primary source materials" from the novel
Josh O'Neill writes, “We’re doing a box set edition of Dracula in which we reconstitute the novel into the primary source documents from which it’s drawn: Mina’s diary, Lucy’s letters, Dailygraph newspaper clippings, even an actual phonograph record from Dr. Seward. It comes in a suitcase. Or a wooden casket or stone crypt, depending on the edition.”
Josh is from Beehive Books, who’ve produced some of the loveliest limited editions we’ve featured over the past three years, and they’ve got an excellent track record when it comes to delivering on these crowdfunded editions.
Dracula itself is a remarkable text, a combination of epistolary novel and assemblage of clippings and other fragments, still modern-seeming after all these years (which is fitting, given the extent to which it is at root a parable about the power of modernity – lights, telegraphs, science – to defeat superstition).
$25 gets you a PDF, $100 gets you the record with its jacket and accompanying textual material as well as a map, $350 gets you a suitcase with all the materials, $800 gets you a limited version with bonus materials, $2000 gets you the “Entombed Edition” with a letter from Dacre Stoker (Bram’s grand-nephew), handmade items, and a special case (“a stone vault”).
It’s all scheduled to ship in Oct 2021.
Beehive ends its pitch by supporting the unionization drive by Kickstarter workers, noting that the workers have not called for a boycott while they seek recognition for their union.
https://boingboing.net/2019/10/14/epistolary-fiction.html
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Lesbian Jungle https://pulpcovers.com/lesbian-jungle/
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Tribal Map of America Shows Whose Land You're Actually Living On
http://flip.it/6TYazI
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And here we go again: ArmadilloCon 41
The mercury is hitting triple digits and we’re just passed the halfway point of the baseball season. It must be time for ArmadilloCon once again!
This year’s con, the 41st such affair, takes place this coming weekend, August 2-4.
Guest of Honor: Rebecca Roanhorse
Toastmaster: Marshall Ryan Maresca
Fan Guest: Dan Tolliver
Editor Guest: Patrice Caldwell
Science Guest: Moriba K. Jah
Special Guest: Martha Wellls
As I have done for roughly the past 25 years or so, I’ll be in attendance and because apparently the con organizers have learned nothing, I’ll be sitting in on several panels.
Best Comics You’ve Never Read
Friday 8PM
Rick Klaw (moderator), A. Lee Martinez, Alan J. Porter
What’s new, what’s surprising, and what are upcoming titles that have got you pumped?!
Godzilla in 2019
Friday 9PM
Don Webb (moderator), Aaron de Orive, Mark Finn, Rick Klaw, Lawrence Person
The big guy is back!
The Best and Brightest of the New Generation of SFF Short Story Writers
Saturday 3PM
Rick Klaw (moderator), Patrice Caldwell, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, David Afsharirad, Josh Rountree
The best and brightest of the new generation of SFF short story writers
Editing Anthologies
Saturday 8PM
Patrice Caldwell (moderator), David R. Stokes, Rick Klaw, Matt Cardin, Adrian Simmons, Paige E. Ewing
What are the goals? How do you put together a cohesive but representative collection? What is the difference between a collection and an anthology anyway?
Texas in SFF
Sunday 11AM
Rick Klaw (moderator), Joe R. Lansdale, Kenneth Mark Hoover, Don Webb, Josh Rountree, Juan Perez
What are some of the best, and most fantastical, re-imaginings of Texas in sff? What are the most dystopian places, things and people in Texas (present and past)? what are the most utopian?
Giants in the Earth
Sunday 12PM
Mark Finn (moderator). Paul Benjamin, Rick Klaw, Lawrence Person, Howard Waldrop
With the return of Giant Monsters, Kaiju movies, and of course, Godzilla and King Kong, it’s time to unpack what (if any) larger message these Earth-Shakers represent; nature striking back, mankind’s hubris, or simply big,. goofy fun? Our panelists will get to the heart of the matter with the usual amount of gravitas and snarkiness.
How to Work with Editors
Sunday, 1PM
Rick Klaw (moderator), David R. Stokes, Patrice Caldwell, Jacob Weisman, Adrian Simmons
What do editors bring to the the table? What should authors expect from editors? How do editors perceive the relationship with authors?
Hope to visit with you this weekend at one of my talks, at the Tachyon table, or just wandering the halls. Come by and say howdy.
And here we go again: ArmadilloCon 41 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon
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