Saturday, January 28th, 2012

Featured

On the Lewis Chessmen

On the Lewis Chessmen

For March I’m planning a trip to New York City. I put my vacation request in yesterday for a few days in the middle of the month. The Lewis Chessmen are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through early April, and they’re something I would very much like to see while they’re on this side of the Atlantic. While I’m a terrible chess player, I’m fascinated by the... [Read more]


On Swapping Twitter’s Columns Around

On Swapping Twitter’s Columns Around

Yesterday morning I logged into Twitter.  This is what I saw: Yes, I’d been upgraded to “New New Twitter,” which began going live to users a month and a half ago. It’s fine, and it’s functional, but one thing irked me. I didn’t like the column layout.  For as long as I’ve been using Twitter, the stream is on the left, and the sidebar is on the right,... [Read more]


On Revisiting the <i>Hitchhiker’s</i> Trilogy

On Revisiting the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy

Yesterday a package arrived in the mail.  It was a book, Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic by Terry Jones.  Hardcover with dust jacket.  A first printing, it looks new, even though it was published nearly fifteen years ago. And with that book I am ready. This year — this month, actually — I intend to reread the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.  All... [Read more]


On <i>Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows</i>

On Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

A few weeks ago, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows came out.  While it’s not the Sherlock Holmes production most of my friends were anticipating — that would be the second season of the BBC’s Sherlock, which began airing on BBC1 yesterday — it’s the Sherlock Holmes event I was most anticipating. Don’t misunderstand.  Much as I liked Sherlock, I didn’t... [Read more]


On 2011 In Review

On 2011 In Review

January 1st.  The start of a new year.  A “turn the page” moment, a time when the slate is wiped clean and one can start fresh.  That’s my feeling on every day, that the new day is a blank slate on which anything can be written, so it should be my feeling on the start of a new year, too.  Except that it isn’t.  New Years is, for some reason, just another... [Read more]


Writing

On Making <i>Merlin</i> Plans

On Making Merlin Plans

Two years ago, I wrote an outline for a Merlin novel. I sent it off to the editor handling the Merlin novels at Random House Childrens UK, and about six weeks later it came back with a very nice rejection letter.  The editor liked the story, but they weren’t publishing original Merlin novels, just novelizations of the BBC Series. While I mused at times on how to de-Merlin-ify the story,... [Read more]


On Contemplating Philcon

On Contemplating Philcon

Yesterday evening I received a surprising e-mail — it was a pre-invite to Philcon. Well, it was surprising to me; things like this are always surprising to me. Philcon is, obviously, a science-fiction convention held every November in Philadelphia.  I knew of it it when I lived outside Philly about a decade ago, but working in retail as I did, getting down to the con would have been impossible;... [Read more]


Comic Books

On Things I’ve Been Reading

On Things I’ve Been Reading

Peanuts #0 BOOM! Studios/kaboom! Created by Charles Schulz Written by Ron Zorman & Vicki Scott Art by Zorman, Scott, and Paige Braddock Earlier in the year, BOOM! Studios published Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown, a hardcover graphic novel adaptation of the most recent Peanuts animated special, which was based on a number of Peanuts comic strips published over the years. Last week,... [Read more]


On Things I’ve Been Reading

On Things I’ve Been Reading

Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #1 IDW Publishing/DC comics Written by Chris Roberson Pencils by Jeffrey Moy Inks by Philip Moy A starship streaks by.  Her lines are somewhat familiar — saucer, secondary hull with a navigational deflector, two cylindrical warp nacelles — but there are some details that are unusual — the saucer has a rollbar with a photon torpedo launcher, the... [Read more]