(date: 2024-02-09 08:22:27)
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-08, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
If there’s one thing I’ve started enjoying over the last few years, it’s that most people seem to have realised that Coraline had nothing at all to do with Tim Burton, and that the “director of the Nightmare Before Christmas” was Henry Selick.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-08, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
I finally found a list of the weird effects that show up from a Mac doing teleconferencing (like the devil horns lightshow). Use them during your next Zoom to startle your friends and coworkers: support.apple.com/en-asia/105117 https://support.apple.com/en-asia/105117
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-08, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Really excited to read this.
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date: 2024-02-08, from: Locus Magazine
2023 in Review: Best. (Reading). Year. Ever.
I’ve remarked on the book-lag I experienced since the COVID lockdown, which saw my reading drop off a steep cliff. In 2023, I’ve felt more like my book-loving self, reading close to 90 books (compared to 60 last year). It helps that this has been an extraordinary year for fiction, the best I’ve experienced since penning reviews for Locus. I’m aware recency bias …Read More
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date: 2024-02-08, from: Locus Magazine
Here’s a highlight from our 2023 Recommended Reading List: I AM AI by Ai Jiang, out from Shortwave Media.
“Moving, brilliant, and certified 100% human.” –Samit Basu, author of Turbulence
If you have the opportunity to give up humanity for efficiency, mechanical invincibility, and to surpass human limitations. . . would you?
Ai is a cyborg, under the guise of an AI writing program, who struggles to keep up with …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/from-the-2023-recommended-reading-list-i-am-ai-by-ai-jiang/ Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-08, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
I even got to read filthy Restoration Poetry on Betwixt The Sheets: https://access.historyhit.com/betwixt-the-sheets/videos/btsrochester
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date: 2024-02-08, from: Margaret Atwoods Substack
You thought the “Left” was always in favour of the Rights of Women? Not in the French Revvie.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-08, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
The ComicsScene Awards 2024. They are a terrific bunch of awards, and I felt honoured to have been part of several of them. Thank you so much to all the voters:
https://comicscene.org/2024/02/01/comicscene-award-winners-2024-to-be-announced-here-07-02-24-7am/
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date: 2024-02-08, from: Locus Magazine
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has named Susan Cooper the 40th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.
SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy said,
Susan Cooper possesses the rare gift of being able to write for young people with a resonance that endures all through their adult lives. I feel as if The Dark Is Rising books have always been a part of my life. …Read More
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date: 2024-02-07, from: Locus Magazine
The ten-title 2024 PEN/Faulkner longlist includes a number of titles and authors of genre interest:
The prize “honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.” This year’s judges
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date: 2024-02-07, from: Locus Magazine
The 2024 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction is open, and the judges for 2023 have been announced: Vajra Chandrasekera, S.B. Divya, and Max Gladstone.
The annual award is open to original fiction of 10,000 words or fewer written in English by authors who “must either be currently residing in Pakistan, or be of Pakistani birth/descent.” Submissions are open through July 31, 2024.
The winning story will receive Rs 50,000 and …Read More
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date: 2024-02-07, from: Locus Magazine
Fallen, Melissa Scott (Candlemark & Gleam 978-1-952456-20-6, $22.45, 302pp, tp) December 2023. Cover by Eleni Tsami.
Melissa Scott’s Fallen might lack the sheer bloody energy of These Burning Stars, but it has instead the precise and understated competence of a writer who’s been honing her craft for four decades. Few of Scott’s novels are alike: while Fallen returns to the space opera universe that made its debut in …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/liz-bourke-reviews-fallen-by-melissa-scott/ Save to Pocket
@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
For the curious about Alexander the Great’s sex life, this podcast is yummy and informative: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/alexander-the-greats-sex-life/id1612090432?i=1000590350230
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
If Coraline in 3D had been perceived as successful it might have changed things about the way 3D was used. But there were a limited number of 3D screens and after a couple of weeks Coraline 3D was replaced in them by the Jonas Bros Live 3D moviez and that was that.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
It’s amazing what buttons do to a smile.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Coraline is turning 15 and is being properly actually rereleased in remastered 3D worldwide this August. https://shop.laika.com/pages/coraline-15 to sign up for first access to tickets, events, news, and all things Coraline3D.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Welcome new people! I recommend the Fountain Pen Feed.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:nkahctfdi6bxk72umytfwghw/feed/aaad2q353alqm
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date: 2024-02-07, from: Literature & a Latte blog
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://player.fireside.fm/v2/FGsx06Yz+sqvf5E2e?theme=light" width="740"></iframe></p>Show notes:
<a href="https://www.georgestevensjr.com" target="_blank">George Stevens Jr.</a>
<a href="https://www.georgestevensjr.com/my-place-in-the-sun-memoir" target="_blank">My Place in the Sun</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stevens" target="_blank">George Stevens</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Place_in_the_Sun_(1951_film)" target="_blank">A Place in the Sun</a>
<a href="https://www.oppenheimermovie.co.uk" target="_blank">Oppenheimer</a>
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/" target="_blank">Lawrence of Arabia</a>Learn more about Scrivener, and check out the ebook Take Control of Scrivener.
If you like the podcast, please follow it in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Leave a rating or review, and tell your friends. And check out past episodes of Write Now with Scrivener.
George Stevens Jr. has been a movie producer and director for decades, and has written a memoir about his life in Hollywood.
Growing up as the son of Hollywood's great directors - his father made many classic films, such as A Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant, and The Greatest Story Ever Told - gave Stevens an inside view of Hollywood. Hobnobbing with the greatest actors of the time, Stevens has been a background force in the film industry for decades. His memoir My Place in the Sun tells the story of his experiences in Hollywood and Washington DC.
"I grew up in a house with a person who happened to be a rare combination of a wonderful father, great director, I could say a war hero, he spent three years away, and was on the ground and in Europe in World War Two. I think the most important thing I learned from him was when he told me you have to respect the audience."
And Stevens Sr. did respect the audience. When his movie A Place in the Sun was released, he threatened to sue, for $1 million, any TV station that inserted any commercial into the running of his film without his specific approval of the ad. This was a bold move, but one intended to ensure that his films retained their integrity.
"He was quite confident that he wasn't going to win, but he did get considerable respect from the judge. His contract provided that Paramount Pictures could not alter or change in any way, the final cut of his film, A Place in the Sun, which was so highly regarded that he won the Oscar." [It garnered nine nominations, and Stevens won for best director.] "And then he started seeing it on television, as he referred that they cut into it little playlets, meaning that Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor are at an important moment in the film on the beach, and then going in a motorboat. And then comes a commercial, and it's got a beach and water, and a whole other story begins. And no judge was going to up entirely the whole system of commercial television. But he did get considerable respect in the decision."
George Stevens Sr. was in Europe during World War II, and his son discovered, in the 1980s, some color footage he had shot of the war, the first of its kind that anyone had seen. "Dad had a storage room in North Hollywood, California. It had everything, it had file cabinets, it had his Laurel and Hardy scripts, it had souvenirs from World War Two, everything. When I discovered that footage, I was living in Washington and the store room is in Los Angeles. I took one little reel of that film back to Washington with me. I was running an American Film Institute and had a screening room and I asked the projectionist on a warm, sunny Friday afternoon. And on the screen, came footage with barrage balloons in the sky on a gray morning. And I'm looking at this footage and I realize it's D-Day. And I further realize that my eyes are the first ones that weren't there on the day to see color. And around a bulkhead comes up a man in his late 30s in a helmet, and it's my father. It's the most remarkable color footage because that was a black-and-white war."
Stevens later set up the American Film Institute, which was set up to recognize film as an art form, mentor young directors, and restore old films, which he describes as the organization's cornerstone. "More than half of the films that had been made since the beginning of film, at the beginning of the 20th century, were lost or missing or destroyed. AFI's first task was to organize the rescue and preservation of American film. We did that in collaboration with the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, and other institutions. It was the rock upon which we built the AFI."
Stevens started writing his memoir about 12 years ago, taking notes and organizing ideas. "Somebody told me about Scrivener, and I got it and I just kept putting everything into Scrivener in different categories and subcategories in [the Binder]. It gave me command of the material. It was like my father shooting all of this film, and then going into the editing room, and being able to make the film. Writing is rewriting, and filmmaking is re-cutting until you get it just right. I don't know how I would have written this book without Scrivener."
<p>Kirk McElhearn is a <a href="https://kirkville.com" target="_blank">writer</a>, <a href="https://kirkville.com/podcasts/" target="_blank">podcaster</a>, and <a href="https://kirkville.com/kirks-photos-2/" target="_blank">photographer</a>. He is the author of <a href="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/store" target="_blank">Take Control of Scrivener</a>, and host of the podcast <a href="https://podcast.scrivenerapp.com" target="_blank">Write Now with Scrivener</a>.</p>
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
15 years ago some nice people from an ad agency arrived at my house to shoot a bit with a script for me about how scary mothers are. “But that’s not the film,” I told them. “Then write a new script,” they said. So I did.
https://youtu.be/HlCJu6zrB10?si=qMaDFjuzJKgnxEg-
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Coraline the movie is 15 years old today! And to celebrate, Laika are rereleasing it, remastered, and in the original 3D, this coming August. I feel like a proud grandfather.
Also, I have still never seen a better use of 3D than Coraline.
Did you see it when it first came out?
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-07, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
My bluesky handle includes a handle (@Neilhimself) and my website (neilgaiman.com) and it self-verifies. Here are your instructions: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial
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date: 2024-02-06, from: Locus Magazine
Inversion, Aric McBay (AK Press 978-1-8493-5504-9, $17.00. 240pp, tp) November 2023. Cover by Bob Kayganich & T.L. Simons.
Every once in a while, I run into a new science fiction story that feels remarkably classic, as though it had been written at the height of some previous era and only recently discovered. Or classical, perhaps – so well-versed in its themes and tropes that you can immediately see where …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/jake-casella-brookins-reviews-inversion-by-aric-mcbay/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-06, from: Locus Magazine
2023 in Review by Colleen Mondor
There is a bit of a haunted story in my paternal family history that has preoccupied me since my father first shared hints of it when I was a teenager. We were talking about his father, my Pepere, who was born in Quebec and emigrated at the age of 13, with his family, to Rhode Island. I heard a few brief anecdotes over the …Read More
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date: 2024-02-06, from: Locus Magazine
Bennett, Robert Jackson: The Tainted Cup (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 9781984820709, $28, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, 02/06/2024)
Fantasy mystery novel, first in the Shadow of the Leviathan series. A high Imperial officer dies when a tree erupts from his body, and the brilliant detective Ana Dolabra investigates with the help of her new magically altered assistant Dinios Kol.
Callender, Kacen: Infinity Alchemist (Tor Teen 9781250890252, $19.99, 400pp, formats: …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/new-books-6-february-2024/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-06, from: Final Draft blog
Outlining your story before writing a screenplay is a vital tool that will save you time and energy. Not only will it help you in terms of structuring your narrative, you’re less likely to have a “second act slump” if you plotted all of the major story beats beforehand. Outlining also frees up your mind when you’re actually writing your script: you won’t be constantly thinking “What happens next?” Instead, you can focus on how things happen.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-06, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Everybody was shocked. And people who didn’t even know that the writers were on strike read articles about it…
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-06, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Actually, he borrowed them.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-06, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Interesting interview with the Chengdu Hugo Administrator. I read the transcription. Apparently the Hugo Administrator can do whatever they want, and that’s the Hugo rules, so he doesn’t know what anyone was grumpy about.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-06, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Was that my first Golden Apple signing?
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date: 2024-02-05, from: Locus Magazine
Published last Tuesday, Sarah J. Maas’s House of Flame and Shadow (Bloomsbury), third in the Crescent City series, still ranks on the Amazon lists this morning; expect it on the print lists next week.
Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 02.11 LAT 02.04 USAT 01.28 PW 02.05 Amz (02.05) UK: Amz UK (02.05) Canada: Amz.ca (02.05)
Items on list -x- number of lists surveyed
10×3 10×2 150 15×3 …Read More
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date: 2024-02-05, from: Locus Magazine
Independent publisher Soho Press has launched a new horror imprint, Hell’s Hundred:
Named after the once bleak, now chic New York City neighborhood of SoHo—formerly known as “hell’s hundred acres” for its grim industrial facades and deadly fires—Hell’s Hundred provides fertile ground for new nightmares to take root. From grisly and macabre to darkly humorous, Hell’s Hundred publishes bold visions of horror from voices new and established.
The line will …Read More
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date: 2024-02-05, from: Final Draft blog
https://blog.finaldraft.com/write-on-lawmen-bass-reeves-showrunner-chad-feehan Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-05, from: Locus Magazine
MARTHA SUSAN WELLS was born September 1, 1964 in Fort Worth TX. She attended Texas A&M University, graduating with a BA in anthropology. She lives in College Station TX with her husband.
Her debut fantasy novel The Element of Fire (1993) began the Ile-Rien series, which includes The Death of the Necromancer (1998) and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy The Wizard Hunters (2003), The Ships of Air (2004), and The …Read More
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date: 2024-02-05, from: Final Draft blog
FBI: International writer Kristina Thomas related her path into writing television to the famous image of a straight line to get you where you need to compare with the reality of a line all balled, jumbled, and twirled around that eventually gets you where you want to be.
https://blog.finaldraft.com/the-bricks-of-breaking-in-fbi-international-writer-kristina-thomas-on-trusting-the-process Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-05, from: Locus Magazine
Author, editor, and scholar Christopher Priest, 80, died of cancer February 2, 2034, in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute in Scotland. He was a major figure in the SF field, famed for his ambitious fiction and erudite criticism and non-fiction.
Christopher McKenzie Priest was born in Cheadle, Cheshire, England on July 14, 1943. Priest was married to author Lisa Tuttle from 1981-87, and to writer Leigh Kennedy form 1988-2011. …Read More
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Holy shit indeed.
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date: 2024-02-04, from: Locus Magazine
One of Those Years
It has been one of those years that come along irregularly in which, wherever we look, we come upon literary treasures.
No fans of the short story, for instance, should complain about a year in which we have been gifted with new collections by Kate Atkinson and Steven Millhauser. Both writers, incidentally, who should be far better known among readers of the fantastic. Kate Atkinson’s first …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/the-year-in-review-2023-by-paul-kincaid/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-04, from: Locus Magazine
Federal judge Stephen Locher has filed a preliminary injunction against the state of Iowa’s book-banning law, calling the measure “incredibly broad.” The measure was meant to go into effect January 1, 2024, and would restrict books about sexuality or gender, or with descriptions or depictions of sex, from school libraries and classrooms. It originally banned books with LGBT content as well, but the state of Iowa reversed that position in …Read More
https://locusmag.com/2024/02/legal-news-4/ Save to Pocket
date: 2024-02-04, from: Locus Magazine
Asimov’s 11-12/23 Clarkesworld 11/23 khōréō 3.2
Asimov’s November/December issue includes three novellas, along with an assortment of short stories and novelettes. The wide variety of themes and styles in this issue work well, with stories evoking classic science fiction, stories with an epic science fantasy feel, and others taking a quiet slice-of-life approach. “Berb by Berb” by Ray Nayler is one of the most effective pieces in the …Read More
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
This is lovely.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
This is who Chris Priest was as a writer. (My favourite of his books was The Glamour.) https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/priest_christopher
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
Chris Priest is dead. We’ve known each other since 1984. He was a famous author and I was a 23 year old nobody and he sat next to me in a pub and chatted and was lovely. He wrote some amazing books. www.ninaallan.co.uk?p=6855 https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=6855
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
It does.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
This thread is, strangely but actually, the first time I’ve actually felt seen, heard or acknowledged in this whole Hugo mess.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
There’s me too.
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@Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky (date: 2024-02-04, from: Neil Gaiman @ BlueSky)
It’s really good.
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