Category: Not-politics

Pride and Prejudice… and Zombies.

No, really.

510xxfxxxgl_sl500_aa240_Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a real book, and it’s coming out in April, whereupon I will buy it.  They’re making the argument that the original book is actually quite amenable to being updated with zombies added, which makes perfect sense to me: everything is better with zombies added, after all.  The absolutely best part?  They’re talking movie scripts right now.

NO.  REALLY: Continue reading Pride and Prejudice… and Zombies.

DVICE is having a “Steampunk Cylon” contest…

…they think that people can come up with something better than what they did:

steampunk_cylon_contest-thumb-425x727

…which may not be the easiest thing in the world, actually. More here and here, with added picture goodness.

Personally, I think that the BSG 1.0 Cylons were closer to the entire steampunk aesthetic than the BSG 2.0 ones – although in 1978 I wouldn’t have said so, being both: a, eight; and b, utterly ignorant that Powers, Blaycock, & Jeter were going to invent the steampunk genre a decade later.

OK, the real question on the Kindle is…

…not whether I pick up a Kindle 2. I already know the answer to that one: I don’t, for a while (if ever).  The question becomes, do I pick up a Kindle 1? I mean, with any luck the price for one of those will go through the floor and I can think about purchasing one. On the other hand, it may not get that way for a while, so I might as well contemplate saving up my money and getting the better option.  On the gripping hand, I like books.  I also like the way that they work even when there’s no reliable source of electricity around.

Probably one of my readers has a Kindle: what do you folks think about them?

Tragically, the Mole People were not on this list.

The 5 Most Ridiculous Lies Ever Published as Nonfiction. There’s some good stuff on there, but The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City
is completely absent.  This is a pity, since it’s my wife’s favorite “sociology book that turned out to be utter nonsense.”  Look here (via here) for a comprehensive smackdown of the physical aspects of her book, which is actually pretty important in a situation like this.

I guess that’s to be expected, though.  Cracked’s in the humor business, and even with a title like “The Mole People” there’s only so much that you can do…

Moe Lane

PS: No, nothing to do with this. Which is kind of a pity, when you think about it.

Wanted the movie vs. Wanted the comic: Whoa.

I mean, I get that movies often diverge from their subject material.  And the author Mark Millar is apparently cool with what happened here, so I’m not disapproving.

But still: compare Wanted the movie with  “Wanted” the comic book series.  It’s impressively different, even by Hollywood standards.  Not quite American Hero / Wag the Dog territory, but still impressive.

H/T: Backward Compatible

Huh. Moneyball.

I may actually have to read the book now. I don’t do sports books, mostly: but Ace made Moneyball sound interesting, in a quasi-gaming sort of way.  God knows that my particular segment of the counterculture has led the way in obsessing over stats.

As for the movie, “screwball comedy that has little to do with the book” is probably the only way that could go.

They’re remaking the Taking of Pelham 123?

Count me in with Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg: this is just plain dumb. If the horrible remakes of Rollerball and Death Race 2000 taught us anything, it should have taught us this: don’t remake Seventies dystopia movies – which The Taking of Pelham One Two Three most emphatically is.

I’d say “What next? Are they going to remake “The Warriors?” – except that I’ve yet to catch that one, actually. But if they do, it’ll still probably suck.

Ooh. Pretty new site, with pretty, old ships.

It’s called Age of Sail, and it looks like a historical blog discussing precisely that.

I came into Age of Sail fiction from the science fiction end of it, actually: reading S.M. Stirling and David Weber got me reading Patrick O’Brian and C.S Forester (I’m currently halfway through A&E’s Horatio Hornblower series, and enjoying it muchly).  And then, of course, there’s George MacDonald Fraser’s The Pyrates, which is required reading for anybody who loves old Hollywood swashbucklers (and who doesn’t).  So I guess I’m explaining why this is going on the blogroll…

Moe Lane

PS: OK, one last one: Naomi Novik.  For all your “Napoleonic warfare novels with dragons added; only, and this is really important to note, adding the dragons doesn’t make the whole thing suck horribly, or indeed at all” needs.