It’s Snowing Again

[ Happy Mood: Happy ]
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So it is snowing in Ottawa again. Yup – again – in April. How much fun is that?

Luckily it is warm enough that it should melt away rather than stick around.

Oh well – spring will come soon – I hope.

Windfall – A Quick Review

[ Silly Mood: Silly ]
[ Eating Breakfast Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
One of the good things about weekly (or bi-weekly) Doctor’s appointments coupled with your report cards being done, is that you have time to do a lot of reading.

The fourth book of the Weather Wardens series finds our heroine Joanne Baldwin working as a weather girl in Florida. The job requires her to dress up in ridiculous costumes and get dumped with water. In short she is second banana to the egotistical main weather man . . . who despite having no powers, has an amazing average in predicting the weather.

Meanwhile, Joanne is under suspicion for manipulating the weather, wardens are being killed, the Djinn are in the middle of a civil war and her sister has shown up. All of these plots weave together and pull against each other, leading to a tense, fast moving novel.

Good stuff, and again, author Rachel Caine keeps this series from being formulaic. Good read.

Everything you were afraid to ask about BSG

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Salon has produced this amazing Battlestar Galactica primer that includes summaries of all the seasons, a character guide, and answers to some nagging questions.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

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What’s the deal with the superlong hiatus between seasons?

It certainly wasn’t Ronald Moore’s idea. When asked about the hiatus at the recent Season Four press conference, he said, sarcastically: “Like we wanted that.” According to the Sci Fi channel’s executive vice president of original programming, Mark Stern, the lengthy delay between seasons was due to “economics and scheduling.”

But get ready for another potentially long wait. Although the show has completed filming on the first half of the fourth season, the second half is likely to be delayed — probably by several months — because of the fallout from the writers’ strike.

Continued…

Everything you were afraid to ask about BSG was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

Game of Thrones – A Quick Review

[ Sleepy Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Eating Breakfast Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
I know, I know, I am late coming to the party on this series.

First published in 1996, this book tells the complicated tale of the eruption of a dynastic civil war in the land of Westeros. There is also the laying out of the beginning of the plots for Daenerys,the sole remain heir of the usurped king and the rise of the Others (not the ones from Lost) in the north.

This is thick, dense, complex fantasy. At 700 pages, this is not a quick read. It was also not a quick read because I kept taking breaks. It was good, but there were times that it was too intense and I needed some time away. The author, George R. R. Martin is not afraid to kill off characters he has spent much of the book developing and getting you all excited about.

But this was an awesome book. I recommend it strongly. Go get it.

My new SF Site column

My new column Nexus Graphica, co-written with Mark London Williams, premieres today at SF Site.

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Nexus Graphica, the column about graphic novels and comics, grew out of our discussions. It just seemed natural to record our observations.

We will alternate columns for every issue of SF Site. Similar to my “Geeks with Books,” the nature and subject of each piece will vary from month to month, but it will always have something to do with graphic novels or comic books.

The first entry, stereotypically titled “Secret Origins”, relates the evolution of the column.

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We met after a panel on lettering at the 1990 San Diego Comic Con. Not that either of us really gave a rat’s ass about lettering. We both were there to talk with Lewis Shiner, who not only co-wrote (with fellow Texan ex-pat Bob Wayne) the Illuminati-infused mini-series The Time Masters, but also lettered the comic. We both came from the literary side of things, fans since Shiner’s 1988 novel Deserted Cities of the Heart, which masterfully related the impending end of the world, according to Mayan prophesy in a real-world Mexico City.

Also included is a selection of recent books of interest.

My new SF Site column was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon