Zombie Lapdance

An old Space Squid contributor Neil Carstairs posted his publishing history on his personal website. In the past few years he’s published a respectable list of short stories, and I just finished perusing them.

Back in Issue #3, Space Squid published Neil’s story "3:06pm London, England". It’s a brisk and austere heist yarn, bursting out with idiosyncratic oddities. It has a chimpanzee opera singer. How can you not like that?

On the fantasy side of the spectrum we see Carstair’s story The Lord of Dark Vale, a particularly grim tale about a hunter and his pet dragons who stalk a lone girl in the woods.

In the hard sci-fi department, it looks like Aphelion has been getting the cream of Carstairs crop (so to speak). They have an excellent short story of his called The Eyes of the Storm. This has the same fast pace and brilliant flutter of images that I remember from "3:06pm London, England." There’s blood and danger and it’s exactly as long as it needs to be.

A slightly longer selection from Aphelion is Never Say Die. This appears to be another story set in the universe of "3:06pm London, England," but fleshed out and populated by angsty cyberpunk heroes. It’s a world where religious fanatics go toe-to-toe with the casual use of genetic technology. It’s a sophisticated and global vision of the future. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for more.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has his own blog. It’s in English of course. Not that I’m recommending you read it or anything, not unless you’re interested in the difficulties of shooting on location in the heart of India with a fake beard.

In entirely unrelated news, the Times of India reports that French scientists have created an artificial mouth and that global warming is likely to cause a freakish mutant animal called a "grolar bear."

And in wildly unrelated news, youtube now has an India-only site that allows us to view such riveting videos as this girl whistling the theme to the movie "Dhoom" (apparently there’s an entire Indian whistling association that people take seriously enought to clap in time with). Damn, I’m going to lose hours of my life watching all this.

It took a late night of photocopying in the back room with Sanjay2, but we managed to get Space Squid published by our self-imposed deadline yet again. I’ve managed to get almost caught up on sleep, so I’ll tell you how releasing issue #5 into the Nebula Weekend went.

First of all, you could hardly call this a con at all. There were no parties or panels to speak of. Just a hundred or so legends of the field, wandering around the Omni hotel with hardly a fan in sight.

On Friday afternoon I wandered down to the Omni with a box of cookies (an advert for baked goods trade with Quacks Bakery) and a backpack stuffed with Space Squid and the Complete Austin Guide. It took me twenty minutes of wandering through the hotel before I actually found the Nebula facilities. Apparently you can’t just take the stairs in the Omni. I had to be guided back to the lobby through a kitchen by a cook carrying a wad of prosciutto.

The only real event on Friday was the signing.

Here we see former RevSF fiction editor Jayme Blashke sharing a table with Patrice Sarath. Elze and Paige E. Roberts look on. Not pictured, Stina "My name’s not Christina" Leicht.

Meanwhile I worked the crowd, putting free issues of Space Squid and party invitations in the hands of as many warm bodies as I could. Or as the case may be, annoying people who are better than me, such as Joe R. Lansdale and Neal Barrett Jr.

Luckily, they have no idea who the hell I am.

That evening there was a relaxed dinner at the Hickory St. Bar and grill with the usual suspects, Steve Wilson, Chris Nakashima-Brown and Lawrence Person (in the lit foreground).

Below, Tales of the Secret City contributor Patrick Sullivan wonders why Squid editor D Chang ordered a children’s burger.

Later, a bunch of us crashed Jayme Blashke’s room and swilled down his bottles of homebrewed jalapeno mead. Imagine having your nipples carressed with a blowtorch. Only with 15% alcohol.

Sure there was an awards thing on Saturday (Michael Chabon’s acceptance speech was a sci-fi-pride manifesto as powerful as Obama’s reply to Wrightgate), but people are really only going to remember the Space Squid release party at B.D.Riley’s Bar and Grill, a benefit for "The Nerds Are Our Future Foundation."

Below, in no particular order, Nebula Award Nominee and Space Squid contributor Jennifer Pelland , Allen Wise, Mr. Jennifer Pelland (not his real name), Space Squid illustrator Chris Waltrip, Fred Stanton, Original Squid Grrrl Cecil Clorox, Robert L. Reed, and Space Squid contributor Jeremey Malish.

A shocking number of attendees allowed themselves to be badgered into reading for the 15min improv fiction contest. The overall genre trope was "Cold Sleep."

MC Matthew Bey prompts the audience for stream-of-consciousness story props while avoiding competing in the contest himself

Robert L. Reed, using the prop "Stupid Red Hat" wrote a touching story about grandma dropping into a cold sleep capsule, and leaving a note in her sunday hat for her grandson.

D Chang wrote with the prop "Box of Space Squid" and told about the streets of Cairo and filthy urchins selling contaminating Space Squid issues on street corners.

Jennifer Pelland, writing with the prop "Stupid Red Hat", took the opportunity to engage in self-indulgent wish fulfillment. Let’s hope she doesn’t really trap her husband in a cryopod.

Writing from the prop "The Hennessey Sisters Who Are Sitting Right Next to the MC" (pictured at the lower right), Contest winner Paige Roberts spins a tear-jerking tail about space pirates, bull semen, and the benefits of taking your cast-iron frying pan into the hibernation chamber with you.

Allen Wise somehow writes for fifteen minutes without once mentioning mighty thews or wenches.

From the prop "Beer Bottle" Nancy Jane Moore comes up with a story about a south-austin Irish-ghetto cryo-clinic where they use bottles of Guiness to put you to sleep until better days roll around.

Second place contest winner Jessica Reisman reads about a future dystopia where squid grrrls rule

Third place winner Patrick Sullivan tells how one can indeed sustain horrible head trauma from Dick Cheny.

The Hennessey sisters explain to Paige Roberts that in Montana they don’t sue, they come after you with a skillet.

so i ordered this wireless spycam off ebay. you can get them for around 30 bucks. you know, for spying on your nanny or for videotaping people defecating.

when the GF came home the day the spycam arrived i greeted her with: "I have a confession to make. I…um…I put a spycam on your cat."

unfortunately, the cat immediately hid under the couch.

i’ll keep you informed of any developments.

You may have heard that Space Squid is having a release party this Saturday, 1pm, @ B.D.Riley’s Pub on Sixth street.

You may also have heard that there will be free appetizer plates (while they last) and drink specials.

What you may not have heard is that we’re holding an improv fiction contest, along similar lines as the 48hr. film project. Only in fifteen minutes. And of course it will be far more amazing, because, we’ve got all these talented writers in Austin who are just chomping at the bit to show everyone how much more awesome they are than all those lesser writers out there.

Here’s how it’s going to work:
1.) The audience provides one genre trope for each contestant and one genre trope for everyone.
2.) The contestants spend 15 minutes writing a work of breathtaking beauty based on the global trope and their individually unique trope (I will bring some pads of paper and writing utensils).
3.) Contestants read their work to the audience.
4.) With all their assumptions and belief systems shaken, the audience sheds a single, perfect tear.
5.) Using a precisely calibrated mechanism, the audience picks the winners.
6.) The winners pick their FABULOUS PRIZE from a grabbag box with such FABULOUS PRIZES as "Qayamat: City Under Threat," a Bollywood remake of Bruckheimer’s "The Rock."
7.) Everyone takes advantage of the drink specials and shows up to the Nebula banquet drunk and belligerent.

For those of you who attended the World Fantasy Conference in Austin a couple years ago, you might have seen the Slackers Map of Austin that Space Squid put out as a freebie.

With the Nebulas bearing down on Austin this weekend, I whipped together an expanded version that has a detailed guide to the downtown "entertainment district." Man, I don’t think I will ever be able to think of that phrase without the sarcastic quotes.


I’ll be handing out the guide at the Nebulas, along with the now free issues of Space Squid, so really, there’s going to be a lot of free stuff flying around.

But if you want a head start on the freebies, I’ve posted a PDF of the guide. Be warned, it’s 7.5MB and formatted to ledger-sized paper, so you may just want to wait for the hardcopies I’ll be printing out. Or maybe you have a printer that handles 11×17 and you want to run off a bunch for everyone you know. I can’t make that decision for you.
Download Space Squid’s Complete Austin Guide

Here’s a picture of my co-workers eating gummi worms and listening to my story about parasitic worms on Drabblecast. Hmmm. Worms.

It’s spring in Texas, and a young man’s thoughts invariably turn to baseball, a sport so totally co-opted by sexual innuendo that you can’t describe even the smallest part of the action without sounding obscene.

On my bike ride home I often pass by the ballfield of Concordia University, a Lutheran Seminary in downtown Austin. Despite the eight years I’ve spent in this town, I have never met anyone who has gone to Concordia, nor have I met anyone who has met anyone who has gone to Condcordia. Nevertheless, last week I gave in to the temptation to watch a ballgame.

And where there’s baseball there’s hotdogs.

The kid who ran the concession stand didn’t open up until after the national anthem. There was no beer, but for $3.50 you could get two cokes and a hotdog. He had the hotdogs wrapped in tinfoil and stacked in a papersack on the counter. By the bottom of the first they were still slightly warm. Condiments came in giant plastic squeezebottles of mustard and ketchup.

The juicy beef meat felt slightly crisp against my teeth, and the bun had the warm and mooshy feel of the buns that your mother kept in supermarket bags on top of the refrigerator and took down only for picnics or for a summer lunch following swimming.

It was a richly plain and somehow nostalgic hotdog. It had a certain added charm, something situational that transcended the meager condiments and rustic preparation.

Concordia Ballpark Hotdog: Grade B

It’s only a week from the publication date of Space Squid # 5 and I’ve only now started to wrap up my illustration responsibilities.

Below is an inkscape illo for a delightfully primal story from Mr. Jeremy Malish called "Talon of Toucan."

I think I did a good job of capturing the story’s dark madness.

It terrifies one to gaze upon it.

i ran across this clip from a cable cartoon that tells the story of a space squid who falls to earth and has delightfully precious adventures.