Happy Halloween, everyone, or Blessed All Saint’s Eve, as you prefer. There is nothing more enjoyable than putting on a costume that let’s you transform yourself, if only for that one night. Along with that comes the right to be scared for the fun of it without getting grief from your friends and coworkers. And what better to be scared by, than a good invasion of the earth story? One of the best is being remade, H.G.Wells classic, War of the Worlds and is even getting it’s own exhibit in the Science Fiction Museum, as told in this story from CreativeMac.
BTW, the above WOTWorlds link will let you read Wells’s original 1898 book online. If you would rather listen to Orson Wells’s 1938 Radio Broadcast version, go to WOW. If you want to learn the details of how and why this caused the panic it did, be sure to read the Museum of Hoax’s story on the subject. For a well written amature version, check out Jeff’s Interpretation. If you want to play many of the WOTW Games available, visit Drake’s Games.
Just a few random links to Cons you might find worth a visit. I recently mentioned GalaxyCon, which I will be attending. The big ones are the WorldCons; the next 2 are Interaction in Glasgow, and LAConIV in the City of Lost Angels. One of the more fun ones is the DilloCon in Austin; and let’s not forget to read up on a Mundane’s visit to a con, recounted in Geeks Gone Wild, about another great con in St. Louis. And if you really want to get wild, you might check out the many Cons of FurNation, a group even less subtle than most. Enjoy!
I have given links before about places to read sci-fi online for free. Another great one you may not be aware of will let you access some truly Classic science fiction short stories. The SciFi Channel updates the page often, and has included stories by Gardner Dozois, Joan D. Vinge, Eric Frank Russell, Roger Zelazny, and many others. Besides the current online story, the link includes an archive of past presentations, both classic and original.
In a totally different way to get (and give) your free dose of reading, Bookcrossing has a unique approach. When you find a book that speaks to you on a serious level, register it with them, document it’s registration info on the inside cover, and turn it loose… Give it to a friend, leave it on a chair at the airport or restaurant of your choice, and so forth. You can later log back into the site and view it’s travels around the world. This is Chaos Theory at it’s finest; some of them never show up on the site again. Others have long listings of people who have read your released copy. And you can even play games with the service; someone can release a book into the wild and leave clues, and you can try to be the one who finds and reads it!
Do NOT miss this one! Check Anonymous Rex for details. The SciFi Channel will be airing it at the beginning of November, and I am looking forward to see how well they translated the first book in the series into TV mode. Please note, by First Book I mean the Prequil, Casual Rex. If they get good enough numbers in the ratings, I am hoping they continue through the series, and make more of these. The closest thing I have found to a Home Page for the author (the same Eric Garcia who wrote Matchstick Men) is a rather disappointing Amazon front; if anyone knows where his true home page lives, please send me the link! The Interview he did at the MysteryOne web sight is worth a visit, and has convinced me I need to go out and get a copy of his AudioBook version, if only to hear him sing! LOL… Too bad the link they list for him there goes to one of those now-owned-by-a-domain-name-seller companies.
I love hitting Cons (Science Fiction Conventions) for a lot of reasons; I will list a few of them here, and look forward to hearing from you about your reasons you either love or hate them. But since I live on the East Coast, the next Con I will be going to is the Galaxy Con II. Good guests, both actors and authors; the pricing on this one looks like a typical Corp buying into the Con moneywagon, unfortunately. With luck, the folks who actually attend will be real people!
Oh, yeah, the reasons I love going to Cons. Here are a few of them; what are yours?
1) Meeting lots of folks with similar interests (SciFi)
2) Catching up with friends I got to know online for the first time in real life
3) Getting to hear the Actors who played the parts tell their experiences
4) Chatting with the Authors about their ideas and stories
5) Checking out the Booths, to add a few jems to my collection (Books, Art, Video, Fill-In-The-Blank)
6) Networking about all of the above with the people I meet there
If you are beginning to see a pattern here, you have probably hit the nail on the head. I go for the people (Authors, Artists, Actors, and that’s only the “A” words!), not the corporate beancounters. If I spend the whole weekend, and only meet one “Real Person” at the event, I still come out ahead, in my book! LOL…
If you missed the initial broadcast, DO NOT miss this Sunday’s return! They did a world-class job on tying up all the loose ends, and the story beat out any previous episode. It starts at 3PM EST on the east coast feed, and the same PST for the west coast feed, on the SciFi Channel. If you have your own dish, watch both! If not, at least record it to add this one to your collection!