The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the winners of the 2008 Dwarf Stars contest. As the name implies, this competition is for very short poems (10 lines or less), which allows them to post all 3 of the winners on the awards page. They have also opened nominations for the 2009 Rhysling Awards. The Guardian ran a nice story about Steampunk, which looks very much like the author recently got his hands on a copy of Jeff and Ann VandeerMeer’s instant classic anthology of the same name and was amazed. As well he should have been; I told everyone last May this was a book they did not want to miss, and ordered my own copy before it hit the bookstores.
While it is still part of the SciFi Channel, SciFi Wire has split off, with a much cleaner, more elegant, and faster-loading home page than the original site, living on its own domain name. This is a reversal from when the SciFi Channel absorbed Sci-Fi Weekly back in 1994, paying the collage students who created and maintained it some serious money for their troubles. Weekly may have evaporated from the independent Net, but some of us remember. Another spin-off property is DVice, which currently has a fun article on the most absurd devices from sci-fi movies. Of course, when you consider the history of ownership of the channel since it began in 1992, and how the mergers changed everything over the years, who can be surprised about how it all turned out?
Strange Horizons presents 2008 in review, where the reviewers review their reviews. And that is the most recursive sentence I have ever written, but strangely true. Be aware, this is Armageddan Week on the History Channel; vote for your favorite way for the world to end, and follow it with Life After People. I support the AFI, and hope a lot of you do as well. This is a small slice from one of their members-only events; Mike Meyers introducing Sean Connery at his lifetime achievement award ceremony. Note the reaction to the Zardoz part of the intro.
And at 26, he is the youngest actor ever to play the Doctor. Yesterday the BBC named Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor Who. Andrew Pettie of the Telegraph has some ideas about why this is a good move for the Beeb, and while the reactions at places like SciFi Heaven range the gamut, I find this promising. The actor has played in the Phillip Pullman screen renderings of The Shadow in The North and The Ruby in the Smoke, as well as showing up in an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl; all with Who veteran Billie Piper. He has also worked with Moffatt on a few previous projects, so the new season should be fairly interesting.
The other day I mention the tune on SciFi Songs called Grasping for the Wind (The Linkup Meme Song), a song filled with SF review blog names. What I didn’t know at the time (for someone who lives in the future I can be awfully slow about some things) was that this was the name of the blog built by John Ottinger that put together the entire project. The list is getting huge, and continues to grow. To help you with sorting through it, the Crotchety Old Fan Reviews the Review Blogs, complete with links to each conveniently placed next to its review. I knew there was a reason I liked the internet, and thanks to Sheila at Wands and Worlds for making me aware of what I was missing. As Holly said in Red Dwarf (Queeg, episode 5 of season 2) “I may be slow, but I get there in the end”. BTW, did you know the Red Dwarf team was putting together some new specials?
The two deep voices of ’70s and ’80s SciFi in the UK, Tom Baker and Brian Blessed, are together at last. OK, it’s only for a cell-phone add series, not new audio Doctor Who adventures, but it is still fun. I even got a chuckle out of the fact they called him Tom Jones on the download page. Thanks to io9 for pointing that story out. There is also a new tune at SciFi Songs: Grasping for the Wind (The Linkup Meme Song), which names some of the best SF blogs online. If you haven’t been there before, be sure to check out the previous 13 songs as well.