Take a deep breath and focus as Helen McCarthy presents the history of Manga from its beginnings in 1860’s Japan to the current crises it faces from pirates powered by broadband in a mere 8 minutes and 22 seconds. This is one of a series of 12 presentations on Japanese Creativity put together by the British Design and Art Direction educational charity, also known as B&AD. If you don’t know who the non-profit educational charity B&AD is, the next video put together by BBC4 will give you a glimpse into the organization. Finally, just for balance, a video of Helen as part of an Anime Filk group at a Con in Iowa in 2010. Thanks to Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.
The short list for this year’s 2012 Hugo Awards was posted online this weekend, and includes a ton of great authors and programs. But I have to say, as much as I am excited about books from my favorite authors, it is the authors I don’t know about who made the list that excites me more. There are really good stories out there that I have never read, and most of those authors will have still more stories I might enjoy that I never would have known were there if not for these awards. And, of course, it is not just the written word that is being celebrated here. The category Best Graphic Story brings images to add a dimension to the storytelling, but I am so long out of touch with that field that I don’t recognize a single title or artist. Again, something new and interesting to explore. But then I hit Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and I have seen every one of them, and would be really hard pressed to choose a single one as best; although I suspect I would lean to either Hugo or Captain America. And on Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, three of the five are from last year’s Doctor Who season. The awards will be handed out at Worldcon as always, which this year is the ChiCon, AKA Chicago 7, the 70th Worldcon convention.
UPDATE: If you want to read the novels online, all have now been released to the public, and Worlds Without End has the links. And congrats on their two nominations to the great team at SF-Signal, who will probably have links to all the nominees that can be read online in any category fairly soon now.
If you are a fan of Steampunk and Steampunk music, you will be happy to know there is a new Abney Park song posted online, Evil Man. And if you are a Steampunk fan, you want to go vote for the Steam Punk Chronicles Awards, letting them know what you favorite choice is for each category. Some of them are no-brainer’s but some are almost too close to call.
On Sunday I mentioned John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There because the latest iteration of the story, in movie format, is being released on disc today. But I thought I should also mention that you can read his stories online, or a number of the ones in the public domain at least. He also did a radio program of science fiction stories called Exploring Tomorrow that you can listen to or download for your favorite portable media player. Campbell was best known as an editor, although a lot of folks now know him as the guy the awards were named after. But he wrote some pretty interesting stuff, and you might enjoy checking it out.
Congratulations to Charles Csuri for receiving the 2011 Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art. As far back as the 1960s he was introducing computers to artists and art to programmers, creating computer art and animations, and creating curriculum’s that would teach those skills to others. Any one who has been to the movies over the past 30 years has seen the results of his work in CGI special effects and animation, but it was equally important to the development of computer sciences, resulting in advances in flight simulators, computer-aided design, architecture, magnetic resonance imaging, and the visualization of scientific phenomena. The 2011 SIGGRAPH Conference is going on this week in Vancouver; check the video for some highlights of the presentations.
The finalists have been announced for the 2011 Parsec Awards. These awards are given out to honor the best in speculative fiction podcasting in each of a number of categories. Part of the requirements to be eligible include being available for free through an RSS feed, so if you are the ind of person who likes a good audio book or radio drama, this is a great source of new programming to add to your mobile player and personal collections. And for each representative program linked on the list you can subscribe to the feeds and get a ton of additional programs. The awards themselves will be handed out in about a month.