BilmBlog500

I went to see Pacific Rim with JABberwocky client Bryce Moore, the author of the award-winning YA novel Vodnik, and since we both blog we decided to exchange guest reviews of the movie. After you've read Bryce's review, but sure to check out Vodnik , check him out on his own blog , and follow along with Bryce on Twitter .  And click here for my review of Pacific Rim, over on Bryce's blog. Movie Review: Pacific Rim -- by Bryce Moore While I was at ConnectiCon, I had the chance to catch a viewing of Pacific Rim (as you already know, if you read my response to some of the robot names in the film). Setting aside my response to the name choices, what did I think of the actual movie? Honestly? I loved it. This is what I'd wanted Michael Bay's Transformers to be like. It's a movie about giant robots fighting giant lizards. If that sounds like something you'd be excited to see, you'll love this film, too. It is, hands down, the best robot vs. lizard movie you...

We change, you know. We think the things we're doing will always be the things we're doing, but we change. Sometimes even the things that don't seem to be changing, change.  As an example, I've been a literary agent for over 25 years, but the job description within the job has changed multiple times.  I've had the same job, two employers (one of them being myself), and probably close to half a dozen job descriptions. But for me, there's one thing that hasn't, and that's going to the movies. And the earliest movie that I can place seeing at a particular theatre dates back to when I was five.  We saw Airport at Radio City Music Hall.  Would my younger brother had been with a baby sitter?  It's hard even to think about. And since my parents didn't believe in film ratings and took us to everything...  Deliverance at the Plaza Cinema, or stopping for Godfather, which I think we might have done as a side trip returning from visiting family in upstate N...

A week back, Thomas Friedman, the distinguished author and columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column approving of the NSA's surveillance and monitoring of metadata of email and phone calls for pretty much everyone. His argument:  I like civil liberties, civil liberties will take it on the chin even more than they are now if we have another 9-11 style attack.  So the government should do all that is can to prevent another such attack, and if that's what the surveillance is doing, I'm in favor of it.  Also, that this has been going on for two American presidencies now. What an idiot! OK, I mean, Thomas Friedman isn't an idiot, and there's a certain soothing logic to his column which reflects an opinion that's apparently shared by a lot of my fellow Americans. But it's wrong, it's misguided, and quite obviously so. It took me several days of mulling over Thomas Friedman's soothing article to zone in on the basic fallacy, but once you do, it'...

The British newspaper The Guardian found out that the US has very likely been receiving details  of every phone call most of us make -- who we called, when we called them, how long we spoke. Where are all of those constitution lovers who are so fond of my 2nd amendment rights to start using those guns to fight against this colossal infringement of our 4th amendment rights? I'm bothered not just by the blatant violation of privacy rights but by the idiocy of this and of everyone who defends this. Let's take a specific scenario, where the government knows that some particular person is a terrorist.  Well, the government has always had the ability to go to a judge and get a warrant and find out who is calling this person and who this person calls, and even to listen in on the phone calls. Some of these abilities are impaired by the switch from land lines to cell phones.  The calls no longer go through particular switching stations for particular phone lines in particular pl...

Since I still have a land line it is susceptible to getting calls from polling companies. I kind of like this.  It is occasionally interesting because you can tell who's paying for the poll by the kinds of questions being asked and the way they are being phrased.  And who doesn't want to be asked their opinion. But I've got to take a few minutes to complain in public about a call I got yesterday. I was sitting around watching tennis from Roland Garros, so I figured I could watch tennis and be polled at the same time.  And the person taking the poll assures me it's just a few questions and won't go on for very long at all. It turns out to be a poll on the NYC mayor's race.  I'm asked multiple times to choose whom I would vote for today, which I refuse to do.  There are two or three candidates I am strongly considering and a few I am strongly not, and I don't want to pick a side now when there haven't been any debates and the contest not yet fully in s...

I feel good today, as Skyhorse and Start have announced better terms to facilitate their purchase of certain assets of Night Shade Books, hopefully avoiding a bankruptcy for Night Shade, allowing the two companies to invest themselves in the market for new science fiction and fantasy, and giving certainty to upwards of 150 authors who had been published by Night Shade. Credit for this goes first and foremost to Tony Lyons of Skyhorse and Jarred Weisfeld of Start.  We don't know how many authors they needed to get on board for the program or how many they had or seemed likely to have.  We do know that their introduction to the world of full-blown involvement in sf/fantasy was overwhelming.  They may have been lacking in forewarning or preparation; Tony was prepared to hear more from 20 or 30 authors about the deal than some 200 or more from all corners.  But ultimately, they did the right thing.  They reached out, spoke to people, and came to the plate with a co...

As a tonic to all of the Night Shade discussions this week, let's talk about something that involves another distinguished sf/fantasy press in the San Francisco Bay area, Jacob Weisman's Tachyon Publications, which is the publisher of the Hugo-nominated novella THE EMPEROR'S SOUL by Brandon Sanderson. It's an interesting story, to me at least, on many levels. For one, I'm old enough to have grown up in an era when we didn't have all of these internet magazines like Lightspeed and Clarkesworld and Daily SF and etc.  So just for that reason alone, it's hard to believe that it took a little over a year for Brandon Sanderson's THE EMPEROR'S SOUL to go from non-existence to Hugo finalist.  Unless you really hit the jackpot, writing a story in January and submitting it to the magazines that were pretty much the only places to go for this sort of thing in 1980, having a quick try on the first sale and having the story sneak in to the November of December is...