Ted Rabinowitz's Blog, page 49

The Evil Overlord List

Once a year, it is incumbent upon us - Aleinu, as my coreligionists would say - to print a link to that classic of fantasy, the Evil Overlord List.

So there it is.
Mwa-hah-hah-hah!


PS - Some of you more alert readers may notice that my own evil overlord, Geoffrey Plantagenet, has committed some of these faux pas - notably, numbers 26, 30, 36, 53, and maybe sorta kinda 98. But five out of a hundred? That's not bad, faithful readers!

Manhattanhenge

For those of you who don't know, Manhattanhenge is the two days a year when the sun rises directly through the gaps in the Midtown street grid. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist whom I generally like, coined the term and directed people's attention to it about ten years ago. But as someone who grew up in New York and remembers trudging east to the bus stop as a kid with the sun directly in my eyes for the winter/sunrise version of this thing, all I can say is "Mneh."

The Dark Thingie of Winter's Blank

Tor.com did a little survey of the most common words in fantasy titles. Almost too painful to be funny.

Swordfight! Swordfight!

Sure, it's Hollywood. But it's still so much fun.

I want this on a t-shirt

Particle tracking from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Nerd Word.

Classic F/SF Ideas: Extreme Environmental Tales

These are stories in which physical conditions are so difficult or bizarre that they become characters in and of themselves. Once a staple of hard science fiction, they have decreased as our knowledge of other planets has increased.

However, with all the astounding eco-planet data we've been developing in the last five years, we might just be set for an EET renaissance. That would be kind of cool, I think.








Dune, Frank Herbert
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
Dragon's Egg, Robert Forward
"Surface Tension," James Blish
"A Pail of Air," Fritz LeiberThe Integral Trees, Larry Niven

Bad F/SF Waters the Garden of Mockery

So I was at a very nice F/SF meetup here in the City That Never Sleeps, and we were watching a "behind the scenes" doc of Joss Whedon's late, lamented Firefly. And up on the screen, there's an actor whom I've always taken to be an urbane, polished pro. But he seemed to be talking with barely controlled condescension about how he tries to "quarantine" himself from science fiction. (I may have misinterpreted. I hope I did, because this fellow has a good rep.) Anyway, aside from the noblesse oblige that should guarantee that no actor mocks a genre or audience that has written checks for them (you won't catch Dave Tennant doing it) it made me think once again about the levels of quality we demand from our F/SF entertainment.


So I encourage all of you - be more demanding in your choice of fiction. If thine epic fantasy offend thee, pluck it out! Or at least don't buy Book II. If you feel that you've shelled out $7.99 for something that reads more like fanwank than high craft, say something.

And contrariwise, always be open and interested in new writers, new voices, new stories. Keep doing that, and as sure as day follows night, you'll find someone who will rock your world, even if you have to sort through a lot of "Fellagon the Dragon"s and "Sword of Something"s to get there.

And of course, jerks with swords

Stained glass

Reliquaries

I've had some email from readers wondering what reliquaries look like. Here are a few. A lot of variation, as you can see.