Notes from a DVD Geek

by Jeremy Lassen

Hey everyone.  Got some new release info for you this month, and some rambling about "Star Trek".

First up: "The Uninvited" hits DVD this week.  It's a US remake of the Korean horror classic "A Tale Of Two Sisters".  It’s fairly decent, (if a little bit dumbed down,) but given how convoluted and obtuse the original was, this isn’t really a terrible problem.  I enjoyed this one.

"S. Darko" proves the Joe Bob Briggs rule of sequels: just do the same damn thing over again.  This beat-for-beat sequel to "Donnie Darko" is by the production company of "Donnie Darko," but original "Darko" director Richard Kelly had nothing to do with it.  In fact he's pretty vocally disavowed it.  But. . . it occurs to me that if Kelly had turned in this movie instead of "Southland Tales," he might still have a career in Hollywood.  If you just want to experience the frission of "Donnie Darko" again, check out "S. Darko".  It does exactly what a sequel is supposed to do - give you precisely the same experience all over again.

April Bestsellers

Hardcovers
1) WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
2) Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
3) Imager by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
4) Turn Coat by Jim Butcher
5) Revolution Business by Charles Stross
6) Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint
7) Storm From the Shadows by David Weber
8) Coyote Horizon by Allen Steele
9) Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton
10) Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman


Mass Market Paperbacks
1) Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
2) Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb
3) Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick
4) Spook Country by William Gibson
5) Spell Games by T.A. Pratt
6) Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
7) From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
8) The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
9) Deathwish by Rob Thurman
10) Kethani by Eric Brown


Trade Paperbacks
1) Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente
2) We Never Talk About My Brother by Peter S. Beagle
3) Matter by Iain M. Banks
4) The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
5) Ravens in the Library edited by Phil Brucato & Sandra Buskirk tie with
    You Might Sleep by Nick Mamatas tie with
    Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Notes From A DVD Geek

by Jeremy Lassen

I’m going to make it short and sweet this month. Just the good stuff!

Two films of note (recently released on DVD domestically) by Japanese director Takashi Miike: The first is an adaptation of “Crows Zero” from the popular manga of the same name. This one might be seen as "Heathers" meets "The Sopranos" --Japanese style. The other is "Sukiyaki Western: Django". This one is Akira Karasawa’s "Ran" meets "A Fist Full of Dollars". It’s in the tradition of a spaghetti western Django movie, but has a mind-blowing color pallet, and over-the-top stylization of Miike. Good stuff all around. While neither of these movies is exactly horror or science fiction, they get special mention here because of Miike’s interest to genre movie watchers in general, and because they are so damn surreal as to quite possibly be fantasy.

March Bestesellers

Hardcovers

1. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
2. Caryatids by Bruce Sterling
3. Lamentation by Ken Scholes
4. Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
5. Storm From the Shadows by David Weber
6. Contagious by Scott Sigler
7. Fool by Christopher Moore
8. Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker
9. White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison
10. The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan

Mass Market Paperbacks

1. Death's Daughter by Amber Benson
2. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
3. Escapement by Jay Lake
4. Mainspring by Jay Lake
5. The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
6. Territory by Emma Bull
7. Small Favor by Jim Butcher
8. Galaxy Blues by Allen Steele
9. Night Life by Caitlin Kittredge
10. Lost Colony by John Scalzi

Trade Paperbacks

1. Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S.G. Browne
2. Jailbait Zombie by Mario Acevedo
3. Postsingular by Rudy Rucker
4. Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente
5. Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow

Miscellany - Watchmen, Ebooks, Current Reading

by Alan Beatts

This month I've a collection of miscellany for you all. Sort of a sound-bite article, with bits about eBooks, The Watchmen (both movie and comic), and some teasers about stuff I've read that you won't be able to buy for _months_.

The Watchmen --
I made time (with some difficulty) to go check out the movie about two weeks ago and I've got to say, I was almost completely happy with it. There might have been one or two little things I would have changed but they were so minor that they're not really worth mentioning.

The thing that really stood out for me in the film was the sheer (and very deeply _not_ Hollywood and _not_ safe) faithfulness to the original material. I really didn't expect it, despite hearing all about how respectful the production was meant to be (really, I thought that was a case of "the lady doth protest too much"). Granted there were a few changes but I thought that they were mostly wise choices that reflected the differences between film and graphic novels.

Notes From A DVD Geek

by Jeremy Lassen

This month I want to talk about Kaiju . Giant monsters! Men in rubber suits! The destruction of large cities by rampaging beasties. How can one go wrong with that? And while bad Godzilla knock-offs can get old after a while, there’s enough variation to be found in the genre (giant alligators in the sewer, giant snakes in the jungle, etc. etc.) to keep things fresh.

February Bestsellers

Hardcovers

1) Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs
2) White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison
3) Caryatids by Bruce Sterling
4) Contagious by Scott Sigler
5) Drood by Dan Simmons
6) Horizon: The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold
7) The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart
8) The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan
9) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
10) Chalice by Robin McKinley

Mass Market Paperbacks

1) Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams
2) The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
3) Last Colony by John Scalzi
4) Duplicate Effort by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
5) Unfallen Dead by Mark Del Franco
6) Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison
7) The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez
8) Halting State by Charles Stross
9) The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton
10) The Queen of Candesce by Karl Schroeder

Trade Paperbacks

1) Last Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
2) Barfodder by Rain Graves
3) Revenant Road by Michael Boatman
4) World War Z by Max Brooks tie with Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald
5) Matter by Iain M. Banks

Used Book Sales (and Sellers) are an Author's Friend

by Alan Beatts

[Editor's Note: SF Signal <http://sfsignal.com/index.html>  is a science fiction blog with news, reviews and commentary.  They run an occasional feature called Mind Meld, where they ask a bunch of authors, editors, and other genre professionals to all answer the same question, and then they post the question and all the answers.  The results are usually fascinating.  This month, they've asked Alan, Borderlands' owner, among lots of others, to answer the following question: "I've seen arguments for and against the used book market.  What's your take?  Does the used book market help or hurt the publishing industry?".  I thought the discussion was interesting, so we've decided to run Alan's answer here in the From the Office column.  Check with SF Signal later in the month to read all the other responses. - Jude]

Whether used book sales hurt or help the publishing industry is a complicated question.  This is mostly because the publishing industry contains several subsections, all of which have their own discrete and sometimes mutually incompatible goals and economic pressures.  To really look at the question comprehensively one has to consider readers, authors, booksellers, and publishers separately.  Before going to to that, let me point out two assumptions - one, that the only person who receives any payment for a used book is the person who sells it (i.e. no royalty goes to the author and the publisher doesn't get a penny) and two, that used books are sold based on the current model (i.e. mostly directly to the consumer in a face-to-face transaction but with a significant and increasing number of sales happening on-line).

THUNDERER and GEARS OF THE CITY by Felix Gilman Review

by Chris Hsang

[Editor's Note: Thanks to intrepid customer/reviewer Christopher Hsiang for the following. This review was previously published by the awesome folks over at i09.com. - Jude]

M. John Harrison has inspired a fantasy tradition of strange, shifting cities by authors like Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Steph Swainston, Jeff VanderMeer, Ian R. MacLeod, and Jay Lake. The New Weird influence of Harrison's VIRICONIUM can definitely be seen in the first two Ararat novels by Felix Gilman.

December Bestsellers

Hardcovers
1. Contagious by Scott Sigler
2. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
3. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
4. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
5. 1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint and Virgina DeMarce
6. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
7. The Gabble and Other Stories by Neal Asher (UK)
8. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
9. The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan (UK)
10. Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

Mass Market Paperbacks
1. New Tricks by John Levitt
2. The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison
3. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
4. The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
5. Dog Days by John Levitt
6. The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
7. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
8. Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce
9. Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis
10. Halting State by Charles Stross tie with
Snake Agent by Liz Wiliams

Trade Paperbacks
1. Steampunk edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
2. Ancestor by Scott Sigler
3. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
4. The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams
5. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie tie with
The Shadow of the Scorpion by Neal Asher