Fantastic Metropolis

The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition)

There’s still a small piece of hardcore geek within me, and that piece says that Peter Jackson’s epic masterwork of Tolkien-inspired filmmaking is a triumph. The extended edition fleshes the story out just enough to make it worthwhile, and the fact that Jackson has brought Middle-earth to exciting life is a boon to fantastic fiction as well as film. See, kids? Fantasy can be cool…

Step Across This Line

I was never really a fan of Salman Rushdie. I found The Satanic Verses supremely overrated, and never looked back. Then I read Step Across This Line and changed my mind. Rushdie is smart, erudite, witty, and opinionated. My type of guy. The essays and articles collected here exude attitude, while Rushdie’s unique perspective offers an absorbingly strange worldview. Good stuff.

The Tenacity of the Cockroach

The Onion AV Department interviews various madmen and cultural guerrillas like Henry Rollins, Ray Bradbury, Ralph Bakshi, Penn and Teller, Alan Moore and a host of others. Always opinionated, always funny, always intriguing. An absolutely worthwhile read.

Coraline

I read this aloud to my three-year-old daughter. By the time we finished, the both of us were huddled together under a blanket, shivering with delight. She looked up at me and said “That was cool, daddy.”, and she nailed it. Coraline is what Harry Potter should be; smart, subversive, and cool as hell. J. K. Rowling should take some lessons from Neil Gaiman… or has she taken enough already?

Memento

From the first scene, I knew this movie would alter my perceptions. By the last scene, I knew this was the fucking coolest DVD I’d see all year. I was right.

Things That Never Happen

Along with Chip Delany, M. John Harrison is my de facto rival/mentor. Any time I write something, I ask myself “How much better could MJH do it?”, and immediately return to scribbling away, hoping to make it better. Because Harrison is a master that I couldn’t hope to compete with. Read this fucking collection, or suffer the loss in silence, kiddos.

The Art of Fiction

John Gardner is perhaps the only writer-on-writing that I respect. I read this book annually, because it has a lot to say in a little package, and Gardner says it with supreme attitude. If you are a writer, you need to read this book, and need to ignore all the other self-congratulatory bullshit pap on the Writing Instruction shelves. They’re toilet paper compared to Gardner.

interlude 2

Music is my second love, after books. I’m a huge music freak fan, and I absolutely cannot live without something playing on the changer. My taste ranges the spectrum, though there’s a distinct focus on electronic music for some reason. Maybe it has something to do with those SFnal leanings of mine…