From the Sid Archives - Interview With Gates McFadden of Star Trek: The Next Generation

I've been going through some files in anticipation of a move to a new place, and I ran across some fun things from my newspaper days.

Here's an interview I did with Gates McFadden in the middle of the Star Trek: The Next Generation run.

Full article .pdf here

The Strong Women in Science Fiction Event

 

Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse, which includes my story "The Witch of Washington Pari," is part of the Strong Women in Science Fiction Event for August 2021.

Check out all there is to see. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Donovan's Brain and Hauser's Memory by Curt Siodmak

Curt Siodmak made significant contributions to the Universal horror canon with screenplays for The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Son of Dracula and others. 

His novels add dimension to the horror and science fiction realm. This handy edition brings together a couple of his greatest works, both of which were made into films. Hauser kind of expands on ideas in Donovan's Brain, so this makes for a nice package. This twofer is from November 1992 from Leisure Books. 

Noel Carroll examines Donovan's Brain in The Philosophy of Horror in contemplating the overreacher plot, the structure/paradigm in the Frankenstein mold. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Six Great Science Fiction Novels

Here's an interesting interview with Siodmak.

 

Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse and Tales From My Dark Side

For a while yesterday (April 18, 2020, in the time of quarantine), Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse edited by Lyn Worthen, which includes my story "Witch of Washington Park," had the Hollywood Squares spot right below Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, and we were on a diagonal from collected stories of Theodore Sturgeon, all in the Science Fiction Anthologies category. Or maybe it was the Zoom spot right below them. Or the Alice below Carol and Marcia.

I know, I know, new things climb into the Top 100 and stay a while, like the fog in a Carl Sandburg poem, and then move on, but it was still a thrill for me anyway. In good ways. Bradbury and Sturgeon are deservedly perennials in those slots. BUT STILL!!!! "...once there was a spot/ For one brief shining moment...Camelot..."

READ ALSO: My Interview with Ray Bradbury

And sorta there's bad in me related to this...
Or a dark side, and the placement soothes an old contusion, I'll confess... When I was a kid in junior high I gave a buck-twenty-five copy of The Martian Chronicles as a Christmas gift at school. It was the cool orange one with the sketch of Bradbury on the cover. You drew a name, you had to buy for a $1 or so in those days. It was a while back.

When my present went to the guy, who was actually happy to get it, a look of disgust crossed this other kid's face. "You always give books," he muttered, spitting the word "books" with about as much contempt of a word as is humanly possible.

READ ALSO: Ray Bradbury - The October Game - Major Spoiler 

Yeah, I gave books, and I still do...
...some of them direct from my brain to yours if you choose. Probably says more about me that I recall that dis, that utterance of contempt. But, uh, I guess I hold grudges sometimes. You know, for, uh, decades. Several decades. So that little thumbnail was fun!

Cat Books Here - Get up to 10 ebook titles featuring cats including the pre-launch Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse

Act Now: https://storybundle.com/cats

For a limited time, you can get Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse via a special pre-launch offer. Cat Ladies includes my story "The Witch of Washington Park" and 9 other titles as special story bundle. Pay what you want for 10 titles with six of them exclusive ebooks.

They all feature cats, which are, of course, a great source of comfort. That's how they serve in my story as a heroine faces a brutal future and works to prepare an urban environment for agriculture in a devastated land.

There's also mystery, horror and suspense in this mix. As I'm writing this, 17 days remain on the offer, so act fast and get some great reading to fill your down time.

See the full cover of Cat Ladies edited by Lyn Worthen here.

Anthology - Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse Cover Reveal

I'm happy to present the cover art for the upcoming anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse.

Plans for this collection edited by Lyn Worthen began last fall, and that's when I wrote my story, "The Witch of Washington Park." Who knew? The Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was set at two minutes to midnight.

In January 2020, it moved up thirty seconds, to a minute and a half.

Visit the Camden Park Press Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse page

The submission call read "It’s time to turn the `man and his dog wandering through a dystopian world' trope on its head..."

I wasn't sure at first what I'd do with that. I began with the notion of a former scientist, her name's Cassandra, making her way through a deserted city and finding a frightened boy holding a cat.

She was working to establish a bit of an oasis where food could be safely grown in an urban environment. Most of the world outside, a landscape ravaged by climate and nuclear disasters, but she and her cat named Midnight were holding on.

She'd grown despondent, however. Taking care of the boy, naming his cat Raven, offering him bits of culture and history while teaching him about agriculture began to give her new life.

Yet threats loom, threats always loom.

As always when a story takes off, the writing experience was exhilarating.

The collection includes many other great tales. Cats that eat zombies. Badass librarians, cat ladies battling something like Cthulhu and much more. It's arriving soon, so keep watching your favorite bookseller's site.

See also: Quoth the Raven featuring my story, "A Cooler of Craft Brew."

The Witch of Washington Park,

I'm excited to announce my 8,000-word story, "The Witch of Washington Park," will be included in the upcoming Camden Park Press anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse edited by Lyn Worthen. Think of it as the flip side of A Boy and His Dog.

The story's set in a future where cataclysmic events have created a wasteland beset by predators of human and animal form alike. Of course.

My heroine, Cassandra, once a scientist, is at work attempting to prepare an urban setting to become an agricultural oasis amid the gloom of a post-apocalyptic world, but she's in danger of giving way to despair. Until she finds a young boy who needs her care.

Nothing's easy for them, of course, and the big threat's in the form of... Well, read it and see.

This story was great fun to write. I'd been wanting to do a little more in the science fiction or speculative fiction realm. The title of the anthology really sparked my imagination.

I'll post links when preorder information becomes available. Probably coming about mid-March 2020.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - A Werewolf Among Us by Dean R. Koontz

Baker St. Cyr is part computer part human and all cyber detective. From Ballantine, January, 1973. 

Not So Normal Living Rooms - Streaming Contained Thriller Horror

I like blockbusters as much as the next aging geek. I went to see Jason Bourne on Sunday because I knew it was going to be fun and frenetic. Other than one car chase that goes on from the third act until the next feature time, I was right.

I'm always intrigued also by films that sometimes get dubbed chamber pieces in keeping with theater tradition and terminology for small cast and limited setting.

Those chamber piece films are those that that go the other direction from the blockbuster. Instead of globe hopping, like a lot of TV viewers, they stay in the living room.

Alfred Hitchcock's Rope with it's real time storyline and Leopold and Loeb-inspired psychopaths is a stunning example. I think Hitchcock liked the challenge of developing thrills in tight settings because what are Psycho or Dial M for Murder as well?

I've enjoyed several variations on the streaming services of late, all eerie and effective, never making us feel just like we're stuck on one set but making that one set or location essential. These are some very weird living rooms if you will.

Coherence was conceived apparently in part by James Ward Byrkit as a respite from blockbusters, and it gives us a dinner party on the night of a comet that soon slides into a night of weirdness as it becomes apparent timelines in the many worlds theory are criss-crossing, and mistakes and missed opportunities drive some characters to desperation. 

Time Lapse from Bradley King plays different games with time to good effect. What might be a grim crime drama without its science fiction conceit becomes a cool and compelling nail-biter when three friends (The Flash's Danielle Panabaker, Matt O'Leary and George Finn), one with a gambling addiction, discover a dead scientist who's left behind a camera in his apartment that snaps Polaroids one day in the future. It's aimed at their living room. What can it hurt to post race results in the window?

If movies have taught us anything, it's that men who dabble in the realm of God reap a big and complicated mess.

That's what the heroes of Time Lapse soon discover. Is the camera creating self-fulfilling prophecies, or are other forces at work? Between dangerous bookies, double crosses and the challenge of keeping secrets and sticking to time's rule's, their world's soon awry, and the tale offers many twists and surprises before its revealing conclusion.




The Invitation has been getting just a bit of buzz upon its Netflix debut, and I think it's deserved.

It's the story of Will (Logan Marshall-Green of Prometheus) the grief-stricken father of a child killed by a playmate. He and new love Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are on the way to a reunion with his ex-wife (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband (Khaleesi boy toy Michael Huisman.) The latter couple met in grief counseling and fled to Mexico for an Est-like (or not) experience that's replaced grief with joy.

Now they want to make amends to Will, so he and a host of old friends have received the invitation to join in, and the evening gets creepier and creepier in a slow burn buildup that engages and refuses to relent. Can any party with John Carroll Lynch as an unexpected guest go any other way, whether or not he's decked out as Twisty the Clown?



These films won't allow just vegging on the sofa, but they will make your living room viewing a bit breathless for a few hours. Check them out via Amazon or Netflix.

A wild and weird Robot Excursion - Killer Robots! Crash and Burn

I have to say I'm a bit intrigued by the look of the robots in Leomark's July 15 release The Killer Robots! That's their exclamation mark, but I can't say it's totally unwarranted. AI's a little unsettling to everyone these days.

As the official synopsis puts it, there's "a dimension where living machines battle for supremacy, and those who oppose find only destruction." That can't be good for non-robotic types.

"After meeting their end in a mechanized gladiator arena, four robotic mercenaries - Auto, Max, Strobo and Trog are extracted from a junk pile, rebuilt and recruited as mercenaries for a mysterious organization of android adventurers."

Soon they find themselves on their way to the planet Vidya, "an artificial world ravaged by a computer virus that has sent its robotic inhabitants into a state of primitive barbarism."

The robotic heroes "must make their way through a tumultuous landscape, activate a mysterious communication device, link multiple universes, and bring about a new age of enlightenment and prosperity for a dystopian galactic civilization."

Birthed by a Florida band of the same name, The Killer Robots! looks a little different and "out there" and possibly outré. Here's a trailer:

Written and directed by Sam Gaffin, The Killer Robots! Crash and Burn will be on VOD platforms.

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz - Spooky Slight of Hand

(Disclosure: I received a review copy of the British edition of 77 Shadow Street. This look inside includes mild spoilers, though no more than the Amazon entry on The House of Thunder.)


Things are always incredible, but an ah-ha is usually in store somewhere in the pages of a Dean Koontz thriller. A slow reveal often twists and explains seemingly supernatural events in a rational or scientific manor, or there's an inversion you weren't expecting.

77 Shadow Street, his latest novel, features many Koontz hallmarks juggled into new alignment. It's a standout among his recent offerings, though Koontz novels never fail to entertain.

When the book opens, odd things are going on at the luxury apartment building known as the Pembleton, conveniently located at the title address. Could you expect less than strangeness if you were living on Shadow Street?

In the opening, a drunken ex-Senator boards an elevator for his floor only to be whisked to a basement of terror. We're talking Buffy-style hell mouth.

Then Bailey Hawks, one of the protagonists, is menaced by a strange creature in the swimming pool, and retired attorney and Pembleton expert Silas Kinsley is awakened by a building tremor.

Odd voices are heard in apartments and hallways, and soon an assemblage of distinct Koontz characters are seeing Victorian-era people appearing from nowhere, more odd creepy crawlies and shimmers of blue electricity pulsing from ceilings and floors.

The Characters
Bailey, a financial advisor with a military background to give him heroic cred, almost takes a back seat to Shadow Street's eccentrics.

Mickey Dime is among the most notable, an assassin who's psychologically scarred by his upbringing. His mom was a rigid and stoic intellectual more focused on self aggrandizing than true philosophizing. You can speculate on who she might be based on. He's a bit like the villain from Koontz's The Husband, whose inspiration can also be a fun speculation game.

A novelist, a country songwriter, elderly female entrepreneurs, an autistic girl who communicates using the novel Bambi and a precocious young introvert round things out.

Their paces
Koontz keeps his band busy once the set-up is complete, and about mid-book answers begin to come as more devilish doings unfold.

To say more would really be unfair if you're going to pick this up, but I will note what you probably think's going on ain't what's going on. But then, if you're a Koontz reader, you'll know that.

With rumblings of Crichton and Vonnegut, the author delivers a page-turning and thrilling tale with a mask-off scene in the final pages that delivers the payoff. That makes up for perhaps just a bit of a fizzle in the climactic action. 

Overall, this is my favorite Koontz book since Life Expectancy. Koontz is a master story craftsman, and it's always fun to experience his latest effort.

Trailer Tuesday: Since Noon Yesterday

In following through on my look at Ed Noon and Michael Avallone, here's a slightly different Trailer Tuesday.

Toward the end of his career, Avallone wrote a final set of Ed Noon novels that took his hard boiled private eye in all new directions. He'd been a private eye, a spy and in the final novels, some unpublished, he faced an alien invasion.

His son, David Avallone, is a film maker, and he adapted the final books into a web film. I missed it on Atom Films or whichever short film site it debuted on. Happily now it's on My Space films, and below is the teaser or prelude.

Interview: Robert Lory Author of The Dracula Horror Series

In the mid-1970s, the book rack at the local Eckerd's provided me a great deal of reading material.

Along with Doc Savage, Lew Archer and thrillers of the day sat a series of titles which brought Dracula, the prince of darkness, into the modern era.

A great deal of attention was focused on Dracula at that time. Magazines featured articles about the newly discovered tie between Vlad the Impaler and the Bram Stoker creation. Both the Christopher Lee Dracula films and Universal Films were also spotlighted frequently in Monster Times and Famous Monsters of Filmland, and the Aurora monster model kits were still on sale.

The Dracula Horror Series fit perfectly into that period, a blend of horror, science fiction and action adventure. In the tales, Damien Harmon, a paralyzed criminologist with telekinetic ability implanted a device with a tiny sliver of a stake near Dracula's heart. Controlled by the professor's thoughts, the device allowed him to harness Dracula's power for the forces of goodness. If Drac failed to comply with Dr. Harmon's wishes, the stake could be activated, sending him back into oblivion. With Harmon's bald, martial-arts-expert assistant Cameron Sanchez and Dracula's shape shifting friend Ktara, they were off to face super villains, lost worlds and much more.


Those titles were penned by Robert Lory, and I was thrilled to connect with him online a few years ago.

I've decided to do occasional interviews here on the blog, and he was the first person to whom I wanted to pose a few questions since those tales stimulated my imagination when I read them in junior high.  It was a lot of fun to learn details about not just the Dracula series but more of Mr. Lory's work at a very exciting time in science fiction, fantasy and horror publishing.


When I was first reading the Dracula novels, I discovered a copy of If with one of your stories among my cousin’s books. Tell us a little about your earliest writing, what first drew you to science fiction and writing for the digest magazines?

I started writing for dollars when in college in the late 1950s. Since my major was history/social sciences, I was heavily into research. I was drawn to science fiction because logically--at least to my mind--the future can't be researched. Similar case with fantasy: just make the stuff up.

You wrote some science fiction novels and horror novels as well. What was it like writing for Ace in the sixties and seventies? Did you work with one editor or more? Any interesting experiences?

Don Wolheim was my first editor at Ace, and he was terrific. Case in point: Because I came to novel writing from the short story scene, I’d learned to write "tight and terse." The result was a first novel (The Eyes of Bolsk) that turned out to be 10,000 words too short. Since I didn't have the stomach for adding a bunch of non-essential scenic views or conversations that went nowhere, I added a secondary plot line. Don liked it, but gave me some serious advice which boiled down to: Look, I like the multiple plot lines but, if you keep writing like this, you'll burn out after four, maybe five, novels. Relax and loosen up.  One of the best writing suggestions I ever got. Too bad I couldn't follow it.

My history with Fred Pohl began in the mid-60s when he was editing Galaxy and If magazines. He editorialized that he would never--repeat, never--buy a story that had astrology as a base. I took it as a challenge and wrote and sent him "The Star Party" with his editorial attached. The check he sent me had a transmittal note that said something like I shouldn't try pulling his chain a second time. I didn't rub it in when Ace Books republished the story in its Worlds Best SF anthology for 1965.

When Fred was at Ace in 1974, I sent him the first 40 pages of The Thirteen Bracelets, saying I had no idea where the story was going, but would he like to see it when done.  He said yes, but would I include two things: an underground battle scene and an insane computer. I had no problem with either, and am convinced they made the book stronger.

After you started having novels published, where did you first see one of your books on sale?

I honestly can't remember, but here's a related incident I remember well. In the late '70s I was on a flight to Hong Kong, which had to refuel on Guam. The airport passenger facilities at that time consisted of two Quonset huts, one of which was a jam-packed general store. I had three free-standing swivel racks of paperbacks. When I got back to the States, I couldn't wait to tell a writer friend of mine the "good news": he had two books on those racks. Then I told him the "better news": I had four.   

Do you have a favorite among the science fiction and stand-alone novels you wrote?

In science fiction it would have to be The Thirteen Bracelets, because in it I attacked every sacred cow I deemed worth attacking. A close second would be Master of the Etrax, a sort of sword and sorcery romp that ridiculed, among other things, bureaucratic decision-making. I laughed out loud writing both books, which makes me think that, in those days, I might not have been the most empathetic knife in the drawer.





The Dracula Horror Series was written with the book producer Lyle Kenyon Engle, right? How did you come to work on the Dracula series?

Lyle had read one of my Sham Odell SF novels and called me to work on a series which became John Eagle: the Expeditor. (The publisher wanted the books faster than the first writer could supply them.) I wrote the third and fourth in the series and then alternated books up to when the series ended at the eleventh entry.

When Dracula came up, he asked me if I'd do it. I was delighted to say yes.

Did you have an interest in Dracula before the series? Did you do special research for the series?

I'd read Stoker, of course, but had no really special interest in vampires per se.  My research was fairly skimpy--a few vampire stories as well as the classic In Search of Dracula by McNally and Florescu. I never did get into the Anne Rice thing.

Some of the promotional blurbs for the Dracula novels have different character names. I’ve always assumed those were from the original outlines and that the books morphed in the creative process. Am I right?

There really were no original outlines, just a few very rough ideas. One was for the Professor to tell the stories in the first person, and that was killed from the moment I signed on. There was no way that he could know all the details of Dracula’s history.

British edition of No. 4

 in the Dracula series.

What was that process like with Engle and how much freedom did you have in developing the stories? 

I had pretty much total freedom.  Lyle and I had a long dinner in New York where we covered several scenarios and some specific problems--like how do you control the beast now that you’ve got him? Back home in Houston, it took me about a week to develop Harmon and Sanchez (the prof would need a younger man to do the heavy lifting) and the cat-morphing Ktara--as well as a very sketchy back-story that began some time in the Age of Myth.

I outlined the first book, and it was a go. I also did outlines for the next two in the series, but when Lyle and the publisher saw that I never bothered to follow them, they told me not to bother producing them.

I always thought both Professor Harmon and Cameron Sanchez were great characters. How did they take shape?

I wanted brains (Harmon) and brawn (Sanchez), both of whom were fire-eaters on a mission and were hard-pressed to pull it off the way they originally intended (as badged public servants). Sprinkled in their psyches are some of my own traits. Harmon detests telephones; I only bought a cell when my wife had hip surgery (it now sits in my car, uncharged).  Cam hates airplanes; I avoid them whenever possible.

Did you have a favorite of the Dracula series?

Actually, I best-liked whatever one I was working on. As a writer/reader, I too was learning more about these characters as the type showed up on the page.

Would there have been any more in the series?

Probably--if the sales had held up. The Atlantis/Old Gods back-story could have been mined for at least another two or three books, but it was not to be. However, a series of nine isn’t all that shabby.

You did the second Boris Karloff Tales of the Frightened anthology. Any challenges in working in that somewhat brief form?

It was a great deal of fun. It not only took me back to the short story medium, which I realized I missed, but I also got to do a pretty good imitation of Karloff’s voice as I read my stuff aloud during the editing process.

Tell us a little about the Horrorscope series. Was that an interesting project also?

Initially, I didn’t think of it as a book series. What I proposed was a collection of short stories, each based on a Zodiac sign, so I started the book-length project with more than a little reluctance. As the products appeared in print, some of my friends allowed as how I “didn’t seem to be having much fun” with them. They were right, and I think the writing proved the point. In any case, when Pinnacle dropped that project (and others of its ilk), I felt very relieved.

Can you tell us a little about what you’re up to now?

Nine years ago, I retired early from my corporate (PR and advertising) job--and immediately started a consulting company, which I retired from about four years ago. These days I enjoy day-trading the financial markets. I’m also working on improving my tennis game. To date, Rafa Nadal has expressed no concern.

The Dracula books now sell at collectible prices. Any thoughts about having any of your work brought out on for Kindle in this burgeoning digital era?

I could hardly believe it when I first discovered my stuff was still being read and reviewed on several Web sites. I’ve gotten “thank-you” emails from people that were toddlers when my books were written. So, from an ego-feel-good perspective, the “digital era” has made my day many times over. Anything more is gravy.

Additional reading

• My Monster Memories: Dracula Returns Again...In Book Form!

New Who

I've been so busy of late, I haven't had time to be excited about the new season of Doctor Who. It's kind of interesting how the phenomena has transformed. 

Took a year for Season 1 to air in the U.S. I can remember visiting the official site one day to discover the TARDIS materializing on White House lawn. 

Now we get the Christmas specials on Christmas night, and a new season is here almost as quickly as it airs in the UK. That's the force of demand and technology, I suppose. 

The lack of anticipation almost makes U.S. viewers take it for granted. 

Seeing the first U.S.-lensed scenes evidenced in the trailer helps with my excitement. Let the countdown begin.

Addendum
And what should arrive in my RSS feed this afternoon but an interview with lead writer Steven Moffat on the evolution of the series. Read it

New Who Wallpaper

Sanctuary! Fantasy SF Paranormal Fun With Monsters

Is there a name for fans of Syfy/Canadia fantasy-thriller Sanctuary? You know like Trekker? I'm ready for my badge and membership card.

I glanced at the first episode when it aired on then Sci Fi, but didn't get to stay with the series, and I'll confess I was a little dismissive. Just another paranormal investigation show, I thought.

I returned for more sampling when the season became available on Netflix Watch Instantly. Episodes became a nice 45-minute break for the lazy part of Saturday afternoons just before time to start my grill for dinner while I was in school.

And I decided the premise was kind of fun and that Sanctuary wasn't just another X-Files. For the uninitiated, it's about Dr. Helen Magnus, Amanda Tapping, Stargate SG-1's Maj. Carter in a stunningly different persona. Dr. Magnus is immortal due to some Victorian magi-science, and she heads a network devoted to finding and protecting a generous supply of "abnormals" sprinkled around  the globe.

The mythology grows richer as the series moves along, even though there are obviously cost-conscious episodes in which Magnus and right-hand-man Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunn) are trapped in one-set confines such as the cabin of a crashed aircraft or the belly of an oil tanker. One ep was set entirely in a warehouse, viewed through the lens of a news crew's camera.

Myth, myth
Magnus is part of a circle that includes a misunderstood Jack The Ripper, Dr. John Watson and Tesla. The Sanctuary network is fraught with internecine political struggle, and there's a rival organization called Cabal. (Spoiler warning) One major character was killed off with stylish imagination.

The Season 2-ending, Season 3-beginning arc eschewed claustrophobic confines for a glob-spanning, world-threatening feature-like three-parter introducing Bollywood numbers and even more mythology, which seems headed in a Steampunk direction next. That's if an eye-candy holograph recently unlocked is any indication.

Happily with Netflix and Hulu, you can catch up quickly or just begin the series now and forge ahead at your own pace.

You never know what monster will crop up next.

Blogosphering

OK, I'm kinda back. Stewart Sternberg, whose The Ravening everyone should already have on pre-order, gigged me a bit a while back about repurposing Twitter tweets, but I've been a little swamped of late, and I did want to preserve some of those thoughts.

Hopefully I'll be back to the blogosphere full steam soon and fresh with ideas and energy. I've just been busy with school, work, and well that's about it, but that's been plenty.

For those of you who still have me in your RSS feed, let me get a few things on record on things nerd. I've managed to keep up with a few things in spite of the swamping.

Iron Man 2: liked it but the critics aren't really 100 percent wrong.

V: Like it, glad it survived, sorry it had to be between it and FlashForward which I liked marginally better.

Lost: Looking forward to the finale. Is The Source the same thing that's in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction or that box Mike Hammer had in Kiss Me Deadly?

Inception: Looks interesting and I like Christopher Nolan.

Reading: The Outside Man by Richard North Patterson.

Next Up: I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond. Wish me well.

Miss Daisy is hanging in.

Steampunk iPhone Wallpaper

I don't know that you can call my first effort at making iPhone wallpaper steampunk with 100 percent accuracy, but I had the spirit of steampunk in mind as I crafted it for the SidiPhone with the help of a few tutorials and Photoshop accessories.

I'm not sure why I felt a desire to trick out my new phone with steampunk touches. Maybe it was the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which felt a little steampunky and drove me back to the Sherlock canon for a December/January binge, or maybe it's just that turbulent times always make us look in different directions, namely backward.

There's a poem called 221B Baker Street, written in the '40s after the 20th century had been shaken by two wars. It celebrates the simpler time and world of the canon, a time where it's "always eighteen ninety-five" and where Holmes can always tie up things in tidy fashion.

Perhaps the constant improvement of technology and it's encroachment on our lives fuels--if you will--some of steampunk's current popularity.

At any rate, it resonates with me a bit at the moment. My effort above is ready for right-clicking if you're inclined to use it. Or if you want to make your own here's roughly how I got there, though this is by no means a step by step tutorial.

Resources

A tutorial from Abduzeedo on creating a vintage travel diary was my starting point and has links to stock art and many of the great Photoshop brushes that made it an easy job. The background is done with a brush from this Waterlogged Map collection.

Some of the gears and tools are from a couple of sets of steampunk Photoshop brushes found here and here. A few I didn't use are here. Maybe for Steampunkwallpaper 2.

I really just added a few bevels, texture touches and drop shadows to make the tools and gears look more real.

More steampunk fun

I ran across quite a few bits of steampunkery as I researched resources. Here are a few more links for browsing enjoyment.

• Via Trend Hunter, Bizarre Magazine's steampunk cover shoot.
• Trender Hunter's Steampunk Celebrations.
• The Steampunk Emporium for steampunk fashions.
• The Steampod Podcast.
• Steampunk Magazine.
• Steamed, a brand new steampunk romance.

Avatar

If you look hard enough you can find negative reviews of James Cameron's Avatar, and I suppose some of the notes about cliches and obtrusiveness of theme are not inaccurate. For me, the sheer joy of Avatar as a moviegoing experience outweighs any of that, however.

It wasn't a scene of flying creatures that wowed me most. It's a long movie, and 3D had already become part of the landscape by the point the first mountain banshee appeared.

The subtle 3D use in a scene in which a crippled Marine is extricated from a cryogenic chamber piqued my imagination first and foremost. With floating orderlies and depth of field, it made the world on the big screen a little different than anything I'd seen before. That's really what's needed in our universe if the movie going experience is to be more than a marketing campaign for Blu-Ray sales.

It really felt like I'd been sucked into the universe of science fiction novels where zero G was a norm.

Flying creatures, jungle landscapes, spiritual indigenous humanoids and rampaging monster dogs only supplemented the experience.

They are really cool, though. It was like being in a fully imagined Edgar Rice Burroughs universe. It's clear James Cameron really did draw on all of the books and movies he experienced as a kid in crafting Avatar as he said in his Studio 360 interview.

It's a wonderous amalgamation, and as Roger Ebert states it's worth seeing if you can get to a theater to be part of the conversation.

I think it's good when we have an occasion for shared dreams, and if something gets us off the sofa, well that's staving off the couch potato universe of WALL-E a little longer isn't it?

Treknicalities

Some things you just don't argue about in our office.

This all started because we were talking about high heels. Apparently there are some women's styles in which the heels are pushing four-inches. I keep up with a lot of things, but that's not generally an issue that's on my radar.

I recalled, however, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Capt. Picard employed the holodeck to re-create a Dixon Hill private eye novel of the 1940s. Gates McFadden as Doctor Crusher had to don high heels for the first time and had trouble navigating steps in them. Apparently in the future they won't have high heels. Maybe that's science fiction.

"Yeah, that was like the one from the show with Kirk," one co-worker said.

"They didn't have the holodeck in the original series," I said.

"Yes they did."

"Where's Rebecca?" I asked.

We have one uniform-owning Trekkie. Yeah, Trekkie not Trekker, some of you know what I'm talking about, but I figured she'd be suitable confirmation.

She was out.

I went a little further up the hall and found our graphic artist. "You ever watch the Original Series."

"Of Star Trek?

I was willing to forgive him that. He's young, and I am confident he would know what I meant if I said something like: "These aren't the droids we're looking for. " If, you know, I were going to cross references.

"Of Star Trek.," I assured. "You can confirm there were no holodecks in TOS, right?"

"Right, they didn't have holodecks."

We went to the back of the building again where the debate was raging.

"OK," I said, hit it."

"There were no holodecks in the one with Kirk," said the artist dutifully.

"But when I watched with my father, they had them," my co-worker contended, refusing to concede.

We got the Boss.

"Holodecks? Original series?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"But they went into the past?" said the unrelenting co-worker.

"But not with holodecks. Besides on holodecks they weren't really going into the past...but that's a different issue. There were no holodecks in TOS."

"But what about...?"

"Wait a minute," I said. "Are you talking about an episode where they went back to the '30s and met Joan Collins by jumping through the Guardian arch?"

"Yeah."

The Boss, the artist and I all responded in unison: "City on the Edge of Forever."

"Written by Harlan Ellison," I added.

"You know who wrote it?" the co-worker asked.

"It's kind of a big deal. He and Gene Roddenberry used to argue..."

"It's a little like The Big Bang Theory in here," our statistician observed. "You guys know episode titles? It's like Sheldon."

"I can remember a time I forgot the title of Balance of Terror ," I said defensively, trying not to sound too much like a nerd. Too late.

"You know, it's not part of the cannon, but the Guardian Arch did appear in the animated series," the boss noted.

I had to think for a second. Then I looked at him and nodded.

"Yesteryear!" we said in unison.

"Spock goes back in time to save his younger self," I blurted.

The argument was obviously resolved now.

The Takeaway: Never, never argue with even an aging nerd about The Original Series.

I'm Becoming a Fan of the Dollhouse

I know the future of Fox's Dollhouse is iffy, but I became a full-fledged fan with the revelations in the recent episode "Man On The Street," penned by creator Joss Whedon. I watched on Hulu since it unfortunately aired opposite the Battlestar finale. Friday night really is sci-fi night.

To me, Dollhouse's ongoing mythology has always been the most intriguing part, and certainly the most original element of the series, shining brighter than some of the hour-long stories that have sent programmable heroine Echo (Eliza Dushku) into somewhat familiar perils.

In one installment she was assigned to pose as the fiance of a hunter who tried to make her his prey. In another she was part of a heist team that wound up trapped in the vault they were pillaging, but those contained stories are really side dishes.

Revelations in "Man On The Street" suggest a much more twisty plot ahead for Echo, a college student whose personality was wiped in order to make her one of the "dolls" --human robots of the shadowy title organization that provides wealthy clients with hot escorts, body guards or backup singers, all customized by science-fictiony techniques that print new personalities and capabilities on the empty human vessels.

Some series might stop with just that premise, but Dollhouse stirs the pot with Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar's Helo), one of those rogue, obessive FBI agents, working outside channels in pursuit of answers in a closed case tied to what many superiors believe is an urban myth.

Just as he did with the seemingly cheesy premise of Buffy, Whedon has crafted a unique and offbeat episodic serial. It's not given to the heavy breathing the premise might suggest, especially with the dual motives that seem to be simmering in Dollhouse franchise manager Adelle (Olivia Williams), who's flanked by Laurence Dominic (Homicide's Reed Diamond at his most sinister) and Echo's "handler," the earnest and ethical Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix). It's actually quite a well-rounded ensemble. Especially when nerdy imprint-wrangler Topher (Fran Kranz) is thrown in.

Top all that with generous doses of kung fu, and you've got an entertaining mixture.

Here's hoping the show gets the cable back-up deals needed to survive. It's TV-in-the-den-worthy viewing, for sure.