Erratica Reduex

Back in the early 80s one of the highlights of my fannish life was my motherand I giving the writer Fredrick Pohl a ride to the airport after a group signing. My overwhelming impression was of a soft-spoken elderly gentleman, and of the authors in attendence, his intelligence and attitude was the one I most admired. I think I assumed at some point he had passed away.

Today, courtesy of james_nicoll's blog, I found out that he's not only very much alive, but he has a blog!

Words cannot describe how pleased I am that he's still around, and keeping current.

For instance, Edward Gorey took a break from illustrating gothic horror to illustrate an ettiquette book. Courtesy of found_objectsI present to you: The Recently Deflowered Girl , which is bound to be useful to the prospective reader in all kinds of situations.

Interestingly, i also found out that Mr. Gorey illustrated H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds. Nicely prolific of the man.

Admittedly it would be a Rush tribute band, but still.


We need to put together these two musicians:





And





I'm wondering if I can actually time playing these two pieces so they sync up.

Now, when I talk about major artifacts of bioengineering in Under the Green Moon, one of the concepts I like to play with is the idea of entire buildings, complexes and arcologies made out of bioengineered creatures (one can't really just call them plants.

This green project for Gwanggyo Power Center in South Korea is nowhere near that level yet, but as an example of thoroughly integrating plants and buildings to the points where the buildings look organic, this is clearly inspirational for what I want to do.





It's pretty inspirational for the current day, as these towers are intended to blend in with the landscape around the current lake, making a "landscape on a landscape" that complements, rather than replaces the natural setting. And more then just being decorative, the planted terraces will have a strong benefit in reducing energy consumption and water consumption, while increasing ventilation.

A very nice trick, if they manage it. As I said, inspirational.

Let's see, tell me if you've heard this one before: a perky japanese high school girl becomes a member of a professional team based on her pluck, determination, and a lethal knuckleball.  It does sound like the plot of a manga, except it's real life: 16-year old Eri Yoshida has become Japan's first female professional baseball player.


And of course, here's the video!

San Francisco Artist Tanya Vlach wants a webcam to place in her prosthetic eye.

Oh yeah. THIS is where:



In any case, I highly approve, especially since what she's asking for is really an update of the camera eye in the original "Cyborg" novel. I wish her luck!

...when you get NAZI DINOSAURS!

I've got to repeat that again, because that's so out there.


NAZI FREEEEAKING DINOSAURS!


 


T-Reich showing up is also how you know you have a really odd comic on your hands. And that's the case for Major Bummer, the comic about superheroes that could give the Mysterymen a run for incompetence.  All this courtesy of scans_daily, which has the rest of this little story...including the GIANT CAT.

Gotta love a story with a giant cat.

Evil Hat had a special offer where in exchange for a paragraph written on our experiences with the election (written in a pulp manner), a special discount on a PDF of the pulp game Spirit of the Century would be provided.  I am now the proud owner of a terminally cheap PDF of Spirit of the Century. 

And here below, is the story of my experiences voting this morning. 

A few details maybe somewhat exaggerated.


I gunned the engine of our Lancer as we took the corner on two wheels, scattering a pack of Rotarians like startled pigeons. "Is he still back there?" My Love hollered, digging under the seat for her bag of tricks "Hardly!" I shot back, “He's right next to us!" And indeed he was; by cutting through the playground, our Neanderthal pursuer had managed to close the gap between us and his outsized pickup (complete with testicular attachments on the trailer hitch and a lynched Cowboy Woody doll dangling from the side mirror). By glancing to my left, I could easily lip-read the words spewing from his nicotine-stained lips: 'MONKEY FOR FETCH AY CHEESEBALLS LOVING'...well, maybe not all that easily, as I was managing the tricky task of keeping at least one wheel on the road, navigate through morning traffic, and keep our pursuer- somehow enraged by the "No on H8" bumper sticker our car sported- from preventing me from voting by the subtle stratagem of using his car like a macroencephallic mace..

“I found it!" My Love hollered triumphantly, extracting what looked like a large tightly wound ball of yarn in an elaborate knot. “Get ahead of him!” And by dint of my naturally miraculous driving ability, honed by years of taking the worst traffic San Francisco could throw at me, I briefly cut him off via a right-left-right sideslip. With perfect timing, My Love flung the knitting ball, which impacted on the windshield of the truck, and exploded out into a six-foot wide knitted poster of ‘Obama for President. Frantically our pursuer tried to slew around to dislodge the curtain, but the special adhesive formula on the backing, kept it securely fastened. It was thus that his efforts caused him to overturn his truck, and we left it tumbling into a handy barranca.
It was at this point, as I slewed into the parking lot of the community center, that I noticed that the last collision had somehow managed to disable the breaks. “Hang on!” I yelled, “This is going to have to be a drive by voting!” as the entrance loomed at us with ferocious speed…

Gilrec, the hapless protagonist of The Far Reaches is a SciFi "hero" in a decidedly Woosterian vien. He'd really rather live out his life on his country estate playing video games, but he can't say no to anythng his remarkably stupid friends or terrifying uncle proposes. Fortunately, he has just acquired an amazingly competant robot butler named Bentley.

At first I was inclined to dislike this comic. The web-anime art style is rather old now, and a lot of the related graphic tropes just annoy me at this point. Likewise, Far Reaches lacks the brilliant dialog and writing that make the actual Jeeves and Wooster books such a pleasure. But I think I was a little hasty, because while it's taken it's time to find its pace, when Far Reaches does hit the right humor buttons, it's damn good.

Take the following scenes, for example:


( Where we see the artist does a damn good Peter Falk )


I was impressed. It's rare to find someone starting off with one joke, and finishing off with a completely different one. So, while The Far Reaches is still definitely light entertainment, it is good fun, and I'll keep reading it.

...we have this recently unearthed collection of items from the Wonderland Expedition Kit.Many thanks should be given, first and foremost to Mr.

absinthetic for assembling this kit. The true honor though should go to Professor John Lake of MIskatonic University for his heroic efforts to catalog and preserve for posterity some of the remnants of the vanished world of Wonderland.


(Translation: I am utterly, totally blown away by this incredible piece of work. Just...wow.