Hey, check out the – well, not exactly highlights but not exactly lowlights either, so let’s call them midlights – of my trip to Montreal. I’m posting these to prove I didn’t spend all of my time there eating. Occasionally, I took pictures of other people eating or snapped shots of places where I’ve eaten. I also drank a beer. Enjoy.
I went into the office today for a couple of hours and spun Episode #20 with Paul. When all was said and done and we had our five acts, we sat back and studied the beats we put up on the board. No one said anything for almost a full minute and then, finally, Paul summed it up: “It’s jam-packed.” Indeed it is. FREAKING HUGE would be another neat turn of phrase that would apply. Perhaps a big too freaking huge? Well, we’ll run it by the rest of the gang when we get in on Monday. Our VFX supervisor Mark Savela is either going to be thrilled, or he’ll suffer an aneurism. It could go either way.
Oh, and we also talked a little about Project Twilight. Paul had a terrific idea, more of a backstory element that gives it a surprising little twist. He wants to run it by Brad and Robert next week as well.
Hey, to any of you voracious readers looking for a great SF read, Eos has made one of my favorite scifi books, City of Pearl by Karen Traviss, available as a free download until August 31st. Check it out. Thanks to the gang at SF Signal for the heads up: http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com/31F6DD15-7767-4590-BBFA-6FF3968B62D9/10/125/en/eos10?WT.mc_id=REFL_SFBLOG2_COP_062508
Speaking of favorite scifi books – whenever someone swings by my office and asks me to recommend an SF novel, I’ll hand them one of the following: John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, Iain M. Banks’s Consider Phlebas, or Thomas M. Disch’s Camp Concentration. The latter is a scifi classic that I didn’t get around to reading until last year, but it made quite an impression. Back in July of ’07, I wrote: ” a scifi classic (I’m embarrassed to admit it took me so long to get around to) focusing on a conscientious objector, Louis, imprisoned for protesting an ongoing war. He is sent to Camp Archimedes, a prison whose inmates are part of a state-run experiment. Through Louis’s journal entries, we discover that his fellow inmates, once ordinary individuals, have been transformed into geniuses by a compound called Palladine. Ultimately, it turns out that Palladine’s source is a horrifying as its side effects. A wholly engaging and brilliant, brilliant read.” The other day, I heard that author Thomas M. Disch took his own life. According to an article in Friday’s Telegraph, Disch ” became increasingly depressed both by his failure to gain recognition for his work and his material circumstances” ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2271007/Thomas-M-Disch.html ). This I found both surprising and incredibly sad given that he was considered by many a truly great writer. In addition to Camp concentration, his novels 334 and On Wings of Song are considered some of the very best in the SF literary field. It’s a shame he died feeling underappreciated because I’m sure he had many, many fans out there who loved his work but may not have taken the time to go see him at book signings and convention appearances, or taken the time to drop him a note to tell him how much they’d enjoyed his books. Just a little something to consider if you happened to have recently read something you really liked or been reminded of a much-loved classic. Maybe take the time to contact the authors and tell them how much you enjoyed their work. I know they would appreciate hearing from you. Wikipedia offers links to various author sites, home pages, and publishers. And the gang at SF Signal offer this very handy, continually updated list of writers who blog: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/002815.html. Thomas M. Disch blogged here: http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/
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