Kind of a slow news week due to the approaching new year. I managed to produce a healthy selection anyway, with the help of some submissions. In the coming weeks, if you find something interesting you think everyone should read, drop me a line via the contact form and let me know, or just post it below. Let’s get started:
1) Carved Book Landscapes: I was not expecting to see what I saw when I clicked that link. These are mind blowing.
2) How Firefly fans saved free speech: An interesting video featuring our beloved Neil Gaiman.
3) The Most Beautiful College Libraries in the World: I’d love to visit a few of these… ok, all of these.
4) Samurai Star Wars: Star Wars themed feudal Japanese art.
5) Io9’s 10 Science Fiction Movies for People Who Think They Don’t Like Science Fiction: I’ve only seen two of these…
6) Steampunk Animals: The artwork is gorgeous, but anyone else thinking that steampunk has run its course?
I think steampunk ran its course when Justin Bieber hopped on the bandwagon (bandairship?), but I still like the aesthetic.
When’s your best of 2011 list expected? I find myself returning time and again in the hopes of finding it posted.
Friday! :)
I liked this link from the movie page http://io9.com/5867509/10-fantasy-animals-id-like-as-pets that might be a fun Thursday topic.
I think Steampunk and dsytopia are both about ready to be done, but not until after Devon Monk puts out a sequel to Dead Iron :)
Looking forward to the best of 2011 list.
Yes, steampunk is not allowed to be done until the Dead Iron sequel. Because Dead Iron was really cool.
I think bad writing is killing dystopia — everybody and their brother has now written a bad knock-off of the Hunger Games and/or The Handmaid’s Tale, keeping the doom and gloom but leaving out everything that made those books actually good. So now there is dystopia fatigue, especially in YA. It may not stay dead, though; urban fantasy also had a nadir, I think around 2005-2007 or so, when a lot of bad books were being churned out and some of the best new writers hadn’t been published yet. But now there’s some really good stuff again.
Dystopia will always be around, just not as the pop-dystopia we see now. (It’s a generational thing, but when I think of dystopia stories, The Hunger Games series doesn’t even enter my mind but what does is; the movie Blade Runner -which is based on Phillip Dick’s Do Android Dream of Electric Sleep- and the Mad Max trilogy.)
I can’t wait for our Best of 2011 List either. :)