In keeping with our space mission news this week, on this date in 1969, the Apollo 12 mission landed on the moon, making astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean the third and fourth humans to walk on the moon.
UN Window “Peace” by Marc Chagall
Writing, Editing, and Publishing:
A lot of fairy-tale news today: From SFSignal, Sarah Pinborough writes about what it’s like to rewrite fairy tales for grown-ups, anticipating her 2015 Snow White novel, Poison.
The Guardian reviews Jack Zipes’ new translation of Grimm’s fairy tales, a translation that restores some of the initial horror and darkness to these stories before the Grimms made them a little more family-friendly.
And here, the Daily Geekette blog covers 5 female fairy tale authors you need to be reading.
Samuel Montgomery Blinn just won the Indie Arts Award; here, you can learn more about Blinn’s involvement in the SFF community in North Carolina and his literary journal Bull Spec. He sounds like a really neat guy; congrats, Samuel!
Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosophy professor at UC Riverside and an SFF fan, writes on his blog about two views of the relationship between science fiction and philosophy. He has a lot of thoughtful things to say, and the discussion continues in the comments.
For all you NaNoWriMo-ers, if you’re proud of what you’ve written and you’re ready to look for a home for your novel, check out Ragnarok Publishing’s submission guidelines. They accept unagented manuscript submissions and queries, so it might be a good place to start if you’re a budding author.
Bestiaire et Musique, by Marc Chagall
Movies and Television:
This is really cool. Lucasfilm is planning a new movie based in part on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This film appears to follow the fairy characters in the play as they try to understand why the love potion has gone awry, and it features some great voice talent. Can’t wait for this!
Internet Stuff:
There has been a lot of space news this week, the biggest stories of which revolve around the Rosetta mission which landed on a comet earlier this week. A lot of interesting stories came out of that, including some sounds similar to singing that the probe Philae picked up. Most exciting to me was the news that the probe detected organic molecules on the comet.
Also, astronomers detected some abnormally strong storms on Uranus this past week and are now working to theorize why these storms occurred, and why they’re sticking around.
Finally, these gorgeous cosplay pictures are worth a look; they blend superheroes and Star Wars characters with the costumes and posing of the Renaissance. The makeup is really remarkable; according to this article, no Photoshop was used to make Superman or Leia look like those characters—just real-life lighting and makeup skills.
I thought the lander was named Philae and the comet was 67P (and then two Russian names I won’t attempt to spell here), bu maybe I was wrong.
Terry reviewed an issue of Bull Spec here, I think.
Kate, thank you for the Chagalls! They are stunning.
Ugh, you’re right, as USUAL. :) I’ll edit this when I get back from my meeting.
I adore those cosplay pictures!
I love the richness and the lighting. They *do* look like oil paintings.
Abnormally strong storms on Uranus? You might want to see your doctor. (Sorry. I have three teenage boys.)
I LOVE the cat woman costume! And the Chagall art!
I thought about that, Kat! Glad I wasn’t the only one. :D
It’s worth noting that the scientists were expecting to find organic molecules – they’ve detected them near comets before. It IS an exciting discovery, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for a revolutionary one.
On an entirely unrelated note – Vader and Chewie’s ruffs are hilarious. I can’t stop laughing.