Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) get ready to lead a mission.
Only two more days until Rogue One; a Star Wars Story opens nationwide.
Giveaway:
I will announce the winner of the Giveaway from last week’s column on Sunday, December 18, in the comments section of that column. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions!
Awards:
You can vote here for the best digital comic of 2016. Thanks to File 770 for the link.
Stephen King thinks it’s just fine that Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize, thank you.
Workshops:
Vandermeer Creative will fund the Octavia Project for 2017. Locus has details and a link to the Octavia Project Site.
Books and Writing:
Brian Attebery gave this address at the James Tiptree Jr. conference in Portland. This essay is long, complex, and fascinating. Mitochondrial fiction?
The Guardian gives you eight illustrations and you have to guess which classic SFF book they are from. (Note: read the clues, they help!) This is really an advertisement for The Folio Society, but it is fun and the ilustrations are beautiful.
Rogue One Poster
Check our New Releases button! Here are some books Jason noticed: “Ada Palmer’s sequel to Too Like the Lighnting, Seven Surrenders is getting some good buzz. And James S.A. Corey’s Babylon’s Ashes (released 12/6) will be a pretty big SciFi sequel release.” I’m looking forward to the new Genevieve Cogman’s The Burning Page, due out in early January, not to mention Battle Hill Bolero by Daniel Jose Older.
Book Smugglers asked N.K Jemisin what she would do if the events of The Fifth Season happened for real, and here is her response.
This is several weeks old but still interesting. Malka Older, author of Infomocracy, wrote about how she came up with the “micro-democracy” idea. Tor published this on election day, which is appropriate.
Movies and TV:
And of course, here is the trailer—featuring baby Groot!
“We’re looking for a girl and her dog.” Emerald City premieres on NBC on January 9; right after Grimm. Tarsem Singh is associated with this project, which means it will be visually stunning. And they’ve taken a few liberties with the source material; notice the reimagining of Toto! I’m cautious. I want to love this because it is so luscious and saturated with color, but I’m worried that it’s just a pretty face. But… Vincent D’Onofrio?
Internet:
Tested.com pulls out their favorite Q&A’s from Adam Savage’s most recent AMA at Reddit.
I can always count on Charles Stross for something interesting. In this blog post he copies some Twitter comments he made about the proliferation of clickbait and/or “fake news” sites.
The Verge wants us all to have an alternative to the Internet’s relentless negativity – at least when it comes to movies. Here, they introduce “Movies with Mikey,” whose goal is to point out the really good things about movies we love.
Analee Newitz thinks that we need to seriously examine our belief that “online” and “IRL” (in real life) are actually separate things. Here is her op-ed piece from Ars Technica.
Space:
New York Times provides a profile of astrophysicist Sara Seager. Thanks to Tor.com for the link.
Earth:
Here is Skylark performing an original work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, an Icelandic composer. The piece is inspired by a 14th century Icelandic hymn.
loved that Tiptree convention essay–thanks!
I got a lot out of that one, and I’m probably going to have to read it at least once more, maybe twice.