A Far Out Fantastic Site

It’s been a very busy week for me although a neat one. Even though really heavy writing of articles for clients while trying to squeeze in writing a new short story has been wearing me out, I came across some interesting things throughout the week. Two of them I found on Memorial Day Monday at Beer’s Books in Sacramento. Beer’s is one of the biggest used-book stores in the Sacramento area. You can almost find any book you can think of: anything from an early 20 th century hardcover to 1950s pulps to newly printed books. Well, for the last three weeks I had been on a mad hunt for a copy of a book by Philip K. Dick, ideally a collection of his short works but I would have been happy with one of his novels. I’ve read his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the novel that the movie Blade Runner was based on) and A Penultimate Truth , plus one or two of his short stories from books I checked out at the library years ago. So I wouldn’t say I’ve been well-read in Phillip K. Dick, though...

I used to take off to BayCon in the Silicon Valley on these Memorial Day weekends but haven’t done so in the last three years. If there was any year I should have went it was probably this year, since HorrorAddicts.net had their book release party for TheHorror Addicts Guide to Life there last night. But my day job made things a little unpredictable and so I didn’t plan for it early enough. I did, however, keep up with the party on Facebook. According to Emerian Rich, founder of HorrorAddicts.net, the party went by great. It was a panel discussion/release party where they were giving away prizes and selling books, including the Horror Addicts Guide . I don’t have the numbers but Emerian said they sold several books, whether that included the Horror Addicts Guide or not, I’m not sure. I know they were selling, or at least displaying, a number of other Horror Addict authors’ books that they set out on their table which looked really neat, the main colours of the banner and cloth b...

(If you missed part one of this topic, you can read it here .) Last time, I went over some highlights of day two of West Sacramento’s Intergalactic Expo. I also went over in my article about how so-called outdated sci fi can be read or viewed as alternate timeline or retro future sci fi. If you missed these, then you can read about them here . Now for the second part to both these discussions. Intergalactic Expo Highlights, Day 2, Part 2 Let me begin by concluding my highlights of Intergalactic Expo which occurred the weekend of May 2 nd and lasted through Sunday, in which Sunday is what last week’s post was highlighting. If you want to know about events for Saturday of the con, then please check out my post forthat weekend . (In that post I talk about the panel on female characters in Josh Whedon’s films and television shows, collectively known as the Whedonverse.) On the second day of Intergalactic Expo, May 3 rd , after the table talk with JP Aerospace, I a...

I made sure I didn’t hold off on the article about old sci fi this time, but I also said I would have more highlights on last weekend’s Intergalactic Expo. [ link ] So I have both here, but I decided it would take up too much space in one post. So I’m dividing each of the two topics between this weekend’s and next weekend’s posts. Intergalactic Expo Highlights, Day 2 Sunday, day two of the con, went by way better than Saturday (day one). Because I took extra preparation to catch the bus at a certain location, I made it to the expo a lot earlier and so saw a lot more there. Day two saw the con’s Outpost Bazaar which consisted of sci fi/fantasy arts and crafts booths in front of City Hall. I spoke with punk musician/author Charles Passarell about his Star Wars -themed band, Mos Likely (punned off of Mos Eisley Space Port in the first (1977) Star Wars film) that would play later that day and about his satirical sci fi novels he was selling at his table. These included his latest...

Photo Credit: West Sacramento's May the Fourth Be With You I hate to say this, but I’m going to have to put off the article on older sci fi another week. It’s been a very long, insane Saturday and so I didn’t have time to finishthe article. But I did say last week that I would talk a little about Intergalactic Expo and so since I won’t be sharing the article at this time, I’ll talk more about Intergalactic Expo even though there’s not much more I can talk about than originally anticipated. That’s because I arrived there way later than intended. I meant to arrive there by 3 PM at the latest but all because the bus driver did not stop at the stop we were waiting at in downtown Sacramento, my cousin and I had to walk more than three miles from there to the West Sacramento Civic Center where the con was held and so we didn’t get their until 4! That’s the problem with the bus system in Sacramento: compared to many other metropolitans in the nation, it is not reliable. W...

Image Credit: PDClipart.org I said last post  that I would have an article about outdated science fiction here. I was working on it this afternoon but discovered that it was going to take a little more work than I had anticipated. So I decided to postpone it to next week. But I thought I would give you some updates on other things that are happening in science fiction and horror. Preview of Coming Attractions “Outdated” Sci Fi : I already mentioned my article on outdated science fiction. It will talk about how older sci fi that seems not to live up to today is really not outdated and why. InterGalactic Expo [ link ]: If you’re in or near the Sacramento area, InterGalactic Expo is next weekend. This con is basically the reincarnation or, perhaps to use a better metaphor, the transformation of the past two years’ May the Forth Be With You event, only bigger and better. Why the change in name? Basically because this “ Star Wars ” con has occurred on May 4 th ...

It’s been a very busy week for me with both my writing and day job. I also attended UC Davis’s annual Pic Nic Day on this beautiful sunny, Saturday afternoon. It went by really well until we couldn’t get out of the Arboretum forest of no return without being harped on. A cousin and I were watching the Battle of the Bands there on the way out when two attendants gave us this bull that we were standing in one of the band’s area as if we were committing sacrilege or something, stepping on holy ground! They did not have clear demarcation of where that area was. But the really irritating thing was that right before they told us to get off the “designated” area, we had moved away from the path to let the band march through. Well, I’m not the one to take things lying down so I went to one of the info booths to write in a complaint. Sometimes just writing about what angers you helps alleviate the mood you’re in even if you don’t get much of an answer back from the person you’re writin...